Rune looked at Teira and then glanced back to the set of three cables on his integration chair.

“Hey. Psst. Teira.” He shuffled closer, confusion evident in his voice as he spoke. “How the hell do I plug these things in.”

Teira glanced at him with an incredulous look on her face, already having plugged the first two cables in with the third in hand and ready. “You just plug them into your neural ports… dumbass.”

Rune gestured at the back of his head, an annoyed look on his face. “I never got any neural ports installed… dumbass.”

Teira’s eyes flicked to one side, then back to him. “Uhhhhh…” A smile slowly crept up her face. “You’re a synth. All synths have neural ports. You’ve just never used them… dumbass.”

Rune flushed red and started feeling around on the back of his head. “No really, I don't feel anything back there, nothing like the ports that you have. There must be—” Rune’s eyes widened as he felt over a trio of ring-shaped bumps that he’d noticed before in the shower but had thought were just some sort of byproduct of being a synth. Hesitantly, Rune grabbed a cable and hovered it over one of the bumps. It didn’t take for the first or second, but when he put it over the third the port opened and he was able to put the cable in. His face flushed even redder. “Oh.”

Teira leaned forwards, stuck her tongue out at him and then grinned. “Dumb. Ass.”

Rune chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Alright, I’m an idiot.”

Teira quickly finished plugging in the last cable before sitting down in the chair and tapping a big green button on one of the arms of the chair, prompting a hard, semi-translucent sheet of some kind to rise up out of the floor. She gave him a nod. “Alright. I’m going to link. Good luck, man.”

Rune nodded to her and waved. “Good luck to you too.”

Teira leaned back in her chair before her eyes rolled up in her head as the hard, semi-translucent sheet finished encasing her. Rune quickly finished plugging in the rest of his cables, before sitting down in the chair and hitting the same big green button that Teira had.

A thought whispered through his head. 10 seconds to link…

Rune closed his eyes and waited. 5 seconds to link…

Rune’s fingers tapped against the hard arm of the chair, and his eyes shot open. One second to link…

Rune’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he felt his consciousness expand in a way he’d never experienced before. A million electrons rippled through a micrometer of gossamer copper cable in a flash. He felt his drives spark and then roar into life, ready to burn with the heat and intensity of a thousand furnaces in mere milliseconds. His weapons systems stood ready, a small but deadly array of lasers, missiles, a railgun, plasma cannons, and more traditional projectile weapons. And there were the vectors… oh, the vectors.

The vectors were the raw potential of momentum. It was overwhelming—more magnificent that he could’ve possibly fathomed. He could see the exact path he would take if he flared his engines in just the right sequence, shot his missiles with a trajectory just so. And for those paths and every other he could devise, there were a million others that could result from minuscule adjustments, sending him in one direction or the other. This web of infinite paths branched out in front of him in an array of endless, geometric, incomprehensible shapes. It was the raw imperfection of the possible resulting from a billion branching, perfect paths. It was absolute, utter, sheer control. It felt so indescribably, incomprehensibly, right.

As the rest of his sensory systems came online, Rune slowly acclimated to his new chrome body, an exoskeleton of a combination of Vallerium and self-repairing carbon nanotubes and innards of copper, brass, and a million different electrical and computational components. He couldn’t imagine anything better, but as the sensors came to life his imagination was proved lacking.

The first sensors were the light sensors. The dual suns of Taraxas IV slowly revolved around each other, a couple light years away from where he hung, suspended in space. The miniature dots of the system’s two planets and their moons—practically invisible to Rune’s human eyes—hung with all their majesty clear viewing distance from Rune’s 360-degree visual array.

After his visual array came to a variety of other sensors. Electromagnetic, UV, radio, sensors capturing nearly every physical aspect of the system sparked to life and illustrated the system in a spectacle incomprehensible to the typical human brain. To Rune’s, as it interfaced with the AI within his Integration chair, nothing could be more beautiful.

