Chapter 12 - Lost Salvation

 “No time to dally, Jim,” The Commander said as the plug swung open and the technicians began unplugging his flight rig. “Meeting. Now.” She sounded grave.

“What she said,” Standish, a comical look on his face, beamed with obvious excitement.

Jim had mostly forgot about the little display he'd put on. He was still trying to wrap his head around the voice. “I have allowed you to be my weapon,” it had said. Where did it come from? How could he hear it? The tech finished unhooking his flight cable. He was drenched in sweat, starving, exhausted, and a bit light-headed. The commander grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him groggily to the debriefing room in silence. Her stride was long and quick, Jim almost had to run trying to keep up.

“Sit. All of you,” She said as Jim realized the others had caught up with them and were following in silence, themselves. “We'll get to Jim's theatrics in a second. Standish?” She gave a side-ways hand to him, conceding the floor.

“First off, good going, guys. Talk about a ton of fun to watch! Our techs are going bananas. Thanks!” Standish applauded, his walking stick cupped in the crux of his elbow. He slowly tapered off as the commander shot him a deeply disapproving gaze. “Second, Central Command is pulling us off the mission so we can re-deploy. Third Legion is going to continue the shakedown here. We've been alerted of some terrorist activity back home. We're being called in to put down the uprising. Show of force, maintain law and order. All that good stuff. It looks like the DPRC has been funneling money to the Outsiders and they've begun rallying people under a separatist movement. While you guys were out collapsing mountains, a couple separatists snuck into Central Plaza and detonated a large explosive device. Current reports suggest it was “hijacked” from the DPRC when they inexplicably decided to transport it across Wilds territory.”

“Was anyone hurt?” Marion inquired, her tone dreadfully excited.

“Does it matter?” Standish responded flippantly.

“Of course it matters!” Marion stood and glared angrily.

“Numbers have only just begun to come in,” the Commander began as she stepped in front of Standish annoyedly. “They packed the bomb in concrete and surrounded it with scrap metal. The explosion was small but the projectile scatter was a nightmare. Detonated in the middle of the financial district during lunch-hour. Mayhem, from what the video feeds show.”

“Ballpark?” Tomah asked worriedly.

“Hundred or so dead, and rising. Several hundred maimed. Thousand or so injured,” the Commander hung her head slightly in reverence, “The attack was highly coordinated. Caught us totally off-guard.”

“ETA?” Adrian asked.

“We're two days out from Central City. First Legion has them on the run,” Standish started.
“First Legion? Why are they calling us in if they brought in First Legion?” Blaize scoffed.

“Didn't I just say? 'Show of force, maintain order. All that good stuff,' I believe is the direct quote,” Standish snarked. “First Legion is all well and good, but they attacked home. If this is the DPRC, they're threatening hundreds of years of peace.”

“They must have a source,” the Commander chimed in. “They must've know we were away. They'dve never made that move if they knew the Cores were still around.”

“Diversionary maneuver,” Jim interrupted. “If you're saying this is DPRC, then that's why we're out here. The Outsiders are pawns. Pay off some mercenaries to screw with the Southern Union, knowing that they'll pull in the IA and send us out. We'll eliminate the mercs and any trace that they paid them off, and Gotoma will get indicted for the crime. Then, leak some information to the Outsiders knowing that they'll definitely jump at the chance to hijack a warhead and make a terrorist show. Guard it lightly and drag it through the Wilds. There's no way that isn't getting into rebel hands.”

“Assume you're right,” Marion said, brow furrowed in dismay, she had returned to her seat. “What's the next step?”

Jim turned to address her directly and saw her face for the first time since they'd arrived at the Valiant. She was still glistening in sweat, her beautiful black hair matted and stuck to the side of her face. Her eyes were sunken and her face slightly ashen. Her normally emotive face was soulless and exhausted. “Well,” he began after shaking his thoughts back into place, “if this were one of my strategy games, I'd wait for my opponent to pull his main force back to base to deal with the insurgents and then sweep my primary force onto one of their expansion colonies, shut down supply chains, maybe squash a smaller allied map threat. That sort of trickery is pretty common in five-man free-for-alls.”

