For the fourth time today, Rune felt the sudden and jarring sensation of sensory data as his mind went form detecting nothing, to observing everything. Ready for the sudden and drastic change, Rune took it in stride and immediately began sorting through his sensory data. What Rune found made him very nervous.

Around him, Rune could see fellow UIS drones being shot down left and right. The UIS drones were massively outnumbered by a swarm of CSC drones, and were rapidly retreating away from a CSC Jupiter class battlecruiser. It only took Rune a single scan of his allies and detection of two intact bombers to figure out what was going on. They were retreating after a bombing run.

This was bad. In the second mission that he’d been on, the mission had been to defend their ship from a bombing run. That mission had been very easy. All Rune had needed to do was hang back and engage the occasional weaker drone that he saw flying by. He managed to get a couple kills himself, and even shot down one of the bombers. It was a relatively low-risk engagement, and the vast majority of the bombing squad had been taken down. Rune knew how easy it was to get shot down, and he was worried it could happen to him. Just to make sure getting shot down still wasn’t an option, Rune pulled up the mission details.

This mission is to protect the UIS bombers as they retreat from their bombing run on the Maleficent and attempt to return to the Streamlord. Points will be granted for each CSC ship destroyed and deducted for each bomber shot down. If you are destroyed, you will not proceed on to the next mission. This mission ends either upon arriving at the Streamlord, being shot down, or time running out.

Time Remaining: 19:42

While ten minutes was normally what Rune considered a short amount of time, when fleeing from your enemies as they unloaded tens of thousands of rounds at your back that could destroy your ship with a single unlucky connection, ten minutes was a really goddamn long time.

Rune very quickly checked the make and model of his ship before doing the same to his allies and enemies. It seemed that he was currently piloting a Xenos X class pursuit drone. It was a speedy ship with decent firepower, with a maximum acceleration of 310 m/s2 alongside three railguns, a single projectile weapon, and single, low power laser cannon. His drone was rather obviously designed to chase down and destroy enemy ships that had their magnetic deflection systems damaged, working in tandem with other drones.

Unfortunately, the specialization had come with severe downsides. While the drone was very speedy, it had traded defense for speed, sporting a lackluster magnetic deflection shield that would have difficulty deflecting most mid sized ammunition. It’s hull wasn’t particularly robust either, build to sustain high thrust and not damage from projectile weaponry. Usually only engine shots were crippling, but the Xenos X class ship had several other achilles heels that would lead to the ship breaking down if struck. Rune needed to be very careful with his piloting.

With the analysis of his drone completed, Rune checked out the rest of his formation. The bombers had already dropped their payloads and weren’t going to be of much help. Aside from the bombers there were fifteen total other ships remaining, six fellow Xenos X class drones and nine Bear class drones, large, tanky drones that had three projectile weapons and high powered lasers, the perfect combo with the Xenos X class drones they’d been paired with.

Unfortunately, the enemies had just as good machinery—and a lopsided numerical advantage. The swarm of CSC drones in pursuit of Rune’s squadron was a full fifty-four drones strong, whereas the UIS drones totaled only fifteen—make that fourteen, as one of the Bear class drones at the back of the formation took an unlucky railgun shot.

Rune nervously adjusted course so that his drone was more towards the center of the formation. Rune knew that his model of ship had a much higher acceleration than the rest of his ally’s ships did, so if he wanted to he could simply outspeed them and totally escape the enemy drones while they took down his compatriots. He was pretty sure, however, that doing so would cause him to lose most or all of the points he’d get from the mission.

Rune was feeling pretty useless just flying in formation, running away and hoping to not be shot down. Just as those thoughts crossed through his head, the Bear drone to his right at the edge of the formation was shot down, its engines going first with an unlucky connection, then the frame being blown to pieces after multiple railgun collisions. Yikes.

