●　● Singapore SRC/CCC

Sam, Sebastian, Andre, and Kerry were each seated at the same table from that morning, each having dressed into their new pilot suits. Andre was leaned back comfortably in his chair, halfway dozing off, unaware of the two next to him. Both Sam and Kerry were still self-conscious of their appearance with their new form fitting pilot suits. Unlike the more comfortably fitting gray jumpsuits that all pilots had normally received, these were of a more flexible material that hugged the body, further standing out with its bright white base and its gray and purple accents. Sebastian couldn’t help but be entertained by the two’s reactions, however he kept it to a minimum.

Sam continued tugging at her left sleeve as she mumbled: “I know I’m not the only one here who finds this material weird at best.”

“I know, right?” Kerry added as she continued adjusting her posture, seemingly never finding a comfortable position in her seat. “It’s not like it’s itchy or anything bad. How do they get this to feel so light yet tight at the same time?”

“Hey, look at the bright side,” Sam continued with a bit of laughter. “Unlike our old get-ups, at least with these we’ll sweat less. I was hot before changing, and this is a long sleeve.”

“And I have to admit they also don’t do bad on our figure,” she added, looking at her waistline. “All I’m missing is a little bit more up top and this would give me the perfect profile. Must be nice,” she said looking to Sam’s figure.

“Yeah but you got the smaller waist. You could pull off a lot more than I could if you-”

“-Oh boy,” Andre huffed as his eyes opened just to roll emphatically. “Really? You got to put us boys through all that?” He looked to Sebastian who didn’t return the sentiment before continuing. “How much longer is Ms. Norris going to be.”

“You know, I don’t ever remember anyone talking about this back at Jazira,” Sam continued despite Andre’s comments. “These things tend to take a while to develop and there had to be a reason. What was wrong with the last materials I wonder? This design had to cost a fortune.”

With that line, it dawned on Sebastian what must have been going on prior to its development. “My brother talked about my people being trapped inside, burning alive.” The atmosphere suddenly took a dark, heavy turn as everyone looked to him. “He told me about this in the hospital. I think he told Hexa, and they made these for us because they know who we are hunting.” He then paused to think back. “This is the same materials I think… from the last war. The ones navy pilots would use.”

That’s right, he did mention all that… Body temperature regulating and fire-proof- no, these might even be radiant heat-reflecting, Sam thought as she also realized nothing was mentioned when the suit was placed out for them prior to changing. “So, this is the risk level they placed us at.”

“Well… yeah…” Kerry replied with a befuddled look. “I thought that was clear- I mean, of course this whole new materials thing was beyond me, but I was already expecting the worst coming up. That’s why we are up for a two-week drill on this new Flex Four simulation.”

Sam found the patience enough to hold her brow back from furling upon the remark. I still don’t know what it is about this girl I can’t seem to trust… can’t put a finger on it, either. “I just tend not to take things at face value. Sometimes you never know what is going to go wrong, yet, after it does you come to find out someone knew all along. You just find out too late.”

“Excuse me, are you speaking from experience?” Kerry snapped back, once again at a loss and unsure what had Sam offended. “All I am saying is everything Ms. Norris has been saying has a valid reason behind it. And here’s more proof they are trying to make this to be what it really is. We have serious, heat-proofed, military grade pilot suits. How could this be any bigger of a hint than it already is?”

“Would you two stop already? What’s the point of going back and forth over something so pointless, jeez,” Andre huffed as he sat up straight, leaning on the table with a glance towards the door. “Let’s all just chill and wait for Ms. Norris. We can’t do anything until we get her word, anyway.”

“Pardon me,” Sebastian interrupted as he looked up at the three, not the least bit amused by their antics. “I really don’t like speaking like this, but we are here for one thing, right? Can we please focus on that? People have died by the hands of the men we seek, and we are lucky to be able to plan so early like this.” He then looked at Kerry in a singling-out manner. “I’ve lost family because of poor planning by Hexa. I believe that we have a right to feel suspicious of anything and everything.”

Tell ‘em, Sebastian! Sam laughed on the inside, taking guilty pleasure of seeing Kerry put in her place through her perspective.

Kerry hinted with her body language she would retract her statement just as Danielle opened the door. Everyone quickly straightened up in their seats.

“I’m not going to keep you waiting anymore,” she sternly spoke up to the room without entering. “Get yourselves to the simulations room on the double.” She stood back while holding the door open, allowing the others to leave before filing in behind. “VR units three through six have been cleared just now. I will walk you through everything as we go rather than waste time in the debriefing room.”