“It gets pretty ruthless,” Adrian said. “I've seen some pretty nasty backstabs.”

“I”ve DONE some pretty nasty backstabs,” Jim said with a casual grin.

“Like that one time during Nationals,” Adrian responded. He leaned his elbows onto his knees, his rippling chest cresting out of his flight suit, his golden necklace dangling down.

“Guys!” Tomah thundered. “We're in the middle of a tragedy. Do you really think this is the time and place to reminisce about bloody video games?” Some of Tomah's curly bangs had pulled out of his black, viking-like braids and framed his exhausted face, his green-white eyes sparkling intensely in dismay.

“He's right, though,” the Commander interjected. “But we have direct orders. We're to withdraw and Third Legion's drone fleet is going to carpet-bomb the final mercenary stronghold. The Valiant is already on course. There's nothing we can do.”

“So, now that that's settled,” Blaize chirped out, “Are we going to talk about freak-show over here and his death-defying acts of daring-do?” He shot a thumb over to Jim. He was reclined back, his feet kicked over the chair in front of him.

“I'm not a freak-show,” Jim defended aggressively.

“Freak show or not,” Blaize began, not even glancing at Jim, his yellow-white eyes intent on chewing off a hang nail. “your Core went apeshit, and I don't trust it. And since you were at the helm and won't tell us what happened, I don't trust you, either.”

“Well,” Jim began, “I don't really know what happened either. “I heard,” Jim began and cut himself off. “I was trapped under the rock, and the core shut down and started humming, so I stood up.” Jim cocked his head to the side and focused on a point in middle-distance. “Next thing I know, I'm standing at the center of a fountain of rock. Everything was frozen around me. I started moving and the air in front of me started glowing red-hot. I realized I must have been moving so fast that I was creating a compression wave, so I positioned myself in front of the beetle thing and threw my arms up, well, like I see them do in my fighting games. Then things turned back to normal speed, the rocks rained down, and the beetle had blown up and evaporated. That's all I know.”

Everyone had turned to stare at Jim while he recounted what happened. At length, Standish broke the silence, “Anything else?” His face was lit up like a Christmas tree and he seemed incredibly excited.

“Well, there was a ton of code running across the screen when it was rebooting, but it was all in some ancient script I couldn't read,” Jim replied, shrugging.

Standish clapped his hands together, balled one into a fist, and held it to his face as he bit his lower lip, his walking stick still cradled in his elbow. “Oh Jim, you are just a treasure, aren't you?” He said as he moved his fist away and began rubbing his hands together, a wild look in his eyes as he stared unblinkingly at Jim.

“Standish,” the Commander said, her head pulled back, chin tucked into her neck. “You look like a cartoon villain.”

“Excellent,” he said as he began folding his hands over each other maniacally. “Excellent,” he repeated, taking special care to drag out each “e.”

“Really, though,” the Commander said, head still pulled back in skeptical revulsion. “You're freaking us out a bit.” Everyone's brow had knitted forward in concern, Jim's face taking on a panicked expression.

“Oh,” Standish said, shaking his head and dropping his walking stick point-first onto the ground where it held vertically for a second before he rested his hand and full weight onto it, kicking his foot across his shin and onto its toe. “All in good fun,” he smiled widely, his brilliant white teeth sparkling as bright as his eyes. “But seriously though, this is good stuff. We'll see if we can get any logs and have our analysts go over it. Good stuff, guys, good stuff.” In an instant he flung his feet square, his cane levitating into his armpit, and clapped his hands together like a motivational speaker. His hand scooped upward and grabbed the ball of the walking stick from underneath. He thrust his free hand into his pocket, clicked his heals together, turned so that he was facing profile to the team, and began pacing, making a point to kick his feet out until his knee locked, his head held high, nose up in the air. “Now,” he said after reaching center-stage, where he pivoted on his toes, facing them full, heels still together, feet forming an off-set 90 degree angle, and dropped the cane from his armpit back to the floor with a loud clack. “Same place, oh-nine hundred, tomorrow. We'll give you the mission brief, then we want Jim to do some synchronization drills with Vishnu before we get to Central City. Rest of you will be doing some simulator cross-training. This is going to be a different theater of combat than you are all used to, so we'll need you to be familiar with the cores and equipment packages we're putting you in.” Standish extended his free arm out and shooed them away.

