It had been what felt like Dozara and his new family only a few months but in reality was more accurately a year taking into account temporal drift as a side effect of extended travel in Hyperspace. As the FTL drives cycled off and the short range impulse engines activated The ship’s automated systems handled waking Dozara and the others as well as scanning for any signs of habitable planets.

As the crew awoke Dozara noticed one of the onboard message terminals flashing with the indication that they’d been contacted by one of the other shuttles that were deployed from Valin.

the message played back as Dozara got dressed and prepared to step out and have his first meeting with the other members of the group since he’d gone into stasis.

The automated drone screen that gave him the message switched to the ship's telemetry readouts and scans of the local area. As he sifted through the data he noticed something had been picked up by the long range communication scanner. A faint barely noticeable radio signal on a primitive unsecured channel. After analyzing it for a few moments he instructed the drone to direct the ship’s guidance systems to seek out the origin point of the signal in the hopes of being able to back trace the signal to the nearest populated world.

----

Over the next few hours the ship tracked to the signal’s origin point, from Dozara’s observation it was a primitive deep space exploratory probe not unlike the models that had been deployed by the council in the time after its founding as part of their early space exploration attempts.

“So Han and his party are following us. That should make things interesting. I wonder what happened to Saya. I remember hearing something over the comms channels before we left Valin that the base they were stationed at came under attack by Council Hunters.” Ichigo stated after Dozara briefed them about the message.

Takaru smiled a bit and asked “Think there’ll be anyone our age coming along with them dad?” knowing that he and Hikari both shared a feeling of loneliness in the absence of someone else their age to associate with while the adults dealt with more serious matters.

“Hmm actually a surprisingly relevant question there T.K. If Han and his family made it out then his son Dojiro should probably be accompanying them and since they left from a larger facility and are aboard a larger shuttle there’s a reasonable chance that there will be other children along with them.” Dozara answered as he pondered what could have happened to the members of Han’s crew.

As the ship neared the probe Dozara opened up the communication channels to better analyze the signal being broadcast by it.

[“To any intelligent life forms who encounter this in the depths of space. We the people of planet Earth would like to extend a greeting of peace. This message is meant to act as our first contact with any otherworldly races. We mean no harm to those who wish to visit us peacefully. For those who would find this probe this is the first in a series of beacons we plan to launch to allow any travelers who find this to follow their way back to Earth.” The message then began to play in a series of other languages many of which resembled languages they knew of from Valin with slight alterations in dialect.}

(“So the humans on this planet developed similarly to us, that's an interesting thought. I’d always speculated that there were other strains of humanity out in the universe. Based on the minor linguistic differences I’d estimate that they have many cultural analogs to things we know of back on Valin so it shouldn’t be that difficult to assimilate into their society when we arrive.”) Dozara pondered as he guided the ship into closer proximity to the pod so he could place a marker beacon on it for Han’s crew to find when they came out of hyperspace.

After attaching the beacon to the probe Dozara began to analyze the behavior of the signal and realized it was being relayed by that probe. He quickly decided to broadcast a signal using the frequency the probe used in the hopes of being able to ping the next nearest probe.

The process of down converting their advanced signals to a compatible frequency only took mere moments but the main hurdle they had was waiting for a response from the outbound echo ping after the conversion. While they waited Dozara took notice of the fact that Takaru had been busy marveling at the sight of the distant stars and planets off on the horizon. He pointed off a distant swirl of gas and what resembled stars from their current distance.

“I think I’ve got a lock on the next probe. It appears to be a few hundred light years off yet but it's still close according to the star map that was included in the transmission from the probe we’re accessing it appears this star cluster is referred to as the local star cluster, It's home to several massive galaxies including the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies. This probe’s tracking data indicates that it traveled out from the Milky Way and through gravitational drift made its way out to the far edge of the star system. The next nearest probe is on the outer rim of the Milky Way from the looks of things.” Ichigo stated bluntly. Her eyes glossed over the star map and based on their relative position she guessed that the distant swirl which Takaru had noticed was likely their destination.

“From our current position it shouldn’t take more than a day of warp travel to reach the next probe in the network and from there we should be able to coast into the interior of the solar system without too much trouble.” Dozara said as he pondered about what differences humans on Earth would have compared to those he knew on Valin.

-----

The small cruiser came out of hyperspace on the outer edge of what appeared to be a sea of floating space debris mostly consisting of masses of frozen space dust and various gases. According to the star charts they’d gleaned from the first probe this was identified as the Khyber belt and was the outermost border of the Milky way. As the ship’s hyperdrive engines cycled off Dozara began to broadcast the tracking signal so he could identify the location of the next probe in the chain.

