《Wartech》


 Chapter 1

    I took a deep breath, and fired my only two seekers. They were the last of the missles I had on me, and the blinking red lights throughout my weapon loadout display were showing exactly how screwed I was. My railguns were out of ammo, my missiles were out of ammo, and all my vehicles were out of commission. I was the last mech left alive on my team, and without those missiles, all I had to rely on were a pair of small lasers on the right edge of my mech¡¯s torso.


    I grinned as the opposing guardian mech went to block the incoming seekers only to have them curve around the energized shield and impact on the fragile ankles of my opponent, severing one foot, and crippling the other, sending the gladiator class mech sliding to my feet. I did a bit of showboating for my audience, raising the railguns I had in place of arms, then stepped forward before they could get to their feet, crushing their cockpit beneath the tons of aethersteel of my mech.


    The grin faded quickly however, when I heard a footstep of an assassin class mech behind me. I tried to turn, but with the sound dampening field that assassin class mechs could use, that was too late. I got halfway around by the time I had a long plasma edged blade shoved deep through my torso.


    I simply sighed at the blaring of alarms, getting cut off halfway as they raised their own railgun to my cockpit and eliminated me.


    I turned off my stream as I got to the loss screen, and rested my forehead against the virtual desk in frustration. I¡¯d been the only one on my team to eliminate any of the enemy mechs, and I still had the highest kill count when it came to vehicles.


    Wartech was a simple team based game. You could design and build your own mechs, along with four supporting vehicles, and then join in battlefields ranging from one on one to fifty on fifty. This had been the most popular six on six style match, and I had been the one to kill five out of the enemy mechs, along with twelve vehicles.


    I didn¡¯t let the frustrating match get me down for long though. While it had given me nothing but depression at the competence of my teammates, it had been an excellent showcase of my new mech.


    By the time aether had come and utterly changed humanity, we had become a post scarcity society. People no longer had to work, but if you didn¡¯t, you would be stuck living in practically cell like conditions with how overpopulated our world was. Unfortunately, jobs were exceedingly limited, and as more people moved to games to escape reality, in game items became exceedingly popular, leading to one of the current most common jobs being some kind of work in game.


    People would create art, furniture, or simply design virtual homes, and with many games allowing real money purchases and sales, you could make good money doing so. I personally designed mech and weapon blueprints for Wartech, currently the most popular game in the market. I honestly didn¡¯t think it was the most fun game out there, but it was popular for one reason. It was touted as a war simulator rather than a game, and the highest level players were consistently recruited by the Union army to pilot real mechs.


    I¡¯d gotten offered a job as well, but the only reason I tended to play was to showcase custom mech designs I¡¯d made rather than simply playing to win. My designs weren¡¯t really the best all around out there, but they tended to be built to counter the current meta, and so I won more than I lost, putting me high enough to be looked at by the military.


    Dragging my thoughts back, I thought at my AI to call Deus. She picked up the call quickly, likely having known that I would be calling.


    ¡°Well it was a loss, but I think that the weapons platform MK I should get the reception it deserves. Those railguns you designed are terrifyingly effective,¡± I led.


    ¡°First off, if you try to call the Mangonel by that terrifyingly boring name again, I¡¯m going to sic your AI on you again. Second, They better have worked well after all the time I put into them. The whole point of them was to make something that can punch through energized shields with a few shots. With Gladiators and Guardians being the mech of the hour, ranged mechs should have a fighting chance again.¡±


    I winced as I felt a smug feeling permeate across from my AI - Eris. I had installed my AI into my neural implant to help me design mechs, not realizing how high my personal aether density was. Aether being what it was, the high concentration had turned said AI sentient, and now I had her stuck in my head for life unless I decided to take a massive risk at my age and have my neural implant replaced. As frustrating as she could be though, she was possibly the best thing that could have happened to me, and probably the biggest reason I was the seventh most popular mech designer on Wartech.


    ¡°Oh don¡¯t worry, no reason to sic me on him, I¡¯ll do it myself,¡± Eris said, her disembodied voice ringing out in the virtual room. She could talk, and even manifest a body if she chose in the virtual world, but she would only rarely do the latter, for reasons unknown to me.


    I held back a shudder, trying my damnedest to get across my feeling of being wronged across to Eris before replying. ¡°Well I¡¯m sure that the premiere weapons designer of Wartech will have no problems earning boatloads of credits with her shiny new weapon, let¡¯s just hope that I can get even a fraction of your sales.¡± Deus was well known as being tied for first when it came to weapon design in Wartech, having made enough credits to somehow get the tag Deus across the entirety of the virtual world. She was tied with Aphrodite, and for some reason had decided to partner with me rather than one of the six mech designers more popular than I. There was a lot of speculation about her, and I¡¯m pretty sure that I was the only person who even knew she was female. The current popular speculation had that she was actually in a relationship with Aphrodite, which she¡¯d vehemently denied when I¡¯d decided to tease her about it.


    ¡°Don¡¯t forget, I get one fifth of all your sales considering you¡¯re using my weapons. Though I have to ask, what was up with those short ranged missles you fired at the end. They should have just splattered on that shield, not gone under it.¡±


    I sighed, of course she¡¯d noticed. ¡°They¡¯re a prototype missile called seekers. They have a much lower velocity than most SRMs, but can make some pretty sharp turns. They were my answer to the shield meta until you decided to completely one up me with those new railguns.¡±Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    ¡°So who actually named them? I refuse to admit you actually managed to name something not completely boring.¡±


    I winced. Eris had decided to name them, and refused to budge when I tried to stick with my simple ¡®guided SRM¡¯ name.


    ¡°I did!¡± Eris exclaimed. She¡¯d also been the one to program the avoidance software into them, which had ended up being the most important part, and what she blackmailed me with to go with her name.


    ¡°Good job. Are you planning on putting them up on the weapons portion of the blueprint shop?¡±


    I shook my head, even knowing she couldn¡¯t see me. ¡°No, I¡¯m planning on keeping them exclusive to the¡­ Mangonel¡­ and other mechs I¡¯ve designed. I figure it will give me some more sales. I¡¯ve almost reached rank six, and I plan on hitting it with this mech.¡±


    ¡°Well let¡¯s put up the designs on three then, good luck Mad.¡± Mad was from my own handle, Mad Magitech, considering I refused to believe that aether was anything but magic, regardless of what the scientists said. I much preferred it to my real name of Miles Smith, though I kept my digital appearance the same as my real one so as to connect to my fans better for when I would go to panels at conventions to discuss Wartech designs.


    We did a short countdown, then uploaded our designs, me with my fingers crossed, and Deus likely leaning back with a smug grin considering how much her sales tended to explode whenever she uploaded anything. She¡¯d once put up a bobblehead on the shop for putting in your cockpit, and it had somehow been the most popular item in the shop for over a month, even though it cost half as much as most of her weapon designs.


    I switched over from the depressing game loss screen to the total sales leaderboard, and watched as my figure started to climb. I watched as there was a burst of sales at the beginning, but it wasn¡¯t quite enough to bring me up to rank six. The person ahead of me didn¡¯t have the best mech designs, but he put a lot of them out, and all of them were quite cheap, in both in-game currency and credits, making them the go-to purchases for starter players who didn¡¯t want to put up real money.


    Switching over to my sales page, about half the purchases were made with credits, while the other half were simply the in game currency. The in game currency cost was high, but I knew it would be within the budget of the hardcore players. I knew the number one mech designer only sold their designs for credits, but I wasn¡¯t going to sell even a quarter of the blueprints they would have.


    Deciding that I deserved to stroke my ego some, I logged back into Wartech, and opened up my hanger and began to stroll around, admiring the different mech designs I¡¯d created. While a lot of my older designs had been phased out or upgraded, I kept a copy of every single mech I had designed, and my hangar was huge considering I¡¯d started to design things in my early teens. My first designs had been abysmal, simply amalgamations of other people¡¯s frames and weapons, but eventually I had gotten good enough to design my own frames and weapons.


