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3.2 - Daily Life Aboard The Fluchtig Part 2

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A blocky head made itself known around the corner of a tall metallic silver wall, quickly followed by a sleek grey body. Held in one hand a powerful pitch-black rifle with a narrow nozzle piece. As this machine slowly rounded the cover, the stocky head's orange visor seemed to glint knowingly as the whole body of the beast hulked around to raise its rifle.

A flash of sparks erupted from that narrow nozzle and coursed forward a jet stream of yellow light. However, even as the light exited the weapon, the body of the large machine recoiled as though in agony as a similarly bright line of orange struck back, smacking the monotone-coloured mech square in the torso.

It stumbled back a few paces and attempted to raise its weapon a second time before, finally, a third hazy line of energy closed the gap and destroyed the stricken grey Vijaik.

Una breathed a quick sigh of relief at this minor victory, although there was little time to relax. She moved one hand over a control lever on her right in order to increase the ventilation for that side's arm and meanwhile slipped her left hand over the reload sequencer.

To her side came a hushed but stern voice of 'encouragement'.

"One."

The voice belonged to Scarlet, who stood hunched in the small angular space behind her Vijaik's monitors. At first, the veteran pilot had observed Una's practise by looking down from the open hatchway above, but over time, she had increasingly dropped into seemingly unsuitable parts of the pilot's cabin to get a better perspective and to allow the cabin hatch to close for the full simulation experience. Bizarrely, in Una's opinion, Scarlet seemed to fit into these tight spaces automatically, never bumping her head off the ceiling or knocking any equipment by accident; clearly, the woman had a great mastery of her sleek body.

The cockpit of the standard 'Neo-MBT' Vijaik consisted of one large monitor to the front and a series of smaller read-out and backup camera screens scattered to either side of the pilot, held aloft to about waist height by a collection of spindled arms that could be moved about in-conjunction with one another. In front of all these monitors stood the actual controls:

  Pedals on the ground allowed the pilot to use all their limbs for control if talented enough - Massive railway-esk clasp levers that activated the hydraulics and cooling systems sat beside her. Una turned her attention back to (after being sure to check all her smaller screens and data flows first) the two handle-like objects and boards of switches that lay between the monitors and the pilot's seat.

The two main handles gave the impression of large rods connected by a semi-circle that the pilots held on to at one end. This half-sphere contained a litany of more minor indents that could allow for a whole array of functions to be activated but generally were used to control the mech's arms, plus as a method of activating the machine's thrusters.

Like her first experience, the simulation was still startlingly real even when teamed against regular computer opponents. The setting on this occasion was an old abandoned space station of some kind. Una found herself in its hanger bay, a frontless room that looked out on a vast expanse of space, while around her lay discarded crates and intricate walls - All making for the perfect cover in a close-range firefight with some broader gaps to the edges of the gargantuan room to force trainees into using more long-range tactics.

Her turn to make a move, Una put her green and navy blue Neo around a corner of its own, sweeping the head unit from side to side for a complete view and looking to her spare cameras for more details as to what lay behind as well as in front of her.

It was while reading a set of data that an alert sounded in her mech, a thin whining noise emitting from a speaker above her to the left, 'Th-That means an energy pulse to the left side, right?'

  To confirm this, she reflexively glanced at a graph-like object that now pinged a single line of energy rushing rapidly for her.

  It had only been a few seconds since the alarms began, but that alone was too long. Reacting far too slowly, Una finally kicked her machine to the right, the enemy projectile scraping violently against her Vijaik's lower abdomen.

'Crap,' the Rookie cursed at her slow response time, quickly working to get her machine level again with the floor of the space station beneath it. The primary monitor now picked up her query, another non-descript grey mech hiding behind an old transport shuttle at the furthest end of the large hanger.

'It's even warmer in here with Miss Scarlet. Must they make these simulations so awkward?!'

There was little time for her to bemoan her discomfort as the enemy loosed a second orange arrow of light across the hanger. This time, Una was a little quicker on the update, ramming forward the two control shafts to force her rear thruster into their maximum output. This in turn, lobbed her whole machine forward, narrowly avoiding a second impact but instead causing it to smack harshly into one of the large metal crates strewn around the room - Her mech quite literally faceplanting into the surface.

The cockpit shook with force, emulating what such an impact might actually feel like, and nearly launched Una free of her chair. Shaking her head in an attempt to recompose herself, she began righting her mech's position once more - Then levelling her weapon on the point that her monitor had detected, she took aim and pressed down on the firing indent.

