Disclaimer and other useful information:

I'm only going to write this once, so apply this message to every chapter posted.

I do not own Titanfall. If I did, this fanfiction would be posted on the wikia as canon, not here.

I don't own the universe of Titanfall. The game itself is rich in lore. I don't own this lore, the universe, the characters of Titanfall, the weapons, starships, titans, Spectres or technology of Titanfall. Last time I checked, Titanfall and everything within it belonged to Respawn entertainment.

I'm just a guy writing a story for the players of Titanfall to supplement Titanfall's campaign.

Respawn, if you're reading this, please don't sue me. Message me on reddit at /u/akucera or here on fanfiction and I'll remove the fanfiction.

If you're reading this and you haven't played Titanfall, welcome! I recommend you support Respawn entertainment by buying and playing their fantastic game, but if you can't, you should watch the Titanfall intro cinematic (you can find this on youtube) and any a video of a game of titanfall (also on youtube. The video itself doesn't matter, just make sure you have a rudimentary understanding of Titanfall gameplay.)

This fanfiction is rated MA. I intend to graphically describe everything with the greatest level of accuracy I can. This means that I will be describing, in detail, the inner workings of starships, weaponry, human biology in space, the bureaucracy of the governments of planets - and violence. Be prepared for written gore. I will give warning of gore in chapters where gore is present, for the squeamish of heart.

And now, let the show begin!

"Jumping in Three! Two! On-" called the shuttle pilot from the flight deck, voice cut off as the micro jump drives kicked in and drowned out all other noise. Aisling caught a glimpse of Brink, her homeworld, out the shuttle's window before the ship jumped amidst the cruisers in orbit. She caught another glimpse of Brink out the shuttle's window – but from 'up' here, it looked very different.

"Bye, Mum," she whispered. "I love you."

"I know, darling," came the reply in her earpiece, laced with tears. "If only I could come with you..."

Aisling gritted her teeth. She wouldn't cry. "I'll be back in a few years, though."

"Take care of yourself," stressed her mother. "I mean it. If anything weird happens, get off the ship and come home. I'd rather you come home without any money than die as a statistic in another person's war."

"I'll do my best. I'm just a mechanic, I'm not even going to be in any danger."

"Very well. Listen, I -"

"Attention, All personnel," called the shuttle pilot over the intercom. "We will be docking with the IMS Austraeus in three minutes. As they interfere with our navigation computer's pre-docking coupling transmissions, please disable your personal radio-transmitters."

"Mum, I've got to go now," said Aisling. "I'll be back home soon, I promise."

"Okay," sniffed her mother. "I love you so very much." She began bawling now.

"Me too. I've got to go now – goodbye!"

Aisling flicked the switch on her communicator. She'd said goodbye to her brother and sister before she'd gotten on the shuttle, but her mother was rather sentimental and apparently wanted to talk to her right up until the last moment.

"Brace for acceleration in three, two, one, mark," said the intercom. The Shuttle's engines fired for a second and the shuttle began to drift toward the Austraeus.

My new home for the next year, huh? thought Aisling. The Austraeus was one of the first ships to arrive on the frontier after the scouts. She was built for carrying a metric fuck-ton of freight – capable of hauling four dreadnaughts, given that they were disassembled during transit.

Dreadnaughts being, of course, the second-largest classification of military ship, smaller only than the enormous capital ships that defended the core worlds.

The shuttle had entered an enormous hole in the Austraeus's hull – used to carry interstellar shipping crates or frigates – and was now nearing an airlock at the end of the container. Behind the shuttle a huge door rolled silently along tracks to complete the Austraeus's hull.

After the initial rush to colonise the frontier worlds, the IMC had purchased the Austraeus and her surviving sister-ship the Dauntless from their original owner. Now the twins were used to haul goods back to the core worlds, making the jump direct from the frontier to the core (with no need to stop to refuel in-between) in just 2200 hours without cargo, 2900 hours with cargo. This trip would be simple – they'd warp from Brink to Venice 3 with some scrap computer parts, money, gold, blueprints, scientific research and other valuable items, trade them with the bewildered and undoubtedly amazed locals on the frontier, load up the Austraeus with oil and metal, then jump back to Brink, completing the journey in about 6000 hours. The oil and metal would go on to IMC factories on Brink and Earth and would emerge as luxury goods for the upper class worlds – Earth, New Athens, Poseidon, etcetera – and money would find its way into Aisling's hands.

