6 - Shopping with a manchild

"Finally we're getting somewhere."

Glancing down at his sensor, Mike smashed his foot on the left yaw pedal as he lit the afterburner on the right thruster and let the pair of gatling guns mounted underneath his yellowjacket fighter rip and let out a mix of armour piercing incendiary tracer rounds and heavy armour piercing rounds which ripped through a rapidly approaching swarm of heat-seeking missiles that exploded with a bright, brief flash, radically different than if they had exploded inside an atmosphere. Mike hardly had time to bask in that achievement as he pivoted the top of his head against the top of his seat, tracking the group of hostile ships which bombarded him with missiles as they had long learnt that getting close to Mike's fighter was a mistake.

"Come on, you have to have run out of missiles by now… Or not."

Breathing a deep sigh as the lock-on warning once again sounded out inside Mike's cockpit, he got ready for another long-winded dance as he attempted to close the range. Keeping up that insane level of manoeuvres for any amount of time, let alone close to half an hour should have been impossible for pretty much anyone, but Mike appeared to be barely breaking a sweat, let alone breathe as he only took short shallow breaths to stay conscious and continuously pack his body with oxygen.

-

"What kind of acceleration is he pulling?"

"He's averaging 5G's for the last 10 minutes, but whenever he overloads the automatic flight assistance and G damper he spikes over 10G..."

Outside the simulator a small crowd had started gathering, collected around tablets, the crowd watched a live feed of Mike's evaluation with a mix of awe and straight-up confusion.

"How the hell is he still conscious?"

Although the simulator was limited in what it could do, it still recreated the g forces of all Mike's manoeuvres, those gees were enough to knock even an experienced pilot out cold but Mike looked hardly bothered by it as he continued with his insane manoeuvres to avoid incoming fire while gradually moving closer to the hostile ships. Eventually, the nerve got the better of one of the hostile ships and it broke formation to try and target Mike's yellowjacket with its guns instead.

That was all Mike needed to quickly tear apart the entire formation.

Slamming his foot down on the middle pedal, Mike's vision blurry as he lit the afterburner on both engines while shifting his foot to press the left and middle pedal at the same time as he jammed the stick as far left as it would go. Performing a corkscrew while spinning off his axel of acceleration Mike instinctually squeezed the trigger as he flew right by the hostile ship which had broken formation, in that moment time seemed to slow to a halt for Mike as he passed the enemy fighter, triggers squeezed he melted the enemies shield in a split second while pumping the cockpit full of lead.

"NEXT!"

Yanking the stick to the right and shifting his foot to the right pedal Mike used the manoeuvring thrusters to line up a shot on the second fighter, evaporating its shield in a split second, the miniguns mounted underneath the Yellowjacket fighter did what it was designed for and shredded the shieldless target. Immediately moving his hand from the throttle which he had just locked at 100%, Mike flipped an entire series of bus switches just below the throttle to redirect the entirety of the onboard fusion generator's power to the shield generator as the third and final hostile ship had lined up a shot. As the light inside Mike's cockpit went out, the space just in front of it lit up bright white as the shield withstood a short burst from the enemy fighter's lasers, this was immediately followed by a bunch of small white dots indicating that Mike's shield had withstood a burst from the enemies fragmentation cannon.

"Tough luck shitface!"

Having caught his enemy with their proverbial pants down, Mike did his duty as a former MOBA player and offered the enemy a few parting words like it was second nature as the power returned to the rest of his ship, now stuck between reload and with overheated lasers the last enemy quickly joined its brethren as Mike tore through it without mercy.

"... That was wave 9, give me something interesting now."

Normalising his breathing, Mike let go of the stick and let his ship spin freely while waiting for the next round, but with nothing happening, he eventually suspected he was under attack from some sort of stealth, but that theory was also shut down when the simulator suddenly powered down.

"Wait, what the fuck? Come on, I was just getting started!"

"No you weren't, get the fuck out of my simulator!"

With the voice of a very annoyed woman responding to his complaints, Mike realised he had gone a little too far.

(Well shit.)