As the ping returned they received a signal from the probe bearing another message.

“So this Earth place isn’t only inhabited by humans, They’ve stumbled into an alliance of other worlds. With that in mind we should be wary of upsetting any others we encounter seeing as we’ll probably be seen as outsiders by this federation since from what I can discern there’s no record of Valin participating in a similar organization.” Dozara noted as he guided the ship through the field of space debris.

Once they’d navigated the field the sensors began to detect signatures of what seemed like hyperdrive emissions, but the strange thing about them was they varied widely across the spectrum from signatures not unlike those of the systems aboard their shuttle to vastly more sophisticated ones which even the ships most advanced sensors couldn’t accurately analyze.

As they neared the next probe they passed several large planets which the star maps they’d gotten from the first beacon were referred to as the Outer Planets. Uranus, Neptune, Saturn and formally Pluto the dwarf planet.

Takaru glanced out the windows looking onward in awe at the size of these other planets. Hikari walked over to one of the overlay terminals and projected an overlay onto the nearest window that lined up the star map with the planets as they passed by them.

------

The crew sat aboard the ship in awe as they reached the interior of the solar system passing Mars and seeing the bustling hub of space traffic that appeared to be floating in low orbit above the small natural satellite the star charts identified as the moon of Earth.

From what they could see the surface of the moon was covered with small artificial colonies. As they drew closer to the outer rim of the floating spaceport that was orbiting the moon their scanners picked up a strange signal a voice came through the intercom.

Within a few moments two heavily armed ships arrived in response to the robotic sounding announcement. Dozara quickly darted to the main communications controls and opened up a wide area broadcast across all the ship’s known frequencies and declared.

Dozara said hastily, trying to avoid any sort of confrontation with the cruisers.

Meanwhile aboard one of the ships its commanding officer a young man from the United Nations Joint Defense Force and chief security officer of the lunar colonies listened to the message and after several minutes of thought opened communication channels and hailed Dozara’s ship to engage in a face to face conversation so they could get a better bearing on the situation faced by these supposed refugees.

A holographic projection of Dozara appeared on the monitor and it was quickly filled in with the interior of the ship along with matching projections of his family. Dozara spoke up saying “I appreciate the fact that my request was answered by someone rather than an automated response system.” he stated as the projection of Samuel showed up on their comes terminals,

The ship deployed a small unmanned probe which flew over to the Safe Haven as Dozara replied.

Dozara asked as they opened an access port for the probe to enter the ship through

Samuel smiled back and said Dozara followed his suggestion and within about thirty minutes of improvised rigging to connect it to their guidance systems a full data transcript of their trip up to that point was transferred to Private Garrison’s ship and was submitted to his superiors for examination.

------

A few hours later aboard the colony hub Dozara and his family disembarked from their ship. As they made their way through escorted by a tour guide hologram program. Takaru began looking at the various people that seemed to be around, some were humans that resembled them but appeared to be holding strange implements which resembled extremely high tech versions of the conventional weapons they were used to back on Valin.

“Those are members of the Magia Intergalactic Guard. A military organization from the Planet Upper Adultia. They use a mix of high technology and magic to defend themselves and power their society.” The tour guide program mentioned that she noticed Takeru's attention shift. Suddenly a crowd of people came through the concourse and while Dozara, Ichigo and Hikari made it through the pile relatively easily Takaru got separated from the group.

As Takaru made his way through the facility enamored by the sight of the others around him, he noticed something on the ground and decided to go over and pick it up and see if it belonged to anyone nearby.

Takaru cautiously edged his way over to the object through the crowds of people eventually finding his way to it, the object appeared to be a small hair pin with a large gem in it. As the jewel caught a flicker of light something happened. The jewel began to glow and a small holographic projection not unlike the tour guide manifested out of it.

“Anya, are you there? Anya?” the hologram’s voice spoke, it was a soft polite voice with a motherly tone to it. Takaru stumbled back slightly in shock to how lifelike it seemed.

“Hello? My name is Takaru. Do you belong to someone?” Takaru replied to the hologram attempting to feint some sense of composure in spite of the situation.

“Yes, my partner is a girl named Anya Cardiff-Armstrong. She’s the daughter of one of the high ranking officials in the Magia Guard.” She replied as Takaru walked along with the hair pin in his hand.

“My name is Takaru Inara, I’m kinda new here, my parents and I got separated in a crowd and I noticed the jewel you were in so I thought I’d try to find a guard or something to give it to thinking it may wind up going to the lost and found.” the projection smiled and nodded

“The jewel you’re talking about is my AI core, and this pin is just a form Anya’s father has me to assume while Anya and I aren’t training. I’m what is known as a Sentient Arm, a weapon with a self sufficient and self aware AI program.” Takaru paused for a moment as he darted around looking for any of the soldiers he’d seen earlier in hopes of finding this item’s owner.