Due to their role, the Austraeus and the Dauntless were unique in the universe. Four kilometres long, 900 metres high and wide and shaped like a giant cylinder, they were tied with the title as the largest ships ever made. Two centrifuges on the side for storing gravitationally-sensitive things and for living quarters. The whole thing rode a 500 metre long nuclear explosion to the stars. Their most unique features, however, where their legacy drives.

Starships used rockets to accelerate them forwards and warp or jump drives to compress the space in front of them and expand it out behind them - shortening the distance the ship had to travel. Jump drives only slightly compressed space but weighed (comparatively) nothing. Their small mass allowed the ship's rocket to quickly accelerate or decelerate the starship. Combined with their reasonable warp strength, a jump-capable ship could leap across a solar system in a few hours - great for military ships, who could even use their drives to jump out of a bullet's path if necessary. Warp drives weighed a metric fuckload and were mounted on large ships with the fuel capacity to travel longer distances. These ships accelerated slower than jump-capable ships but their top speed was enormous – owing also to the fact that they were usually mounted on ships with large fuel tanks.

And then there were Legacy drives. The greatest scientists and engineers of a generation lead by Sir Hammond himself built just four legacy drives for the four colony ships sent to the frontier. These drives were capable of compressing the space in front of a starship by four hundred thousand times. They were also the size of a battleship and weighed as much as a cruiser – completely impractical for use on anything other than a superfreighter. With a legacy drive each of the colony ships could make the warp from the core worlds to the frontier in a few thousand hours, rather than tens of thousands of hours. Now, just the Austraeus and the Dauntless remained of the original four.

"Deceleration in three, two, one, mark," said the intercom, and the shuttle's reverse thrusters pulsed, slowing the shuttle as it neared the airlock.

The airlock hissed, shuttle doors opened. The shuttle-ees began to unbuckle themselves from their seats and were immediately glad that they had purchased magnetic boots beforehand.

"Greetings, crew!" exclaimed a man standing upside-down in the airlock, hanging off the roof with his magnetic boots.

Well. Up is a relative term in space.

"According to this," the man said, "you guys are the last shuttle to dock. We're going to be leaving for the IMC port at Venice 3 in a few hours, so get some rest and adjust to your designated time-zone before then. Make a line and come past me and I'll give you your briefing cards."

The man called out each person's name and handed them a card. Aisling was called early – usual for her, given her last name – and thus came to receive her card. The man glanced at her card and motioned in the general direction of her cabin before moving to the next person.

Aisling Brand

Cabin Q 7:12

Electrical engineer, hangar 42

This ship uses 26 hour days.

Time Zone -6 hours.

...read Aisling, walking along the corridor toward her cabin. On occasions she had to duck or dodge to the side as other crew-members passed above or beside her, hanging upside down and off the walls with their boots. The card also showed a helpful map that described how the cabin numbering system worked. The letter corresponded to the hangar the crew area was nearby and the numbers were co-ordinates for the hangar's location – so, hers was in row seven, 12th from the end.

Hangar Q, deck 7, cabin 12. I think our shuttle docked at Hangar Q...

She soon found a corridor leading to the crew area and began walking toward her cabin, which appeared to be on the roof until she oriented herself correctly. She pushed the entry button.

"Oi!" roared a woman inside. "Don't cha knock on your planet?!"

Said woman's shirt was floating in the low-gravity above her head, sleeping attire in her hands, arms covering her chest.

"We do," replied Aisling, who entered, closed the door and turned to give the woman some privacy. "Most of the time. Sorry."

A second later the door opened again. "You can look now!.."

Aisling floated inside, caught a bunk and swung toward it. "Sorry about before," she apologised.

"It's okay... whispered the woman. Aisling took another look at her, this time with her shirt on.

She was young, heavily tanned, and very tall. To be 1.9 metres high at – what, 170 Kilohours old? Her height, skin tone and accent gave it away.

"Let me guess – you're from Helios?" asked Aisling.

"Yeah!.."