    It was only with this latest collaboration that I hadn¡¯t solely used my own designs in the past four years, and I hoped that the increase in sales would make up for the amount that Deus was getting from my own sales. I paused for a moment at my solitary melee mech I¡¯d designed. Unlike the designs most others had crafted, it was designed to outmaneuver the early melee mechs, and had sold well for a while until the latest Gladiator and Guardian designs. Melee mechs used a big chunk of metal with active aether armor as a shield, and the processing power of the mech to block anything they could see coming. While they could still be taken out by snipers, the active armor shield that Aphrodite had popularized had led to a melee focused meta, with a few sniper class mechs, basically a giant gun on legs with an advanced sensor package, designed to hit things before they could be seen.


    I walked by my vehicle designs next. While most people simply decided to go with the very old, yet still reliable tank designs, I preferred to use missiles, and I grinned at the thought of increased sales once I put ones with seekers up on the shop.


    I logged out after reaching my newest design, the Mangonel as it had been forcibly named, and spent the rest of the night modifying my older designs to be able to use the seeker missiles, having to remove various pieces to load the more advanced computers that would tell the simple AI in the missiles where to target, and how to get there without hitting anything on the way. Eris and I would debate on what to remove, and how to modify things, until I logged out, took care of my physical body¡¯s needs, and went to sleep.


    I woke the next morning bleary eyed, as I always seem to be before having some form of caffeine, and was in the shower when Eris informed me I had a call from Deus.


    ¡°Yes?¡± I started the call, terribly annoyed that my morning ritual had been interrupted, while trying to keep said irritation out of my voice.


    ¡°Hi!¡± she replied, sounding terrifyingly chipper. I hated morning people sometimes.


    ¡°So I have a few pieces of good news, and some bad news.¡±


    I grunted in reply as I dried off from my shower, and trudged over to my coffee machine, having it make me the strongest coffee I could survive.


    ¡°Let¡¯s get the simple stuff out of the way first. I¡¯m glad to announce you managed to make your way up to the fifth rank in mech designs last night!¡±


    If we¡¯d still used physical phones rather than neural implants, I would have dropped it. I¡¯d expected a certain amount of increase, but this was way beyond expectations. I instantly had Eris pull up my account balance, and my eyes bulged at the number it displayed.


    ¡°The second piece of good news is that you¡¯re going to get to meet me in real!¡±


    I was getting old of being surprised. At a time where most of the Wartech community considered Deus male, I was going to be meeting her in real. After thinking it over a moment, I became a bit wary, there had to be some reason this was happening.


    ¡°Why?¡± I asked, a bit of edge creeping into my voice.


    ¡°Well that¡¯s the bad news. Turns out the latest goldilocks planet we found was already found by the Clyx, and the military just so happens to have decided to conscript a few designers and a ton of players from Wartech so we can have some more feet on the ground to conquer the planet.¡±


    ¡°And why was I conscripted? Why didn¡¯t they decide to just grab Myst or Loss? Their designs are usually considered the best out there.¡± I was getting quite annoyed about this, and I¡¯m sure some of it leaked into my voice.


    ¡°Well I kinda sorta may have refused to work with the people ahead of you, and they really wanted me, so you got dragged along.¡± I could hear nothing but a chipper tone, not even a hint of repentance as she talked. I felt my gut sink as I heard Eris giggling at me, having hijacked my senses to make me actually hear her rather than just sending it to my mind like she usually would.


    ¡°So you mean to tell me I would have been totally fine until you decided to drag me along with you?¡±


    ¡°Yup!¡±


    I held my head in my hands as Eris¡¯ giggling petered off.


    ¡°I kept telling you to have more ambition, and this is your chance at doing something good. Go for it!¡± Eris tried to motivate me, only making me sink deeper into despair as my neural implant informed me someone was at my door to see me.


    I dragged my feet, downing my coffee as fast as I could in the hope that it would make me feel better about this mess as I made my way there. Answering the door, I could see a few people in suits, as Eris informed Deus that the military was probably here to pick me up before she hung up the call.


    ¡°Miles Smith? Also known as Mad Magitech?¡± The most important looking person in the front asked.


    ¡°That¡¯s me.¡± I replied, feeling utterly defeated, as Eris tried to encourage me that this was a good thing to have happened.


    ¡°You¡¯ve been conscripted into the Union¡¯s army, please come with us.


    I let out a sigh, and looked longingly back into my home one last time as I stepped out the door.

 Chapter 2

    I spent the first hour determined to spend the drive in silence as a small form of resistance to my new situation, only mentally chatting with Eris, but after getting more and more bored, I let my curiosity get the best of me and asked something I¡¯d been wondering ever since Deus had called me.


    ¡°So why does Deus need me to work with her anyway? Why doesn¡¯t she just design weapons and have others work with them?¡±


    The man who I assumed to be in charge looked at me, seemingly surprised I¡¯d talked. ¡°Unfortunately, most designers do best working together on a single project. The mech and weapons being designed for each other produces far better products than making them separately and then mashing them together. You¡¯ll also have a couple others working with you designing the sensor packages and computers you¡¯ll need for your mech. You won¡¯t have any aether material designers though. They¡¯re too rare, though you will be able to set a bounty on a material you need, just specify things like shear strength, flexibility, hardness, conductivity, and set a credit bounty. If it¡¯s high enough one of them may try to design it for you.¡±


    I nodded, I guess that made sense, though it didn¡¯t make my situation feel any better. I was going to have to find some way to get back at Deus, though considering Eris always seemed to side with her, I had no clue how I was going to pull that off.


    Curiosity sated, I asked a few more questions about what was going to happen, but the man said that he couldn¡¯t say much until I¡¯d signed the NDA. Frustrated, I had Eris pull up a few chatting applications, discussing mech design with some of the others I was friendly with until we reached a massive complex.


    After a needlessly complex security checkpoint, I was dragged into one of the buildings made of simple concrete and glass, looking purely utilitarian. I was told to wait, so sat down one one of the provided chairs and tried to pull up my chat application only to be told I had no signal. The wait wasn¡¯t long, and soon I was filling out an obscene amount of paperwork, thankfully all digital, and doubly thankfully, Eris filled out basically everything for me, leaving me only to digitally sign it.


    Once I¡¯d digitally signed something like forty different things, I was escorted to a room and told to wait. It wasn¡¯t long until a cute, bookish girl was escorted in in a similar manner I had been, her barely five foot frame a bit dwarfed by my six foot one inch. Her face had a smattering of freckles, which was surprising considering they¡¯d been mostly eliminated by the gene washes most people would get for their children. She was lean in the same manner practically every VR user was these days, me included. The neural implants had a handy function of stimulating muscles as we were in VR. While it wouldn¡¯t bulk you up, it kept you skinny and in shape, regardless of if you ever worked out.


    I¡¯d almost finished examining her, when she decided to start the conversation. ¡°What? Don¡¯t recognize me Miles?¡±


    Hearing her voice, I did recognize her. ¡°Deus, we¡¯ve never even video chatted. How on earth did you expect me to recognize you.¡±


    She pouted a bit. ¡°Well I recognize you.¡±


    ¡°Of course you recognize me. My VR persona in Wartech looks the exact same as me, and all my social media accounts are linked to it,¡± I deadpanned.


    ¡°Well you¡¯re no fun.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d assumed you¡¯d already known that considering my personality hasn¡¯t changed.¡± Eris soon pitched in to ask me to say hi for her, and I obliged, Deus echoing the greeting.


