The Admiral sighed. “You really should mention these things from the start,” she replied. “In any case, why don’t you hop in one, and I’ll walk you through it. Everyone, go ahead and pick your core. Oh! But not the middle one. That one’s mine. Still doing calibrations on it. Best not to interface
After that first test, the pilots were completely exhausted. At least, mentally. The act of merging their thoughts with their cores was incredibly taxing. And it only took them an hour to get into that state. The Admiral was certain that it would take time and practice to reduce the effects. She t
“I disagree,” said Miko. “They will be able to activate autopilot faster.” Everyone chuckled. She was normally too straight-laced to even make a joke, and Eva found her momentary goofiness adorable. “In all seriousness though, the job is hard,” said Commander Chase. “Prometheus would make maneuver
Mack sat in front of his PC and stared at the monitor before him. Its cold blue glow etched hard lines on his face. It was late at night, and his eyes were bloodshot. His pupils looked flat and dead, even more so after he took a swig of his now-warm beer. On the monitor was raw footage that Eva a
Redstar huffed at that statement. “I didn’t come all the way out here to become a mechanic,” she said. “I’m a fuckin’ pilot.” “It does mention in our contracts,” Merlin retorted, “that we-” “That we get to test a prototype, not learn to fix it.” “I consider maintenance a part of flying. If you’r
Eva sat in her core with her eyes closed as she flew across the surface of a pristine forested planet. She was deep into a Promethean Merge, and perceived the world through her fighter’s sensor suite. Trees whizzed by on her flanks as she flew at top speed above a brisk river. Readouts of the terr
And the same sort of concept held true in a simulation. If the brain knew it was being fooled into giving the answer of “2” - was there any point to doing the calculation? And this fact threw the Admiral’s sim data into doubt. How much of it was the brain presenting a shortcut, and how much was gen
The four pilots split up the moment they arrived on Helios. It wasn’t as though they didn’t enjoy each other’s company (well, for the most part anyway). Simply, they had spent a couple hundred hours with each other, in that lab. They were sick of the project, of brother and sister Chase, and of each