“There is a woman working on the Olympia station that is two hundred and five years old.” Seo-yun said.
Sumia glanced at her quizzically, and Seo-yun understood the question in her eyes.
“Immortality is a recent discovery. We found it just before we started our trip here. That’s why she is so young.” Seo-yun answered with a twinkle in her eye.
Sumia looked at the garden and laughed softly. “And to think I once thought you primitive.”
Seo-yun smiled weakly, “We are, in a way. We have been in space for more than a hundred years. But in truth everything we have accomplished by now, we did in a couple of decades. And we are still adapting our atmosphere based knowledge to space. But genetics are probably the area we are the most advanced in.”
“Well, I guess that it is me that is a child here.” Sumia said.
“No one here looks at you that way. We value knowledge and skill above all else. And you are obviously a skilled and knowledgeable person.”
Sumia smiled at Seo-yun, and then looked back at the garden. “Do you think that my people could become like yours? I mean to live as long as you do, and to change our society to be more like yours.” Sumia asked softly. Seo-yun couldn’t help but smile at that. If only Sumia knew how much they suffered in order to become so unified, to create Olympus.
“I already have my people working on the life extension. There are differences between us, so it will take some time for us to learn your genetic code.” Seo-yun said.
“You already started? Why would you do that when we are not your people?” Sumia asked.
“Humans always struggle between our two natures. We like to think of ourselves as good. But truth is that each one of us has those evil desires within.” Seo-yun paused, looking at the sky. Then she turned to Sumia. “There is a very old story from my home world from the people called Cherokee. It goes something like this:
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”” Seo-yun continued, “A wolf is an animal from our home world, it is used here as the metaphor for our inner selves. Do you understand what the story is about?”
Sumia didn’t answer immediately, instead she took her time and thought about it for a while, “Yes, I think that I understand. I think that it speaks for my people as well. Perhaps my people fed the wrong animal for far too long.”
They remained there, looking at the garden until the sun moved past the horizon and the night fell.
Chapter Twelve
July 2171 – Second Fleet
Fleet Commander Johann Stern sat in her ready room going over the files on Ra’a’zani warships as she waited for her fleet to exit a trans-lane. The Resistance, or more accurately the Olympus Ai Asumy managed to get a few visual scans of the ships. Sadly, there were no more thorough scans available, as they couldn’t risk detection. There were a few classes of ships detected, but the one she was most interested in were the ships that they would encounter in Sol. The ships were around 450 meters long and 220 wide, about half the size of her Monarch, but still larger than her battleships. The ships hulls were covered in scale like plates that overlapped. There were no weapons visible or anything else for that matter save for the drives at the back of the ship. The resistance did however record an instance when the scales moved to reveal launcher that then fired a missile like weapons down on Earth. So they knew that the ships were armed and that the weapons were retracted into the hull. Everything else was a mystery. They didn’t know what kind of weapons they had, defenses or what materials their ships were made of. They knew very little. The more she read, the less she knew, and Johanna worried that they might have rushed ahead of themselves. They had no way of knowing if her ships would be on par with the Ra’a’zani. Although the resistance information from the ground was promising. They said that their military technology on the ground wasn’t all that more advanced that theirs, which meant that their space technology probably wasn’t as advanced as well. Still, Johanna’s ships would outnumber her opponents. And her ships went through a big retrofit back at Sanctuary, getting most of their weapons updated.
Tomas Klein has given her orders to send a message to the Ra’a’zani before engaging them, they had their protocols and Asumy provided everything they need to know about the Ra’a’zani language. They even had their translators programed with the Ra’a’zani language. But Johanna doubted that any talks between the them would do anything, from everything she read Johanna could see that Ra’a’zani were monsters and slavers. They won’t retreat without a fight.
A ping from her imp told Johanna that it was time for her to go the CC. She got up from behind her desk and went to the CC. She entered and took her place in the command chair.
“We will be exiting trans-space in ten minutes Fleet Commander.” Ship Master Andros Venter said.
Johanna nodded and turned her command board on. To the side she used the holographic menus to send an order to the entire fleet, putting them on alert. The system they were entering now was the second system that the Union ship discovered with intelligent life in it. And as such could potentially have a space faring civilization.
“Exiting trans-space!” Navigation Handler said. No one felt anything as they returned to normal space, as they never did, the transition was seamless. And as the viewer wasn’t turned on, the only thing that told them that they were now back in normal space was the fact that the holo started to update as it gathered light from the system and from the information provided by the fleets passive sensors.
Johanna and the rest of the CC crew sat quietly and waited for the holo to finish drawing a picture of the system. As soon as it finished, Johanna leaned forward in her chair and looked closely at the fourth planet in the system.
“Well, I guess that this is going to be a problem.” Johanna said. They still didn’t have a quality picture of the planet itself, but there were objects in its orbit. Objects that were clearly artificial.
“Do we know what those are?” Andros asked.
“Most likely satellites.” Sensor Handler said. “There are two objects that are larger, most likely stations of some kind. We need to get closer to verify. I am also getting a lot of radio signals, comparable to Earth in early 2000s. It looks like they just started exploring space.”
Andros turned to Johanna and raised an eyebrow. They knew what they could encounter, and had a plan. But the position of the inhabited planet in its current orbit puts it right between their fleet and the outgoing trans-station. Which meant that if they had even a primitive way of watching the skies they would detect them when they passed their world. Going around wouldn’t work either, as it would add too much time to their trip.
“Start passively scanning everything, let’s see if they have a presence anywhere else in the system. And try to discern at what level their technology is.” Johanna said.