Chapter 3

Assignment Orders

Original issue

Issue Date 7:23 7/10/255,555 GY

Name: Tiara Fairsteen Rank: Cedet

Age: 15. Race:Frayin. Homeworld: Tanbera.

Hair: Long Silver. Fur: silver. Eyes: Brown.

Skin: Tanned. Height: 5ft, 2in weight: 98lb

DOB: 6/02/255,540 GY

Parents

Father:Redacted Mother: Gena Fairsteen

Mirin: Redacted.

Siblings Trina.

Cadet Tiara is hereby assigned to the newly formed Training Squadron aboard Taurus Station, Section one twenty-six A,Terra, Sol System for the purpose of practical experience and training. This Squadron has been awarded the callsign of FOX and shall hereafter be referred to as Fox Squadron.

Standing Orders

Fox Squadron's duties shall include, but not be limited to, the training of both Imperial and Terran Federation Cadets as well as act as the designated Liaison Squadron and shall handle all disputes and conflicts between the residents of Taurus Station, Section one twenty-six B, the local populus, and Imperial citizens.

Cadet Tiara is ordered to report to deck 3 compartment 237 aboard the Aurora by 8:22 7/18/255,555 GY.

For the remaining two weeks, the trip was an exhausting schedule of classes and training. In the morning there would be lectures given by Nayomi about various topics involving the Terrans. From basic culture to the complex political climate. Then three hours of physical training and ending with two hours in the simulators each day. Naturally when The Lieutenant informed them they would be getting the next day off, they had all cheered.

By mid day they had found themselves in one of the forward common rooms on the Aurora. They had tried to simply stay in bed and sleep the day away but The Lieutenant had very quickly thrown them out of the bunk room after letting them sleep in for a few extra hours. Tiara had found herself looking out the viewport at the blue white glow of trans-space. Across the table Michael was half watching her with Tali asleep, her head on his shoulder. She was fairly sure that under normal conditions he wouldn't have allowed such a thing, but was simply too tired to really care at the moment. For a moment she thought it might be fun to tease him over it but the slight twist of reality called her attention.

“We are about to drop out of Trans-space,” Tiara suddenly said. Micheal seemed to feel the shift coming just a moment later before the space outside the viewport returned to normal. The shift caused Tali to let out a little squeak before looking around confused for a moment before sinking back into her seat. Beyond the viewport a corvette sized ship, whose design looked like it was based off a bird of prey, was moving into an escort position next to the Aurora.

It was an odd ship, in that it had a large fixed cannon under each of its wings. If Tiara remembered correctly, one of the lectures had shown this to be a Terran Hawk class frigate. The two cannons were actually rail guns. It was also equipped with short range missile batteries and hidden phaser cannons. If one didn't know better they would assume that this was some kind of civilian light freighter. Which was probably the point.

"So how is that even classified as a frigate?" Kell commented as he and Kira sat down at the table. "I mean it's so small there is no way it could have enough power to qualify." Kira explained as if she had been the one to ask the question.

"It's not really hard to figure it out. The Terrans have seven Class Seven technologies." Half the common room turned to look at her. While most of them were probably trying to gauge if she was lying or not, Michael on the other hand was staring at her for a completely different reason. Only those with an Alpha-Theta 4 or higher clearance should have known that. Fourchently before he could even start to question her on this the holo board in the center of the table came to life.

Naomi’s now familiar figure showed up in place of the normal game board that should have been the only thing that could have appeared. "She is right. Though four of those are direct extensions of the Terran's power generators." She said before her hologram placed her hand on her chin as if she was thinking about something. "However most of the Terran's technology is actually high 3 to low 5 in level.” For most that would be a lot to unpack.

Unfortunately for them they wouldn’t be getting the time to process it. No sooner had Nayomi finished speaking, a call bleared out over the ship's PA calling the members of Fox Squadron to report back to their bunk room. A short junt later they all arrived and were told they had six hours to be ready and on the shuttle to Taurus Station. Tali was then informed that she would be the pilot, which sent the poor girl scrambling to get her stuff packed so she could get to the shuttle and get preflight checks done. Though it did take long to track the few bits of clothes that hadn't quite made it back to them. Cadets were not given a lot to start with for this reason.

So six hours later they arrived in the main hangar which was humming with activity. It took them a few minutes to actually find their transport. They all stared at the Assault Shuttle in disbelief. The top of the line shuttle looked fresh out of the factory and was just barely big enough to fit them all in a tight squeeze. “This is not going to be a normal assignment if they are giving us an Assault Shuttle.” Tiara said, voicing the thought they were all likely sharing.

