The next day started at an hour I would have never considered waking at before I’d come here, but thankfully it was still later than I’d been waking for the classes I’d been going through for the past few months. Dragging myself out of bed to one of Eris’ favorite songs (she had a heavy metal obsession), I got ready, and was out the door in time to get to the spot where we’d be meeting the people who would fill out the rest of our squad.
Liz and Sydney were already there, Liz looking excited. I snorted. Morning people. At least Sydney had the decency to look as irritable as I felt. It was only a minute or so before three guys walked in, and I let out a sigh of relief, I was no longer outnumbered by the fairer sex. The person in front I quickly recognized as John from basic, and I greeted him, which he returned with a nod. The other two were holding hands, and introduced themselves as Sean and Achilles. I shrugged, it wasn’t my thing, but I had nothing against it. Unlike in the past, those who were actively against same sex relations were considered extremists, usually of the religious variety. Sean was tall and well built, with a gym rats build, while Achilles, contrary to his name, simply had the lean VR look, while being even taller than Sean.
We chatted for a bit, and once Sean got talking, he didn’t seem to stop, at times making me question if he even had to breathe. The girls mostly stayed out of the conversation, and definitely weren’t interested in talking to each other, while Eris kept encouraging me to join in the conversation instead of remaining as mostly a bystander. I stayed out of it until the discussion turned to different mechs and strategies, at which point the girls and I both joined in with our opinions. While the other three men were rated top thousand in the civilian Wartech, they mentioned that they’d been having a lot of trouble with the military version. When they would play pvp outside of the required scenarios against the aliens, the enemy pilots would crush them.
It was through this that I learned what exactly was going to happen. We’d be playing scenarios against AI controlled opponents for at least four hours a day, while in the rest of it, us designers would be expected to either design mechs, or showcase our own mechs in pvp to try and convince others to use them.
While the player versus alien scenarios were simply for training fighting against alien mechs, playing against other trainees would train us how to fight against other pilots.. They’d tried using AI controlled mechs for a while, but if they were controlled by drones, the ping delay would cripple them, as FTL communicators would take up too much of the mechs power. On the other hand, any AI powerful enough to run a mech at the same level as a human pilot with an aether computer would take up so much space and power that it would cripple the mechs weaponry. Considering that aether computers could only be built into living minds, they simply stuck with human pilots.
A severe looking woman wearing the standard military camo soon arrived and went over what I’d already learned from the pilot trainees, and gave us access codes to the full Wartech, so we’d no longer be locked into the training scenarios we’d done in class. The second she was gone we all logged in, and we were met with quite a few more people than I’d expected. Among them were Tae and Kenna and the rest introduced themselves as the designers that would be creating the mechs for the three pilots on our team. I thought it was a bit odd that they would making an entire team of experimental mechs rather than mixing some of them with the more common ones, but figured it wouldn’t matter too much.
Each team of designers had introduced themselves to their pilot, informing them what type of mech they were best at designing. They then each turned to their screen and opened the design mode, disappearing from the virtual room. I felt a bit jealous, as I was going to be stuck doing scenarios instead of actually designing for four hours, but kept my irritation from my face. Once the rest of the designers had disappeared, the squad opened the scenario and mech options. I was instantly blown away. While we had access to tens of mechs and fifty scenarios while we were in class, there were now hundreds, if not thousands of different mechs available, each slightly different, along with hundreds of scenarios.
Eventually, I decided to stick with the mech I’d decided was my favorite while we were in training, Crusher, and let the others decide on the scenario. We ended up with two melee mechs piloted by Sean and Achilles, Sean with a massive shield, Achilles with a smaller one that was more maneuverable. I was the only short range mech, John and Sydney chose the same mid range mech with a laser on one arm and an autocannon for the other, while Liz picked the Deadbolt she’d enjoyed in training. Now that we were out of the training mode, we got to pick up some support vehicles as well, and I reminded myself to make some missile platforms and load them up with my seekers once I’d redesigned them with the new tech I had access to.
I went with my usual three missile platforms and a single vehicle with a communications and ECM suite to make sure we could keep contact with each other. The rest went with mostly tanks, though Liz picked up a couple scout vehicles to help keep an eye out for assassins. The map we decided on (meaning Liz and Sydney chose and then dragged everyone else along), was a wave defense map that we would lose if either fifty percent of the city was destroyed, or all our mechs were destroyed.
We went into the scenario where we’d decided to set the enemy pilot skill at extreme, and ordered our vehicles to advantageous points, usually meaning a bit of cover, or in my missile platforms case, lots of cover they could indirectly fire around.
The first wave started, and I almost laughed a bit. A single light mech with medium lasers appeared, along with four tanks. We didn’t even bother wasting ammo, just let Sean and Achilles walk up and finish each one of them with a single swipe or stab of their sword, only losing a bit of power on their shields from blocking the shots.
The next wave went similarly, two enemy mechs and eight vehicles. This time John and sydney joined in with their lasers, melting through the enemy tanks and vehicles before they could do more than scratch the paint on our mechs.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
We started burning ammo by the fourth wave, and on the sixth we had to start using our support vehicles to run interference and take out the enemy vehicles before they could do much damage to us. At that point, I was beginning to get a bit worried, as Sean and Achilles were a bit outmatched one on one by the AI difficulty. John and I were holding our own however, and Liz and Sydney seemed to make the fights they were picking look almost easy for them, quickly coming to aid us as we started to take damage.