Rune was becoming more and more receptive to the idea of pulling away from the rest of the drones, when he noticed a fellow Xenos X class drone utilizing its higher acceleration to pull ahead of the rest of the formation. Rune thought the drone was escaping for itself and was beginning to follow when all of a sudden, the drone cut its acceleration, used its adjustment jets to execute a spin while still moving forward, and fired off six railgun shots at the enemy drones. Rune watched in amazement as the shots flew past to impact with a high ranged lightly shielded enemy drone and destroy it with a lucky connection.

If Rune had lips, he would’ve grinned. As an ace pilot in Whirl of Warplanes, a move like this could’ve never been possible. Airplanes on earth simply didn’t have that kind of mobility: they didn’t have adjustment jets, and more importantly, such rapid rotation would confuse or maybe even disable the pilot with the massive amount of force. In a drone in space, however, things were different. The rules had changed. And it seemed like Rune had a lot to learn.

Now that he was looking for it, he noticed that each of the other Xenos X pilots were all full burning away from the enemy formation, likely in order to use the same strategy that the Xenos X drone he’d just seen was using. Rune only deliberated for about half a second before he decided to try using the strategy. Even if he’d never tested it, even if he had no experience, at the end of the day this was just a simulation. He had to start somewhere, and there was no better time than the present.

Rune ramped his engines up to max burn, and started to slowly pull ahead of the rest of his allies. Once he’d gotten a decent distance ahead and was moving slightly faster than them, he activated his adjustment jets, causing his Xenos X to spin in a fast circle. Data streamed through his systems, his railguns calculated the optimal paths to strike an one of the weaker enemy ships, and three shots lanced out from his railguns before his drone finished swinging around, another adjustment jet . His engines reignited, and he continued to accelerate at full blast.

He’d done it. A sense of satisfaction and confidence came over Rune. He’d proved he could fight back. If he played it right, he could survive this—no, he would survive this. Him and his allies would win. He quickly checked the stream of visual feeding coming in through his optical sensors. It seemed that none of the three shots had made a connection with the enemy drone. No matter. If not the first, second, or third, maybe the tenth.

And so began a monotonous series of shelling runs, where Rune would fly ahead of his formation and level off a number of shots before needing to accelerate to do the same run again. Rune made run after run after run, always making sure to stay slightly ahead of the screening wall of allied Bear drones, which absorbed or shot down the majority of plasma, projectiles, and incoming missiles. Surprisingly enough, through the next four minutes of retreat, only two more of the UIS drones were shot down by their CSC counterparts. They weren’t able to outspeed the UIS drones and surround them without leaving their heavy firepower support behind, and so couldn’t effectively pound the UIS drones.

Unfortunately, that all changed. At 15:11, all the other UIS flipped around and began full accelerating back towards the Maleficent. Shocked and very confused, Rune immediately pinged one of his allies to inquire as to what was happening, a skill he’d picked up in one of the previous missions.

The response came quickly. If we continue accelerating, we’ll overshoot the Streamlord and just go straight by the ship. Then the CSC drones will have the opportunity to pick us apart.

Rune quickly scanned his systems to confirm the veracity of his compatriots words, and realized they were true. They were moving extremely quickly, and if they wanted to arrive at the Streamlord and not simply pass it by they would need to decelerate quite a bit.

It was a moment of comprehension for Rune. Earlier, when the UIS ships had been attacking the fleeing CSC bombing squad, they’d only managed to down a few of them before the CSC bombing squad began slowing down which allowed the UIS ships to catch up and rip them apart. Rune had thought it had been coded in to the sequence to make it easier for trainees. Now he knew that was simply how reality worked.

Based on his previous experience, Rune was of half a mind to simply abandon the rest of his squad and fly for it, but with fifteen minutes on the clock and several enemy drones that had equally powerful engines capable of tailing him and gunning him down, Rune knew that he definitely wouldn’t survive. No, there was no real choice here. It was either stay in formation with the rest of the UIS drones and pray, or die alone. The choice was obvious.

Rune and the other three remaining Xenos X drones balled together to form a core of snipers around the pair of bombers, with the eight Bears circling around them. The formation was very tight and compact, the drones mere tens of kilometers apart.

