The first test of our new mech didn’t go so well. We’d somehow all missed the fact that the recoil would increase with the new railgun, so not only did it make aiming the second shot basically impossible, it also destabilized the mech to a certain extent, making it so if you were even a little off balance you would have to try really hard not to fall over after firing.

Once we fixed that issue with a couple of stabilizers in place of some of the extra armor, we had to constantly revise the small things. We had to edit the placement of the capacitors to make sure they weren’t easily knocked out by a hit that didn’t go through the armor, and toughening the framework around them. There was an issue with the power transmission lines due to them bending too much when they would heat up from the power coursing through them, which would lead them to snap, and the supposedly reliable autocannon was having a few issues, which I had to look up and find that the “standard” autocannon was almost always modified in a certain way so as to prevent the jamming issue.

I grumbled at how that hadn’t been part of the so called standard autocannon until I realized that it was simply the default one created by some big conglomerate, and as it was pretty cheap and easy to fix for the end users, they hadn’t bothered bugging them enough to fix the base design.

Once we’d gotten all of that done, the tests started to go well. Every now and then we would modify the angle of some of the armor, and we ended up giving up a bit less tracking in the arms in order to stack on a bit more armor as they were a bit too fragile. It meant we had to turn the torso more to aim them properly, but the extra armor was particularly useful in longer range fights.

Eventually, we decided to take a team of four of the Ante along with two guardian class mechs into the wave defense that had become our favorite scenario. We appeared in the map, and the first five waves were as easy as we were used to, complete stompfests, and wave six we handled without anyone getting more than a little scratched up, seeing as how our superior ranged weapons let us wipe out the enemy mid range mechs without any issues.

Then came the wave we always had trouble with. A group of eight lancers appeared over the horizon, quickly closing on us. We counted down until they got in range, and the four of us in the Ante fired as one, targeting the mech in the center in order to mess up their formation. The four hits from the modified railguns ripped through the shield without much of an issue, and the mech collapsed, sliding forward on the ground, leaving a deep divot in the dirt.

I grinned as we focused our second shot on the mech to the right of the one we had targeted, watching it copy the other one. I heard Deus giggling over the airwaves until Aphrodite chastised her.

“Well this seems to be working well.” John commented.

“We may be a quick shot at the beginning, but now we’ve blown our load, we’ll only get a shot every thirty seconds or so, we’ll need to have sean and achilles stall them as long as they can.”

I heard a few snickers at my innuendo, and a full blown laugh from Deus, who had always appreciated bad jokes. Eris sent a feeling of disapproval mixed with resignation across our mental bond, something I had become quite used to whenever I said something similar. It was nice, finally knowing the group well enough to be comfortable making comments like that.

The wave ended up going well, Achilles and Rockin getting quite beat up, both severely limping and Rockin missing an arm, but those of us in the Ante mechs had managed to keep our distance well enough to avoid any damage.

Wave nine went a bit more poorly, losing both Achilles and Rockin, along with Solid, who hadn’t noticed an assassin class mech getting behind him. Wave ten, the number of mechs actually decreased down to six again, but they were all heavy class mechs. Heavy class mechs weren’t used too often, as they were a lot more expensive to produce, but they could take and give a massive beating, which they decided to do to us.

We managed to take one out with concentrated fire, but then they got in range of us, and more weapons and autocannons than I had ever seen unloaded on us and practically deleted us from the map.

When we got out, I saw that we had finally broken into the top thousand scores. I let out a massive grin. While top thousand may not seem like much, this was top thousand scores of all the trainees across the literal thousand plus worlds that constituted humanity. Not only that, these were the top thousand scores, not top thousand groups. There were only around fifty groups scoring higher than us, one of which actually had the first hundred places all on their own. Considering there were literal millions of students at any one time, that was amazingly good. Most of them would end up dropping out, likely being sent to be foot soldiers, but that didn’t seem like it would be an issue for us at all.

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We had a short discussion, and we decided to make our mech available for others to use, putting up our score on that particular wave map up, and I got tasked with the dubious honor of editing a video for it.

I did what I could to avoid it, but the only others who could do any sort of video editing were Liz and Sydney, and you just don’t say no to two beautiful girls asking you to do something. At least you don’t when one of them threatens to share your early mech designs with the rest of the worlds. There were damn good reasons I removed those from the shop!

