When I was back in the waiting room I sat down next to Troy and took out the pad I’d gotten.

‘’How’d it go?’’ He asked as soon as I sat down.

‘’She ignored me, then she tried to get me fired, and in the end I gave her a lesson before she quickly briefed me.’’ I replied and smiled.

‘’What’d you do?’’ Troy smiled too, he obviously hated her manners as I did.

‘’Well, I tested my luck more than she liked, and got away with it, she was furious.’’ I said as both of us chuckled again, this time I heard someone sitting behind us also chuckled.

I looked down at the pad again and quickly called Mira, didn’t take long before she replied and her face showed up on the pad, she was finely dressed, looked like someone going to have a fine dinner, she was smiling so beautifully that I was powerless to do anything but smile back.

‘’Hey Sheridan, how’s the trip coming?’’

I looked around the waiting room, there were several mechanics looking at their pads, minding their own business, some were still waiting to be briefed and get theirs, and in the background there were windows where the stars slowly passed by.

‘’Slowly.’’ I replied as I looked back down on the pad: ‘’What’s the occasion?’’ I followed up with, obviously referring to how finely she dressed, she was usually casual in her clothing.

She smiled even more: ‘’I’m having a meeting with the ‘New Stockholm Arts Institute.’’

‘’New Stockholm has an art institute?’’

‘’You’d be surprised.’’ She gracefully winked at me.

‘’I am surprised.’’ I quickly replied before she said: ‘’I’ve got to go now, I’m going to be late, don’t want to make the swedes angry.’’ She chuckled and turned off the screen and my pad went dark.

‘’You are one lucky guy.’’ I heard Troy say besides me, I turned to face him and said: ‘’Truer words have never been spoken.’’ Before smiling.

‘’I guess she’s an artist?’’ He asked; ‘’The best.’’ I quickly replied.

After a short pause he asked again: ‘’So, how did you two meet?’’ I paused for a while, then replied: ‘’Well… In my earlier academy years I went to a kind of club for authors, to share stories and ideas, and their thoughts on other authors stories.’’ I paused and looked up: ‘’Mira was there too, she made graphic novels, but she always ran dry on ideas.’’ I chuckled before continuing: ‘’Actually, she only did all the times I attended, and I was always the first person she asked for help, with time we grew closer and ended up like we are today.’’

Troy smiled for a while before sharing his thoughts: ‘’What a pleasant story, good luck to both of you.’’

‘’Thank you, how about you, got anyone special waiting at home?’’

He looked away, still smiled though: ‘’Nah, I had but she dumped me a week before the assignment.’’

‘’I shouldn’t have asked.’’ I said, followed by a short pause he broke: ‘’Don’t be, she was a bitch anyways, don’t know what I was thinking, she probably only dated me because I was number one, I feel free now.’’

‘’Might also have something to do with the fact that you’re exploring space.’’ We both chuckled again.

Almost right after we stopped chuckling our pads lit up, which meant breaking news, we both quickly paused to read the news, some people watched them instead.

The atmosphere in the room grew heavy very quickly as people were getting deeper into the news, breaking news was right, a TPS battle cruiser had for unknown reasons suddenly blacked out in communications and attacked and successfully destroyed two other warships before it blew up for unknown reasons.

Stuff like this didn’t just happened, it’d never happened before, a smaller similar instance happened once but they tried to prove a point and made it obvious, they didn’t just take hundreds of lives including their own for no apparent reason.

Even after everyone finished no one said anything, what was there to say? After a short silence the speakers activated: ‘’We are aware of the news and would like to inform you that nothing in your mission has changed, this could only be an isolated event and we have no fears of further tragedies.’’

Sounded like propaganda, but it was probably true in this case, what they did wasn’t good for anyone.

After a relatively long silence the speakers activated again and a man said: ‘’We are approaching blue 02.’’ In the standard emotionless voice as always.

We all stood up and started going for the main airlock in a bunch, while walking the ship shook slightly as it was docking, a few people jumped since it was our first time in space, It’s not easy getting used to.

The airlock was already open when we got there and we quickly made our way through and made a line outside of it, shoulder to shoulder, with a meter between each of us. We did spend more time inspecting the docking area though, because it was huge, the entire station was supposed to be huge, but we weren’t prepared for this, it was incredible.

There were several smaller ships in the compartment, we could barely see the walls on either side of the compartment and there could probably be docked more than 30 large ships on the side of it, imagining that there were larger space stations than this was almost a scary, just imagining building something as large as this in space was enough.

Shortly after most of us finished admiring the place a bunch of people in command suits came in, chatting, they were all young, sergeant pins. The stopped in a line in front of us and spread out the same way, a woman in the center started talking: ‘’We will split you up in teams of three, who will each follow our instructions working on different parts of the ship.’’ She paused and took up a pad: ‘’Corporal Flair, Private Steel, and Private Lanier, come with me.’’

Troy and a young looking girl stepped forward alongside me and started following the woman who turned around slowly walked, just before we left the room into a large corridor I heard another three names being listed.

After walking for a short while, past the bright grey corridors with lots of doors with different signs the woman started talking again: ‘’You three have been picked because you ranked top in the entire region, you will work directly in the mech bay, as soon as we get there I will give you further instructions.’’

No one answered and we walked in silence until we came to a huge door with a much larger sign with clear yellow letters: ‘’Mech Bay’’