Ugh my head. I thought to myself. It felt like a truck hit me, oh... Right, I was hit by a truck. Then why did I feel... Comfy, like I was in a bed. Sitting up, and letting out a groan from the pain I opened my eyes, the first thing I noticed was a window looking into outer space, I froze. How the hell did i get into outer space!

I realized that it must be a hospital TV or something, after all I was hit by a truck! Observing the room I was in I saw that it was like a luxury suite. I didn't know why I was in a room like this, I knew I had health insurance but I didn't expect to get a room like this! Thinking about that i inspected my body, i was wearing a sci-fi looking skin suit. And my body was sore, just sore, I was hit by a truck! Stuff like that doesn't heal overnight!

I was starting to get nervous, just where am I? Getting off my bed I noticed a ding! The door at the right side of the room slid open, a brunette woman with a beautiful face and green eyes wearing a sci-fi military uniform stepped through. She said " hello Grant, how are you, besides getting turned into a pancake by a truck." She said in a joking tone, I never met this woman in my life, yet she felt familiar. "Who the hell are you, and where the hell am I?!” I demanded, she replied with "Why, your on the U.S.S. SPARTAN" "you didn't answer the first question." I wanted to know what the fuck was happening "I can't tell you that Grant, but what I can tell you that your getting a new job." What is this new job? and what is happening!? She seemed to read my mind as she said "You’re  going to become a space fleet commander. So you better act the part." She said with a smile. Wait did she say space fleet commander!

As I stood there frozen from shock, she disappeared, leaving me very confused, exited, and afraid at the same time. I noticed footsteps behind the door and realized it must be one of my new subordinates. I stood up straight while their was a another ding! and an officer stepped through, he saluted and said "Good morning admiral, I  hope that you're okay since the faulty hyper drive incident." I remembered the woman saying that I better act the part so I replied with "Yes, i'm fine for now, how's the ship?" I wanted to now how the ship was since I was going to be working here for some time, "She’s fine, except for a little damage here and there, we appear to be stuck in an unknown solar system and maybe even in another galaxy."

Well that's bad, "Sir, you should get dressed and get up to the bridge so we can start to get this problem under control." I nodded and dismissed him, he saluted and left, leaving me to get dressed. I looked around the room before my eyes landed on a closet in the corner of the room, walking over to it opened automatically and brandished an admirals uniform, except the medals, I understood, as I actually have to earn the medals, and that lady probably removed them.

Putting on the uniform with visible excitement, when I put it on the back of the closet turned into a mirror. I was 25 years old, I had black hair and red eyes, I was a little tall but not by much. Satisfied with my look I walked to the door, the closet closing as I left. I walked into the hallway connecting to my room. I didn't know were to go until, I saw the floor light up as a holographic path pointed the way to the bridge, I was confused for a second until I realized it was the future, of coarse there was going to be stuff like this.

Following the path I made my way to the bridge, when I entered everyone in the room shot up and saluted me, I looked around to see holographic displays and androids and stuff, it was awesome! They kept their pose until I realized that I was the admiral, I said "at ease" and they resumed their duties. I walked over to a chair in the middle of the room, most likely my chair, as I sat down a holographic display popped up. this made me jump a bit but after a quick look around the room nobody seemed to notice, breathing a quiet sigh of relief I inspected the display, it listed the information about the ship which was.

hull integrity: 99%

weapon systems: online

life support: online

hyper drive: damaged

I inspected the ship, it looked to be like something out of call of duty: infinite warfare but a little more advanced. I noticed some tabs on the top of the display which were fleet, personnel, technology, economy, navigation, and empire. I was very curious about empire but I would do that later, I selected fleet. It opened another display, which was a bunch of slots with my current ship in the first slot, most of the other slots were locked except 2, which was my command ship and an empty slot.

