It was in 2066, when the the final barrier, space, was conquered by mankind.
Putting aside decades of battle, the nations of the world joined hands to colonize the new frontier.
However, a mere 25 years was enough to wipe away the noble thoughts that gave birth to the „Space Era“.
It is now 29 SE and brutal war rages throughout Earth and the colonies above them, as nations aim to forge a destiny for themselves in this new age.
The true fate of children of man is unknown and a new RUBICON shines in their distance...
Trilateral Alliance
Nova Calendus
Purpose -
Military Academy Station
Population -
1254 Military Personnel
Location -
Asteroid Belt, 121 Hygiea
Date -
13th of April, Friday, 29 SE
Time -
9:48 AM
Lt. Commander Conrad Eagle (MssrNeko)
Hangar
“Welcome to Nova Calendus, Sir!”
The moment you stepped off the transport ship Agamemnon and into the hangar of Nova Calendus, you were greeted by a rather sharply dressed female officer. Her salute towards was crisp and her eyes showed a surprising amount of seriousness, all things considered. Not quite what you expected when you set off towards what you thought was a rather standard, albeit prestigious, military training facility. The people who ended up working at academies were usually the… people who didn't fit into the traditional chain of command. People who had the skills, but not necessarily the personality to make it in traditional forces.
Then again, considering the reasons you were here, one could hardly call Nova Calendus a “standard” military academy.
“Junior Lieutenant Shirley Reigns, at your service. Would you please follow me?”
The two of you made your way through the bustling academy, which to its credit, looked a fair bit more tightly regulated then you expected. Definitely more strict considering what you remembered from your classes in Triton Point. Then again, Triton Point was for training captains, not Mobile Suit pilots and harsh discipline was not as required for higher ranking officers as it was for lower ranking ones, unfortunately. Reaching a rather solid pair of blast doors, with the words “STAFF ONLY” . Walking to a nearby terminal, Jr. Lt. Reigns pulled out her identification card and pulled it through the card reader with a quick swipe. After a brief moment, the panel flashed green, and the large doors opened, revealing a rather large cargo elevator, the young woman beckoned you to follow her. Pressing the button labeled “Basement Level 3”, the lift slowly lurched into a descent.
And then, through the transparent wall of the elevator, you saw the reason you came here.
“The
New York. An experimental battleship constructed by the finest engineers in the Alliance.”
"Something which can hopefully turn the tides to our favour."
The voice of the junior officer sounded almost wishful for some reason as she gazed at the ship.
“A ship made to carry our new...Mobile Suits.” The purple haired woman turned her eyes away from the ship and back to you. “Speaking of which, I will be assigned to the New York as the ships Maintenance Officer. So if you do have any problems on that front, do not hesitate to contact me.”
As the elevator’s doors slid open, a slight smile, almost hesitant, appeared on Shirley’s face.
“Well then. Shall we have a tour of your new ship,
Captain Eagle?”
Riley Guarstein (Mereo) & Freira Lima (Hero)
Simulation Room
BEGINNING STAGE SIMULATION
STAGE SELECT - 4 - DESERT
SCENARIO - ESCORT
The world seemingly melted away, before being replaced with another.
Of course, to the cadets of Nova Calendus, this was a rather familiar sight. After all, the vast majority of the students in this military academy were trained to be pilots. And one of the easiest and best ways to gain the needed experience for combat situations was the Simulation Room. Through the use of simulation pods, it was possible to almost identically recreate the sensations and feelings of a real battle. Almost… as the room currently had a scent of lemony freshness that could only result from a furious cleaning session. No doubt one of the 1st Year newcomers had thrown up again, either from stress or from motion sickness. Judging from some of the rumours that spread around the station, it was not that rare of an occurrence.
An image appeared on the right hand corner of your control interface.
“Right, you two. Standard escort parameters. Guarstein, escort the convoy from A to B. Lima, destroy it before it reaches its destination.”
The voice of your blond haired, glasses wearing supervisor echoed over the the command module. Lt. Commander Cinque Reval. A legendary Mobile Suit pilot, with the skills to match his fearsome reputation, Cinque was a man who definitely knew how to train pilots. The man’s training style wasn't particularly rough, per se… but he somehow knew the perfect points that would drive home his lessons, even if they were a tad hard to stomach from time to time. Though it was peculiar that a man of such talents was simply a trainer at a military academy, even one as prestigious as Nova Calendus. Surely his talents would be better suited to the battlefield, especially now as the Alliance seems to be loosing ground every day.
The mission itself was relatively standard fare. Escort a 2 truck convoy of supplies from one location to another. Of course, considering the Commander, there would undoubtedly be some sort of complications involved. From the looks of it, the route itself was mostly relatively clear and, outside of a single canyon near the and, the painfully obvious ambush spot that everyone would expect. Other then that, it would be relatively hard to surprise the defender considering the flat terrain.
“No equipment limitations, grab whatever gear you think is suitable for the occasion. The loser will be staying here and doing E-rank accuracy simulations for the next 4 hours. If you don’t finish in 10 minutes, there will be two people doing them.”
Two virtual GUARDIAN units materialized in a shower of light, equipped to the specifications of their pilots.
BATTLE START
Zach Ayers (Dranes), Stevie St. Angelo (Morm), Takuto Satoyama (Kurogane)
Class 7
“Yo..you can’t be serious.”
“My uncle serves as a bridge officer on board the Brasilia. I am telling you, both Beijing and the Brasilia are scheduled to leave JOH-N during the next couple of weeks.”