Calming down a little, Mike finally let go of all of the controls to find that he had cramps in both his hands. Clenching his hands to stop the cramps, Mike's hands shook for a few seconds before normalising. Wiping the sweat off of his brows, Mike exited the simulator to find a room full of people staring at him, River included.

"Where's the fire?"

Snapping the crowd out of their collective daze, a woman among them loudly cleared her throat before commenting.

"The corp doesn't pay us to be idle, come on people, back to work!"

Recognizing the voice as the same one that had shouted at him earlier, Mike sensed he hadn't gotten off on the best foot with her as the room cleared, leaving only him, River and the woman.

"Well, well. What a star group of recruits that have come to my humble guild office, time for an interview."

Dropping her business smile mid-sentence, the woman who seemed to be the local guild leader turned around and headed for her office, leaving River and Mike to follow.

Sitting River and Mike down in chairs in front of her desk, the guild leader briefly introduced herself as Beth before she started the questioning.

"So, what the fuck are you doing in my guild?"

Starting out with Mike, it was clear Beth didn't seem to trust Mike in the slightest, he was clearly a first-class pilot, so why would do something as dumb as sign up for the pilots guild when he could enter a megacorp and earn 5 times the salary in no time. In that case why sign up to the pilot's guild? Beth figured there was a decent chance Mike would misuse the pilot guild membership, the real question was if that potential misuse outweighed the benefits Mike and River could bring to the pilot's guild.

"I'm looking to earn a shit ton of creds."

(He's just saying whatever I want to hear…)

"Bullshit. And you, stay."

Immediately shooting down Mike's answer, Beth turned to River who was about to get up from her seat as she moved her hand to a prominent button on her desk.

"I wouldn't attempt anything rash, now answer my fucking question mister pilot."

Figuring nothing good would happen if the foul-mouthed guild leader pushed the button she was hovering over, Mike figured he might as well be honest.

"We're here to both earn a shit ton of creds."

"And?"

"And run far, far away from here. I fucked over my previous employer before they could fuck me over and get me killed."

"Then why do you think I would even consider having you join the guild if you're just going to fuck us over?"

Having just admitted to betraying a former employer, Beth saw even less reason to let Mike and River join the guild.

"I fucked over a criminal syndicate that I was forced to join after they grew too big for their ego, given the size of what remains of the operation I would say the chance of them coming after us is pretty close to zero, but as it isn't zero I would like to open up the distance while also earning som creds with my travelling partner before finding someplace to settle down. Doing that requires a combat-capable ship and the only place to get that is the pilot's guild or a seriously massive criminal element… Now, you can either let me sign up here or I'll become the most significant source of pain for the next 2 to 5 years lighting up fires everywhere they can and can't burn within your jurisdiction out of petty spite."

Faced with Mike's brutal honesty, Beth scrutinised his expression for a few seconds with narrowed eyes.

Given that her vast experience told her Mike was telling the truth, and she didn't have enough on him to get him arrested she had no choice but to let him join the guild.

"So, how much is your budget?"

"1.5 mil. I'm looking for a two-seat fighter, medium-range and able to loiter for a while. Between crew comfort and weaponry I favour weaponry, if the choice in weaponry is between close-range weaponry and long-range weaponry I favour long-range weaponry."

"Okay, this is definitely not your first rodeo…"

Looking down at her tablet, Beth sorted through the numerous ships in her inventory to look for what Mike had specified, as she did, River finally couldn't take it anymore and spoke up.

"Why the hell does the pilot's guild have an inventory loaded with state of the art ships? You can't even find half of this shit outside of a large private military corps."

"That's because the pilot's guild is a private military cooperation, the largest one in existence too, but unlike other corporations we mainly deal in trade route security and bounty hunting."

(And grey areas which are technically illegal, but there's no way a branch manager would ever share that with us…)

The pilot's guild started out as an insurance firm which made its business ensuring cargo ships and their cargo when they travelled in insecure sectors, their business model gradually evolved as they started acting as an intermediary for mercenaries that would help secure said shipping routes. The relative niece insurance firm eventually evolved into a gigantic organisation now found throughout every part of the galaxy, in interstellar online the pilot's guild was where players would get quests either wipe something out, transport something or find something, focusing mainly on ship action but also surface reconnaissance actions and even ground combat.