Like before her weapon released a faint beam of counterfire, and in the same fashion so too did the enemy. For its part, Una's shot went wild, hitting the transport shuttle instead of the enemy; the transport exploded violently, destroying the enemy machine by complete accident. Una whopped aloud before blushing at the action and glancing nervously towards Scarlet, but the crimson-haired older woman seemed entirely unamused. Looking back to her screen, Una tried to work out why, quickly assessing what damage the last encounter had left her with.

"Two...Just about."

Before she could get far into this activity, another impact left her stunned. In the direction of the hanger's open face, a third enemy unit had appeared. It shot immediately, this time causing severe damage to the Neo's cabin bulkhead, a large metallic cylindric surface at the very centre of the mech that prevented damage to the cockpit behind it.

  This time, hoping to impress, Una forewent reading the damage report of this latest hit, instead raising her weapon and returning fire once more, 'Still three charge uses left. No need to check.'

Her gun didn't fire.

The enemy's did.

Simulation Over; Party A - (Rookie / 1st Crewman O' Conchabhair) - Unsuccessful

Una blinked at the report screen, "Bu-but, what? How, I-" she mumbled. Scarlet sighed ruefully from beside her before making her own way up to the roof of the cockpit, releasing the hatch-way and then taking a seat lightly on the rim of the entranceway above Una's head:

"Tell me, girl, why exactly do you keep trying to stand up 'straight' when there ain't no gravity? And what's the point of audible alarms if you stop to look at the reports? What exactly, for that matter, made you decide to suddenly not check the damage immediately once the threat of the second unit passed, eh? And most of all, do you normally make a habit of breaking cover before doing a visual sweep in all directions, including the one you just came from?"

Una swallowed hard. It was a scathing evaluation, although far from the worst she had received recently. In an odd way, it struck Una that while certainly incredibly intimidating, Scarlet was actually a better teacher than expected. She shouted a lot, sure, and her oppressive spectating of the simulations was a little stressful, but in between, there had been plenty of genuine advice - Further, the woman truly seemed to take note of every movement Una made during practice before pouring over the numbers and results of every simulation - As evidenced by this most recent set of comments.

It came to Una as she activated the simulator shutdown sequence and made her own way out of the open hatchway to stand alongside Scarlet; that at the very least, these last five days had shown her that despite all the fear the woman had instilled in her during that first training session, along with her brash an unruly personality - Scarlet was in reality still just a person, if an unusual one. No longer did she get shivers when around the former pirate, though she was secretly grateful to have not yet had to face Scarlet in any further practise bouts.

"Alright girl, now listen here. I don't know what the 'Princess' or any other 'official' would think of this, but as I see it, there are two types of pilot."

Una nodded along attentively as Scarlet broke the short-lived silence following the botched simulation;

“There is Nilas and Her Highness's type, the ones who see it all as numbers, well, not literally numbers, but the type who calculate. When they want to do something, they think about how to do so, right?

  They think about the order in which they'll hit enemies A, B and C. On the other hand, you have pilots like me and that Sabban guy. We don't think about the machine; we feel it, you understand girly? Instincts: I don't think that I need to press button A, then two followed by three-C, I just do it. I let the battle flow around me.

Well, it's my reckoning that's what you are; you're intuitive, you can feel the controls, but problem is you spend too much time trying to read the screens and then tryin' to pick out the proper controls. In that last 'attempt', you spent half your time reading a novel and the other half trying to find the ground."

Scarlet stared intently at Una as if to confirm the statement. Una, realising she had heard Hoki say something similar about adaptability before and knowing she had clearly messed up the simulation, nodded in agreement.

Scarlet seemed satisfied with this and began to point empathically to the eye patch that lay over her left eye;

  "See this Rookie? According to the doctors, I lose about 22.252 et-cet-er-ra-per cent of my vision cause of this here. Think that stops me piloting, do ya?

  No, the point is girl it's like all things. Eyes are just one sense. You can hear the sounds of the machine when it's been hit - Ya can taste the change in the air if your spacesuit switches to its internal oxygen supply. You can feel what each control does!"

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Una did her best to keep up as this onslaught of theory continued. It seemed to her to go against everything the textbooks had taught them. Piloting was generally about precision. Vijaiks were complicated mechanisms with dozens of small AI programs operating at all times.

