Mars – MCNA – Commons
PT Shyla Redding and EWOT Nate Beasley
Beasley caught up to her just inside the commons area. She had stopped, and even though he couldn’t see her face from behind, her body language indicated she was downright furious. When Beasley saw past her, he understood why: the whole of the commons had stopped talking when she entered. Some looked irate, others looked congratulatory. Beasley had forgotten, but it was a major event that an Academy record had been broken, and two records on the same day by the same crew were practically unheard of. The cadets in the Commons didn’t know whether they should be celebrating or forming a lynch mob.
“How’d you do it, Redding
All pretenses were dropped, and Vermanov moved in, probably to try one of her martial skills out on Shyla, but Nate stepped in between them. “I think you should leave, Sasha,” he said softly.
Vermanov looked shocked, and Shyla could’ve sworn that she saw hurt in Vermanov’s green eyes, but she quickly schooled her face. “Playing baby-sitter today, Nate? I would have thought that was below someone of your talents.”
“If it can help another, nothing is too low,” Nate said. Vermanov couldn’t hide the hurt this time, and walked away. Her gaggle followed her, rumbling about Shyla somehow brainwashing Beasley.
Shyla moved in close to Nate and whispered at him so others couldn’t hear, “I do not, and never have, needed saving. Find some other mercy mission, Beasley.” She then stormed off to her dorm.
The door slid shut behind Shyla as she entered her room. She stripped off her overalls and half-naked fell onto her bunk. Why did everyone always assume she needed help? She didn’t need anyone to back her up. She just needed to rely on herself and everything would work out. Being alone wasn’t so bad either, if no one was close, no one could stab you in the back. She heaved a great sigh into the bed covering, then got up and stripped off the rest of her garments and started the nano-shower.
A short, unpleasant cleansing later, Shyla still found herself worked up over the day’s events. The fact that Michaels and Beasley had conspired with each other infuriated her. She was some lost cause for them to try and save and the patronizing was more than she could stand. Michaels had been wrong too - she didn’t want to be found, she wanted to find. She wanted to find someone that could read her mind, her every movement. She didn’t want some blasted weekend warrior sitting behind her. She wanted to be able to trust that person. So far, every person had failed, and she’d been unable to trust them with anything. She wanted them to act like, well, like her father. The man had known everything she was thinking. And she still had his patch from when he was a Navy pilot…
Shyla slapped her face to snap out of her funk. It was still early afternoon and she could probably get simulator time if she was lucky. The simulator was as realistic as the real trainer, but had less of a chance of killing you. Shyla had never considered it more than a video game and treated it as such. Some cadets despised her for her apparent apathy to simulator training, but Shyla never cared. In her mind, it would be more useful to be practicing in the real machine flying in a real sky, no matter how well the simulator replicated the effect, so the simulator was not much more than an entertaining distraction.
Shyla was in luck with most of the cadets still running their courses and she was able to get a simulator. The Simulator Room actually had six simulators, all large boxes hovering inside full-motion anti-gravity rings. Two were in use, and Shyla watched as the box bounced around in the ring, moving up and down, side-to-side then crashing up against a side. The trainee inside had just crashed. Shyla tried not to laugh, but her attempt made it come out derisive. A couple of technicians turned sour glances her way, so she moved on to her designated simulator.
She pressed her palm to the hatch and it parted allowing entry. Shyla strapped in and started up the simple pre-flight checks. The hatch closed sealing her in darkness, the only illumination coming from the holo-displays in front of her. She reached over her right shoulder and picked up the simulator glasses, which were a cheap solution to replicating the HUD that displays on her locksuit helmet. The glasses actually were just a head-clip that went over the ears and behind the head. The ‘glasses’ had no lenses or frames in front of the face. Instead, there were tiny holo-emitters that created a holo-display across the face. The glow lit up the cockpit further.
Shyla started the simulator system, and she felt the repulsor field activate and lift the box into the middle of the full-motion rings, keeping it stationary. The rings would move and use repulsor fields to change the orientation of the box within them. It was hard to do, but Shyla had heard of people spinning their boxes, or launching them out of the rings, or other crazy stunts. She supposed that was a side-effect of trying to mimic reality without the reality.