It took nearly a full thirty seconds for the enemy CSC drones to pull up and surround the UIS formation, getting ready to pound the remaining thirteen ships as a group. Once the CSC swarm was in position to begin their assault, their juggernauts, powerful Jaxus IV models bristling with several projectile guns, plasma cannons, and point defense lasers. There were a total of fifteen of them. Rune was pretty sure that he and his allies were screwed.

The Jaxus IVs opened fire on the Bears, and the Bears returned the favor. Rune followed suit with his railguns, one of which made a lucky connection with one of the Jaxus IV models, destroying it. It was a small but short-lived victory for the allied UIS drones. Over the course of the next minute or so four of the remaining bear drones were destroyed to a mere two of the Jaxus IV models, including the one Rune had gotten with a lucky shot.

Rune nervously checked his systems to see how far it was to the Streamlord. They estimated it would take another three minutes of flying. There was no way they were going to survive another three minutes of this. But there had to be some way. There was no way the mission was impossible, as then every testee would simply fail on the fourth mission. Rune checked his systems again to make sure that he wasn’t missing any crucial weapons systems that might help them in the fight. Nope. Nothing.

If it wasn’t on him, then maybe one of his allies. He first checked the Bear class drones and drew a total blank. Pretty much everything was exactly as he’d expected. Multiple projectile weapons, a powerful point defense system, weak engines, a sturdy frame, nothing special. Then if not the Bear class drones it had to be the bombers. Rune’s systems did a brief scan of the allied bombers and found that they held the key to the fight. They weren’t all out of ammunition—they still had a collective three antimatter missiles, two swarm missiles, and a single EMP blast. If they utilized their weaponry optimally, they could take out four of the Jaxus IV models with just the EMP blast.

Rune wasn’t really sure why his allies hadn’t taken use of the ordinance, but he supposed it was just part of the test. He immediately began pinging the bombers to prepare their ordnance and for the Bear class drones to start rotating in circles around the core of their formation. The Jaxus IV models rotated with the Bears, and as they were moving around another of the bears went down, causing more Jaxus IV models to rotate into positions near each other to use more firepower on the remaining Bears.

Eventually, all three of the Bears had rotated to one side of the formation and attracted all of the Jaxus IV models. On the other side of the formation, the CSC drones began pressing into the back of the formation, one of the more eager pursuit models landing a few lucky shots one of his fellow Xenos X drones and downing it.

It was worth it, though, when the EMP blast went off, catching and disabling all of the Jaxus IV drones, before the bombers shot off their remaining missiles, the swarm missiles breaking into hundreds of smaller explosive canisters, shielding the three antimatter missiles which targeted the highest firepower CSC drones.

The CSC swarm scattered. With their Jaxus IV drones down the vast majority of drones with effective point defense systems were taken down, and what drones that did have point defense systems could barely defend themselves. The drones that lacked point defense systems simply had to fly away, making massive course adjustments in order to escape the missiles swarming towards them.

While only a total of five CSC drones were taken down by the salvo, it bought the UIS drones the crucial time that they needed to make good on their escape. It took nearly a full minute and a half for the fastest of CSC drones to start regrouping, and without the support of their heavier Jaxus IV drones, they couldn’t make a decisive engagement with the remaining UIS drones.

Most of the last thirty or forty seconds of engagement were done with railgun shot from long distances, and only one more of the Xenos X drones was taken down. The CSC drones called off their assault at approximately fifty seconds to the Streamlord, when a massive laser from the ship lanced out of the darkness of space and incinerated one of the CSC drones.

If Rune had lungs, he would’ve sighed in relief at the sight of the CSC drones peeling off to begin to a long arc to return back to their ship. Another simple, relaxing forty seconds of flight and Rune pulled up alongside the Streamlord, pinging the ship requesting access for docking. The docking bay began sliding open, and as Rune attached himself to the docking clamps, Rune felt the now familiar pull of oblivion as his mind was pulled out of the drone, and placed in darkness with a familiar message.

You have completed the fourth of eight segments of your first mission. You are being given five minutes of break. If you desire to begin the test early simply ask for it.

