Sitting in the lobby, she realized that these people did almost exactly what she herself did; just for different reasons. She'd answered a long list of questions, alongside a group of others... and now a few techs were taking all that data and putting together a sim that would convince a group of people it was real... with the idea of subjecting them to what they would think were genuine, life-or-death situations.

She reached the back of her head, touching the tiny sliver they'd had her put in a week ago; when she entered the sim, she wouldn't remember answering these questions, until the sim was over. Unfortunately for her own purposes, it didn't work on existing memories; but they could essentially make a temporary form of amnesia. When she woke up in the sim, she'd think she was still doing her daily flight training, just building muscle memory and instincts that would help fly... and they'd create a believable narrative that would lead to the problems.

What would the narrative be? How would it work? She was excited to find out... but a touch worried. She'd told them about the tattoo. She wasn't the only one to do it, but they came in different varieties, and patterns... and after this sim, she'd need to find a different one to use. She could never use it to determine reality again. She glanced down at it. The ink and the pattern it were formed in would make the wrong picture show on any tattoo. So.... when she saw the real thing inside the sim...

***

The tiny sliver they'd inserted for the test was confusing. They claimed they were testing her compatibility for the sim; and she was reasonably certain they were going to use a direct connection, rather than a headset or anything of the sort... but no. They'd put it away as soon as they inserted it, and the technician who'd been testing her had frowned. "Well then. That's... unfortunate."

He looked at his wrist, then at her. "We should get to the nearest shelter. There's an attack coming."

Erica blinked. "An... attack?"

"Yup. Some pirates... probably just some thinly disguised Alliance troops... just entered the system. I'm sure we'll be fine, but with the sheer number of them, it might take some time...."

The distant sound of sirens. A deep fear ran through Erica. Even if they had no idea who she was, simply being an augment would make for a terrible fate if the Alliance somehow got hold of Tybalt... but that was impossible... right?

"Okay. Where do we go?"

"Every train station has an underground bunker, with beds, supplies, and its own power. We just need to get there, and we'll be fine." He glanced at her. "You know how to use a weapon?"

She shrugged. "I did the training here with rifles, and before I showed up, I did training with handguns." She thought of her years playing as a ranger in the sims. "And blades; solid, machete sort, not knives."

He blinked. "Well, I don't think they have those, mostly just guns. There's a protocol for this. If you want, you can head to the armory. We'll be loaning out guns and swapping the training loads for lethal; we'll expect them back once this is all over, but just in case...."

"Couldn't hurt to be ready. Of course. Better to die fighting when they try to take the bunker than end up as slaves." She knew exactly where the armory was. She'd been there every day she did the rifle training; and headed out into the hallway at a jog; joining the other people here for training, as well as the staff, converging on the armory...

She'd seen the armorer in the cage at least a dozen times over the past couple weeks, and never remembered his name; just that he was a tall, thin man, probably some sort of space augment, and every time she'd come up to the armor-plated entrance he'd been cleaning and disassembling a weapon, or putting one back together.

Right now.... he was simply grabbing weapons, slapping magazines or batteries into them, and setting them on the counter... and calling out. "These guns are live! Put your comm on the counter to register who got it, and head for the bunker! This is not a drill! Grab one spare magazine or battery if you aren't taking a needler! If everything goes well we'll be wanting these back!"

The counter was only six feet wide; and the place was crowded. Handguns, rifles, being snapped up, people she'd seen in training or just walking through the halls crowding in... and a steady trail of armed trainees heading for the bunker.

After she picked up her own rifle; it was one of the nicer laser ones, could swap between a steady beam and a pulse-rifle setting; she followed the rest of the crowd, streaming towards the building... and like most of the others, stopped when a sudden loud boom sounded in the air.

As she glanced up, she could recognize.... something that shouldn't be there.

A single aircraft was falling from the sky, the boom must've been something striking it... and she could see it. A squadron, at least, of Mars-class fighters. Which... didn't make any sense. The only people who used those anymore were those who didn't give a damn about the survival of their crews. They might've been advanced... three or four hundred years ago... but the tiny fighters couldn't even get back out of an atmosphere without help, had no shields...they'd been briefly used with AI pilots, before the second galactic war, but lately they were, at most, drones, remotely controlled...

Wait. Some of the absolute biggest pirates that worked for the Alliance... threw together tons of those things, and put poorly-trained slaves in them... tortured or threatened into compliance. They disobey, they get tortured, alongside their friends, their families. The problem... the only ones big enough and organized enough to do that... were the ones that were so big they could actually take a world.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

This... might not be a raid. They might be here to conquer Tybalt on behalf of the Alliance.

As the groups of trainees approached the bunker, the fighting in the sky intensified. They were moving too fast, and too low, to get more than brief glimpses of them as they flew overhead...she could see the doors ahead, and resisted the urge to sprint; if everyone crowded it, it'd take forever to get them all in.

Suddenly, there was a loud whistle overhead... and an audible crack.

A brilliant flash of blinding light.. and darkness.

***

When she awoke, out of habit, she checked her tattoo; clear. Exactly as marked. She probably wasn't in a sim. She grumbled... and pulled to her feet, checking herself over. No apparent injuries. Everything moved properly.