Tiara was definitely glad that she had taken the initiative to enter the shuttle first, If only because it lets her take the nav-station in the cockpit instead of the now crowded troop compartment. This also gave her a great view of the system's sixth planet as they left the hangar of the Aurora. It was a large gas giant with thousands of beautiful rings of ice and rock spread out around it on a plain from its equator. The entire thing glissend like thousands of little stars in the light of the distant sun. The three of us in the cockpit stared for a moment before we had to return to the task of guiding the shuttle to its destination.

“Tiara plots a course to the third planet from here.” The Lieutenant ordered from the copilot's seat. This snapped the girl's attention back to the task at hand.

Taking a quick look over the nav-station’s read outs she found the fastest route would take them past the fourth planet, using its gravity well to sing the ship towards the third planet. The entire trip would take roughly thirty minutes. Just enough time for her to get a good sensor sweep of the system, which turned up some interesting results. There was an asteroid belt between the fourth and fifth planets that showed signs of multiple simi hidden statons. Way beacons indicating where travel corridors were set up to get past the belt. The reason they had had to leave the Aurora appeared to be that all three corridors that were large enough to accommodate her currently had ships lined up waiting to get through. What didn’t make sense though was why. The belt wasn't exactly larger and really only covered the equatorial plane. So why limit ships to the corridors in the first place?

Turned out she would get an answer to that question sooner than expected. A mid-seized freighter had just decided that it wasn't worth the wait and started moving past the belt outside one of the corridors. It only made it halfway before two Pirate Cruisers slipped out of their hiding spots within the belt they were hiding. The first ship moved directly towards the freighter, while the other moved to intercept two military Destroyers that were moving to save the freighter. Suddenly the Shuttles sensors went nuts as the four combat ships began putting out power signatures and charged their weapons.

With a flash of light the second cruiser fired at the two approaching Destroyers. The massive magnetically charged shell crossed the gap between the ships in fractions of a second. Tiara couldn't have told anyone why but she was sure that it was going to be deflected past the two ships. She wasn't even sure why she thought this herself, but sure enough there was a flash of colorful lights around the front of the first Destroyer as the shell was forcefully slowed and pushed away from the ship, turning the hit into a near miss. She could only guess how powerful the magnetic field on that ship had to be to deflect an object traveling a fraction the speed of light. Even more impressive though was when they returned fire on the cruiser.

The two shells from the Destroyers crossed the distance at what must have been a speed nearly twice that of the Cruiser’s shell. They even showed magnetic disturbances around them as their electromagnetic charge interacted with the solar winds. Yet still even with them smashing through the Cruiser’s equally impressive magnetic field the shells only managed to do moderat damage to it. Though it did give the Cruiser enough of a shock to decide this wasn't a fight it really wanted to have. It looked like the exchange would likely go on for a few more minutes, so Tiara reported it to The Lieutenant and thanked the Spirits that they were on the other side of the system.

The remainder of the trip was fairly uneventful. When they passed near the fourth planet she noted it showed signs of having been terraformed. There was also a nearby debris field filled with half destroyed ships. Based off of the designs it was probably the remains of the Gravarin fleet that was destroyed during the first contact incident. The battle itself had made news across the galaxy. It wasn't every day that some random race was discovered and then defeated one of the major powers.

Then came the third planet Terra, their home world. The mid-sized planet had a massive station wrapped around its equator. According to the shuttle's sensors the circumference of the station at its closest point to the planet was around 265,000 km, was 1 km deep and one hundred and fifty meters tall. Tiara herself had seen massive generational super structures but this was definitely the largest she had ever seen. It was even possible that it was the largest orbital structure in the galaxy. It was quite possible that it could hold the entire population of the planet it was set around.

Tali hit the intercom back to the troop bay. “You guys are not going to believe this. They have a station that is so big it goes around their entire planet” a moment later the door into the cockpit opened and Michael stepped through with Eric and Amara pearing in behind him. He stared out the view port for a moment before asaking The Lieutenant. “I thought the Terrans had only been a space faring race for the last one hundred years?” None of them wanted to take their eyes off the massive station. It felt like that despite the thing's massive size it would simply vanish if they did. “That is what the reports say.” he responded somewhat dryly.

