Chapter One: Hanna

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The cruiser rocked and buckled under the pressure of the attack violently, kicking Hanna-Constanze von Hoch out of her command seat and knocking her to the steel floor of the command deck. She shook off the attempt of her second to help her back up to her feet and stood up straight once again.

Wiping the blood flowing from her nose onto her jacket, Hanna swayed unsteadily down the line of officers and crew attempt to maintain order over the failing RFS-Rostov. Her mind was blank as wire flew out of panels and smoke filled the command deck. Her eyes were held on the ten geth vessels looming towards her crippled ship.

"Kapitän, we have fires on the aft decks four and seven!" she heard screamed behind her.

Hanna turned back to the lead ship monitor Jürgen Meyer. His eyes were wide and blood was pouring from an open gash. He could not have been more than 18 and he appeared to have been close to a full on collapse. If she was being honest with herself, Hanna would have been right there with him, but she couldn't. She had a job to do. She had three hundred souls under her command and she fully intended on getting as many of them alive as she could out of this encirclement.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out her handkerchief and pressed it against Jürgen's wound until he took it from her.

"Deploy fire suppression systems and have maintenance and damage control in full firefighting gear and on standby," she ordered the man softly. "I want the life pods prepar-"

"WE HAVE FULL GRAVITATIONAL LOSS IN 3,2-"

The Rostov groaned and buckled yet again. True the screaming of her XO, all gravity vanished and every man, woman and object not bolted to the ship lost its mass and flew upwards. Blood from the crewmembers pooled and formed floating liquid spheres. Taking a moment to acclimatize herself, Hanna put her zero-g training to good use and pushed herself away from observation and back down towards the command bridge. She gripped the railing and forced herself in a semi-standing position.

"Stay at your posts!" she finally raised her voice in order to retain discipline back over her crew. "I want a situation report in forty five seconds!"

Falling silent, Hanna watched as her panicking, demoralized crew forced their bodies back to their posts. She allowed them her allotted time to reorganize themselves and prepare a brief statement of their ship status. It was a status Hanna already knew was doomed. She just needed to know how soon she would meet her doom.

The only one to approach her was her executive officer, Korvettenkapitän Selene Auffarth. She was as dead eyed as Hanna. The attack was overwhelming and struggling to stay standing and in command was difficult to say the least

"The mass effect field is collapsing, kinetic barriers down to 14 percent operational strength, armour plating integrity failing, point to point ship defence grid is failing and weapons are running hot with heavy casualties in the fire control room," her XO stated grimly. She checked her datapad, and then added. "A geth raiding party is being held off by security on portside decks three, five and seven. Leutnant Hesse has stated the geth are moving this way to neutralize us."

Pursing her lips together, Hanna looked away and closed her eyes. So there it was in black and white. They were truly fucked. Exhaling, she turned back to Korvettenkapitän Auffarth.

"How many ships are within 50,000 kilometres?"

The Korvettenkapitän looked at her datapad and immediately glanced back up to her.

"Fourteen. All of them are closing in, Herr Kapitän!"

Nodding grimly, Hanna cleared her throat and let go of the railing, allowing herself to float until she was high above the crew.

"This is it, Gentlemen… our final stand," she announced to everyone. "Target in order of damage severity of the enemy ships, make sure we send as much munitions off this ship and into theirs as possible, I want to divert all auxiliary power into the weapons and shields and begin the process of power diversion from the lower decks. Helmsman put the Rostov in full rotational movements for as long as possible. We need as much gravity as we can get."

A chorus of 'Aye's' was sent back to her and the groaning Rostov was suddenly begun the full rotations. Hanna brought herself down to the grown and dragged herself along to the communications centre and activated the ship wide communication system.

"This is Kapitän zur Raum Hanna von Hoch," she started without thinking. She paused for a second and then added. "The Rostov has been compromised. All nonessential crew members and marine fire teams are to file in an orderly manner towards the life pods and prepare to abandon ship. It's been an honour serving alongside you all."

