• Encounter
    Chapter 1: Coldest night

    The planet Crystal is nothing but harsh icy tundra, with planet wide ice storms that last over nine months. No one lives on Crystal with the exception of a small research colony on the planets icy surfaces, the colony need enough supplies to last through the nine month ice and snow storm with only mere weeks of usable whether to land supply transports. Today a transport ship is coming to bring the last of those supplies to the colony, but the weather has gone from bad to worse over the last two days.
    The ship is an unusual designs three over sized thrusters, an angular and bulky mid section, a narrow bow with a glassed in cockpit, but its most unusual feature is its large cargo bay located above its primary hull. This is the Star Dragon and it piloted, reserve Allied Federation Navy Ranger pilot Phoenix Coldflame. Phoenix is delivering the last shipment of supplies to the base on the planets surfaces, but this ‘milk run’ of a job is going to be anything but easy.
    “Transport Star Dragon haling Crystal base, over.”
    “This is Crystal orbital command, glad to see you Star Dragon we weren’t sure if you were going to make it in time.”
    “Copy that, ETA is ninety minutes to atmospheric entry.”
    “Roger, be advised the annual snow storm is coming early this year. Best if you unload your cargo and get the hell out of here before it hits.”
    “No need to tell me twice, I'm already coming in at 115% power.”
    “Copy that, Crystal orbital command out.”
    Phoenix leaned back in his pilots chair looking at the planet he was approaching, from here it didn’t look so bad, to him it looked like a giant cotton ball floating in space. However like most planets in the wild region looks were very deceiving, the planet Leko was one such planet. It looked like an inviting blue and green sphere in space, but it housed some of the most deadly disease in the galaxy.
    Phoenix shuddered as he remember when he was there on assignment once, flying escort for troop transports landing on the planet. He pushed the thoughts from his mind and focused on the icy globe in front of him, suddenly the communication crackled and a voice came over the channel.
    "Crystal orbital command to Star Dragon, abort your approach, repeat abort! The storm has picked up speed and will hit the base in ninety minutes; you'll never get off the planet in time."
    "Leave that up to me." Phoenix engaged the Star Dragons over drive and few at Crystal with all the speed his ship could muster.
    "What the ******** hell do you think you're doing you crazy b*****d?" Yelled the anthro from the control room.
    "What was assigned to do, get you these supplies."
    "You are really a crazy son of a-"
    "You better just shut the ******** up and light up your landing pad!"
    There was silence on the other end, and then a landing beacon started transmitting giving the coordinates of the colony and the landing pad. Phoenix navigated the Star Dragon at a suicidal speed continuing to rocket towards Crystal, normally Phoenix would have just try and wait for a soft spot in the storm to show its self in order to land however the importance of his cargo would determine life or death of the residents of the Crystal base.
    ~~~

    Star base 193, three day earlier.
    Phoenix was standing in the cargo bay of star base 193 as cargo drones loaded the Star Dragon with large metal supply crates, he was standing with a gray hound who was briefing Phoenix on his mission.
    "Phoenix these supplies need to get to the planet Crystal, there is a small colony there and they are in desperate need of these supplies. Also it time sensitive as to when you get there."
    Phoenix looked over the list of supplies being loaded into the Star Dragon; it looked to be average supply stock. Blank data crystals, computer replacement parts, foodstuff, and disposable heading coils, this last item was a bit odd because larger regenerating coils were cheaper and more reliable.
    "What's the need with these supplies? I mean I can see if the base was low on food stock it would determent who lives and who dies on the base. But why 'time sensitive'?"
    "Crystal is an ice planet, and nine local solar months out of the year its covered in a damn global ice storm, no ships can take off from there, sure they could land during the storm but that would be a crash landing and you would never get off until the storm lifted."
    "In that case I should get going, just one question before I go. What’s with the disposable heat coils?"
    "Melting snow into water, the snow is so cold during the storm that regeneration coils burn out in a few weeks, so we found that its easers to send them a bunch of disposable ones that can be easily swapped out."
    At that point it all clicked into place, without those coils, the colony would not have any water that would cause too many problems for the residents of the colony, even the death of some or all of them. Phoenix was not going to let those people down now that they were counting on him.
    Phoenix headed out as soon as his ship was loaded he sped away from the star base and set cores for the planet Crystal.
    ~~~

    Phoenix came back to the present as the Star Dragon was now with in the red zone of the planets orbit; this was the point of no return. Phoenix polarized the glass inclosing the cockpit to reduce the glare of reentry. The Star Dragon continued to accelerate at a wild rate, until it broke through the atmosphere with a defining sonic boom, and was flying through the snowy skis of Crystal.
