Ten years earlier

-

How had Ramirez gotten picked for this mission?

He had no damn clue.

He was basically straight out of bootcamp when it happened, barely out of graduation to be hones. To be fair, Ramirez hadn't really planned any of his life out very well, for the longest time he was going to go to the winter Olympics and win a gold medal in ice skating and then.... Well he wasn't entirely sure, maybe he would coach or soemthing, but a last minute crisis of self and a very spur of the moment decision had seen him on a bus to boot cam.

Now Ramirez wasn't lazy, not by any means. He came for ma hard working family who prided themselves on being the best at whatever they were passionate about. His younger brother was already a football star, his sister was going to be an Olympic boxer, and his older sister was probably the smartest person he had ever known, and then there was him. He had been one of the best skaters on the team until his self-crisis had led hi to that bus.

Turns out it wasn't motivation or work ethic he lacked but discipline.

Clearly he hadn't known what he was getting into. Months of exercise, drills, no partying, no alcohol, no girls or boys had, if not changed his perspective, than at least mellowed him out a little. His parents had worried that he wouldn't like it, but, as it turned out, structure was the one thing in his life that he had really been missing.

Then bootcamp was over and he was at graduation ceremony, in his new dress uniform swearing an oath he found he was way more serious about than he had ever been about ice skating.

His father and mother, long since over the shock of his decision, were proud of him running up to hug him when the ceremony was finally over, and the solemn moment passed.

"So what happens now?" His mother asked, already to business.

Abuela waved her off, "give the boy a minute to breathe, we can get to that step in a minute."

He hugged his Abuela.

She stepped back to look at him and straightened out the front of his uniform, "Look like your grandfather in that uniform."

"Congratulations." He said to her with a smirk on his face.

She frowned at him, "For what."

"Grandad must have been sexy as hell, so, again, congratulations."

She huffed, "I see boot camp couldn't get that tongue out of your head ."

He grinned, "Nope, pretty sure it made it worse."

"Private Ramirez!" The group of them looked up, and Ramirez snapped to attention as an unfamiliar face, and an unfamiliar uniform appeared through the crowd. The man that approached wasn't a marine, and the little silver pins on his shoulder marked him out as UNSC air division. he wasn't entirely sure he needed to salute this man, but he thought it would be better safe than sorry.

'At ease."

He dropped his hand, "I'm sorry sir, but we haven't...."

"Met before, no, but we have been watching you closely."

Ramirez glanced back at his parents not entirely sure where this was going, "Uh, sir?"

The man adjusted a stack of files under one arm, "My name is Colonel Palmer, and I'm here as a representative of the Enterprise mission command."

Ramirez raised an eyebrow, "You mean the spaceship."

"Yes I mean the spaceship. You catch on quick for a jarhead." Ramirez smiled with a little bit of the good natured ribbing.

Captain palmer withdrew a file and glanced over at Ramirez's family standing in confused silence behind him, "I trust that would will be able to keep this confidential to the best of your abilities. Obviously its not classified, but we would rather keep this quiet. Any posts on social media about what I am about to tell your son will immediately disqualify him from candidacy."

They nodded quickly unsure where this was going.

"Anyway." He handed the file over to Ramirez, "In that file is your next assignment. I have been tasked by the UNSC Enterprise task force to put together a list of eligible names to crew the Enterprise on its first launch . You were on my short list, you have all the desired attributes and qualifications we were looking for when we made this list."

Ramirez took the file, rather stunned and flipped it open.

His own personnel file with a green stamp across the front.

He looked back up at Colonel Palmer, "Qualifications, but I haven't done anything yet."

"No you haven't, but your class is the first class trained in orbital drop insertions, shuttle convoy, and strange planet simulation." He flipped through another file eyes scanning over a line of text Ramirez couldn't see, "Your assessments say you, have the makings of a leader, react calmly under pressure, and have exceeded expected performance metrics." Again he looked up from the file, "I would care about that a lot less if your personality inventory had come back as any less than what it was."

Ramirez glanced back down at his own file, "Personality inventory?"

"One of those bigass paper tests you had to take at the very beginning of the program, they're calling it the Stellar-99 Confined Behavior Personality Inventory. The test was issued as a way to find those people we believed could handle close quarters confined spaces aboard an interstellar craft for several months without escalating or causing conflict . Your Stellar-99 scores indicated very high degrees of Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness on the five factor personality model, and low neuroticism." He turned another page, "Additionally you have no history of mental illness anxiety or depression, and your family seems to have no history of sudden psychotic episodes or other acute onset disorders."

Ramirez paused and shrugged, "I mean, I am a pretty great person, no nee to tell me twice."

Palmer snorted, "You also scored high on the Comic-7"

Ramirez frowned, "And what is that?"

"It measures humor, the ability to take jokes or engage in witty banter.'

Ramirez laughed, "They have a test for that."

"They have a test for everything." Palmer said, his face serious, "this is going to be a long trip, under dangerous conditions, in unknown territory with new stresses. Having someone there who is good at their job is extremely important, but none of that matters if they are a complete asshole and no one wants to work with them. The Comic-7 Was developed on a Seven factor model to ensure that you are someone other people want to be around. Humor, the ability to take and give jokes we found, is one of the greatest indications of cooperation between a group of people. One day we may not have to use tests like this to let someone go into space, but for now we need this mission to work, even if I have to staff the entire ship with clowns."

