Foreword: Into Space

## Into Space

    Upon entering the USF Dropship, you realize that you are confined in the main cargo / Schneider hangar, and are not granted access to the bridge of the ship. Large mechanical arms grab ahold of your Schneiders, and you feel compelled to exit them before you too are snatched up by the arms that lift them into the air. The drop ship lurches, and an intercom instructs you to strap into seats along the perimeter of the hangar. One of your contemporaries disregards the instruction, and is slammed into the side of the hull, knocked at least unconscious by the blow, as the Dropship blasts off against the gravity of your home world.

    A gruff voice comes over the speaker:

    "Listen up, Rats. We are taking you to the Blue Faye, a transport ship. We will be holding onto your Schneiders while aboard, so don't even think of doing anything foolish. If you endanger the crew of the Faye, your lives will be forfeit, but if you play by the rules and learn how things go on up here, you will do just fine - hell, I might even have to salute one of your sorry asses someday."

    The speaker goes dead, not giving you any further instructions beyond that.

    You quickly feel your stomachs jump as the Dropship breaks into open space and gravity fails. Shortly after, you hear the scream of metal scraping against metal as unseen docking procedures begin to attach the Dropship to some greater structure. Just as suddenly as you noticed its absence, gravity returns and a door opens along one edge of the hangar.

    Through the door, there is a dimly lit and mist-filled hallway. The air is hot and thick. As you walk— or in the case of Pok, roll— through the mist, you can feel your cracked flesh greedily absorbing the moisture. The hallway has several doors along it and each opens as you approach, triggered by some sort of proximity sensor. The door spirals open, akin to an advanced aperture that folds backwards on itself, revealing small living quarters. There are more rooms than there are of you, and each of you is able to claim a personal space in these chambers.

    Each of these rooms would be considered simple by any veteran member of the USF, but to new recruits like yourselves, they provide a spectacle that you could never have imagined. The features of the room become clear to you as gentle, sterile, white lights hum into life. Along the far wall of each chamber is a bed built into stainless metal outcrops. The sheets on the bed are a rich black— impossibly clean, void of dust or blemish. A small screen blinks brightly above the bed, with illegible text. The floors are polished thick glass, laid atop the structure of the transport ship. You can see wide support beams underneath it like a ribbed metal skeleton. There seems to be a small entertainment section as well, though the electronics of that area are foreign to your eyes. Dark amber liquid slowly, magically fills a glass vessel by the entertainment center.

    Your gaze shifts outward, through the two windows to the dark and endless scenery of space. Countless, unimpeded stars twinkle with color in the void, swirling with energy beyond the thick glass that separates you from them. The darkness beyond the window seems to stretch into the room and, for a moment, makes it feel unnaturally large— all while making you feel irrelevantly small.

    After you finally settle into your quarters, the weight and stress of the last day finally catch up with you, and despite any efforts you make not to, you fall asleep.

    When you awake, you are greeted by a small, levitating orb. It is jet black, except for a single, soft blue ring on one side, which faces you. The ring vibrates as the small object beeps and hums at you. Floating before you, it directs you to a series of lights on the floor that lead you towards the sound of water falling. When you follow the sound, you find yourself in front of a glass shower stall. You have never seen such blatant waste of precious water. It surges from a flat spigot about 8 inches in width, and falls from a wide beam. Steam rises out of the stall, and the small airborne orb seems to urge you to bathe. Dirt and mud dissolve from your bodies and, afterwards, your skin feels unpleasantly soft, as if you had torn off a callous and revealed skin not ready to serve its purpose. Upon exiting the shower, you find that your clothing has disappeared and a jumpsuit has assumed its place.

    The jump suit is dark gray, and bears no markings, save the USF emblem badging on the left sleeve shoulder. They fit loosely, though not so much so that one would find them baggy or inhibiting when performing dexterous actions.

    Back in your room, you find a plate of food. The small orb floats beside it happily, if such a device could be happy, you realize that in the dark of space you do not know the time of day, nor when you last ate a meal. Your ravenous hunger trumps your caution around strange foods, and you eat. The fleshy meat that you find is salty and charred, yet juicy. Globs of buttery fats are atop strange, green flaps that lie in a pile, and you find yourself craving more. A neon-colored sphere is on the plate, and when you cut into it, tangy juices spray out from within. Your fingers are made sticky from the sweetness it contained.

    Though you don't realize it at the time, a week of this treatment passes by. Your bodies, previously malnourished and failing, feel strong and healthy by the 7th day. After a second week, you firmly believe you have never felt this good in your life. Your teeth, which once would slide or bend in your mouth from time to time, feel firm and trustworthy. Your skin, once covered in blemishes and boils, is clear and flexible. You feel rested, and your mind is sharp. Your jaw, which you never realized took great effort to open and close, responds quickly when you speak or eat, and for the first time in your life, your muscles have ceased spasming on their own throughout the day. On what would have been the 15th day, you feel the transport shift and lurch beneath your feet.

    The intercoms buzz to life.

    "Alright Rats, get out into the hall and line up."

    A heavy airlock opens at the end of the hall.

    One by one you file out of the hallway. A large man in a white jumpsuit lets you exit one at a time, in order of your line up. You are instructed to sit in a large, reclining chair. The chair is padded, though not as softly as the beds you had been enjoying for the last few weeks. You feel a pressure on your arm; turning your head to see some sort of band crushing it, and a man in white approaching you. The rims of your vision seem to collapse inward, and the world fades to black.

    You awake in a new room, nigh identical to your previous quarters. You almost thought the rooms were one in the same, but the table is in the wrong place, and the computer monitor now blinks at you in a language you can now understand. In a pale blue font on a black backdrop, it reads out a schedule to you, titled "BASIC TRAINING." Beneath it is a map with a small blinking "you are here" dot. As you sit up, you realize that something feels off, your mouth feels full. You find your tongue maddeningly drawn to teeth that were not there yesterday. You feel the jagged new edges along them as your tongue repeatedly sweeps over them. Pok feels something stranger. At the base of his spine, he feels a cold steel plate right where his back splits into his ass. It then strikes him like a sledge - his toes are cold. It isn’t the phantom sensation of pain that lingered for years as he felt their absence, but true cold against the metal of the floor as he sits upright in the bed. He attempts to lift a leg and his thigh twitches, though does not rise, despite his commands.

    "TRAINING STARTS IN 5 MINUTES RATS! GET MOVING!"

Nexus Haven - USF Space Station