    The landing beacon of the colony was still transmitting and Phoenix made a bee line for the landing pad, even thou he had recklessly flown into this place, he didn’t want to stay any longer then needed. Then through the pea soup thick snow storm Phoenix could see the small colony, but only as a gray outline of a dome with a razed landing pad next to it.
    Phoenix fired up the landing thrusters of the Star Dragon and hovered over the pad a few moments, aligning the docking ring and cargo hatch on the Star Dragon with the ones on the base. Once he heard the metal on metal thud of the docking ports coming together, he lowered the Star Dragons landing gear and powered down the engines.
    The base crew had wasted no time in unloading there cargo from the Star Dragon, as soon as it had entered the atmosphere the cargo crews got there own cargo drones into position and were ready as soon as the Star Dragon docked, they had over half of the cargo unloaded when Phoenix walked into the main cargo deck, everyone except the drones on the deck stopped to look at the either brave or crazy pilot who flew the cargo down.
    Phoenix was a hedgehog with orange fur, his top quill was the same color but the rest were yellow, but his most distinctive feature was his orange wings. He wore a pair of blue tinted sun glassed on his head, a jet-black leather jacket over an olive green shirt, navy blue jeans and mud brown boots. But two things stood out in an almost intimidating way, was his dark purple eyes, and the pair of golden wings on the left side of his jacket. In the center of the wings was an inverted triangle with lines from each corner meeting in the center.
    This was the insignia of the Rangers, the most elite fighting force of the Allied Federation of Species (AFS). Everyone in the room immediately recognized it and realized that flying into a snowstorm was nothing difficult for a Ranger. After a moment of pause everyone got back to work, moving even faster so that Phoenix could take off before the storm got to the point that he was stuck here.
    After every one returned to work a gray fox tripped and fell carrying a supply box, Phoenix quickly ran over to help.
    "Here let me help you." He said as he picked up the box.
    "Thank you Sir." The fox said with obvious nervousness in his voice.
    “Hey relax man, what’s got you're tail in a knot?”
    “It's just that I've never been on an assignment for so long, I mean I'm here fore almost a year now.”
    Phoenix pondered the idea of being all but cut off from the rest of the galaxy, and to be honest he found the idea somewhat unsettling. “So how did you end up getting this assignment then?”
    “Volunteered, this out post is volunteer only.”
    Phoenix thought it somewhat ironic that this fox was having second thoughts about a nine-month assignment that he needed to volunteer for. Phoenix set down the supply box on a cargo pad and was approached by the colony’s supply chief a large brown bear.
    “That was some choice flying into this frozen hell, but we're all the more grateful for it.”
    “It was nothing, I know the limits of my ship and I know a few tricks.”
    The Bear laughed and gave Phoenix a rough shake on the shoulder.
    "Now while I'm here is there anything you need me to take back?" asked Phoenix.
    "There is one thing, that is if you want to.”
    “Sure it’s no problem.”
    “One of our TAT's needed to be taken back for repairs."
    "What's a 'TAT'?"
    "Tactical Arctic Transport, we have four here but one broke two months ago and we couldn’t get anyone else to take it back for us."
    "Sure, load it up and I'll get it fixed up and bring it back next year."
    “That would be great, now you better get the hell out before you're stuck.”
    “I hear that.”
    Phoenix gave the bear a small punch on his shoulder and hurried back to the Star Dragon's hatch just as the last of the supplies were offloaded.
    Phoenix sat in the cockpit of the Star Dragon going over his preflight check list, the storm had gotten bad but not to the point that Phoenix didn't think he could get off world, he had flown through worse stuff then this before. With a wine of power the lift jets and mane thrusters came to life spiting fire and smoke in the cold air. The Star Dragon hovered in mid air for a few moments, then retracted it's landing gear pointed it's nose skyward and rocketed off in to the storm above.
    The Star Dragon easily reach 12,000 feet, but that was when things started to look bad, the scanners were picking up a lot of objects up ahead, Phoenix increased power to shields and braced for whatever was coming right at him, then it hit. A chunk of ice the size of a grapefruit hit the shields at 300+ MPH.
    "Holy s**t!" suddenly the Star Dragon was being bombarded by hundreds of ice chucks being hurled at 300-500 MPH, the shields were holding but the shier force of the ices impacting agenist the shields were slowly pushing the Star Dragon down.
