Olympus (Rise of the Empire Book 1)

by Ivan Kal

  And now as the Olympus transport flew over the ocean on a course for the surface platform of the city, his hands trembled slightly. Not from fear, but from excitement. His childhood dream was about to be fulfilled. It was his dream to reach beyond this overpopulated Earth, to travel between stars and to find new worlds, new beings, if such even existed. And now, hopefully, he held the answer to all of those questions. Eight months ago, an Olympus sub had stumbled upon a find that had the potential to shake the entire world.

  They’d found a spaceship; his people said that it couldn’t be anything else, and Olympus hired only the best. According to them, its design didn’t make sense for a submarine. It was first assumed that it was a relic of the past, before the war, some secret project that had since been forgotten. But after the first experts got on the scene and inspected the find directly, they found that it was far older than that, tens of thousands years older to be more precise. With it being so old, it couldn’t have been made by human hands.

  There were, of course, theories about Atlantis at first, but as soon as the find was transferred to a secure facility at Sedna, all those theories were shot down. His best people quickly all came to the same conclusion: it had been made for space travel. And then countless new theories had popped up. Where did it come from? Why was it here? And most importantly, whom did it belong to? It was made from a metal unknown to Earth science, and was impervious to anything they tried to open it with, though their choices were limited as they didn’t want to damage anything. And Tomas forbade anything more powerful, fearing that they would hit something they weren’t supposed to and blow themselves up.

  And then four days ago, his people had managed to open what they believed to be a cargo door. He didn’t know the details on how, but as soon as he’d found out that they had a way inside, which had been one minute after the door had opened, he had forbidden anyone from entering. He wanted to be there personally when they went inside.

  His transport finally arrived at its destination and smoothly lowered itself down on the pad. The airplanes of old had all been mostly replaced, at least in Concordis and the League. The American continents still had airplane travel, but any travel between there and the League or Concordis was by Eagle-class transports. The technology had been mostly there even before the war—hover ability, vertical liftoff and landing, and faster speeds, not to mention their greater reliability. Olympus had been the first to start producing them, and couple of League companies had seen the opportunity and jumped on as well.

  They looked reminiscent of the old Japanese Kawasaki C-1 military transports. A bit bulkier in appearance, without the back tail, where instead the engines were situated. It had two big turbines below the wings that were turned towards the ground with two exhausts on the wings top. There were, of course, many variants based on their purpose: commercial, cargo, military, and those designed specifically for Olympus use. The Eagle transports were all mostly larger than the old commercial airplanes. Different variants had different dimensions, but most fell into the range of ninety to a hundred and twenty meters. With the advances in technology, the space inside the transports was again increased, so the new transports could carry at least twice as much as the old airplanes of the same length.

  “Tomas, we’ve arrived,” Elias Bakas, his second-in-command and head of security, said from the seat beside him.

  Tomas nodded and stood up. The platform at the back of the transport slowly lowered and revealed the surface platform of Sedna. There were two people waiting for them; Nathan Jansen, the mayor of Sedna, was one of them. Nathan was also a high-level Olympus employee. All the cities built by Olympus were run by their employees. All were highly capable, and most importantly, loyal to Olympus first and Concordis second. The cities were outwardly considered Concordis property by anyone outside of Concordis government; even the citizens of Concordis believed that. In truth, the cities were leased to Concordis by Olympus. The deal that Tomas had made with the government was very clear. The cities were going to be populated by people from Concordis, but the running of the cities would be entirely up to Olympus personnel; there would be no politics involved there. Tomas had worked hard to make Olympus what it was today. The company was not like other companies; it was completely run and owned by Tomas—with a few of his closest friends who helped him start it, each owning some small part.

  It was more of monarchy than a company, and he ruled it all. Olympus had achieved a monopoly in many different areas. It had many subsidiaries in all parts of the world. The Concordis market was mostly run by them. Very few companies were able to keep up, and only because the government aided them as much as it could early on when Olympus was just created. With Tomas at the helm, Olympus started to swallow the broken market and repair it under his guidance.

  The government realized that Tomas was set on dominating the world economy and feared that the very fragile world peace would be broken. But Tomas wasn’t a man motivated by money or power. He understood that they were just tools with which he could accomplish his goals. What motivated Tomas was hunger for knowledge, the need for advancement. Not just of himself, but for the entire human race; he wanted to unite the world. But he knew that as long as greedy governments existed, it was never going to happen. The creation of the League and Concordis had given him a tiny bit of hope that humanity could someday become what he envisioned it to be, but it was still not enough. Olympus was his solution to the problem, a way to control and guide the world without having to play with politics. Or keep politics at a minimum, at least. He learned over his seventy-one years of life that one could never entirely escape it.

  He strode purposely down the ramp, his steps confident and his posture flawless. Tomas Klein was seventy-one years old, but looked as if he was in his late twenties. Olympus had made many strides in prolonging the human lifespan. The world was still overpopulated. Resources in the League and Concordis might have reached the point where population control was no longer necessary, but their level was still not enough to feed the entire world population. Many still died of hunger and thirst in Russia, and the American continents, as well in the countries that refused to join with the now largest powers in the world.