He spent an immeasurable amount of time simply sitting there and taking it all in. His new body, the majesty of the cosmos, the infinite possibility of paths before him. He was slowly adjusting to his new circumstances when all of sudden he remembered he remembered he had a purpose. And there they were, hovering in the back of his mind like illusory phantoms. Instructions.

Trainee, in your documents it was marked down that you had yet to operate any machinery requiring integration. This is a tutorial designed to accommodate new integrators that have yet to experience the process themselves. You will be given a full thirty minutes before each test to accommodate to your new form before you must take each test. When you desire to begin the test simply ask for it.

Time Remaining: 17:13

Rune banished the thought to the back of his mind along with the excitement of his new body. He needed to stay on task and do well on this test. That meant getting used to his new body. He needed to test his limits. Just thinking about it got him the information he needed. He could accelerate at a maximum 250 m/s2.

He picked a vector that would lead to a cluster of nearby asteroids and started flying, his engines at full blast. By nearby, he meant twenty thousand or so kilometers away. That may seem like a lot, but with 250 m/s2 of acceleration it only took two minutes and twenty-eight seconds before he started decelerating, and three minutes and thirty-seven seconds for him to reach maximum firing distance with his railgun. And fire he did, wanting to test out his new armaments. First, he made sure that every shot collided with an asteroid, and tested the amount of damage that they would do. It turned out that his railgun not just did a lot of damage, but that it was also highly accurate. He hit every shot, and the asteroids hit either had chunks ripped off or simply broke into multiple pieces. If those shots had hit a ship, Rune was sure it would’ve been smashed to pieces.

At three minutes and fifty-four seconds, Rune passed the two thousand kilometer mark and came in range with his two projectile weapons and plasma cannons. He decided to test the projectile weapons first. These fired a series of short bursts of high velocity, non-magnetic kinetic based projectiles. They could very easily shred through an asteroid, but at their maximum accurate range of two thousand kilometers, only a few rounds in each burst would hit.

The two plasma cannons had a different problem. Each blast of plasma was more accurate and did more damage, but the blasts traveled slowly and Rune only had thirty rounds. His sensors could detect the rounds seconds long before they reached the targets, and if someone had been firing at him he would’ve been able to dodge them relatively easily. To land one accurately, he would have to get within five hundred or so kilometers to land consistent hits, a dangerous proposition at best.

The lasers had a similar problem. The light-based weapons, while dealing a decent amount of damage and hitting every single shot, shorted out Rune’s systems after a mere two shots. Rune could decrease the amount of power he was supplying, but then they dealt just about no damage. It simply wasn’t worth using them offensively, and after scanning his databases Rune realized he had several subroutines to use them to shoot down either missiles or projectiles of various types. Unless he was in an extreme situation

After testing out the rest of his weapons, Rune moved on to his missiles, which he had four of. Two were more traditional kinetic missiles that relied primarily on speed with a small amount of explosive force. The other two were antimatter missiles, high in explosive force, but rather lacking in speed when compared to the kinetic missiles. Rune shot them off at four asteroids. The missiles were very effective, utterly destroying their target asteroids. In retrospect, however, he could’ve shot down both types of missile long before they collided. They were effective weapons, but would more likely serve as distractions or a close ranged finishing blow.

What was confusing for Rune was why he only had a single railgun, and why that railgun had only ten shots, far less than all of his other weapons. After a quick scan of his systems, though, he quickly realized the rationale behind this feature. He was coated in a magnetic substance which made him capable of briefly emitting magnetic fields which could push the magnetic shot of a railgun off by a couple meters, causing the weapon to miss his ship. It was pointless shooting the railgun off unless the enemy ship didn’t have similar magnetic fields or had been damaged enough it couldn’t generate them.

Rune scanned his systems for more defenses and found that he also had a dust blast which would fire a cloud of metal dust which could repel plasma shot. Unfortunately, the blast only had a single charge, so the protection was minimal, and could only be used if his systems registered the plasma before it collided, which if it was going to collide, wasn’t very likely. In addition to the dust blast, the plating on his ship was specifically designed to deflect, absorb, and neutralize laser beams, drastically reducing their effectiveness.

