Quoted By:
“Back again, Beta. Another sweep.”
Your pilot chides you, her hands dancing over her own map of the area.
“She’s hiding somewhere in this sector. If mag-scan isn’t picking her up, you need to be more proactive. We can’t just wait out the clock on her.”
You know. You know. The time issue is pressing upon you more than she knows.
“The simulator settings must be incorrectly tuned. There isn’t enough metal in a standard habitation block to conceal her superheavy frame.”
You snap back.
Sophie isn’t taking it, though.
“Settings or not, what matters is that we are wasting Time. A dozen fights would be, are, going on right now, and we would Need to clean this up As Soon As Possible! ASAP! To disable her, and move on to help someone else.”
Fine. She’s being prickly right now.
The idea was simple. Use the simulator in the Camp to gauge Delta’s operational capabilities, ensure that she’s functioning at peak capacity, and let Sophie get another sync-and-sight session in, along with testing some of the available weapons from the refit. All so you can finally give Delta a clean bill of health, and then get back to actual combat operations, as Colonel Kinston demanded.
And while adjusting the settings to keep little things like Delta’s utter lack of a pilot at present from hindering anything, and ensuring a fair fight.
So Delta had no issues against simple targets with you supervising, easily blasting her way through the tanks, targets, and fortifications. Thus you moved on to doing a few combat exercises directly against you. As best as the simulator could manage, anyways.
Only problem is that she is cheating. There shouldn’t be anywhere on this map where Pyramid can hide from mag-scan, and yet nothing shows up. Period.
It isn’t fair!
“Beta. Don’t talk about fair. You’ve dismantled her three times so far.”
That is correct. But you won fair and square. And in the fight that mattered, in reality. All without resorting to bending the rules of the simulator.
A sense of disappointment radiates from across the link.
“That’s not really the point….”
Unable to take it, you speak up.
“It is all with the goal of improving future performance. The more she is used to accounting for the weaknesses of her size, the more success she will have on the battlefield.”
Movement on seismic. Lighter than expected. Five streets over. You take to the skies, leaping up to draw a bead on her. How had she concealed herself…..
Oh. Of course.
<span class="mu-i">She’s not using her actual Pyramid Frame!
The fake sun shines down on the older Core Frame, gleaming red paint and a silver Demon claw.
Whirlwind missiles reach up for you, exploding before they reach you in puffs of sensor-blocking smoke. Occluding the battlefield.
Your Sunburst laser array flickers through the smoke, scattering as it ineffectually sprays energy across her fresh armor.
This is a bad situation. Possibly salvageable.</span>