The empty slot was probably for another ship... That I didn't have. I decided to leave it there and closed the tab, I moved on to personnel and saw information pop up about my personnel, I have 3,000 soldiers, 500 crew, and 4,000 civilians, 1,000 scientists, and 1,000 androids. I didn't know why there was that many civilians on board, but what do I know. I didn’t bother with technology and economy because they would probably be helpful later, not now. I selected navigation next and saw a solar system with blacked out planets orbiting around it, there was 3 planets in the habitable zone that I might want to check out, I tried to select 1 of the planets and I was met with.

planet: unknown 

atmosphere: unknown 

potential life: likely

do you want to travel to this planet?

I wasn’t surprised to see the option to travel to the planet, it was navigation after all. Feeling like I couldn’t do anything else for now I said yes. The crew around me started to get to work preparing to jump to this planet that probably has life. The display in front of me disappeared and left me staring in awe at the window revealing countless stars and galaxies, it was one thing to look at space through a computer, but it’s entirely different to see it with your own eyes.

Shaking my head after breaking away from my trance, I saw a percentage of showing how much time was left until the ship was ready to jump, when the percentage was 100% it waited for me to confirm, I said yes and watched the stars elongate as we were jumping. I realized that the hyper-drive was still damaged and hoped that there was a planetary jump drive too, it would be horrible to die just when I started just because I forgot to repair the hyper drive.

Thankfully we arrived safely, and I saw the planet, it was about the same size as earth, there were about 5 continents and they all definitely had life, happy about this I opened up the navigation window and saw roughly the same thing except it said unnamed planet instead of unknown, it also wasn’t blacked out anymore, I had the option to send a scout drone to test the atmosphere and see if there was life, which there definitely was. I launched the drone to test the atmosphere and see if there was a good place to land. I watched it as it fell down to the planet and decided that I would check out the empire window, I was smiling from ear to ear as I read what it said

To create an empire, you must have at least 1 colony.

It wasn’t much but it made me very happy, cause I could have my own intergalactic empire! Looking through it more I saw the option to make a new colony on this planet, now I knew what the civilians were doing here. But I didn’t want to set up my first colony on a planet that has a poisonous atmosphere, just because a planet has life doesn’t mean that it’s atmosphere is fine.

I then realized how scared the crew must be since their probably in another galaxy. After looking around the tab some more I found an option to make an announcement to the entire ship, I selected it and announced what was on the top of my head. "Hello everyone, this is your admiral speaking, I do not want to frighten you, but I also do not want to lie to you. We are currently in an unknown part of the galaxy, possibly even in another one. Please remain calm, and resume your work, i'm planning on setting down a couple of colonies for resources and sustenance on this planet Orion. Again, please remain calm, thank you."

The crew was relatively calm, they had their reasons. It wasn't uncommon for colony ships to settle down on planets near them when their lost in space, sometimes they even created their own governments. Which caused multiple conflicts to keep the human race united, in fact this ship was military, but due to it being so far away from major conflicts it was re-purposed for colonization. This helped put the citizens  minds at ease, because the SPARTAN still had some punch.

About the being in another galaxy part... they had mixed feelings about that. It means they were free from their old government, but also meant that they wouldn't get supplies coming in to support their growth. They all new that this was for the best, so they began to prepare to settle down on this planet they would soon call home...

I eagerly waited for the scout drone to finish analyzing the atmosphere, when it was finished I saw that there was life, shocker, and the atmosphere wasn’t poisonous to humans, along with the chance of there being sentient life. This got me even more excited because I couldn’t see any cities or anything, the good part about that is that there’s more room for my colonies, and if there is sentient life here there probably in the Stone Age, which means that it will be very easy to convince them to join me.

Going back to the empire screen I selected the option to make a colony, I saw that it needed at least 2,000 civilians to make a colony that was very likely to survive and be useful in my soon-to-be empire, which means I had enough for 2 colony’s, I decided to put my first colony on a continent that would be very good for a farming colony, the colony was going to be in the grasslands near a jungle, my second colony would go on the continent right below it which was very rocky and mountainous, very good for a mining and production colony, I also wanted to split my troops up and have them go to protect the colonies because you can never be to careful.