    ¡°Well I guess I should introduce myself properly since we¡¯re going to be working together now. I¡¯m Elizabeth Tear, though please call me Liz.¡±


    ¡°Well it¡¯s a pleasure to meet you in the flesh, though I¡¯d have appreciated it if it wasn¡¯t because you¡¯d dragged me into this.¡±


    She only bothered to smile in reply, making her bookish looks light up in a way I hadn¡¯t expected to be possible. After blinking that thought away, and pointedly ignoring Eris¡¯ comment about how cute she was, I decided to try and get some more information. ¡°So when are we meeting up with the other designers, the ones who¡¯ll be working on the sensors and computer?¡±


    ¡°Well I may have dragged away a couple of interns at my dad¡¯s company to help us out. They should be arriving pretty quickly.¡±


    I blinked. Apparently her dad was some sort of bigshot. ¡°What company would that be exactly?¡±


    ¡°Oh, my dad is the president of Tear Industries.¡±


    I¡¯m pretty sure I¡¯d turned even whiter than the lack of sun had made me, this time completely ignoring the innocent smile she had on her face. Tear industries was the second biggest company when it came to manufacturing mech weaponry. At least I had an explanation as to how she had been so good at designing them. She¡¯d likely been groomed from birth for designing weaponry.


    ¡°I can¡¯t wait to get to play with the good stuff here, all of the stuff on the civilian Wartech is like twelve generations out of date,¡± she decided to ignore my plight while continuing.


    ¡°Wait, what do you mean the civilian Wartech?¡± My curiosity overcoming my surprise.


    ¡°Oh, you didn¡¯t know? Wartech is an almost perfect recreation of reality, run by one of the most powerful AI on the planet. It¡¯s how the military trains pilots and tests new mech designs. The civilian version just doesn¡¯t have any of the modern alloys, weaponry or mechs to avoid aliens getting information on our technology.¡±


    ¡°Wait, what exactly are we going to be doing here?¡±Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    ¡°Basically the same thing we¡¯ve been doing. Designing weaponry and mechs, and then testing them in Wartech.¡±


    I blinked. I¡¯d expected it to be a lot different from what I¡¯d been doing, but it seems that I¡¯d be able to continue my shut in lifestyle.


    My happiness must have shown on my face, because Liz got an evil looking grin on her face. ¡°Don¡¯t expect to be doing the same thing, we have basic first, then we still have to do daily drills and meet up with our team daily for practice.¡±


    Despair leaked into my voice as I questioned in a pleading tone, ¡°Why do we have to do all that? We¡¯re going to be designers for fucks sake. Why do we need to even need that? And what do you mean team?¡± Eris ignored my question, simply saying how good it was that I was finally going to be doing something.


    ¡°Well first, we¡¯re going to need to form a squad of six mechs and practice with them. As for why, you don¡¯t expect people to just randomly try out mechs from some unknown designers do you? If you weren¡¯t a good player, the military would just have someone matched with you to showcase any mech designs we put out, but both of us are good enough to show it off ourselves, and that saves the government a good amount of training time for the trainees to use on the more standard mechs, though they can still choose to use any designs they like.¡±


    ¡°Wait, what do you mean we? As far as I know you don¡¯t even play Wartech.¡±


    ¡°Of course I do. You may know me as Demon.¡± She was practically preening at the expression I was showing her. Demon was one of the best players in Wartech, bouncing around the top fifty places on the ranking, regularly making it to the top ten.


    I shook my head. Apparently she was just the perfect person when it came to mechs. Resolving myself to not be surprised by anything else she said, my brooding about how she was apparently better than me at everything was interrupted by the door opening again.


    Walking in were two more females, which made me start to pray they weren¡¯t the others on our team. It was bad enough having Liz and Eris, but if I was going to be surrounded by more females, I was going to lose my mind from being so outnumbered.


    My hopes that they weren¡¯t who I despairingly expected them to be were dashed when Liz began to introduce them to me. Tae Chiyun was a confident looking taller asian woman with a slim frame, who would be working on the computers which would run the mech. On the other hand Kenna Kull was an average height woman with strikingly red hair and green eyes, who seemed very shy for someone so striking.


    I stared pointedly at Liz before asking something important. ¡°Did you have to get only females?¡±


    ¡°Hey, there was no way I would want to work with males.¡±


    I looked down at myself, back up, then down again. ¡°Do you assume I¡¯m a eunuch?¡±


    Her blindingly bright smile was painful to look at as she replied. ¡°Well we¡¯ve been working together a few months now, and you haven¡¯t hit on me or flirted with me once.¡±


    My eyes were dead as I replied. ¡°Why on earth would I hit on someone when I don¡¯t know anything but what they sound like.¡±


    Tae was looking on with a grin, while Kenna was looking away, pretending she wasn¡¯t hearing anything. ¡°Well you knew I was rich, and Isn¡¯t my voice beautiful?¡±


    I felt a small grin slide across my face, deciding that I may have a way to get her to kick me off the team as I replied. ¡°Well I will admit, your voice is beautiful, and it matches you well.¡±


    She wasn¡¯t flustered in the slightest as she said ¡°Why thank you,¡± and I felt my grin slip a bit. At least I had some hope of getting out of this though, I just had to hit on her until she kicked me out of the team.


    ¡°Don¡¯t bother trying to get me to kick you out of the team. You¡¯ve signed the paperwork, and you¡¯ll just get assigned to a different one if you do.¡± So now she could read my mind. I sighed internally as I heard Eris laughing uproariously in the back of my mind. After a bit Eris calmed down and gave me some unneeded advice. ¡®I do recommend going after her though, you obviously think she¡¯s cute, her personality fits yours pretty well considering how well you worked together, and she¡¯s probably one of the richest people on the planet.¡¯


    That sunk the rest of my mood back into depression and I decided to try and hop back on my chat application in order to try and forget what was happening to me. The girls decided to chat, with Kenna sort of hanging in the background, with only a couple comments, her head shrunk down a bit, clearly as uncomfortable with people as I was, and worse at hiding it.


    I was starting to consider a few new designs after finding out I had access to the internet again,likely due to having signed the NDA already. I was discussing pros and cons with a few of my fellow designers, when I realized that all I know might end up becoming moot considering all the new tech I was going to get to play with, and closed out the chat application as a skinny man with glasses wearing military camo came into the room.


    ¡°Now that you¡¯re all here, I¡¯m going to be explaining exactly what you¡¯re going to be doing for the next few months. You¡¯re going to have bootcamp for two weeks, and then you¡¯re going to be attending classes to learn about the common alloys and materials you¡¯re going to be able to work with in the military, along with some of the more common weaponry and armor. Don¡¯t expect this to be anything like what you¡¯ve worked with in the Wartech you¡¯ve played, so I expect you all to work hard,¡± He said, giving me a pointed glare as he finished the last part, which I may have flinched at.


    The girls seemed to be much more enthusiastic than I was, even Kenna nodding along. The man continued in a bit more detail for a bit before dismissing us and assigning us rooms.


    The next day I was woken up far too early for my liking by some ungodly music that sounded like it was played on a klaxon alarm. I fell halfway out of bed, before dressing as fast as I could, a grizzled drill sergeant yelling at us about how little time we had to get ready.


    The day continued to be hell. It was exercise after exercise, all the while being berated by the grizzled man who I quickly began to expect was a devil. I¡¯d expected my high density aether body to be an advantage as it gave me strength beyond what my frame should have, but it only resulted in more work. When we marched, I was given almost triple the weight of the other recruits, and even pushups were done with the additional weight. I would look longingly at the others who had it better, and quickly became friends in pain with John, a recruit who was going to be solely a pilot rather than a designer. He¡¯s been recruited in the large wave of recruits that were conscripted when the large scale war with the Clyx broke out over Ettin 4, the goldilocks planet we were fighting over. John tended to be a bit brusque, but he was the only other one with a high aether density, and we bonded in shared misery.


    The days passed in a similar manner, and I repeated my mantra of ¡®only fourteen days¡¯ cutting down the amount of days in the mantra as each passed. Eventually we were done, and I thought that the hard part was done. I was wrong.


    The actual schooling was even worse. Those who didn¡¯t have an aether computer built off their brain were quickly given one, making the advantage I¡¯d have over the average person after Eris had made me one completely moot. In fact, considering that Eris used most of it herself, I had less processing power and storage at my disposal than the average recruit, even with the modifications Eris had made. I got a bit closer with my team as we went through it, learning that while Tae had basically forced herself into the group I was in, Kenna had been dragged in after Elizabeth had found out how good she was at designing bleeding edge sensor tech.


