Ivan Kal - Olympus

“What?” Rachel asked.

Adrian lowered his head and mumbled. “They could become invisible.” He said barely audible.

The others looked at each other, and then Lorena looked at Adrian “What?”

Adrian felt his cheeks grow red and then raised his head. “Well I found these vids, they called them movies before about ninjas, and I saw that some of those ninjas could make themselves invisible.”

They looked at him for a moment, and just when he thought they were going to start laughing at him, Sahib leaned closer “Really? That’s so cool.”

“Yeah, I would love to be able to do that.” Kevin said.

Lorena narrowed her eyes at him “And why is that.”

“What? It would be really cool.” He said defensively.

“And why would it be cool?” Rachel said joining her friend.

“Well, uhm… Ah— I could cut in lane for lunch!” Kevin said. The girls kept glaring at him while Kevin squirmed.

Sahib and Adrian laughed at their friends discomfort until the girls finally let him off the hook.

Adrian cleared his throat and asked the group. “Did you chose something?”

“I was thinking swimming.” Kevin said, quickly.

“I already signed up for dancing.” Lorena said.

“I think I would like to sign up for track and field.” Rachel said.

“That’s nice, well I will be signing up for the same thing you are A.D.” Sahib said slapping Adrian on the shoulder.

“Awesome, so we will be ninjas.” Adrian said smiling at his friend.

November 2094 – Four months later

Seo-yun sat in one of Olympus briefing rooms on Cloud station drinking tea with Elias, Tomas and Nadia. They were all there on Tomas’s invitation to discuss the best course they could take. Seo-yun raised her cup and softly blew at the hot tea before taking a sip. The others likewise drank their beverages of choice in silence.

After a few minutes of this Nadia finally broke the silence. “Are we really going through with this?” She asked.

“Looks like we are.” Seo-yun confirmed.

“So, you plan to crash the gathering and just say it?” Nadia asked Tomas.

“I don’t see any other way.” Tomas said.

“They are not going to like it, especially the Coalition.” Elias said referring to the Coalition of Russia, India and U.S. they had finally realized that they stood no chance against the League and Concordis unless they work together. They still had their national integrity, unlike the League or Concordis, but they still worked closely, in something resembling the European Union.

“They won’t be able to do anything. They’ll yell and insult and threaten, but they won’t be able to stop us. And I don’t believe that they will resort to force. They might chose to deny us, try to put sanctions on us and ignore us, and if they do, they’ll learn just how much they depend on us.” Tomas said.

“Are we sure that we want to do this?” Seo-yun said.

“Do you believe that there is any other way? The only reason why we had this period of peace was because I made sure of it. But do you have any doubt in your mind that if anyone of them had our superior tech, they wouldn’t use it for war? The moment any one of them had the ability to go to war with big enough chance for success they would seize that chance.” Tomas said.

Elias nodded. “He is right Seo-yun, Concordis and the League are two greatest world powers, at first they stayed out of conflicts because they were recovering form the last war, and after only because they didn’t want to provoke each other. And now with the Coalition catching up to them technologically the balance of power is shifting, the old animosities are being brought back to the surface and everyone is getting into the new race for space, it’s only a matter of time before they start bickering over the land on the moon and other planets in the system. Hell they already started sending spies to our facilities trying to find the blueprints for our drives and artificial gravity tech, just as they keep pressuring us to sell them the same ones.” He finished grimly.

“I know, those are my departments they’ve been trying to infiltrate.” Seo-yun said “I just don’t want us to do something that sparks a new war.”

“War is inevitable, until we learn to work together as a race, we will never have a lasting peace. Even if we succeed there might still be a war.” Tomas said.

Seo-yun sighed her eyes conveyed age and tiredness her young face did not. “Alright then, in a month’s time we announce to the world our secession, we create our own country.” She said.

“Yes, everything is in place, most of our personnel and their families have been moved to the two of our six underwater cities, Sedna and Nephthys, and here on the station or the Moon colony. And soon we will have capability to house three times the number of our employees on the Moon and in the orbit on the station.” Nadia said.

“Good, anyone that wants to stay with us will be given citizenship, and anyone who doesn’t will be given a choice of continuing to work for us on Earth.” Tomas said.

“We already told all those who have knowledge of our secret projects about the secession, all had chosen to come with us, and had already transferred their families into space. But with so many families leaving Earth and not appearing on Cloud station had already gotten the press curious, they know that there is something strange going on.” Elias said.

“They’ll find out soon enough, stall them until then.” Tomas said to Elias. “All the plans have been put into motion, there is nothing else we can do, so let’s now move on to other things. Seo-yun you have news I believe?”

“Yes, as you all know we have been trying to figure out how the Union traveled between the stars, as by their records they traveled much faster than light. We now know that the ship we recovered isn’t capable of faster than light travel, it was carried by a much larger ship that was capable of those speeds.” Seo-yun said, she taped her datapad a few times and suddenly an image of our solar system appeared above the table they were sitting at. “We know that they used something called “translanes” to travel between star systems, and the information about those is very sparse, most of the databases containing the records of translanes were sadly corrupted and unrecoverable, only thing we managed to find out was these lanes were natural, and that they had some kind of mass limitations, most of what we know is speculation. But we did find something else, it seems that before they used this method of travel they used another, different kind. They managed to push their ships into a different kind of space, in which the ordinary laws of physics didn’t apply, one of our scientists proposed that this space be called hyperspace” She said and smiled slightly, the others at the table chuckled a bit, they were all old enough to remember the old movies, Seo-yun taped her datapad and the solar system shrunk down. “This method of travel was a lot slower than using the translanes, and it had other limitations. Such as it could have only been initiated when the ship was sufficiently away from the stars gravity well. Which meant that travel inside of a star system was still bound by laws of our space and much slower. The top speed they managed was ten times the speed of light, which meant that the distance of one light year would be traveled in a little over a month. We did find some corrupted blueprints, and have been trying to figure out by ourselves the missing parts, we are confident that we will have a working prototype within a year.”

“That’s amazing Seo-yun, I guess that I always doubted that I would see outside of our solar system by the end of my life, and now it might just happen.” Tomas said with a boyish grin on his face.