Rise of the Empire 1: Olympus (18 page)

Chapter Twenty

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 p
eople 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.

Adrian got up from his bed and walked to his desk, it was close to 15:00 hours, and he wondered who it was, he had just gotten
off his watch in the Command Center an hour ago. He activated the comm and was surprised to see Laura’s face. Judging by her expression he figured that this wasn’t a social call, so he snapped off a salute.

“Fleets Master.” Adrian said.

Laura returned the salute, and Adrian saw approval in her expression before it slipped behind her professional mask.

“Ship Master Farkas.” Laura said. Immediately Adrian realized that this was serious so he turned all his attention to her image.

“Approximately two hours ago, a Concordis warship was stolen by dissidents, at least that is the official version, and it has since then made its way to Cloud station, where we expect it to dock in four minutes. The truth is that there are no dissidents on board that ship, it is crewed by Concordis personnel, and we believe that this is a scheme on their part in order to acquire our technology. There are two Concordis ships on their way to the station. You mission is to disconnect from the dock as soon as possible, and set course to Cloud station at maximum speed. We are going to inform Concordis leadership to keep their two ships out of our territory, you are to position your ship between them and the “dissident ship”, board the vessel if possible, but if they refuse, you can’t under any circumstances allow that ship to go back to Concordis hands. If they don’t surrender to you, you have the authority to destroy that ship. Do you understand your orders?” She asked. Adrian’s mouth had gone dry, he looked Laura in the eyes.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Good. I have given you command codes equivalent of a Ship Master, and have sent a squad of army forces to the ship. You have the authorization to undock from the station.” Laura said. She looked at him for a moment more, her expression showing an emotion Adrian hadn’t seen before on her face, and then she terminated the connection.

Adrian immediately jumped from the chair and dressed,
while sending the command to the computer to put the ship on blue alert, meaning that everyone was to go to their posts. They had a few drills in the last few days, so he knew that they would follow the order. Bethany was already on the bridge as it was her watch. It took him less than thirty seconds since the moment the communication from Fleets Master ended, to the moment he stepped in the Command Center. The Command Center’s walls were round, and after they reached the height of a meter and a half they started to curve towards each other, making the room resemble the inside of a dome, all of the walls were also screens, using a type of nanotechnology any part of the wall could be turned into a screen, it could also project a 360° feed from the ships outside cameras, when turned on it looked as if the Command Center was on top of the ship and had the view of everything around. It didn’t have any special tactical advantage, but he was told that it looked amazing when the ship was close to a planet, such as Mars. The stations were oriented in a half circle all facing the same direction. Those were from left to right, science, sensor, navigation and weapons station, behind them a was a holo-desk, it was installed just a few days ago, and had the ability to show a 3D representation of the ships surroundings, it was a smart software that took all the information from the ship sensors and then created a virtual representation of the space around them, scaled down of course, it also showed a lot more information, but Adrian didn’t have a lot of time to get himself familiar with it. On the left side of the holo-desk was the communication station, it was the only one that was separate from the others, and was oriented towards the “side” instead of the “front” of the ship, behind the Holo-desk and on a platform was the Ship Master’s “command chair” and besides it on a slightly lower platform, was the High Prime’s chair. Adrian made his way to the command chair currently occupied by Bethany. When she noticed him she turned to him and scowled, not bothering to get up.

“Another drill Adrian? You are taking this position too seriously, you need to relax an-“

“High Prime, I need a status report from all systems.” He interrupted her. Then he turned to the acting Communication Handler Gillian Estevez, she was one of the Academy graduates that chose to enter service at the rank of cadet. “Contact engineering, they need to prep the drives, and inform the team working on the upgrades to abort any operations they have in progress and return to the ship.” Everyone turned around and just looked at him like he was crazy. Bethany stared at him open mouthed still sitting in his chair. Adrian looked at her with a stony face.

“High Prime, the Ship Master has entered CC, why are you still sitting in my chair.” He asked calmly. Something in his voice must have clicked with her because she
got out of the chair. Adrian took his position in the command chair, he looked around and noticed that everyone still just looked at him, three of the older cadets who were now at the stations for Navigation, Sensors and Weapons had amused looks and were chuckling amongst themselves. The atmosphere in Olympus was more relaxed than in Earth militaries, but there was still a clear chain of command, and their behavior was inexcusable. They didn’t know that this wasn’t a drill, and even if it was, they needed to take it seriously.

“I gave you an order. This is not a drill.” He said to the room, only Communication Handler Estevez listened to him and got on the comms with engineering
, Adrian told Iris to remember and remind him about Estevez later, the rest kept looking at him, while the three older cadets resumed their amused chuckling. He knew that they disliked drills, but their behavior was unacceptable. He informed the security that their presence was required in CC via his implant, and sent them his new command codes, the ones Laura gave him. He then informed those from the second and third watch he knew would follow his orders to the CC to replace the ones he was about to kick out.

He looked at the older cadets, one of them returned to what he was doing before Adrian walked in
, while others shook their heads and talked ignoring Adrian. A moment later six security officers entered the CC. Adrian pointed to the three Cadets.