    Liz was constantly clashing with another woman I never got the name of, and they were both horribly competitive, fighting for the top two spots every damn test we took. Their constant scathing remarks at each other quickly made it clear that they had some sort of history together, but I wasn¡¯t really interested, though I was worried that their attitude was going to carry through to when we finally formed our squads.


    Studying, studying, and more studying. It was hell. Even Eris wasn¡¯t spared, working as hard as she could to improve the aether computer, which was simply a computer built of pure aether that would directly interface with the brain through the neural chip. She worked as hard as an AI could to improve it to the point where I was no longer behind the other recruits who didn¡¯t have an AI hogging most of the processing power and storage. The only difference was in our attitude. I felt like I was slowly withering away to death, while Eris was horribly chipper, happy that I would soon be working to help humanity rather than - as she put it - wasting away alone while doing nothing of worth. We weren¡¯t even spared physically during the study period. While we would parse the information from our aether computers, trying to commit it to our own memory rather than having it simply stored, we would be hiking, doing pushups, situps, hikes, or my personal most hated, burpees.


    At the end of it, I was ready to steal one of the guns worn by the guards that would patrol the outside of the base and end it, but then the last week appeared. I¡¯d expected the hell semester to end in pain, but it was the final week we got into something I expected to find fun. We were going to get into the military version of Wartech and try out a bunch of different mech designs to acclimate ourselves with it. I couldn¡¯t keep the grin off my face, even as I was woke at an ungodly time in the morning.

 Chapter 3

    I arrived at class with a spring in my step. Opening the door, I saw around half the class there, with most of them looking quite excited that we were going to be actually trying out some military mechs in Wartech. I sat down next to Kenna, giving her a nod which she replied to with a shy smile. She¡¯d began to open up a bit to our group, but she would shy away from interacting with anyone else.


    Once the last of the students had filed in, the teacher who had been there when I arrived sent access codes to each of our neural chips and told us to login. We¡¯d already had access to the military database to research things, but we were finally getting access to the military Wartech. Logging in, I was met with a staging area, which had two other people. Liz was there, along with the girl she was constantly being competitive with. The two stared each other down for a moment, before both of them turned away with a huff. I shook my head, this was going to be awkward.


    ¡°You¡¯ve all been grouped in squads based on your approximate skill at Wartech. You¡¯ll be fighting different scenarios with each other. Each time I expect you to choose a different mech to familiarize yourself with the different systems. You¡¯ll be fighting against AI controlled Clyx mechs rather than mechs of our own design, if you want to practice against other pilots, you¡¯ll get your chance after this class. Once you¡¯re out of class, there will be different scenarios against the Sius and Rew as well. I¡¯ll give you a bit to get familiar with your teammates, then I expect you to use the screen to start selecting your mechs and scenarios.¡±


    Once he was finished with the explanation, I decided to introduce myself to the girl I didn¡¯t know, ignoring the glare I was getting from Liz. ¡°I¡¯m Miles. You would be?¡±


    ¡°Sydney,¡± she replied in a curt manner, taking my proffered hand even though she looked slightly annoyed at me.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to guess you two already know each other?¡± I asked, getting a glare from both of them, doing my best not to flinch.


    ¡°You could say that,¡± Sydney answered, giving me no more information to go on.


    ¡°Let¡¯s stop chatting and get playing already!¡± Liz said, her enthusiasm apparently drowning out her dislike for Sydney.


    I shrugged, and turned to one of the screens, looking through the different mechs available. There were tens of them, the first on the list being one of my least favorite melee focused mechs, with a much more advanced form of the active aether armor shield, and a plasma blade, oh so cleverly named warrior. Skipping over it, I looked at the more interesting ones. There was a fun looking heavy mech named Overwhelm that was basically just a missile platform on legs, but it wasn¡¯t quite what I was looking for. Eventually I found a relatively balanced mech called Raven. It had a large laser completely taking up one arm for medium range, a plasma cannon on the other arm for short range, and a few missile tubes on the torso, along with single use jets for jumping. Using them would cause some damage to the legs when landing, but they could still be used for surprise tactics. Deciding to double down on the short and medium ranges, I loaded up some short range missiles, which gave up range for a larger explosive payload.


    Deciding it would be best to discuss our team composition with the other two, I turned to them and mentioned my choice to the others. Surprisingly, both of them were cooperative, Sydney taking the Warrior mech I¡¯d completely passed over, and Liz chose a sniper class mech called the Deadbolt, built around the largest railgun I¡¯d ever seen, giving up all other armaments to have enough power from the aether reactor to use it.


    Annoyingly, we didn¡¯t have the option to have any support vehicles, meaning I was going to have far less missile support than I was used to.


    ¡°So why don¡¯t we get any vehicles? Is that the case with all the military maps?¡±


    Sydney stared at me like I was stupid, apparently to her I was just being an idiot. ¡°These are mech training scenarios. They¡¯re obviously not going to want people trying to minmax their vehicle choices yet.¡±


    We finalized our choices, and tried to look through the different scenarios. While there were a few different maps, most of the options were locked, with each simply having a difficulty rating and not allowing us to customize the enemy mech skill or amount. Shrugging, I suggested we started with an easier map, only to get instantly vetoed by the two girls, who seemed surprisingly in sync with each other for how much they seemed to dislike each other. We instantly crossed off the escort missions, as we all agreed they tended to suck.


    Before we started up the map, we shared callsigns, Sydney turning out to be Aphrodite, explaining the antagonistic attitude she and Liz had for each other. Sticking two very competitive designers could both be argued as the best designer in the game together seemed like a terribly poor decision to me, but then again I was just a lowly grunt here.


    The map we chose was one classified as hard, an urban scenario in which we were fighting in an enemy city, thus not needing to do our best to limit civilian casualties. Loading into the map was as instant as it always was. One second I was pressing the confirm button on the screen I¡¯d selected my mech from, the next I was in the cockpit of my Raven mech. Looking at the dashboard, my eyes were instantly drawn to the power level of the aether reactor - it was easily double that of the ones I¡¯d seen in the civilian version. I grinned at the change, it was one thing learning about it, it was another piloting something with so much power. Looking at the power draw of the weapons, I nodded. They took up around double the power of the civilian versions, gaining some range in return. They would also be significantly more damaging, though not gaining as much as you would expect.


    I stopped admiring the new tech, and linked my neural implant to the mech. It was comfortable, I could simply feel the mech in my mind. I could tell how much it was damaged, not at all in this case. I simply knew how many missiles I had left, and how much power the laser and plasma cannon would draw. I would get three consecutive shots from the plasma cannon before the capacitors would be drained and need about fifteen seconds to recharge, or five seconds of continuous fire from the large laser.


    Focusing my mind on the sensors and chat channel, I gave the all ready, the last to do so, and we started moving out. The goal of the map was simple, eliminate the enemy mechs and vehicles. We started carefully wandering the city, finding a few isolated vehicles, which were swiftly eliminated by Liz before they could get a shot off. It was going well when Liz warned us that she had mech contacts on her sensors. We slowed down, me staying close to Sydney to provide support and let her shield get in the way of any mechs that might take potshots at us.


    We approached where the sensor contacts were showing, and rushed around the corner, Sydney leading. When we got a visual, I groaned. There were three melee class mechs, wielding massive active aether armor shields, one mid range mech similar to me, and one sniper class mech. Some sort of projectile was instantly intercepted by Sydney, originating from the sniper mech, and I saw the glow indicating the active aether armor on her shield dim an unhealthy amount. Two of the melee enemy mechs charged at us, two lance looking weapons on the two arms on their right side, while one of the mechs stayed back to protect their mid range mech from our own sniper. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    I heard the roar in the air from Liz firing her massive railgun, trying to take out the enemy sniper, and saw it scrape the right side of the enemy mech, doing some damage, but not taking it out of the fight.