  The pilot may choose where to put an arm, but a dozen smaller sequences would occur automatically to make such an action possible - It was in that way they had been taught to see themselves as computers, a central processor amongst the machine.

Scarlet however, seemed to favour a different view;

"Now that isn't me saying ignore the whole damn thing. Back there, you obviously knew ya had ammo left, and you thought you'd only taken one minor hit, yes? But ya got overconfident, didn't you? Not seeing you'd actually been hit again, a shot was fired by that second enemy, masked by the explosion just before it went down. Pegged your arm's servo. Your gun didn't fire cause the connection between it and the cabin was all severed by one minor hit of the dying enemy."

Una focused on Scarlet with awe, having been entirely unaware of what had happened. Scarlet, having explained the post-mortem, seemed to pause to contemplate how best to go forward. Una found a slight similarity between Scarlet and Kolme in the way they'd both periodically cease talking in a struggle to best word something. Although she dare not suggest any such link between the two out loud,

At last, Scarlet began again by lifting up one of her legs so that it sat folded across the other, which still dangled over the edge of the Vijaik hatchway she'd made her temporary perch. Without any fanfare, she rolled back the leg of her trouser, "Now look, this is what I mean righ-- What's wrong? Why the face? You got some sort of problem, girl? Hadn't picked you for being that sort,” she finished, a tone of offence creeping into her voice.

"What? No, ah, er, well, umm, I'm sorry... I didn't know..." Una retorted, receding into herself.

"You didn't? I thought everyone knew," Scarlet replied, raising her visible eyebrow.

Una shook her head lightly, trying her best not to stare. Beneath the trousers, from the knee down, lay a metal prosthetic leg, a sleek contraption of practical, if not particularly comfortable, looking make. Possibly an athlete's prosthetic, she considered.

  Scarlet laughed that slightly hoarse cackle of hers, "Well, if you really didn't know, that's al'rigth then. Doesn't bother me either way what ya think, of course."

With a bit of hesitance, Una stopped standing and lowered herself to sit down alongside Scarlet - "Were you, ummm, born with it like that?" She asked tentatively.

Scarlet mussed the question momentarily, "Hmm, no. That's the point I wanted to make to ya. As soldiers, you need to understand that every part of our bodies is a weapon."

"A weapon? I don't think I understand....."

  As if to answer, Scarlet now rolled up her jacket sleeve as well, beneath which lay her tanned arm, covered in deep burn marks and old, wide scars. Una nearly clasped her hands over her mouth in response.

"Look girl, if you could stop getting so worked up, I might finally get to my example! This is why I end up having to conceal all this cack, 'tis less effort than all the gawking," Scarlet added exasperatedly. Una nodded as best she could, still unsure what all this was in aid of.

"What I'm getting at is this," she traced a line along a particularly harsh-looking scar that covered the whole length of her forearm, "Got this one back when we made landfall on Bhaile. At that point in the war, the Union forces still didn't have their own mechs, well, not ones that could match a Vijaik anyway - So their best option was to send special forces lads to kill the pilots in their sleep or steal our machines in the middle of the night.

  I mean, there we were on a foreign planet, right in their backyard, so I can't tell ya the number of times we were 'rudely awoken'. Anyway, the point is one night, the wall of this old building we had set up as a base, is just blown apart while we're all asleep.

The initial spray of bricks and mortar got a couple of us, and then the attack task group came. Me and the rest were no slouches! We were awake and flipping over tables & beds in no time, returning fire against the incursion while dressed in nothing but our plain clothes - Some of the guys were in no more than their boxers or briefs, considering we weren't used to the heat.

  The enemy quickly realised they were in for a fight, so through the hole in the wall came a grenade. Shrapnel everywhere split one poor feck's head clean open. I got lucky; I raised my hand up in time to block a massive piece of shrapnel and a bullet all in one."

Una stared at the woman as she continued with this remarkable tale, trying to figure out if she was exaggerating the story or not, her eyes fixed on the many scars Scarlet pointed to across her arm one by one.

She had heard how brutal the fighting had been after Abhailien-Revolutionary-Forces made their full invasion gambit against Bhaile's States-Union, but hearing it first-hand was something else.

  "And that's how you got that biggest scar, Ma'am?"

