Max climbed back into the simulator, hanging his lab coat over the back of the machine, and powered up the virtual reality program. It brought him to the cockpit of an orbital insertion fighter inside a simulated hangar in a drop ship, the standard launching point for the experimental fighters.

[Launch in T minus fifteen seconds. Please remember structural limits exist within the simulation.] A robotic voice informed him and Max chuckled at the warning that was very clearly for Nico.

The countdown commenced and the bay doors opened, showing that he was facing straight down towards a yellowish orange planet. A Sulphur Waste if Max's guess was correct. They weren't often human habitable but were often hotly contested due to the abundance of resources that formed inside them.

The fighter was launched towards the planet with a shuddering lurch as the variable thrusters mounted outboard on the wings engaged to adjust his speed and trajectory on the automated path. The two simulations were separate, so Max was alone in this place, hurtling to what felt like certain doom.

Dropping in a Lander was much more relaxing than watching the fires of orbital entry fill the cockpit window in front of you. The jet was out of his control for a while while the harsh entry overrode any attempts at maneuvering, so Max made a mental note to increase the output of the outboard thrusters so that this vulnerable moment could be eliminated and Pilots could begin their attack pattern over a minute sooner.

The force was well within structural limits, so a bit of maneuvering wouldn't hurt anything, and could prevent the destruction of a lot of units. Max wasn't familiar with the limits of other aircraft, but for this one, the solution seemed plausible.

Once he had slowed enough to maneuver again, Max brought up the targeting sequence, finding that there were two clusters of Cygnus Reaver Class Heavy Mecha, ending in a single Cygnus Super Heavy unit. The program was likely set before the treaty between the two sides had stabilized when everyone assumed that the long-standing feuds would erupt into battle again any day. There was still a chance of that, but it was looking increasingly slim with every week that passed, as more and more trade agreements and alliances were formed.

The first target was a cluster of five Heavy Mecha, and Max's targeting skills had already come to life, though the jet was nearly five hundred kilometers from the target. He trusted his System on this front more than anything else, so Max sent round after round towards the target. The Rail Cannons could only fire one shot every three seconds, or a six-second gap per array. That was a truly abysmal rate of fire, but the amount of energy needed to propel the rounds was immense.

Two mecha were immediately scrapped by the Rail Cannons, and then another and another. With the speed he was traveling, Max was already too close to make the fifth attack, so he turned the missile pods to a rearward position and launched them down at the last Mecha while turning the jet toward the second target.

The jet groaned ominously, and Max checked his structural readings, seeing that he was already over eighty-five percent of capacity, into the danger zone for structural integrity. If they were going to have Mecha Pilots operate these jets as drones, some serious work was going to need to be done. They were simply too fragile for the way they were going to be used, and now Max understood why Nico had almost blown hers up. He followed the optimal route for the test, while she had likely improvised and ended up with more sharp turns in her route.

The second squad was only three Heavy Mecha, and they fell to the Rail Cannons from over three hundred kilometers away. The guns might be ridiculous and unwieldy, but he couldn't argue with their absolute power. He hadn't failed to get a single hit kill with them yet.

Max banked and turned for the Super Heavy coming in low above the hills where the Super Heavy's powerful weapons wouldn't be able to target him as easily, then put two nearly simultaneous rounds into it, breaking the shielding, but he was still out of missile range and the second round lost most of its velocity before the shield collapsed. Max knew the tactic now, and waited the full six seconds, firing both Cannons at once and following them with a full volley of armor-piercing missiles as his jet raced toward the target at over a thousand kilometers an hour.

The shielding around the Super Heavy Mecha fell in an instant and the missiles impacted all over the joints of the armor and the cockpit. The Mecha collapsed like a doll with the strings cut, and Max turned straight up, gaining altitude, where the crippled Mecha couldn't easily target him and he would be safer from surprise ground fire.

At the five-second mark since his last Rail Cannon rounds, he banked back toward the ground, firing both at once again. The shields hadn't come back up, and the rounds drilled deep into the mecha, causing a core breach, and Max turned away in a hurry as the first signs of a chain reaction glowed in the torso before turning into a full-power nuclear explosion.

[Scenario Complete. Ending in 5 seconds.]

Once he was brought out of the simulation to the lab, Max found the researchers in a flurry of activity, talking rapidly over each other and comparing notes.

"Did we do something strange?" Max asked Nico, who seemed just as confused as he was, though nothing showed on her face.

"I have no idea. I just took out the mecha the most efficient way and then they called me back to wait for you. I've only been back about five seconds longer than you have." She explained.

"You didn't have to loop up to take out the Super Heavy with a second volley?" Max asked.

"Nope, I waited until I was in range and disabled the shields with the missiles then used the Rail Cannons to blow it up." Nico shrugged.

Yeah, that was a good idea too. Max hadn't expected the shielding to hold that well though and had thought the second shot would make its way through and damage the mecha so he could finish it with missiles.