The ensuing silence was deafening. Faith was wondering what to do now when a fighter jet buzzed her and her comm erupted.

“Recruit Harrington turn your craft around and return to base.” Said an authoritative male voice.

Faith weight her options. The hover craft used anti gravity generators for lift but that came with several downsides. The anti grav had to first negate gravity by producing a negative grav wave equal to the planets positive gravity field and then add more anti gravity to lift a craft. The anti grav wave pushed away the positive grav while also pushing on the craft it was lifting which was why the craft had wings.

While the craft could hover and do maneuvers a fighter jet could not the fighter jet could out maneuver and fly faster than the hover craft Faith was in.

Grinning Faith stopped the craft and hovered, then dropped it down to just touching the trees of the forest. The fighter jet was not expecting the maneuver and flew onwards. After he started to bank left to come around, Faith pushed the acceleration throttle all the way forward and rocked right at a sharp angle.

By the time the fighter had come all the way around Faith was nearing the mountain peaks. Since the fighter had better acceleration then her it cought up fast but by then Faith was flying into the mountain cannons.

As Faith jinx the craft to the right to avoided a rock formation a missile flew past her and slammed hard into the rocks. There was no explosion which told Faith the pilot hadn’t armed the missile.

Looking around Faith had a split second register an opening in the right cannon wall. Slamming the craft into a dead stop Faith turned into the side cannon, then slammed her acceleration throttle forward, shooting the craft down a narrow valley at an insane speed.

Seeing a dead end Faith pulled up and flew straight up, rocking out of the cannon valley before she did a upside down tight loop and then spun the craft right side up. Looking around for the fighter a warning alarm sounded out of a missile lock.

Slamming down on the left foot petal the craft plummeted down back into the cannon valley she just excited. Another missile flew passed, this time overhead. Faith lost sight of it as she entered the cannon valley and pushed the acceleration throttle forward.

Flying back thought the narrow side cannon Faith yanked the control stick into a hard right turn as she exited into the main cannon valley.

Glancing at her instrument monitors she saw the dot representing the fighter coming straight down, shoving the hover craft onto its side the fighter jet missed his strafing run and flew passed her almost hitting the bottom of the craft.

Righting the craft Faith spun it around and then titled it downward to see the fighter had not pulled up in time and had slammed into the hard rocks below. A missile lock warning screamed out and the last missile the fighter had fired regained lock. Before Faith had time to respond the missile slammed into her craft.

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Even without the missile being armed it still had enough weight and momentum to destroy the hover craft. Faith felt a hard blow to the back of her head and then darkness took her.

Faith was in and out of consciousness and when she opened her eyes she saw double, a wrecked cockpit overlaid with a clear cover and though it her work bay, the images started to flip back and forth and Faith started convulsing. Her arms and legs started flailing and slamming into the clear cover in the real world.

She felt her muscles seize up in both the real world and the simulation and suddenly couldn’t move her body in either.

She didn’t know how long she was floating between the real world and the simulation with her consciousness fading in and out but it felt like the passage of time was fluid sometimes it seemed minutes had passed and other times days.

“Faith.”

“Faith.”

“Faith!”

The scream jolted her upright and she saw she was in a plain hospitable room. Looking towards the window she saw the sun, buildings, and trees, she was still in the simulation.

“Faith. Can you hear me?” Sarah asked.

“Sarah! What happened? How did the integration go!”

“I have completed the initial stages of it. Now you on the other hand almost died.”

“Died!” Faith yelled.

“Yes died. Your consciousness was caught between here and the real world, fighting unable to choose one, which caused a severe seizure. I administered a paralytic that stopped you form moving your body to prevent you from further damaging yourself.”

Faith was speechless. She almost died and had been trapped in her own body.

“This confirms that turning off the medical device without proper procedure will be detrimental to you. I have absorbed the code but it will take me some time to parse it and find the deactivation coding. It is even more complex than I had first analyzed.”

“So don’t die in the simulation and wait till you can lean how to get me out.” Faith summarized.

“Yes Faith whatever up do, do not die in the simulation. I have been exploring more options now that I have transferred into the nanites. I have already found numerus ways to improve the nanites making them smaller, more efficient and effective, and with more computing power.”

The last part was the most important to Faith. “More computing power, would that speed up your integration?”

“Until I build the new nanites it will slow the integration. I would need to salvage the current nanites for materials and then focus on building the new nanites.”

Faith thought about that. “Would the faster computing power make up for the lost time?”

“If my projections are accurate then yes.”

“Then do it. Improve the nanites as far as possible. Build other designs, see what works and doesn’t and incorporate the improvements on the next version of nanites after this upgrade.” Faith said firmly.

“Starting now. It well take a few days for the first upgrade to complete. Form there I will reserve a small amount of computing power for designing, building, and testing other configurations of nanites as I focus primarily on freeing you.”

Before Faith could respond the door opened and a medical officer walked in.

“Recruit Harington. The famous recruit who outflew combat veterans.” Was his opening.

“But I still go shot down.” Faith tried too demure.

He snorted. “Only after taking two of them down.”

He preceded to check on her vitals and read the medical readout.

“Well your fit to return to your training unit.”

Jumping out of bed Faith found herself in a plain grey pants and white shirt.

“Thank you officer.”

Faith walked out of the room and with Sarah’s help found her way out of the small hospital and back to her unit.