Choose Your Character: Keiko Tanaka

The daughter of scanner technician (and former UEE Starman) Steven Tanaka, and UEE naval pilot Lieutenant (JG) Sarah Phillips, there was no question that Kei would enter into some form of UEE service, of course; from her mother she learned a love of flying, of ships that could go fast and handle as though they were an extension of yourself. And from her father she learned a deep and abiding curiosity about how those ships worked, and about the distant stars she saw through his telescope with him, during those long months when her mother was away on duty.

Naval service seemed a way to indulge all of that.

But shortly after she enlisted, her father's health began to fail, the result of a lengthy exposure to chemicals during his own military duty–one worsened by the lack of a naval SAR ship in the area, at the time. Inspired by watching her father fade and eventually pass, Kei decided to get a medic certification on the side just to have at least the basics on hand just in case it was ever useful. Which it indeed did, only about six months after finishing her basic medical certification, when Kei's squad ended up chasing off a band of pirates harassing a civilian ship piloted by an older man named Connor Simms.

Simms had been an entrepreneur in his youth, one who had made his fortune early and then invested it in trying to build what he hoped would be a new company focused on exploration and discovery. He was joined in this by an unusual partner, a Xi'an with a similar curiosity named R.ēth; the two had hoped that this unusual friendship and partnership would let them engage in exploration in both human and Xi'an territories.

Sadly, they had limited luck, as they'd had little luck in finding jump points or other significantly profitable discoveries. As such, the company turned to solo scouting–and even private escort–missions to pay the bills, much like the ill-fated one that Keiko met Simms in the aftermath of.

She sat with the explorer as they hauled him to medical care, and in the process the two bonded. After his recovery, Simms reached back out, and took on the role of an eccentric uncle to Keiko. She began spending more of her downtime with Simms and his crew, even R.ēth, who took to calling her kyul’ēyūl, "songbird"–or just ē’yūl, "Melody"–after her unconscious habit of humming to herself as she tinkered with any machinery. Intrigued by the nickname, she began trying to learn the Xi'an language from a pleased R.ēth (even if he sometimes despaired at her accent).

In time, she became perhaps not an unofficial member of the company, but at least a close friend to it. When her mother's frigate was lost with all hands, it was Simms and the others who were there for her. She listened to their tales of the company's victories and woes, and began to see the UEE from outside of the lens of a lifetime military family.

And it was through that outside lens that Keiko's view of the UEE began to tarnish. She saw how much injustice and inequality was perpetrated throughout human space and how little the UEE seemed to care, or even thrive on the back of it.

And then one day, she got a message from R.ēth that Simms and the others–save for R.ēth, who had avoided the mission as it was in human-held space–had taken one of the company's ships out to investigate rumors of a new jump point. While out, they'd been jumped by pirates; the ship, and all hands aboard, were lost. Simms having no living relatives and the rest of the company being gone, he had left his portion of the company to Keiko. She offered it to R.ēth, but with his friend and partner lost, the Xi'an's heart had gone out of the endeavor.

Feeling a bit lost and adrift, Keiko mustered out–retaining a reserve status, just in case–and found herself standing among Simms' ships and pondering her next steps as a civilian.