Rise of the Empire 1: Olympus (8 page)

Chapter
Eight

Elias opened his eyes
, and the top of the chamber he was in slid open. He swung his legs over the edge and sat up. The face that greeted him was that of Maria Nunez. They have met years ago when she worked on a project involving the alien ship. Now she was head of Olympus simulation program.

She smiled softly at him
“You win again. What is it, Fifteen to six for you I believe?” she said.

“Sixteen.” Elias said.

“Yes that’s right I forgot the one with the assassination.” She said cheerfully. “That one was inspired.”

“It was. So they programed a stealth suit on their own?” Elias asked.

His eight team members were in the process of “awakening” all around the room. Maria motioned him outside of the room and towards her office.

“They got the specs from the research department, so they just programed the
scenario, the suits capabilities were real.” She said.

Elias nodded, he and the security department have been competing with the programing team since the virtual technology became viable as a training tool. A fierce rivalry had developed between them. The programmers managed to score a few wins against his team
, but mostly by programming impossible scenarios, and since a certain scuffle between one of them and one of his men they have been trying to win in a more balanced match, hence the use of stealth suits. The programmers tended to use more guile and creative tactics rather than brute force, and their score was much better against other teams. Which only made them much more motivated to win against Elias and his team with the same tactics.

“They, used very little in terms of firepower. And only one team.” Elias commented.

Maria nodded “Yes, they thought that their win would be much greater if they won with less rather than more. They’ll up their game next time.”

“They almost won this time. If our suits weren’t as armored as they were
, we would have all fallen in the ambush.”

“So did you notice any bugs?” She asked.

“None, like the past three times it was perfect, it felt real. The integration with our implants was perfect. I believe you finally made a perfect virtual reality.” Elias answered.

“I hope so, but these sort of things need to be carefully examined each time.” She said.

“Could you forward Niko’s sound detecting program to the development? I want them to incorporate it into the default suit design.”

“Of course Elias.
Are you staying for a while? I know that the programmers will want a rematch soon.” She said with a smile.

“I’ll have to disappoint them for now, Tomas needs me on the Cloud station.” He said.

“Space? I must say the weightlessness managed to became a pain really fast, I have no idea how those who live there deal with it.” She shuddered.

“Tomas tells me that they
will be putting in the artificial gravity fields, they should bring the generator online in a few days for testing.” They had managed to build a gravity field generator two years ago, and they had them in use, just not on the station yet.

“
Something from a certain project?”

“
Of course.”

“I
t amazes me sometimes how much we managed to advance in such a short time.”

“And still we have a long way to go.”

“I’ll arrange a transport for you to the spaceport. It will be waiting for you at the landing pad.” Maria said.

“Thanks.
Tell the programmer team that I’ll be expecting a new challenge when I return.” He said as he walked out of Maria’s office.

“I will.” They shook hands and he left. The programing team was comprised of ten game level designers that Maria managed to steal from the entertainment branches of Olympus. They had the necessary experience to utilize this technology and build
realistic challenges. Though they did go overboard a few times in the beginning, introducing a lot of impossible obstacles. They even put in an enormous Troll, ported from one of the games they designed, the Troll’s appearance came as a complete surprise to Elias and his team, it scared most of them as it exploded out of ground, and then it proceeded to clobber them to death. They have since then calmed down and focused on recreating tough but realistic situations, though they did tend to find new and inventive ways to use existing technology. There were other teams that competed against each other in simulations, security teams, but the programmers were the ones that created the environments, and so they created their own team.

Laura was already waiting for him in front of the facility. She would accompany him to the station, while the rest of the team remains here to train in various scenarios for another two months before rotating with the teams that were currently in the field. She fell in step with him as he passed.

“John didn’t take the exercise seriously.” Laura said evenly.

“He
was never in the field before, and he is young, he will learn to take matters seriously after he gets some more experience.” Elias’s team frequently rotated two promising rookies through their ranks every few months so that they could get a feel for them and their responses.

“If he returns.” Laura said.

Elias didn’t say anything, there was nothing to say, Olympus personnel were as capable as those in the armies, their technology was better, and their people were on the average older. John would off course be put in low risk operations in the beginning, but even in those there were sometimes casualties.

They entered the
elevator that would bring them from the heart of Nephthys to the surface.

“
Niko was good.” Elias said.

“Yes, he has potential
, and he is smart, I was thinking of putting him through tech and then command courses, in a decade or two he might be a great commander.”

“I was going to suggest the same, make it happen.”

When they arrived at the pad, the transport ship was already waiting for them as Maria had promised. They boarded the transport, and it immediately took off towards the space port located in the Pannonian basin. The trip from Nephthys would take just over an hour and forty minutes. They sat in a comfortable silence, both of them had many reports or requests to review during the flight. Elias opened his implants inbox and started reading through the list of requests Laura had forwarded to him. Anything she couldn’t deal with or was unsure how to handle she sent to him. He opened the first file and text started floating in his field of vision, he could have activated the audio form, meaning that he would hear a voice reading the text directly into his mind, but he more often than not chose to read. The implant was capable of massive data storage, and later recovery. It was mostly used to store most any kind of data, from pictures to text and videos, and it could send and receive files. There were some concerns at the start, of implant hackings, and a few minor incidents, but all those problems were solved by the introduction of a buffer system. The implants were in closed modes, until the user turns on the receive and send mode, and the mode wont activate until the sent items were activated and checked in an isolated system. Not to mention the high grade firewall system that Olympus has implemented, borrowing some ideas from the alien tech.