The simulation began, and the walls of the cockpit disappeared, replaced by a three-sixty view of a computer generated environment. The Tru-Sight system was probably the most advanced part of the whole simulator. Shyla wasn’t impressed, just chalking it up to another gimmick.
Trying to decide which course to run, Shyla pulled up her own flight record. All Trainee flights are recorded for review purposes, but they could also be played back, or re-flown in the simulator using the data to create the same environment virtually. After a second scanning the data, she pulled up her most recent flight from that afternoon. Shyla wanted to know if the record-breaking score was truly her skill or Beasley’s.
The simulation fast-forwarded to the starting point, and Shyla heard her recorded call to the Tower control. She was ready for what was next, and as if controlled by muscle memory, gunned the simulator the same way she had gunned the Fang. She blew through the first portion of the course with ease, and then came to the area where the drones had first appeared. She ignored anything Beasley’s simulated self was saying and concentrated on her flying. To her surprise and dismay, she was hit by a paint shot a mere thirty seconds after the drones had appeared. The simulation ended. For that course, getting hit with a paint shot was disqualifying. Shyla grunted in frustration and pounded the control console with her right fist.
She ordered up the same simulation again and started over. Again, she perfectly navigated the start of the course, and was expecting the drones and knew what pattern they’d attack in. She’d expected to be able to dodge right through them, but she was caught by paint again, this time, even quicker than the first time. The frustration quickly blinded her to any improvement, and even though she tried again and again, she never succeeded in getting past the first set of drones on her own.
Finally, as if to prove and emphasize her own failure, she added in Beasley’s shooting data while she flew. This time, she flew the course in less than fourteen minutes. She paid more attention to his calls than last time, and marveled how efficient and eerily prescient his calls seemed to be. The man was highly observant, calm under pressure, and even more so, fully in control of everything. It was because of him that Shyla had been allowed to fly without any difficulties through the run.
11-08-07
Shyla felt the tears starting to well. She couldn’t even find an outlet to express her frustration. All of her training, studying, and work, all proven useless by a god damned EWO. The type of person she’d most hated to boot. Shyla couldn’t stand people that never had a concern for themselves and instead worried after everyone else as if they were helping people. She thought people like that were shallow and false. It was unrealistic for people to not be at least a little selfish. If they couldn’t worry about themselves, how could they truly worry over another? And Nate Beasley seemed to Shyla as the ultimate epitome of this type of person. They were always looking for someone that needed to be saved as if they were some stupid superhero.
Shyla, irritated, waved her hand in front of her face and the simulator’s holo-menu appeared. She pulled up the most difficult piloting course she knew. This course had nothing shooting at her; it was simply a test of flying skill. The Tru-Sight system reset, this time she was in space looking at Saturn’s Rings close-up. The millions of asteroids floated along through space conforming to the magnetic ring. The course went right through the thick of the rings. It was a simple, straight track if you took out the asteroids. But with the asteroids, it was hell. There was no easy way to fly through the field, so it took skill and talent. Shyla had finished the course in the simulator once. All of her other attempts were spectacular failures.
She hit the ‘Start’ button on the holo-menu and the display wiped away. A large number three appeared on her holo-HUD and two floating course markers changed color to amber. The number changed to two, then one, and the markers changed to green. Shyla gunned the throttle and the simulated Fang sped off through space. The course skirted the outer edge, finally dipping deeper into the ring, then back out to the finish. The outer edge was easier than the deeper area, but it had its own challenges. The asteroids in the edge were smaller and numerous in number making them harder to dodge. The deep field held larger asteroids, moving, or rotating quickly, but they held their own small gravitational fields that could affect her piloting.
She nosed the Fang into the field and started to roll and slide, strafe and pitch. Her fingers moved on the control surface constantly changing the angles and attitudes of her verniers and attitude thrusters. She deftly evaded rocks and stones, trying to dodge out of fields of rocks the size of baseballs. Her barrier-shield blocked most of the smaller hits, but a good impact on a rock the size of the fist could cripple her fighter. Her holo-HUD displayed most threats, and she made every attempt to avoid them. She had found her groove, and she knew it. She saw everything coming and dodged gracefully out of the way. Then an asteroid exploded.
