I was standing in the entrance of an uplink rig, I had told Jessica and her husband everything I could remember about everything and anything I could think of. They asked a lot of questions that did jog some things I had forgotten and caused me to speculate on others, they yelled at me for that and told me if I was speculating I had to announce it. It all left me feeling wrung out and tired. However, they did not let me rest, instead I was dragged out of the bed after I was unhand-cuffed. Then dragged into a meeting room and set upon by a vulture named Luscious Rivers and his endless paperwork and signatures. I did read it all, it was basically my statement of what happened from my point of view, including recorded files for evidence. Somehow they even had my flight records, and the data recordings from the Terance, I assumed Zeo probably sent them or maybe the Commander, and I had to sign all of it. Before I was unceremoniously dumped into this uplink pod with all three of the fools smiling at me while giving me two thumbs up each.

  “Alright, Kenna, we have your statement and can now mount a legal defence. In the meantime, you have to go to work and be your rogue, dangerous self.” Jessica said while trying not to laugh.

  Grumbling to myself about needing sleep, I walked around to the plate of the rig and looked down at my black card.

  “Here we go, okay, now for the motivation speech to get my courage up. Though I walk down the path to hell, I fear no monster, for my weapon and I are death. Oh, that was so corny, what the hell was I thinking?”

  I quickly shoved the card into the plate trying to avoid the embarrassment and saw a flash of light before I spluttered and sat up, sand falling out of my mouth as I quickly realised my mech had been berried. “Son of a-” I started to whine when I caught the huge guy that looked like his muscles had muscles standing over me as he looked down at me with that long wavy hair and cute face.

  “Uh, hi” I said as I grinned.

  “Hi, yourself, do you got a name or are you sticking with the mysterious girl that pops out of the sand?”

  “Uh, yess…”

  “Riight, okay, I'm just going to call you Kimberly since the player name above your head says ‘K1mb31y’ okay?”

  I nodded my head dumbly, still trying to figure out what the hell was going on and where I was. That was when I heard someone behind me scream out in glee.

  “Oh! No way! Are you a fan of the Star Hawks too?” a woman said as she ran around me to look at my face, her eyes practically shining like neon signs. She waited a beat, then pointed at an embroidery on her jacket that showed the emblem of the Star Hawks.

  “I am, see, they are so cool, their record in the boot camp is legendary! But it's illegal to get their emblem as a tattoo, something about copy right and privileges. I think the machine said I need to get the leader of the Star Hawks permission to receive a tattoo, and you could only get that by becoming a member. Ooh, I wish I could meet them!” she gushed as she spun around a bit.

  The big guy suddenly grabbed her and pinned her against his side as he laughed nervously.

  “You will have to excuse my little sister, her manners are non-existent. Uh, my name is Corwin and this ball of enthusiasm is Jasmine Baskily.”

  “Nice to meet you both,” I said as I slowly stood up. “Uh, what makes you think I'm a fan of the Star Hawks?”

  “Because the back of your jacket has a huge Star Hawk emblem embroidered on it, it takes up the entire space.”

  I considered ripping the jacket off to look until I remembered the guy in the hangar said that my mechs would have the emblem tattooed on their arms. I slowly smiled the best I could and gave the overexcited girl two thumbs up.

  “You know it” I said nervously.

  Corwin chuckled as Jasmine gushed excitedly.

  “Well Kimberly, I guess that means you are coming with us, because Jasmine is not going to let you out of her sight until she has talked your ear off about that team. And all players are meant to meet up with Lieutenant Travis Mathews so we can report a successful descent.” he rolled his eyes and motioned in a direction as he began to turn.

  Having no better plan, I nodded my head and started walking along next to Jasmine, who was staring at me intently. Occasionally I would glance at her, which would make her eyes sparkle before I looked away, and I could feel the pout of me not initiating the conversation she so desperately wanted me to start. This caused me to glance at Corwin, he saw the look and let out a laugh.

  “Mother made her promise not to talk to anyone about the Star Hawks unless they brought it up first. Apparently some of the elves have a wasp up their arse about the leader what's her name…” he trailed off as he tried to remember.

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  “Flight Lieutenant Kenna Mackenzie!” Jasmine gushed and helpfully said to Corwin.

  “Right, yea, Kenna, anyway they are all pissy about her, something to do with erratic flying near eight of their very expensive frigates, and they have been verbally attacking anyone that appears to support the Star Hawks.”

  “Yea, unfortunately a lot of people have removed their merchandise not wanting to rock the boat, but I am a huge fan, so I had a new jacket printed and if I spot an elf I can wave my hand over the emblem, and it will change to my favourite Gafitium team emblem.”

  “What is Gafitium?” I asked curiously.

  “Oh, it's a sport on our home planet, played by people that get lightning affinity classes. They ride hover bikes around and throw lightning at each other, and if you get too close you might get a bomb tossed at you too.” Corwin said as he laughed loudly.

  “My Brother is a huge fan of the sport, he tried to join a team out of school, but before he could the arsehole employment agency guy fast tracked him into military service instead.” jasmine whispered to me as she gave her brother a sympathetic look. Before turning back to me and continuing.

