Post by Neytiri on Jun 22, 2010 21:47:17 GMT -5
It was 2136 when she enlisted into the U.S. Air Force from Australia straight out of high school, a nation in the United Allied Front formed by Congress nearly forty years earlier. She worked the flight line for her first four-year stint, put herself through college using her Alliance G.I. Bill and joined Officer Candidate School in Quantico the day she finished college in Brisbane. While she was attending and in the U.S., the Chinese, in their expansion into the Philippines, nuked Brisbane and Darwin in an attempt to disrupt the alliances in the area.
Her entire family was killed. Her father, a prominent doctor at Brisbane General and her physicist mother and two younger siblings were killed. This broke her heart and, even though ‘revenge’ was not a motive the military liked, her class CO allowed her to sign her papers over and become a U.S. Marine pilot flying a new class of aircraft called a tilt rotor.
Katja Conners is her name and despite the Russian flavor, she is Australian through and through, complete with accent. She was twenty-one at this point and driven by her sadness, loss and anger towards the Chinese, she excelled in her courses and graduated top of her class. She was assigned her own Samson the day she got her OCS degree and shipped to Hawaii. There she was assigned to the newest class of aircraft carrier, with the deck over twelve acres, three times larger than the Kennedy Class of the early 2000’s.
It was a hard life now, moving from port to port, helping in humanitarian missions in the Philippines and Australia. She had also flown some missions into southern China and she loved every minute of that. But her CO’s had taken notice that she was becoming cold. Heartless!
They weren’t the only ones that had taken notice of her exemplary career. The RDA had approached her twice before with what they thought was an offer she couldn’t refuse; she did. But now her CO's were encouraging her to accept the offer because it was good money and a new life to live: security and flight on Pandora.
She reluctantly agreed and LAT moved into the RDA, still in the Corps, but assigned to the civilian operation that she knew very little about. All she really knew was that they had developed a form of space travel making it possible to reach the next solar system closest to Earth. Alpha Centauri.
Katja was surprised to discover that she was assigned to the AVTR sector of the operations before being sent to Pandora on the next flight out early next year. Blood and DNA samples were taken and she was given massive manuals to read about the program and everything involved. Medical training, link chamber tests. Virtual avatars were what she linked into for training; she would not get her real avatar body until she arrived on Pandora. Her avatar was now growing in an artificial womb. Months passed and finally the avatar was ‘born’ and placed into a stasis tank for the flight to Pandora, she was walked through on how to prep for cryo-sleep. Her supplies and Samson were loaded.
Five years, ten months and two days later she woke up in a zero G vessel and there were medics floating from cryo-pod to cryo-pod waking people up, checking their status. She was told to follow the rails to the aft of the ship where there was a large room so everyone could eat before the flight down to the surface within two hours.
While everyone was eating they were briefed on the re-breather units that they would need once in the atmosphere and after her Samson and several other supplies were loaded into the two Valkyries, they boarded and harnessed into the fold away bench seats.
It was now 2148. She was the tenth phase of avatar drivers. After landing and going into the chow hall, now briefing room, everyone that came on this first landing were told about the hostilities of Pandora. She couldn’t help thinking that this information would have been useful to know before leaving Earth in the first place. Once the briefing was over the avatar drivers were separated from the rest of the groups which either miners, repair techs or RDA soldiers.
But her mission here was completely different: she would actually be flying her Samson as an avatar should that be required for science missions and later, expansion into the brush once Site-A was mined out and they moved on to the big score.
She met Dr. Max Patel before her avatar was out of the tank. She was in awe at how ‘blue Katja’ as she called it, had grown so big. Almost ten feet tall, it was very tall for a female avatar and slender, the ears twitched from time to time, or a hand would clinch. Max explained that she would be put through a series of tests with her avatar in the morning after it was decanted. Grace was not here at this point; it was now around noon and she was at the school teaching the Na’vi English.
The following morning she went through her tests in her avatar with flying colors, surprising the hell out of Katja because she didn’t really like doing the virtual ones back on Earth. Although she and Grace had not yet met, the doctor did observe as Katja and another driver went through the numbers in the room next to the Drive Pod chamber.
