I arrived at class with a spring in my step. Opening the door, I saw around half the class there, with most of them looking quite excited that we were going to be actually trying out some military mechs in Wartech. I sat down next to Kenna, giving her a nod which she replied to with a shy smile. She’d began to open up a bit to our group, but she would shy away from interacting with anyone else.

Once the last of the students had filed in, the teacher who had been there when I arrived sent access codes to each of our neural chips and told us to login. We’d already had access to the military database to research things, but we were finally getting access to the military Wartech. Logging in, I was met with a staging area, which had two other people. Liz was there, along with the girl she was constantly being competitive with. The two stared each other down for a moment, before both of them turned away with a huff. I shook my head, this was going to be awkward.

“You’ve all been grouped in squads based on your approximate skill at Wartech. You’ll be fighting different scenarios with each other. Each time I expect you to choose a different mech to familiarize yourself with the different systems. You’ll be fighting against AI controlled Clyx mechs rather than mechs of our own design, if you want to practice against other pilots, you’ll get your chance after this class. Once you’re out of class, there will be different scenarios against the Sius and Rew as well. I’ll give you a bit to get familiar with your teammates, then I expect you to use the screen to start selecting your mechs and scenarios.”

Once he was finished with the explanation, I decided to introduce myself to the girl I didn’t know, ignoring the glare I was getting from Liz. “I’m Miles. You would be?”

“Sydney,” she replied in a curt manner, taking my proffered hand even though she looked slightly annoyed at me.

“I’m going to guess you two already know each other?” I asked, getting a glare from both of them, doing my best not to flinch.

“You could say that,” Sydney answered, giving me no more information to go on.

“Let’s stop chatting and get playing already!” Liz said, her enthusiasm apparently drowning out her dislike for Sydney.

I shrugged, and turned to one of the screens, looking through the different mechs available. There were tens of them, the first on the list being one of my least favorite melee focused mechs, with a much more advanced form of the active aether armor shield, and a plasma blade, oh so cleverly named warrior. Skipping over it, I looked at the more interesting ones. There was a fun looking heavy mech named Overwhelm that was basically just a missile platform on legs, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. Eventually I found a relatively balanced mech called Raven. It had a large laser completely taking up one arm for medium range, a plasma cannon on the other arm for short range, and a few missile tubes on the torso, along with single use jets for jumping. Using them would cause some damage to the legs when landing, but they could still be used for surprise tactics. Deciding to double down on the short and medium ranges, I loaded up some short range missiles, which gave up range for a larger explosive payload.

Deciding it would be best to discuss our team composition with the other two, I turned to them and mentioned my choice to the others. Surprisingly, both of them were cooperative, Sydney taking the Warrior mech I’d completely passed over, and Liz chose a sniper class mech called the Deadbolt, built around the largest railgun I’d ever seen, giving up all other armaments to have enough power from the aether reactor to use it.

Annoyingly, we didn’t have the option to have any support vehicles, meaning I was going to have far less missile support than I was used to.

“So why don’t we get any vehicles? Is that the case with all the military maps?”

Sydney stared at me like I was stupid, apparently to her I was just being an idiot. “These are mech training scenarios. They’re obviously not going to want people trying to minmax their vehicle choices yet.”

We finalized our choices, and tried to look through the different scenarios. While there were a few different maps, most of the options were locked, with each simply having a difficulty rating and not allowing us to customize the enemy mech skill or amount. Shrugging, I suggested we started with an easier map, only to get instantly vetoed by the two girls, who seemed surprisingly in sync with each other for how much they seemed to dislike each other. We instantly crossed off the escort missions, as we all agreed they tended to suck.

Before we started up the map, we shared callsigns, Sydney turning out to be Aphrodite, explaining the antagonistic attitude she and Liz had for each other. Sticking two very competitive designers could both be argued as the best designer in the game together seemed like a terribly poor decision to me, but then again I was just a lowly grunt here.

The map we chose was one classified as hard, an urban scenario in which we were fighting in an enemy city, thus not needing to do our best to limit civilian casualties. Loading into the map was as instant as it always was. One second I was pressing the confirm button on the screen I’d selected my mech from, the next I was in the cockpit of my Raven mech. Looking at the dashboard, my eyes were instantly drawn to the power level of the aether reactor - it was easily double that of the ones I’d seen in the civilian version. I grinned at the change, it was one thing learning about it, it was another piloting something with so much power. Looking at the power draw of the weapons, I nodded. They took up around double the power of the civilian versions, gaining some range in return. They would also be significantly more damaging, though not gaining as much as you would expect.