“So you’re kinda like the AI aboard the ship my family came here on. It helped guide our ship here and also was responsible for teaching my sister and I all we know of our homeworld up to this point. From what you’re saying though you and the other’s like you are a lot more advanced than the AI’s I’m familiar with.” he nodded and replied

“Yes, Sentient Arm AI’s are hundreds of years more advanced than common Artificial Intelligence programs, such as the navigation system you described or the AI that the facility used for tour guides. Let me see if I can activate my tracer system and see if I can reach Anya and draw her here.” The jewel began to glow and release small bursts of energy that tickled Takaru’s hand but left it unharmed.

------

After what felt like an hour of searching, the AI who had identified herself as Angela had led Takaru to a point where she said would be a safe place to meet with her owner. Takaru glanced around looking for Anya, his eyes darting around trying to match the description she’d gotten from Angela. As his eyes darted around seemingly in vain he felt a bump and as his eyes centered themselves on what he’d crashed into.

It was a girl, from what he could estimate roughly his age with sandy blonde hair and light gold eyes. She stood on equal footing to him in terms of height with a relatively lean body type. From what he could tell she appeared to be a bit of an early bloomer based on her looks. His eyes quickly glanced up and down his face blushing slightly as he began to lose track of eye contact seeing the skirt and top she had on. She stood there for a few moments tapping her foot obviously frustrated by what had happened but then Angela spoke up.

“Anya! So you finally got my signal. This young gentleman found me a little bit after I fell off back in receptions. The area around there was swarmed with guards due to the lockdown and so there must have been some interference from their auras.” the girl nodded and smiled at Takaru putting her hands on her hips as she caught his eyes scanning up and down.

“Well I am glad that he was able to find you. We’ve been training together since I was a little kid and I’ve heard the bonding process can be very straining if you’ve already been bound to a Sentient Arm. Thanks.” she said as she leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek her voice going from a gruff and slightly tomboyish tone to a softer and sweeter one.

Takaru handed Angela’s AI core and the hairpin back as his face blushed. “He said he got separated from his parents in the crowd on the entry concourse. Do you think your dad would have any trouble helping him get caught up with them?” Angela said, trying to snap Takaru back to his senses knowing he was a bit stricken by her owner.

“Shouldn’t be that troublesome to help him out after all it's the least I can do seeing as he did help bring you back to me.” Anya replied before turning to Takaru and attaching the pin to her hair as she asked “Where were you and your family headed when you got broken up?” Takaru shook his head trying to avoid seeming distracted by how cute Anya sounded and looked when she didn’t have the tomboyish tone to her voice she did previously.

“We were heading up to meet Private Garrison for immigration intake. My family and I are from Valin.” Anya rubbed her chin as she thought, a few moments later she snapped her fingers.

“Private Garrison the colony’s security director?” she said in an inquisitive tone. “I can take you to his office. My dad works with him in Sector Security.” she smiled and took him by the hand as she started to lead him.

(“I think this one has an interest in you. Or at least he appears rather enamored with your looks.”) Angela said to Anya through their telepathic link.

“He does seem to have something unusual about him, beyond just being an offworlder of course. I think I’ll inform dad about it later.” Anya replied as she tugged Takaru along. Within a few minutes they’d navigated back to the concourse and from there it was a short trip to Sector Security’s main office where they met up with Takaru’s family.

“Thanks for the help.” Takaru said as he saw Anya walk away. His family greeted him and asked where he’d gone. He explained that he’d gotten lost in the crowd and went looking around for a security officer to try and find his way back to being a bit careful to omit any mention of Anya knowing Hikari wouldn’t let him hear the end of it.

Commander Garrison walked out and greeted them saying “Well nice to see you made it here without too much trouble. Before we can get too far into the paperwork of your immigration we need to take some genetic samples to add an example of your genotype into our records.” He led them into a small office room with a large table in the center with several strange box-like devices on it.

“Stick your hand inside them. They will take a small body fluid sample and analyze it based on known genomes already programmed into our systems and give us a baseline for what to expect from others like you in terms of medical care requirements and such.” Dozara sat down first nodding in agreement as he slipped his hand into one of the units in front of them.

He felt a small pinprick as the scanner quickly siphoned off a small blood sample and a small heating system inside the unit applied a heated bandage to it to cauterize the wound. After that the girls followed suit with Takaru being the last to go through it, his mind still off on its own wondering about Anya.

