It had been a long week. But Barten was finally on his way to Charlie Base. By that time most of the soldiers who had been attacked had woken up. Though Jamieson was still unconscious. From what the doctors said he had taken a large amount of damage. And had his Con been any lower it probably would have killed him. As it stood he was still healing and it was expected to take some time yet.
The news was both a boon, and a bane. Because Jamieson would one day wake up. And that whoever was controlling Smith hadn’t killed him. And a bane because of the last person who was slotted into Barten’s new squad.
“I can’t believe it Another base huh? I wonder how many they have? I mean, this is the third one that we’ve been at. Is there that many for each of the objects? Or were we just lucky?” Dane prattled on as he looked out of the window. Even though the noise of the copper dampened Dane’s words. The fact that he was still talking somewhat made it worse. They were able to see Charlie Base already and he hadn’t stopped talking since it first came into view.
In addition to Dane, Yin was added to the squad. They had first met when doing the reconnaissance mission back at Echo Base. And then again when they helping with the wounded. Although she was rather strict and often said little, Barten was glad to have her on the squad.
As for Crisp, Barten had met with her while they were retreating from the front lines. She seemed more at home in the forest than anywhere else. But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t competent in a dav. If anything Barten would say that she would be one of the better pilots he had seen.
The last member would be joining them at Charlie Base. He was an old hand that had already completed his 5 year term with the International Army. Wait, it’s the United World Reserves now. And he had reenlisted after the last battle went pear shaped.
When they were close enough to make out the details of Charlie Base Barten was surprised to find that it was about twice the size as Alpha Base. It didn’t lose out on the quality of the buildings either. If anything they somehow looked even newer and higher tech.
The chopper that they were in landed on a pad with slowly blinking green lights. As soon as the door was opened Barten leaped out with the others and were greeted by an older man with graying short cut hair done in the army style. He nodded and gestured for them to follow after him.
Once they were far enough away from the sound of the chopper he turned around and smiled. My name is Sergeant Griff,” he said and then waved his hands. “Don’t worry about saluting and all that. I’ve already retired from this outfit once. And I will be your 5th in the squad. I hope that we get along well.”
“Wow! Does that mean you managed to max out all of your stats?” Dane asked. “I heard from some of the other old timers that anything past 17 is pretty hard to achieve.”
Griff gave Dane a quizzical look and then shook his head. “They go up when they want to go up. We never got to see combat like you newer gens did. So every stat bump we saw was due to hard work. And it was because of us, and the generations that came before, that you had so many tried, tested, and true methods for raising your stats.”
“Okay. But how high are your stats?” Dane asked.
“Just assume that they are all 17s,” Griff said. “We also had enough time to work on team tactics. Something that I noticed hasn’t been drilled into this generation yet. So we’ll spend some time on that. Of course, nothing is promised when we come into contact with the enemy.” He looked around the rest of the squad. “So. No point wasting time. Let’s get started.”
“Wait, already?” Crisp asked. “I’ve only been up for maybe a day and still have this killer headache.”
“What better time? If you can work as a team when you aren’t in perfect shape it should be easy to do it when you are right?” Griff said with a smile. Yin didn’t add anything. Barten shook his head. And Dane started with the questions already. Barten felt like the next few days might be tiresome. And he avoided rubbing at his temples.
In the end the training wasn’t as bad as Barten feared. They spend some time learning to move around one another without tripping. And then calling out what they were doing. As the repetitions increased they reduced the length of their call outs to short phrases. It wasn’t much. But it was what they could do in the time that they had available.
***
Like Myles had promised Barten started training with one of the winged davs. Only Myles had neglected one small detail. And that was that Barten would need to raise his Con to 17 or higher first. Otherwise he might pass out from the pressure of accelerating at full power. It wasn’t fun. Charlie Base had an even stronger g force training rig and he was glad when his Con finally leveled up.
There were times that he felt it would be better to just dump his stat points into Con and get it over with. But on some level that felt like cheating. When everyone else was doing their best, working through the hard parts without a free way out. Wouldn’t it be inconsiderate to their efforts?
Finally the day came for Barten to step into one of the training winged davs. Head Engineer Meeks continued to work with them on Charlie Base. Though it seemed like her patience was even smaller than it was back on Alpha.
The speaker in the dav suit crackled to life. “Alright Barten. First up, don’t you dare crash this rig. If you do I’ll shove whatever is on hand so far up your ass that you’ll become the next winged dav suit. Are we clear?”
“Uh. Yes.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“Yes!”
“Better. Using a flying dav is the same as a normal one.” Barten nodded to himself. All of the controls seemed to be the same. “Except that it’s not. At least when you’re in the air. It draws on more of your ability to connect with the dav than the ground units. So you’ll have to try and direct it with your mind. Think that you can do that? Try to move on of the wings first. But no flying!”
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Barten closed his eyes and took a moment to center himself. Then he tried to connect with the suit. It felt a little different than the normal ones. But the way escaped him until he felt around for the wings. There was another place to connect with. And it felt… distant. It didn’t make sense that they would be farther away. Maybe it was become humans didn’t have wings?
