She turned and nodded at the hologram.
“Message sent.” Asumy said.
An hour later the comm panel pinged and Asumy played the responding message.
“Message received, expect a team in ten days, no contact until then.” The voice said. There was no verification, he didn’t introduce himself. Mathias looked at Gloria and sighed.
“Ten days, our food will just barely cover that period if we spread it out very thin. But we have water for maybe two days.” He said.
“There is plenty food and water aboard the ship.” Asumy said.
Mathias looked at the hologram.
“That food is more than 60 years old, I don’t think that we can eat it. And as for water, I don’t know if it is still drinkable.” Mathias said.
“Food and water are stored inside stasis units, they are as fresh as the day they were put there.” Asumy said.
Mathias looked at Gloria, she had a bewildered expression, she like him didn’t know what stasis unit was, but if the food and water were fresh as Asumy said, then their ten day wait would pass a lot easier.
“Alright can you show us the way towards this stasis unit?” Gloria asked.
“Of course.” Asumy said, and a line made of light appeared on the floor. “Follow the line, I can still monitor your progress and speak to you, but you won’t see this hologram.” He said.
Mathias shook his head, and started in the direction of the line.
Chapter Two
Sol
Jacob Kelly the leader of the resistance sat impatiently in the copilot seat of a Ra’a’zani shuttle. The resistance acquired it during the early days of the Ra’a’zani occupation, when they still dared to fight back. The Ra’a’zani believed the shuttle destroyed, and the resistance used it only for very important missions. They conquered Earth in less than a month, and their idea of keeping us under control was rather simple. They destroyed all of Earth’s technology, and taught us how to use theirs. So now we depended on them for survival, humans lived in special encampments, and worked for food and water. But they also didn’t monitor us all that close, they knew that we couldn’t escape their rule, and early on they showed us the price of fighting back. In the beginning the resistance organized frequent raids on the Ra’a’zani, until they grew tired and executed a third of the population. Humanity’s enslavement was all that easier because the Great War devastated the population. The Earth population at the end of the war was around 3.5 billion, and only a very small percentage of those left were people born long before the war. Jacob was one of the few remaining humans that was born well before the war, and also one of the few still alive that went through the life extension treatment, before the knowledge was lost during the war. Jacob was 120 years old, and would live at least another 30 years, the rest of the population that was born after they lost the treatments, aged normally with an average life span of 90 years or 100 if they were lucky, since the treatment isn’t passed on from parents to children. After the Ra’a’zani executed the third, there were only 2.7 billion people left. And very few of those remembered a time before the Ra’a’zani, or the Great War. Those left knew very little about humanity’s history, since they only knew what they were taught, or what they heard as stories from their parents. History lessons seemed unimportant when one struggled to stay alive. And barely anyone was left who knew the human technology, the third that the Ra’a’zani chose to execute were all from the cities that survived the war and had the knowledge of the past.
That made it all that more important that they arrive at their destination safely. They were close now, after ten days of traveling, the Ra’a’zani shuttles were very fast, and the Resistance hideout was close, they were situated in the Asteroid belt, on an old forgotten mining station from before the war. They did not send anyone to inspect the coordinates from their hideout because they were so close, they did not want to give away their base. But now that was changed, Jacob was the only one in the resistance available to inspect the ship they found. And also the only one old enough to remember Olympus, and the truth of the events that happened, he was working for the League government then, and remembered well the day when Tomas Klein stood before the leaders of the world and announced that Olympus was leaving the Solar system. He was in the League party then, a part of the team that was sent to the meeting at Sedna city, he remembered the actions of the world leaders upon hearing the announcement. They tried, and failed to obtain Olympus technology, and then immediately they turned their sights on the new opportunities, each pushing to get the biggest share of Olympus territory and facilities that they left behind. Thinking back on that period brought great shame to Jacob, as he was among them, arguing in order to increase his own countries standing. None of them cared that Olympus was leaving, in fact they were relieved. Now Jacob could clearly see where their greed brought them. Each country focused on increasing its own wealth, they neglected their people, and started a war that had all but ended the human race. They learned nothing from the previous war, when they unleashed nuclear weapons on each other. Jacob thanked God that every country at least honored the treaty and didn’t use nuclear weapons during the Great War, at least they remembered that lesson, he had no doubt that there would have been no humanity for Ra’a’zani to enslave, had they used nuclear weapons. Though in truth it didn’t much matter, that just pushed them to find more inventive ways to kill each other.
If the message they received was true, and the discovered ship was an Olympus vessel then they might just have a chance against the Ra’a’zani. Up until now the only thing that they could do was watch and wait for a chance, their military strength paled in comparison to the Ra’a’zani, they had no ships of their own and had no way of destroying the four warships patrolling the Solar System, not to mention the transport ships that carried materials mined here back to the Ra’a’zani space. The message from his people said that the ship had an Artificial intelligence. Jacob was present when they received the message, and saw the confusion of his people, they didn’t know what that was, the concept was foreign to them, as Ra’a’zani had nothing like that, and as they had little to none knowledge of human technology. There were few books or movies that survived the war so they couldn’t have learned about it that way. But Jacob was old enough to understand what that meant, a sentient computer. He was surprised when the message came, he knew that Olympus was advanced but not that it was advanced that much.
“We are here Jacob. There is the ship.” Tamara, his pilot and second in command said. Jacob looked outside the shuttle through its forward windows. He saw the ship immediately. It didn’t match what he remembered of Olympus warships, nor did it match any other Olympus ship he ever saw. Though there was no doubt that it was made by them. It had soft angles, rounded, it was perhaps 140 meters long, with its rear end being bulky, wider and taller than the rest of the ship. The rest resembled the Olympus warships with its rounded box look.
“Contact them.” Jacob said. This was the riskiest part, if this was a Ra’a’zani plot the resistance would end with him. But Jacob knew that the resistance would have ended if they didn’t find the ship, there was nothing they could do against their conquerors. They had no means to fight back.
Tamara contacted the ship and a moment later, they were given instructions to dock with the ship on its port side. Jacob stood up and went to the back end of the shuttle. There were four more people there, they were armed with the remnants of the war, plasma rifles, they were developed during the war by Concordis. The Ra’a’zani gathered all the weapons that Humanity had and destroyed them, these were ones of the few that they managed to hide. Four people were Lars Rickman, Bella Nunez, Kristofer Gates and Nicole Smith. They were all born after the war, and survive in the slum cities, all save for Nicole, she was born in Denver, one of the few cities that survived the war. Jacob nodded to them and they waited until the shuttle docked. When Tamara came out they went to the access hatch and entered the ship.