"Incoming missile"
"Damnit... not another one" I thought, while my sweating hands desperately slammed the countermeasure button as fast as possible. One look at my damage report display made me wish I had not done that: shields and several internal systems were offline. Only 19% of my aft armor remained, several other internal systems had taken either light or severe damage. This crate was in no condition to fight and I still had two of those guys on my six...
Banking hard to my left in an effort to evade the most of yet another incoming weapon salvo I wondered how the heck I had gotten myself into this mess...

It all started two days ago, on my birthday. A day I will never forget, for it was that day my grandpa gave me the best present I had ever received in my life...

First let me explain a bit about my family... My mom and dad are traders, and they are affiliated with the Zoners. Usually their job is pretty boring, but atleast you get to see a lot of the Sirius system. Most of the time we live on our transport ship, travelling from station to station.
Our grandpa sometimes travels with us, altough he likes to stay onboard the stations to do a bit of research and plunder the local historic archives. You could say my grandpa is some kind of a sientist, altough he is not an official one appointed by the goverment. He knows a lot, and I really mean a LOT. His main area of expertise is the history of Mankind and our people in Sirius, he has even managed to track down our personal history back to that legendaric planet that's the origin of all mankind: Earth.
We seem to be the descendants of some obscure group of people called the Dutch, or in their own language, de Nederlanders, living in an even more obscure place called the Netherlands. When the end of the Big War in mankind's home system came to a close most of what remained of that people were divided over the Bretonian and Rheinland sleeper ships and travelled to Sirius. Being with way too little to terraform their own planet or to build their own station, and too dispersed to start their own faction most of them joined groups like the Zoners or other independent groups and rebuilded their lives with that what their ancestors had done for centuries: trading.
Altough my grandpa could talk hours after hours about their history I personally couldn't care less about this insignificant and obscure group of people or their heritage. They are history by now. Even if there was something something special dividing these people from others in Sirius, then surely by now that should be long gone right? What is the point of being stuck in an ancient and long forgotten past?

That night, my grandpa gave me my best present ever: my very first ship! "Grandson, you're are a grown up men by now, and it is time I give you something I have been working on for months." he said. "I have seen you watching the ships coming in and out of the hangars for hours and I know how yealous you are of those people that may fly escort duties for your fathers transport... Now follow me, my boy." I will never forget that feeling when I saw that Dagger standing there in the hangar. An aquaintance of my dad had salvaged it from a recent battle between lane hackers and the police in an asteroid field somewhere and my grandpa had secretly worked to get it operational again for months. I was in the seventh heaven! It was a good thing that ship was still in the docking anchors, otherwise I would have flown it out of the station immediately, closed docking bay doors or not. The rest of the day I did nothing but familiarize myself with flying a dagger while my dad gave me instructions. I had ocasionally flown other ships before but none of those were my own. Oh boy what does that differ from flying your very own very first ship!
The next day my dad left the station with several containers full of water wich he had to bring to a Zoners base only 2 system jumps away. This was the first time I flew with the transport, in my very own dagger, instead of inside the transport itself.
We were in an asteroid field deep within neutral territory when it happened... They came out of nowhere. First we got 1 unidentified contact closing in from behind, soon followed by two on our left and two more on our right. Corsair raiders, we stood no chance... Almost before we knew what was happening they had shot down 2 of the escort ships. They hunted down the third while the fourth and last one managed to engage his cruise engines and bugged out. Last thing I heard my dad say when he opened a comms channel was to run, to run as fast as I could... "Go son, don't you stand there wasting time damnit! You are no match for them! Don't be a fool and get out of... Kgrrzbzt..." was all I heard before they destroyed the transport's comms antenna.
Awakened from the shock by my dad's words I engaged my engines while the corsairs were still busy. I sped away as fast as my second-hand ship could take me. Just when I thought I would make it the first shots impacted on my shield, almost making me crash into an asteroid out of shock. Looking on my radar I saw that two of the corsair ships had broken off and went into a pursuit while the other three focused their full attention to the transport now that the last escort still remaining had been finished off, and that was how I got myself into this mess...