    "Come on! You've been through worse than this before." Phoenix said to the Star Dragon; even though it couldn't hear him or talk back it still helped him to talk to his ship when they were in tight spots. But finely the force of the falling ice was too much for the Star Dragon to take, with a muffled explosion the anti-gravity generators holding the Star Dragon in the air blew out and the Star Dragon plummeted back to the surfaces of Crystal.
    "s**t!" Phoenix screamed as the 2,000-ton ship plummeted out of control back to Crystal, Phoenix was able to regain some control but without any anti-gravity system to lift the Star Dragon there was no going back up until they were fixed.
    Piloting the Star Dragon as best he could in to a controlled crash towards the surface, Phoenix began broadcasting a distress call over open comm’s.
    "This is the Star Dragon, I'm going down! Anti-gravity is out, all other systems functioning."
    The Star Dragon plummeted farther and farther as the ground got closer and closer, at 1,000ft Phoenix pulled the Star Dragons nose up at a sharp angle using the forward lift thrusters. Still falling, but slowed by the lift thrusters, the Star Dragon crashed on the surface of Crystal with a bone shattering crash, but in tacked. However the force of impact knocked Phoenix out.

    Phoenix stirred, the first thing he was aware of was a tremendous pounding in his head, the second thing was that his com was blaring something, but he couldn't understand what it was saying yet. After a few minuets he was able to cut through the fog in his mind and open his eyes, trying to look around he realized that everything was dark, Phoenix reach over to the control panel on the arm of his seat and hit the emergency light, to his surprise they didn't respond. Puzzled he pushed the button to reset the main lights, after a moment they slowly came back on.
    This was good; it meant the main power was still working, unfortunately for his head so were communications. Someone was still yelling over the comm’s and Phoenix still couldn't tell what he was saying. He reached over and picked up the hand unit and replied.
    "This is Star Dragon, I'm alive will you please stop ******** yelling damn it!”
    "This is Crystal control, we thought we had lost you. We have your location based on the comm. sat uplink, your about 300 kilometers south east of base."
    "So I can't get a cab in this neighborhood."
    "Um..."
    "Never mind, it’s a home world joke."
    There was a pause on the other end of the comm., "The storms going to get worse and we can't get you out, I'm sure you-"
    "Yes I understand,” Phoenix cut in. “And I'll be fine, I have replicator systems on board and supplies, my fusion reactor is at 81% and life-support is stable."
    "Well, guess we'll see you in nine months."
    "Yah, ow... I might just sleep through it if my head doesn’t stop pounding."

    The storm lived up to every thing Phoenix had hear about it, it continued for six weeks to dump ice ranging in size from water melons to escape pods. After the six weeks of ice storms snowstorms rolled in, solid curtains of thick blinding gray snow. There was little chance of escape, but in order to keep busy Phoenix fixed the anti-gravity generators, cleaned up stored equipment that had come loose in the crash, and even the TAT from the colony. But no matter how much he tried to keep him self busy Phoenix was feeling lonely, that’s why he was all the more glad when the colony started making regular check ins with the Star Dragon. One comm. operator he had become friends with was a black squirrel named Sam.
    After two months a ship appeared in low orbit above Crystal, this ship looked somewhat like a flattened egg made of silver. The ship orbited Crystal for three day until it came over the center of the storm, on the fourth day a small pod shot out from the under side of the ship hurling towards the stormy surface of Crystal, and all this was picked up by Crystal orbital command.
    Phoenix was in the engine room working on one of the backup generators that had burned out a few days ago, with a soft buzz the com system on Phoenix's gantlet alerted him about an incoming transmition, it was Crystal base, but then again who else could it be?
    "Hay Sam what's going on?"
    "Phoenix we have been tracking something you might find very interesting, get to a vid-screen we have a data feed we're up linking to you.”
    Phoenix headed to the cockpit and sat at the communications station, he was receiving the data feed. It showed a ship in low orbit over Crystal flat, silvery, and roughly egg shaped.
    "Ok I give up, what is this?" said Phoenix with puzzlement in his voice.
    "We don't have a ******** clue, it showed up four day ago and just made a few lazy orbits, then ten minutes ago this."
    The screen showed the ship shoot a small silver pod-like object at the planet.
    "Ok, weird but why are you telling me now instead of four day ago?"
    "Because that pod is about to land near you, we can't be sure how close but some where within fifteen kilometers."
    "So pod of unknown origin, landing within TAT range. How long until it lands?"
    "About thirty minutes."