As the line passed by a busy personnel processing area, Sam noticed how many eyes were following them every step along their way. It had been a long while since she last felt as nervous as she suddenly did just now, albeit under completely different circumstances. Nevertheless, she felt as if every side conversation and look her way was something she didn’t want to hear. It then struck her that this was the first time she was self-conscious of her position and how she was placed into it. Being a Knight in some form or fashion had to be how she made her way through the top of the Akkadian Naval Prep Academy all those years as well as getting her seat into that popular law school she had just taken a leave of absence from. It never bothered her as she only cared about moving forward, but something had her humbled as she kept noticing the other pilots passing through processing. Some had faces speaking of their arrival to the completely unknown and uncertain while other faces told the stories of what terrible things they had seen. Perhaps they too had come back in from Dhaka, which was soon to be her next destination but with much better and specifically designed equipment and training.

“Are you OK?” Sebastian snapped her back to reality with his concern.

She was trailing a bit farther behind than she realized. “Yeah… I’m fine.”

“File in, VR units three through six,” Danielle commanded to the group as she held open a door for them that led to the simulations area. Melancon, three, Navarre, four, Ngyuen, five, Knight, six.”

Sam took her seat in the full-sized cockpit module as she reached for the helmet overhead. She took the helmet, holding it in both hands as she inspected it front and back, inside and out. This weighs so little for being a much bigger helmet than the standard. I wonder what’s different about the tech. She rested the helmet over her head, carefully adjusting the neck pad tightness and the chin strap, noting the higher degree in fit and comfort. Flipping down the visor and powering on the systems, she immediately noticed the biggest difference in the technology utilized. This visor is wrap around! It’s like real peripheral vis-… It was instantly dizzying the moment the simulated world loaded up as each eye movement affected the POV angle from the camera transmission.

“This is nuts!” Andre shouted over the comms channel, likely speaking of the new visor technology. “Are you all seeing this?”

“This is going to make me sick,” Kerry chimed in.

Sebastian tried as hard as he could to remain calm. The sensory overload was enough to handle as it was, much less the lack of sleep still taking its toll. After trying to only look straight forward in futility, he quickly flipped the visor back in its upright positioning, catching his breath. “Why is this necessary?”

Danielle then finally joined in over the channel. “I wanted to let you experience something new firsthand. There used to be this pilot operating system known as Antares and it required direct neural network linking to utilize.

I remember my dad talking about that years back.

For how superior it was of a system, it was too taxing on the pilot. Instead, someone up in space last year found a way to keep the whole ‘shoot where you look’ tech and some other bonus goodies, so, what you see is what I’m speaking of in its pre-production form. If it’s getting you dizzy, you’ve got to get used to it. I am about to load up some very simple target practice bots. By the end of today, we will be able to not only complete basic one-pull targeting but we will also get to see each other’s natural strengths and weaknesses so that we can start to implement the basics of the Flex Four formation and get you in the right roles. But until then, get your equilibrium reset real quick.”

Easy for you to say. Why have I never heard of this newer system version!? She closed her eyes, relaxed her shoulders, and calmly gripped the controls. Let’s just move forward and see what’s what with this thing. She activated the catalyzers and felt the usual humming vibration she had long been accustomed to which every simulator up to this point had beautifully reproduced. Being removed from the chaotic outside world, the familiar situation once again felt like home. She then began to ease the control stick bases forward to get the Axiom walking. She knew how the feedback felt all too well when walking over asphalt, which was why an incredibly uneasy feeling swiftly rushed over consciousness. But this is just a simulation, right? I must be going crazy… She continued to adjust to the life-like feedback systems as well as the camera that would snap in every direction just as fast as her vision would naturally do depending on the stimuli present. By now, all of her surroundings were old abandoned high-rise apartments with run-down offices and markets scattered between. She noticed that as her head turned to the left to spot the language written on an old billboard, despite the camera panning left in response to her neck muscle input, her eyes darted to the right to spot something similar. The camera snapping to the right in response was just as she initially thought, far too close to real vision properties and quite unsettling.

After a few seconds passed, a red-highlighted touchdown zone popped up on screen with the label ‘landing target’. “Are we jump-boost practicing?”

“Give it a shot,” Danielle responded.

