Michael Owen 21 Years
Michael is the ships technician and the protagonist of Infection series. He is quite a careless person, often neglecting his duties until he has no way to avoid them. This leaves the pelican in a constant state of disrepair. Mike is also a bit of a ladies man, although the ladies often disagree. He has been on the Pelican's crew from the very start and plans to stay in the job for ten more years, to make a good deal of money to retire young on some nice colony.
Jacob Pliskin 20 Years
Jacob is the young captain in command of the Pelican. He bought it together with Michael and started the business together a few years ago. Jacob joined the military when he was 16, but as his unit disbanded he took interest in the unit's cargo transporter, which he later bought and renamed the Pelican. The ship has then become more that a job for Jacob, who knows the ships systems bit by bit and has himsef reprogrammed most of the ships computer.
Ellie Adams 25 Years
Ellie is the medical officer in charge of keeping the Pelicans crew healthy. She was hired to work on the ship after a radioation leak had nearly killed the original two crew members. Ellie, although she looks young, is the oldest of the crewmembers and under constant bombardment of flirting from Michael. This bombardment has not yet been very successful, only awarding Michael with icy retorts and stingy comments about his appearances and behavior.
> STORY:
It is 3118.
After humankind succesfully invented hypersleep and hyperstravel, man began rapidly colonizing their home galaxy. Mankinds first steps into space were lead by massive corporations with nearly endless funding. As the colonies expanded, several feuds were born between these corporations, which now began to hire personal armies and arm spaceships with new ranges of weapon systems. Not long afterwards the colonies were torn apart by wars, which cost millions and millions ofl ives and demolished entire colonies.
As the situation became dangerous enough, that it began to threaten mans survival in space, several of the largest corporations and governments united and formed a coalition, that is today known as the UEF - United Earth Federation. As the parties that formed UEF united their military organisations, they were easily able to push the smaller factions out of the main colonies and into the small border colonies at the outermost reaches of human space.
At some time in the 3080's the UEF had succesfully ridden 98% of used space of any resistance and piracy and a peace was finally declared, after over a century of raging war. In the decade that followed the peace declaration, UEF began to realise that it had massive amounts of funding being drained by military organisations that were now nearly entirely out of use. UEF began to retrain soldiers into police units to safeguard the colonies, while maintaining a certain level of military presence in the border colonies. UEF also began disbanding facilities that were established during the war to support the military machine: military research outposts, resupply centers and barrack worlds were abandoned and in some cases dismantled and disposed of. The massive transportation fleets of the UEF were also mostly disbanded, their mostly overused, damaged or simply outdated ships being sold to the highest bidders, who proceeded to create a thriving business of transportation companies.
One such one ship transportation company is the Pelican: a single ship with three crew members taking the transportation jobs of the highest bidders.
July 14.3118 (Earth time)
LR-05 Research colony (Disbanded a month earlier and now being dismantled and shipped to be disposed of)
"Welcome to LR-05 orbital station" Michael stepped through the airlock and gazed at the gleaming steel corridors greeting him, nodding to the computer which had greeted him as he entered the station. He had been ordered by his Captain to enter the station and keep an eye on the personnel loading cargo onto the Pelican. Michael shrugged as he thought of the things he had heard of this place from his older brother who served in the military nearby. The stories of how soldiers had gone mad and killed... and worse...
As he walked, he thought of his next mission, of how the Pelican would have to travel across half of the galaxy, all the way to the core, just to drop the cargo off at the BH-01 Black Hole disposal facility. The massive metal colossus that was tethered to four planets so that it would not be drawn into the small black hole at the middle of the galaxy. Any ship going by the disposal facility would instantly get sucked into the black hole and there was no return. The facility was used to dispose of any materials that were never to be seen again. Why didn't they just leave it down there and bomb the place to vapor?
The corridor took a sharp turn and as Michael took the turn, his eyes were greeted by another pair of eyes. A pair of very deep, green, beautiful woman's eyes. A sight he had not expected on the station.
"Are you mr. Owen?" The woman asked, as Michael slowly digested her image in his head. She was a sleek woman, clad in a white jumpsuit that had been issued to all the low level workers on the orbital station.
"Yeah... that's me..." Michael said, his eyes still wandering on the beautiful figure of the woman.
"I have been instructed to take you to the viewing deck and to assist you if you need it. This way!" As the woman finished, she turned on her heels and walked down the corridor, with a small wiggle in her walk that just seemed to hypnotize Michael, who has suddenly forgotten all about his job here.
Outside the station, where the Pelican was docked and waiting for its cargo, two men clad in cumbersome spacesuits floated watching the moon below.
"Are the packages ready for transport?" One of the two men asked the other, while glancing at the massive green surface of the below moon, where the massive white domes of the research facility were barely visible.
"They are ready, and the captain has been advised not to take any other cargo that ours."
"Good..."
As they spoke, two large metal blocks were floating from the reaches of the moon's low-gravity atmosphere and towards the station, guided by small rocket engines. They were automatically guided so that they found their places underneath the Pelican and slid neatly into the open cargo slots of the ship. Michael never noticed how one of the spacesuit-clad men entered the empty space between the cargo compartments and exited after a few minutes...
The pelican was ready to start its journey...