Arion felt the pit in his stomach return. A collective mind? That just upped the stakes. Am I ready to take it to that extreme? Will I lose my sense of individuality? The sound of shuffling and little coughs told him he wasn’t the only one.
“I realize you must have questions about this. Let me start with the most common ones I have heard. ‘Why have we never heard of this before?’ Simple; the fact that we join a collective consciousness, while in Level Five, is kept within the WSO community. Few outsiders would ever understand it and many would fear it. It would face the same stigma that early adopters of modern micomms and early Psionics felt as well.
“‘Is it dangerous?’ No, if one of your wingman takes a hit and goes down, you notice their loss and it may limit your effective sensor ability, but it will not cause you any harm, other than the emotional loss of a comrade.
“‘What is the purpose of such a system?’ Easy, to keep tabs on each other, to make sure that your buddy is okay and that if they need help, you can help them, be it a combat threat or a systems issue.
“‘What does it feel like?’ You’ll find that out in a moment.”
The room went silent as Grunt looked over the cadets again.
“Now hear this!” he barked, drawing everyone’s attention. “Not everyone can fully adjust to using Level Five. The merging of self with the machine can be too much for some, and the networking, sometimes more so. That is why you were tested to enter into the WSO Corps. Those who are too willing to join with the machine and give up their individuality would never be able to go into Level Five and leave it again. You must understand, whether or not you use Level Five when you fly is up to you, but you must prove that you can use it. Otherwise, you will be washed out. Anyone who does not want to go any further can go now.”
Arion grabbed his helmet and stood up. He felt the eyes of everyone in the room fall upon him before he looked into Grunt’s eyes. Grunt stared back with a singular steely-eyed intensity. Arion looked to each of his fellow cadets with a gaze that told them he understood their fears before turning back to his teacher. His face impassive, he looked down, pulled his helmet on, and locked eyes with Grunt again as he sealed the helmet. “Let’s do this.”
“What are you waiting for, get your brain buckets on, people!” Grunt ordered, walking back to his station and grabbing his own.
Arion sat back in his seat and pulled up the interface menu. He waited and the Level Five interface soft key illuminated. It’s go time. Swallowing hard, he reached out, pressed the key and closed his eyes.
He opened his eyes to a brilliant star field. All around him, a mixture of forward swept wing Splicer 5000 Firehawks and asymmetric Splicer 3000 Markers, with their massive antimatter cannons,—the assigned craft of the Monstero Nach and Nip Tails— appeared. He gazed in wonder at the scene and, without even realizing it, recognized the WSO of each craft. He willed himself away from the craft and took a God’s Eye View of the area. While it reminded him of how he watched things in Level Four, it felt worlds different, the thoughts of his fellow WSOs tickling the back of his mind.
“Welcome to Level Five,” Grunt called out and pulled Arion back into his own craft. “You’ve no doubt taken a look around and seen each other. Now I want you to see yourselves. Perform a self-diagnostic. Not an automated diagnostic. I want each of you to check on your systems yourselves. Don’t take the computer’s report.”
Arion set to work and commenced his diagnostic by checking his power core. An acute awareness of his own heart beating filled him. He stopped for a moment. What the…? Chuckling to himself in realization, he continued his power core check and found his hearts beating steady and calm. The system is using my own hearts to represent the photon energizers, and is that? Yes, it’s a third heart. He checked his fuel tanks and the feeling of a full stomach greeted him. Proceeding into the engines, he felt his legs tense and relax as he pulsed the thrusters through a standard test. This is just trippy. Moving up, he checked his computer and felt a tingle at the base of his skull. His face muscles contracted and relaxed when he checked the cockpit. Looking at life-support forced his lungs to take a deep breath, exhale, and take another. Curling and uncurling his toes made his landing gear extend. Repeating that process retracted them again.
“An interesting experience to say the least,” Grunt commented, interrupting the diagnostic. “By now you’ve all come to see what most of your default settings are. You can customize these later, but for now, keep looking. I’ll let you know when we’ll continue with the lesson.”
Grunt, master of understatements. Arion set back to work, even more curious and excited to feel his fighter through his own body. He checked his communications array, ears twitching and mouth opening and closing in response. He looked around smiling and, as he shook his head became aware that his sensors were his own eyes, eyes that now saw all around him. Still smiling, he flexed his arms and felt the flight control jets on his wings fire in response. I wonder. He extended his arms and leaned side to side like he would as a child when pretending to be an airplane, the fighter rolled in response. Blazer would kill for this interface.
A thought occurred to Arion and he clenched his hands into fists. His GP-77-8-C plaser cannons came online, the flow of plasma to the weapons pulsing through his veins. He changed his hands into a chopping position and felt them come to represent his bio cannons. Changing their shape once again, he curled his fingers yet left his palms exposed holding the half curled fingers out from his hand. With a snap of capacitors, his system disabling E-13-77-G Narfic cannons came online.
He turned his hands about, aiming and focusing them on different targets, and the guns complied, twisting on their gimbaled arms. He drew his hand into a classic pointing position and his missile launchers activated. He tracked his pointer fingers about, locking them onto different targets. Extending and retracting his middle fingers, he cycled through the missile types available. An almost unconscious sphere of influence around him limited where and how far he could point depending on the weapon. Arion cycled through the missiles several times, but to his dismay, he could not find his shark torpedoes.