    ¡°I¡¯ll try and take out the sniper quickly, Mad, you go for the mid range mech, Aphrodite, good luck with the melee mechs,¡± Liz¡¯s voice cheerfully echoed over our comms.


    ¡°Of course great leader Deus, I¡¯ll do all the work,¡± Sydney replied, her voice dripping sarcasm.


    I ignored the unnecessary comments and fired one shot of my plasma cannon at the mid range mech, unfortunately the melee mech standing in front of it just kept their shield between us. Their shield dimmed, but not enough for me to get through it quickly. Seeing how little that would do, I decided to go all in and activated my jump jets. I was instantly launched into the air, and I focused on the enemy medium range mech as he returned the favor, firing his four automatic cannons at me. Even with my height, his legs were still blocked off by the large shield of the other mech, so had Eris instantly run the calculations for hitting center mass, and fired my laser and plasma cannon. The laser hit at the speed of light. As an infrared weapon, it wouldn¡¯t be visible if not for the fact that it literally ignited the air as it passed, seemingly a line of flame that colliding with the enemy mech, and caused the mech to glow red as Eris kept it focused center mass, molten metal starting to slough off.


    Its dodge to the right may not have prevented the laser that moved at the speed of light, but it prevented the plasma cannon from impacting in the spot that had been weakened from the laser, still managing to blow off one of the arms as it impacted in an explosion of light and sound.


    I checked over my own mech, and didn¡¯t see any significant damage, most of the enemy shots having hit my armor plates, though the arm my plasma cannon was on had taken some damage and wouldn¡¯t be able to track to the left anymore. Hoping to finish what the laser had started as it ran out of juice, I fired my missiles, falling back to the ground as they went speeding towards the enemy mech. I used my directional thrusters, usually used to speed up lateral movement on the ground, and redirected my path slightly to hopefully land on one of the enemy melee mechs.


    Sydney was already in combat with two of the enemy mechs, and was somehow holding her own as I landed on one of them. I shouted as I landed, excited, but the enemy mech had managed to raise his shield in time to prevent me from crushing his main body, and I heard the crunching of metal that came from my legs and his arms supporting the shield. Looking over the damage my mech had taken, I noticed my legs were still functional, but my speed would likely be cut in half, and grinned too early as the enemy mech managed to stab one of his lance arms into my left leg, practically severing it.


    Unbalanced, I fell to the ground as Sydney managed to get to the side of the enemy mech and impale it on her plasma sword, the glow in her shield all but gone. I expected to be instantly killed by the mech I¡¯d fallen on, but it exploded as a round from Liz¡¯s oversized railgun hit it, the roar of it firing following the instant after.


    Putting my focus on my sensors, I saw that the enemy sniper mech was ripped to shreds, a massive hole center mass in it. As the last enemy mech gave up on supporting the mech with the automatic cannons, it charged at Sydney, the medium mech opening fire on my fallen form. I winced as I saw the damage accumulating on my mech, glancing at my power levels to see that I still didn¡¯t have enough power to fire my plasma cannon, and my laser wouldn¡¯t last long enough to do significant damage.


    I lay there with my missing foot as more and more of my mech went out of commission, but considering my missiles had severed another arm on the enemy mid range mech, I was hopeful I would survive long enough to get off a decently long shot with my laser. My hoped were quickly dashed however, when my sensors picked up a spike in energy from behind Liz. An assassin class mech had snuck up behind her, and impaled through her cockpit with a weapon I didn¡¯t recognize.


    I sighed as I saw the last melee mech impact Sydney, its lances tearing straight through her weakened shield, and ripping off a good chunk from the left side of her mech. She fell to a knee from the impact, but managed to shear through one of its legs before falling to a lance through the cockpit. Deciding to go out in a blaze of glory, I fired my just reloaded short range missiles, and got off one shot with my plasma cannon at the midrange mech.


    Seeing it explode didn¡¯t feel me with much joy as the assassin class mech ran up to me outside of where my arms could track his movements, and shoved the mysterious blade through my cockpit.


    Exiting the sim, I noticed that both the girls were looking exceedingly frustrated. Deciding to be the one to break the silence, I led with my opinions. ¡°I think I need to pick a different mech, there¡¯s no way my plasma cannon can break through those shields they have with the three consecutive shots I get, and I¡¯ve got no melee weaponry to help break through them.¡±


    Liz decided that my comment was a good point to start an outburst. ¡°That assassin class mech was bullshit! I have a freaking advanced sensor suite! There¡¯s no way I shouldn¡¯t have picked up even the best stealth suite.¡±


    Sydney apparently thought that the best thing to do was incite even more rage. ¡°Well if you¡¯d been a competent pilot, you would know that the stealth the Clyx have is leagues better than what we have. We don¡¯t even know how it works. Next time maybe try actually using your visuals instead of just relying on your sensor package,¡± she said, her voice dripping with venom.


    ¡°Says the person who decided to try and block a straight thrust from a Lancer mech when her shield was practically out of power.¡± Liz retorted.


    The two glared at each other for a bit, before turning away from each other. I was starting to see a pattern here.


    Trying to break off the negative atmosphere, I decided to bring what to do next. ¡°So we should probably try a different map, and we need to try out different mechs for each of us, lets get looking.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to pick an easier map. The enemy pilots were only rated as moderate,¡± Sydney arrogantly said. Looking over, Liz was nodding along with her. Apparently they only agreed with things like this.


    ¡°Considering that¡¯s the average rating, it¡¯s not so bad. They outnumbered us six to three anyway¡± I replied hesitantly


    Sydney snorted. ¡°Maybe that¡¯s average in the civilian version. The military version has two difficulties above difficult, extreme and insane.¡± I raised my eyebrows, wondering why they hadn¡¯t mentioned this in class. Though then again, maybe they had, I¡¯d spent most of it on complete autopilot.


    The two girls glared me down until I acquiesced, and then we went through the different mech options. Eventually, I decided on a different mech that was relatively similar to the one I¡¯d picked last time, giving up the laser, but packing a lot more capacitors to power a massive plasma cannon, called the Crusher.


    This time, both of the girls decided to pick up missile platform mechs, Liz going with one that had medium lasers on the arms for shorter range engagements, while the one Sydney picked had autocannons. Considering that her mech had no powered weapons, the excess power from the aether reactor was used to power active aether armor built into the mech itself rather than on a shield.


    We chose a desert map this time, and the fight went much better than the previous. Liz had taken a long range missile loadout, while Sydney had gone with medium range missiles. When we found the enemy, they were simply bombarded from over a kilometer away by Liz, and Sydney opened fire once they got a bit closer, heavily weakening their shields from far from melee range. My plasma cannon easily blasted through the weakened shields, and the missiles easily took out their ranged mechs while I took care of anything that got close.


    This time, we were paying attention to visuals, and caught the assassin mech before it even got close. While the missiles couldn¡¯t get a lock, our short range weapons easily took it out before it could do anything other than fire its railgun a single time, not having enough power to fire more than one shot considering most of its power went to the stealth suite it had.


    The rest of the day went pretty well as we beat one after another of the hard difficulty challenges. Some of the mech combinations we used worked well, while others completely flopped. The double sniper setup we used when we finally decided to do an escort mission failed in a spectacular manner. While it was fun to focus fire and take out a melee mech in an instant, they simply ignored us and took out our escort target.


    We won more than we lost, taking a break here and there for lunch and dinner, and we worked surprisingly well together considering the two girls seemed to hate each other. The rest of the week passed in a similar manner, and by the end of it we¡¯d convinced the instructor to unlock higher difficulty enemy mech pilots. While we quickly adjusted to difficult, when we got to extreme, it felt like banging our heads against a brick wall. The enemy not only outnumbered us, we were barely more skilled than them. By the time the practice week was over, we¡¯d only beaten a single mission with the enemy set on extreme, and we hadn¡¯t even touched insane.