Shyla, shocked, jerked her fighter straight and almost collided with another asteroid. Several smaller ones were sent careening through space from the force of the explosion and pelted the barrier of her Fang. Several warning windows popped up informing her of the threat and the quickly weakening barrier. Shyla swore as she regained control of her ship then pulled up radar. There was a blip. Confused, Shyla pulled up the simulator menu and saw that another pod had joined her simulation. She’d been so into her own piloting, that she’d hadn’t notice the message informing her that another pod had joined. She took one guess as to who the other pilot was, and to confirm it, Sasha’s voice blared over the radio.
“Flying solo, Redding
The missiles started flying almost immediately. Shyla, already challenged with the asteroids, found herself in a situation she’d never been in before: one that truly tested her piloting skills. She clung to that idea. Made it her sword, held aloft before her. It was a goal to be overcome and passed. She lost track of everything but rocks and her resolve and poured on the speed.
Sasha’s GIB, Stefan Drake, whistled as he watched the little Fang zip through the rocks. Sasha was grumbling in the pilot’s pod below him. Unlike the Fang and its sleeker cousin, the Switchblade, Sasha and Stefan had loaded an aggressor type craft that had the gunner facing forward elevated above the pilot. The SA-6 Hammerhead, was all weapons and control surfaces. The vertical cockpit at its bow gave it its name, and the pilot and gunner were kept in an upright position, rather than sitting down. The Hammerhead could out-fly and out-gun the little Fang any hour of the day, but had been replaced by the sleeker Switchblade. Even so, Shyla was giving Sasha a run for her money. She was deftly avoiding everything Stefan could shoot at her, as well as dodge everything that Stefan blew up. Sasha had her hands full just trying to keep up with her.
“She’s s’methin’, i’n’t she?” he said in his thick Europan accent.
“I can’t spare the moment to figure out what the hell you just said, Stefan. Clear it up!”
“Nev’mind. Ast’roids forty degrees starb’rd an’ closin’.”
“Where the hell isn’t there any, Stefan?!” she yelled, concentrating on her piloting.
“Ba’ the w’y we c’me, ‘oss. Got tone, Fire One,” Stefan called out covering his smartass remark by cleaning up his accent. The laser-guided missile arced out from the Hammerhead’s side missile bay and struck a larger asteroid in Shyla’s path. The giant rock shattered, showering particles over a large area. Shyla’s Fang pulled an impressive loop into a half-roll changing direction and avoiding the growing hazard. Sasha was forced to also evade as she tried to keep up with Shyla.
“Check you targets, damn it Stefan!”
“Roger,” Stefan sighed and searched for another target.
Outside, a crowd had gathered watching the computer-generated show on large holo-displays. Most were cheering for Sasha. Others were just watching. There didn’t seem to be any calls for Shyla. A call for bets went up, and the noise in the Commons increased. Odds on Shyla were quickly approaching six-to-one against.
Nate heard the commotion and came to investigate, leaving his late lunch at the table. At once, he knew what had transpired. He fought his way thought the crowd and into a controller’s booth and snatched up a headset. The technician on duty didn’t bother to stop him as she was engrossed in the show like everyone else.
“Shyla, can you hear me?”
“Who the hell is this, I’m busy,” came her distracted reply.
“Beasley,” he said simply. He knew it was a bad time, but cleared his throat and started in anyway. “Look, Shyla, I wanted to apologize. I said the wrong thing earlier, I know, but my intentions are still the same. Pull up, hard and to the right!” he called seeing the missile speeding toward her right thruster-pack. She immediately did what he said, and the missile lost lock, and harmlessly flew off into the field. “I know it’s going to be hard to accept me, but I’m willing to work to make it happen. I’ll prove to you that I can be a good EWO. I’ll prove to you that you can trust me.” He stopped, not knowing what else he could say. He knew it wasn’t exactly the right time for such a conversation, but he didn’t know when he’d get another chance with her distracted. Besides, he wasn’t exactly expressing his undying love for her either.
“Just,” she said after a moment, her voice strained with more than just her piloting. “Shut up and get in the back seat.”
