Test flight

"Words are all good, but let's see some actions."

Suddenly being told that they were the 13 swords last hope might have been enough to shake Mike had he just arrived in this strange world perfectly mirroring Interstellar Online, but far too much shit had happened since then for him to be that naive.

Actions always spoke louder than words in Mike's world.

"I will do whatever I can to earn your trust."

Cait seemed to recognise this as well, for all the promises she just had made, the organisation she was part of had done nothing but continue to antagonise Mike and his crew since they arrived. While not intentional, actions have consequences.

Glancing towards the rest, Mike saw he had full authority and proceeded accordingly.

"Then let's go see the Wyrm, right now."

"O-okay-"

"Moreover that surveillance needs to be gone when we come back, we will check. But if it is okay then I'm willing to continue being the test pilot of the HIMAG."

"Got it!"

With a tentative agreement somewhat in place, Mike and the others immediately left the hotel suite they had just entered as Cait's subordinates filled it to comb for bugs. Somewhere else in the shard, a surveillance team reported their loss of equipment, with no passive methods of observing the aliens, more direct methods would be required to uncover their sinister motives.

Suspended by docking clamps with crab-like repair drones crawling all over it, the Wyrm somehow still looked like it used to, although the medium-class heavy fighter lacked its reactor core which had been scuttled and one of its heavy laser turrets had been torn off and lost to deep space.

"It hasn't even been 24 hours and still I'm nostalgic…"

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Before I knew it, the Wyrm became my- no, our home."

Just getting a glimpse of the Wyrm was enough for Mike and Jessica to get nostalgic, still, other parts of their group managed to keep their wits intact.

"How's the repair coming along?"

Turning to Cait seeing that she was keeping her word, River's primary concern was getting the Wyrm back to operational status, the faster that could be done, the more leverage they had on the 13 Swords and the council which could quickly change its mind.

"Um, we're currently 80% done with a full structural scan and composite, once that is complete and we know what we need, the auto-fabricators under my direct command will commence production of armour and sub-armour replacements and reinforcements. In addition to up-armouring the ship, we're also proceeding with replacing the power plant, thrust pack and lost weaponry."

As Cait had explained before, this wasn't just a simple repair operation, instead, she was upgrading the entire craft's armour, mobility, firepower and sensor suite.

Essentially, it was much closer to a complete retrofit than a repair operation.

"You're replacing the armour and propulsion units? That could impact the thrust-to-weight config and if you're just adding weight willy-nilly that could harm the chassis."

While River realised how massive of an advantage it could be to have a refitted Wyrm which was faster, tougher and deadlier than before she also recognised the harm a botched job could do. If, for example, the Wyrm's thrusters and reaction control system weren't properly calibrated, or the chassis wasn't balanced correctly, the Wyrm could literally tear itself apart or bend its frame in the middle of high-g combat manoeuvres.

"This isn't the first time we've designed manned fighters."

"No, technically it's the second, just after the HIMAG, and that's still a prototype."

"Okay let's not go off the rails here, take a step back, both of you."

Getting in between Cait and River before they got into a full-on fight, Mike risked his own life to de-escalate the situation before anything regrettable happened.

"Cait, we're not claiming that you'll make any kind of mistake when rebuilding the Wyrm, but this craft means a lot to River and the rest of us, it's our home and built using a radically different design philosophy compared to anything from this galaxy. Is it possible that River could be involved in this retrofit?"

"Fine."

Ending the day with the tentative spirit of cooperation, Mike didn't get much in the way of sleep before he was helping with the development of the HIMAG again.

Only this time he wouldn't be sitting in some boring flight simulator, instead, it was finally time for a test flight. While the first hour of his day was spent ensuring that the life support systems would be compatible with his flight suit, Mike was eventually let to a high-security hangar where the High Mobility and Agility Testbed was docked. The most striking feature of the HIMAG was its propulsion system, taking up nearly two-thirds of the craft, each module on either side of the cockpit had two main thrusters on either end of it, these nozzles could freely vector and allowed the craft to rapidly accelerate in every direction.

"I already expected this, but this thing really just is a cockpit bolted to a pair of thruster modules…"

"Well yeah, given we can't armour or shield effectively against the crystal lifeforms, the only option left is evading."

The inside of the HIMAG was just as cramped as Mike had feared, luckily the avatar he possessed didn't suffer from claustrophobia and quickly settled into the tiny cockpit and started flipping switches and turning dials to power up the craft as its fusion reactor got kick-started by an attached fuel line which quickly purged as the craft came alive.

"Comm check, everything good?"

[We hear you loud and clearly Mike, you're cleared for takeoff-]

"That's all I needed to know, thanks~"

Immediately cutting off Cait as he got the go-ahead for taxi and felt the clamps disengage, Mike spent no time on subtlety as he lit the afterburner and shot out of the cargo bay at full tilt. Immediately feeling the hit of 20 g's, Mike wore a full-on shit-eating grin as he firmly wore in the seat before he cut thrust and started banking from side to side, checking the agility of the craft as he reopened communications.

[MIKE! I was about to shut the HIMAG down from here, what exactly are you doing!? We have a series of preplanned steps to get through, this isn't-]

"Yeah, yeah I know. That's what I'm doing."