Then outside they went and the process was repeated for four more drivers. She and the other driver, a man whom she had never met before by the name of Carlos, went to the avatar compound inside the Hell’s Gate complex and ate native foods. At first the idea of this was disgusting but the flavors really appealed to her avatar/Na’vi body, and she began to enjoy them. Afterward, they changed out of their hospital gowns and into the typical avatar clothing for down time and training. Katja wore shorts and a form fitting T-shirt of olive drab green with 'USMC' on the front.
Her entire family was killed. Her father, a prominent doctor at Brisbane General and her physicist mother and two younger siblings were killed. This broke her heart and, even though ‘revenge’ was not a motive the military liked, her class CO allowed her to sign her papers over and become a U.S. Marine pilot flying a new class of aircraft called a tilt rotor.
Katja Conners is her name and despite the Russian flavor, she is Australian through and through, complete with accent. She was twenty-one at this point and driven by her sadness, loss and anger towards the Chinese, she excelled in her courses and graduated top of her class. She was assigned her own Samson the day she got her OCS degree and shipped to Hawaii. There she was assigned to the newest class of aircraft carrier, with the deck over twelve acres, three times larger than the Kennedy Class of the early 2000’s.
It was a hard life now, moving from port to port, helping in humanitarian missions in the Philippines and Australia. She had also flown some missions into southern China and she loved every minute of that. But her CO’s had taken notice that she was becoming cold. Heartless!
They weren’t the only ones that had taken notice of her exemplary career. The RDA had approached her twice before with what they thought was an offer she couldn’t refuse; she did. But now her CO's were encouraging her to accept the offer because it was good money and a new life to live: security and flight on Pandora.
She reluctantly agreed and LAT moved into the RDA, still in the Corps, but assigned to the civilian operation that she knew very little about. All she really knew was that they had developed a form of space travel making it possible to reach the next solar system closest to Earth. Alpha Centauri.
Katja was surprised to discover that she was assigned to the AVTR sector of the operations before being sent to Pandora on the next flight out early next year. Blood and DNA samples were taken and she was given massive manuals to read about the program and everything involved. Medical training, link chamber tests. Virtual avatars were what she linked into for training; she would not get her real avatar body until she arrived on Pandora. Her avatar was now growing in an artificial womb. Months passed and finally the avatar was ‘born’ and placed into a stasis tank for the flight to Pandora, she was walked through on how to prep for cryo-sleep. Her supplies and Samson were loaded.
Five years, ten months and two days later she woke up in a zero G vessel and there were medics floating from cryo-pod to cryo-pod waking people up, checking their status. She was told to follow the rails to the aft of the ship where there was a large room so everyone could eat before the flight down to the surface within two hours.
While everyone was eating they were briefed on the re-breather units that they would need once in the atmosphere and after her Samson and several other supplies were loaded into the two Valkyries, they boarded and harnessed into the fold away bench seats.
It was now 2148. She was the tenth phase of avatar drivers. After landing and going into the chow hall, now briefing room, everyone that came on this first landing were told about the hostilities of Pandora. She couldn’t help thinking that this information would have been useful to know before leaving Earth in the first place. Once the briefing was over the avatar drivers were separated from the rest of the groups which either miners, repair techs or RDA soldiers.
But her mission here was completely different: she would actually be flying her Samson as an avatar should that be required for science missions and later, expansion into the brush once Site-A was mined out and they moved on to the big score.
She met Dr. Max Patel before her avatar was out of the tank. She was in awe at how ‘blue Katja’ as she called it, had grown so big. Almost ten feet tall, it was very tall for a female avatar and slender, the ears twitched from time to time, or a hand would clinch. Max explained that she would be put through a series of tests with her avatar in the morning after it was decanted. Grace was not here at this point; it was now around noon and she was at the school teaching the Na’vi English.
The following morning she went through her tests in her avatar with flying colors, surprising the hell out of Katja because she didn’t really like doing the virtual ones back on Earth. Although she and Grace had not yet met, the doctor did observe as Katja and another driver went through the numbers in the room next to the Drive Pod chamber.
Then outside they went and the process was repeated for four more drivers. She and the other driver, a man whom she had never met before by the name of Carlos, went to the avatar compound inside the Hell’s Gate complex and ate native foods. At first the idea of this was disgusting but the flavors really appealed to her avatar/Na’vi body, and she began to enjoy them. Afterward, they changed out of their hospital gowns and into the typical avatar clothing for down time and training. Katja wore shorts and a form fitting T-shirt of olive drab green with 'USMC' on the front.