Olympus (Rise of the Empire Book 1)

by Ivan Kal

  After they put on the suits and made sure everything was properly secured, they signaled that they were ready and then waited for the match to begin.

  A minute later, the doors from the waiting room opened and they stepped inside the forest. This time, they were in direct contact via their implants. And since this wasn’t a simulation, it meant that Iris was there with Adrian. Bethany immediately instructed them to separate into three teams of three, with Adrian left as a rear guard. They moved in a V formation, with Bethany’s team being the center and behind. Their strategy was to encircle the opposing team and take them out, which left Adrian with nothing to do as he was far behind them. He’d made the point when Bethany had told them the plan, which of course she had rejected as nonsense—he was to protect their rear. No matter that, with their wide formation, there was no way anyone could get behind them. But Adrian had finally conceded, not wanting to fight with her.

  The rest of his team advanced quickly and soon were out of his sight. He could still follow their progress via his implant. Adrian moved slowly, following Bethany’s instructions to the letter, keeping a 100-meter gap between the rest of the team and himself.

  “The two of you need to work this thing out,” Iris told him.

  “What thing?” Adrian asked her, playing ignorant.

  “Don’t be like that with me, Adrian. I know you,” she said.

  “Fine, what would you have me do?”

  He heard a sigh. “Talk with her, find out what is the problem. Both of you are only hurting the team with your feud.”

  Adrian elected to keep silent and focused on moving through the thick forest. He knew she was right, but he just didn’t know how to approach Bethany. Nor how to make things right between them. He wasn’t blind, he knew that she had some problem with him. He just didn’t know how to deal with it.

  A rapid exchange of fire startled Adrian and he took cover. He focused on his HUD. The rest of the team had met with the Vipers. There were more sounds of fire, and he could hear Bethany instructing the team to fall back. But a few minutes later, she and the rest of the team grew silent. Their blue dots on his HUD changed into red ones, indicating that they were down. Adrian looked out of his cover. He didn’t see anyone, but he knew that the enemy team was approaching. By now, they would have realized that they were one enemy short.

  Adrian looked at his options. He could just walk out and let them shoot him, since their team had already lost. But he didn’t want to just give them this win. He remembered Bethany, and suddenly he didn’t want to be defeated without a fight. He quickly turned back and went to a tree he’d noticed a few meters back and climbed it. He found a spot four meters from the ground and trained his rifle in the direction the other team was more likely to come from. He didn’t have a lot of visibility, only a couple of meters in front of the tree. But that also benefited him; they wouldn’t spot him easily. The Olympus rifles, unlike the ones from Earth, didn’t have scopes. They relied on their wielder’s implants to aim. When the rifle’s line of fire aligned with a target, the crosshair on the HUD would rotate. At least, that was what it did for Adrian—the HUD was fully customizable.

  A few moments later, the first enemy came into view. Adrian followed him with his sight, but didn’t fire. He waited a few moments more until two more arrived. When no one else arrived, he aimed his rifle at the last one in their formation and took him out with a well-placed shot in the chest. Immediately, he moved his rifle to the next closest and took him out as well. It all happened in less than a second, and he then moved to fire at the last one, who had already started moving towards cover. Adrian’s first shot missed, but his second struck him in the lower back. He fell on the ground and turned, firing his rifle blindly. Adrian finished him with a shot to the chest. He then jumped down from his hiding spot and started running back towards his team’s starting point.

  His retreat was unfortunately interrupted by someone opening fire on his back. The first shot missed, but the next hit him in the leg and he went down. He rolled over and tried to aim in the general direction of his attacker, but another shot found his right shoulder and pain spread through his arm, the suit freezing its movement. A moment later, another shot found his chest and he was completely frozen in his suit.

  “Match over. Team Viper victory,” a voice rang out inside the arena. A minute later, Adrian’s suit unfroze. He got back on his feet and went back to the changing room.

  He was first to arrive, and when the others appeared a minute later, Adrian was already out of his suit and sitting on one of the benches. They removed their helmets, and Adrian noticed their somber expressions. They were all accustomed to winning. They had taken the top scores in other challenges and had believed that team vs. team would be no different. They took off their suits and changed into their regular uniforms and started leaving the room to go back to their team room. When Bethany started for the doors, Adrian got up and grabbed her hand. She turned angrily to him and started to say something, but the look on Adrian’s face stopped her. The rest had left the room, with Noah being the last to leave. He noticed them staying back.

  “Adrian? You com—?” he started before Adrian interrupted him by closing the door. He took a deep breath and turned towards Bethany, who stood in the center of the room, her hands crossed over her chest.

  “What is your problem?” Adrian asked, trying to keep his voice controlled.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about. It was a good plan, they ju—”

  “I’m not talking about the stupid match!” Adrian yelled, interrupting her. He started to get agitated. His breathing grew fast. He managed to bring himself under control in the silence that followed his outburst. When he had enough control, he met Bethany’s startled eyes and stepped closer to her.

  “I’m talking about this thing you have against me,” he said.

  She opened her mouth and then closed it.

  “I have nothing against you,” she said slowly.

  “Don’t. We both know that there is something. This feud between us is only hurting our team and our chances of graduating. So why don’t you just tell me what it is, and maybe we can try to work it out?” Adrian said.

