The past ten days had been among the most brutally challenging things that Zayd had ever endured. In order to correct his fundamentals, Wing Leader Tael decided to modify the training schedule that Eirian had originally described. Tael saw no reason that he couldn’t practice language or listen to lectures about the Temple of Evolutionary Ascension while he was running, holding stances, or engaging in general conditioning. In Tael’s opinion, any physical training that didn’t require active decision-making or learning could be added on top of Eion’s lessons.
As to the Wing Leader’s active lessons, he was kind enough to restrict himself to eight hours a day split between weapons training, tactics, personal combat and the use of Dark Energy. In some areas, Zayd excelled. Once he had a few days to blow the dust off, he improved dramatically in his handling of heavy weapons like the maul in bouts against Tael and other members of Lady Nimue’s personal guard. While many of the Fae were faster and more agile, they quickly learned that no one could match Zayd’s raw physical power and a single mistake could be incredibly costly.
In other areas, Zayd’s performance greatly disappointed Tael. “It’s impossible to use you as a marksman,” the white-haired Fae had said after the third day of training. “Your control of Dark Energy isn’t refined enough, by the time you’ve channeled enough energy to be useful your aim has suffered considerably. If it was just a matter of control, we could match you with a weapon that has a high rate of fire, even if your accuracy is poor, suppressive fire alone has value and you’ll get lucky eventually.”
“But I don’t have enough energy to sustain suppressive fire,” Zayd recognized. “I’d run myself dry almost instantly.”
“Which is why I’m going to pair you with a Firelance,” the Wing Leader said. “It’s still going to consume a huge amount of energy every time you discharge your weapon but accuracy isn’t essential and you’ll gain options for area dispersion that can let you be incredibly effective in the right applications,” he explained. The combination of a heavy weapon like a maul and a generally situational weapon like the Firelance was an odd one but when confronted by Zayd’s limited energy reserves, and poor accuracy, there was little else that Tael could come up with to make Zayd more effective in a short amount of time.
Zayd expected the Firelance to resemble an ancient human flamethrower but he was pleasantly surprised to learn that ‘lance’ was more appropriate than he’d initially thought. The high-tech weapon resembled an ancient jousting lance with a long conical taper that funneled Dark Energy along its length before unleashing a concentrated blast of thermal energy. Depending on the desire of the wielder, the Firelance could produce anything from an explosive ball of flame to a concentrated jet of sustained thermal energy. The weapon was cumbersome and heavy but its destructive power was significant and it played well to Zayd’s general fighting style.
Today, however, Zayd was introduced to one of the most compelling pieces of Fae warfighting equipment he’d seen yet. The suite of Fae Combat Armor stood just over two and a quarter meters tall and resembled the armor worn by ancient knights. The dark black armor gleamed with thin lines of glowing purple energy in runic patterns that were meaningless to Zayd but from the strength radiating from them clearly weren’t merely ornamental. The elegant, sweeping curves of the overlapping plates fit together in a style that was both artistic and functional with articulation through all of the joints of the armor that would barely impede movement for the wearer.
“Impressed?” Tael asked with a grin as he observed the young human’s reaction. “The Saighdear Combat Armor may not be luxurious and it isn’t designed for extended warfighting, but for short engagements, it offers a considerable boost to a soldier’s fighting power.”
“What’s the control system like?” Zayd asked as he walked around the intricate armor noticing several hardpoints for mounting external weaponry or other equipment. “Motion-activated movement replication? Voice commands for non-mechanical inputs? Cybernetic neural connections?” The last possibility was the one that most concerned Zayd. Unless Priestess Eirian’s extensive augmentations had repaired his ability to accommodate cybernetic augmentation, he knew that anything that required a data link would become an impossible barrier to cross.
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“Nothing so crude,” the white-haired Fae said with a laugh. “Dark Energy circulates through your body at all times. The Saighdear will tap into that flow to understand your needs and execute them. You’re not ready to understand how it works,” he added, placing a reassuring hand on Zayd’s shoulder. “Don’t let that concern you. You don’t need to know how it works to learn how to use it. The bodysuit you’re wearing right now will improve the quality of your connection to the armor but it isn’t essential to control it. Once you’re connected to the armor, you don’t need to command the armor to move, you just need to move. Your actual body becomes like your skeleton, the armor becomes your new muscles, ligaments, and skin. You don’t think about moving your bones when you move your body, they just come along for the ride. Same with the armor, your thoughts will translate directly into action and your body will come along for the ride.”
“That sounds like how a high-end cybernetic system is supposed to work,” Zayd said, marveling at how effortless it sounded to manipulate the powerful armor. “What about weapon systems, communications, and all the rest?”
“Same thing,” Tael said, waving a hand over the armor and inputting commands to open the armor for Zayd to climb into. “That’s part of what you need to learn in the next five days. You have arms and legs, moving the arms and legs of your Saighdear will be as easy as moving your own. It’s the things you don’t have that you’ll need to learn to think about so you can get the most out of your armor. You’re also moving with five times the mass that you currently have. The alloys used in your armor are very dense, even if it isn’t bulky, it’s still heavy so we’ll take it easy to start with a lot of managing movement and then we’ll get more complicated.”
Once Zayd climbed into the armor and it closed itself around him he experienced a brief moment of complete sensory deprivation before the systems of the armor came online, restoring his senses of sight, sound, and touch. It immediately became clear, however, that his restored senses were very different from the senses of his actual body. As he looked around the training room he had to suppress the desire to focus too much on any object lest the visual sensors of the armor zoom in to a dizzying degree of detail on whatever he was focusing on. The same applied to his sense of hearing as the armor instantly filtered out background noise to amplify the sound of whatever he was focusing on.
“This is going to take some adjustment,” Zayd said as he held up his armored arm and inspected the movement of his fingers while opening and closing a fist. “It feels natural and at the same time, not.”
“That’s normal,” Tael said after slipping into his own suit of armor. “Now, a few changes to your routine. First, in a moment, I’m going to disable your translation software. You can access the dictionary in your suit if needed, but for the next five days, we’re getting rid of the training wings. We’ll still use it when we can, but you need to be able to fall back on your own voice if anything ever goes wrong with the systems powering your communications,” Tael explained. Near instantaneous translation wasn’t so computationally or data-intensive that it couldn’t be loaded into the computer systems of a small shuttle or even a suit of combat armor, but battle damage could easily deprive a soldier of any feature of their powerful armor. Leaving Zayd unable to communicate with other members of the team was a vulnerability that should be minimized to the greatest extent possible.
“Second,” the Wing Leader continued. “You’re done with lessons from Eion for a bit. I’ll be bringing in a few of the other members of the wing to aid in your training but we don’t have time to waste on anything that doesn’t directly improve your combat abilities. Third, while the Saighdear is not intended for extended combat deployment, there’s no better method of gaining rapid proficiency than pure immersion. Once you prove that you can walk around the training room without falling flat on your face, we’re going outside for a four-day hike. You ready, Champion?” Tael’s last words came after he disabled the translation software, his voice sounding smoother and more harmonious than it had while Zayd relied on the Fae technology to repeat everyone’s words in Galactic Standard.
“Ready Wing Leader,” Zayd replied easily. Ten days might not be enough to become a decent conversationalist, but it was more than enough to master a wealth of common words and phrases.
“Follow me,” Tael commanded, setting off at a brisk walking pace. “And don’t fall behind.”