by Ivan Kal
“They traveled for a hundred years? How fast were they going?” Tomas asked.
“Very fast. We aren’t really sure how they did it. But there are mentions of them using something they called translanes to travel between stars. We have no idea what those are, whether it is something artificial or natural. We weren’t able to figure out the math at all, and there are no instructions on how to use them. We know they used these translanes from their historical data. And we managed to pull a few star charts from the data; the Union territory was directly on the other side of the galactic core from us, in the Perseus galactic arm. And the Union believed that the invaders came from the outer side of the Scutum-Centaurus arm,” she said.
Tomas let out a long breath; she knew that he’d been holding it in for the better part of her report. But also knew that his worries were unfounded; if the Union hadn’t come back to Earth in the last thirteen thousand years, they most likely wouldn’t be back at all. And if everything Seo-yun had told him was true, most of the other races expanded slowly over many years. The enemy that had attacked the Union could still be a long way from them.
He leaned back and asked, “Anything else in the database regarding the reason why they left a ship here?”
“No, the database, apart from being corrupted, doesn’t seem to have much information regarding the Union’s state at the time. I believe that we have accessed the files that the crew of the scout ship had with them or had specifically transferred, since there seem to be a lot of gaps. The war with the invaders being one such. Only historical data is available, and it’s lacking at least a hundred years of the war. There is no reason specified for leaving the ship here; the AI also doesn’t have any information on that, but most of his databases were corrupted. They most likely planned to come back and were unable. Either they met their end somewhere on their journey or have returned to the Union. Judging from the way the war was going before they started on their journey, if they had gone straight home from Earth, they would have arrived just before the Union’s defeat.”
“You assume that the Union couldn’t have survived,” he said.
“We have done extensive projections based on the historical data we had available. There was no chance of Union survival. They might have delayed the end by a couple hundred years, but there was nothing else they could have done—they were too badly outmatched and outnumbered.”
“Do you believe that whoever attacked them could come here?”
“The chance of that happening is slim to none. Even the arrival of the Union ship on Earth was a very unlikely event, and this is even more unlikely. The galaxy is vast; there are many other possible venues of expansion much closer to their side of the galaxy. The only reason the Union came here was because they wanted to go somewhere they wouldn’t be found. So no, there is almost no chance of that happening.”
“And yet, we now know that there are many races out there. There is a chance that one of them might find us sooner rather than later,” he said.
“Yes, there is a chance of that. But in addition to the regular Union star charts, we recovered some survey data from this region of space that the ship took before coming to Earth. It seems that our part of space is sparsely populated, and according to the survey, our closest neighbors are at least 100 light years away. At the time of their survey, they hadn’t developed any technology; they had barely started using tools.”
“Well, that makes me feel a bit better, but they’ve still had thirteen thousand years to advance.”
“And so have we,” she said with a smile.
“Anything else I need to know?”
“Nothing else. We still haven’t translated the parts of the data that are in other languages, nor have we finished reading the translated parts yet. And there are still a few items on the ship we couldn’t identify.”
“Alright, then, I guess that we are done here. You can return to your project, and I have a lot of adjustments to make to my plans,” Tomas said, rising from his seat.
“Alright, I’ll send you the written copy of the report,” she said, tapping her datapad a few times.
“Thank you, Seo-yun. It looks like the things are about to get very interesting.”
Part Two - The Expansion
Chapter Seven
August 2093 – Eleven years later
Elias Bakas, the head of security for Olympus, ran down the streets of some backwater village in southern Venezuela at full sprint trying to keep himself from getting shot. The hostile forces weren’t supposed to be there, and yet they were shooting at him. His team was running ahead of him, all three of them that were still in the game. The rest of his nine-man team had been taken out in the ambush. Elias slid down the ground and into a house through a hole in the wall. The house was poorly built and didn’t provide much cover other than from sight. The enemy bullets ripped through the walls of the small village house all around him, some bouncing off the ground or inner walls and striking his armor. He wore a new generation of powered battlesuits developed by Olympus.