I stopped admiring the new tech, and linked my neural implant to the mech. It was comfortable, I could simply feel the mech in my mind. I could tell how much it was damaged, not at all in this case. I simply knew how many missiles I had left, and how much power the laser and plasma cannon would draw. I would get three consecutive shots from the plasma cannon before the capacitors would be drained and need about fifteen seconds to recharge, or five seconds of continuous fire from the large laser.

Focusing my mind on the sensors and chat channel, I gave the all ready, the last to do so, and we started moving out. The goal of the map was simple, eliminate the enemy mechs and vehicles. We started carefully wandering the city, finding a few isolated vehicles, which were swiftly eliminated by Liz before they could get a shot off. It was going well when Liz warned us that she had mech contacts on her sensors. We slowed down, me staying close to Sydney to provide support and let her shield get in the way of any mechs that might take potshots at us.

We approached where the sensor contacts were showing, and rushed around the corner, Sydney leading. When we got a visual, I groaned. There were three melee class mechs, wielding massive active aether armor shields, one mid range mech similar to me, and one sniper class mech. Some sort of projectile was instantly intercepted by Sydney, originating from the sniper mech, and I saw the glow indicating the active aether armor on her shield dim an unhealthy amount. Two of the melee enemy mechs charged at us, two lance looking weapons on the two arms on their right side, while one of the mechs stayed back to protect their mid range mech from our own sniper.

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I heard the roar in the air from Liz firing her massive railgun, trying to take out the enemy sniper, and saw it scrape the right side of the enemy mech, doing some damage, but not taking it out of the fight.

“I’ll try and take out the sniper quickly, Mad, you go for the mid range mech, Aphrodite, good luck with the melee mechs,” Liz’s voice cheerfully echoed over our comms.

“Of course great leader Deus, I’ll do all the work,” Sydney replied, her voice dripping sarcasm.

I ignored the unnecessary comments and fired one shot of my plasma cannon at the mid range mech, unfortunately the melee mech standing in front of it just kept their shield between us. Their shield dimmed, but not enough for me to get through it quickly. Seeing how little that would do, I decided to go all in and activated my jump jets. I was instantly launched into the air, and I focused on the enemy medium range mech as he returned the favor, firing his four automatic cannons at me. Even with my height, his legs were still blocked off by the large shield of the other mech, so had Eris instantly run the calculations for hitting center mass, and fired my laser and plasma cannon. The laser hit at the speed of light. As an infrared weapon, it wouldn’t be visible if not for the fact that it literally ignited the air as it passed, seemingly a line of flame that colliding with the enemy mech, and caused the mech to glow red as Eris kept it focused center mass, molten metal starting to slough off.

Its dodge to the right may not have prevented the laser that moved at the speed of light, but it prevented the plasma cannon from impacting in the spot that had been weakened from the laser, still managing to blow off one of the arms as it impacted in an explosion of light and sound.

I checked over my own mech, and didn’t see any significant damage, most of the enemy shots having hit my armor plates, though the arm my plasma cannon was on had taken some damage and wouldn’t be able to track to the left anymore. Hoping to finish what the laser had started as it ran out of juice, I fired my missiles, falling back to the ground as they went speeding towards the enemy mech. I used my directional thrusters, usually used to speed up lateral movement on the ground, and redirected my path slightly to hopefully land on one of the enemy melee mechs.

Sydney was already in combat with two of the enemy mechs, and was somehow holding her own as I landed on one of them. I shouted as I landed, excited, but the enemy mech had managed to raise his shield in time to prevent me from crushing his main body, and I heard the crunching of metal that came from my legs and his arms supporting the shield. Looking over the damage my mech had taken, I noticed my legs were still functional, but my speed would likely be cut in half, and grinned too early as the enemy mech managed to stab one of his lance arms into my left leg, practically severing it.

Unbalanced, I fell to the ground as Sydney managed to get to the side of the enemy mech and impale it on her plasma sword, the glow in her shield all but gone. I expected to be instantly killed by the mech I’d fallen on, but it exploded as a round from Liz’s oversized railgun hit it, the roar of it firing following the instant after.

Putting my focus on my sensors, I saw that the enemy sniper mech was ripped to shreds, a massive hole center mass in it. As the last enemy mech gave up on supporting the mech with the automatic cannons, it charged at Sydney, the medium mech opening fire on my fallen form. I winced as I saw the damage accumulating on my mech, glancing at my power levels to see that I still didn’t have enough power to fire my plasma cannon, and my laser wouldn’t last long enough to do significant damage.

I lay there with my missing foot as more and more of my mech went out of commission, but considering my missiles had severed another arm on the enemy mid range mech, I was hopeful I would survive long enough to get off a decently long shot with my laser. My hoped were quickly dashed however, when my sensors picked up a spike in energy from behind Liz. An assassin class mech had snuck up behind her, and impaled through her cockpit with a weapon I didn’t recognize.

