Ivan Kal - Olympus

“You’ve finished a lot of work in a short time.” Laura commented.

“Yes,” Nadia sighed “And still we are only about twenty percent done. The central is operational and habitable but it still isn’t close to being finished, we are currently using only ten decks of planed fifty. And other arms are all still in the beginning fazes, except the food processing, which we needed to get operational as soon as possible, Tomas wanted the station to have its own food supply, rather than relying on supply ships from Earth.”

“It’s impressive nonetheless.” Laura said.

“It certainly is.” Elias said.

The elevator slowed and the doors opened, as soon as they got off they arrived at the security station were the security asked for verification, which they provided with their implants. When their identity was verified the guards saluted and let them through, they entered the office space, which was the entire deck, there were dozens of doors on each side leading to private offices, with dozens more desks in the middle of the room where employees sat and worked. Each desk was improved version of the command desk Tomas once had in his office, the new ones hadn’t changed much in appearance but were much faster with better hologram technology, these have mostly replaced personal computers back on Earth.

They walked beside them and arrived at Tomas’s office.

“He wants to speak to you in private first.” Nadia said to Elias, “We’ll wait in my office.” She said pointing towards her office next to Tomas’s. Elias nodded and entered.

Tomas’s office looked very much like the one he had on Earth, the couches and a table in the middle. Tomas sat at his desk and looked up when Elias walked in.

“Elias, come sit, we have much to discus.” Tomas said gravely.

Elias reached the desk shook Tomas’s hand across it, and sat in a chair in front of it.

“This is serious then?” Elias asked.

“Very much so.”

Elias remained silent and waited for Tomas to continue.

“You know that our space projects caused a lot of protests by the world governments outside of the League and Concordis, primarily with Russia and U.S. They protested our right to explore and build facilities on the moon and other planets in the Solar system, citing the Space treaty. The League and Concordis, gave us permission, and responded to their protest by saying that they didn’t sign the treaty and that Olympus was a company not a state, since then Russia, India and the U.S. have been trying to get their own joint space program up and running, their technology is inferior but over the years they have managed to buy enough from the League that they have reached the point where they can start sending their own missions out into space.” He looked Elias in the eyes and said. “They plan on colonizing the moon.”

“That is not good.” Elias said, both the Concordis and the League agreed that Olympus could only put storage facilities on the Moon. What no one knew was that Olympus had not only already built those facilities, they had already expanded and started to colonize the Moon. There were already around one thousand people living there. The Concordis didn’t realize since all off the inhabitants were also Olympus employees, and their families came from the underwater cities under Olympus control. It was easy enough to make sure no one found out that the people were gone.

Tomas nodded. “They plan on sending the first test mission in two years, and to start colonizing in five years, the people that will live there will obviously come from their three countries, but since they had announced this, the League and Concordis want to start doing the same. Both the League and Concordis governments sent me a request, they want to hire us to build them the ships to go and start colonization of the Moon, they want to be there before the Russians and Americans.” He finished grimly.

“That, is definitely not good.” Elias responded.

Tomas closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with his hand. “We could stall, though if we do, at most we get two years until the first mission starts, or if the Concordis and the League grow tired and find someone else to do it, it’s not hard to get to the moon, they could do it a hundred years ago for god’s sakes! It will only make them suspicious and when they get there and find our colony they will know something is wrong, not to mention the freaking station and shipyard we built on the dark side of the Moon.” He said. A smaller station was in orbit of the Moon always on its dark side so that it wouldn’t be seen from Earth, alongside a shipyard, a colony and a mining site. Olympus works fast and with all the advanced technology they unlocked from the alien ship they went into high gear, a year after they got the space port up and running they started sending missions to the moon and beyond, they started mining operations on the asteroid belt and the Moon, three years later they built the station and a shipyard, that boosted their production speed significantly, and next they started building the station in Earth’s orbit, they had stalled its production on purpose, they could have built it in a year but they didn’t want to alarm the governments of Earth, or show them their true capabilities, even the things that they did until now had some of them suspicious.

“Couldn’t we just go public then, tell them that we are colonizing the Moon and have plans to colonize further. What’s the worst they could do?” Elias said.

“They might not have the power to do anything to us, but it will hurt our plans a lot, they can control the press, and when they figure out what our plans are they will paint us in a not so favorable light.” Tomas said “And remember they don’t know what we really have, first they will try to take control of Olympus, and then when I refuse they will try to have me removed as CEO, when they realize that Olympus is completely owned by me they will resort to force. No, we need to start planning now, we need to get ahead of this before they find out. They will never allow a corporation to colonize the Moon, but we might trick them if we start looking for personnel for the station, it could safely hold thousands.”

“But when they do find out they will stop our recruiting attempts. We need people if we are going to fulfill our plans.” Elias said he tried to think of a way to recruit people without giving them away.

“I have a few plans, but I’m guessing that we will need to make do with a lot less people than what we originally planned. There are three million Olympus employees worldwide, with their families about seven million, assuming about sixty percent of them accept our plans, that is around four million people. We planned for more. We will need adjust our plans.”

“What do you have in mind?” Elias asked.

“First we need to tighten our security, we will be making some risky moves and we need to ensure complete secrecy. That’s your job, we need to find everything we can about the other countries space projects, and we need to stall the League and Concordis as much as we can until they wise up and turn elsewhere. And I will be making a trip to see Seo-yun, I have been letting her have the choice of which technologies we develop, I will need to convince her to focus on space technology.” Tomas said.

“I’ll see what I can do on the security part, but if you believe that there might be a conflict, we will need to expand the security, or the military I guess, no point in calling it security anymore, and we will need spaceships to protect the colony.” Elias said already developing the strategy for the next few years.

“Yes, I already sent the instructions to the shipyard, by the calculations I got we should have two warships in two years, but we will be stopping the production of freighters and mining ships.” Tomas said. Olympus currently had four freighter class ships and six mining ships, freighters were constantly moving materials that were mined at the asteroid belt, they had the best engines they could currently produce and it took them just a little over a month for the trip from the moon to the asteroid belt.