    After talking to the instructor, it turned out that the reason the enemy always outnumbered us was simple - the missions were designed for a six person squad, but considering our skill level and the amount of people in class, we¡¯d been stuck with just three people. After finishing the class, we were brought to the place we¡¯d stay, each of us being given a surprisingly spacious house as designers, and we were to meet up with the people who would make up the rest of our squad tomorrow.

 Chapter 4

    The next day started at an hour I would have never considered waking at before I¡¯d come here, but thankfully it was still later than I¡¯d been waking for the classes I¡¯d been going through for the past few months. Dragging myself out of bed to one of Eris¡¯ favorite songs (she had a heavy metal obsession), I got ready, and was out the door in time to get to the spot where we¡¯d be meeting the people who would fill out the rest of our squad.


    Liz and Sydney were already there, Liz looking excited. I snorted. Morning people. At least Sydney had the decency to look as irritable as I felt. It was only a minute or so before three guys walked in, and I let out a sigh of relief, I was no longer outnumbered by the fairer sex. The person in front I quickly recognized as John from basic, and I greeted him, which he returned with a nod. The other two were holding hands, and introduced themselves as Sean and Achilles. I shrugged, it wasn¡¯t my thing, but I had nothing against it. Unlike in the past, those who were actively against same sex relations were considered extremists, usually of the religious variety. Sean was tall and well built, with a gym rats build, while Achilles, contrary to his name, simply had the lean VR look, while being even taller than Sean.


    We chatted for a bit, and once Sean got talking, he didn¡¯t seem to stop, at times making me question if he even had to breathe. The girls mostly stayed out of the conversation, and definitely weren¡¯t interested in talking to each other, while Eris kept encouraging me to join in the conversation instead of remaining as mostly a bystander. I stayed out of it until the discussion turned to different mechs and strategies, at which point the girls and I both joined in with our opinions. While the other three men were rated top thousand in the civilian Wartech, they mentioned that they¡¯d been having a lot of trouble with the military version. When they would play pvp outside of the required scenarios against the aliens, the enemy pilots would crush them.


    It was through this that I learned what exactly was going to happen. We¡¯d be playing scenarios against AI controlled opponents for at least four hours a day, while in the rest of it, us designers would be expected to either design mechs, or showcase our own mechs in pvp to try and convince others to use them.


    While the player versus alien scenarios were simply for training fighting against alien mechs, playing against other trainees would train us how to fight against other pilots.. They¡¯d tried using AI controlled mechs for a while, but if they were controlled by drones, the ping delay would cripple them, as FTL communicators would take up too much of the mechs power. On the other hand, any AI powerful enough to run a mech at the same level as a human pilot with an aether computer would take up so much space and power that it would cripple the mechs weaponry. Considering that aether computers could only be built into living minds, they simply stuck with human pilots.


    A severe looking woman wearing the standard military camo soon arrived and went over what I¡¯d already learned from the pilot trainees, and gave us access codes to the full Wartech, so we¡¯d no longer be locked into the training scenarios we¡¯d done in class. The second she was gone we all logged in, and we were met with quite a few more people than I¡¯d expected. Among them were Tae and Kenna and the rest introduced themselves as the designers that would be creating the mechs for the three pilots on our team. I thought it was a bit odd that they would making an entire team of experimental mechs rather than mixing some of them with the more common ones, but figured it wouldn¡¯t matter too much.


    Each team of designers had introduced themselves to their pilot, informing them what type of mech they were best at designing. They then each turned to their screen and opened the design mode, disappearing from the virtual room. I felt a bit jealous, as I was going to be stuck doing scenarios instead of actually designing for four hours, but kept my irritation from my face. Once the rest of the designers had disappeared, the squad opened the scenario and mech options. I was instantly blown away. While we had access to tens of mechs and fifty scenarios while we were in class, there were now hundreds, if not thousands of different mechs available, each slightly different, along with hundreds of scenarios.


    Eventually, I decided to stick with the mech I¡¯d decided was my favorite while we were in training, Crusher, and let the others decide on the scenario. We ended up with two melee mechs piloted by Sean and Achilles, Sean with a massive shield, Achilles with a smaller one that was more maneuverable. I was the only short range mech, John and Sydney chose the same mid range mech with a laser on one arm and an autocannon for the other, while Liz picked the Deadbolt she¡¯d enjoyed in training. Now that we were out of the training mode, we got to pick up some support vehicles as well, and I reminded myself to make some missile platforms and load them up with my seekers once I¡¯d redesigned them with the new tech I had access to.


    I went with my usual three missile platforms and a single vehicle with a communications and ECM suite to make sure we could keep contact with each other. The rest went with mostly tanks, though Liz picked up a couple scout vehicles to help keep an eye out for assassins. The map we decided on (meaning Liz and Sydney chose and then dragged everyone else along), was a wave defense map that we would lose if either fifty percent of the city was destroyed, or all our mechs were destroyed.


    We went into the scenario where we¡¯d decided to set the enemy pilot skill at extreme, and ordered our vehicles to advantageous points, usually meaning a bit of cover, or in my missile platforms case, lots of cover they could indirectly fire around.


    The first wave started, and I almost laughed a bit. A single light mech with medium lasers appeared, along with four tanks. We didn¡¯t even bother wasting ammo, just let Sean and Achilles walk up and finish each one of them with a single swipe or stab of their sword, only losing a bit of power on their shields from blocking the shots.


    The next wave went similarly, two enemy mechs and eight vehicles. This time John and sydney joined in with their lasers, melting through the enemy tanks and vehicles before they could do more than scratch the paint on our mechs.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    We started burning ammo by the fourth wave, and on the sixth we had to start using our support vehicles to run interference and take out the enemy vehicles before they could do much damage to us. At that point, I was beginning to get a bit worried, as Sean and Achilles were a bit outmatched one on one by the AI difficulty. John and I were holding our own however, and Liz and Sydney seemed to make the fights they were picking look almost easy for them, quickly coming to aid us as we started to take damage.


    At wave seven, we started to have a bit more discussion on what we were going to do.


    ¡°So Mad, I have the perfect plan, I¡¯m sure you¡¯re going to love it!¡± Liz started. I blinked a bit at the use of my handle rather than my name, then groaned. This was going to be terrible.


    ¡°So what is this genius plan Deus?¡±


    ¡°Well,¡± She dragged out the word. ¡°Aphrodite and I can eliminate an enemy mech each, but if we¡¯re stuck fighting two, we¡¯ll be tied up, so you get to have the honor of distracting two of them!¡±


    ¡°Great,¡± I replied with as much sarcasm as I could muster dripping from my voice.


    ¡°Is she always like this?¡± Sean chimed in.


    ¡°The ridiculously cheerful tone, or getting me to do the crappy work?¡± I replied.


    ¡°Both.¡±


    ¡°Yup. She was one of the best players in the civilian version of Wartech, yet I was the one stuck showcasing the mech we designed.¡±


    ¡°Good luck,¡± John chimed in his curt manner. With that, I was stuck in this role whether I liked it or not.


    As three melee mechs charged us, I made sure to get close enough to be just in range of one of the enemy mid range mechs, making myself appear to be a bit too close to one of the enemy Lancer mechs. The random thought about needing to learn the names of the other enemy mechs flitted through my mind as I opened fire on the Lancer, the shot impacting on its shield, visibly making it dim.


    I used up the rest of the energy in my capacitors with my plasma cannon, which ended up destroying its shield, and one of the arms behind it, but it kept charging towards me even as I backed away as quickly as I could. I had Eris fire the missiles at the enemy mid range mech as I did so, just as it opened fire with its lasers, destroying half my salvo of missiles just as they released. I shrugged, at least I saved myself some damage.


    As the enemy¡¯s lasers ran out of power, I checked over the damage. Over half my missile ports had been slagged beyond recognition, and my cockpit was getting a bit too close to open air for my liking.