Keeping up a nonchalant conversation as he started spinning HIMAG as he kept an eye on the reactor output levels, finding a slight oscillation in one of the reactor couplings.

[What the h-]

"The port power bus isn't keeping up as well as the starboard one, but it's recharging faster… Is it overheating or just out of spec?"

Judging by the following silence, Mike figured Cait thought he was just fucking around and didn't expect he had actually been busy figuring out the craft's limits. Back at the HIMAG control room, Dan was busy suppressing a laughing fit as he watched Mike break in the prototype craft.

"Ah, sorry, it's just been a while since I saw Mike fly and it caught me off guard."

The more Cait looked at Mike's seemingly random manoeuvers, the more it became apparent that he was stress-testing the craft in a very systematic manner, pushing the frame to its breaking point while making sure no part of the craft went underutilised for more than a second.

"Is he normally like that?"

"From what River has told me, yeah, he would race around inside civilian ports at that speed all the time. For some reason, whenever Mike gets into the pilot seat he becomes a different person. I have no idea how he built up that level of skill, it's almost like he has gotten the chance to fight and die over and over again…"

While Dan did consider himself superior to Mike in terms of CQC, given an equally capable spacecraft and put into a 1v1 situation Dan was confident he would end up losing every single time, although Mike was a fraction of Dan's own age, he was vastly outranked in terms of sheer combat experience.

That was the one thing Dan never could quite figure out about Mike, but it had long since stopped bothering him as Dan now saw Mike as a reliable comrade.

"Ah, it seems like he's done testing, at least for today…"

Snapping back into reality, Dan had another slight chuckle when he looked back at the screens where Mike was currently spinning out of control, the power bus he had initially pointed out had blown, leading to loss of power in the HIMAG's port side while the starboard side thrusters had locked open.

After Mike had finally been pried out of the HIMAG he had long since puked the entirety of his stomach contents, thus he declared it was time for food, he wasn't safe from the aftereffects of his accident, or the ridicule of his allies.

"Urg… Holy shit man…"

Once again on solid ground, Mike still felt like the entire world was spinning after his earlier accident.

"Well, that's what you get for insisting you wanted to fly prototype hardware…"

Even if Jessica was sympathetic to Mike, she still realised that he got what he asked for.

"ThAt'S WhAt yOu GeT! Shut the fuck u- Urg… Fuck me…"

Stopping his mocking mid-way through as he was about to puke, again, Mike held a hand over his mouth as he was soothed by a nervous-looking River gently rubbing his back.

"Are you sure you're okay? Shouldn't you be laying down somewhere resting?"

Having seen a recording of the HIMAG spinning out of control and stuck continuing to accelerate, barely keeping itself from ripping apart, River was still quite worried about Mike's condition.

"Y-yeah, I'm fine, or so she claims anyway."

Pointing to Cait who had made sure he was okay through several examinations and tests, Mike switched the focal point of the conversation to the other side of the dinner table.

"Yeah, he's completely fine, all the tests came back fine."

Sitting on the other side of the table, Cait still had some issues with Mike and the other's appearance as they had finally dropped the flight suits with tinted glass for more casual wear. Although these people looked radically different from herself and everyone she had ever known, in the end, they were still people.

"You people seem really close."

Taking a sip of her coffee, Cait almost spit out her drink when she heard Mike's response.

"Of course we're close, we've fought together and almost died multiple times. If we weren't close at this point it would be strange."

Repeating the thing he had seemingly said ad nauseam at this point, Mike found it simple to thrust the people around him completely, even if they had met under strained circumstances.

"Well most of the people here did try and kill me the first time we met, so I understand why it wouldn't quite stick."

Remembering the past days fondly, Mike didn't even mind the number of times the people around the table had beat the shit out of him.

"I-I'm sorry!? They did what?"

"That's because you fucking kidnapped me, what else was I supposed to do than start swinging?"

Completely ignoring Cait's outrage, Jessica continued casually recounting her and Mike's first meeting as she cut a piece of steak and stuffed it into her mouth before continuing.

"He kidnapped me, the same thing happened to River… Anyway the first time I met him I broke Mike's nose, it's strange how these things work out."

Not at all repentant at the fact she punched Mike in the face out of nowhere, Jessica cut out another slice of lab-grown meat before stuffing her face with it.

"I fucking saved your life, you little shit…"

"Yeah, sure."

"... I'm gonna go take a leak."

Realising he was talking to a wall, Mike got up on his feet and took a few seconds to steady himself before leaving the dinner table. Keeping the act up until he entered the toilet, Mike almost collapsed, catching himself on the way down; his legs had seemingly stopped working out of nowhere.

"Come on… Not again…"

Trying to steady himself, Mike quickly was out of breath, just remaining on his feet seemed a challenge as he started shaking as his vision narrowed.

These sudden attacks Mike had previously talked with River about were becoming far more frequent as of late and had been impacting his sleep which had started to become anything but stable. Even though he had promised to tell River about these attacks, Mike didn't want to worry her with these things, after all, they went away as soon as he got into a pilot seat, so there shouldn't be any reason to worry.