My fist collided with densely packed sand in a leather case. I had wandered into the gym and was punching a bag for all I was worth. It was swinging to and fro as my fists jabbed again and again, making it flex under the power of my assault. I wasn’t sure how I had gotten here, the last thing I remembered was leaving the mess hall, but man did it feel good to punch something. Each strike made my blood pound a little harder, until I was striking in rhythm to my pulse.
Eventually I had to stop, out of breath, sweat dripping into my eyes, and hands pulsing from striking the bag as hard as I could. I apparently hadn’t changed, hadn’t put on gloves, or done anything to warm up, just walked up to the bag and beat it like it owed me money.
Wheezing to catch my breath, I looked down at my hands and noticed a faint trickle of blood from each of my knuckles, which had coated my hands while I was punching, leaving my hands an uncomfortable shade of crimson. I padded over to the sink and washed up my hands and face, rinsing the blood and sweat. Well that was unsettling to say the least. I needed to get to bed soon, or else I wouldn’t be able to do much good tomorrow. What time was it, anyways?
I slipped out my pad and realized that I was due to “wake up” any minute. Sighing, I went back to my room and showered instead of going to bed, cleaning the rest of the sweat and sleep from my body. It was going to be another long day of training, but such was life while in a war. If you weren’t fighting, you were getting ready to fight.
I put yesterday’s uniform in the laundry and got dressed in a new uniform, looking myself over before turning to leave and get my team trained. I had taken a few steps into the hall before I noticed something off about my steps. I looked down and saw a piece of paper stuck to my shoe, which I then peeled off. It was a post it note with a heart with A + D written in the middle and an arrow through it horizontally bisecting it. That’s strange, I wonder why that was in the hallway like that; there usually isn’t litter around on the ship. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to wonder about it later.
I tossed the note in a garbage receptacle and proceeded to the classroom. This time all three of my wingmates were waiting for me looking over a orbital mechanics diagram, with Gwayne explaining some of the finer points of the diagram to Amy while Daren made occasional comments about clever maneuvers one could manage. I smiled at them working together like that and walked to the front, pulling up a diagram of the lancer and exploding it out so that I could highlight key systems for us to learn about today. I decided that the cockpit would be a rather important topic for discussion and it had been quite a while since any of us had taken an in depth look at it.
“As happy as I am to see you three studying together, I’m going to have to ask you to take a look at what we’ll be examining today.”
“Of course, sir.” They chirped and switched to the front view so they could inspect what I was looking at.
“We use an advanced cockpit that, at a glance, might remind you of a fighter jet cockpit, but I assure you that while it bears some casual resemblance, the devil is in the details and those are certainly quite distinct.” I pulled the seat out of the expanded view and began to cover the features of it. “While this appears to be a leather chair, it is in fact a crash couch, capable of supporting your body under tens of gs of acceleration. This does not, in any way, suggest that attempting such acceleration is advisable. Such acceleration quickly proves lethal to the most trained of us, much less the inexperienced pilots such as ourselves. Yes, in this context even I am considered inexperienced.” I cut off Amy’s open mouth before she could even start.
“It is imperative that you remember that it is very dangerous to accelerate too quickly, because it will kill you before enemy fire can even find you.” I shifted the display to the seat integrated controls. “These here are the main controls you should be familiar with. They control every axis of movement and targeting and weapons. This means that it is the main point of contact for controlling literally everything you need during a firefight. The twin joysticks allows you to perform complicated maneuvers while using the throttle levers to control you acceleration of the main thrust. Controlling all of these in sync is very important because it can make the difference between being in position to make the devastating shot that will cripple your foe, and being plastered against incoming flak.”
I paused to see that everyone was taking notes and smiled. It was good to have their full attention and go through the systems in detail like this. It felt normal… and right. This was the satisfaction my previous occupation was completely lacking. I pulled the HUD, or Heads Up Display, into focus and began again.
“This is your HUD. On it will display all the information you can imagine being able to handle, and then some. It will take you a while to get used to, hell, I’m not even used to how much data it can show me. It is your eyes and ears out there, telling you incoming projectiles, enemy positions, weapon ranges, who is talking on the comms, friendly positions, enemy weak points and general structure, and so much more. Take care of it as you would your own eyes, for without it you will be literally blind. This cockpit has no windows, no direct view to the outside at all. Without your HUD, you might as well go for respawn right there and then, because you’ll be unable to do anything else. Thankfully, both sides have agreed that jamming each other with overwhelming energy is both pointless and needlessly disruptive, so you don’t have to worry about the enemy blinding you with an abundance of energy, but that won’t save you from razor sharp hot metal riddling it with holes and taking you out that way.
“I know this is a lot of information, but Amy needs all of this, and we’re all due for a refresher on this stuff. Are there any questions so far?”
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
Amy looked up from her notes and nodded. “How do you maneuver when you are targeting? Doesn’t targeting take one joystick up completely to let you lock on?”
“So it does, but that doesn’t make you unable to maneuver. Before entering targeting, you can set which controls from that joystick you want to replace controls on the other one, and you still have two axis of freedom that can be dedicated to motion while in targeting. Our vessels have six degrees of freedom, and each joystick has four degrees of freedom, which means that while you lose the most intuitive axis of freedom while in targeting, you can still fully control your craft while in targeting.