Beasley grinned and ran to the open pod next to Shyla’s. He popped the hatch, got in, and quickly joined Shyla’s simulation as her GIB.
Shyla felt his presence in the simulation almost immediately. It was a weird sensation. Beasley wasn’t there physically, but the Tru-Sight system displayed a believable fake, and Nate’s words came over her holo-goggles adding to the realism. She caught her mind wandering and refocused on the task at hand. Sasha must have been getting desperate, because the amount of missiles and laser cannon bursts launched her way were increasing in number.
“Guns coming up, let’s see how they like it when we start shooting back,” Nate said, with a hint of satisfaction in his voice. His holo-HUD showed the targeting reticule and Nate saw the aft-facing gun turret move with his eye movement. An EWO locked onto targets using only his eye movement. An invisible laser tracked his eye in the simulator, but in the actual ships, the motion would be tracked with the Pilot Thought Control system. A small, but distinct difference, the PTC was faster at target recognition and lock-on than the laser site, but this didn’t hamper Beasley at all. He squeezed the trigger and the turret flashed and coughed. Depleted uranium slugs, wrapped in a blanket of highly-charged plasma were magnetically accelerated out of the turret tube. The mass driver was a lethal weapon to any space-borne ship. It could penetrate most barrier-shields. It was a weapon designed to counter most known defenses.
Sasha wasn’t defeated so easily though. She wasn’t expecting it, but her reaction speed was blinding and the Hammerhead jinked. The shot missed by a wide berth. Unlike missiles, mass driver slugs didn’t home so could be easily dodged. But the upside was that Beasley had lots of ammo. He depressed the trigger and let fly salvo after salvo of the burning slugs. Sasha was forced to evade with a wild maneuver getting her out of Beasley’s range, while dodging fast-flying asteroids.
Meanwhile, Shyla, now relieved of the burden of dodging missiles, concentrated on the course and dodging rocks. She increased speed and put even more distance between them and Sasha. The radio crackled to life, “Cheating again, Redding Redding
“This is just a simulation, Sasha,” Beasley called out tonelessly. There was silence for a long moment, and then, “Nate, is that you? No, you can’t be there. Why would you help her!?”
“Because she’s my pilot, Vermanov. You’ll just need to remember that. Watch that rock,” he said patronizing her. Her Hammerhead veered away, missing the oncoming asteroid by a meter.
“That’s a lie, Nate! She has no EWO! You should be mine!”
“You have an EWO, Sasha, and good one, too. How’s it hanging, Stefan?” Beasley said, again making light of the situation.
“Pr’tty bor’d act’lly. I’m no’ complainin’ abou’ getting’ to shoot stuff, mind you,” Stefan said lazily.
There was a shriek over the radio and the Hammerhead went ballistic for a second. Beasley wasn’t completely surprised, always knowing Sasha to be high strung, but he wasn’t expecting her to lose it in a simulator.
“Sorry Sasha. I belong to Shyla now. And I think I see the finish line. Here’s a parting gift for you,” and Nate fired the salvo he’d been holding onto for the last few moments. It arced straight out towards the cockpit of the Hammerhead. Sasha’s wild flying, and her lack of concentration on the situation at hand, put her back into Nate’s range again. Still, Sasha saw the shot and evaded. Nate had expected that and had actually aimed for an asteroid directly behind her and on a similar course and speed. The rock shattered showering large chunks of rock over the Hammerhead. The simulator displayed the canopy of the Hammerhead cracking, and then exploding outward. The now pilotless aggressor drifted into an oncoming asteroid and exploded into pieces. The virtual Hammerhead faded out of the simulation.
Shyla had been listening to the conversation, but had said nothing. Concentrating on the course and rocks, but also trying to keep Sasha in a good shooting position for Nate had been taxing. His gamble had worked, and Shyla’s Fang flew past the end markers. The simulation menu popped up displaying the time. It was another record. The simulation ended, and she closed down the holo-display leaving her in the darkness of the pod. She hesitated getting out, not sure what to expect from Nate or Sasha outside. When she did crack the hatch a moment later, she heard a most unexpected sound.
Cheering.
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