By the time he finished the request list, they were already at the space port. The space port was built
nine years ago, when Tomas first started pushing for space exploration, he managed to convince the two major super powers to allow him to build a private space station, and from there to coordinate his planed excavation of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The other nations, most notably Russia and U.S. where against a privately owned station in the Earth’s orbit, but the two opinions that mattered where Concordis and the League. With permission from them, he started construction of the space port, and later of the station. He managed to even convince them to give him permission to build structures on the Moon, under the guise of factories and storage for the planed mining operation from the asteroid belt. Though Elias knew that was just the beginning of Tomas’s plans. The U.S. again protested loudly, citing breach of the Outer Space Treaty, while the League and Concordis responded by saying that most countries that signed the treaty no longer existed. And so Olympus went ahead with Tomas’s plans, while the former world powers watched from the sidelines unable to do anything to stop him.

As Elias and Laura left the transport, they were met with two security officers, greeted them with a salute of right fist to the chest which Elias and Laura returned. The salute was Tomas’s idea, he believed that Olympus security should start to look more like a military as his plans went forward, and knowing his plans for the future
, he agreed. The rest of the world, wasn’t bothered by their salutes, they have grown accustomed to seeing Olympus security everywhere, and the militaries of the world frowned, but believed them just a bunch of mercenaries playing soldiers.

“Sir, the shuttle is ready.” One of the officers said. Olympus security didn’t have a strict rank system yet, like the military though
, there were plans to implement some in the future, so they relied on Olympus tier system for now.

“Good.” Elias said, and followed the officers to the shuttle.

The Olympus shuttles were nothing like the shuttles from the past, they weren’t 2/3 rockets and 1/3 the actual shuttle. These were built by using a combination of earth and alien technology. They were capable of flying inside the atmosphere, leaving the Earth’s atmosphere and traveling through space. They were used to transfer both people and cargo from Earth to Space. The Hermes class shuttle was never going to win any beauty contests but it did get the job done.

They approached the blocky shuttle, the flight crew was already priming the engines, when they boarded one of the pilots instructed them to fasten themselves
, and then disappeared into the flight cabin. Soon after they could feel the shuttle lifting of the ground.

The experience of leaving the Earth’s atmosphere was rather uneventful, the shuttle itself was completely sealed. There were no windows, though there were view screens that could show the video from one of the outside cameras, but Elias didn’t bother to turn them on, he found the whole experience a bit disconcerting.

A few minutes later they could feel the effects of Earth’s gravity disappear signaling that they have entered space.

A screen directly across from them turned on, most likely by Laura with her
implant. All that could be seen was the dark void filled with bright stars, much brighter than how they are seen from Earth, the shuttles cameras were much more advanced than the ones used long ago, He remembered when Seo-yun explained to him years ago how the images that were taken back when mankind first left Earth were of a much lower quality, and when taking a picture or a video the lens focused on the things that were brighter than the stars like the moon, a space station or astronauts, so stars weren’t captured because they were much dimmer, giving the impression that you can’t see the stars in space. The technology then wasn’t enough to capture the same things that the human eye could. Now those cameras outside could capture the same things human eye could see and much more.

The stars slowly moved as the shuttle turned, the Earth appeared on the left side of the screen, and a few moments later the Cloud stations form could be discerned in the distance. As they drew closer the station grew bigger, until it almost filled the screen. The station itself had
a unique look, Tomas rejected the designs that relied on wheels and spin to generate gravity as he planned on incorporating the artificial gravity generators as soon as the technology became available. The station resembled a five pointed star when watched from the above or below, kind of. The center was the main habitat, it was cylindrical in shape with both the top and the bottom housing numerous sensor equipment and relays, from the cylinders center extended the five star “points”. The points were more like five skinny arms, at least for now. They would in time be decorated with multiples of other boxes and pods, as the station grew, one of the arms that was the designed as the station’s food production facility, where the food for the station’s inhabitants was grown, had already finished construction, and had slowly started production, each star point was about 400 meters long, and was planned to be around 200 wide. The rest of the points were mostly just building blocks. The other fully finished part was the center, the heart of the station. It was 700 meters high and had a diameter of 500 meters. It was a feat of engineering that was never before attempted. It was silver in color, it had no windows on the outside, but Elias knew that there were many cameras on its surface that would allow those living inside to see outside. The main part was imagined as a business and recreation area, but for now a only a few floors or decks are used for those purposes, and the rest was used as temporary housing for those that lived on the station, until one of the fingers intended for habitats could be finished. The shuttle made way towards the lower part of the cylinder, that housed docking stations, and couple minutes later they safely landed inside the stations hangar, the door closed and air was pumped back into the hangar. The hangar wasn’t large, it was just big enough to house three Hermes class shuttles, and Tomas planned to have a docking ring installed around the cylinder in time to accommodate the bigger ships he planned to build. As they landed Elias could feel the effects of gravity which meant that Tomas had already installed the gravity generators, which was a relief for Elias as he hated constantly bumping his head on the celling in zero gravity.