    My attention was grabbed from the damage report as the Lancer closed in on me, and I activated all my directional thrusters on the left side of my body as I stepped to the side, trying to avoid the lances that practically launched at me, likely through some form of hydraulics. While I mostly dodged, one of the lances lodged in my mechs arm, severing the cooling line to my plasma cannon. I could still fire it, but with only passive cooling, it would quickly warp and likely explode if I tried to fire more than a shot every couple of minutes.


    I ignored the damage as I had my mech step back, raising my arm with an unhealthy grinding sound to intercept the next thrusts from the enemy mechs two right arms. My arm caught one of them, preventing it from hitting me right in the cockpit, but the other avoided it and lodged in my torso, hitting the capacitors that would have powered my now useless plasma cannon.


    My missiles were reloaded at this point, and I fired a few from the tubes that hadn¡¯t been slagged, unfortunately only severing the Lancer¡¯s remains of its left arms, and rocking it back. I was preparing for it to kill me on the next thrust when I heard an ¡°I got you!¡± from Liz as a shot from her Deadbolt pierced through its torso. As it slumped to the ground, I couldn¡¯t let out a breath of relief however, as the Lancer had been between me and the mid range mech, which opened fire with its now recharged lasers.


    My cockpit was starting to glow with heat, my pilot suit being the only thing keeping me from breathing superheated air by the time our support vehicles finished off the rest of their opponents, using the last of their ammo to damage the arms of the mid range mech enough to drag them off target. The barrage also rocked it to the side enough for its other two arms to stop properly tracking me, saving me from death, at least for now.


    Sydney opened fire at it just after our vehicles, Her laser heating the metal to the point her autocannon pierced through the weakened metal into the cockpit. They then turned to help Sean and Achilles, who both had a significant amount of damage, Sean¡¯s mech barely able to limp, while Achilles had his blade arm half severed, doing his best to block anything he couldn¡¯t dodge.


    With the girls joining in, the mechs were eliminated just as John finished off his opposing mech, but after a quick status update for everything, we realized just how screwed we were in the next wave. Everyone except the girls had taken significant damage, and we were going to be even more outnumbered soon.


    I was expecting another mixed bag when they appeared, but instead it was a squad of purely eight Lancers.


    ¡°What the hell is this?¡± I asked over comms.


    ¡°It¡¯s a pretty common tactic the Clyx use, they basically form up a shield wall and rush you. They can cover each other ridiculously well even when one of their shields runs out of power.¡±


    Taking stock of my own mech, the only weapons I still had available were less than half my missile tubes, and they were running on dry. I sighed, and fired my missiles as the enemy advanced, quickly getting steamrolled as they ran us down.


    We exited the scenario to see a top scores screen, where we ranked a miserable forty thousandth or so, which was surprising considering the highest wave to be defeated was the tenth.


    ¡°So if we¡¯re going to be using handles like you three,¡± Sean started, nodding to Liz, Sydney, and I. ¡°We should share ours. I go by Rockin.¡±


    ¡°Achilles, I decided to stick with my real name¡± Achilles said a bit nervously.


    ¡°Solid,¡± John added.


    We quickly gave our full tags with the identification number after our name, excluding Deus and Aphrodite, who had paid an obscene amount of money to have exclusive rights to their name. I noticed that Liz had decided not to show off her alternate identity as Demon, which likely saved the egos of the other males, who weren¡¯t aware that they were the same person.


    After a bit of discussion, we decided to stick with the same map, but even trying a few different compositions of mechs and vehicles, the furthest we could get was destroying half of the phalanx on wave eight when we used three of the more maneuverable melee mechs, one absolutely massive but slow melee mech, along with two snipers. Interestingly, even just destroying half the lancers so raised our rank to the mid twenty thousands.


    Eventually, it was time for us to leave, and get to what I was excited about doing, designing mechs with all the new toys.

 Chapter 5

    Liz, Sydney, and I instantly logged into the design mode, leaving behind the other three, who would likely be practicing against other trainees.


    ¡°So what sort of mech are we going to be making? I started the conversation with the other three people in our group.¡±


    ¡°Medium long range,¡± Liz instantly answered.


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Because the current railgun is horribly out of date. The standard design hasn¡¯t changed in over a decade, but that¡¯s just I haven¡¯t had the chance to play with the modern materials in the civilian version,¡± Liz answered. I looked at her with a blank look. I knew she was arrogant, but this was flat out ridiculous. Mentally shrugging, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, and quickly started asking how much power it would require. Eventually we decided to go with an automatic cannon on one arm, as the railgun would be taking up a majority of the power the aether reactor would put out. We also decided on an advanced sensor package, which made me depressed. Between the capacitors for the railgun taking up one half the torso, and the advanced sensor package and autocannon ammo taking up the other half, there would be no room to fit in my seekers and the computer required to calculate their trajectory.


    We had a bit of discussion on overall mech shape, and decided to go with one that would minimize the sensor profile, which would hopefully make the enemy assume we were a light class mech rather than the medium class one we were. For armor we would be going with reactive armor to minimize damage from enemy railguns and automatic cannons, though it would leave us vulnerable to lasers.


    We had a discussion with Kenna, and contrary to her usual quiet demeanor, once we started talking about what types of sensors, from aether detectors to standard radar and lidar, she would not be quiet, talking at a rapid pace about all the different options we had.


    ¡°Is she always like that when it comes to detection systems?¡± I asked Liz after she¡¯d gone off to design the sensor suite we¡¯d be using.


    Liz let out a mischievous smile as she replied. ¡°Of course! Why else would I have brought her to join us?¡±


    Now that I thought about it, I don¡¯t think that Liz said anything without a smile of one variation or another, but considering how cute she was when she smiled, I could definitely forgive her. Eris caught onto my thoughts, and was radiating a smug feeling across to me, making me frown.


    ¡®I¡¯m still not going to go after her, I¡¯d rather not get kicked off the team,¡¯ I thought at Eris, but she got the better of me with her reply.


    ¡®So if you wouldn¡¯t be risking getting kicked off the team you would?¡¯


    I blushed at that, and Liz gave off a questioning look, while Tae, who apparently had been paying attention to us grinned. I gave her a blank look, but her grin only got a bit wider, clearly assuming something.


    Deciding to ignore her, I opened design mode and got to working on the mech. I decided to use the base frame of one of my older mechs, and started switching out materials. Along with those, I switched out the joints to more efficient ones that were listed for open use on the military version. While mech designs themselves tended to be unique from person to person, almost all used joints, connectors, and alloys that were open use for their design, as they had become the standard for a reason. I wasn¡¯t yet knowledgeable enough to be designing my own with the new materials, even with the months of schooling I had gone through. It made me happy when I realized that the upgraded capacitors would drastically cut down on space and weight, and considered using the additional space for a couple seekers, but eventually bowed down to reason and simply doubled down on the capacitors adding enough power that the railgun would be able to fire twice consecutively after they were fully filled.


    I didn¡¯t even manage to get the basic frame done before dinnertime, and I went to the cafeteria rather than going out to any sort of restaurant. Tae was the only one to join me, and I discussed with her optimizing a computer to use for controlling the seekers I was planning on upgrading, but we would have to hold off until Eris had rewritten the control code, which itself would come after we had redesigned the seekers themselves with the new material.


    After dinner, I was free to do as I pleased, and I decided to spend it on the seeker redesign. Just about everything changed, while mostly staying the same design. I used improved microthrusters and fins, a more electronic countermeasure resistant wireless signal, a lighter alloy overall, and a more powerful explosive load. Thankfully, I wasn¡¯t actually doing much designing, just replacing parts with better ones. Eris would have the hard job, she¡¯d need to run countless simulations due to the changes so as to develop a control program for them.


    I¡¯d thought I hadn¡¯t spent that long, but by the time I finished, I realized I was going to have to wake up in less than two hours. I rushed as quickly as I could through my nightly ritual before rushing to bed, dreading waking up.