The group, slightly baffled-looking, turned their gaze to the Commander. She gave them a slightly bewildered nod, and they all dispersed and left. “Jim,” Carol halted him before he reached the door, “Report to tactical before you head to your dorm. They'll no doubt have a few questions for you.”

“Where's tac-....” he started in before the Commander cut him off with a look, leaning her head forward and arching up her left eyebrow. “Oh, right,” Jim said, withdrawing the small crescent-shaped device she had given him previously from a cargo pocket on his flight suit.

“0900. Don't be late, even fashionably. Eat heavy. Not sure how much drilling we'll do on Vishnu. Don't wanting you getting hungry,” the Commander winked at Jim.

“Molly!” Jim waved at the three-dimensional rendering of her inside the tall, rectangular, glass prism of the holographic projector. “Are you OK? Is everything alright? Is your dad safe?” Jim was seated at the small desk along the right wall. The nearly 3-foot-tall holo-projector took up most of the space on the desk. Molly's image, occasionally flickering with interleave lines -no doubt a fragment of compression as the bandwidth available fluctuated from atmospheric interference- was a perfect rendering of her from the waist up. A blue-lighted camera on top of the terminal interface scanned Jim in the same way Molly's scanned her, generating a similar image for her projector, though if Jim remembered correctly, her father recently provided her with a full sized, eight-foot, prismless, corporate-grade telepresence projector.

“He's fine. You know Dad, he's rarely ever in the office anyway. If anything, this just confirmed why he should be more reclusive than Mom lets him be. It's pretty scary over here. Third Legion's set up shop in the Styx along with some Gotoma goons,” Molly looked simply radiant to Jim. Her serene face and matter-of-fact tone comforted him. Because her hair was starting to get so long, she had it pulled and pinned to the side, a loose french braid holding the rest of her hair and coming down across her left shoulder. She had on a blue camisole underneath a tan long sleeve shirt, one of Jim's favorite outfits on her.

“Gotoma?” Jim felt his face pull into a surprised and confused look.

“Oh, right. You've been on the Valiant for the last few days. The press caught wind of your little counter-insurgence hullabaloo and has done a full profile indicting Gotoma as a primary aggressor to the Great Union. I listened to a whole dealy on it on it from the Independent.”

“Love the Independent. They still have that one guy, John-Stephen al Bassem?” Jim smiled and leaned back in his chair.

“Oh yeah,” Jim wasn't sure if her chuckle was legitimately placid and warm and perfect, or if his feelings were just overwhelming his objective perception. “He's my favorite. He's funny and poignant, and has such a skillful way of of talking about what's going on in a way that's not so dry and boring.”

“Exactly. Anyway, what'd ol' Jay-Sab say about what we're doing?” Jim smiled warmly.

“Well, first he made a joke about how the IA is like the popular kid at school that everyone loves but secretly hates. Then he talked about how the SU is like our younger brother and someone kicked their sand-castle over and we decided to kick their butts for it. Then he quipped about the DPRC's weird habits, making them out to be the creepy kid at school that kills ants with a magnifying glass. Then he got serious and talked about how their isolationist mentality and demagogy has led them to be really small-minded and counter-populist and how they ignore objective personal rights. He used that to talk about how they were probably manipulating Gotoma and then mentioned that these 'Outsiders,'” she used air quotes like the Professor, “were probably radicalized by their propaganda and manipulated behind the scenes.”

“I said the same thing in debrief today,” Jim started. “I don't know if you heard, but we just finished collapsing a mountain.”