After a couple more system scans, Rune figured that he knew pretty much everything he needed to know about himself for combat. The majority of drone to drone combat would likely be with projectile weapons, shredding down defenses before finishing targets with his railgun. Plasma weapons would be used in the event of a very close range battle and could finish it in a single strike if he got lucky. Missiles could be used as distractions or to shoot down fleeing enemy ships, while lasers, in turn, could shoot down missiles or serve as a desperate last attempt to shoot down his enemies. He had more or less worked out what he was going to do in combat and was feeling ready to put his theories to the test.

His mind thought back to his instructions after the phantom words whispered through his mind once again he knew he had three minutes and fifty-three seconds left before he would be forcibly put into the test. It wasn’t a lot of time anyways, and Rune was feeling pretty confident. Screw it. He mentally willed the test to come.

Suddenly the data changed. Visual feed that had been showing one thing suddenly showed something completely different. The array of sensors detecting the various types of radiation suddenly shifted to getting completely different readings. The ammunition which he’d previously shot off suddenly reappeared. His speed which had been aided by his acceleration suddenly cut out. It was very jarring. Rune took a second to reorient, before focussing on his mission.

Like a shadow lurking just behind him, the words were there for him as soon as he called on them. This mission is to eliminate the pirates before they reach and destroy the merchant freighter. Points will be granted for each pirate ship destroyed but deducted if the merchant ship is destroyed or you are destroyed. Additional points will be granted for each pirate ship that surrenders intact. If you are destroyed, you will not proceed on to the next mission.

Time Remaining: 19:58

Even as he finished processing the words, his sensors were already going to work, scanning the system for the threats mentioned in the instructions. It took milliseconds for him to register them, first on the thermal sensors by the emissions of their drives, then by the distress signals of the merchant ship all throughout the system, and then visually on his optical sensors.

Rune didn’t personally recognize any of the six ships he was registering on his sensors, but as soon as he thought about it he could feel the data flowing into his mind. The first ship which was accelerating in an arc away from the other five was a remodeled Belthax III class Freighter. It was on the upper end of long-distance travel ships, complete with medium acceleration engines, a centrifugal habitation, an auto-repair section capable of maintaining up to four drones, and a single railgun with a 360 coverage array of lasers. It was a good ship. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to deter these pirates or outrun them.

Before he started planning the fight, Rune assessed the enemy drones and figured out how long it would take for them to overtake the merchant freighter. The pirates had a trio of drones that, while not nearly as good as Rune, were nonetheless serviceable. There were two Tauris DCs and a single Toshiba M class drone. The Toshiba M class drone had the highest acceleration at 280 m/s2, with the Tauris DCs lagging behind at 220 m/s2. These pirates knew what they were doing, however, and had them all flying in formation towards the merchant freighter, which was barely able to pull off an acceleration of 40 m/s2 to escape. After some quick calculations, Rune realized that it would take the pirates roughly three more minutes of flying to get to the point where he wouldn’t be able to intercept them. That was plenty of time. With that in mind, Rune started analyzing the enemy ships and forming a plan.

The Tauris DCs were practically scrap metal, essentially just flying missile carriers with a single projectile gun and a small array of point defense lasers. On the flip side, they had minimal radiation shielding and a weak magnetic field to repulse magnetic shot. A single, high powered shot with one of his lasers followed by a railgun round would destroy the drones with ease.

The Toshiba M class drone was the real danger of the trio. The Toshiba M class drone was a niche drone that did a particular job exceptionally well. The drone sacrificed the majority of the advantages of having diverse weapons systems in return for increased defenses, speed, and higher powered and ranged plasma weapons.

It had a better laser point defense system, more reflective plating, higher acceleration drives, stronger mag deflectors, and plasma weapons that couple hit accurately at ten kilometers. It was pretty obvious to Rune what the plan of this drone would be. It would rapidly accelerate towards another drone, closer the distance for close combat, and destroy the enemy drone with its plasma weaponry. The counter to this was rather simple: fly away, fire the projectile weaponry while keeping distance, and then gun the Toshiba M class down with his railgun.

