"All persons on board report to your cryopods." Reina looked at the nearest loudspeaker. That was the signal that the launchpad was under attack and the ships needed to leave. Reina turned to her pod, only to be met by an embrace by her father. "Don't worry Reina, we'll be safe soon. If you need courage, just think of your mother up there with the rest of the Flying Tigers, fighting so we can escape." Reina fought back the tears as they simultaneously stepped into their pods and sleep was brought over them.
It was the 23rd century, and war has broken out in the Sol system. Five sleeper ships launched under attack of the Coalition. Three of the five landed in Sirius without problems. The Bretonia was slowed, and the Hispania was sabotaged.
It was the Hispania where Reina and her father were stationed. Many pods were opened when the ship was sabotaged, but Reina's was not.
"Gracia, you're clear to launch. The target is in the vicinity of the Hispania Memorial. Teach that Hunter to stay out of Alpha." "Si, I'll take care of it. This Dromedary has a few tricks up its sleeve yet." The freighter launched from Planet Malta and made course for the Hispania, a shell of a ship floating in the Omicron Alpha system. When the ship got within 3K of the wreckage field, the scanner rang of a hostile. Sitting there was a Bounty Hunter Manta. Without wasting any time, the freighter opened fire. The Manta barely put up a fight before being ripped apart by a trio of Cannonball missiles. Gracia was turning back to Malta when a blip on her comms were heard. "Dios mio, did that come from the Hispania?" The freighter stopped and turned towards the archaic wreck. "Better take a look..." Gracia inched the ship towards the hole in the side of the Hispania. Floating in space was a cryopod. After hesitating, Gracia tractored it into the cargo bay, and set the ship on autopilot.
Gracia stood in disbelief. Sitting in front of her was a cryopod housing a teenage girl from 800 years ago. "Oye, this has to be some kind of dream. I should wait until I get to Corsaca to open it though, no way I can keep this chica alive in this pile." With that, the freigher made a direct path to Omicron-85. But on the way there, a strange ship was detected on scanners.
Distress beacons weren't all that rare, in fact they were common enough that he simply ignored them most of the time, but something was different about the one that he just picked up. Considering he was in Omicron Alpha on a recon mission.
Plotting a course towards the Hispania, the Nephthys fighter cloaked after it entered cruise. A simple recon mission wouldn't have been this successful if it wasn't for the new cloaks the Order had produced, and while he was thankful he managed to get one, though he figured it was because High Command wanted him dead.
Moments later, he glanced down at the scanner to see a Dromedary making it's way towards him, the distress beacon was coming from inside the ship itself. A smile creeping across his face as he ran one last scan to see which group the vessel had belong to, and it was an Outcast.
From Gracia's point of view, she could see a faint outline of a vessel as it started to decloak well within cruise disruptor range, and moments later several such missiles were being fired from the unknown ship, shortly afterwards a couple of missiles caught the Dromedary as the pilot attempted to evade.
"Alright, cardi-sniffer. You're going to get one cha-" His sentence cut short as three missiles flung towards him. His ship broke away as three cannonballs quietly screamed through space heading towards him, a series of countermeasures being dumped from his ship. "Okay, we'll just do this the hard way."
The fight was over as soon as it began, and the Dromedary was drifting in space along side the Nephthys. "Now that we have that out of the way, please hand over that escape pod, and I'll be on my way." After a few Hispanic curses, the Outcast finally complied with his request.
Once safely out of Alpha, and near... friendlier house space, he landed his ship on Freeport Six. Pushing himself up and heading back towards the cargo bay to check on what or who he picked up. Only to find what looked to be a seventeen year old girl. He stared in disbelief for a few moments before sighing heavily and preparing to open the cryopod.
When the button that opens the cryopod was pressed, steam hissed through the hinges of the door. The liquid that would normally exit through a tube spilled through the door. A few seconds passed after the liquid escaped before the girl's oxygen mask fell to the floor, slowly followed by her body. The man caught the unconscious body and took her to a rented room on the station.
Days passed and the girl still did not regain consciousness. During her sleep, she would say the same things, "Sirius, Hispania, Tigers, Coalition". After a few days, she would start to move, but still not fully wake up. It was a week until the girl finally sat up. Obviously confused, she looked around the room in a panic. Sitting at a desk she saw a stranger with his back to her, working on something unknown. She spoke with a panicked and shaky voice "W-who are you? Where am I?!"
It had been a week since he rescued her from the Outcasts in Omicron Alpha, and a week since he stayed in one location, only coming and going when he needed to actually get food for himself or ensure she was getting the necessary nutrient while she was out. In fact, her voice and questions out of the blue had startled him, causing him to knock over a white mask that was sitting next to him. He froze in place and took in a deep breath as he regained his composer.
"Good morning to you too," He replied, keeping his back to her as he carefully leaned over and picked the white mask up, setting it on the desk. "I'm Terrance Chamberlain, you're on Freeport Six, and quite frankly lass you're in good hands. Do you have a name?"
The girl gave a jump when the mask fell. She stayed silent for a moment after the man finished. "I'm Reina Pavoni...did you say Freeport Six? I haven't heard of that, is it an Alliance Station?"
Terrance smiled softly to himself, as he half turned towards her, keeping his face out from her view. "Something like that, Miss Pavoni. I'm surprised you still remember that era of history. It's been... eight-hundred and nineteen years since the sleeperships had left Sol. Freeport Six... in some sense is an Alliance Station, but you see lass, humanity isn't exactly united like we were back in Sol. This station is actually a Zoner station." "Sol...The sleeperships! Did we make it to Sirius?! Wh-...eight hundred nineteen years...?"
