Chapter 19: Flames

'Let this day be marked as the day history is altered forever. A staged evacuation effort of Olympus 1 will be enacted over the coming days, and I urge all of you to remain calm and listen to the instructions of the local authorities.'

Finally, the governor of the Olympus 1 spoke to the fury of all that lived on and around the planet. After the major public outcry from the files leaked from his office as well as further information about the planet's doom, the governor himself know that there is no other choice for him except addressing it publicly and kick starting the evacuation effort.

'There will be internal reviews performed later on regarding any signs of malpractice or incompetence.' Dr Dorry May announced in a follow up statement supporting the Olympus 1 governor, 'however, now is the time to unite and stand together and not tear each other apart. To survive this crisis, we will need to work as a single unit.'

Meanwhile, the Space Force general doubled down on his previous stance, claiming this move to be utterly ridiculous, cowardly and declaring that he will be revealing the truth to the galaxy using his resources.

This immediately threw a wrench into the evacuation effort, as the people take one of two sides. There are those that have been monitoring the rumors of Olympus B's strange behaviors from the beginning that is now hastily trying to get off the planet, and then there are those that believed in the general of the Space Force and refused to leave, thinking that this is one of those scams and trickery by one of the big Ten to use to take over Olympus 1 and mine its resources. However, one thing is common among both groups, and that is their distrust of the government.

Now, with the leakage of the files and silent whistle blowing done by Cellica's unit achieving the desired effects, the current galactic government is in even more of a difficult spot than before. However, at least there is change....and action. At least something is happening, albeit slowly, towards the right direction.

Only history will know how effective this action is, and only history can judge whether the system has failed all those people, or whether it's the people that make up the system that failed them.

Protests break out onto the streets both in the planet's various underground cities and on the orbital rings of the planets, as the general of the Space Force instructed certain conservative parties to organize mass protest about preserving the planet's legacy and diverting attention away from the science and the trajectories to instead focus on the movements of the Big Ten. As those that didn't trust the Olympus 1 governor to begin with latched onto the general as a symbol and refused to let go.

This shit has played out a million times before. Dr Dory May can't do anything to combat the general's strategies, as his layers of lies are built on layers of half-truths, as it all became a tangled mess of rumors, accusations and loud speeches quick fast and in a hurry. It is from that point on that she realized she will be remembered as the one that caused a trillion deaths in the history books.

There is no backing out here, there is only moving forward. Dr Dorry May, a woman caught in the middle of a tornado, must do whatever she can to keep going. If the people are manipulated by the general, then there is nothing she can do further. The people paradoxically value freedom of speech above all else while being completely unaware of those that abuses that right. She has done all she can at the moment, and she will have to move onto the next stage of the plans.

In hindsight, when the historians look back at this dark chapter in galactic history, they will quickly realize that there is indeed nothing Dr Dorry May can do NOW. There were always plenty of things she COULD HAVE done way before though, and perhaps if those things were done, much much less lives would have been lost as a result.

'What a fucking idiot.' Cellica's unit looked on as the general of the Space Force gave yet another passionate speech about the tearing down of the current paradigm in hopes of building a better way. The current system is certainly busted, but the general himself is to blame for the system's failings for not only being part of the system, but also contributing to it's problems.

'We will examine the conspiracy personally, starting from the sell out scientists!' The general declared with a fist raised up high to the cheers of a roaring crowd.

'Don't start too early.' Charlie said, strapping in her combat gear as the ship docked onto the Stevens Research Station. Toso remained silent characteristically while Claudia lets out a small sigh. Jun looked on at the two girls and didn't say anything.

'Don't look so down, everyone.' Cellica said, clapping her hands together, 'we are here to protect these people, so focus on that task alone for now. There will be plenty of time to point fingers later on, as that is what the government is best at anyway.'

'Yes, boss!' The unit members stood tall and replied, and they walked down the ramps and headed into the station that lit the fire of this great turmoil in the Olympus system. The oversight committee director is there bright and early to welcome Cellica's unit with the station's security director.

'You must be Officer Cellica Uleric, I am Director Mandel.' The director said, 'thank you for getting in touch, and please follow me.'

The director and the security director lead the group into a meeting room that is the exact same room as the one where Professor Tisha made her big presentation. And as all of the unit members sat down, Cellica was the one that cut straight to the chase.

'Thank you for replying so quickly, Director.' Cellica said, bringing up the hologram of the general's most recent speech, 'I am sure you have seen this fool?'

