Forging the Frontier (#1 Neon Frontier History)
02 Jan 2025Rawnu
It’s been four years since we set the first lights ablaze and called ourselves Neon Frontier. Four years since I walked into that half-lit bar in Oberon’s Refuge and found myself at the start of something I didn’t even know I needed. The galaxy was chaos then—Thargoids in the Pleiades, the superpowers playing their endless games of control—and in the middle of it all, a handful of strangers who were done with all of it.That station was a mess. The Thargoids had battered the system to the edge of collapse, and Oberon’s Refuge felt like it was just holding on, its air thick with smoke and desperation. I’d docked the Iolaire, my long gone Krait Phantom, after running relief missions to evacuate civilians from another doomed settlement. My nerves were shot. I just wanted a drink and maybe some quiet, but what I got was Jaxon Reeve.
Jaxon was impossible to miss—tall, with an augmented arm that glinted under the bar’s flickering neon. He was in the middle of an argument with a trader about supply routes, his voice cutting through the murmur of the room. He had this presence, like he wasn’t just taking up space but commanding it. I tried to ignore him, but the moment I made a comment about the station’s defenseless docking protocols, I was dragged into the conversation.
And then there was Elyra Sen. She was sitting at a table in the corner, half-hidden by the holo-display of data streams she was scrolling through. She had this electric energy about her, like she was plugged directly into the station’s failing power grid. When I pointed out a few flaws in Oberon’s defenses, she didn’t look up. She just said, “You think you could do better?”
I told her I knew I could.
That was the spark. Jaxon laughed, joined the conversation, and before I knew it, the three of us were swapping stories. Jaxon talked about the missions he’d run for the Federation, how he’d been ordered to leave civilians behind while securing corporate assets. Elyra shared the horrors she’d uncovered working on Imperial research—secret experiments using Guardian tech on unwilling test subjects. I talked about my time with the Screaming Firehawks, the friends I’d lost, and how the war with the Thargoids had exposed the galaxy’s worst truths.
We were strangers with different scars, but the same fire burned in all of us. We were tired of being pawns in someone else’s game. We wanted something more—something better.
The turning point came faster than any of us expected. Before the night was over, Oberon’s Refuge came under attack. A rogue corporate faction had decided the station wasn’t worth protecting but was worth looting. We didn’t have time to think, only to act.
Jaxon flew his Chieftain, a brutal and efficient beast of a ship. Elyra had her modified Cobra Mk III, rigged with systems that could disable an entire ship’s weapons mid-flight. And I had the Iolaire, her sleek frame dancing between ships as I scouted weak points in the enemy formation. It was chaos, pure and simple, but somehow, we pulled through. The station survived because we fought back.
After the dust settled, we stood in the hangar, watching engineers patch the worst of the damage. Elyra broke the silence. “We can’t keep doing this. Putting out fires for people who won’t fight for themselves.”
“We need something more,” I said, and for the first time, it wasn’t just a vague thought. It was an idea, fully formed.
Jaxon grinned. “Something that fights for freedom. For us. For everyone who’s had enough.”
In the weeks that followed, we found others who shared our vision. Explorers, mercenaries, hackers—anyone who didn’t fit into the Bubble’s suffocating systems but wasn’t ready to give up. Using data I’d gathered during my deep-space expeditions, we found an abandoned asteroid base on the fringes of human space and made it our home.
I wrote "Neon in the Black" during one of those long nights in the base, watching the neon glow of our ships in the hangar. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but when I played it for the squadron, it became something more. It was a declaration—a promise that we’d carve our own path in the galaxy, no matter what it cost.
Four years later, Neon Frontier is more than just a squadron. It’s a family. A movement. We’ve fought off corporate vultures, explored the darkest corners of space, and faced the Thargoids on our terms. Every ship in our fleet carries the glow of defiance, a beacon against the void.
Looking back, it’s almost funny. I walked into that bar in 3307 tired and bitter, thinking the galaxy had beaten me down for the last time. But Jaxon and Elyra—those two misfits—showed me that even in the darkest times, you can find something worth fighting for.
And now? Now we’re the Neon Frontier. And the galaxy knows our name.