  Bethany just looked at Adrian silently, but he could see her holding back something.

  “Bethany. Please, just tell me. I have spent days trying to remember if I’ve ever done something to make you dislike me,” Adrian said pleadingly. He was growing tired of the tension between them.

  Bethany’s face scrunched up in a grimace.

  “It’s nothing you have done. It’s me,” she said angrily. Adrian was taken aback by the vehemence of her response.

  “What do you mean it’s you?” he asked, confused.

  Bethany sighed, the anger going out of her. She sat down on one of the benches.

  “I was jealous at first, and I hated you. You must understand, I have trained and studied for this my whole life. I always wanted to be a soldier, since I was a small girl. I would look up to my father and later my brother. They were my heroes, and I wanted to be just like them,” she said. Adrian knew that both her father and her brother were in Olympus military. “I would train day in and day out for the single purpose of being the best. I wanted to make my family proud. After I graduated elementary, I went into the military school. And there all my hard work paid off. I was the best, and my training led to me being invited to join the fleet, something that was new. Where I could leave my own mark. I was so proud of myself, as were my father and brother. I learned that only the best were invited to join the fleet, and everyone else I met was the elite. And I was the best even among them.

  “And then I met you, an 18-year-old kid. Someone who was so good that they recruited you before you even went to specialization school. At first, I thought that you were being favored, but quickly I realized that you were just that good. So I made it my mission to be better. But then I realized that I wasn’t better. So I tried to alienate you from the others. I didn’t even real
ize what I was doing, it all just happened. And then when we came here and you told me off, it was like a fog lifted off my mind and I saw how I’d been treating you,” she said with a sad look on her face.

  “Then I hated myself. I tried to apologize, but didn’t feel like it was enough. I was embarrassed and didn’t know how to talk to you after that. I was uncomfortable around you, and I didn’t want to lose my pride, so I tried to limit our interactions. It just became easier than talking to you,” she finished softly. Adrian looked at the ceiling.

  “How much easier this all would have been if we’d only talked to one another,” Adrian thought to Iris.

  “That is one thing I will never understand about humans. How can beings so reliant on communications with others of their kind be so deaf and ignorant of one another?” Iris said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What?” Bethany said softly. Adrian looked at her and realized that he’d answered Iris out loud. He went on his knees in front of Bethany and took one of her hands in both of his. He smiled awkwardly.

  “We are such idiots, you and I,” he said.

  Bethany looked at him in a funny way but didn’t respond.

  “If only we’d talked sooner, we could have put this behind us a long time ago. There is no need for you to feel inferior to me, or to be embarrassed. It was my fault as well. I was too scared to talk to others at the Academy. I didn’t even know how. I am not like you and the others. My age isolated me from the rest of you. And I didn’t make any attempt to bridge the gap between us,” Adrian said.

  Finally, she released a nervous laugh. “Yes, we certainly are alike in that manner,” Bethany said.

  “You don’t need to avoid me, or to blame yourself for what happened before,” Adrian said. He smiled and stood up. He still held Bethany’s hand, so he pulled her to her feet. Adrian looked her in the eyes and asked, “Are we good now?”

  Bethany let out a relieved sigh and nodded. “And I am truly sorry for the way I treated you in the Academy.”

  “It’s forgotten,” Adrian said.

  “Thank you,” she said, relieved.

  They shared another moment, and then Adrian started towards their room with Bethany walking beside him. When they entered the room, their teammates looked at them and released a collective sigh of relief. Bethany and Adrian looked at each other, then at them, and said simultaneously, “What?”

  They all looked at each other and Sakura responded first.

  “We thought that you killed each other,” she deadpanned. Adrian tried to keep his face straight and not reveal his amusement, which was fueled even more by the fact that they could have killed each other. He kept a straight face and put a hand on Bethany’s lower back, pulling her closer to him.

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

  Bethany caught on to his ploy, and put her 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 somberly. It had been 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 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 a time. They have much more experience, and if we want to beat them, we will need to improve quickly. And change our game.”

  Part Three – The Divide

  Chapter Seventeen

  January 2103

  Tomas Klein sat in his new office aboard the Mars station. He had moved his headquarters from the Cloud station in Earth’s orbit to Mars, as it was becoming increasingly more difficult to hide his moves 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 few 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, but it was still not enough. He had hoped that the countries on Earth would unite and start exploiting the resources of the solar system, but they were unwilling, satisfied to leech off 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 hundred ships, most delegated to work inside the asteroid belt—not counting several stations, two in deep space outside of any planet’s 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’d managed to 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 had since gotten 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 had 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 below them. Perhaps they didn’t have poverty, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t still inequality of wealth. 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 on 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 united under one banner. He didn’t need it to be under him; anyone worthy would do. Tomas only feared that it would never happen. He looked at the report th
at floated above his table. The report held the latest news regarding the Concordis, Coalition, and League warships.

  For the past few years, they had been building warships and increasing their shipbuilding capabilities with more construction posts 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 more. Even the decision to build those ships was badly received by most of his advisors, and they’d only been 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, the League had 4 orbiting above Australia, and the Coalition had just finished building their second ship, with more planned. 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 was. 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, although they were small by Olympus standard. But monumental for those involved. 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 become Olympus’s equals.