“Yeah, just saw that on the Breaking feed,” Molly positioned the holo-projector's camera onto the screen in their living room that had the news on.

“I never knew you watched the news so much,” Jim said, mildly surprised.

“I didn't until I had a soldier for a boyfriend,” Molly replied a bit accusatorily, pulling the camera back to her.

“Touche,” Jim responded, a bit hurt. “Well, we snuck in through some caves and hit an ammo dump in a small geocache. There was an elaborate cave structure underneath and when we blasted the chamber, it caused a cascading collapse. We didn't get to see it, but Standish said it was pretty impressive.”

“It was pretty impressive,” Molly agreed. “One of the weather satellites caught it. The mountain dropped down like a stool had been kicked out from underneath it, then the top fell off and ca used a massive landslid. The dust cloud is almost as big as a volcano's. Nice job.”

“I almost died. There was a cave-in because some reckless bastard detonated a rocket in an unstable geofront,” Jim started nonchalantly. Molly's face became grave. “I got buried under a massive load of debris in the middle of the combat. I was piloting Vishnu.”

“What the hell were you doing in Vishnu? How dare you act so casually about almost dying, Jim. Weren't you saying that that core was crazy experimental and untested?” Molly sounded very angry.

“Yeah. But something happened. The core, like, slowed down time? I guess is the best way to describe it, I think?” Jim scrunched his face and craned his head to the side. “It felt like time stopped and I had moved so fast that the air started compressing in front of me. I struck a pose straight out of one of my video games and it totally works. I was pretty pumped. HUGE explosion. Totally vaporized this gigantic shadow beetle. Seriously. I couldn't make this stuff up.”

Molly's eyes grew wide. “That's crazy, Jim. How did it happen?”

“I don't know. Promise you won't think I'm crazy?” Jim arched his eyebrows pleadingly.

“Of course not, Jim, you know that.”

“Well, this voice started talking to me in my headset. I think there's some mega-advanced AI in the core that has gone rogue and thinks it's ACTUALLY Vishnu. It was talking all crazy-like and said things like 'I have chosen you as my weapon' and how it had been imbued from the heavens to fight demons or something. I kinda just played along until we got back to base. Wouldn't want to anger a god or anything,” Jim chuckled slightly.

Molly was not amused. “Jim,” she stated flatly. “You talked to the Commander about it?”

“No,” Jim started, “but I mentioned some comm issues to the tactical analysis squad, and told them to analyze the in-flight transcripts. Also asked them to review the coding to see if they can find any trace of a sub-AI or an adaptive-response interface.”

“Good. Don't worry me like that Jim. I can't lose you.” Molly's eyes went big and doughy. “Hurry back to base, you're not allowed to die without holding me one more time.”

“I should be back in a few days. I have Sim and Synch training all tomorrow, and then we're deploying into Central Square for a “show of force” whatever that means. Probably won't be in communication for a few days.”

“Alright, my love. I'll see you then. Get some sleep. Good night, darling.” Molly blew a kiss to him.

“Good night to you too, my dove. I love you.” Jim caught the kiss and blew one back to her before he shut off the conference monitor.

*******************************************************************************************************************************

“Let's get started,” Standish began. His suit had returned. Dark grey, tailored in his favorite Italian cut, high-collared, salmon-pink shirt, white tie, and black ornately-styled wingtips, a matching grey fedora with a white band adorning his caramel-brown pate. “We're still a day out on the Valiant.”

“Yeah, why is that?” Adrian began. His flight suit was rolled down, his muscular frame rippling under the tank-top shirt.

“Upper atmospheric and Low-earth Orbit travel is scrambled right now, thanks to the terrorist attack. The energy/speed ratios are really bad on the Valiant when we're this close to the ground thanks to increased air resistance and a lack of solar and dynamic power synching. So, we're stuck checkpoint-hopping for power to run our anti-field generators,” The Commander explained in a flat tone. Full uniform, as usual. Jim couldn't recall a time since Lyceum where he'd seen her OUT of uniform.

