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.
As they left the hangar they were met with a woman in an Olympus business uniform, black skirt and jacket. Elias approached and offered his hand.
“Nadia, it’s good to see you again.” He said.
“Likewise Elias, Laura” Nadia Wilson said as she shook his hand and then Laura’s, she was Tomas’s assistant and second, since Elias stepped down from the position and focused only on the department he was the head of.
“How have you been?” He asked.
“Well enough, I just hope that the generators keep working, so that I can finally stop exercising with those blasted machines.” The machines she was talking about were designed for the people that stayed for extended period of time in space, to battle muscle atrophy.
“They seem to be working fine. It feels as if we are down on Earth.” Laura commented.
Nadia nodded. “Yes, now if they can only keep it working everything will be fine. Come this way, you know how Tomas gets when he is kept waiting.”
“Lead the way.” Elias said.
They moved through corridors, passing people in Olympus uniforms, rushing from one end to the other, carrying all kind of different equipment. Every so often they would pass by an open panel in the wall with wires or big conduits peeking out and someone fixing something. The inside of the station might be habitable but it wasn’t finished just yet, not by a long shot. The walls were still just metal plates, with no paint or decoration, at least in this part of the station. Elias had visited the station once before with Seo-yun, when it was just barley habitable. It amazed him sometimes how fast Tomas managed to build everything. But then again he had the advantage of near unlimited resources, and alien technology. Most of the things here were built using Olympus’s version of the alien fabricator. Seo-yun and her team had managed to unlock, and somewhat improve on the concept, in its complexity if not in scope. Olympus nanotechnology was, as it turned out more advanced than the one they found in the alien ship, their nanites were capable of much more sophisticated work, and they could be programmed to do much more.
They arrived at the elevator that would take them up to the top part of the cylinder were Tomas’s office was, they entered and the elevator started moving as soon as the doors closed, meaning that Nadia sent instruction via her implant.
“You’ve finished a lot of work in a short time.” Laura commented.
“Yes,” Nadia sighed “And still we are only about twenty percent done. The central is operational and habitable but it still isn’t close to being finished, we are currently using only ten decks of planed fifty. And other arms are all still in the beginning fazes, except the food processing, which we needed to get operational as soon as possible, Tomas wanted the station to have its own food supply, rather than relying on supply ships from Earth.”
“It’s impressive nonetheless.” Laura said.
“It certainly is.” Elias said.
The elevator slowed and the doors opened, as soon as they got off they arrived at the security station were the security asked for verification, which they provided with their implants. When their identity was verified the guards saluted and let them through, they entered the office space, which was the entire deck, there were dozens of doors on each side leading to private offices, with dozens more desks in the middle of the room where employees sat and worked. Each desk was improved version of the command desk Tomas once had in his office, the new ones hadn’t changed much in appearance but were much faster with better hologram technology, these have mostly replaced personal computers back on Earth.
They walked beside them and arrived at Tomas’s office.
“He wants to speak to you in private first.” Nadia said to Elias, “We’ll wait in my office.” She said pointing towards her office next to Tomas’s. Elias nodded and entered.
Tomas’s office looked very much like the one he had on Earth, the couches and a table in the middle. Tomas sat at his desk and looked up when Elias walked in.
“Elias, come sit, we have much to discus.” Tomas said gravely.
Elias reached the desk shook Tomas’s hand across it, and sat in a chair in front of it.
“This is serious then?” Elias asked.
“Very much so.”
Elias remained silent and waited for Tomas to continue.
“You know that our space projects caused a lot of protests by the world governments outside of the League and Concordis, primarily with Russia and U.S. They protested our right to explore and build facilities on the moon and other planets in the Solar system, citing the Space treaty. The League and Concordis, gave us permission, and responded to their protest by saying that they didn’t sign the treaty and that Olympus was a company not a state, since then Russia, India and the U.S. have been trying to get their own joint space program up and running, their technology is inferior but over the years they have managed to buy enough from the League that they have reached the point where they can start sending their own missions out into space.” He looked Elias in the eyes and said. “They plan on colonizing the moon.”