Chapter 1: A new beginning
Taz stared at the wall. Her first day of training to be a Starship ranger was finally here. Her mother had seen her off, bursting with pride at what her daughter was achieving.
Ever since she was three, Taz had wanted to be a ranger. When the other girls were playing with dolls and skipping ropes, Taz was pretending to shoot things with her toy zapper, or hanging from trees on an improvised surveillance mission.
Taz always wore the same tom-boyish clothes which consisted of tank tops, khaki shorts or trousers and army boots which were in need of repair from over use. She dressed, looked and acted like a boy in every way, (growing up with 3 brothers had toughened her up!) but the one thing that opposed this look was her hair. For as long as she could remember, she had had thick, raven black hair that ran the whole length of her back and hung well past her waist. She always tied it back in a plait or a ponytail, and however much she complained about it and threatened to chop it all off, she never did.
However, one month earlier she finally received her acceptance letter to Space school and told her mother that she wanted it cut off. She was a new person, stronger, fearless, so the girly hair had to go. Her mother, crying through the whole ordeal, took a pair of scissors and cut the ponytail at the base of her neck before neatening up the back and sides and finished by tying a red bandana to keep the stray hairs from falling into her face.
She would never admit it, but as she stared into the mirror that evening, feeling strangely lightheaded due to the weight that had been taken by the hair, and saw her reflection staring back without the black sheet of hair, she cried. For some reason it had let her keep hold of a more innocent part of her, reminding her that not all of her was violent. Mentally, she shook herself. Look at the state of her! Red puffy eyes, runny nose, cracked lips and cheeks glistening softly from the tears she had let fall. That was NOT what a Starship ranger should look like! She wiped her wet eyes and cheeks before dunking her whole head in a bucket of icy water. She towel dried her head before changing into a grubby tank top and leggings which she always slept in. She turned out the light and settled down to another restless nights sleep.
A month on from that night, she had grown accustomed to her new look and now quite liked the ferocious looking spikes that adorned her head. They made her look more threatening, which was always a bonus, especially with her being only 5 feet tall, with a minute frame. She was small, there was no denying that, but the sixteen year old could fight off fully grown men with nothing but a dinner tray.
She stopped reminiscing and focuses on the present. She was about to check the large timer on the wall, telling them the time of arrival when she felt the vessel come to a juddering halt. They had arrived.