'I am ashamed to admit that all of us here has been seeing nothing but that fool.' The director admitted and Cellica can hear the anger welling in the tone of his voice.

'Good, because he is going to move onto this station in particular.' Cellica said, 'here's what he will likely do, and this will be how we as a unit here will combat that...'

The director and the security chief took Cellica's advice and laid out strategies to heart, as she introduced the specialties of each of the individual members. Toso is the one most adept at intelligence gathering and programming so he will be in charge of monitoring the space around the stations and looking out for any suspicious activities. Charlie is a former soldier so she will be directly in charge of the security and reinforcements of the station's weak points. Claudia is a mechanic and an innovative mind so she will be upgrading station facilities in both security, life support, communications and structures along with Charlie while Jun is a generalist that can be plugged into any scenario.

Cellica herself will act as the brain of the operation, though she obviously didn't disclose her special ability that literally allow her to see the enemies from miles away. That will be used as a safety for when the inevitable attack from the space force comes.

Obviously, the attack wouldn't be so blatantly obvious. It would have been some excuses.

And just like that, the unit settled into the day to day living of the research station stuff and immediately got to work. The student and researcher body is noticed of the possibility of interference by the space force, and those that wished to leave are suggested to leave at the earliest notice. A handful of the researchers left, but the others stayed on, either because they each have a part in further monitoring of the sun's activities, or because they wanted to stay and fight for their rights.

Over the past few days, Claudia has been working on both creating personal protection gears and shield generators, placing them at each of the critical points within the structure and installing protection mechanisms like shockwave projectors (guns) and speaker units. Charlie spent the days training the station's security personnel when she found a stash of security droids that can certainly be used in case of security. Toso is busy reconfiguring and repurposing parts of an old monitoring system and use it for detecting any approaching convoy.

Meanwhile, Cellica has been spending some time getting to know the two researchers that are caught in the middle of the vortex, Professor Tisha and Dr Ahun. After the barrage of interview requests and appearances on the internet, they have finally managed to compartmentalize some time to do the thing that they are here to do at Stevens, and that is the research of the suns.

With the stations now towed away from the influence of Olympus B's influence and constantly steered away, the entire observation equipment setup will need to be reconfigured to account for the new distance of observation, and Cellica, being their personal security personnel, started learning about the in's and out's of solar monitoring and research. An added bonus is that she could literally turn over her shoulder and look at Olympus B with her jaded colored eyes whenever she wants.

It is a normal day in the office for Cellica, and there is nothing exciting happening in the regions near the stations according to Toso. Cellica walked in with a warm cup of coffee and situated herself in her usual corner in the office when Dr Ahun, who's already been working for a couple of hours early in the morning, lets out a surprised hum. Cellica looked over, and saw Professor Tisha approaching her student's work desk as a hologram is brought up.

The hologram is quite far away, but distance isn't exactly an issue for Cellica.

'This is strange...' Professor Tisha's eyebrows crunched together as the worrying data is plotted and showed on the hologram in between them, 'not entirely unexpected, but certainly isn't helpful.'

'No.' Dr Ahun agreed, 'we need to let more people know.'

'What is going on?' Cellica asked from across the room and deactivated her artifact. She can tell something is up, but that's the extent of her knowledge of the behavior of suns.

'The trajectory of Olympus B deviated from the prediction of the Falling Star model.' Professor Tisha said with a downer tone, 'and that's for the worse.'

'I will work on some further modelling, but this isn't looking good...' Dr Ahun said, letting out a sigh, 'if anything, the evacuation will need to be sped up if most people are going to make it out of this.'

Shit. Cellica gripped hard onto the cup and almost shattered it all over the place. Opening up her personal interface, she checked on where the bearers are at before sending a further text message to them.

'Come as quickly as you can, we will need your assistance in the coming evacuation!'

'Share the data set and let the other groups verify it.' Professor Tisha instructed, as she stood back up again, 'you will work on the more important stuff. Sounds like another news release is due.'

In the mean while, Jun is just doing bits and bobs of random jobs that needed doing anywhere in the station. And a few days passed since the unfortunate discovery of Olympus B's new trajectory.

Today, his tasks are to monitor the food handling droids as a new shipment of food is supposed to arrive today.

Compared to most of the other stations, quite a lot of the processes in Stevens is done by robots with human oversight, and the kitchen monitor is sick today, meaning that would be Jun's job for today.

'Hold up.....' Jun looked down at the size of the crate coming in today as te station's hanger opened up to receive it from the drop ship, 'this is way too big.' The crates drifted into the room and was pinned down by the magnetic locks on the hanger ground, and the gigantic crater opened up all by itself.

