I burst through the red field into outer space. I screeched to a halt, windmilling my arms in what must have looked like a ridiculous cartoon attempt to stop moving forward. It worked, and I found myself standing on a small, glowing, golden platform in the middle of a field of stars.

"Where now?" I asked Arjun.

"Just hang on," he said.

There was no feeling of motion, but a moment later I saw a bright red star beginning to grow in strength and intensity. I was rushing toward it at incredible speed. As I approached, it resolved into a red globe. I saw a collection of platforms like mine in the center, all connected together. My team was on them, waiting. My platform zoomed in and docked with the others. I stepped off.

"Good to have you back, sir," Chavez said and saluted. I could see the strain on his face.

"Thanks," I looked around. "What's the deal here?"

Hester stepped forward. "It’s an obstacle course, sir. The platforms at our command will become small spacecraft. They’re pretty easy to control. You've got the key. The goal is to get it to the end of the course. You've got to fly through hoops and avoid enemies that are trying to shoot you down. That's what happened to you last time."

I scratched my head. "That's kind of a wonky mechanic.”

“My uncle had some old classic NES games,” Will threw in. “I remember one kind of like this."

"That's probably where this fragment got the idea. Anyway, this is the starport," Hester said, gesturing around. "We have to have someone holding it down. Every now and then, enemies attack, but we've been able to hit them with our spells and weapons, and nobody's been a serious threat." She looked unhappy.

I sent her a quick message. What's wrong?

I don't want to undermine Chavez, sir, but you yourself said, before you died, he's not handling this situation well. We should have been out there clearing off enemies. I've got the hang of the ships now, I could take a kill squad out. I see the enemies zooming around in twos and threes. We could have ambushed and killed a bunch of them. As soon as you get out in front of the rest of us, dozens of them swarm. That's what got you last time.

I took a deep breath. "Arjun, you got a plan for us?"

"The enemy blips seem to be drawn to the presence of the key," Arjun said. "They zeroed in on you no matter what formation we flew. You will need to have a protective guard around you."

"Who here's comfortable with these ships?" I asked.

Four of the squad raised their hands, along with Hester and Will.

"I'm going to need more than that," I said.

Chavez spoke up. "Sir, we want to be able to hold this point if it should take more than one attempt. I suggest that you leave at least half the squad with me, sir. That way we can learn from our mistakes."

"That's exactly what we can't do," I snapped. "Every time we die, we forget everything we've learned. I just spent the last," I checked my timer, "four and a half hours getting back here. And that was with Arjun holding my hand. How much time are we going to waste on attempts?"

"Sir, you said before that if we lost this point, we would lose the whole level."

"I did?" I raised a hand to my ear. "Arjun, can you confirm?"

"You said that, sir, but not why you believed it. No one else received any system messages saying so."

I sighed, wishing I knew what my past self had figured out. "All right, but I don't think I'm wrong here. Chavez, you believe you need eight men to hold this point." I turned to Hester. "What's your assessment?"

"I think he could do it with three." She named off the men she'd leave behind, including Jason, our new Recycling Expert.

Chavez looked furious. "This woman's a civilian. She has no combat training.”

"Hester has more combat experience than you do," I snapped. "Hester has been up against aliens who've got weapons and capabilities you can't even dream of." I took a deep breath, put my head to my ear. "Arjun, Allison, what's your analysis?"

"I back up Hester," Allison's voice said. Arjun concurred.

"All right, then. Give me a quick rundown of what to expect, and let's go."

Hester explained how to control the small spaceship that materialized as I asked for it. It was actually really straightforward. The level had some weird physics. It wasn't really fully three-dimensional. You could go up and down, and you could go side to side to a certain extent. Then you'd bump into invisible walls.

"Basically, the course seems to be about 100 feet tall and twice that wide," Hester said. "You've got to hit each of the loops in sequence. You can go as fast or as slow as you like. Just tap your toe down to go faster and lean back on your heels to slow. But the slower you go, the easier it is for the enemy to pick you off."

"How do I fire on them?"