I sighed as I saw the last melee mech impact Sydney, its lances tearing straight through her weakened shield, and ripping off a good chunk from the left side of her mech. She fell to a knee from the impact, but managed to shear through one of its legs before falling to a lance through the cockpit. Deciding to go out in a blaze of glory, I fired my just reloaded short range missiles, and got off one shot with my plasma cannon at the midrange mech.

Seeing it explode didn’t feel me with much joy as the assassin class mech ran up to me outside of where my arms could track his movements, and shoved the mysterious blade through my cockpit.

Exiting the sim, I noticed that both the girls were looking exceedingly frustrated. Deciding to be the one to break the silence, I led with my opinions. “I think I need to pick a different mech, there’s no way my plasma cannon can break through those shields they have with the three consecutive shots I get, and I’ve got no melee weaponry to help break through them.”

Liz decided that my comment was a good point to start an outburst. “That assassin class mech was bullshit! I have a freaking advanced sensor suite! There’s no way I shouldn’t have picked up even the best stealth suite.”

Sydney apparently thought that the best thing to do was incite even more rage. “Well if you’d been a competent pilot, you would know that the stealth the Clyx have is leagues better than what we have. We don’t even know how it works. Next time maybe try actually using your visuals instead of just relying on your sensor package,” she said, her voice dripping with venom.

“Says the person who decided to try and block a straight thrust from a Lancer mech when her shield was practically out of power.” Liz retorted.

The two glared at each other for a bit, before turning away from each other. I was starting to see a pattern here.

Trying to break off the negative atmosphere, I decided to bring what to do next. “So we should probably try a different map, and we need to try out different mechs for each of us, lets get looking.”

“I’m not going to pick an easier map. The enemy pilots were only rated as moderate,” Sydney arrogantly said. Looking over, Liz was nodding along with her. Apparently they only agreed with things like this.

“Considering that’s the average rating, it’s not so bad. They outnumbered us six to three anyway” I replied hesitantly

Sydney snorted. “Maybe that’s average in the civilian version. The military version has two difficulties above difficult, extreme and insane.” I raised my eyebrows, wondering why they hadn’t mentioned this in class. Though then again, maybe they had, I’d spent most of it on complete autopilot.

The two girls glared me down until I acquiesced, and then we went through the different mech options. Eventually, I decided on a different mech that was relatively similar to the one I’d picked last time, giving up the laser, but packing a lot more capacitors to power a massive plasma cannon, called the Crusher.

This time, both of the girls decided to pick up missile platform mechs, Liz going with one that had medium lasers on the arms for shorter range engagements, while the one Sydney picked had autocannons. Considering that her mech had no powered weapons, the excess power from the aether reactor was used to power active aether armor built into the mech itself rather than on a shield.

We chose a desert map this time, and the fight went much better than the previous. Liz had taken a long range missile loadout, while Sydney had gone with medium range missiles. When we found the enemy, they were simply bombarded from over a kilometer away by Liz, and Sydney opened fire once they got a bit closer, heavily weakening their shields from far from melee range. My plasma cannon easily blasted through the weakened shields, and the missiles easily took out their ranged mechs while I took care of anything that got close.

This time, we were paying attention to visuals, and caught the assassin mech before it even got close. While the missiles couldn’t get a lock, our short range weapons easily took it out before it could do anything other than fire its railgun a single time, not having enough power to fire more than one shot considering most of its power went to the stealth suite it had.

The rest of the day went pretty well as we beat one after another of the hard difficulty challenges. Some of the mech combinations we used worked well, while others completely flopped. The double sniper setup we used when we finally decided to do an escort mission failed in a spectacular manner. While it was fun to focus fire and take out a melee mech in an instant, they simply ignored us and took out our escort target.

We won more than we lost, taking a break here and there for lunch and dinner, and we worked surprisingly well together considering the two girls seemed to hate each other. The rest of the week passed in a similar manner, and by the end of it we’d convinced the instructor to unlock higher difficulty enemy mech pilots. While we quickly adjusted to difficult, when we got to extreme, it felt like banging our heads against a brick wall. The enemy not only outnumbered us, we were barely more skilled than them. By the time the practice week was over, we’d only beaten a single mission with the enemy set on extreme, and we hadn’t even touched insane.

After talking to the instructor, it turned out that the reason the enemy always outnumbered us was simple - the missions were designed for a six person squad, but considering our skill level and the amount of people in class, we’d been stuck with just three people. After finishing the class, we were brought to the place we’d stay, each of us being given a surprisingly spacious house as designers, and we were to meet up with the people who would make up the rest of our squad tomorrow.