A voice crackles over the Comms. It’s Doctor Yi.
“Remember, engage the QPS! Engage the QPS!”
Hanami snaps to attention. She glances around the cockpit and fixes her gaze at the center console. On top of what looks like a large flight stick is a glowing blue holographic polyhedral. Ignoring the sparks and plummeting shields, Hanami focuses inward, recalling the details of her training.
The QPS—Quantum Probability Sphere. Each Mech has one. Maneuvering a massively heavy Mech, controlling multiple highly lethal weapons systems, calculating velocities and trajectories, monitoring shield and hull point levels, communicating and coordinating movements with allies, minimizing collateral damage, and engaging multiple targets at incredible speeds—it is too much for the human brain to manage. Nature needs a boost.
Quantum Mechanics reveals that the world is awash in probability fields. The QPS engages with those fields, allowing pilots to zero in on actions with the highest probability of success. In practice, through bidirectional interface with a Mech via the Neural Net, it can allow a pilot to experience an illusion of ‘time dilation.’
[Ranger: Shields – 31% and falling]
Hanami grips the glowing polyhedral. She knows the Neural Net extends through the entirety of her specialized flight suit, and feels her mind engage with the QPS. It is an elusive sensation at first but becomes easier with practice.
Time begins to dilate. In those frozen moments, Hanami engages her Adaptive Tracker, highlighting the six drones and tagging them in an arbitrary numerical order. She punches the signal over to the other pilots, so they have the identical target readout. Then she moves her Mech backwards out of the immediate shower of lasers. All this takes less than six seconds.
“QPS engaged,” she says.
Chase grits his teeth and hits his QPS as well. As his relative time dilates, he looks with wonder at the crackling interplay between laser blast and shield in apparent slow motion through the cockpit windshields. Then, finding the right controls, he aims his shoulder-mounted Semiauto Cannon at Drone 1 and fires. The Mech shudders as it fires off a three-round burst.
Drone 1 explodes and crashes into the ocean.
[57 rounds remaining]
“Woo hoo! One down!” Chase shouts, using his jets to quickly double move across one side of the atoll, trying to spread out the Mechs so the drones can’t concentrate fire.
Kora engages her QPS. Let’s see what you can do, girl.
Time slows. Kora ignites her two Directional Energy Shields and bright blue conical glows materialize from each hand of her Mech. She raises Templar’s arms and, like rain against umbrellas, the drone laser blasts pelt the shields and dissipate. Kora checks her readings and boosts power from her engine into the shields. The force of the drone lasers cannot counteract the strength of the shields, and her heat rating is stable.
“I’m good!” she yells into her Comms. “I’m not taking any damage... I’ll try to keep drawing the fire of these two drones ganging up on me. You take ‘em out!”
Reo engages his QPS. His pupils expand as he experiences the relative slowing of time. These drones are going down.
Reo lines up his shoulder-mounted rocket-propelled Grenade Launcher at Drone 3 hovering above him. He fires. The grenade sails through the air and misses the drone. Dang it. Reo fires again—same result. The grenade misses. Okay, how about a missile then? Reo lines up his shot and hits a button, feeling the missile hurtle from his shoulder-mounted launcher.
The missile whizzes through the air, but the drone swings to the side as the missile flies past, plopping harmlessly into the distant sea. The drone continues firing at Bombardier. [18 grenades remaining, 3 missiles remaining]
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“I missed,” Reo says into his Comms. “These small movin’ targets aren’t a great match for my loadout.” [Shields – 51%]
Hanami reassesses the situation. Five drones remaining. Two are concentrating fire on Kora, but she is holding her own. Another is closing the gap on Chase after he dashed halfway across the island. The fourth is harassing Reo, and the fifth is focusing on Hanami.
Hanami activates a similar double-dash movement using her jets that she saw Chase pull off. She wants to create some distance for her ranged weapons to shine. Artillery won’t do any good in this scenario, so she readies her Long-Range Cannon.