Sam readied her feet as she quickly depressed them, instantly feeling the pull of her launch just like she took off straight out of the building, letting out a shout instinctively. She felt the air roaring by as much as she did the easing up of the acceleration force as her jump arc approached peak. The tightening of her gut prior to the drop downward was already naturally kicking in as she hit the boosters once more to soften her landing to a solid but harmless thud. The scraping sensation of her foot units sliding on the asphalt below already had her brain convinced this was all real. The red landing zone where she had landed turned to a soft green glow as she yanked off her chin strap buckles and quickly removed her helmet to yell out: “Director, what the hell kind of system is this?! Could you explain this sensory wizardry before I freak out, please?” With those two lines alone she already found herself having to stop to catch her breath.

“I can break it all down after you complete these. We have to see how your body responds to any given situation and this is the only way. Get back to it,” Danielle flatly replied over the channel.

Ugh… no choice, huh. “Yes, ma’am.” She took a deep breath before locking her helmet back on and flipping her visor back down. I just have to tough it and keep doing this like it was another walk through one of the Jazira programs.

The observation room was dimly lit with only enough light from the display screens to illuminate the presence of three officers. Danielle was standing between the two, watching the simulation tasks being run while the other two assistants monitored incoming data. The angle of the lighting accentuated the bags under her eyes, proof that she had been awake for more than the past twenty-four hours, yet her sharply focused gaze showed fuel still left in the tank. Her eyes couldn’t leave the screen that showed Sam’s in-helmet and in-cockpit combined feed. While easily recognized as thoroughly uncomfortable at best, her stress levels were still within the accepted range as her Axiom continued through the motion trials. “Keep practicing emergency relocation sequences. I will keep an eye on things from here.” Her focus then wandered to the other three, seeing a mixed bag of results.

Sebastian had stopped to flip open his visor to rub his eyes, following by several hard blinks. His Ap50 stood well outside the landing zone, having missed by a block. Andre managed to land in his zone by the skin of his teeth but at a cost. His helmet was removed, head buried in his hands. He attempted to massage his eyes in a similar fashion, followed by a shake of his head in an attempt to get everything back together mentally. Kerry was halfway through her descent. It was controlled, albeit as shaky as her fingers’ grips on the controls. Her stomach felt like it was lifting up into her throat as she fell towards the landing zone. Instinctively, she punched the thrusters to soften her landing, but the feedback again was too surprising as she overcompensated and overshot the landing zone by a few meters. As soon as it settled in place, she was as quick as the others to throw the helmet straps off and gasp for open air.

“Director,” Andre spoke up with audible discomfort and confusion. “This too much on our brain at once. I feel like we are in the matrix or something and we had no warning.”

“Nguyen, why do you think we are giving you two weeks?” Danielle sternly replied. “Keep practicing. Each one you hit or miss loads a new one. Keep going because the slower you go the longer it will take to get used to it.” Danielle had thought back to her experience with the full Antares OS the previous war, knowing there was no way they had as much to cope with, yet it was still a cause for concern. “If you have to slow down for these first few, do so if you have to. But it’d be better to get it done as quickly as you can for your own sake.”

Sam landed her second successful jump but had to immediately stop to calm her nauseousness down. After a few long, slow breaths, she opened her eyes to scan the area around her. It was hard to see anything with the area being so densely packed with a monotonous pattern of concrete framed high rises, each plastered with the same illegible markings. “Director, where is this program locating us?”

“This is Dhaka, one of the abandoned precincts,” Kerry answered. She was still standing where she landed earlier, taking in her surroundings and preparing herself for the next practice run. “It all looks real familiar. Hard to do any fast movements unless you jump.”

I guess she should know from experience. “I see.” Her own experiences suddenly then took control. She grabbed her controls once more, this time imagining the Cloak was approaching her from up the wide six-lane street headed for the intersection from where she stood, using her manual aiming on her equipped launcher. Lifting the arm, her eyes instinctively looked for the reticle, altering her camera angle to the lower right, throwing off her focus and disrupting the aiming cycle completely.

“Knight, what are you doing- stick to the trial!” she heard Danielle fuss over the channel. She attempted to manually aim once more, still unable to keep her eyes away from the moving reticle. “Knight if you want to keep doing what you want to do, you can walk out right now, damn it.”

What?! Isn’t being able to shoot the damned enemy a bigger priority than running!? The grip her experience with the cloaked LTACs in Bogota had by now already run too far away for her to come back to reality as she continued fighting the aiming and eye-tracking camera. Moments later her screen went blank.

“Five-minute cool down,” Danielle bluntly spoke with a pull of the plug. “Calm the fuck down and follow instructions or walk away.”

Sam tried her hardest not to take the helmet she just removed and slam it against the front cockpit door in anger. It was, however, even harder not to when she heard Danielle’s next remarks over the line.

“Navarre, get yourself together! No time to act tired- next attempt, go!”