Ivan Kal - Olympus

“Why would we kill each other? We are best buds.” He said in a bewildered voice.

Bethany caught on to his ploy, and put left hand on his shoulder, then she turned and leaned into Adrian putting her right on his chest.

“Yes, why would we kill each other?” She said softly. The startled looks on their teammates’ faces were too much for Bethany and Adrian and they burst out laughing. Adrian laughed so hard that he had to lean on the wall holding his stomach with his hands, and Bethany wasn’t much better off, she was laughing so hard her eyes started to tear up. The rest of the room joined them after a moment of stunned silence.

After they managed to get themselves under control Tania looked at Bethany and Adrian.

“You two almost had me there, for a moment I thought that all that tension between you was an act. So what happened?” Tania asked.

“We worked some stuff out.” Bethany said.

“Well I am happy that you finally straightened things out, but we still lost the match.” Alexander said.

“Yes.” Bethany said somber, it was her tactics that led to their defeat.

“The tactic was solid.” Adrian said, getting the attention of everyone in the room. “It’s just that we forgot something.”

“What?” Sakura asked.

Adrian looked over the others, making a brief eye contact with Bethany.

“The other teams had been fighting amongst themselves in these matches from the beginning, while we chose to focus on only one type at the time. They have much more experience, and if we want to beat them, we will need to improve quickly, and change our game.”

January 2103

Tomas Klein sat in his new Office aboard the Mars station, he had moved his headquarters from Cloud station in Earth’s orbit to Mars, as it was becoming increasingly more difficult to hide his moves in the vicinity of Earth, ever since the Earth’s major players started increasing their presence on the Moon. About half of Olympus population was living on the Moon, mostly families, the other half was spread out on Mars, and on the stations they had inside the system, they had very little people living on the Earth, besides those who worked there, Tomas had slowly transferred all of his people to space, leaving the underwater cities to Concordis, all save for Sedna. He still had some employees working on Earth but their families now lived in space. Earth economy was still dependent on things that Olympus produced, he tried to lessen that somewhat by giving them some of their facilities, it was still not enough, he had hoped that the countries of Earth would unite and start exploiting the resources of the Solar system, but they were unwilling, content to leech of Olympus, while expanding their military influence in space, that was one of the reasons why he didn’t share Olympus tech with them, they were not ready yet. Tomas managed to keep most of his actions secret from the Earth governments, he kept the true number of his ships under wraps, and Earth believed that he had somewhere around 20 transport and mining ships, but they weren’t sure, as Tomas kept moving them outside of their area of influence. In truth Olympus had around a 100 ships, most delegated to work inside the asteroid belt, not counting several stations, two in deep space outside of any planets orbit, and four shipyards/space stations that were spread out in the solar system. The secret to their rapid expansion and unprecedented building capabilities was the fabricator technology. With it they managed increase their manufacturing speeds by more than 500%, while the powers of Earth still relied on manual labor, and their industrial assembling lines. Tomas knew that the word of his fabricator technology got out and that Earth knew about it, but they had no way of getting it. Tomas kept the technology heavily guarded, and had moved all his fabricators outside of Earth influence. Tomas has kept a lot of Olympus technology out of the hands of Earth governments, and while he wanted to see all of humanity advance together, he knew that the governments of Earth wouldn’t allow it, any technology they acquired was tightly controlled and used for their individual progress, rather than the progress and improvement of everyone’s lives. They were still too set in the old rivalries, still remembered old wars, and while they did make progress, The League and Concordis being a part of it, it was still not enough. He knew that there was still corruption, and an enormous gap between those in power and those bellow them. So Tomas kept it all out of their hands, some could say that he was doing the same thing those on Earth would, but Olympus wasn’t like them, there was no division by class in Olympus, everyone was equal in opportunity. Everyone was able to choose their own path, all for free, the only thing Tomas asked in return was that they use their freedom to better the lives of those in Olympus. So while on the surface it seemed that Tomas was doing the exact same thing the corrupt politicians of Earth would do, the difference was in motivation, they would do it for their greed, while Tomas for the good of all. He hoped that he would live long enough to see the day when Earth finally unites under one banner, he didn’t need it to be him, anyone worthy would do. Tomas only feared that it would never happen. He looked at the report that floated above his table. The report held the latest news regarding the Concordis, Coalition, and Leagues warships, for the past few years they were building warships, and increasing their shipbuilding capabilities with more construction post in Earth’s orbit. His shipyards were now orbiting Jupiter, with only one orbiting Mars. Olympus also now had 8 warships, they didn’t have a need for any more, even the decision to build those ships was badly received by his advisors, and were only built because Tomas feared that Earth would turn to force to acquire Olympus tech. Now his fears didn’t feel at all foolish. Concordis had 3 warships, currently in orbit above Europe, League had 4 orbiting above Australia, and the Coalition had just finished building their second ship, with more planed, there was no need for them to have warships, there was no threat to their territory from space, unless they knew about Olympus ships, which was unlikely, as they never went anywhere near Earth. There were of course tensions between the three Earth powers like there always were, so Tomas assumed that they wanted to have their space interest covered. Both the League and Concordis had built colonies on the moon in the last year, they were small by Olympus standard, but monumental for those involved. But overall their space operations paled in comparison to Olympus, not just in technology but also in scope, all three combined barely had half the number of ships that Olympus had. They had limited mining operations on the moon, and none in the belt. They relied on Olympus for raw materials, which Tomas gladly provided, he didn’t want to impair their progress no matter what it looked like to them, he wanted them to catch up to Olympus, to became Olympus’s equals.

Tomas sighed and closed down the report, there was nothing he could do about them arming themselves, that was one of the reasons why he didn’t want to share their technology with them, he knew what they would do with it. He opened up the next report, this one from Professor Hyeon Seo-yun. It informed him that their first interstellar trip was a success, the exploration ship Star Gazer has arrived from its trip to the Alpha Centauri system, the system closest to us. It started its journey more than a year ago, with their version of the alien hyperdrive they were able to travel at ten times the speed of light, making the 4.3 light years trip in just over five months, they spent another month there collecting data and looking around the system and then spent another five months back, it’s now traveling at sub light speed from the edge of our solar system, the edge being the place where Sun’s influence was low enough for a ship to enter hyperspace, which was a few light hours past Pluto, it will take it a few months more to travel back to Mars. The drives worked perfectly even on a trip that long, as did the stasis pods the crew used while in hyperspace, just as Seo-yun assured him they will, but Tomas was still a bit skeptical, he wanted to wait a bit more before they undertook such a long trip, but Seo-yun insisted that there was no need, that they understood the technology and had everything under control, Tomas chose to defer to her judgment and gave her the permission. The report contained a mountain of scientific information that Tomas didn’t understand, sensor readings, readings from the planet orbiting one of the suns in the system and others, he scrolled down until he found Seo-yun’s translation of the data, she tended to leave Tomas notes on the more scientific reports she sent him, he insisted that he get any report on matters she deemed important. Her notes told him that while this was a giant leap and a momentous event in human history, the system itself wasn’t impressive, there was nothing there of interest to them, the one planet was unremarkable, nothing more than a rock, with no or very little materials that they used, she didn’t recommend colonization of that system. There were talks between Tomas and his “council” on colonization of other star systems, they all agreed that if they started colonization they would start with a planet with more hospitable conditions, preferably an Earth like world, but based on the map recovered from the Alien ship, those planets were so far away that it would take them decades to get there from the Solar system. For now they would stay in their birth system.