  He’d released a treatment that effectively erased aging—period—prior to death. People were now expected to live at least a hundred and fifty years, though only in the League and Concordis. The body no longer aged slowly after the point of where growth ended. Instead, people were expected to age rapidly in their last few years, with as little suffering as possible prior to death. People still died of disease or unnatural causes, but even that had been reduced greatly, at least in Concordis.

  The war had changed many things. People realized how close to the death of their entire race they really got. The leaders knew that as long as their countries put themselves first and the world second, there would always be wars. And one of them would soon end them all. The creation of Concordis and the League went a long way towards making sure that never happened. People who lived there were happier, and their leaders worked towards making sure that every single citizen had a full life, to a point that there was no poverty. The two countries worked closely together. They both used the same currency—credits—and had the same economic structure. They shared the technology that could be used to enhance the lives of their people. Olympus had a presence all over the world, though mostly in Concordis and the League. The countries that chose to retain their own identities worked to minimize the level of presence Olympus could have there.

  Tomas reached the welcoming party with his security detail following close behind.

  “Nathan, it has been too long,” Tomas said as he shook Nathan’s hand.

  “Seven years,” Nathan said. “It’s funny, but it doesn’t seem that long. And you look the same, of course.”

  “As do you. And what are seven years compared to more than a hundred?”

  “A drop in the ocean.” Nathan smiled slightly, and then nodded towards Elias. “Mr. Bakas.
”

  “Mayor.” Elias nodded back.

  “Tomas, I believe that you are acquainted with Professor Hyeon Seo-yun, who is a consultant on our little project.” Nathan gestured to the woman standing beside him. Tomas, of course, already knew of her. She, like most every other person in Concordis, looked like she was in her twenties. She was an attractive woman of Korean heritage, with straight brown hair tied in a tail and brown eyes. Though the pictures from her file failed to convey the full depth of intelligence that shone from her eyes. She had degrees in many areas; she was a professor of astrophysics and astronomy, with her other degrees including thermodynamics and robotics.

  Based on her file, she was close to eighty years old. Ten years older than Tomas, and one of the brightest minds in the world. Tomas has been trying to bring her into the Olympus family for the past twenty years. She’d refused all his offers, saying that working for Olympus held no interest or challenge for her. And Tomas had offered her more than he had offered anyone else. He had made it a sort of a quest for himself, to bring her into the company. Tomas could wait a long time to reach his goals, and he had all the time in the world.

  “Professor Hyeon, I must say that it gives me immense pleasure seeing you in Olympus uniform.” Tomas smiled slightly.

  “Humph…Yes, I imagine it would for someone like you,” she said in return, with a tight smile on her face that somehow managed to convey utmost contempt for him.

  “Oh, someone like me?”

  “Yes, a person with a pathological need to control everything he lays his eyes on, a person with delusions of grandeur. In other words, a megalomaniac.” Her words were followed by absolute silence and wide-eyed looks from the rest of the party as they turned towards her. Tomas could appreciate honesty; he rarely got it from his subordinates. He found it refreshing.

  “Why, thank you, Professor. That was exactly what I was going for.” He smiled widely and then turned back to Nathan, but not before seeing the shocked look on the professor’s face.

  “Lead the way, Nathan, I’m eager to proceed.”

  “Of course, Tomas. This way, please.”

  They entered the elevator in silence, and after Nathan provided the terminal with the right codes, it started moving down towards the city. A few times they could feel the elevator slowing and moving sideways, meaning that they’d changed shafts. The project facility was at the bottom of the ocean, a few kilometers outside of the city limit. It was listed as a storage facility, which explained the less frequent traffic to and from the facility.

  After a few minutes, Nathan finally broke the awkward silence. “As per your instructions, no one has entered the ship since the doors opened. And security has been placed on red alert in case—”

  “Wait, since the door opened? You mean to tell me that the door opened on its own?” Tomas asked sharply. That detail hadn’t been included in the report. And now that he thought about it, the actual opening of the door had been described rather vaguely. All Tomas had been interested in was that the door was opened, and hadn’t really focused much on the means of how. Stupid of him, really, but he’d been so very much excited about a prospect of exploring the spaceship that it had slipped his mind. He mentally issued commands to his implant, recording this entire incident and making sure that another such oversight didn’t happen again.

  “Well, we are not really sure—” Nathan started nervously, but was interrupted by Professor Hyeon.

  “The events surrounding the opening of the door are somewhat unclear. We can’t say with a hundred percent certainty what happened until we enter the ship. But what we do know is that a technician was working on opening what we believed to be an access hatch. The technician was frustrated, and in a fit of helplessness yelled at the ship to ‘open the door.’ Though he didn’t use that exact wording, nor proper language, but after that outburst, the door lowered.”