Aisling giggled. Helios was an IMC colony built on a small (and thus low-gravity) planet orbiting its sun rather closely. The thin atmosphere brought on by the low-gravity environment barely reduced the sun's glare, resulting in dark-skinned inhabitants. The low gravity meant that their spines tended to stretch out further than usual, leaving them incredibly tall – granted, this girl was probably short back on Helios. Finally, the thin atmosphere meant that Helians tended to grow stronger lungs than humans living elsewhere. This lead to Helian voices naturally being louder than normal. At home, the sound of their voices wouldn't travel as far (due to the thin atmosphere). As a result Helians found it difficult to control their voices when moving to thicker atmospheres. Brink was the same size as Earth, but it's thick iron core made it's gravity slightly stronger than Earth's. The important thing about Brink, however, was that it's magnetic field extended far into space, making the manufacturing of orbital goods much easier as crews didn't have to deal with the sun's electromagnetic radiation. Similarly, the increased gravity on the surface meant that goods made to last on Brink would generally be strong enough to last anywhere and were thus highly sought-after amongst the people living on the upper-class worlds.

"I'm Aisling, of Brink."

"Pleased to meet you, Aisling..." the girl whispered. "I'm Sophia!" she shouted a moment later, before blushing at her outburst.

I feel her pain. The atmosphere is thinner here than on brink. I'm having trouble being heard.

Someone knocked on the door.

"Come in!" called Aisling.

The door opened, and four uniformed woman – by the looks of it, from Ahrax – strode in.

"Afternoon, ladies," said the first one, hair tied high, sunglasses hiding her eyes. "I'm IMC Officer Jenny Baxter, I'll be bunking with you. This is Je'lai, Evans and Street."

" 'Morning," said Aisling. "Wait, it is still morning, right?" She checked her watch.

Yep, 13:23 Am.

"Negative," said Baxter, eyebrow raised. "This ship uses 26 hour days, not 28 like Brink. 'Afternoon' starts at 13 o'clock, not 14. Our cabin has also been designated to run six hours behind the main clock. It's actually 15:23 hours. You ever flown on a starship before?"

"No..."

"Marvellous," said Baxter, sarcasm oozing from her words. "Please don't vomit in your sleep."

So these guys are IMC, huh? thought Aisling as she hit the necessary buttons on her watch to synch it with the ship's clock. The Interstellar Mining Corporation's voyages were usually manned by half IMC-dedicated personnel and half contractors whom they'd hire along the way as the voyage required. These four would be regulars – soldiers, navigators, engineers, mechanics – hell, there'd be a couple salesmen in there too, to get the IMC the best deals when they traded with the frontier settlers. This was Aisling's first voyage with the IMC and by the looks of it the same was true for Sophia. Unlike the regulars, who wore silver and blue uniforms, Aisling and Sophia donned T-shirts and shorts. Aisling was glad she didn't bring any skirts. Zero gravity made them a tad – revealing, to say the least. T-shirts, evidently, weren't that much better. It would get better when the centrifuges turned on.

Hopefully this ismy last voyage with the IMC. The IMC treated the inhabitants of the core worlds fairly – so Aisling knew she'd be paid at the end of it all – but they were known for being brutal to frontier settlers. They'd turn colonies upside-down at the slightest hint of oil or tritium buried below. They'd tear apart entire cities to capture a single outlaw. They never paid their bounties.

If her family wasn't so desperate for the money, she'd have stayed on Brink, but an IMC grease-monkey was paid significantly more than a grease-monkey on Brink. Her father worked day and night to support Aisling's mother and his three children. Labour and lives were cheap on Brink. A pregnant woman could be replaced in an instant and the moment Aisling's mother's employees found out about her fourth child they'd fired her on the spot with a shrug and a sorry.

And thus, the moment Aisling heard the IMC were in Brink and were hiring – 30% now, 30% at the end and 40% along the way – she'd signed up for a voyage right away and written down her father's bank account details. Hopefully he could keep the family afloat until her arrival.

A screen on the wall of the cabin flickered and pulled Aisling back into reality. The words "Voyage briefing" appeared, then a face. Male, pale (almost albino) white skin. Brilliant green eyes, brown hair. Stubble on the chin, large nose. Not old enough to be a grandfather, but somehow with the wise look and trustworthy feel of one.