Ramirez laughed his minds eye coming up with images of a spaceship clown care, and was about to make a joke out of it when palmer continued.

"You have no to low instances of motion sickness, indicated no issue with confined spaces, and when asked what you would do f you met alien life you replied, "Idk depends on how sexy they are."

Ramirez blushed furiously. His mother rolled her eyes.

"That.... Uh, that was in my favor?"

"only in context with the third assessment which was the Arkansas Bias Inventory which indicated you have very few biases towards what we would call "targeted out groups".

Ramirez grinned and shrugged holding his rms out wide, "Everyone is welcome here , I don't discriminate."

Palmer looked as if he was trying very hard not to roll his eyes, "About that, that is the only part of your inventory we had some concerns about." He gave Ramirez a long hard look, "We know about your glorious list of escapades, but do you think you could keep the monster in your pants for a few months, or do you think you might just implode.'

Ramirez glanced hurriedly back at his mother, who was glowering at him with an expression told hi that, if she hadn't been wearing her nice shoes, he would have gotten a sandal to the back of the head, with great prejudice. He turned away and cleared his throat, "Yessir, no funny business."

"I'll have to take your word for it."

"Your orders are in there, report at that exact date and time to the requested location, Until then ou should be free."

Ramriez nodded and closed the file, "IT will be an honor to serve with you." Palmer said giving him a salute.

Ramirez gave one back, "Looking forward to it sir."

***

Ramirez half staggered into the mess hall aboard the Enterprise. His feet were heavy and his body ached from long hours inside the EVA combat suit. His head was still spinning with the day's events, enough that he wasn't entirely sure if he had dreamt the whole thing up or not.

Aliens, real... aliens.

His implants said it had been over twenty four hours since they had last set foot on the enterprise, and since then they had discovered several alien races, technically been abducted, imprisoned and shot ut of the airlock int space. He was so tired, but still hungry and it would have been impossible to sleep with all his racing thoughts.

In the mess hall he was granted a generous portion of food allotment from a ship system that was unhappy he had missed an entire day of caloric intake. Mmmmm pancakes.

He walked across the floor intending to join a group of other marines he saw heading towards an open table, but he paused, catching sight of a familiar figure sitting alone near the viewscreen. It was that lieutenant, from the mission, the one that had flown the ship and subsequently been the first to spot alien life. The crazy bastard had chased the alien deeper into the strange alien ship out of his own sense of extreme enthusiasm.

That was something Ramirez could appreciate, and he approached with his trey of food.

Lieutenant Vir, he thought.

Ramirez was good with names, and he always remembered a pretty face.

Lt. Vir had the look of a man who didn't know what he had, either a late bloomer or an ugly duckling turned swan. The man had a young face, sharp jaw and bright green eyes. He was also rather tall, a few inches taller than Ramirez himself , and judging by the awkward way he sat the height and physique were a new enough development that he wasn't quite familiar with it just yet. If Ramirez hadn't been on strict orders not to engage in any shenanigans, he certainly would have gone for it.

But he could always use more friends.

He sat down across from the Lt. the clattering of his try causing the other man to jump.

"Seat isn't reserved is it?"

"As a matter of fact, I think I saw your name on it corporal..... Angel..... Ramirez was it?"

Ramirez held out a hand and the two of them shook, "Everyone just calls me Ramirez."

"Adam."

Ramirez began sawing at his pancakes with a fork, "Crazy day, still feel like I'm dreaming."

Adam grinned, "That makes two of us. Did you se how big that dam ship was. Pretty sure it could have eaten the enterprise and shat us back out if it wanted."

Ramirez laughed, "As long as the aliens don't have that Idea in mind than I'm fine." He glanced over his shoulder, "Where's the Captain, sort of expected her to be around.

"She had to debrief UNSC command" Adam said shoveling a mouthful of pancake onto his fork.

"How do you think they'll deal with that? Will they tell the public?"

Adam nodded once and swallowed, "The UNSC has a strict open disclosure policy on extraterrestrial life, Before we left the enterprise team put together a hundred different plans In the event of certain scenarios. I imagine the UN president has several speeches lined up, one for if we all blew up in warp, one for if we suddenly disappear, one for if we come home successful, and one for if we encountered alien life..... I imagine they were probably thinking space bacteria or something, but you get what I mean."

Ramirez smirked, "Bit of a Nerd aren't you."

"Geek actually, Nerds are smarter than I am."

Ramirez laughed, "I can drink to that." He raised his cup of juice, "man I could really use a shot right now."

"I've never drank before"

Ramirez almost spit out his juice and looked up, "Religious thing or....?

Adam shook his head, "No, I just turned 21."

"You know if we make it out of this unprobed and alive, you and I are going to tear up the town."

Adam raised an eyebrow, "We barely met."

"And we have several months to get to know each other, besides I've already made the executive decision to be your friend, and this offer isn't voluntary, so you'll have to deal with it."

Lt vir just grinned, "What a horrible fate you have subjected me too."

"I know, you'll have to cry yourself to sleep tonight."

Adam's face was deadpan when he said, "Oh woah is me, I made a new friend. How tragic."