Okay, I know they’re there, I can feel them hanging off my belly remoras. He scoffed at the irony of that thought. Unsure how to access the weapons, he called up the system’s help tutorial through his micomm and looked up the default hand signal. He found the sign and extended his hand. Laying it flat, he stuck his thumb and pinky away from the rest and felt his sharks awaken. He aimed his hands at various targets, locking them into the missiles’ memory cores, in case his link to them was later severed.
“All right, it looks like you’ve all finished, now let’s go on. Your sensors have automatically joined with those of everyone else. This is a default you can turn on or off at any time. Try disabling it now.”
Arion allowed himself to see the almost ethereal strands connecting him to the others, then severed them. The range of his sensors dropped to the point that he felt blind for a moment. The mass shadows of debris and the other fighters didn’t help. He found several areas that his position wouldn’t let him see into now that he was denied the ‘eyes’ of his fellow WSOs.
“All right, link back to each other.”
Faster than they’d disengaged, the cadets reestablished their sensor data link weave and the blind spots all but disappeared.
“That is one of the primary reasons for the Level Five networking. You can do the same thing in lower levels, but nowhere near as effectively, nor as quickly.
“Now I am going to give each of you damage to a different system. I want you to figure out where, and see to its repair.”
Arion floated while waiting until a massive cramp shot up his left leg. It felt debilitating and out of reflex, he grabbed at the spot. The act of clasping his hand to the injury sent repair microbots to the scene.
He identified the problem an instant later and the tiny robots were set to work fixing the damaged accelerator coil in the plasma rocket. After pullin
g back his hands, the pain subsided as the robots continued to work, but his leg still felt stiff. He heard a groan of pain and turned to look at Gokhead, the mental image of him clutching his head filling his view as Gokhead endeavored to fix his computer system. A moan drew his attention to Acknit as he clutched at his stomach in an effort to seal a fuel leak, a bright yellow stain marring his flightsuit. Others stared at their hands, unable to make them into fists, their plaser cannons offline, while others found their own problems, some trivial, some major.
“As you can see, damage to a system is represented by pain in various body parts. As you progress you will learn how to cope with damage in multiple systems and how to best effect repairs.”
“Sir, I noticed when I took damage to my computer system that my head felt kind of fuzzy. Yet I could still concentrate and think, it was strange,” Gokhead commented, his voice once again taking on a machinelike quality that Arion found disturbing.
“That is correct, Cadet Gokhead. If your computer core takes damage, your link to the fighter degrades as well. You will still be able to think clearly, but your command of the ship will diminish. You must all realize that as the WSO, you are a part of the computer system, and of the fighter itself. Should your pilot become incapacitated, irrational or killed, you have full override capability and can fly the craft yourself.”
“Makes you wonder what we be needing them for,” Telsh laughed.
“I’ll tell you why you need them,” Grunt barked, cutting off any replies. “Even with your ability to control the fighter all by yourself, you still can’t manage the fighter’s onboard systems and fight effectively.
“Pilots are focused people. They focus on the objectives and the targets you give them. This can give them tunnel vision, and they block out everything else. It is your job to cover what they’re blocking out. You fly your pilots. If you tried to fly the craft as well as manage it, you too would become focused on a single objective and lose your bearings on all that’s around you. In space combat, that is deadly. It’s like a sniper. Cadet Talkerna what does every sniper have with them?”
“A… a spotter,” Matt replied. “Yeah, when you’re sniping you become focused on the target. You tend to block out any danger to yourself and concentrate on hitting the target. The spotter is there to cover you. Situational awareness is key for them. Just like in a Pilot, WSO team.”
“So then why are you a WSO?” Nash asked. “I mean, you are a sniper.”
“It’s just how I scored on the tests. Besides, Gavit and I make a great team in flight, almost as good as Bichard and me on the ground.”
“That is correct,” Bichard replied, his voice devoid of hum or punctuating clicks.
“Exactly as I was saying. Acting as a team, you are more likely to survive an engagement and come away victorious,” Grunt continued. “Another reason for the weaving system is simple. You can assist each other. Should one of your fighters take heavy damage or a WSO is injured, it is possible for another to link in and assist, taking on some of the mental workload.
“Also, I’m sure you’ve all realized or experienced by now the rush of combat, even in sims. Your hearts pound, your mind races, adrenaline starts pumping, and you can lose track of things. I am going to simulate battle conditions in your brains and do damage to three of you. Figure out who it is, because those affected may not notice.”
Arion began checking on his comrades as the exercise commenced. He wasn’t searching long before Gokhead interrupted him.
“Arion, check your left wing.”
No way. Arion felt confused for a moment then looked over and saw that his arm was gone. Pulling back to a God’s Eye View, he saw that his whole left wing had been sheared off. Pulling back to his own sensors, he found a blur on his left side, the loss of his wing stripping away one of his sensor pods with it.