“Hey you there, Takaru wasn’t it?” asked Private Garrison. “You seem a little zoned out, like you're off thinking about something else. Or possibly someone else?” Takaru’s face turned a slight shade of pink as he looked away while the scanner took its sample.

“Yeah kinda.” as he glanced over noticing his parents and step-sister had taken notice of his reaction. “It was just someone I ran into after I got separated from them. I found someone’s hairpin and on my way to the security desk to turn it in at the lost and found, I ran into its owner. She was a girl about my age.” he paused, his blush deepening slightly as he turned down and away his eyes dropping to the floor.

“Ah so you’re the boy that helped the Major’s daughter find her Sentient arm partner. I heard about that while you were being cleared through security. You have a very good head on your shoulders, you were willing to sidetrack from what would have been as simple as finding the nearest security desk and asking for directions to help someone out. One of the guards noticed you walk in with her before you meet up with your family.” Takaru’s eyes sunk even lower thinking of how he’d expected Hikari to get onto him about being hung up on a girl he’d only just ran into once.

The taunting never came. Commander Garrison cued up a holographic monitor showing the security footage of him walking around and following the directions given to him by Angela and his run in with Anya. Dozara got up and smiled walking over to Takaru and patting him on the shoulder as he said

“It's fine son. From what I can see you did all you could do to be a kind and helpful person. Besides it seems like she appreciated your company.” At that moment the feed showed the small peck on the cheek she’d given him. “Maybe you’ll see her again.” he said, trying to give Takaru some confidence.

-----

Later that afternoon in a smaller break room the results of the samples came back and Commander Garrison briefed them on what they’d found through the analysis.

“It seems that the strain of humanity you belong to isn’t far removed from the ones I know of back on Earth. I assume if regional equivalence were taken into account you’d be a mix of caucasian and Japanese. Although your physical appearances lend more toward the caucasian side of the spectrum. As for your ship’s travel data it appears as though everything is in line and while we can’t pinpoint your home world’s exact location we’ve sent scout vessels to the area nearest to our best estimate of where it would be in relation to our star maps.” Sam said as he looked at Dozara.

“You said you and your family were fleeing a hostile military force from your homeworld? Care to give me a bit of background information so we’ll be able to make preparations in the event our scouts run into any aggressors” Sam asked.as he saw Ichigo and Dozara rummaging through some materials they’d brought along from the Safe Haven.

“The Separatists army isn't known to have left Valin at least as of our last contact with the facility we departed from. Although we expect they’ll be setting up for off world expansion over the next few years since they’re liable to be hunting for us and the other refugees who escaped aboard the Safe Haven 001. We can provide you with some of the plans we were developing back on Valin to help deal with the potential of them invading whatever world we landed on.” Dozara said as he extracted a few data pads from his luggage and handed them to Commander Garrison.

“So it seems you have quite the contingency plan.” Commander Garrison acknowledged as he looked over the information. “Your concepts for the combat armor seem very familiar but I can’t place it exactly. In the meantime I’ll run this by my superiors and see if I can help get this worked on. Do you think you’d be able to contribute your hands to it if I managed to get it commissioned? This sort of tech is pretty advanced considering we have no chart of your planet on the star maps, I’d say it's not that far behind Magia tech or at least Emoltarian bioimplants.” Dozara nodded as he glanced over at Ichigo who followed suit.

“We had most of the project work developed back on Valin but due to our abrupt departure we weren’t able to finish the final implementation.” Ichigo said as she handed him a few smaller data pads showing examples of the prototypes for the weapon systems they’d planned to use.

“Hmm I’ll let some of my associates in the Magia engineer’s corp take a look at these, the tech kinda makes me think of their sentient arm tech although a slightly less developed version. they may be able to help you put this project into production.” Sam said as he looked it over.

“In the meantime, I think we could make arrangements to have you transferred to Earth. I have some connections back in my hometown of North City and set you up with some housing. In exchange, would you care to turn over your ship to the UN Joint Military Forces for examination. Any information we harvest from what work is done to them will be given to the Federation Galactic Patrol to identify any ships that may be flagged as potential threats.” Dozara and the others all nodded in acceptance of the offer as Sam stated it.

“I can see why you’d do that Private Garrison. To my knowledge back on Valin the Separatists didn’t have a proper fleet of ships to use on their own so it wouldn’t surprise me if they hijacked one or more of the factories that were producing the Safe Haven class transit ships. The most cost efficient way of handling it would be for them to simply retrofit weapon systems onto them since it would delay their development of a mobile fleet by a few years if they stopped to develop a new series of ships specifically designed for combat.” Ichigo mentioned as she and Dozara gathered up the data pads they’d given to Commander Garrison.