  “The goal isn't to blow each other up, though. There are three balls, and one team has to keep it in the air by tossing it between players on their team. If they drop the ball or hold onto it for more than ten seconds, then the other team gets to pick it up. The objective of the sun ball is to get to the other side of the field and place it in the twelve-foot tall stone statue's hand. It's meant to symbolise handing the sun to the sun god and when you do you score six points. The second ball is called the moon, which is held by the team that doesn't have the sun. If the enemy team gets the moon into the statue's mouth before you get the sun in, then they get a point. However, the moon is really heavy, and you can't let go of it, or you lose a point. And the last ball is the asteroid. It's a small ball that you have to hit the sun with while it is being held in the enemies hand, if you can do it, then your team gets twenty points. But only one person on each team gets the asteroid position. And it is really hard to pull off.”

  “That seems kind of dangerous” I said nervously as I eyed each of them.

  “Oh, no, the bikes have force fields to protect the players.” Jasmine said as she smiled.

  “Yea, until you whittle them down and make them pop, then it's open season!” Corwin cackled as he thrust his hand forwards and shot a lightning bolt out at a tree.

  “Haha, yea, right, that makes sense.” I said as I looked between them, wondering if they were okay.

  “Corwin, you got to talk about your thing, can I talk about mine now?” Jasmine asked innocently.

  “No” Corwin shot back with a dead pan voice.

  I was about to open my mouth to talk to Jasmine about my team when we crested a hill. There I spotted a sprawling military campground that was being built out of brick and metal, by thousands of people that seemed to swarm over the place. I turned my attention to Jasmin to ask a question as I noticed two guys following along behind us. Instead of asking, I spun and raised my hand at them as if I could suddenly shoot lightning or something out of my hand.

  “Who are you and why are you following us?” I demanded.

  Corwin started laughing after a few moments of grasping his knees as he tried to breathe, he started waving his hand in front of him.

  “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, haha, they are what's left of my squad, from when I served, they were the squad's recon unit, I am surprised you noticed them, not many do, we decided to form a rogue company for this campaign, but sadly there is only four of us instead of the normal eight, so I'm not sure that we are going to get many benefits from this one.

  They both nodded their head towards me but didn't say anything. And I slowly lowered my hand as I gave them the stink eye for trying to sneak up on me.

  “Wait, what is a rogue company? Is that like a guild funded company?” I asked curiously.

  “No, a rogue company is one that has no guild behind them, we are kinda out here on our own. Funding ourselves with all the credits we have left.” he laughed, but it sounded nervous, and I could have sworn he was watching me out the corner of his eye.

  I heard one of the creepy guys behind me whisper, “in a guild but shunned by the guild making us unattached to any guild.”

  I glanced back at him, as I thought ‘that was kind of the position I was in too, my commander had told me to go rogue, was this what he meant?’ turning back to Corwin I smiled.

  “I have three members I am meant to meet up with here somewhere, and we might have to start our own company too.” I said to him.

  “Ah, that is interesting, we shall be rivals then.” Corwin said as he gave me a lopsided grin, before Jasmine smacked his belly.

  “Be nice, she is a Star Hawk fan, we fans, courageous and proud enough to display our pride, have to stick together!”

  “Alright, alright, you don't need to hit me” he whined as he rubbed his belly.

  Jasmine suddenly gave me a smile before grabbing her brother and pulling him away and over to the other two, where the four of them began a heated whisper and a fair bit of finger wagging. I turned my attention to the ships that were sitting on the landing pads in the base we were walking towards. I spotted a fair amount of spitfires, a few that looked like rinky dink sledges that might fly, and a fair amount of drop-ships.

  “Steal what you need” I whispered to myself as I eyed a spitfire, wondering how fast it could go and how much damage I could do with one. I was about to break away from these four and slip down the slope and into the crowd so I could work my way to that spitfire. But it was all tossed out of my head when a large hand landed on my shoulder. This caused me to turn and look up at Corwin.

  “We have come to a decision, and would like to invite you and your friends to join our rogue company, we will split the benefits and profits fairly between our two rogue companies that will work under the same banner, sound good?”

  “Sounds good, but I should check with my friends first, make sure they are okay with it.”

  He nodded his head and walked over to stand next to Jasmine as I looked at my hud. Opening a radio app on it, I noticed a new heavily encrypted channel was listed as bright Bird, ‘what the hell is this’ I thought as I clicked it.

  [FLT Mackenzie: hello?]

  [FSGT Walker: oh, shit, she is alive, that's great, where are you Ma’am, we are waiting in line to check in as players with some Lieutenant Travis Mathews. FSGT Rivers suggested we form a rogue company afterwards]

  [FLT Mackenzie: still outside the town, I popped out of the sand into the lap of a rogue company, there are four of them, and we walked all the way to the base, should see us on the north-east ridge. Hide, your tattoo’s though one of them is a huge fan, but her brother said the elves are hunting our asses. Because of some frigate business, I’ll explain more later. They asked me if we would be willing to form our two companies up under the same banner and help each other gain more benefits and I said I would check in, so, what do you think?]

  [FSGT Walker: that actually sounds like a good idea, but we need to be careful, rogue companies have been known to team up and then betrayal each other. I'm not saying this one will, but it's always a possibility.]

  [FLT Mackenzie: right, I'll keep that in mind.]

  [FSGT Walker: we will head over to the company building after talking to this Lieutenant and get our rogue company officially establish.]

  I smiled and looked away from my hud as I mentally closed the radio app.

  “They said yes, but If you four are planning on betraying us…” I let it hang in the air as I looked between each of them.

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