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“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.”

“Do you believe that whoever attacked them could come here?”

“The chance of that happening are 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 were many more 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 the addition of 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, and at the time of their survey they haven’t developed any technology, they had barley started using tools.”

“Well that makes me feel a bit better, but they still had thirteen thousand years to advance.”

“And so did 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 taping 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, 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 men team have 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 nano battlesuits developed by Olympus, the suit itself weighed about 60 kg and was made from new type of nano carbon fibers, courtesy of the research derived from the alien craft they found eleven years ago. The suit itself was powered by three of the new type 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 nano technology 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, though that capability draws heavily on its power reserves, or boosting the user’s strength or speed, 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 suits systems with a mental command, conserving energy ensuring that the suit doesn’t run out of energy in tight situations. Elias turned his attention to the HUD in his helmet, it displayed various 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 suits 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, meaning 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 were his team was. As he passed inside two members of his team positioned themselves at the door and covered the hole they came in. One covered the window at the back of the house. Elias came to his feet in the middle of the room, he checked his power reserves and calculated 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, 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 suits systems and could read its telemetry. The two other members of his team Niko and John kept their backs turned to him 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 instead of Niko sharply.

“Oh, c’mon it’s not like we—” John started but Elias interrupted him

“Stop. It does matter, we will get out of this.” Elias 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 already dead.” Niko said.

Elias nodded he had 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, 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 had 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, my suits 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 record of the ambush, and there were nine different sources of fire.” Niko said.