Ivan Kal - Olympus

“Taylor to Novak, report.” Taylor called the other team leader.

“Light resistance, package in place.” Novak responded.

“Good, secure the perimeter, meet us at the ship in an hour.” Taylor said.

Hughes kept working on isolating the server and separating it. Olympus software was high grade, and as such they didn’t have the time to try and crack it, so they would be bringing the core with them. Taylor told his team to secure the area, and informed the Captain that everything was going according to plan.

Tomas looked up from his desk, as Laura barged into his office.

“There is a Concordis warship heading straight for Cloud station.” Laura said.

“What?” Tomas asked. “Could it be heading somewhere else?”

“No, it going straight for Cloud. It’s not responding to any of our attempts at communication.”

“Did you contact Concordis?”

“Yes, they are blocking me.” She said angrily.

Tomas sent the request for Elias, Seo-yun and Nadia over his implant to come to the office immediately. They all had offices here at the Moon base. He told Laura and she sat down on one of the couches in the office. He got on the comms with Concordis ambassador immediately after sending the request. A minute later, the others arrived, while Tomas was speaking with the Concordis ambassador.

“What do you mean hijacked!” Tomas yelled at the image suspended in the air above his desk.

“The dissidents had resources, and we suspect that it was an inside job. We have already sent our two other ships in pursuit, if you could inform your people on the station to go with the dissidents demands and buy us time for our other ships to arrive, we can resolve the situation.” Ambassador said, in a manner that telegraphed to Tomas that it was rehearsed. Tomas didn’t bother to answer him and just closed the connection.

“You heard?” He asked the room.

Elias put his hand up, and was nodding in a way he always did when he was talking with someone via his implant. Two minutes later he closed his eyes and then opened them and looked right at Tomas.

“They are lying.” Elias said.

“I know that! I just don’t know about what!” Tomas yelled frustrated.

“I got in contact with my people on the Concordis station. The ship Concordis claims is hijacked, was boarded by its original crew in secret. There are no dissidents on that ship.” Elias said.

“What the hell are they up to?” Tomas asked.

“Do your people know the reason behind this?” Laura asked.

“No, but they did say that there was an arrest made a few days ago, a dissident cell, that was kept secret.”

“What do they think they could get from this? They must be after our technology, but I have no idea how they plan to get away with this, we know that there are no rebels on that ship.” Nadia asked.

Tomas grimaced. “No we don’t.” He said sourly.

“What do you mean, we don’t know?” Seo-yun asked incredulously.

“If we know, then that means we have spies in their ranks, and if we have spies in their ranks that means that they will have grounds against us. They played this perfectly, if we say we know, they tell the world we have been spying on them, if we do nothing they will save us and be regarded as heroes, not to mention what they will recover from the station.” Tomas said bitingly.

“They know that Cloud station has no technology that they ca—”

“Damn!” Tomas interrupted Seo-yun. “Yes there is technology, the servers, they hold all of our files on our tech, including those on the alien ship and everything we translated from it. There is no technology on the station worth recovering, but they will get everything from the files, it will only be a matter of time until they manage to make sense of the tech.”

Seo-yun’s eyes widened. “We can’t allow them to get that. This just proves that you were right. They are not ready for that.” She said.

“I don’t see what we can do to stop them.” Elias said slowly.

“Where is our closest warship?” Tomas asked Laura.

“It’s on a patrol between Mars and the belt.” She said. “It would take it at least a week at full burn to get here.”

“Wait, isn’t there a ship docked here?” Elias asked.

Laura’s expression turned surprised for a moment, but she quickly hid it behind her professional mask.

“It’s undergoing upgrades, we were putting in the new FTL comms, and the crew is on leave, the Ship Master and other officers are visiting their families on Mars.” She said.

“But it has crew?” Tomas asked.

“The ship is crewed with those that passed from the Academy, we gave them some time to get acquainted with the ship, before more experienced officers returned. They are kids Tomas.” Laura said.

“You told me that some of those kids where even better that the officer we had in command.” Tomas said.

“In simulations yes, they have no experience in real situations.” Laura said weakly.

“Who did you put in command?” Tomas asked with a hard look in his eyes.

“Adrian.” She responded, closing her eyes.

Tomas’s eyes softened when he heard and recognized the name.

“I know that you care about the boy Laura, but I need Laura the Fleets Master now, not Laura the mother. Can he command that ship?” Tomas asked, Laura had told him that she felt as if Adrian was her son. And that she hoped to recognize him as such in time, if he was willing.

“Yes.” She said softly.

Tomas moved around his desk and hugged Laura. He moved his head back and looked in her eyes.

“You once told me that he had the potential to become something great. Trust in him now.” He said.

Laura nodded, and swiped her hand across her eyes, a moment later she regained her composure.

“Alright. What are your orders?” She asked.

“I want them to get there as fast as they can, that ship can’t be allowed to go back with our files.” Tomas said. Then he turned to Elias. “Tell our people on station to try and stall them but not to endanger their lives.”

Elias nodded and closed his eyes, sending orders through the implant to be relayed to the station. Laura walked to Tomas’s desk and started giving orders to the people working on upgrading the ship, to stop their work and then she opened the channel to Athena and her commanding officer.

Adrian was lying in bed inside the Ship Masters quarters reading a book, it was a good book, about the humanity’s first contact with alien life. He was quickly adapting to the life on a ship, he held the first watch, then let Bethany take over the second, and Noah the third watch. He was the one of their teammates that were assigned to this ship with Bethany and Adrian, he gained the rank of Adjutant and served as the ships third officer, Alexander was in the med bay serving and learning under Chief Medical Officer John Lightman, one of the two people that didn’t go on leave with the rest of the crew. The other being Chief Engineer Belinda Martinez, she remained to oversee the upgrades to the ship. They were supposed to install a new type of a communication device, apparently one that was faster than light, though it had the ordinary laser comm and radio capability as well, and there were also some minor adjustments to their drives, but those were finished two days ago. Now, the only thing that was left was the comm device, and that should be done in about a day or so.

Just as he was getting to a good part of the book his comm started beeping. It was the one on his desk, which had the video capability. Implants could send, receive and play video, but they didn’t support live video chat, for obvious reasons, they couldn’t transmit the users face.