“Isn't this bad? I thought the Alliance brass was taking a defensive strategy, because they didn't want to contest their assets like that.”
“Who knows? Maybe they actually managed to find a way to bypass those damn Rubicons and stop them wrecking everything for once.”
There were many rumours going around in the classroom belonging to the 7th flight of Nova Calendus Academy. Some were about the Solar War. The contents of those rumours wasn’t usually very good. The Alliance was planning a final doomed assault with every man and ship they could muster! No! The EAU was amassing troops at Greenland and would overwhelm the Raindhoff perimeter with their unbeatable Rubicons. Some times it was hard to gauge the effects of the war here on Nova Calendus, even though they were all a part of Alliance military. There was a reason Nova Calendus was placed so far at the perimeter of known space and the isolation served to protect them just as well as any shield or beam placement would. Being on the frontier of inhabited space seemed both a blessing and a curse at times.
“What? Lima tried to punch the Lt. Commander? And Guarstein tried to stop her?”
“I swear, the French girl at Class 4… Lumiere, I think, said that she saw it with her own eyes after Tac class.”
“You sure that she is... trustworthy? Doesn’t she have a massive crush on Guarstein? And I don’t think the Lt. Commander needs Guarstein to protect himself from Lima. He is the Crimson Supernova, remember?”
The second type of rumour was what was present in all every school all around the world. Gossip. In this case, the attention seemed to be on their two missing classmates, Freira Lima and Riley Guarstein. No one of course had no clue what was going on, besides the fact that Lt. Commander Reval had taken the pair somewhere for an unknown reason. Though it was at least quite clear that that particular rumor had no legs. Freira Lima was a rather… peculiar individual, but she wasn’t stupid. And people that tried to punch Cinque Reval couldn't be called anything but just that. But that was hardly the only speculation that was being flung around. Some said that the Commander had simply gotten tired of Lima’s constant flaunting of school rules. Others said that Guarstein “challenged” Lima for the Class President position, as if the academy was some sort of gladiatorial ring where might was everything.
But while most of the classroom seemed content to gossip about the situation, one Mashta Lima sat at her seat with a deeply worried look on her face.
“Onee-san…”
European-Asiatic Union
EAUN “Ark Royal”
Purpose -
EAUN Cruiser
Population -
125 Military Personnel
Location -
Asteroid Field, Lionel’s Gap
Date -
13th of April, Friday, 29 SE
Time -
5:45 AM
Captain Jin Jeong Song (Race), Commander Kang Tae Hwan (Snax), Sylvia Hanaika (KT), Takeshi Wakahisa (Zagrin), Kai Reigns (Sei), Lieutenant Commander William Read (ILurkNoMoar), Melvin Conners (Arch-Magos Winter)
Briefing Room
The briefing room was quiet, with the only sound being the occasional chatter between fellow officers and the clanking of coffee mugs on the table surfaces. The departure of the Ark Royal was quite sudden after all, since it was supposed to be on a leave on Avernicus. However, the ship managed to only be docked for a day, barely enough to get resupplied, before their leave was cancelled and the ship was ordered to head to the Asteroid Belt of all places. Avernicus itself was far out, but the Asteroid Field itself was the frontier. The “boondocks” of space, if you could call it that. Of course that made it a haven for all sorts of individuals, but the EAU hardly had the manpower to enforce any sort of laws in the area while in the middle of a war.
Not to mention that it had been three days since they entered the Asteroid Field and they still hadn’t heard any specifics about their mission outside of a single target coordinate. Well, that was the nature of Special Operations. And from the looks of things, they were about to find out what this was about anyway.
The large quantum communication screen flicked on.
“Good morning, everyone. I sorry about cancelling your leave, but unfortunately something rather urgent was dropped on my lap by the higher-ups. Not the kind of mission I can decline, either. And you are the only ship that far out that I can trust with anything like this.”
The Commodore’s face was minimized to the right hand corner as a large image of a space station came into view. From the looks of it, a rather well defended one at that. Not that it really mattered in this respect. The power that lay hidden in the bowels of the Ark Royal far out-scaled something of this nature when properly used.
“This is Nova Calendus Academy. I don’t know if you have heard of it, but it is one of the more famous military academies of the Alliance, focused on training Mobile Suit pilots. However, as my…” A momentary flash of displeasure appeared on Leon’s face. “... superior officers tell me, the station has lately branched out of teaching and into weapons development and research. And that they have developed several new weapon prototypes that the Union would like to look at.”
“Your mission then, is to capture these weapon prototypes and bring them back here, to Rheingold Station, where our technicians can reverse engineer them. If compromised, destroy them. We have combat superiority at the moment and while learning their secrets would be advantageous, simply denying it to the Alliance is sufficient. If possible, clean out the mainframe as well. We don’t want wayward tech in the hands of random freelancers to come haunting us in the future.”
"Judging from what little information we have, it seems that the prototypes are not fully functional yet, but do take due caution during the mission."
Leon’s face turned toward the captain of the Ark Royal.
“Jin, I leave you with free hands on the mission specifics. I have no doubt that you will be able to produce a satisfactory result. If you need any additional resources, let me know. I should have enough pull with some of the local… individuals, to get you some degree of support, if needed.”
Turning back towards the main crowd of officers, Leon gave a sharp salute towards the people in the room.
“Fight with honour and integrity, everyone. Good luck.”
“Leon Friedman out.”
The screen flicked off.