At wave seven, we started to have a bit more discussion on what we were going to do.
“So Mad, I have the perfect plan, I’m sure you’re going to love it!” Liz started. I blinked a bit at the use of my handle rather than my name, then groaned. This was going to be terrible.
“So what is this genius plan Deus?”
“Well,” She dragged out the word. “Aphrodite and I can eliminate an enemy mech each, but if we’re stuck fighting two, we’ll be tied up, so you get to have the honor of distracting two of them!”
“Great,” I replied with as much sarcasm as I could muster dripping from my voice.
“Is she always like this?” Sean chimed in.
“The ridiculously cheerful tone, or getting me to do the crappy work?” I replied.
“Both.”
“Yup. She was one of the best players in the civilian version of Wartech, yet I was the one stuck showcasing the mech we designed.”
“Good luck,” John chimed in his curt manner. With that, I was stuck in this role whether I liked it or not.
As three melee mechs charged us, I made sure to get close enough to be just in range of one of the enemy mid range mechs, making myself appear to be a bit too close to one of the enemy Lancer mechs. The random thought about needing to learn the names of the other enemy mechs flitted through my mind as I opened fire on the Lancer, the shot impacting on its shield, visibly making it dim.
I used up the rest of the energy in my capacitors with my plasma cannon, which ended up destroying its shield, and one of the arms behind it, but it kept charging towards me even as I backed away as quickly as I could. I had Eris fire the missiles at the enemy mid range mech as I did so, just as it opened fire with its lasers, destroying half my salvo of missiles just as they released. I shrugged, at least I saved myself some damage.
As the enemy’s lasers ran out of power, I checked over the damage. Over half my missile ports had been slagged beyond recognition, and my cockpit was getting a bit too close to open air for my liking.
My attention was grabbed from the damage report as the Lancer closed in on me, and I activated all my directional thrusters on the left side of my body as I stepped to the side, trying to avoid the lances that practically launched at me, likely through some form of hydraulics. While I mostly dodged, one of the lances lodged in my mechs arm, severing the cooling line to my plasma cannon. I could still fire it, but with only passive cooling, it would quickly warp and likely explode if I tried to fire more than a shot every couple of minutes.
I ignored the damage as I had my mech step back, raising my arm with an unhealthy grinding sound to intercept the next thrusts from the enemy mechs two right arms. My arm caught one of them, preventing it from hitting me right in the cockpit, but the other avoided it and lodged in my torso, hitting the capacitors that would have powered my now useless plasma cannon.
My missiles were reloaded at this point, and I fired a few from the tubes that hadn’t been slagged, unfortunately only severing the Lancer’s remains of its left arms, and rocking it back. I was preparing for it to kill me on the next thrust when I heard an “I got you!” from Liz as a shot from her Deadbolt pierced through its torso. As it slumped to the ground, I couldn’t let out a breath of relief however, as the Lancer had been between me and the mid range mech, which opened fire with its now recharged lasers.
My cockpit was starting to glow with heat, my pilot suit being the only thing keeping me from breathing superheated air by the time our support vehicles finished off the rest of their opponents, using the last of their ammo to damage the arms of the mid range mech enough to drag them off target. The barrage also rocked it to the side enough for its other two arms to stop properly tracking me, saving me from death, at least for now.
Sydney opened fire at it just after our vehicles, Her laser heating the metal to the point her autocannon pierced through the weakened metal into the cockpit. They then turned to help Sean and Achilles, who both had a significant amount of damage, Sean’s mech barely able to limp, while Achilles had his blade arm half severed, doing his best to block anything he couldn’t dodge.
With the girls joining in, the mechs were eliminated just as John finished off his opposing mech, but after a quick status update for everything, we realized just how screwed we were in the next wave. Everyone except the girls had taken significant damage, and we were going to be even more outnumbered soon.
I was expecting another mixed bag when they appeared, but instead it was a squad of purely eight Lancers.
“What the hell is this?” I asked over comms.
“It’s a pretty common tactic the Clyx use, they basically form up a shield wall and rush you. They can cover each other ridiculously well even when one of their shields runs out of power.”
Taking stock of my own mech, the only weapons I still had available were less than half my missile tubes, and they were running on dry. I sighed, and fired my missiles as the enemy advanced, quickly getting steamrolled as they ran us down.
We exited the scenario to see a top scores screen, where we ranked a miserable forty thousandth or so, which was surprising considering the highest wave to be defeated was the tenth.
“So if we’re going to be using handles like you three,” Sean started, nodding to Liz, Sydney, and I. “We should share ours. I go by Rockin.”
“Achilles, I decided to stick with my real name” Achilles said a bit nervously.
“Solid,” John added.
We quickly gave our full tags with the identification number after our name, excluding Deus and Aphrodite, who had paid an obscene amount of money to have exclusive rights to their name. I noticed that Liz had decided not to show off her alternate identity as Demon, which likely saved the egos of the other males, who weren’t aware that they were the same person.
After a bit of discussion, we decided to stick with the same map, but even trying a few different compositions of mechs and vehicles, the furthest we could get was destroying half of the phalanx on wave eight when we used three of the more maneuverable melee mechs, one absolutely massive but slow melee mech, along with two snipers. Interestingly, even just destroying half the lancers so raised our rank to the mid twenty thousands.
Eventually, it was time for us to leave, and get to what I was excited about doing, designing mechs with all the new toys.