The suit itself weighed about 60kg and was made from a new type of carbon nanofibers, courtesy of the research derived from the alien craft they found eleven years ago. The suit itself was powered by three of the new types of batteries developed by Olympus. They were Earth technology inspired by alien concepts, and could store enormous amounts of energy for their size. They were small and could fit just beneath the armor without making it seem bulky like some previous attempts at a powered suit. And the adaptive energized nanotechnology made it much stronger than the previous incarnations as well. It could run mostly unpowered on its user’s strength alone without losing any protection.
The battlesuit was capable of repairing itself or boosting the user’s strength or speed, though that capability drew heavily on its power reserves. But one of the most important breakthroughs was the ability to control all suit systems by implants. The wearer of the suit could turn on and off the suit’s systems with a mental command, conserving energy, ensuring that the suit didn’t run out of juice in tight situations.
Elias turned his attention to the HUD in his helmet; it displayed various bits of information concerning the suit. The information he needed to address now was displayed in the right top corner. Representation of the suit was showing there with its lower back flashing red, indicating that he had taken a bullet there. He had barely felt the impact; the suit’s armor was good for a couple of shots in the same place. But the hit had actually damaged one of the power lines of the suit, meaning that the power to any systems below his hips was cut off. Which meant his speed was severely reduced, as he would need to move using just his own power. He jumped through the door deeper into the house where his team was.
As he passed inside, two members of his team positioned themselves at the door and covered the hole they had come through. One covered the window at the back of the house. Elias came to a stop in the middle of the room; he checked his power reserves and calculated the time and amount of energy the suit would spend to repair damage to the power line. The damage wasn’t big, just critical, and it would take at least 2 minutes for the nanites in his suit to repair it, but would also push his energy reserves down to 30%. He activated the self-repair program and approached the window. The fire from outside had stopped.
“Anything?” he asked over his team’s channel. They were all connected via a secure link provided by their implants.
“Nothing. I don’t believe they have any heavy weapons, so they’ll most likely surround the building and wait us out,” Laura, his second, responded. Elias crouched in a corner, letting his suit repair itself without his movement interrupting it. It could move and repair at the same time, but each time he made a move, that interfered with the repair process and the time on the countdown clock rose a few seconds. He didn’t bother to inform his team why he did so; they all had access to his suit’s systems and could read its telemetry. The two other members of his team, Niko and John, kept their backs turned to h
im and Laura.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
“We could try to run to the evac point,” John said.
“No way. They have us surrounded by now. As soon as one of us steps outside of this building, we are history,” Niko responded.
“You do realize that it doesn’t really matter whether we survive this or not, right?” John asked calmly.
“Shut it, boy,” Laura answered sharply.
“Oh, c’mon, it’s not like we—” John started, but Elias interrupted him
“Stop. It does matter, and we will get out of this,” Elias said coldly. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” John said softly.
“Alright. Now, I want options,” Elias said.
“Well, first, they don’t seem to have the same suits as us. The intel said to expect it, yet they clearly can’t see us inside, since we would have been dead already,” Niko said.
Elias nodded. He suspected the same, both from the way they managed to ambush them like that, and the reason Niko mentioned. Their suits were equipped with infrared vision and could have easily seen through these thin walls.
“Yes, and they had trouble keeping up with us at full speed,” John said.
“So we know that they don’t have heavy weapons, since we aren’t buried in rubble. They are most likely short on ammo, since they aren’t wasting any on a lucky shot through the walls, and they managed to sneak up on us and ambush us,” Elias said. He thought back on the ambush and something struck him as odd. “Anybody actually get a visual on the enemy?” he asked.
“No,” Laura said.
“No, but then, I was too busy running away to notice,” John said.
“No. I tried to spot them, but there was nothing,” Niko said. “My suit’s sensors didn’t even detect any movement prior to the ambush. I do have the number of shooters, though; I had my implant analyze the sound recording of the ambush, and there were nine different sources of fire.”
Elias noted in his implant Niko’s quick thinking. “Nine-man team with light weapons. And most likely some kind of stealth system.”
“It has to be something new. I didn’t hear anything from the research department,” Laura said.
“Probably. Alright, this is what I want you to do. Niko, can you program your implant to analyze the sound in real time and feed the locations of the sound origins to your HUD?” Elias asked.