Altough the communications system had taken moderate damage I desperately tried to send out a distress signal, not knowing what else to do. More and more screens began to flicker or just turned black entirely while the computer core received concussion damage. Then I saw something even more frightening: an eagle turned up right in front of me, so suddenly that my hearth almost stopped beating. I saw it closing in with afterburners hot, and then it opened fire...

I heard a boom, a very loud boom and I thought I was gone for good... I was dead now, there was no doubt about it...

It was only when I saw burning pieces of one of the Corsair's ship zipping past my window that I realised it was not me the eagle was shooting at. I managed to get a grip on myself again and turned my ship, or rather wreck, around to see what was happening, now that my radar screen was failing. What I saw was the best show of piloting skills I had ever witnessed... The smooth movements of the eagle, so elegant that it seemed it was dancing, almost made me forget there was actually a fight on life and death going on...

Then I saw the marking on the eagle, and my eyes almost popped out of my head... On the main hull, just below the cockpit was painted a big blue six-sided figure with inside the image of a wolf...

Could it be... could it really be?? I have heard stories about this strange mysterious group from my grandpa once when I was young. I always loved to hear them. Stories about a a ship just as mysterious as it was legendary, called the ANS Europa with an equally legendary fighter squadron onboard, called the 101'st Wolfpack. According to centuries old legends they were fighting on the Alliance's side during the Big War in the solar system, and were supposed to be by far the most skilled squadron in the entire war, listing more victories then any other squadron, on either side of the Big War. Fairly recently a Command Carrier class ship has been spotted in several systems within Sirius, bearing the name ANS Europa. It is reported to look old, almost ancient, but still threatening and definately battle-ready. The last few years piracy allover the colonies has drasticly decreased, according to rumors because of intervention by a group calling themselves 101'st Wolfpack. Many people speculate if this is the legendary group and currently there are three main theories circulating about what is going on. One being that they jumped together with the sleeper ships, and wandered off to explore on their own soon after arrival. Another one is that their members stayed together and that their descendants later re-assembled another ANS Europa in secret. The third and last one, and the on my grandpa believes to be true is that they stayed in the Sol system, fighting a desperate war together with the remnants of the Alliance against the superior Coalition forces. Later, when there finally was no more safe place left for them in Sol and the situation became intolerable, they jumped to Sirius too, also using cryo pods to stay alive. Something, altought it is not known what must have gone wrong along the way, delaying the trip to Sirius by atleast a few centuries. They should have arrived only recently in that case, after wich the crew was finally awakened from their cryo-stasis sleep. I always found that story the most exiting one, because that would mean the original, legendary people from the ancient tales and myths should still be out there somewhere, moving through Sirius...

And now, now I was actually watching one of them fighting Corsairs, in an effort to safe ME! I didn't know if I was supposed to feel honored, shocked or frightened by this... It was over in a matter of seconds, altought it seemed like an eternity. The Corsairs stood no chance against the superior skills of this pilot, who flew like I had never seen anybody fly. "Hehehe, the galaxy is a dangerous place for young boys like you... what is your name kid?" "I-I am N-Nico sir, Nico Terra." I said, still recovering from all of the experiences of the last few minutes. The pilot chuckled and said "Greetings Nico, I am called Phoenix. That crate of yours is clearly in no contition to fly on it's own, let me tow you back to a safe haven kid. Where did you said you came from again?"
I told him what station we left from, where my grandpa was still doing his never ending study. Along the way I told him what happened to me. "Hmmm... strange...." I heard him mumbling, but when I asked him what he was thinking about he said it was nothing important. As soon as he had dropped me off at the station he left in a hurry, telling me he had to "check out on some stuff." I looked at his ship flying away while wondering what was up before docking and made myself a promise. "One day..." I thought, "One day I am gonna fly as good as you do, and then, I will pay back my debt to you, Phoenix... you saved my life and I will never forget that... One day I will get my chance to pay you back for that, and I will mate, I swear..."

~~~TO BE CONTINUED~~~

by Aesthir