“That is just plain weird,” Arion commented as he stared at the nub that was once his arm. “Thanks for the heads up, Gok! I didn’t even notice.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Grunt announced. “We watch each other’s backs. Now we’re going to try something truly disorienting.”
Damage to the three WSOs’ fighters disappeared, and darkness replaced almost everything in Arion’s vision. He could see and feel himself and his fighter, but he couldn’t see anything around him. Nervous cries for explanation rang out from several WSOs, as they looked for a solution to their sensor loss. Arion focused outward, listening for any kind of sensor buoy or ship, hoping to get a sensor image.
“Losing one’s sensors is one of the most frightening and disorienting things that can happen to a WSO. Even with your sensors on passive mode, you can still receive data and put together a situational outlook, though far more limited. Using your communications systems, you might be able to get sensor data from another source, but if all else fails, you still have your good old Mark One Eyeballs to fall back on.
“Now for something even worse,” Grunt said, and all went silent.
Arion tried to listen for any communication but found none. Grunt just rendered us all deaf and blind. Arion called out just in case anyone could hear him, but found his mouth sealed shut, he couldn’t transmit. Panic began to set in as Arion searched for a way to see or communicate.
Wait, the forward targeting array is on a different sensor network, he realized, feeling more than a bit foolish. He accessed the targeting system, but short-range scanners didn’t respond. Frustrated, he attempted to reroute the system, and almost didn’t notice something very important.
How could I have been so stupid? He activated his gun cameras. An image of space ahead filled his view. Arion set to work and repositioned his Narfics to look out in a wide arc. Integrating the cameras together, he formed a rough panorama of space ahead of him. He noted several navigational marks and other craft and recorded their positions. Panning the Narfic Cannons about their full range of motion, he found even more.
A tickle ran up his arm, sending the hairs straight up. Arion panned the guns towards the source but it was beyond their range of motion. It took Arion a moment to realize what had happened. Someone’s painting my shields with a low powered laser beam.
The beam pulsed in and out, like a data stream. He set to work using the remaining portions of the communication system to analyze the data and, as the data flowed in, a text message appeared from Gokhead’s fighter. Images from Gokhead’s gun cameras soon appeared and filled in the gaps in Arion’s view along with a heading towards Gokhead’s craft. Arion angled his fighter towards Gokhead, painted him with his own laser, and completed the link.
“Good thinking, Gokhead.”
“Best I could come up with, but we need a way to communicate with the others,” Gokhead replied, his voice a little more normal, his transmission filled with pops and static. “Signal isn’t the cleanest in the universe.”
“What do you want? We’re using targeting lasers and EM Torus shields. I’m surprised the shields aren’t scattering the laser even more. Hold on, do you think we can weave this all together?”
“I think so, but why? Oh, I see now. Yes, try it, I’ll stay here.”
Arion set his plan into action and steered his fighter to point towards Matt’s. Once facing the fighter, he painted it with a laser, transmitting his and Gokhead’s data, as well as how to continue the weave. It wasn’t long until all the assembled craft but Grunt’s, which had disappeared, joined the weave. The images surrounding them were hazy and filled with gaps as well as the popping and crackling of each other’s voices. Image and voice quality deteriorated as each member joined the network.
“So what do we do now?” Acknit asked. “We can’t go anywhere this way.”
“Maybe we’re taking the wrong approach here,” Temblin, one of the Nip Tails offered. “I mean Grunt did say that when all else fails, let the pilot do his job, and revert to the old mark one. I don’t see how we’d be any worse off than we are now.”
“He’s got a point,” Rudjick admitted.
“Our instruments are all still functioning. So we could navigate home.”
“With sensors out, we have no reference points to realign with. We could get lost forever,” another Nip Tail commented.
“Yes, we do,” Arion said with a chuff. “We have our eyes, our micomms, and the instruments in our helmets. We can manually recheck using them. It’s not the best way to do things, but it should work long enough for us to at least make it to a navigation or sensor buoy. Once we find one of those, we should be able to fix the sensors and communications gear on at least one fighter and use it to herd us home.”
“It’s risky, but I think it’s the best idea,” Nash agreed. “We’ll be limited to regular drives. Without sensors there’s no way we can risk slipstream.”
“Alright then, drop back to level one interface and prepare to navigate,” Arion commanded.
One by one, the weave went offline as the WSOs dropped out of Level Five; severing the link with their fighters. Arion blinked several times. After he opened his eyes and looked around his console, the star field projected on a hologram around him. Wishing he could rub his eyes, he found several navigational marks already programmed into the computer. Scanning the skies, he found other fighters, and they began to bunch in close enough so that the crews could see each other. He angled his craft into the tight formation, flashed hand signals to those around him, and steered towards a nearby moon. I can’t even use the micomm link, there must be some kind of interference.
“About time you thought to do that,” Grunt announced as the holograms disappeared.
Arion felt disoriented for a moment as he found himself in the classroom again, and the micomm link sprang back to life.
“Some catch on and revert to Level One a lot sooner. I’ve seen classes just keep on trying Level Five until I had to pull them out. You guys were about average. I have a question, though. If Cadets Temblin and Scotts hadn’t suggested reverting to Level One, how long would you have stayed at Level Five?”
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