Niko paused for a moment. “Yeah, I can do it. I’ll need to specify the frequency range for their gunfire, but I have the recording from the ambush, so it’s not a problem. But I’ll need a few minutes to configure the suit’s HUD.”
“Good, I want you to send us the program when you are finished. John, how much juice you got left?”
“About sixty percent,” John answered.
“I want you to go on a full burn. You are going to be our bait.” Full burn would deplete the suit’s power reserves rapidly, but would also provide a big boost to wearer’s speed and strength.
“Oh joy, I get to be chased by bullets,” John responded sarcastically.
“Laura, Niko, and I will remain here and shoot through the walls at them when they fire at John. Set your firing mode to piercing rounds. John, I want you to run full speed in a straight line. They are slower than us, and our suits can take a few hits from their weapons,” Elias said.
“Great,” John said, and then muttered a few curses that were barely audible across the line.
“Niko, how much more?”
“I’m just about…And done,” he said in a voice that clearly conveyed the grin he had beneath the helmet. Elias immediately noticed a notification on his HUD indicating a pending data download; he allowed it through his firewall and executed the program Niko sent him.
“When they fire, a red flashing dot will appear in your vision over the HUD designating where the source of fire is,” Niko explained. “It will remain at the same position for 2 seconds after the firing stops, and will move if the source of the fire is moving. You are going to need to adjust for the distance between the barrel and the weapon holder on your own; I didn’t have time to program that as well.”
“Good enough,” Elias said.
His HUD flashed and informed him that the suit had finished repairing itself. He got up from the corner and crossed to the center of the room, taking position facing the wall. Niko and Laura took similar positions while John remained by the door.
“Ready?” Elias asked.
“Yes,” John answered.
“Go.”
John moved through the room, leaving dents in the floor; it took him three steps to cross the room, and then he exploded through the window. Almost immediately, the enemy opened fire. Elias’s HUD showed four red flashing dots indicating enemy positions. Elias adjusted his aim and fired four times at each dot. He could hear Laura and Niko doing the same. A moment later, firing from the outside stopped.
“I got four. You?” Elias asked.
“Two,” Niko said.
“Three,” Laura said.
“We need to check and see if we got them or if they just changed positions.”
“John, you alright?” Laura asked.
“Yeah. I got hit in the shoulder once, but the suit held.”
“Alright, turn back and confirm that the targets are down. I’m sending you the coordinates,” Laura said.
“Niko, go help him, we will cover you.”
Niko went out through the window, followed by Elias and Laura.
“I got five confirmed here,” John said.
A minute later, Niko called in. “Two here. I’m moving to the last coordinates.”
“John, get on the roof across the street. I don’t want us ambushed again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m at the last coordinates. There is blood but no body. I’ll follow—shit!” Niko said, followed by a short exchange of fire.
“Niko, report!” Laura said.
“I’m okay, he just appeared in front of me. Got him before he managed the get in position. He was wounded. I think his suit got damaged; I don’t think he planned on showing up in front of me. They definitely have some kind of cloaking tech.”
“Found the last one dead,” John said.
“Alright, if there are more, we won’t see them until they fire. We’ll move towards the evac point. John, keep to the roofs. Niko, get back here,” Elias said.
They covered the ground quickly using their suits’ power. They arrived and secured the evac point. Elias called in the evac team. Ten minutes later, a transport came across the horizon and they boarded it. As they lifted off, the village and its surroundings started exploding into bright blue particles until they swallowed everything, including the transport.
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 had met years ago when she worked on a project involving the alien ship. Now she was head of the 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 answered.
“Yes, that’s right I forgot the one with the assassination,” she said cheerfully. “That one was inspired.”
“It was. So they programmed 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 programmed the scenario. The suit’s capabilities were real,” she said.
Elias nodded. He and the security department had been competing with the programming team ever since the virtual technology had become viable as a training tool. A fierce rivalry had developed between them. The programmers had managed to score a few wins against his team, but mostly by programming impossible scenarios. And ever
since a certain scuffle between one of them and one of his men, they had 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.