"Ah I found something, but…"

As Beth eventually found something which matched Mike's request she quickly handed him a tablet with the details. The craft Beth had found matched Mike's every requirement, but it was a pretty niece ship with only very specific uses. Glancing over at the tablet Mike was holding, River started reading along.

"Let's see, a UZ-PMC Scorpion model medium defence fighter… What the fuck is that atrocity?"

"We'll take it."

"Wait, what?"

"Great, let's go take a look at it then."

"Sure."

"Listen to me for a second!?"

With at least Mike and Beth in agreement, the trio went to the guild hangar to check out their inventory.

"Here she is, we've had a real hard time doing anything with this beauty, another few cycles and I would have started salvaging its components."

Showing Mike and River the craft it immediately became apparent why it was named Scorpion. With a solid thruster pack taking up about 40% of the craft to enable it to move in all directions, the rest of the craft was made up of its main armament with a twin cockpit on either side.

"... What the hell is that?"

"A beta class railgun, the kind you would usually see on destroyers or frigates."

"Yeah I am familiar with the class of weapon, I just didn't expect a railgun to be found on this light of a craft… Can it even shoot without tearing itself apart?"

As a former pirate, River was quite familiar with railguns, namely how much of a pain they were to deal with. With a longer range than missiles, cannons and even some classes of torpedoes, a craft equipped with railguns had to be approached carefully. Conversely, the low rate of fire brought on by the need for charging and cooldown periods, the need for radiators and enormous power draw made railguns a poor choice for close-quarters combat which fighters were usually optimised for.

"It can fire just fine, although the charge time is longer than usual due to the small reactor."

"That still doesn't make any sense, why would anyone ever want to put a railgun on a fighter? That's like trying to fistfight with a bolt action anti-material rifle, at some point that amount of firepower just becomes impractical..."

Even with Beth's assurance that the craft wasn't outright defective, River still couldn't see how such a craft would ever be useful.

"That's because this design is made to guard areas or serve as a long-range torpedo screen for larger formations. Think of this craft as a mobile railgun turret, to that effect it can loiter quite well by rolling in place to simulate gravity."

"Please give us a minute."

Still not convinced by Beth's sales speech, River sent her away before turning to Mike with a serious look on her face.

"Are you honestly sure about this? I find it hard to believe we'll ever be able to earn anything with a craft like this."

(What the hell is she saying?... I guess River can't see how OP this fighter is.)

Realising he had been on an entirely different page, Mike started explaining his reasoning after moving a bit further away from Beth.

"It'll be easy to rack up some bounties with a craft like this, the railgun will allow us to just pick targets apart at long range. If you're worried about the long recharge period between shots I can assure you that won't be a problem either, with the recoil compensation system and excellent thruster pack I'll be able to simultaneously keep a good distance and run down any prey that tries to escape."

Seeing that Mike had apparently put way more effort into thinking about the ship's advantages, River turned meek for a few seconds until she remembered that he hadn't touched on any of the ship's disadvantages.

"What about getting caught out between reloads? Or running out of ammunition for that matter, having only a single weapon means only a single thing has to go wrong before turning defenceless."

"That's equally true no matter how many weapons or how good shields you have, if the cockpit gets hit, you're dead, end of story. That being the case I prefer not getting shot at in the first place, or just avoiding fire, something that'll be an easy feat by using the Scorpion's impressive thruster pack to manoeuvre and evade instead of just stabilising the ship for shooting."

Although most games in the genre had been characterised by invulnerable shields, ships that could ram asteroids to destroy them, what had drawn Mike to Interstellar online was its 'instant death' element. Shields on fighters could often only take a few laser shots before failing, and even the best-armoured ships couldn't take more than a few shots before something went wrong. The choice to place players and NPC's alike only a few hits from death created a tension in combat which Mike had become hopelessly addicted to over the years, that tension was only enhanced by the high speed of movement in fights that made Mike return to the game time and time again.

"... Fine, but I want a great vacsuit and a two-cell life support system in addition to our binding contract."

"Sure."

Shaking on it, Mike turned to the guild leader.

"We'll take it, throw in a pirate hunting mission as well, we're short on cash."