“Still don't see why it'd take over a day to get to home base. One of our scramblers can literally travel around the planet on a single charge just above mountain-line,” Blaize interjected.

“The Valiant is big, guys,” Standish said pointedly. “Filling the fuel cells takes a while. Not to mention all of that other stuff that she said,” he sounded almost defensive. “As for the mission,” he began as he paced the stage, taking the “use the space” idea as law, “The Valiant will be positioned over the city, just over Central Square, where the attacks were carried out. The containment dome will open temporarily and you guys will be dropping in hot. You'll be doing patrols and generally making your presence known for the next few days, coordinating with ground troops to stave off any potential follow-up while intelligence collects data on future attacks.” Standish brought up a slide of the city from a distance, the brilliant blue dome sparkling against the full afternoon light, it's neon-electric shell fading into the sky's blue tinge, accented against the luscious green forest it was nestled within.

“After the initial drop, you'll be roaming in sets of two. 4 hour shifts and you'll all have to pull an 8-hour shift every other turn. Marion and Jim will have first blush, Marion will handle the first 8. You'll be fed a grid layout of the city and a curated path will be automatically selected for you by our tactical servers,” the Commander had positioned herself next to Standish in the center of the stage, and switched to a slide of the city, cartoonified and rendered with an orange mission line snaking across the major thoroughfares, indicating a theoretical patrol route. “When you're not on shift, you'll be expected to either be sleeping or in the sims. Any questions?”

“How long will we be on patrol,” Adrian asked, after no one spoke up for a few beats.

“Good question,” Standish began, “the answer to which is 'until we say so.'” Standish smirked arrogantly and hurriedly added, “Next question.”

Marion sheepishly raised her hand, confused about if that's what she was supposed to do.

“Ah! Marion, yes, you have the floor,” he pointed at her with the base of his cane.

“Uhh, what are our Core assignments going to be?”

“Excellent question!” Standish exclaimed as his cane levitated into his armpit and he clapped his hands together. “Marion, you will be in Simo as per usual, in his gunner's kit. No need to snipe this run. Our heavies will be in their usual assignment of Cúchulainn and Heimdall. Blaize will be running Musashi. No need for a scout on this pass, you need to look scary, grrrr,” Standish put his hands in front of face like claws and bore his pearly white teeth like fangs. “Jim will be in Vishnu. Because, I mean, obviously. We have this cool new toy, why not run it!”

“Anything else?” the Commander cut Standish off, unimpressed with his little press conference. Everyone else remained silent. “Alright, then. Off to the simulators. We have several scenario set up. You'll need to be intimately familiar with the terrain and prepared for a bunch of non-standard battle maneuvers. Dismissed.”

Jim began to stand up as they all did, but Blaize shoved him back into his seat by leaning heavily on his shoulder. “No need, teacher's pet. You're going to need a special talking to by your favorite lady.”

“Oh, Jim,” the Commander began as she broke away from quiet conversation with Standish. “Can you stay behind? We need a word with you.”

Blaize chuckled as he swaggered away to catch up with the group, who laughed at his prescience.

Dejected, Jim rose after the rest had filed out, and made his way over to the Commander, head hung low. “What's up,” he said, a hollow attempt at enthusiasm obviously failing to convince the Commander.

She ignored the feigned excitement, however. “Jim, tactical wasn't able to get much from the flight data from your last run. We're going to put you in the plug again and do some tuning. We want to try and get your sync ratios to at least 75%. It's gonna be a slog. We'll try and get you some simulator time but we really need you comfortable in Vishnu.”

“Alright, I'll head down to the hanger now,” Jim was visibly sullen.

“Jim,” the commander begun, a flash of hope lighting his face up as he turned to acknowledge her. “You're doing really well. I'm proud of you. Keep it up and just remember that you don't need to impress anyone. Just do your best and everyone will see you for who you are.” The commander gave a calculated, affable smile, as she resumed conversation with Standish.