Concluding her message, she signed off and allowed herself to sit down as the rotational gravity kicked in. As soon as weapons were offline, she would send her bridge crew to safety next, then she would activate the self-destruct sequence and set course for the largest geth ship she could limp toward-

The ship stopped groaning and rotating, the power came back on, the air flow normalized and the humming of the mass effect field could be felt from where Hanna was sitting.

"Welcome back to your second chance at life, sailors. This training exercise has concluded," the voice of the operational overseer called to the trainees. "All students are to report directly to shuttle bay seven for evacuation to Port Deimos sickbay for further treatment. Transport ship Braun is scheduled for departure to Earth at 14:40."

Hanna moaned as she pushed herself out of her seat and attempted to fix up her hair. As relieved as she might have been, she still found herself feeling a little frustrated. That was her Valhalla moment. If she was going to die in battle, she would die in a matter that befitted her namesake… a way that would make her Father proud of her.

Approaching her was her smiling classmate Oberfähnrich zur Raum Selene Auffarth. Now that she had a moment to take in the superficial, Hanna took note of her friend's fat lip, bruising eye and blood flowing from her ear. Jesus Christ was the quarian naval exercises tough as nails. There was no room for the faint hearted and that was what put them above and beyond the Raumstreitflotte –at least until they crossed over the Relay and into Citadel and geth occupied space.

"Think we did a good job, Han?" she asked rather brightly for a woman with her face mashed up. "Well you certainly did."

"Hanna," she naturally corrected Selene. Slowly she smiled and together Hanna and Selene stepped down the battered command deck, pausing to allow ship maintenance to begin the process of repairs for the next batch of students. "And yeah… I think you and everyone was great under circumstances. It wasn't supposed to be an easy hands-on assignment, wasn't it?"

As they walked out of the command deck and towards the shuttle bay for a return to Port Deimos, Hanna supposed it would have been good manners to have not tuned out Selene's response, but it was long and Hanna had other things on her mind; notably her performance.

Coming out of the adjacent airlock was a group of interceptor students, laughing at each other and swinging their dicks as usual. Under normal circumstances, Hanna would not pay attention to them, but they had an applicant amongst them which she did want to see, and she so happened to have been the quietest of the bunch. Walking with them was a tall quarian woman, her head facing the group as they moved together. She seemed to be interested in what the other students were saying, but she was still new and unsure how best to participate with her compatriots.

The interceptor pilot student glanced her eyes and sort of paused for a moment before she excused herself from the group of pilots and stepped forward to join her, a smug look splashing over her face. Hanna did the same to Selene, offering her XO a pat on her arm and a smile before she dismissed herself and sped up her pace in the direction of the encroaching giantess of a quarian… well, being 5'5 to the quarian in question's 5'11 wasn't that much of a difference but it was enough to tease her about.

"Hey, look it's the Giraffe…"Hanna crowed to the quarian approaching her, her arms spread open dramatically as she switched to her English.

A small grin spread onto the mouth belonging to her best friend, Niah'Vetari. As Hanna stepped up her pace, so too did Niah. She stayed silent until they were within proper speaking range. Niah, in spite of appearance was by far the more delicate, introverted of the two of them. She would sooner die than raise her voice in any event short of witnessing murder.

English was sort of a private language for the two of them. Both committed to early childhood lessons solely so that they could have conversations without eavesdropping. With English only being worth a damn to German and quarian society for international trade, for the majority of quarians and Germans, it was a novelty. Of course, with the advent of universal language translation software, learning the language was further rendered pointless.

"Hello back to you, Short Stack," Niah addressed Hanna, not only using Hanna's official best friends nickname, but also reaching out to give Hanna a little shoulder push. "Next time you command a ship, try not to get us all killed in some wild Wagner-esque drama, okay?"

Hanna rolled her eyes and gestured Niah to follow her so that they were not blocking the academy clean-up crew approaching them.

"But I thought you liked me being dramatic!" Hanna exclaimed, naturally being dramatic about it.