After entering were and what I want the colonies to be I pressed colonize. And a timer popped up displaying how long it will take to prepare the colonists, troops, and supplies for the first 2 colonies, which was going to be tomorrow morning, I realized that I still haven’t named the planet, going back to the navigation screen I looked to see If I could name the planet, I found that I could name the planet and add it to the galactic database, I saw that I could get credits from doing this but I didn’t want to risk the chance of aliens showing up to claim the rest of the solar system before I was done with this one, so I decided that once I have claimed and have control over the entire solar system that I will upload it, but I did name the planet Orion.

I thought that it was a good name, but onto other matters, I decided that I might as well look at the technology tab, when I opened it I was met with with a technology tree that is a lot like one of those empire building games, looking through it I saw that I could already start research on one of Multiple tech trees: farming, entertainment, economics, terra-forming, military, space travel, planetary travel, construction, diplomacy, production, and energy. I already have the base technology researched for each tech tree to start me off, right now I could only research one thing at a time but I could see that I could research multiple things in the future as I advance enough.

I selected farming lvl.2 because we need food, I saw that it was going to take a day to finish the research so I checked out the economy tab. It was nothing special, I could sell stuff and buy stuff on the market for credits or materials. But this would probably ruin my chances of claiming the entire solar system so again I decided to wait until I conquered the solar system.

With that done I went back to the tech trees because I noticed before that I can have queued technologies to research, I queued the technologies: reusable energy lvl.2, thrusters lvl.2, mass production lvl.2, news channel, military training lvl.2,ground transportation lvl.2, language translator lvl.2, banking lvl.2, and construction vehicles lvl.2. Now I wasn’t really sure what to do, maybe my bed has a function that will let me sleep until the colonies are done preparing and launched into the planet for them to colonize?

Thinking that question I got up from my chair and walked into the hallway, I followed the blue path back up to my room and entered, laying down on my bed a hologram appeared in front of my face by a few feet and asked for how long I want to sleep, I set it for tomorrow morning. But something happened, I felt a needle enter the back of my neck and inject an unknown fluid into my bloodstream. I felt myself black out from the liquid that was now saturating my body...

Off in the jungles of Orion, a tribe is celebrating their kill, (they look like the elites from halo) they have digitigrade legs and dark green skin, their average height is 6 to 7 feet tall, they’re hands are similar to a humans except much bigger, they have eyes similar to humans, and have a naturally muscular frame. They were celebrating a successful hunt of a novid, a bear like creature that walks on 2 legs, has no fur, and are 3 times bigger than a bear.

The adults wore groin cloths and were equipped with bows and clubs that matched their masters giant-like size, the children wore nothing. They are the Krotar, an alien warrior race currently in the Stone Age, but do not mistake them for unintelligent, for they have around the same IQ as humans, the only reason why they haven’t advanced much is because of 2 things: unlike humans they do not have an affinity for technology meaning that technology is more complicated and confusing to them, and there a young species just a couple thousand years younger than humanity.

The leader is always the strongest and most experienced member of the tribe, it doesn’t matter what gender they are. Now back to the story, this Krotar tribe was one of the good ones, meaning that they didn’t have a fight to the death every time they met another tribe, they would usually greet the other tribe, trade a bit, and then spar to test the other’s mettle.

They were tracking this novid for a couple of days, and it lead them near to the edge of the jungle where the thick jungle trees gave way to open grasslands, the beast put up a fight and injured some of it’s hunters, so they decided to rest here and heal their wounded until they could go back and wander through the jungle again.

The tribe leader, Arken, a female, was at the top of a tree staring at the stars, because they usually stayed within the jungle she rarely got a chance to see the stars through the thick leaves of the jungle, to her they were the most beautiful thing in the world, she always longed to go to the stars and see them up close, but she knew that it’s impossible, besides, she has a tribe to take care of. She was about to jump down to join in the festivities until she noticed a new star, she has star gazed long enough that it wasn’t there before, she gave it a long look before she climbed back down with a feeling in her gut that this was going to change everything.