**************************************************************************************************************************

“Alright,” the tech began as he finished initializing the core's boot pattern, “You're running at 63% right now. We need 12 points by the end of the day. Let's start by running our calibration suite. You know the drill. Try to be as still as possible, and don't be afraid when the sensors twitch.”

Jim, immobilized in the core, was also without his sensor suite. The core was so well-sealed from the outside that the plug was actually anechoic. So quiet it was without simulated audio feeds and radio chatter, that if you sat perfectly still, you could actually hear the dull burbling rush of blood as your heart pumped it in and out of your head. It's said that after a short time in the stifling silence you could actually experience severe cognitive degradation and too long could lead to profound insanity.

“It won't be too much longer, Jim, you're doing great, we're getting some really good numbers,” the tech came over, distracting Jim from the thoughts that seemed to be screaming all the more loudly in his head. “Just a few more subroutines.”

The nano-pillow writhed and squirmed beneath him. It was mildly disconcerting and if Jim was afraid of such things, it could easily feel like you were buried alive in a pit of snakes. His muscles spasmed violently as the program initiated each individual muscle group. He wished he could chat with the tech, or even respond, but he knew that any non-necessary muscle movement, including the of his throat to make words, would make the calibration less accurate, and thus would net them lower affinity numbers.

Without warning, the external sensor suite was initiated, and the familiar out of body experience was initiated, the ghostly sensation slightly less pronounced than his last time in the plug. “68%, Jim. Not a bad bump! We're running you at no sensory bias, a full 0 Rands. We're gonna release the docking clamps and have you walk a few rounds around the hanger, might have you do some various exercises to isolate muscle groups and map them individually. If it's too exhausting, let us know and we'll try and up the Rand bias, but it'll color the numbers.”

“Roger that,” Jim confirmed as he heard the hissing and buzzing sound of the docking clamp releasing the tension off his chest. Jim felt his quads engage and his calves and feet strain to maintain balance. Without sensory bias, the computer was doing nothing to predict or compensate the feedback to Jim, so every minute stimulus sent into the core's sensors were translated into human anatomical signals and fed directly back to Jim. This was particularly stressful because it meant Jim could feel the disproportionally heavy weight of the core's arms and legs in comparison to the weight of his own body.

“You've returned, it would seem, my warrior,” the voice came through into Jim's headset, less soft and subtle this time. It had a very confident and sing-songy nature to it. “And what are we doing today?”

Jim disengaged his intercom and spoke aloud to himself, “we're trying to increase my sync ratios. Last time I piloted you, I was at just a shade over 61%. My commander wants me to hit 75% before we enter into the next combat theater.”

“An ambitious goal, warrior. I may only communicate with you through this rudimentary contraption. If you and I could commune in our minds as one, we could dance in harmony,” the deep, round notes, still light and airy, breezed over his ears.

“I'm sure, but for now, this is all I have,” Jim sounded indignant.

“Then we shall make due, warrior,” the voice danced in Jim's ear as it wafted out of his headset.

“Jim, you doing ok? Balance looks good. You've shot up to a 71% right now, think you've got it in you to run your drills?” The tech interrogated.

Jim shook his, and the core's head, knocking his thoughts around and letting them fall into place. With a massive concerted effort, Jim took a few steps forward and pivoted to his right. He began the hard, harsh slog along the side of the retracted catapult track. With no bias, the core felt impossibly heavy. Each motion felt slow and laborious as the wind resistance fought against the rapid motion of his long, swinging limbs. Each step Jim took felt like he was carrying a backpack full of boulders across a tight-rope.

“Alright, Jim. We're gonna need you to bend over and touch your toes,” the tech instructed.

“Childish. You will not comply with such a worthless and simple task, will you?” The voice seemed rife with contempt.

“I am fighting just to put one foot in front of the other, touching my toes will be far from simple. And as I'm sure you're aware, the tech team has full logging enabled to help map your motions to my musculature. So, it is far from worthless, either,” Jim said disdainfully. “I'm not sure about the last person to pilot you, but I need to calibrate before I truly be the 'warrior' you call me.” Jim took a second to compose his thoughts, and began the monumentally difficult task of leaning over and maintaining balance. After what seemed an eternity, Jim had bent over while maintaining balance and begun the equally strenuous task of returning to upright.