Hanna did not get a verbal reply; she looked at Niah to be silent as the grave, her head lowered with an expression which told Hanna exactly how Niah actually felt by it. The drill was not designed to be survivable, it was meant to educate through terror and teach the recruits how to maximize the amount of combat effectiveness a doomed ship could provide towards the military situation at the expense of their deaths; Command knew it, the instructors knew it, Hanna knew it, so why didn't Niah understand that it?

Surely it was something her father at least discussed. He was Navy as well. In fact it had been her father Cal'Vetari who had played a heavy role in Hanna's decision to join the young navy over the tested and true Heer which her father, bless him, was ready to take her in with arms wide open. Thankfully for her, Father did not resent it as she expected he might. When the shock wore off, Father started to see the benefit to sacrificing one of his children to the Raumstreitflotte. With any luck, a Hoch would finally have a seat in the second most influential branch in the Wehrmacht.

Still… she felt a little bad about it. She knew that her change would come at a cost. That cost was her younger brother Joachim's dreams. It was now up to him to carry on Heer traditions, and Joachim resented the Wehrmacht service with each passing day. She would not be the least bit surprised if the resent would seep over into their relationship as well.

"Well… I'll take your suggestion the next time," Hanna placated her friend as she placed her arm around her shoulder. "I could use someone on the bridge with me. Someone who gets me… someone who knows how to sort cut through my shit."

Hanna could feel the quarian shrug.

"You'll do fine," Niah quietly reassured Hanna, her downcast as she seemed to focus on her feet as they walked. "Not everyone is command material like you."

Hanna broke her grasp on Niah's shoulder and allowed a small grin to cross onto her mouth as she stepped out in front of her. She lowered herself just enough so that Niah had no opportunity to shield herself from the human attempting to bug her into opening up.

"I'm serious, Niah," Hanna stated to her friend in perhaps a more humorous tone than she should have used. "I think you should consider changing over to ship officer training. You got all the reserve and judgement skills to be placed in some sort of facet of command. It's not too late. I'll totally vouch for you!"

Hanna stopped walking, forcing Niah to come to a dead halt, bouncing lithely against Hanna before taking a step back. She looked up finally so that her fried did not have to cramp out her neck for her amusement. In spite of Hanna being annoying, Niah did allow a half smile to cross on her face. She was amused, but very much unconvinced.

"Going to need more than your good word to get that…" she started then stopped.

At first Hanna thought it was just a running nose, but it was far too warm for that. She brought her finger up and touched the blood now flowing out of her nasal cavity. Although Hanna laughed out of self-deprecation, Niah did not. She stepped forward and tilted back Hanna's head as she pinched both nasals closed, disregarding the sight of the blood entirely.

"Thanks…" Hanna said nasally as she looked up at the quarian now tending to her injuries. "…and I'll have you know I've earned the name 'Queen Asskisser' from my fellow cadets for a reason. I don't have many friends in students, but the instructors like me. I'm sure they'll agree with my judgement."

Again, it was meant to be humorous, but Niah was clearly not feeling it the same way as Hanna was.

"Point the students that resent you out and I'll kick their fucking asses for you," she plainly stated, surprising Hanna at the willingness to hurt the people who had sleighed her.

Hanna had little time for the games students played. Father taught her to keep her nose to the ground and focused upon her studies over the social affairs of students. He promised her that there would be enough time for the ugly game of social politics in the real world when it mattered. Still, she could not pretend not to be bothered by it.

…it was nice to have Niah here… telling her these things mattered to her as well…

"My hero…" Hanna murmured to Niah in a slight daze. "Well, I suppose I could always call my father and ask for him to call in a favour if you'd like. He comes off as this traditional Prussian Junker hard ass, but he soft hearted far more than most give him credit for-."

"I'm not looking for charity, Hanna," Niah cut her off, silencing Hanna completely.

The two of them remained locked in a state of silence several long moments. Both quarian and human looking each other in their eyes as Niah continued to keep the pressure on the nose bleed. Tentatively, Hanna reached out, her hand clasping around Niah's wrist.