"Good afternoon, crew, I'm IMC captain Roberts," said the face, introducing itself. "This is a pre-recorded message being played to you the day our voyage begins, in each of your afternoons at 15:30. The IMS Austraeus will be leaving port on Brink at 23:00, time local to the ship's computer, or 15:00 Brink local time. We will be warping from Brink to deep space, halfway between Brink of Sol 4 and Venice 3 of the Freeport system. The warp will take 1071 hours and we'll be accelerating the whole way by burning our main engines. When we're in deep space we'll be at our top speed - around 225 kilometres per second. We'll burn our auxiliary engines for 4.5 hours to accelerate us in the clockwise direction, and then another 4.5 hours to decelerate us. We'll come to a relative stop having turned 180 degrees, at which point we'll fire our main engines again to slow us down. After 1037 hours we'll keep our engines burning but also turn on our auxiliary engines. Our main and auxiliary engines will turn off 34 hours later and with any luck we'll have dropped out of warp and into orbit around Venice 3.

We'll then move into Venice 3's spaceport and unload our cargo. At that point, you're all welcome to see the sights at Venice 3 while our traders sell our goods and purchase cargo for us to freight home. That'll take about two weeks.

Following that we'll warp to Carlyle and refuel just enough to make a second warp to Demeter. At Demeter we'll completely refuel and warp all the way home.

So, welcome to the IMS Austraeus, your new home for the next 5760 hours. Some of you will have crewed her before. Those of you contractors who haven't, well, once again, welcome aboard. Obey your Commanding Officer's and keep an eye out for acceleration alerts and you'll do just fine. New crewmen, your IMC comrades have flown with us before and are trained in all the basic tasks around this ship. Feel free to ask anyone with an IMC blue armband for directions.

There are a few hazards out here in space. The IMS Austraeus is equipped to shield us from radiation and small asteroids. We've got our Auxiliary engines to dodge the larger space-rocks, but for the most part space is empty and we don't expect to find many. If we're attacked by pirates we can easily hold them off until we outrun them – our fuel tanks are much bigger than theirs."

Space piracy wasn't practised so much in the core worlds – more so on the frontier. Because a large ship's warp drive warps space in front of it and behind it for a large distance smaller ships can drop in behind a larger ship and utilise the larger ship's warp drive's power. The larger ship typically has a larger fuel tank than the smaller ship and thus is capable of outrunning the smaller ship – but the smaller ship's thrusters are more efficient (less mass to accelerate) so, for a short time, the smaller ship has an advantage over the larger ship. Pirates used this tactic to catch up to and board larger ships. For this reason many ships had rear-facing cannons installed.

"We're not on a military voyage so we're not equipped to deal with serious military incursions. If we come up against militia spacecraft we're calling for IMC support and legging it. We have a couple of Pilots and titans aboard but that's all we'll need. Venice 3 is as peaceful as it gets on the frontier.

That's all for the briefing, I'll see you all on Venice 3."

The centrifuges began to turn on the sides of the Austraeus, creating weak artificial gravity of a sort. It was better than the magnetic boots, at least.

A group of engineers called Aisling down to take a look at a panel on the warp drive before they left port, but it was easily fixed. Warp drives work in conjunction with the ship's thrusters to propel their ship at enormous speeds. They stockpile energy from the ship's fusion reactor in a flywheel and release it all at once, creating an artificial black hole in the centre of their warping arrays. The black hole – or, in the case of the Austraeus's legacy drive, the eight black holes - bend space-time around them. By synchronising the creation of the holes, the gradual annihilation of them due to antimatter formation on their event horizons and the speeds at which they spun one could fold space in a line in front of a spaceship and unfold it behind the spaceship. While the Austraeus's thrusters would only take it up to 225,000 metres per second her warping array was capable of folding the space in front of her into four hundred thousandths' of it's original size – multiplying theAustraeus's top speed by four hundred thousand times to a total speed of 300 times the speed of light and minimising the effects of relativity. Aisling simply bolted down the metal cover of an auxiliary radiation vent for the spacial warping array – nothing special or particularly crucial.

Just as Aisling was going to sleep – 'twas annoying having to fix the engineers' problem at what was (for her cabin) designated night-time – an alarm sounded.

Je'lai moaned, opening her eyes. "Acceleration alarm, brace."

"Bon Voyage," muttered Evans. " 'Ere we go agaen."

The Austraeus's main thrusters fired and she began to leave orbit around Brink, accelerating toward Venice 3 – currently just a speck of light in the universe. A few moments later the space directly in front of the Austraeus began to contract and she dove into the abyss.