I had been scrolling through the market looking for a cheap ship I could use to bring my clan up, but so far all I had found was three that could do it. However, they would require multiple trips to get everyone in the clan up here. I let out a sigh, knowing I had to get into the details of the ship's to see which would be the best, but I had been going non-stop for a week now, and I just wanted a break. I looked past the market hologram screen at one of the stations to see three green squares highlighting the ships that were leaving the station and speeding away towards the carrier.

“Bye, come visit again, soon” I mumbled.

I reached out to reluctantly open the info screen, knowing I had no choice and had best get this done. However, I was stopped by a message that appeared on my hud.

Greetings, Flight Lieutenant. I am commander Lucas Winch, the commanding officer of the Carrier GF0074, named Terance. I write this letter to you so that you are aware that sometime in the next twenty-four standard hours you will be forcibly uplinked to your squadron interview aboard my ship. A group of the Navy officers and some of my own ship officers will perform an interview with you to see if your… team would be a good fit for one of us. Thank you for your time, Commander Winch.

“What does he mean good fit? Damn it everyone has been pushing me around recently, and I'm getting tired of it, all this crap and not knowing what the hells going on, I'm sick of it! …Ya know what, let's see if this thing has a manual on guilds as well, let's see what I can really do! …but first I need to get the dry dock building that ship.”

I let out a long breath as I calmed down. Now that I had vented, I turned my attention back to the market screen, and I opened the info tab on a twin tailed gassix. It was a light transport ship that could carry ten people from the planet-side into orbit. Where it would dock with a larger ship or space station.

I shifted my attention to the second info screen, which displayed the information on a twin engine valcor. To my eyes, it looked like the drop-ship I used during bootcamp. It could transport twenty-five people. The holographic image, that continued to spin and move as if I was touring the ship, made me believe it truly was the drop-ship I had used. I couldn't resist the excitement I felt quickly rising, and didn't even bother looking at the third option. I paid the one hundred and fifty thousand credits for the licence to build the ship and the blueprint to do so.

Quickly closing the market table, I pulled open the command window for the space dry dock. Feeling excited to start building my very own drop-ship. However, my finger froze over the build button when I noticed it was greyed out and a little warning below it in red stated I was missing resources. Quickly navigating the windows until I found the only resource I was missing was five iron ore.

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“Are you kidding me!” I screamed at the window as I stared at it in disbelief.

“Five fricken iron ore, that's what is stopping me from starting my plan to bring my clan up here?”

My eyes slowly drifted past the window to the image of the solar system floating above the table. I could see the Galactic Federation ship's floating around the perimeter and each celestial object within, I could also see the Americans still sitting on the hull of the Space station base. However, my eyes settled on the three ships flying towards the solar systems' perimeter. I had asked Zeo why everyone had arrived to the solar system so far out. Zeo told me it had to do with the safety restrictions in the subspace drive, not allowing any ship to exit Subspace anywhere near the location that a celestial object could inhabit. After watching them for a bit, I shifted my attention to the asteroid belt where the mining barges were flying around rocks extracting the resources.

“Hurry back, I only need five iron…” I shook my head, feeling silly, it kinda felt like I was playing some sort of game and I had to wait for a NPC to bring me something before I could complete a quest.

A window suddenly appeared in front of my face. ‘Forced secure uplink establishing’ it vanished soon after, and I had just enough time to think ‘What the? It's been like twenty minutes’ Then my vision turned white, then black before clearing to show me sitting at the foot of a long table. I could see a man sitting at the other end and down the sides were more men and women wearing the void navy uniforms and all of them were looking at me.

“Flight Lieutenant Kenna Mackenzie, you are a pain in my ass. I have been ordered to take you and your former team aboard my ship but now that you are here it is up to me what I do with you lot and none of these officers want you all, so I'm splitting the team!”

He turned to look at the officers around the table as they all turned to the holographic screens in front of them.

“Okay, first up we have a Flight Sergeant. He is a drop pilot named Brendan Ripter. His scores in boot camp are fairly decent, and his scores are off the charts in drop manoeuvres, both in-planet and out. Works well in formation and solo flight. He has no complaints against him. However, as you can see, there is a fair list of compliments and recommendations attached to his file. Who wants him?”

I opened my mouth to complain and declared that my team wanted to stay together. A symbol appeared in front of my face of a silhouette face and three lines, a red circle was around it with a red line going through it. ‘They have me on mute!’ I screamed in my head as I closed my mouth and tried not to glare at the commander as they continued to talk. It annoyed me as I watched them bid on my team, taking them and assigning them to squads in various platoons. Then they finally turned to look at me again, the last member of the star hawks that had not been given to a squad.

“Alright, it seems no one wishes to bid on the acquiring of this Flight Lieutenant, honestly I'm not surprised, a Flight Lieutenant holds the rank to lead, but this one has no leadership training from any void recognised military. I can not boot her off my ship, as I have been ordered to take her. This means I answer directly to the Void Emperor, who is the real ruling clan of the galactic empire. So I am reassigning you from a drop-ship pilot to a Drop Carrier. Welcome to Terance, Flight Lieutenant Kenna Mackenzie, I hope you adjust quickly to your new station!”

Everyone around the room started chuckling and grinning at me as my vision turned white, then black.