As for the two pirate ships themselves, Rune wasn’t particularly worried. They were both crude ships constructed from a hodgepodge of spare parts from other ships and lacked enough uniform parts to be described as a particular make or model. One ship appeared to be largely comprised on parts from ships from Bannon Industries and seemed to fill the role of a tugboat, whereas the other one had parts taken from a Hachiro D class gunboat, an Orion class freighter, and a Halcyon-class luxury cruiser.

Out of curiosity, he checked his database to discern what sort of drone he was currently flying. It was a Mao D class drone, created by Xing Feng Industries. If Rune had lips, he would have smiled at the name. The Spear. One of the more versatile weapons on the medieval battlefield. It was the perfect name for the drone.

The latter of the two was simply bristling with railguns, to the point at which Rune might’ve worried about getting hit, but he didn’t plan on ever closing close enough for the ship to be able to use its railguns without some warning for Rune. The ship looked rather ramshackle, and his visual sensors could detect what may or may not be wiring on the outsides of the ship. If there was exposed wiring, which wasn’t all that unlikely considering the makeshift condition of the ship, he might be able to fry its systems simply with lasers, or hit unprotected parts with his railgun. With that ship down he’d be able to easily dispatch the tug which only had a point defense system of lasers.

Deciding that his plan was more or less good and that he might as well go through with it, Rune fired up his engines on an intercept course for the predicted path of the enemy drones that would allow them to arrive at the same point at roughly the same time. As soon as he was in range for him to gun down the first of the two Tauris DCs, he fired off his railgun. After 0.72 seconds when the shot had crossed into the zone where it was close enough that it could not be evaded, Rune fired his laser at 80% power, slagging the side of the drone the railgun shot was coming in on.

The drone never even stood a chance. One second it was there, the next it was a fiery ball of fire and shrapnel, one or maybe more of the missiles attached to the drone having been hit and exploded, setting off a destructive chain reaction. It took microseconds before the other two drones were readjusting course. The Toshiba M class drone curved towards Rune on an arcing path that would leave it flying next to him, while the remaining Tauris DC fired off its payload of eight missiles and then curved to fly off back towards the two pirate ships.

Unfortunately for the pirates, the other Tauris DC wasn’t able to turn in time to get out of Rune’s railgun range. His flight vector plotted him a course that would overtake the drone, and in seconds he did. His railgun barked out three shots in rapid succession, one for each of the three most probable paths of the Tauris before his lasers lanced through space to fry the magnetic shielding on the Tauris. After another half second, his optical sensors confirmed the hit as another fiery ball of shrapnel blossomed in the darkness of space.

Now, however, Rune was in a pickle. The missiles launched from the Tauris DC weren’t a problem, his point defense system of laser had already begun to track, lock onto, and gun down the missiles hurtling through space towards him. No, the problem was that the flight vector that had allowed him to run down the second Tauris DC had made it so that the Toshiba M class drone would soon be tailing him, and with the larger acceleration, Rune wouldn't be able to shake the drone which could pound him with its plasma cannons. The drone was currently accelerating towards him from the right, likely expecting him to curve away to the left. That would give the Toshiba the opportunity to follow him and pound him with its plasma cannons as he ran.

It would be a closer fight, much closer than Rune would prefer. He racked his mind for any other option and quickly came up with one. Rune decided to do the unexpected. Instead of curving away to the left, Rune curved to the right, setting himself on a course that would allow him to shoot past the Toshiba. While he would still come into range of the Toshiba’s plasma cannons, it would only be for a couple seconds, and it wouldn’t be able to get more than a shot or two off. If he timed his dust blast well, he could repel the shot and not take any damage.

Deciding this was a better plan, Rune made the course adjustments. There were mere seconds till the Toshiba and him passed each other, and whoever the pilot was he wasn’t skilled enough to make the course adjustments that would allow him to follow and run down Rune. The pilot seemed to realize Rune’s plans far too late and started adjusting his course to allow him to come around and follow Rune after passing him, but it was too late.