Eris started to send me a smug feeling and I could feel my face start to pale. “So you don’t want your old mech designs uploaded that badly huh?”

I tried to mentally growl back my response. “What. Do. You. Want?”

“Ask Liz on a date.”

I thought about it for a bit, then relaxed. That probably wouldn’t be that bad, and now I finally thought about it, I doubted she would kick me off the team for asking for a date, and I did have a bit of a crush on her anyway at this point.

Now that I thought of it, she may have a lot of influence, but I’m pretty sure her threat about kicking me off the team was just a bluff. I spent the rest of the time video editing trying to decide how to ask her out, getting more and more nervous, and went to bed after finally calming down, deciding to just ask. If she said no, then no loss.

The next day, our group was discussing the Ante, and changes that we still wanted to make. I still wanted to make it a bit more maneuverable, allowing it to move backwards faster in order to keep distance more easily.

As the discussion petered off and we started to split off, I followed Liz for a bit, figuring I probably wouldn’t get a better opportunity to ask.

“Hey Liz?”

“Hm?”

“Would you like to get lunch together sometime?” I asked, my hopefully calm face belying my nervousness.

“Sure.”

I blinked, I had gotten all worked up expecting an instant rejection, and she agrees just like that? I heard a giggle, and realized it wasn’t Eris. Turning around, I saw Tae with a smug look on her face, along with Kenna, who had gone a bit red after her giggle.

Looking back to Liz, who had a bright smile on her face, I worked out a time and place for the date, a bit embarrassed seeing as how my request for a date had been overseen. As I tried to leave without seeming like I was running away, I heard a quiet “Took you long enough” from Tae.

It was a few days later on the weekend that we met up at a small little cafe for lunch. We discussed a few topics, and I learned that as I had expected, Liz had been trained basically from birth to design weaponry. I learned how her family had tried to get her trained for business instead, how to act around other rich people, how to manage a company, but she’d completely rejected all of that, and had focused on being a designer instead.

I shared my completely ordinary life with her as well, talking about how I’d gone to a normal school, gotten into an ordinary college for engineering, then found and fell in love with wartech, which quickly led to me starting to design mechs. As soon as I got to the point that I could make a living off my mech designs, I’d promptly quit my job, and I felt a bit ashamed as I mentioned that I’d basically been a complete shut in ever since then.

I thought the date was actually going pretty well, but we were rudely interrupted when what sounded like an air raid siren went off, then through loudspeakers installed everywhere on the training base we were ordered to get to one of the buildings.

Liz and I looked at each other, and for the first time I saw her actually look nervous. My stomach sunk, as I expected that she knew far better than I what the siren would be about.

We soon arrived, and ended up finding the rest of both our design squad and our mech driver team. I got to meet the rest of Sydney’s design team as well, and we discussed the mech that they were currently designing, a haze of worry hanging over all of us as we tried to distract ourselves with the discussion.

After a while, Someone came onto the stage that was there for a speaker, and everyone quieted down as they began.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news. We’ve gotten notice that Sius ships have warped into our system, and they’re currently making a beeline towards Earth. We expect some to peel off in order to hit Mars as well, but there are enough of them to endanger the cradle of humanity here. We don’t know how they managed to get past the guarded systems surrounding us, but they have a large enough fleet to endanger our world. We expect that they will be coming to conquer rather than destroy, or at least that is our hope. We have enough mechs on planet to defend most of the larger cities and military installations, but with the size of the fleet, we can only hope that our own fleet will manage to reach here in time to support us. If worst comes to worst, those of you going through pilot training may be expected to fight. For now, we can only have faith. Please return to your place of residence, you will be informed of anything we find relevant.”

The auditorium was absolutely silent as the situation sunk into us, and then it exploded in discussion as we split up to go to our homes. Our group decided to meet up at the small home I’d been given to discuss what was going to happen to us, but once we got there, the talking quickly petered off as we brooded in silence, and the different people split up to go to their own places.

Liz gave me a hug as she left, and I sat there for a while before rousing myself, deciding to play some wartech to get my mind off what was happening. Apparently I wasn’t the only one doing so, and I ended up joining both Liz and Sydney to play against some other pilots. Eventually, we got too tired to continue, and we each went to bed worried.