"You don't," Hester said apologetically. "Sorry, sir. We've got the torpedo launchers. They take a couple seconds to reach their target, and they've got a reloading time of five seconds. When the enemy gets really thick, it's bad. You do have a chaff ability. It throws out silvery reflective stuff behind you and below you, which seems to confuse any enemies that run through it for about ten seconds. And a speed boost that gives you a two-second boost of power. None of us can match that, so you don't want to get ahead of us."

"Right," I said.

"Oh, and there'll be bonus glowing golden clouds. You go through those, you heal up any damage to your ship. Works the same for us. Don't go through the red clouds, though. Those apply a slow.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Gold clouds good, red clouds bad. Anything else?"

"Uh, that's it, sir. I think.”

"Then let's go."

I leaned forward, arms out. I controlled my spaceship by tilting my arms up and down like an airplane's wings. To go up, I leaned back, and to drop down, I leaned forward. It was simple and also ridiculous.

Hester and three of the men zoomed out ahead of me. Will would be playing rear guard. I was to concentrate on flying the course. None of them had to go through the rings, just me, because I was the one with the key.

As I left the red sphere around our safe point, the first ring appeared in front of me. I couldn't tell how far off it was. In this space, there was no frame of reference, so I aimed straight for the center of the blue ring and stepped on the gas. My ship sprang forward.

Hester's point squad raced out in front of me. In about four seconds, I was upon the ring. I dove through it. The next ring, bright green, was above and off to the side. I adjusted my course as a pair of enemy fighters raced in. They looked like TIE fighters from Star Wars, and they shot torpedoes at me. I jinked to the left and avoided the torpedoes as Hester's team fell on them and blew them up. I lined up and went through the next hoop.

Behind me, Will called, "We've got three on your tail at eight o'clock and below you."

I tried to picture that as I picked out the next ring. It was red.

"Oh, oh, oh," Arjun shouted. "I forgot. Red rings means there's going to be another one almost immediately after it. You won't have much time to adjust. They'll always be either just above or just below, but in the same axis horizontally."

"That would have been helpful to know," I said through gritted teeth as I headed into the ring.

Behind me, Will's team blew up one of the enemies. A torpedo raced past my hull. It exploded near me. A bar popped up in the right corner of my vision, showing my ship's health was at [87/100]. I darted through the ring and just as Arjun had said, there was another one about 20 feet above me. I climbed as fast as I could and raced through the ring.

The next ring after that was a more comfortable distance off. It hung in space, bright purple, about as far below me as it possibly could be. There were three enemy fighters between me and it. I slowed up, let Hester and her team race on ahead of me.

"Bogeys on your tail," Will called. “They just came screaming in out of nowhere. Throw chaff!"

I activated my chaff ability and then, as Hester's team took out two of the three enemies, hit my speed boost button to race toward the purple ring. I dove through it just as a stray torpedo from the last of Hester's targets hit me, taking me down to 76 hit points.

I came out. There was a golden cloud off to my left and then a ring to my right and up. I didn't think I'd be able to hit them both. There was no going backward on this course. I had to keep going forward no matter what. I wasn't hurting that badly yet. Hoping I didn't regret the decision I made for the ring.

Just beyond the ring was one of those red clouds. I dove steeply to avoid it, then looked for the next glowing circle.

"We've got incoming!" Will shouted. "Eight of them!"

"Focus them down," Hester shouted. "We'll drop back to help you as soon as we've made sure this area is clear."

Her team raced ahead, then killed most of their speed. I darted past them toward a bright orange ring. I passed through and a pair of enemy fighters were waiting for me. They shot torpedoes. I hit my speed boost and my chaff as I was passing the pair. One of the torpedoes impacted me. My hull's integrity was down to 64%.

"Any idea how far along we are?" I asked Arjun.

"Just keep flying," he said, which told me everything I needed to know.

Sweat dripped down my brow, but I couldn't wipe my face because I was using my hands to fly this stupid spaceship. Hester's team got out in front of me again, intercepting the next set of enemy bogeys. She sent me a private message.

The course isn't quite the same as the last time we ran it, but this is just about the point where you went through a pair of double rings and came out in the middle of a cloud of enemies.

