Admiral Dean was walking through the boring hallways of Redwood Academy, that got its name from the surrounding trees beautiful autumn colors.

Calling it an academy was stupid enough, since only half of the complex was an actual academy, the rest was a strategic base for ‘The Peoples Star’, humanity’s only worthwhile space exploring corporation, which owned half of the academies and all the stars nowadays it seemed.

Dean finally reached his office and yawned before damning early work hours in his mind, he opened the door into his office and stopped in front of his small desk and stared into the window behind his chair. He looked into the beautiful gardens that came in all of People Stars academies, a small pond in the middle surrounded by small trees, bushes and benches.

He looked at the water flowing, reflecting the suns morning rays, and the young and eager students chatting for a while before sighing and sitting down, he put his hand on the desk as his screen grew out of it, he always hated that design, just let the computer screen sit, no one will steal it in a bloody academy.

Once the screen was up he touched it and waited for it to register his fingerprint, of course, it took an eternity because of the old hardware in these computers. Once it finished he was immediately greeted by a flashing indicator, a priority message, exciting.

He pressed the indicator and a message instantly popped up:

Date: August, 9, 2114

From: General Nero

Subject: Mechanic

Admiral, the Gamma cannon project is delayed and additional crew are required.

Overstocked academies, such as your own are to send one mechanic to assist with finishing the project within the time frame, I suggest that you send someone who is a quick worker and who does well under stress, in case the Colleral know more than we do.

The rest of the message was just information on where to send the Mechanic for him to get a shuttle to ‘Blue 02’, which got its name from being located near a blue star, where the Gamma cannon project took place, what was more interesting was the generals remark on the Colleral, he wasn’t one to be paranoid and the Colleral aren’t usually good tacticians.

The Colleral themselves were the first alien and only alien species discovered by humanity so far, unfortunately, they were very hostile and first contact, between the human exploration vessel ‘T.P.S Distance’ and the Colleral warship translated to: ‘Pride’, ended up in a firefight for unknown reasons, both vessels were destroyed,  war has raged ever since.

Dean snapped out of his thoughts and touched the screen again while saying: ‘’List, crew, mechanic.’’ The screen quickly changed to a list of all mechanics who finished academy and were just waiting to get assigned elsewhere, or maybe not, probably not.

The list was long, the general was right about their being overstocked, but it didn’t take Dean long shorten it to a few worthwhile candidates for an important project like this, he ended up going with a young man who just graduated, Sheridan Steele, an eager and intelligent young man who Dean taught in a few command lessons, the kid wasn’t ready to take command but Dean trusted him with this assignment.

He tapped on Sheridans name and a full evaluation with teacher’s descriptions and his grades were brought up, Dean skipped all of it and instantly started typing a message to his private panel.