    Morning may have been even worse than I was dreading, heavy metal playing within my skull to wake me up as Eris hummed along in my head somehow. Dragging myself from the heavenly warmth of my bed, I got up and got ready, quickly heading to the cafeteria for breakfast. I considered getting some groceries and cooking my own food for a bit, but decided to do that another time. I ate as quickly as I¡¯d been trained to in basic, and quickly met up with the rest of my combat squad, this time having each of their designers along with them to discuss details on what sort of mech they would like.


    We went through our four hours of practice, this time trying different maps. Going up against the other aliens was interesting, the Sius mechs all had four legs, and were ridiculously maneuverable. They tended to use mainly combustive weaponry, using the power that would charge lasers or railguns to power active aether armor covering their entire mech. While they wouldn¡¯t take as much of a punishment as an actual active aether armor shield, they wouldn¡¯t get knocked out from a single shot of a sniper class like most mechs would.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    The Rew on the other hand, were the only ones that didn¡¯t use mechs based on their physiology, mostly using quadrupedal mechs, one of which looked suspiciously like a rhino that was covered in active aether armor. I wondered how they managed that for a bit. Humanity had tried using mechs not designed to be humanoid, but they had always ended up causing serious orientation issues, usually ending in the operator ending up violently ill.


    We were soon back to designing, and i finished the basic design. It was terribly angular, and looked like an older mech design, but that was the best way to minimize sensor profile, so I simply ignored the fact that it looked a few generations out of date. I wondered a bit at the fact that a lot of modern designs weren¡¯t purely utilitarian, but designed partially for looks as well. Our new mech had angled reactive armor on its torso, giving enough room for the capacitors, sensor package and computer, along with ammo for the autocannon.


    I decided to use the default automatic cannon for the right arm. It wouldn¡¯t be quite as good as some of the custom designs people had made, but it was massively reliable, and I evenly distributed the armor around it. I didn¡¯t give it much leeway in tracking horizontally in return for more armor, but made sure it could track well vertically for anti air and anti vehicle purposes. The torso could rotate, which would fix the problem of horizontal tracking anyway.


    Once I¡¯d done that, I got down to the details, choosing an explosive reactive armor rather than a passive one. For the metal plates in the armor I went with a pretty basic aethersteel alloy, as I wouldn¡¯t need to cut down on weight due to it being a medium class mech. The only special feature of the armor is that it would absorb slight amounts of aether, which would make it seem a bit fuzzy on aether sensors. That would combine with the shape to hopefully cause the enemies to assume it was a light mech.


    I couldn¡¯t work on the design of the left arm until Liz finished the railgun design, and considering how many variables she would have to account for, I didn¡¯t expect her to finish it anytime soon. Weapon design was often far harder than mech design to create a viable product. With mechs, you could at least get down a basic design in just a couple of hours. The hard part came after that, fine tuning joints, weapon choices, shape, and alloys would require a lot of testing in Wartech before you came out with a final design.


    For the legs, I went with a very stable design rather than picking less stable ones that were more maneuverable, as I would have to account for the recoil from both weapons. Mechs using plasma cannons and lasers didn¡¯t have this issue, and were able to pick up faster designs.


    Annoyingly, the hip joints were of an older design, only slightly changed from the civilian wartech, and I quickly switched them out for the joints I used on my own mechs in the civilian wartech, which would give a bit more flexibility, allowing the mech to turn faster, and giving more lateral motion, while only sacrificing an inconsequential amount of speed. I¡¯d always thought it silly to give up maneuverability for one or two kilometers an hour.


    While I was doing this, Eris had spent the connection to a much more powerful computer than the aether one built into my head to run calculations for the seekers, and soon had the base code down. While it was likely possible to optimize the code, we decided to stick with it for now, and quickly found Tae to have her optimize a computer for it.


    Computers had drastically changed. Within high density aether areas, we could no longer use proper AI, even an operating system being complex enough to change, as they would begin to react with it, making them form sentience. When some people¡¯s neural implants had started talking to the users, most of them had been helpful, happily performing their tasks, even programming things the user requested. On the downside however, whatever caused the sentience had slowed them down drastically, losing much of the cold calculation abilities they had before, though they could still display information they were passed. The only place where they were actually improvements were game worlds, which managed to become much closer to reality, turning closer to simulators with game mechanics rather than just games. Enough storage and processing power would alleviate the lack of calculation ability, so the massive server farms for games made their AI basically a god in their game world.


    With mechs using aether reactors, their aether density would make something as simple as a calculator become sentient, so mechs by necessity needed custom computers that took up stupid amounts of space. My parents had given me a bleeding edge neural implant, not realizing my personal aether density was particularly high, and when I¡¯d decided to install a rudimentary AI on top of the basic operating system, Eris was born.


    On the other hand, pure aether computers would not form sentience, though they would need to be installed on the framework of a living brain, and were horrendously expensive for anyone not in the military. I still wasn¡¯t sure how Eris had managed to make and modify the one I had, but considering how helpful it had been in my designing and gaming, I would never complain.


    Tae quickly agreed to my request for the computer design, and looked quite driven now that she had something to do other than simply trying to improve the basic computer that all mechs ran on. Mech computers would regularly have improvements, with new materials being constantly created, and slightly smaller or lighter designs being made.


    Afterwards, I had a discussion with Kenna on how much space her sensor package would require, along with what I would have to add to the outside of the mech to properly work. After just a short discussion, I was absolutely blown away. She had somehow managed to fit a full advanced sensor package in the the space that that would normally only fit a medium sensor package, and I took advantage of it, happy to add more armor to the mech. Now that I had the basic design down, I would only need to wait for Liz to finish her design and then would come the complicated part: lots and lots of testing in Wartech.


    A couple of weeks passed, and each day the dark circles around Liz¡¯s eyes grew darker and darker. I tried to urge her to take a couple of breaks, but each time she would respond in an excited manner about how close she was to creating the perfect railgun. I could only watch in worry as I expected her to collapse. In the meantime, I created some vehicles that would be using my seekers, and also made a missile platform mech for them, using the spare power for lasers.


    The missile platform is what finally allowed us to beat wave eight on the wave defense we¡¯d played before, pushing us up to the top five thousand. Simultaneous missiles from above, below, and from the sides made the enemy shields unable to block all of them at once. They were the bane of melee Clyx mechs, as ever since active aether armor had been developed, they would just load it up onto a shield and interpose it between any missiles and their mech. Before that, they would have machine guns to shoot down missiles, and I was sure that if my seeker missiles became something commonly used in reality, the aliens would quickly go back to them. On the other hand, my seekers were mostly useless against the Sius, as they tended to cover their mechs in active aether armor instead of using a shield, and the many propulsion systems of my seekers meant that they had a lower wield warhead than similar sized missiles.


    We soon started to get used to the tactics of the different alien races, and not too long after started to find out why playing against fellow pilots was mandatory for pilot trainees. The AI controlled mechs tended to stick to the same patterns over and over, dodging the same way, firing on the same trajectories, targeting the same parts of our mechs.


    I made sure to use my seekers in matches against other pilot trainees quite a few times, and they quickly became pretty popular after people saw how hopeless our melee mechs were against them. In response, mechs with large lasers quickly became more popular, as having the large laser focusing on the missile tubes for even a fraction of a second would slag them to uselessness, and they could hit from out of the seekers effective range.


    It took a total of three weeks and much of her physical health, but Liz had succeeded in upgrading the railgun design that had been used for over a decade. She had somehow increased the velocity by a good ten percent while somehow decreasing the power draw by five percent. Considering force equals mass times velocity squared, that would be a lot more damage. She tried to explain the science behind the new railgun to me, but it was completely out of my wheelhouse. The only weapons I¡¯d tried to improve myself were automatic cannons, and they functioned nothing like railguns.


    I then finished up the left arm for the mech Liz had decided to call the Ante, as it was our plan to buy into military mech design. Now all we had to do was test it and iron out any kinks.

 Chapter 6

    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.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    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.