“I don’t want to be here all day,” Meeks voice sounded out through the speakers. Her tone caused Barten to sigh. With a bit of mental effort he moved one of the wings. “Excellent. Now the other. Great. Now engage the thruster. Just enough to blow around. But not enough to take off.”
Barten searched around for a moment. “I can’t feel the thruster.”
“Think of it like blowing air out of your rear. That’s what the others say. But you can’t really trust the retired guys. They always shoot shit out of their mouths.” Barten didn’t have a visual on Meeks. But he was pretty sure she was wearing a big grin and was screwing with him on some level. The only problem is that the advice worked. And he didn’t know how he felt about that.
“Great. Now start running, and do 20 long jumps while blasting just enough thrust to keep yourself airborne longer. The goal is baby steps here.”
Barten spent the afternoon training as Meeks suggested. Which wasn’t much more than the 20 long jumps. After completing that many he found that it was getting hard to concentrate. And the connections that he needed to make with the suit kept falling out of his grasp. And he was able to move it the way that he wanted. When he finally jumped out of his dav he was covered with sweat from the increasing effort.
When he mentioned it to Meeks she seemed to already know about it. “Yeah. You need to work yourself into it. Takes a bit to build up whatever mental muscle. Most of the soldiers that are flying around without a care were worse than you. Couldn’t even finish the 20 long jumps. So you have that going for you over them at least.”
“So I’m going to need to learn fast right?” He asked as he wiped himself down with a towel she provided him. “We aren’t going to wait too much longer for the Goliaths to attack, right?”
“Well. We’ll see on that. They haven’t been making much noise since the last attack. But that probably means that we are going to be in even more trouble when they do. So yeah, worse case you’ll be sent out in a flying rig with only enough juice to jump around. Might as well just go in a normal one then.”
“Great. Pencil me in for the accelerated course then. We’ll see how far I can go before it’s time to fight again.”
Meeks showed him a smile that was more teeth than it needed to be. And that made Barten wonder if he had made a mistake. By the next morning he knew that he had. But he had already made his choice, and he would see it through until the end. Otherwise he might lose his chance to fight. The chance to save his squad and comrades.
On his way to the showers Barten made a pleasant surprise. The blue light at the side of his vision started pulsing at some time.
—
You have put in enough effort to open up a new stat!
Psychic Resonance
It serves as a power source for psychic abilities. In this case it is being used for control and powerful extra functions of a dav suit.
—
Barten found himself reading the messages from the system over and over again. Usually it gave him such information that it was hard to process. While also being easy to understand. Psychic Resonance is easy to understand in that it gave him more power to move the wings on the dav around. The part that he got stuck on is just how aware is the system? It told him what he was using the power for. Which if it did not he probably would have connected it to the dav sooner or later. But it also flat out mentions the davs. Which isn’t something that should have been possible unless it was pulling information from somewhere. Or unless someone was feeding it information.
He reached back and felt the healed incision where the chip was implanted. Was it spying on him through the chip in his head? Even then, how? What was the system? Would it end up changing him in some way? Would he become like the Aethergarblind? Or something worse?
Barten tapped himself on the head. He was spiraling downwards with his negative thoughts. He needed to only look towards the future to see where he would end up. And no matter what he wouldn't let himself become like one of those things. Even if he became stuck on that path, he had others to help him along. Friends and comrades. Enough that they wouldn’t ever let him down.
Now that he had centered himself. At least somewhat. Barten tried to think about how to spend his points.
—
Kyle Barten
Level 3 Pilot
Titles: Progenitor
Unspent stats: 3
Stats:
Strength: 12
Constitution: 17
Agility: 12
Dexterity: 16
Perception: 17
Psychic Res: 20
Psychic Resonance: 1 (new +1)
Skills
Shooting 1, Piloting 3, Running 2
Unspent skill points: 1
—
The obvious spend would be on the new stat. But that would put him at a higher level and potentially make it harder for him to gain points in it later. Fighting outside of the suit wouldn't be likely. And Even if it did happen, Barten would need to likewise be fighting an enemy not within a suit. Otherwise he would be a red splat on the ground sooner than later.
Which meant that improving his ability to fight in a dav was the most important. That left him Dexterity, Perception, and the new Psychic Resonance. Each of them would help him move the dav better to follow his will. But which one would have the most impact on the battlefield? It wasn’t something that he currently had an answer to.
And while spending his stat points was hard for Barten to figure out. He had already decided to spend his Skill point on Piloting. There were so many other options that he had already fallen asleep reading through them. And while any number of them might be useful. Barten decided to double down on the dav route. And decided to spend his skill point in Piloting.
It took him a moment to figure out how. But after willing it to be so, the skill point disappeared and Piloting reached level 4. He hoped that it would also aid with his controlling of the wings and thruster on the dav. As Barten figured that would be his secret weapon in the upcoming battle. The type 3s used their adaptability to fight back against the davs. But it was their mobility that caused the most problems in the fight.
Barten went over his status one last time. His hands clenching and unclenching. There was only so much time to level himself up before the fighting resumed. And he needed to do everything that he could.