Targeting the drone closest to her, Hanami gets a probability readout. Calculating the weapon type, distance, wind speed and direction, size and movement of the enemy—her accuracy rating is high. She squeezes the trigger.
A single CRACK from her weapon resounds as Drone 2 explodes in a shower of sparks and metal.
“Two targets down.”
Chase has moved out of range, but Drone 3 is rapidly gaining, lasers carelessly scorching the sand in front of him. He readies his Semiauto Cannon again and fires a three-round burst. Missed! [54 rounds remaining]
Chase switches to the Laser on his other shoulder and lines up the shot. A searing energy burst rips past his cockpit and hits the underside of the drone, melting its weapon. The drone careens past him trailing black smoke.
“Drone 3 still mobile but I think incapacitated,” he calls.
Ronin pivots again and Chase fires a laser at the drone lighting up Reo. Its flight apparatus is seared off and it spins down to the ground.
“Drone 5 down!”
“Much appreciated, braddah,” Reo says, giving a wave with his Mech.
Kora makes Templar take a knee in the sand, combining her two energy shields directly overhead as a canopy as the two drones bear down on her, concentrating all their firepower to try and break through her barrier.
“I’m still holding,” Kora calls. “Would one of you be so kind as to take these pesky things out?”
No use in wasting my grenades and missiles, Reo thinks. Let’s see what this melee weapon can do.
Reo activates his jets and flies up above Templar, hovering at the level of the two drones. Bombardier grips the Impact Hammer in two hands and swings. He connects with the first with a loud CRASH and sends it flying into the other. Both hit the ground in smoking heaps.
“Rugby-shmugby,” Chase calls out. “That was a straight up baseball move!”
Kora deactivates her directional shields and Templar stands back up as Bombardier descends to the ground beside her. Chase quickly pilots his Mech over to join them.
Drone 3 buzzes around the small island listlessly like a trapped fly.
“Hey sharpshooter, want to finish it off?” Chase asks Hanami.
Commander Carver’s voice cuts in over the Comms, “That won’t be necessary. Although useful for training, this is expensive military equipment after all. We can repair and reuse that drone. We’ll deactivate it remotely.”
Kora leans forward in her cockpit and massages her temples.
“Ooh, my head bloody hurts...”
This jogs something in Hanami. “Everyone, disengage your QPS. Outside of combat there is no reason for having it on. It will just cause massive cognitive strain.”
Massive cognitive strain? Yikes, what exactly did we sign up for? Kora wonders as she and the others deactivate their Quantum Probability Spheres. Her throbbing head starts to feel better almost immediately.
“How bad did you guys get hit?” Reo asks, looking from Mech to Mech. No visible signs of damage can be seen. That makes sense. The Commander said this was a nonlethal exercise; no Hull Point damage should be expected.
“My shields fell to 41%. But it seems like they are going back up now that the fight’s over,” says Chase.
“Right. The manual says the shields can pull from the Core to regenerate if other systems are bein’ used minimally,” says Reo.
“Manual...?” Chase inquires.
“I got down to 50%. Once I directed full power to my hand-shield thingies, they couldn’t touch me!” says Kora with a triumphant laugh.
“37% for Reo. Bombardier took a bit of a beatin’.”
“Well, you make a big target,” says Chase.
Hanami looks stoically at her display. [Shields – 11% and rising]
Doctor Yi’s voice comes over the Comms.
“The training session is over. Good job, pilots. I am loading the automatic flight plan for your return. We’ll see you back at base.”
---
Commander Carver switches off the Comms, stands gazing at numerous displays and readouts in Central Command. He frowns deeply at the numbers.
“Not a great performance,” he growls.
“It wasn’t so bad,” Doctor Yi encourages. “Once they engaged the QPS system they did much better. It was their first time operating real Mechs.”
“If a handful of nonlethal practice drones gave them this much trouble... Why did I have to get saddled with this backup squad?”
“You worry too much. They will improve, just give it time.”
“We don’t have time! We’ve wasted enough damn time as it is! We must launch first thing tomorrow morning—no more delays.”