  “You are telling me that we have an alien ship under power in our facility? A ship that seemingly opened a door on its own? And you didn’t see it prudent to inform me about it?!” Tomas said, raising his voice slightly and letting a touch of steel slide inside his tone. Tone which he used when he was very displeased.

  “I have presented the mayor with my recommendation, which was for a science and security team to enter the ship and for the facility to be evacuated immediately. I assumed that you had denied my request, Director,” Professor Hyeon said in a voice that made her previous remark clear to Tomas. She believed that he had knowingly endangered his people just so that he could have a chance to enter the ship first.

  “Nathan.” Tomas turned to the mayor of Sedna.

  Nathan’s face had turned white, and he nervously looked around to the other faces in the elevator with them. The professor had her superior mask on, while Elias displayed his typical expression of disinterest. Seeing that he wouldn’t get any help from them, Nathan turned back to Tomas. “Ah, we—when I informed you about the situation, y-you ordered that no one goes inside u-until you got here. I-I just followed your orders, sir—ah, Director,” Nathan said, dropping the familiar tone he’d used earlier. By the end of his speech, Nathan’s eyes were fixed on the floor while he nervously rubbed his palms against his uniform.

  “Yes, I gave you orders. Orders I made without all the information I was supposed to have. If you had told me the circumstances, I would have reacted differently. A part of the blame is on me for not asking for an elaboration. But a much greater part is on you for withholding it from me. I have placed you in the position of leadership because I trusted your judgment and capability, trust that you have now lost. I don’t need sheep who are too cowardly to tell me to my face when I’m in the wrong. You are dismissed from your position effective immediately; your second will replace you until such a time when I can choose a suitable replacement.”

  “B-but, sir, please, I was ju—” Elias’s hand on his shoulder silenced his attempt at an argument and coaxed out a soft, “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter Three

  The rest of the ride was spent in silence that was even more awkward than the one before. There was one thing that Tomas hated more than anything else, and that was incompetence from competent people. He could understand when the people who didn’t have the drive to do their best to rise above all others, who didn’t have the means nor abilities to succeed, acted incompetent. But when someone who had decades to rise and better themselves made the same mistake, that was another matter entirely.

  He could forgive someone even if they made such a mistake; even he made mistakes from time to time. But when one tried to place the blame on others or to justify his mistake when that mistake put people in their charge in danger, then it was much harder to forgive. Tomas was running an empire, and he needed competent, trustworthy people who would tell him things he needed to hear, not things they thought he wanted to hear. Because at the end of the day, he made his decisions based on information provided to him by those who worked for him.

  Finally, the elevator stopped and the door opened. There were two security officers standing in front of it, along with two other members of the project. They stepped forward to greet them, but before they got the chance, Tomas turned to Nathan.

  “Take the elevator up to your former office and inform your second of the change in the position. Afterward, remain in the city until you are informed of your next position.”

  Nathan’s eyes widened a bit at his words; most likely he’d believed that he would be fired. Tomas had other things in plan for him. Even though he would not have as high a position as he’d had until now, Nathan would have a chance to prove his worth again. Even though he’d made a mistake, he was still a very capable employee, and Tomas didn’t want to lose someone who might still prove useful. Hopefully he would learn from this mistake.

  “Yes, sir, thank you, sir.” Nathan nodded his thanks, gratitude clear in his demeanor. Good; that meant that he at least realized his mistake.

  Tomas nodded back and then turned to the people wait
ing for them. They were obviously interested in what had just happened, but not enough to ask anything about it. Professor Hyeon left the elevator alongside Tomas, closely followed by Elias.

  “Director Klein, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” said one of the project members. “My name is Marcus Bearn, and I’m in charge of the team that will be working on deciphering the objects technology. This is my second, Maria Nunez.”

  Tomas shook their hands and tipped his head towards the security officers, who tipped theirs back. Olympus security was a vast enterprise by itself. In fact, it was a private military, though Tomas had gone to great lengths to ensure that stayed a secret only known to him and his few trusted fellows. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, it was a security subdivision of Olympus. Providing security to their clients and Olympus assets. Tomas wasn’t set on a rigid command relationship between himself and his subordinates, but he did expect that they follow orders. And also that they think for themselves and voice their concerns to him when it was appropriate, though judging from the incident a few minutes ago, he didn’t always succeed in that regard. The security division was completely loyal to him; the problems arose with his “non-military” departments. Frankly, they were too scared to tell him anything they perceived would make him angry.

  A big part of that came from their image of him, an image he’d worked hard to create and maintain. He had to, in order to accomplish what he did. But that was only his mask towards the outside world; his security understood that. But then, they had the advantage of always being around him. Elias or someone from his team were always near him, watching, protecting from the shadows. Elias also acted as his second, and he no doubt passed all his impressions about Tomas down to his subordinates. The practice of second had been implemented by Tomas more than thirty years ago as a way to maximize productivity of his enterprise. The seconds were regarded as assistants by the general public, but what they didn’t realize was that seconds were in fact advisors, confidants, and partners who actually had the same level of power as their “first.”