    "Damn, express delivery. I'll suite up and head out ASAP"

    Phoenix was in the lowest level of the Star dragon, rummaging through a storage locker for thermal combat gear he had stored there from a Ranger supply depo. After suiting up he climbed into the TAT he had repaired in the main cargo bay, Phoenix opening the side cargo hatch and ice and snow poured into the cargo bay, but it hardly mattered he needed to get out and the cargo bay wasn't directly to the rest of the ship so the could wouldn't matter. The TAT plowed through the snow and ice like butter; I wish we had these things during the war, thought Phoenix as he drove the vehicle through the snow and out into the snow storm.
    "So where is this, whatever it is Sam?"
    "Ten minuets until impact, sending you probable landing coordinates."
    A set of numeric coordinates appeared on the HUD as well as a nav point. Phoenix estimated that he would arrive about five minuets after the object hit; Phoenix just relaxed set the TAT to auto pilot and waited to arrive. Fifteen minuets passed quickly and the TAT came to a stop at the edge of the objects landing site.
    "Hay Sam I'm at the crash site, do you want a data up link?"
    "If it will hold in this whether, yah sure"
    Phoenix activated his HUD recorder on the TAT and his visors, Phoenix got out and surveyed the surround landscape, or rather what he could see of it. With visibility nearly zero Phoenix switched to inferred and looked around again, spotting a rapidly cooling hot spot in the snow, his objective. Phoenix walked over and found it to be an escape pod of some kind, but the hatch was open and whoever was in the pod was now out in this weather.
    A knot formed in Phoenix's stomach, he was dressed in armor rated for -90* C tempters, but it was close to -110* C out now, and he was defiantly felling the cold whoever was out here would not last long unless they had better gear then him, and even if they did they would never make it to either the base or the closer Star Dragon, he needed to find whoever was out here and fast.
    "Sam I need you to remote activate and run the TAT's thermal imager and search for any hot spots with in rage."
    "Why? What’s in the pod?"
    "It was some kind of escape pod, and its open. There no way in hell that a pod made surfaces open, someone is out here."
    "Imager is online running scanning now. I got something, not much, dropping Nav marker."
    A blue marker apered on Phoenix’s HUD just ahead of him. "Got it Sam"
    Phoenix moved as fast as he could towards the nave point in the snow, by now the winds were picking up again and Phoenix was still blind in the storm.
    "Sam, could you put a second Nav marker on the TAT? I can't see anything out here."
    "Sure Phoenix, I'll mark it green so you can tell them apart."
    A green nave marker appeared on the left of his HUD showing him where the TAT was, Phoenix was now with in a ten feet radius of the nav point on the heat source, turning on his HUD's thermal scanner he saw what looked like a body only a few feet in front of him. Phoenix moved forward until he could see a shady outline through the storm, finally he got close enough to see that it was a body. Phoenix could tell by the outline in the snow that the body was a female, and the large tail attached to it told Phoenix that it was probably a fox, but she was wearing almost nothing a sweat shirt, pants, and shoes but nothing for this environment.
    Phoenix quickly picked up the fox in his arms and ran as fast as he could back to the TAT, he hoped that he could get whoever this was back to the TAT before she froze to death if she wasn’t already. The storm thinned out just enough for Phoenix to see the TAT and made a final mad dash for it, he jumped inside and hit the close button on the hatch, carefully laying the fox on a bench and covering her with a large thermal blanket he cranked the TAT's heater to max, he also used his fire element to warm the blanket before climbing back into the cockpit and turning the TAT around and driving as fast as possible back to the Star Dragon.
    It only took Phoenix about ten minuets to get back to the Star Dragon, but for his passenger the short trip might have felt like hours. Driving the TAT back into the snowy cargo bay of the Star Dragon Phoenix closed the cargo bay behind him, gently but quickly he picked up the limp fox Phoenix quickly took her into the Star Dragon, he brought her to a small medical bay and laid her on the razed bed in the center of the small room. Phoenix placed a bracelet like device on her arm, the device was a micro surgery unit, it was designed for battle field treat meant of combat wounds, the unit inserted two small needles and injected the fox with a cocktail of stimulants and other stabilizing drugs. After making sure the unit was working properly he turned his attention to the bio readings at the head of the bed, the readings were weak but despite that she was alive for now.
    Phoenix sighed in relief; she was alive but hardly out of the woods. Phoenix walked over to a chair on one side of the medical bay; he sat down and looked at the fox on bio bed. Phoenix didn't know who she was or where she was from, all he knew was that for some reason he felt very protective or her, or maybe that was just because he had rescued her and didn't want her to die. Never the less it was out of Phoenix's hands now; if she made it through the night she would probably live. Adjusting him self as conferrable as possible Phoenix fell asleep watching over, who ever she was.