"I'm not offering charity for you, Niah," she spoke up to suddenly nervous looking woman. "I'm doing what it takes to give you everything that you deserve... you'd think that after twelve years; you would realize that by now."

Niah exhaled as an expression of guilt and shame crossed over his face. Hanna did not mean for that to be the case, but it seemed to drive the point across that that she was being foolish again. They were friends… Niah did not have to constantly worry about dealing with the societal gap between them that should have separated them, but did not through hard work over many years by both of them.

Letting go of Hanna's nose, Niah absentmindedly wiped the blood on her hand onto her trousers. She closed her eyes for a moment before she finally nodded curtly.

"I'm… sorry," she started, obvious shame tainting her words. "I guess can be a real bitch about things about these things."

Hanna nodded.

"Yeah," she confirmed without hesitating. "You really can be."

That was all it took. Niah snapped her eyes open and giggled as she gave the grinning Hanna a hard shove forward, which Hanna had braced for. There was nothing more fun than to push Niah's buttons, and in the twelve years she had known her, Hanna had become exceptionally good at it.

"You're not supposed to agree!" Niah all but shrieked at her, not noticing the group of training officers passing by the two bickering students. Hanna noticed and giving the officers as charming a smile as she could, she slapped her hand over her friend's mouth and stood at attention until they left.

"I wouldn't want to give you the charity of a gentle lie," Hanna said sarcastically to the mutinous looking Niah as she released her mouth and took her arm into her control. "I imagine that would throw you back in the loop. So if you won't take my advice or my help… then you better buckle down and show some initiative, bitch! I'm going to be a Destroyer Kapitän in five years, and I'm going to need a damn good flight leader escorting my ass."

Five years as a little too cocksure on her part. But Hanna was confident she could get that sort of posting. Grandmother Hanala was a captain of a scout ship on a special assignment by the time she was 24. If she could do it, why couldn't she?

Still grinning at each other, the two of them fell into a comfortable silence as they turned back and made their way down the rest of the corridor towards the shuttle bay. Both girls were within inches of each other, Niah's hands wrapped behind her back as Hanna maintained her command posture. Something she routinely practiced if she was to get into the mindset of being in actual command one day.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered why it was that Niah decided to follow her to the Raumstreitflotte in the first place. It was a topic not discussed between the two of them yet, in spite of being 10 months into their schooling.

Niah was technically a citizen of the Quarian North African Mandate first and foremost. Her father was assigned to liaison with the Raumstreitflotte, and generally maintained this role for the past decade. Niah was not obligated to serve, and Niah never really struck her as a military type as her elder brother and sister were. She was much more artistic by nature, her works littering both of their respective childhood bedrooms and Fort NiHa, which was a little getaway the two of them built between the ages of eight to fourteen out of the ruins of an abandoned Hanomag command vehicle abandoned during the Civil War.

Niah belonged in an art school, not a Raumstreitflotte academy. It was all very... curious…

"So…" Niah broke the silence between them as she looked Hanna's way. "Any plans this is time off?"

Hanna sighed as she broke down her ridged posture into something a little more uncertain. Slowly she shrugged at Niah. This was altogether not something she was interested in dealing with.

"Well… I could spend it dealing with my family…" Hanna mused out loud. She glanced Niah's way and added. "…or I could hold up somewhere else… somewhere a little looser and quieter; any suggestions?"

"Hell yes you can hang with me!" Niah blurted out. She paused and laughed to herself as she added. "Well, I mean…. yes, I could get behind it… still, you should see your family, right?"

Hanna nodded, equally enthused by this.

"Alright then," Hanna confirmed. "We'll crash at your place when we get back, get some breakfast in us, bug your mom, then work up the nerve to have dinner with my family… which is always a treat right?"

Hanna rolled her eyes slightly as she thought about home. She loved her mother and father, loved her siblings… but even with ten months' and almost 78 million kilometres between them, they still felt like such an intrusion. Whether she liked it or not the Hoch influence on everything was obvious, and not just by her Grandfather and Father…

"Really though, thank you for being cool with it, Niah…" she spoke quietly to her best friend. "Sometimes I just want to get away, you know… seems silly."