Preprocessed artificial meat and lettuces aren't supposed to be able to do that. Jun stood up and slammed the emergency button as full armed operatives in black flooded out of the crate onto the station ground.

'They are here.' Tapping the communication channel for his unit, Jun crouched down and repeated the phrase three times, 'they are here. They are here.'

At the same time, a warning popped up on the personal interface of all of the researchers that remained in the station, and a quiet yet efficient evacuation and lock down process begun. A step-by-step timeline of the defensive plan is immediately shown onto Charlie's personal interface as everybody immediately began to fulfill their own roles.

'Toso, is anyone else coming?' Jun asked, as he switched on his personal interface as well as pulling out the pistols he had in his suits while switching the setting to stun and disable. He had no intention of killing any other people, despite their transgression and their aggression.

There was no response in the channel apart from Claudia's voice, 'Toso? Where the heck are you?'

Still nothing.

'No time to worry about that.' Cellica cut in decisively, and all the members of her unit listened closely, 'Jun, get your ass out of there and follow the plan. We will force the invaders to move through the layers of defense and traps while we wait for reinforcements from the others. I will take care of the scholars in the hideouts.'

'Yes, boss!' Claudia, Charlie and Jun all responded at the same time.

Immediately after Cellica's instructions, Jun whispered into his personal interface to turn on the map layout of the solar research station and set a course towards the nearest defensive strongholds, where Charlie and Claudia has set up extensive defensive mechanisms and security droids were dispatched in all of the key junctions.

At the same time, Cellica activated her artifacts and immediately gained vision of those intruders that poured out from the gigantic container. They were all wearing black miliatary grade gear and moved efficiently and quickly, Their heavy metallic boots came with the magnetic lock function so they won't even be affected by any alteration of the artificial gravity of the station. They moved swiftly and quickly, however, they didn't even try to go through the main door that's now been sealed shut. Instead, they had their explosive experts working on a random corner in the hanger.

'What the hell is their plan?' Cellica wondered as she pulled back her vision, when she saw what's on the other side of the hanger wall, and it directly lead to a corridor to the back of the research building, a backdoor/shortcut that directly bypassed the first stage of the defense!

'Charlie! Toso!' Cellica said into her personal interface, 'are you seeing what they are doing?'

'Toso isn't responding, boss.' Charlie said with a worried tone, 'is he going to be okay?'

'Toso?' Jun's voice came through the channel, 'what are you doing here?'

Cellica felt like a knife was thrust into her body as she immediately realized what could have happened. Toso has always been the most reliable member of her unit, and it is beyond uncharacteristic for him to disappear at such a time. That leaves the other option....Cellica turned her head and focuses the power of her artifacts over towards where she thought Jun would be, and she saw the man lying face down onto the ground, motionless.

Toso is nowhere to be found still.

'Everyone! Change up to a new secure channel, I will send you the details!' Cellica immediately went ahead and created a separate encrypted channel between herself, Charlie and Claudia before continuing, 'Toso has betrayed us, and Jun is gone! We need to prepare for the possibility of they bypassing all of our defensive positions and coming directly here!'

'What?!' Claudia covered her mouth as the shock caused her to knock the hologram projector off the table.

'Fuck!' Charlie cursed before bringing up the map of the layouts of all of the defensive points, 'I have designed the pathways so that there is no way to bypass all of the positions....'

'Unless they blow through all of the thin walls.' Claudia continued, then the two of them shared a glance before Charlie looked over and filtered out all of the walls according to it's thickness and structural integrity. Then, she drew a line between the hanger bay where they knew the invading forces are at.

'Boss, this is where I think they will go, if they go through walls.' Charlie said, sending over the map to Cellica.

'Thanks.' Cellica said, activating the Eyes and tracked down the group, which split off again into three in what appeared to be a pincer maneuver that will center in her current location. The plan of betrayal would have worked perfectly, if not for the perfect intelligence that Cellica's Eyes offered.

And now, she is going to turn the fight onto its head, and she is going to figure out why the hell is Toso the traitor in this.

'I have vision on the enemy.' Cellica said quickly, as she labelled multiple points on the building layout map, 'send a third of your forces each towards these few points and set up an ambush, and bring the remaining ones here.'

Then, she turned around, and ushered the scholars to move closer towards each other before turning on the shield generators and protecting them all together. She kept the Eyes activated so she can always see what is going on in the station, as the invading forces moved through the empty corridors, the security forces is also moving to meet them.