They all jumped when a sharp beeping sound suddenly came from the comms unit. Tiara quickly put her commlink back on and responded to the incoming hail. It turned out to be a command and control operator who was calling to give them landing instructions. Curiously there wasn't any delay or overlap that was associated with someone using a translator. Was she Frayin? She wondered, at least until the operator said something that was rather alarming. “Be advised that this will be a Zero G landing in an active hangar.” A few moments passed and the operator must have gotten a little worried when Tiara didn’t respond. Instead of responding to the slowly panicking operator on the comms Tiara slowly turned to the rest of the cockpit and repeated what she had just been told. What happened next was probably a testament to the training they had reserved or at the very least Tali’s skills.

No sooner than she had said the words did Micheal turn and yell for everyone to lock themselves and anything near them down as he quickly moved back into the troop bay. Tali gave them all of six seconds to do so before flipping off the ship's internal gravity and unbuckling herself from the pilot's seat, soliciting a few curses from the troop bay. She then floated up so she could access the control panels above the view port that she was too short to reach. The Lieutenant took the controls and put his own commlink on, while Tiara asked the operator to give them their approach vector. They were now getting close to the station and they could see the hangar. They could see personnel and equipment floating around inside. Not in some uncontrolled manner but in specific purposeful patterns.

There was a flash of sparks as Tali finished disabling the anti drift system on the shuttle that had never been intended to be turned off, then moved back to the pilot’s seat and then cut the main thrusters. All that was left was to drift in using only the emergency thrusters to guide them. It was a little unnerving to watch. Tiara wanted nothing more at the moment to be in the control of the shuttle. Not that she thought she could do a better job than Tali or The Lieutenant, but it was comforting for a pilot to be in control of the craft they were in. She briefly wondered if it would have been better or worse to not be able to see what was going on as they passed through a blue field at the entrance of the hanger. It must have been a gravity field as she could feel it pass over her as they went through it. The pull was just enough to change the course of the shuttle so that it would drift to an empty area in the back of the hangar. To Tali’s credit despite several near misses with people or equipment she held their course all the way to the empty area. Then with a loud percussive sound the magnetic locks latched onto the deck of the hangar.

We had a short moment to breathe before a surly looking Terran Male in a dark blue uniform with three chevrons above three inverted arcs on his sleeve keyed open the shuttle's main hatch and told them to get out and head to the mission briefing room. A task that was made a little hard as there was no gravity between them and the door out of the hangar. Tali, Eric and Elvira were the only ones who didn't need one of the mechanics to redirect them back to the door. Where a young Terran female with a single chevron on her sleeve helped them into the hall, that thank the Spirits had normal gravity. They were then directed to the first door on the right just past the bulkhead.

Inside the room there were twelve chairs with L shaped metal surfaces on them and two Terran males in blue gray uniforms that looked like a cross between Frayin naval uniforms and the uniforms that they had seen the Terran's in. The one on the right was a tall dark skinned (boy?) Who took a moment to look her up and down before saying "How the hell can they all be hot?" Under his breath before begrudgingly reaching into his pocket and handing the other (boy?) A couple pieces of paper. " I told you." The shorter light skinned one said. She was about to ask them what they meant and what the strange paper was about when a holo projector came to life with Naomi appearing on it.

"Djimon, Orin you should be aware that Frayins have exceptional hearing and just heard everything you just said." The two Terran boys look at each other with what she thought was a look of bemusement. It was hard to tell really, since Tarrans didn't have ears or tails to indicate such things. Their skin did change color a little though. As if to simply confirm what Naomi had said Elvira spoke up to ask them a question "So what do you mean by we are all hot?"

The entire situation was so funny that before she knew it she was laughing. After a moment of everyone staring at her she managed to get control of herself and straightened up. "Forgive me you were all just staring at each other with these confused looks that I couldn't help myself." She managed to say. This seemed to put the two Terran boys at ease. "Right." The dark skinned man said "Let me introduce myself. My name is Cadet Djimon Tekle and this is Cadet Orin Johnson." They all took a few moments to introduce themselves. Then just as they finished a Terran male enter the room behind them

He was tall with light colored skin. He was wearing the same blue gray uniform as the two boys but had one significant difference. On his collar was a gold symbol with four circles in a diamond formation connected by four lines connecting the diamond and a single gold circle in the middle. The Terran wearing a Frayin naval Lieutenant's insignia looked over the room before speaking in a clear solid voice. "Looks like you're all here. Allow me to introduce myself to those of you who don't know me. I am Lieutenant Colson, the leader of Fox Squadron.