Mere seconds later, the Toshiba came into range of his projectile weapons, and Rune opened fire. Milliseconds later Rune crossed into the range of the Toshiba’s plasma cannons, and then milliseconds after that, Rune fired with his own plasma cannons before dust blasting. All the while his projectile weapons blazed, ripping holes into the Toshiba.

A second later the ships had passed each other and Rune reviewed his sensor feeds. His readings showed that the dust cloud had successfully deflected a total of three plasma rounds, whereas his singular one that had hit his enemy was also deflected.

Rune didn’t let his concentration slip, however. While he’d overcome the most dangerous part of the fight, he still needed to finish the job. A slip up here could easily spell death. Rune arced around as fast as possible until he was just shy of parallel with the flight path of the Toshiba before curving away to match the Toshiba’s turning. While the Toshiba was indeed a faster drone, it’s turning radius at maximum speed wasn’t as good as Rune’s was. In a deadly game of cat and mouse, Rune flew between the maximum range of the Toshiba’s plasma cannons and the maximum range of his projectile weapons.

A few seconds of his weapons pounding the Toshiba’s outer hull passed before the pilot realized that he wasn’t going to be able to outturn Rune, and started arcing away to generate distance between the two spacecraft. Rune wouldn’t let him get off so easy.

Rune’s projectile weaponry pounded the back of the Toshiba as it attempted to fly away. The Toshiba was fast. Unfortunately, it wasn’t fast enough. Rune’s guns pounded the back of the drone for a good two seconds before one of the projectiles hit something critical in the engines, which exploded in a fiery blaze of light, crippling the ship, stalling any acceleration. Rune arced around and sunk a railgun round into the Toshiba for good measure, reducing the drone to fragmented scrap.

With the primary threat eliminated, Rune checked the clock to make sure that he still had time to subjugate the two remaining pirate ships. 10:49. Plenty of time.

The remaining operation was relatively simple. The remaining two pirate ships had attempted to run away. It didn’t take Rune long to catch up and demand their surrender, but when he did they refused, and the ship with the railguns leveled several shots at him in an attempt to ward him off. Rune wasn’t having any of it.

He stayed out of range and systematically used his lasers to fry each and every railgun on the ship before once again demanding their complete surrender or that he would destroy them. This time, the response was quick and terse. They surrendered.

After the pirates surrendered, Rune found himself pulled out of the mission and floating in a void, much like what he might imagine being in a sensory deprivation tank might be like. Words floated into his mind, and Rune quickly processed them.

You have completed the first of eight segments of your first mission. You are being given five minutes of break. If you desire to begin the test early simply ask for it.

Time Remaining: 4:57

Rune shrugged before simply willing the next test to start. He was feeling confident after crushing the first test and ready to move on to the second.

All of sudden, his mind went from sensing nothing to receiving feedback from tens of different sensors.

A thought slithered it’s way into Rune’s mind before he could take stock of the situation. Drone launching in 15…

Rune quickly rifled through his data and found that he appeared to be in the docking bay of a large cruiser, namely a Yamato Class UIS Battlecruiser named Streamlord. His drone was about to launch out into space. Rune could see several other drones in the hold of the ship either launching or preparing for launch, telling Rune that whatever was happening it was a large scale operation. He decided that he should pull up the mission instructions, and quickly scanned his database before retrieving the information.

This mission is to eliminate the ESA drones and shoot down their bombers before they reach the Streamlord. Points will be granted for each ESA ship destroyed and deducted for each bomber that gets through or if you are destroyed. If you are destroyed, you will not proceed on to the next mission.

Time Remaining: 19:38

Alright. The stakes of the mission seemed to be going up. He guessed that they would go up for every mission after. He could roll with that. He just had to play smarter than all these AI in here with him. Rune cracked his metaphysical knuckles. It was time to scrap some ships.