“Really good, Jim, really good. We've got you another point. Let's do some knee raises and leg extensions,” The tech came over once Jim had returned to standing.

“Bah, such boring trivialities! When will my flesh once again experience the hot breath of battle?” The voice bellowed, contempt dripping on every syllable.

“If we can get the ratios to where they need to be, then I'll be deploying tomorrow. Probably won't see combat, though. It's a Secure and Patrol mission,” Jim responded as he carried out his various calisthenic feats.

“Jumping Jacks, Jim, If you'd be so kind,” the tech came over again.

“And shall I ever be able to slake my thirst for combat again, or was our first dalliance my last true taste of scrimmage?”

“Well,” Jim replied between pants as he executed his jumping jacks, “We're in peace time. There's potential war brewing, but we're trying to avoid it. If we're unsuccessful, or just unlucky, you'll get your 'true taste of scrimmage' soon enough.”

“That's really good, Jim, we're homing in. Few more drills and we should be able to get you to 75% without bias and then we can work on getting you there with compensation. Let's switch drills. Run a few laps around the catapult deck, if you can.” the tech instructed Jim.

“On it,” Jim replied as he panted heavily, maneuvering the core to begin a jog and then a decent-paced run around the catapult at the center of the deck.

“Well, I can only hope my services are never needed for more than rousting and intimidation, but I am a warrior, and as such I crave the thrill of the fight. I shall not bother you again until we are once again immersed in glorious combat.”

Jim waited a bit while he ran, but the voice seemed to have gone. He was sweating profusely and breathing hard. The effort only became harder as his synch ratios increased sans compensation.

“You're looking good. We're gonna start adding compensation in, can you switch over to some more advanced drills? How about run and tumbles?” The tech sounded more suggestive than commanding.

“I think I can manage that. So I guess you're implying that we're at 75%?” Jim was too exhausted to sound optimistic. But, as with anything, had to push through the fatigue if he wanted to get better. He began to do his run and tumbles. They composed of a start from kneeling, a dash for 10 paces, and then a dive forward, tumbling through a somersault back into a kneel facing the other direction, where he'd repeat it again.

“We are, and you're currently up to 5 Rands. You push 15 regularly, shall we work up to there?”

“I push 15 when I have synch ratios in the 90's,” Jim replied to the tech. “Let's work up in increments of 5 and I'll let you know when it feels more natural.”

“Roger that, upping you to 10 now. Switch up exercises, too, we've got all the data we can from this one. How about some acrobatics? Think you've got that in you?” The tech came over.

Jim could feel the subtle bias begin to take effect in the form of a numb feeling in his appendages. It was welcome, the uneven weight of the Core finally beginning to balance out. “Think I can, I'm starting to feel pretty good.” Jim started with a light jog and then hurled himself forward into a front handspring, followed by a front flip, into a backflip and a series of back handsprings which he finished into a backflip with a 540-twist. He did not, however, stick the landing, and went tumbling onto his butt, and flailed several dozen feet backward. The shock transference took some edge off the impact, but they still gave Jim a punishingly sharp jolt to his tailbone, and each tumble gave a pretty solid pound on shoulders and other appendages. Not enough to be damaging, but plenty enough to be more than punishing.

“Not bad, all things considered, Lieutenant. You're currently at 35 Rands, where you were flying on your last mission, and at 75% even. Want to leave it for now?” The tech came over with a slight chuckle in his voice.

Jim dusted himself off and shook out the bangs and bruises. “75% is my target and I hit 75%. 35 Rands feels sufficiently normal. Let's call it good.”

“Alright,” the tech responded, “bring it in and we'll get you down to the simulators.”

“On my way, but I'm going to stop in the mess hall first. I'm at 60% energy reserves and it's going to be a long day drilling.”

“Roger that, Lieutenant Ross, see you in the hangar.”