The tiny world within my pod flashed bright, drowning out everything around me in pixels and white. Slowly, the simulated world came into view.
A large hangar stretched out ahead, not much different from the hangars we had passed through during our induction. Simulated concrete, strip lighting and the omnipresent smell of ozone. I turned my head, and I felt the servos and rotors whirr to life as the mech turned. Around me were line after line of other mechs standing in the centre of the hangar.
Large, modular, and industrial machines that were both blocky and sleek in design. Painted a khaki green mixed with deeper shades to create the illusion of camouflage. They possessed large gauntlets with a firearm attached to the underside of each arm, allowing for a large volume of inaccurate fire.
Never got why they painted the mechs this way, sensor systems can easily pick them out just from their heat signatures alone.
Corralling my thoughts, I looked down at myself, the neural link tugging at the back of my mind like an itch I couldn't reach. I filtered out the feeling, ignoring it to the best of my ability, focusing on this new reality. To better get to grips with it I flexed my fingers and watched as the mech's hands clenched. They bore massive articulated gauntlets, each finger thick as my forearm, the joints hissing with hydraulic feedback I could feel in my knuckles.
Ahh — how I missed this.
The prep-academy pods had given me thousands of hours inside a simulation just like this one. But it had been six months since I last took part in such a simulation; the neural feedback buzzed at the back of my mind.
Hmm, just one last thing.
I looked around the cockpit in search of my favourite button. It wasn't in clear view at first glance, and so I ran my hand underneath the console searching for it. An old-fashioned flip toggle beneath the central controls.
Bingo.
I flipped it.
[WARNING: MANUAL OVERRIDE ACTIVE]
[SYSTEM COHESION DEGRADING]
[AEGIS-ASSIST OFFLINE]
I grinned as I felt vast amounts of data forcefully enter my mind, every hum and vibration from the mech's core, the heat of the engines, the stabilisers straining to keep up.
I took a step.
The mech responded smoothly. My weight shifted forward, and the frame followed. But there was a slight lag to it I didn't expect, a fraction of a second that caused me to almost lose my balance. I sank into the step, allowing the stabilisers to fix the frame's gait.
Huh, that's new. Maybe I'm just out of practice.
I took another step, and the same fraction of delay appeared. I compensated, pausing my step, matching the lag before it fell into place perfectly.
There we go.
I flexed the mech's hands again and raised my guard. The mech copied it, the massive forearms settling into position with a precision that would have impressed me if the movement hadn't arrived a beat after I'd finished thinking it.
Never mind, that's going to take some getting used to. Maybe it's the difference in stats I had from the prep-academy simulation and the ones I have now.
Around me, the hangar filled with sound that distracted me from my thoughts. The grinding creak of mechs stirring and whirring, a crash of someone falling to the ground, and another crash on the far end of the bay that was much louder.
"Recruit Sato! Cease your fuckery. Breathe — and stop fighting the link!" Okafor shouted through the comms.
"I'm not fighting it, it's fighting me!" Sato said, his pitch strained and higher than usual.
"Close your eyes inside the pod. Focus on the mech's body. Let your real body go."
There were a few seconds of silence before Sato's mech slowly straightened.
"That is super, super weird," Sato said, a hint of a shiver coming through his voice.
"Congratulations. You're standing. Now walk to the green marker."
My HUD flickered as a green marker shimmered to life. It stood about fifty meters away from me, further into the enormous hangar.
I started for it, moving one leg after another, anticipating the lag and allowing myself to get a feel for how the mech worked in the simulated space.
"Not bad, Tiernan, you pick it up fast." Okafor's voice came through my personal comm.
"Thank you, ma'am."
"Alright, your link stability is too clean for a first-timer. Head to the intermediate course, follow the blinker. Move — on the bounce."
"Understood."
Let's see how far we can push this thing.
I started across the hangar, first walking, then slowly transitioning into a jog; the mech's stride ate the distance in long, heavy steps. My body quickly adapted to the new form and input, as the speed at which the mech moved steadily increased, as did my competence.
I initiated a right turn toward the course, following the new marker on my HUD, and the mech's torso followed a fraction late. My shoulder clipped the edge of a docking crane with a screech of metal on metal that echoed through the hangar.
Smooth Marcus.
After a few more minor mishaps, I reached the course and began to move through it.
Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Let's take it slow.
The intermediate course was quite similar to the gauntlet in several ways, except that all of it was scaled up by about five times. Typical elevation changes, to narrow corridors and objects to pick up to refine motor control. I followed through with it, moved across the elevation pitches, squeezed through the corridors and manoeuvred the boxes and objects to their designated spots before moving on.
All in all, it was quite easy, even if I was out of practice.
As the saying goes, once you learn how to pilot a mech, you never forget. Or was that a bike?
Behind me, the barracks were still finding their feet. I could hear them through the comms — fragments of conversation, grunts of effort, Okafor's corrections flat and steady between the crashes.
Jin's mech caught my attention. She moved more sharply than everyone else; her Agility translated exceptionally well and made her frame look ten tonnes lighter. She reached the yellow marker, turned, and accelerated.
The burst fired her deviation activating through the neural link. Her mech lunged forward three metres in a jagged, stuttering dash, and the mech's legs scrambled for purchase.
"Jin. Save the heroics for when you have firmware that can handle your deviation."
"Understood, ma'am." She clipped.
Tomás passed the yellow marker while Jin was heading back to the start. His mech walked with a mechanical deliberation, nothing fancy. It seemed as if he was just trying to get a feel for things first, trying to crawl before he could run.
We all focused on our individual tasks for hours. I must have run the intermediate course at least a hundred times, and I was starting to get sick of it. The word intermediate really oversold the difficulty; it was more akin to a beginner plus.
The rest of the barracks progressed pretty quickly. Once they got over the chasm of body, mind and machine, they started to settle into a steady rhythm that carried them through. Though I imagined that was large in part due to system skills, and the Aegis-Assist doing a lot of heavy lifting for them.
But the first slot of the day came and went, and soon we moved onto combat exercises. Okafor called for a rendezvous back at the centre point of the hangar, and we all fell into line. I was truly excited for this, while I could just about hold my own with the heaviest hitters in direct hand-to-hand, mech combat was my forte.
I get to kick Miller's ass just like in the first week, heh.
"Alright, greenies, form up. Get ready for drill."
No… Please, no. God, no.
The barracks let out a collective groan at the mere mention of it, but form up we did and drill we did. Hours of it, left turn, right turn, stand at ease, standing at attention, marching in formation, saluting. The whole shebang. What took the squad a good few weeks to properly figure out and become proficient at was now ten times worse. While we could drill in our sleep in our regular bodies, replicating that in giant death machines was a different story.
We stumbled, crashed into each other, and did just about everything entirely out of time. The issue stemmed from the input lag that different Agility stat scores promised. Where once we had a feel for each other's rhythms and cadences, this was an entirely different ballpark.
But all painful things must come to an end, and as the barracks remained stuck learning the very basics, our promises of mech glory shattered.
I really wish there was a system skill for drill.
The following evening in the barracks was almost deathly quiet; everyone lay flat in their bunks staring at the ceiling with blank expressions, as if their neurons were completely fried.
"My everything hurts," Sato said from his bunk. "How does my everything hurt? I was lying in a pod."
"Neural echo," Park murmured. "The link translates strain bidirectionally."
"Great. The pod makes me tired, and I didn't even move."
I sat on the edge of my bunk and reached into my footlocker and pulled the datapad from it. I'd almost completely forgotten about it from Osei, the simulations and the cultivation method.
The leather case was warm in my hands. I thumbed the activation switch.
Though nothing happened, I sighed and prepared to put it back down when my interface blinked to life.
[NEURAL HANDSHAKE — COMPLETE]
[CONTENTS ENCRYPTED]
[REQUIREMENTS: RANK 1]
[CURRENT RANK: 0]
[RANK PROGRESSION: 18/100]
I stared at the screen.
GOD FUCKING DAMMIT.
"Nothing is ever easy, is it?" I murmured under my breath.
"It sure isn't. Here I thought the simulations were going to be cool as hell. Fighting endless swarms of Buggers, fighting each other in high-octane combat. Instead, we got shitty drill…" Sato continued his endless parade of complaining.
"Huh? Oh yeah, it's not what I imagined either." I said.
I set the datapad back into my footlocker and lay down on my bed.
Well, at least I've got a path forward, and at least it can be unlocked.
I closed my eyes and let Sato's yapping and sleep take me.