Time Remaining: 4:58

On all of the previous missions, Rune had simply jumped into the next mission immediately, but that last one had been pretty stressful. Rune wanted a brief break before he started the next trial, which he presumed would only be more difficult and stressful. For a couple minutes, his mind drifted aimlessly in the void before he finally decided it was time for him to start the fifth mission.

The familiar jarring rush of data filled Rune’s systems as he looked out at the galaxy through an AI’s eyes. Rune rummaged through the data flowing in through his sensors and very quickly realized he was not in a good situation. Alongside him flew a Zilbanian class freighter, and in hot pursuit were a pair of drones, one being a Pingbi A class drone and the other a Kaori C class drone. They had just left their control ship, a Kuiper I class freighter. Neither were particularly strong drones individually, but together they made a very effective and powerful duo.

The Pingbi class drone, its name fittingly meaning shield in English, was a defensive class of drone that moved relatively slowly, with a max acceleration of 240 m/s2. The drone had several dust blasts, high powered short range plasma cannons, a projectile weapon, and a high powered wide coverage point defense laser system for guarding its allies. Meanwhile, the Kaori C class drone was relatively fast with a max acceleration of 300 m/s2 coupled with two railguns, medium range plasma cannons, and a low powered point defense system.

Meanwhile, Rune’s Wolf class drone, while a powerful and speedy adversary, wasn’t well equipped to take on the dynamic duo. The Wolf class drone had two advanced medium range projectile weapons, a single high powered railgun, a pair of low-mid ranged plasma cannons, a max acceleration of 280 m/s2, and a single dust blast. His frame was sturdier than the Kaori’s and weaponry more powerful than the Pingbi’s, but that was on an individual basis. Combined, they had more of both than him.

Hoping the Zilbanian class freighter may have something to help him, Rune did a brief scan of his ally. It had jack shit. A point defense system of lasers incapable of high powered shots, a single projectile turret, and two missile bays, only one of which was filled with a kinetic missile. Against that Pingbi’s high powered point defense system a kinetic missile wouldn’t do shit. The Zilbanian couldn’t do anything more than fire some pointless projectile shots and pray they hit or distract the Pingbi for a second by launching its missile. Even if those laser shots couldn’t damage Rune, they’d fry the missile with a single strike.

Or wait… maybe he could do a lot more with that missile than he thought. Just to get a quick check on time, Rune pulled up the mission details.

This mission is to eliminate the pirates before they reach and destroy the merchant freighter. Points will be granted for each pirate ship destroyed but deducted if the merchant ship is destroyed or you are destroyed. Additional points will be granted for each pirate ship that surrenders intact. If you or the merchant ship are destroyed, you will not proceed on to the next mission.

Time Remaining: 19:42

Rune was torn. He had a plan, but it was risky one that would most likely get him killed very quickly. It said that he had yet another nineteen and a half minutes to finish coming up with a plan and engage in combat, but that was deceptive. Rune had carefully read the instructions, and this time it said that if the merchant ship was downed then he would also fail the mission immediately. That was bad because it meant that he needed to engage the pirates before they could get in range of the merchant ship and destroy it. And from his system’s calculations, he only had approximately a minute to come up with a different plan from the near-suicidal one that he’d come up with.

For about a minute, Rune thought and tried to come up with a better plan. Maybe he just didn’t know enough about space combat. There was probably some simpler, far less risky way to win this, but Rune couldn’t think anything up. Maybe someone who had trained for this like Teira could do it, but not Rune.

So Rune accelerated from the side of the Zilbanian class freighter, plotting a looping arc so that he could accelerate enough to keep up with the enemy drones. A half second after he’d left the side of the Zilbanian class freighter, the missile launched and then started flying on the side opposite of him, shielded from the Pingbi’s point defense laser system by his body.

His plan was simple. Personally, fly the missile to the Pingbi so that it could get within the range where the Pingbi’s systems wouldn’t be able to react in time. He would’ve picked the Kaori as a target, but the Kaori could easily outrun him and keep outside the minimum reaction range all the while peppering him with plasma. Moreover, while the high powered defense system of the Pingbi could take down the missile, the coating on the missile could resist the Kaori’s. No, the only real choice was to fly the missile to the Pingbi.