Great. I dove through the next ring. The one forming in space ahead of me now was red.

"Another double ring. I want you guys to get out ahead of me and scout. Can you tell me where the next ring is?"

I eased back on my speed as much as I dared. Will and his team told me they were cleaning up behind me, that I shouldn't need to worry about it for too long.

"No, we can't see the rings," Hester said.

"Well, that's helpful," I muttered.

"I only know it was a double ring last time because you said so," Hester confirmed.

"Oh, well, it's a double ring now," I said, making a note to communicate more with the team just in case we had to do this again.

We zoomed on toward the rings. I ducked through, found the next one was below me and dropped.

"There's four enemies this time," Hester said. "It's not as bad as last time, but be careful. They're big."

I darted out through the next ring and, as she'd said, found the enemy waiting for me. These ones were black and red, bigger than the previous set of knockoff TIE fighters. They shot at me and instead of two missiles each they launched four. I dove wildly, dropping low. Hester and her squad swooped in and blew the enemy away. I avoided most of the missiles. Two of them hit me, taking me down to 43%.

I swore as I lined up on a green ring. I burst through and there was a golden cloud just waiting for me. I burst through it. My health bar went up to 100%. As the golden cloud cleared there was a red cloud just beyond it. I had no way to avoid. I hit the cloud and my speed dropped to almost nothing.

I swore as more enemies came in. "I didn't see the red cloud. I'm slowed."

Will and his team had caught up to me. Two of them raced ahead to help Hester while the others played rear guard.

"More coming in behind us," Will warned me.

"Chaff's back off cooldown. Tell me when," I replied.

"Not yet. Not yet. Now!"

I dropped the chaff and hit my speed burst. It didn't even take me back up to normal speed, but it was better than sitting in a cloud of my own chaff. There were another five seconds left on the slowdown effect. The longest five seconds of my life.

Up ahead of me was a white ring, the first I'd seen.

"White ring. It's smaller than the last few," I said to Arjun, just in case I failed and we had to do this again. "I don't know what it means."

"No idea," Arjun said helpfully.

I dove through and there were two more rings in quick succession, one above, one below. I dropped as much speed as I could, climbing up, then diving down through. I made it, barely. I'm pretty sure one of my wings clipped the edge of the next ring.

"That was a triple," I reported. I came out, oriented myself, found a blue ring hanging ahead of me with four enemy fighters in between me and it. On the plus side, if Hester was right and these guys didn't respawn, we were taking out a hell of a lot of them. I gritted my teeth and focused.

I lost track of time. Hester, Will, and I called out commands. The soldiers with us responded, but I wasn't even thinking of them as people. I probably couldn't have given you their names if you'd pressed me. Not in that moment. Not while I was focused so intently on a challenge utterly unlike anything I had ever done before.

I shot through a bright pink ring and there, hanging in space ahead of me, was a platform like the one I'd come from. I searched, making sure I wasn't missing any rings.

I described what I was seeing. "Is that where I'm supposed to go?"

"Hopefully," Arjun said.

I muttered something sarcastic about just how helpful he was being and made for the platform.

Two last forlorn TIE fighters came in, trying to stop me, but my health was over 70%. Three missiles crashed into my hull as Hester and company took them down, but I made it in.

My ship disappeared the moment I touched the platform. There was a glowing pedestal in the center. I pulled the key out of my inventory. I hadn't looked at it before. Now I saw it was a golden hoop. I set it on top of the pedestal. There was a fanfare of trumpets and a cheer.

A moment later, a ghostly fox woman appeared. She took the ring in her hands and bowed to me, waving her bushy white tail. Then she vanished away.

[Success,] the system reported. [This fragment is now accessible to Kronos.]

My team came in to dock. They cheered. Hester and Will embraced. The soldiers offered fist bumps. I tiredly returned a few.

"Ready to get out of here now," I said aloud.

A moment later, a door appeared, just hanging there in space.

"Oh, and don't forget to tell Chavez and the rear guard," I added, as I opened the door and stepped through.