1: Is this a worthy sacrifice?

Tuesday 6. June 2547

Eva Kingsley, civilian contractor, colony of New Shanghai

It had been a perfectly normal day for Eva Kingsley so far. She had not deviated from routine by even a little bit. After getting dressed and quickly consuming her breakfast, she had gone to the space elevator via train, was lifted into orbit, and then ferried by a shuttle to ODP-2 of the New Shanghai orbital grid, where she worked as a civilian contractor inspecting its construction, just as she would any other working day of the week.

The normality of her day was suddenly disrupted sometime after her lunch break, with the unfinished ODP shaking beneath her Mag boots as she "stood" on its lower side, facing the lush green world of New Shanghai.

Immediately turning on her radio and selecting her comm channel with the other workers, she asked: "Inspection 2 calling in, what the hell just happened James?"

But before she could receive an answer, the radio spoke, but not with the voice of James, her supervisor, but with an automated message which, while expected after that shaking, nonetheless sent a shiver down her spine: "To all non-military personnel, a state of emergency has been declared on this station, abandon your work spaces and follow the evacuation plan, prioritize boarding a shuttle as soon as possible, I repeat…"

She immediately turned around to head to the nearest hatch to a pressurized section, but after having taken less than a dozen steps, she stopped to stare at something indescribably frightening, not in the manner a horror movie would be frightening no, but scary in the way only something which will have profound personal consequences, no matter what would happen next. A white point of light was streaking away from ODP-1 at a blistering pace, tens of kilometers away, yet still visible due to its high luminosity.

If the ODP was firing then that meant they were under attack, and with practically no pirates in space, the most likely candidate were some Innies that hadn't had the common decency to die to some spec-ops raid during the height of their insurrection back in 36´.

While the insurrection was at an absolute all time low, there were still some small cells in the outermost regions of inhabited space, and if they decided to attack, it is likely they that they think they can take on the defenses and come out victorious. They might lose a couple of their ships to the ODP grid sure, but it is likely they would be able to simply overwhelm them with numbers, and the two ships assigned to the colony, a destroyer and a frigate, would not be able to provide much support while rising through the atmosphere from their resting places in the Fengxian shipyards on the surface.

Once she got out of her initial surprise and stopped staring at the general region of space where the only other ODP in the grid was, she immediately scrambled to get to the hatch and the armor protection it would provide as soon as possible.

As she was opening the hatch she was staggered once again as the ODP, while not entirely finished but with all basic systems functional , demonstrated its capability of fulfilling its role, even in its unfinished state by firing its main MAC cannon once again, and shaking much the same way as the first time.

As she got into the hatch she wondered where the return fire was. While it was possible the innies were using old drives with much worse accuracy, they would still be perfectly capable of firing back, if with lessened accuracy, though the lack of thrusters on the ODP firing, it seemed they had yet to take a single shot which would necessitate evasion.

Closing the hatch behind her, she immediately started heading down the corridor, following the illuminated lines, at least those that had been hooked up to the electrical grid. The station shuddered once again, though this time it was not one indicative of firing, but instead of the thrusters finally activating to evade a shot from the enemy.

The ODP fired the third time as she was finally entering the final stretch of her journey to the shuttle to be used in the evacuation of her sector of the ODP. As she turned the corner immediately shocked to see that there were marines around the hatch, standing guard in a fashion which indicated the expectation of a boarding action, which was quite strange if the enemy was insurrectionists as she had originally assumed. Boarding actions would be much more probable with a pirate group, but pirate attacks on colonies were incredibly rare. Having no time to dwell on it she quickly ran past them and took a seat on the shuttle among 8 other civilian contractors, such as heavy machinery operators rated for vacuum, and her supervisor James.

Before she could even begin asking him if he knew who was attacking them, she felt the shuttle disconnect. With the shuttle disconnected and presumably beginning its descent directly onto the surface, she felt a sudden wave of relief flood through her system. While it was still possible they would be fired upon, as long as they didn't head right towards the enemy the likelihood of them being shot down would be abysmal. And, in only a couple minutes´ time, they would be taking shelter in one of four civilian bunkers in the planetary capitol, which also happened to be the only major settlement on the planet.

Turning to her supervisor she said: "James, do you know who It is that's attacking us? Neither insurgents nor pirates really have the motive to attack us, don't you think?"

"I'm afraid I'm as clueless as you on the matter, my job may have been to sit on the radio all day but even the navy head honchos don't seem to know who it is, the slipspace radar signature of the ships matches nothing they have in the database, and the gravimetric sensors are apparently malfunctioning. They gave us a bunch of different readings which would be impossible without a major spacetime anomaly detectable with other systems, and despite the means of how a malfunction could be consistent between two independent systems with differing software being lost on me, it is still most likely it has something to do with the software side of things, and not that the ships are spontaneously changing their mass."

Intrigued, but also quite glad to be on her way to safety, Eva spent the rest of the trip to the surface in silence, quickly entering the bunker once they landed on the surface.