Eric Spears

Eric looked at his score. Rank five seemed so far away. He had read the guides, scoured through the forums and studied all the blogs. He knew his uncle wouldn’t tolerate a waiver for drone fighter operations but one of the missions required recruits to reach rank five in a mission to escort a squadron of drop ships as they made a run to drop off a company for a ground station assault. Success required at least eight of the ten drop ships land their troops. The best Eric had managed to save was five. Everything fell apart when the enemy drones showed up. Eric could usually handle his own in dog fighting but when he had to protect nearly helpless drop ships that maneuvered like bricks?

He must have run the mission a hundred times, he checked the counter, a hundred and nine. Dammit.

A link came in from Hansen. Eric opened audio only.

“We have the weekend off,” Hansen said. “Why aren’t you on the shuttle for Everett? I didn’t see your name. Better hurry before the roster gets filled. If you need a buddy you can come with us.”

Regulation required that Marines always travel in pairs whenever possible. Despite Marines being solo operators these days, when they weren’t plugged into their avatars or drones, traveling in pairs was always encouraged, especially when leaving base, or a station. It wasn’t unheard of for a travel ticket to be denied to a Marine that was traveling to a city without a buddy.

“I need to get this drone fighter ranking,” Eric said. There were some Jujitsu tournaments he had wanted to see, but he had to get rank five with drone fighters first.

“Man,” Hansen said. “You still working on that? You are persistent, I’ll give you that. Why not just get a waiver, lots of people are requesting waivers.”

“No can do,” Eric said. “My uncle would kick my ass if I did something like that.”

“Sucks to be you man,” Hansen said.

“Where are you getting hung up at?” Hansen asked.

“Dropship escort,” Eric said.

“Why is that giving you problems?” Hansen asked, sounding confused.

Eric remained silent and counted to five. It wouldn’t do to curse at Hansen.

“If I knew that I wouldn’t be having problems,” Eric said.

“Best method I found is to leave two fighters to stay on escort and take the other four to brawl with the incoming flight,” Hansen said. “Then as soon as attacker flight one is dusted, switch to one of the guard fighters and dust the second attacking flight. I’ve done that without losing any of the drop ships although I think you can lose one or two.”

Yelling and screaming at Hansen wasn’t really helpful Eric reminded himself.

“I don’t dust the first flight fast enough,” Eric said. “I don’t get back to the two fighters because they have usually been wiped out first.”

“It is that important to you?” Hansen asked and Eric was grateful it was audio only because his look might have killed Hansen.

“Yea,” Eric said. “I will get it eventually. I think I just need more practice.”

“How many times have you done it?” Hansen asked.

“Many,” Eric said, unwilling to share that number.

“That bad huh?” Hansen said.

Eric dropped his head, once again glad Hansen couldn’t see him.

“I’ll get it. You go have fun,” Eric said.

“Meh, I’ve been to Rome before,” Hansen said. “Meet me on the net in an hour and we will go through it. Let me see what you are doing.”

Eric scowled. His last battle had been embarrassing.

“You go have fun,” Eric said, unwilling to let someone see how badly he was doing. “I’ll get it. There are few things I want to try.”

“Bullshit buddy,” Hansen said. “See you in an hour.”

“Seriously,” Eric said. Why would Hansen skip some R&R to help him with a stupid certification ranking? “You go have fun.”

“An hour,” Hansen said.

“Thank you,” Eric said.

“No problem man,” Hansen said.

Hansen hung up and Eric stared at the wall of his room. What if his uncle found out he needed help?