"I get that," Niah replied, gently hip checking Hanna. "But cards on the table, I still don't understand why you like hanging out at my house. It's kind of plain compared to yours."

Hanna hip checked Hanna right back. Again, this hang up was back on the table… Next thing she knew Niah would be calling Hanna 'Countess', a title she just fucking knew Father was going to thrust into her lap before long…

"Don't sell your home short, Ni. Your place is ultra-comfy, and your parents are so fucking cool," Hanna replied, glancing at the suddenly purple cheeked quarian. "My parents are on ceremony every moment, annnd you're the baby of your family. No little monsters hanging off your every move, wanting your attention at all hours of the day."

Next to Hanna, Niah emitted a drawn out, amused laugh.

"God, I guess you would know all about how it must have been to be Karive, wouldn't you?" Niah said, bringing her eldest sibling up. "No wonder you take her side and shit."

Hanna could only smirk at first; as the two of them reached the shuttle bay. Two shuttles were left. One was loading ship officer candidates, the other interceptor pilot trainees.

"You know damn well I'll take your side ninety-nine out of a hundred times… But eldest siblings have to stick together," she informed the quarian as she unbuttoned her rumpled jacket. "We're the ones facing the brunt of our parents expectations… we rarely hear the praise for our triumphs, but we will certainly hear about our failures…"

As Hanna glanced to Niah and found her friend looking at her strangely. Shrugging, Hanna turned away and stopped in front of the fighter shuttle to see Niah off. Niah seemed a little disheartened, like the short shuttle ride not a trip she wanted to make without her. Still, Niah disengaged and wandered off to join the rest of her fellows, leaving Hanna by herself.

Hanna glanced back at the shuttle waiting for her. If her fellow trainees already didn't like her, then what was the point of trying to going with them? If she was going to be in a command position, perhaps it was instead better to get to know the ones whom she would be leading into combat against the geth someday.

If that meant more time with Niah, she… supposed that was sort of a bonus in itself…

Silently Hanna stepped quickly towards the fighter shuttle and ended once again standing next to Niah. Niah did not notice. It took another small hip check on Hanna's part before the girl bounced on her toes in surprise as she noticed Hanna standing there, not speaking a word as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Niah'Vetari, don't tell me you're associating with Fleet blowhards!" one of the pilot trainees playfully jeered at the sight of Hanna standing there with one of their other sisters.

"Speak about my best friend and your future Kapitän like that again, and I'll punch you in the throat, Steiner!" Niah snapped back without a moment to hesitate.

As the shuttle exploded with laughter, Hanna could not help but be impressed by the display of protection the quarian was offering her without fear or uncertainty. Niah sat and patted the seat next to her, a rare confident expression splashed over her face.

This… this was an expression Hanna wanted to see from her all the time…

…

…

Welcome to the first Chapter of Uplifted: Integration the redo. I've been sitting here trying to figure out how I was going to go about it. I decided for the time being I was going to keep it simple and dedicate the first story as a character and world building exercise. Still deciding how much will carry over, but for now this is a story about building up Hanna (formerly Charlotte) von Hoch into a character at the same scale as her Grandfather before her. We'll see her strengths and weaknesses, explore her fears, and build the dynamic between her and Niah'Vetari.

That means her family. All her family comes second. There will be plenty of material to draw on, but a lot of it feels like filler, and I want to cut straight to it once I feel I have Hanna plotted out. Another thing is I want to set it up as a story where you don't need to read Uplifted to get into it. I get why people don't see the appeal it. It's long and unpleasant. I'm looking to make it as friendly as I can.

I originally envisioned Uplifted the Grand Crusade series to be a sweeping space epic, and a grimy noir covert fic, but the more I think about it, the less I think I can do that. I'm not the same person I was when I wrote Uplifted Arrival and the next generation with 10k+ chapter releases. I don't have the patience and just have a lot of other stories that draw my attention, along with a potential jump into a new fandom, which might come out of left field. We'll see.

Anyways, sorry for this spiel, and thanks for reading this.