The plan was both stupid and risky, but it was the only plan he had. He’d likely take a lot of damage on his run and he might even die, but he didn’t see any other way to even the playing field. There was nothing left to do but fly and try to execute the plan.

Rune’s drone slowly arced around, the missile flying in close proximity to him, as lasers from both the Kaori and Pingbi lanced through space to miss or splash against him. As he started the arc, minor adjustments in his path allowed him to dodge most of them, but as he got closer, more started connecting. They didn’t deal any significant damage to him, the vast majority of disintegrated outer hull quickly replaced by carbon nanotubes. And he made sure to not let a single one get past to strike the missile and weaken its outer frame.

As they started arcing around and the missile drone duo started nearing the pair of pirates, Rune switched positions with the drone in a split second, interposing himself between the two drones and the missile once again. A few more seconds passed of lasers splashing off his hull or ripping through the space around him, and then the truly dangerous last segment of the operation began.

While Rune could be sure that he was in between the missile and the Pingbi at all times, he could not ensure the same of himself and the Kaori. While Rune continued flying for the Pingbi as that was the only drone of the two he could outrun, the Kaori circled around and started leveling laser shots into the missile and plasma and railgun shot at Rune at they caught up to the Pingbi. He began evasive maneuvers after pinging the missile to follow him, but the Kaori nonetheless managed to hit multiple shots. Luckily, none of the three shots it managed to hit on the missile were enough to cause the missile to detonate.

Rune and the missile were able to fly within range of the Pingbi’s guns, first the projectile weapon at 20,000 kilometers. Projectile shards ripped through his frame causing damage to his systems while plasma splashed against the rear of his ship and burn away his defensive coating. Then, at 3,000 kilometers, Rune was within the range where the missile could full burn and cover the distance in under a second, not enough time for the Pingbi’s laser systems to react. Rune waited for a half second and pushed a tad bit further before dust blasting and commanding the missile to target the Pingbi.

His sensors detected the flare of the missile, and a half second later detected the bloom of an explosion in front of him from near where the Pingbi had been. His drone arced away from the Pingbi, and projectile fire no longer followed him. His sensors did a brief scan of the dust cloud and confirmed that the Pingbi had been downed. Now the fight was just between him and the Kaori.

Unfortunately, things weren’t looking good for Rune. In his desperate assault on the Pingbi, one of his thrusters had been taken out, crippling his mobility. In addition to his thrusters, both his projectile weapons, thermal and UV sensors, power systems, and dust blast containment module had all been scrapped by the Pingbi’s fire, while the Kaori had slagged the majority of mag deflector modules on the rear of his ship.

By some stroke of extreme fortune, none of the Kaori’s railgun shot had managed to him yet, but that wouldn’t last for long. Running away wasn’t an option at all with his downed thruster, and even if it was, his slagged rear end meant that he’d take a railgun hit sooner or later. He needed another plan. There had to be some way to save himself.

Rune thought furiously for a half second or two before he finally remembered back to the previous mission. Sometimes, the best way to stage a retreat was by shooting back.

After a wave of plasma collided with the back of his ship, Rune cut his engines and started blasting one his adjustment jets, causing his ship to rapidly spin in circles almost as if the Kaori had hit something critical in his systems and caused him to malfunction.

The Kaori took the bait, and instead of slowing and arcing away, sped towards him while blasting out railgun shots and more plasma. Rune gave it a couple seconds of wait for the Kaori to bridge some of the distance between them before flaring his adjustment jets, stabilizing his spinning, and rapidly accelerating back in the direction of the Kaori.

It took nearly a full second for the Kaori to realize his plan and spin around to start accelerating away, but by then it was too late. He already closed the distance. The two ships queued up their short ranged high powered plasma rounds, sending red and green crackling through space towards each other. Rune’s sensors detected one final blast of light, and then the void rushed in.