"Roughly eight-hundred and nineteen years, aye. You've been in cryogentically frozen for quite sometime, considering the Hispania arrived in Sirius in the year nineteen A.S." He replied, turning to face her fully with a light smile on his face, she could see he was roughly the age of fifty and had a burn scar across the side of his face. "Eight hundred years...W-Why wasn't I woken up when we arrived?! And how did I get here?!"
"Somewhere down the line, the Hispania suffered engine problems, and wasn't able to make landfall properly. Only a handful of colonists managed to get planet side on a planet known as Malta and another group on a planet known as Crete. You're lucky I was in the area when your cryopod sent out a distress beacon. Which... was weird because, Alliance distress beacons aren't that common." Reina's eyes widened in fear "The others landed....What about my father? Where is he?"
He shook his head slowly, putting on a frown and looking down. "If I knew, I would tell you. Though he's either still alive and in a cryopod on the Hispania, or long since dead. I'm sorry..."
A look of shock and dread came over her "Long..dead...but...we promised..." Reina sat for a few seconds before hunching over and started crying
Terrance drew in a long deep breath, before letting it out slowly and pushing himself up to his feet, making his way over to the bed and sitting down next to the girl. He briefly hesitated before placing his hand gently on her back. "It's going to be alright."
A few minutes pass before Reina calms down. "That's easy for you to say, you're not 800 years in the future with everybody you know being dead!" She starts crying again "As sad as it maybe, Miss, think of it this way. You do have a fresh start out here in Sirius." He replied, not actually having anything to say that would calm her down, after patting her on the back a couple of times, he pushed himself up and walked towards the desk he was originally sitting at, and took a seat again. "If you need anything, just give me a shout, and you can call me Terry."
It was a few minutes before Reina calmed down again. She sat in silence before speaking again. "What do I do now? I'm billions of miles away from home 800 years in the future"
He sat his pencil down and turned towards her again. "Well, you can help me in my crusade on uniting humanity against aliens. Or you can leave this room and head off to start your new life."
Reina looked up at the mention of aliens. "But I don't wan-...Did you say aliens?"
He raised an eyebrow and turned away from her, grabbing his pencil and starting back on what he was doing prior to her being awake. "Yeah." He stated a few moments later.
She looked at him with great curiosity "You mean there are aliens in...wherever we are?"
"Sirius." He said correcting her, "And yes, there are aliens here. They aren't the 'show us your leader, we come in peace' ones either." "What are they like? Can we talk to them? Are any of them here?" Reina crawled forward on the bed in excitement. "Hostile, no you can't talk to them, and no there aren't any of this station. That I know of."
She sat back down, her excitement dimming. "Well....why not?" "They're parasites bent on destroying humanity as a whole. My job is to ensure that doesn't happen."
"But....why would they do that?" "No one actually knows why. We just know that they attacked us first." He sighed lightly, reaching for the mask on the desk and placing it over his face as he pushed himself out of the chair. "I'm going to go get some proper food for you."
She sat in silence, only nodding when he mentioned food "Don't touch anything on the desk." He said, looking back at her with the mask down on his face, shortly after he walked towards the door, opening it then shutting it behind him as he stepped out of the room.
As soon as the door closed, Reina looked down, noticing that she was still in her cryosuit. She looked around and noticed the one pair of clothes that were locked in the cryopod with her piled on the end of the bed. She immediately changed and started to survey the room. When coming across the desk, she did what she was told and ignored what was there. After making a lap around the room, Reina stopped at the window. She stared in wonder at the unknown space.
It was about twenty minutes later when he actually arrived back, carrying a couple bags full of random assortment of packaged food, and candy, carefully closing the door behind him with his foot and carrying the back over to the bed and setting them down. "I'm not exactly good with kids... so... I bought some food that I thought you might like."
Reina ignored the man when he re-entered until he mentioned kids. She turned and glared at him. "I'm not a kid, I'm 16 years old. If I was a kid, I would be running around, screaming, and drooling on everything"
Terrance looked over at her through the mask, seemingly unphased by her glare, and her words. "I'll keep that in mind. Thank you."
She sighs "Sorry, I've been called a kid all my life and I hate it." "Well, you're still going to be called a kid. After all..." He made a slight gesture towards her, "You're... still a kid, albeit an eight-hundred-something-year-old one."
She sighs "Fine, call me whatever" She then notices the bags of food he's carrying "So...what did you get?" "Never said I was going to call you that, Miss Pavoni." He gestured towards the bags, before taking the mask off as he walked towards the desk. "Look through them and see what you'd like to eat, it's just a variety of some healthy food and junk food."
Reina sits on the bed and digs through the bags, but nothing strikes her interest. "I don't recognize any of this...what is it?"
Placing the mask on the desk, he walked back over towards her and started digging through the bags himself, pulling out certain food and explaining what it was to her.
Reina looked confused before picking up a brightly colored stalk that resembled broccoli. She took a bite, then devoured the rest of it. "That was delicious!" She continued digging, taking samples of various foods and candy.
A week has past since Reina first woke up. Since then, Terrance has been teaching her about the basics of Sirius and ship piloting. She seemed to learn quickly, but was still emotionally unstable about the whole situation, and other than getting lost on the station a few times, she never left the small room. The morning of August 10th, Reina was shaken awake by a familiar person
"Sorry to wake you." Terrance muttered, as he watched her stir from her sleep, he took a couple of steps back. "Get ready, I have something to show you in the hanger."
He turned away from her, grabbing the white mask off the table and putting it over his face before he proceeded out of the room, not bothering to wait for her to catch up as he headed down towards the hanger. He arrived within a few minutes and took in a deep breath as he approached the Civilian Freighter, which wasn't in the best condition - though it flew.
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