"Ha! Heck no, that came next. There I am in absolute agony, my arm falling limp to one side while still trying to fire my pistol with the other. I tell ya, the company CO would have killed me for dropping my rifle - Well, that's if he hadn't already been lying dead via a brick to the stomach followed by a stray bullet to the head - Anyhow, the rest of the base finally gets its assess in gear and surrounded the enemy on the far side. Seeing how they were routed, their unit decided to make one last charge on us.

  There was only a handful of us not dead at that point, and in comes a full kamikaze assault, and at the forefront of it, charging at little old me is some madman with a friggin sword! A sword, no word of a lie, an actual sword in this day and age!"

"I had only one option: my pistol was out of rounds, nowhere to move to or hide - I grabbed my bloodied, limp arm and held it up in front of me like a shield - Next thing I know, I'm on the ground, the swordsman is dead, his blade still embedded in me bleedin' arm.

  Apparently, one of his other comrades had charged in laced with grenades, and I would have probably died - Pretty much all the others bar one or two did - Yup, that shrapnel should have torn me to shreds or at the very least, I'd have lost this arm from the sword-guy if he got a second strike, had the very same shrapnel not killed him first.

  Essentially, he acted as my shield while the grenade saved my arm. That sword is what gave me this mark,” Scarlet finished triumphantly, a wolfish grin plastered on her face as though she were boasting about winning some competition or prize.

Una found herself at a loss for words. Scarlet seemed to pick up on this, with an expression of disappointment at her story not landing with the desired effect she had hoped for, "Look, the thing is, if I hadn't treated my whole body as a weapon that day and moved with the flow of the fight as best I could, I'd be dead right now. Ya see?"

Una frowned, searching for understanding - "But, ummm, isn't that a little too reckless?"

"Reckless! Girl, are you dense or something? We're soldiers. Being a soldier is reckless. A pretty little thing like you joining up by her own choice during wartime? Now that's just plain stupid.

  Think of it this way: if I hadn't shielded myself with my arm, that first piece of shrapnel would have had me dead in the head, never mind the rest. What good is an arm when you're dead, Rookie? And it's more than that. I didn't think about sacrificing my arm; I'm no darn masochist! It was instinct, you see? The instinct to move forward. I didn't check my surroundings to look for body armour or something to use as a shield 'cause I'd have already been dead by that point.

  For you girl, I reckon that's the only way we make a half-decent pilot out'ta ya."

Una sat quietly once more, contemplating the words. Putting aside the extravagant narrative, she couldn't help but wonder if the older woman had a point.

  'No use in having an arm if you're dead, huh? I guess they do say you should respect the wisdom of elders... still I kinda' want to keep all my limbs.....'

“Though, there's clearly something else holding you back. You're masking it well, but something is biting at you constantly,” Scarlet added.

Una half-gawked at just how observant her tutor was, or had she been that obvious? Was her grief that clear for all to see?

“I, sorry. It’s just all a lot. I think you’re right about it being reckless for someone like me to become a pilot…”

“Ah, so that’s it, huh? Those three from the escort ship, you knew ‘em, did ya?” Scarlet said back, hair wild hair swishing as she turned her head to look at the shorter girl’s face.

“They were classmates of mine, ya… I just... I don’t know, the fact I was on this ship when they died, and I didn’t even know it had happened. They were so much better than me, and now… They’re just gone.”

“Makes sense. ‘First time someone died within reach of me, and I didn’t even know it had happened, hit me like a truck too. Almost doesn’t feel real, when you don’t see it with your own eyes, have no body to mourn over, just someone telling you that a person you knew is gone now,” Scarlet said with a frown.

Una was shocked, Scarlet had just summed up her inner thinkling with apparent ease, “Even you, Miss Scarlet?!”

“What do ya mean even me! I was a rookie once too ya know. And besides that, I wasn’t always a washed-up old hag bullying junior pilot. I’ve had my share of command roles, and they all ended in–. Tch, the point is I get loss, alright? But that’s part of the game. It's hard right now, and it’ll be hard next time and the time after - But you get back up and keep going. Otherwise, how would you face them? Could you look your classmates in the eye if you meet them again after dying a worthless death out of grief? Well?!”

Una swallowed hard. Scarlet leaned forward right into the girl’s face until they were nearly touching one another, “Well, Rookie, could you?”

“N-no, no I’m not sure I could,” Una finally relented.

Scarlet leaned back and grinned a broad, toothy grin, “Good! Then let's crush that grief by making you a half-decent pilot, maybe even make a soldier outta ya in the process! Buckle up girly, this is where we really get started!”

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