“To clarify about axis of freedom, the ship has forwards/backwards, left/right, up/down, roll, pitch, and yaw. Your joysticks have pitch, roll, yaw, and up/down. The joysticks are typically set up so that up/down is disabled, because it can really mess up new pilots, but with practice, you can use up/down and yaw on your targeting joystick to help control the craft while in targeting. We can load up a training regime later today to give you all time to practice more advanced control schemes.
“Does this answer your question?”
“Yes, Commander, it does. I never realized our joysticks were so… sophisticated.”
“They are indeed, and we’re the best because we can control the craft under those conditions with such complicated tools. It’s one of the most essential parts of the craft, and you need to get your mind wrapped around how to manipulated them so you can handle fighting against real opponents.
“If there are no questions at this time, I will move on to auxiliary controls. These are the controls you probably won’t be messing with during a fight, but are essential before and after. All the controls for things like stealth plating, comm systems, navigation, diagnostics and any other small features of the ship, such as the music player, are located here. While these are not nearly as important to be intimately familiar with, it is good to be passingly familiar and competent at controlling these. It is important, but not completely necessary, to be able to manage your comm channels in a timeless manner.
“Another auxiliary control, not located with the others, is the ejection button. ‘Button’ is actually a misnomer, because it’s a lever, located on the left side of the seat. Pulling it will cause the craft to shred itself except for the main thruster and cockpit and will make the main thruster fire at 30g of acceleration away from the initial direction of travel for thirty seconds before lowering to 10 g and continuing as long as possible. This is, ideally, to point you in the direction of the carrier and push you back towards it as quickly as possible. It probably fails half the time, but that’s the best you could hope to get given the circumstances on finds themselves in out there. It is a hostile and violent environment, and any chance of successfully getting out of a firefight is better than no chance.
“Finally we come to the frame of the cockpit. This reinforced cage of metal is a sphere for modularity and survivability. About a meter in diameter, it holds the pilot and everything we’ve spoken about so far today. The outside is designed to be inserted into special cradles used in every lancer in the fleet. Rumor has it that our enemy uses a similar system for all gunners in their fleet, lancer or no, but I’m not aboard one of their ships so who cares? Not this pilot, that’s for sure. I just want to put steel on target and keep the enemy out of our space for as long as I can assist with that. Who is with me?”
“HOOYAH” they shouted back to me, raising their fists into the air.
“Glad to hear it. Let’s get some chow and then we’ll hit the gym and simulators, how does that sound?”
“Sounds great boss.” Daren said, grabbing his things.
“See you in a few.” I replied, grabbing my own things and heading to my room to put away the materials I had brought to class.
I dropped my things off at my room and turned to head down the corridor towards the mess hall. I smiled at some of the others walking the hall before I turned to enter the mess and grabbed a platter to load up with food. I grabbed an extra helping of chicken alfredo and went to join my wing at a table.
“We’re going to be doing a light workout followed by back to basics training today.” I explained to them as I shovelled food into my mouth.
“Whatever you say commander.” Amy simpered, smiling at me over a cesar salad.
“Yeah, sounds good. I’m going to try out some of those complicated move you manage all the time” Gwayne said, looking at a flight report from a couple of missions ago as it demonstrated me turning about my center of gravity while launching a half dozen lances into an enemy’s side. “Now that you’ve explained how the controls can be changed, I understand, in principle at least, how you’ve managed some of the flying I’ve seen you manage. Until now it just looked like pure magic.”
“Well it took me some doing to figure it out myself. I watched Lukas’ flying and poured over the flight designs until something clicked and I figured out how he did it. Then I spent hundreds of hours in the simulator, practicing such moves until I could manage them at intense g-forces. Now it’s all muscle memory.” I took a few more bites, giving the others time to process and respond.
“Yeah, we all need to step up our research game. Sure, yesterday Gwayne and I handled that cruiser alright, but it was just the two ships and Amy was being a target.” Daren shrugged. “Besides, I don’t want to be left in the dust as you demonstrate how easy it can be to take out a cruiser with pinpoint accuracy.”
I chuckled, forming another bite on my fork. “It’s not that easy, I’ve just trained and trained and trained. Things look a lot easier when you’ve done them a thousand times. What is that quote, ‘I don’t fear the man who has performed ten thousand technique, I fear the man who has performed one technique ten thousand times.’”
“That’s easy for you to say, commander, but some of us just got here.” Amy pouted.
“And I’m going to lend you the wisdom from my experience. You are all capable of doing everything I have, or you wouldn’t be here. Someone up there,” I gesture at the ceiling, “believes you are capable of piloting lancers into enemy fire and putting steel on target. I’m just here to facilitate your education and formulate plans that will hopefully meet mission goals.”
“Well I’m glad to be flying under you.” Gwayne smiles, “Let’s hear it for Alpha Wing.”
“HOOYAH” we yell together, before getting up from our cleared plates and placing them in the proper receptacle.
“Meetup in twenty at the gym for a workout,” I remind everyone, waving them off as I head to my own room to get dressed.