Simple grey cargo pants with all sorts of nonsense in them. Loose-fitting white shirt, long-sleeved, covering the weights on her arms. Weighted gloves. Weighted boots. A dull, constant ringing sound... she'd been too close to an explosion. If she were still a normal human, just the pressure might have killed her. Instead... she'd be almost deaf for a while.

She searched around herself... some people were still lying there, unconscious, seemingly unharmed. Others had blood leaking from their ears, and were shifting, moving... and others completely limp... possibly dead.

She grimaced.. and grabbed the rifle, looping the strap over her head.. and blinked Her head felt too light. Ahh, yeah. She had a headband she wore to help her neck muscles. Damnit, where.... Ahh.

Erica set the simple weighted grey fabric on her head, and inhaled. Hopefully this wouldn't be the sort of day where she'd toss that aside. There was... a train. Not five hundred meters away.....

One of the men from the training facility; David, maybe; looked at her. "Hey.... Miss Grayson, is it? If you're feeling okay, mind grabbing someone and hauling them to the train? The bunker door got sealed by that blast, and under normal circumstances we'd want to leave them where they lay until a medic arrived, but..."

She looked at the people, conscious, unconscious... there were a few men hefting folks and carrying them towards the train. She... was a heavy-grav augment. She smiled. Time to make that choice worth something.

"Can we get something to lay them on, so I can drag a few of them?"

***

As she slowly marched, step by step, grunting with the weight, she got a few appreciative glances from the others carrying people to the train; as she kept dragging the glider forwards. The ultralight aircraft was sturdy enough to survive the crash; and to support the seventeen people they were able to fit on it before Erica started hauling it off to the train; as well as the weights she'd taken off to dump on. She could feel it; it was an effort. A struggle. But she could've pulled more, if the thing was larger.

She saw another pair; much shorter than herself, but clearly even stronger; doing the same thing with another glider, moving ahead of her... and smiled. This would work out just fine. They'd clear those pirates out, the whole situation would be over by the end of the day. She could get back to her training, and...

She blinked. As they reached the train, she could hear engines... and people shouting. Screams. Someone pointing at the sky.

As Erica stopped at the train, and people started grabbing her inert cargo, tossing people on... she could see an assault shuttle dropping from the sky, with a jet black hull splattered with orange and yellow; whoever these pirates were, some of them had just arrived.

She looked back at the train.... it was almost full. And even if she wanted to...

It started to move, heading back for the city, even before the doors shut; one of them even trying and failing to close a few times, an unconscious limb drooping out, before someone dragged it in.

She grimaced. No time to put the weights back on, as if she'd want them. She grabbed the rifle, and looked around... there were at least another dozen people from the facility, trainees and employees both, gathered there. One of them looked at the shuttle, and at the others; a tall, fit man with a tattoo of a target reticle on his face, and a vaguely asian look about his eyes; he wasn't Japanese. Perhaps Han?

He looked around at them for a moment. "Well. This is a bit of an unpleasant situation, folks. You can call me Bob... I used to be Directorate infantry, and I... appear to be the only unaugmented person here. If someone's going to get captured, it'd be best if it was me. Anybody else with real military experience?"

The group was fairly silent. Hearing someone with real experience was here made them all a bit more comfortable; it definitely did Erica. She checked her rifle, making sure it was working properly; and after a second thought, grabbed the armored vest; it doubled as armor, after all; and started slipping it over her shirt. The shuttle had landed less than a kilometer away, taking cover behind the rubble of a building.

Bob watched her, and chuckled. "Well then. That shuttle can hold over a hundred troops. Its pirates.. god knows how many it'll have on there, but since backup is already on the way, and they can't just conquer this planet in the next two hours, they'll be here to capture people and sell them to the Alliance, then run before a fleet shows up to wipe them out. My best recommendation... kill as many of them as you can. And if you think they're going to take you? I'd recommend putting the gun to your heart and pulling the trigger. They won't bother to haul a corpse back with them just to peel the implant out, and its better to wake up in a sim than as a slave."

One of the others frowned. "But... don't they sell implants as slaves, too?"

"Sure. But then they need to authenticate the source to sell it in the Alliance. Which means hauling a rotting corpse at least sixty light-years. Alliance doesn't take them unless they can prove its from an aug."

The others slowly nodded, as Bob glanced back... and inhaled deeply. "Alright. They're gonna be mostly using stunners, and hopefully not expecting much resistance. So...." He looked around for a moment... and nodded. "Head for the restaurants. Get behind a booth and play dead unless you hear shooting; if they stick together, I'll fire first, and you can support me.. And if so.... they shouldn't be using needlers, so stick behind cover. Anything can make good cover against a laser. If you hear the needlers come out... don't bother with cover. Just keep moving."

She nodded... and looked at a chicken place she'd eaten at not a week ago; currently empty; and sprinted for the door, followed by a few others; as the group split between a few buildings. She could feel the sweat running down her back, and wished that she was absolutely anywhere else; especially the city, with its police, and the dome... and anti-air defenses... preventing anyone like these pirates from landing.

They didn't have much time at all before she might have to kill someone.... on purpose, this time.