Beyond the Aiming System
Thud-thud-thud! Whoosh! Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh!
Aboard the Gareld, Jincheon swept in wide circles through the hangar, throwing punches into empty air. It looked for all the world like a boxer working the bag, yet piloting a mecha made the same motions nowhere near as simple as they appeared.
A human body could distribute force through every sense at once; a mecha could not. Lose that balance for even a moment and the machine toppled. Most pilots spent half a year in simulators and another half-year in training frames before they were considered ready. Even then, rookies still died in droves on their first real sortie, flailing and freezing under fire.
Jincheon simply ignored that common sense and compressed an entire year into three days.
At this level I could walk straight into combat right now.
Calsira had watched enough battlefields—enemy pilots and allied pilots alike—to know that Jincheon’s current movement would already hold up under fire.
Then a voice laced with mechanical static crackled from the circling Gareld.
“Hey, did you bring the meal?”
“Yes, I brought it,” Calsira answered through the external speakers.
“Can’t hear you. Louder.”
Ah. Right. He’s only good at moving so far.
She quietly retracted her earlier assessment. Jincheon still knew almost nothing beyond pure locomotion. There was plenty left to teach.
Satisfied that basic movement had been mastered, Calsira climbed into her own Gareld.
> To hear distant sounds or converse with people, please use the external acoustic focusing device.
“How do I do that?”
“That is…”
Calsira walked him through the external acoustic focusing array, radar operation, and every other minor system. Jincheon’s learning speed was superhuman; he absorbed the flood of information and executed every function correctly on the first try.
“So it’s like this… Ah, by the way—did you actually bring the food?”
“I did. Whether they eat it or not is their business.”
“You were gone a long time just to drop it off. Something happen?”
“…No. Nothing happened.”
After a brief pause Calsira decided a private matter needed no explanation and left it at that.
“Anyway, your pure movement has already far surpassed the basics.”
“Honestly, it’s starting to get boring. But if I jumped into real combat with only this, problems would crop up. I want more than just walking around—something with variety.”
“What about the Gareld you used as a sandbag?”
“That one? Over there.”
He pointed. At the end of his finger lay a Gareld whose armor had been shredded until only the bare frame remained.
He wrecked it that cleanly…
Anyone could smash a frame to scrap. Leaving the frame intact while destroying everything else demanded exquisite control.
I’ve been called a genius my whole life, but isn’t this a little much?
Adapting to a mecha this fast left Calsira unsure whether to celebrate that her companion had grown stronger or to feel a twinge of jealousy.
“Any further adaptation drills would just be a waste of time.”
“I think so too.”
“Then let’s head to the multi-purpose training room.”
“Multi-purpose training room? Ah—the place deeper inside the hangar.”
Jincheon had updated the facility map on his Bio Device, yet his attention had been locked on the hangar itself; he was only now noticing the training complex.
“For reference, this entire hangar doubles as an elevator. I already found the switch that controls it over in that building. One floor down is the multi-purpose training ground.”
“Got it. Wait a second.”
Jincheon confirmed the building she indicated, hopped out of the mecha, and sprinted across the deck.
A deep mechanical rumble rolled through the hangar as the whole platform began to descend.
“Hope the training ground has something more interesting than this.”
He was already back in the cockpit, eyes bright with expectation for harder, more varied drills.
A heavy thud, then a soft electronic chime. The elevator stopped. The single massive door split left and right.
Three branching corridors waited beyond. At mecha eye-level, holographic signboards floated above each path:
“Training facilities after all. They even built ranges inside.”
“Easier to train recruits in-house than keep shipping them outside.”
“The comprehensive range is the one where you move and shoot at the same time, right?”
“Probably. Where do you want to start?”
“I’m sick of just walking around, so shooting range first. Evasion drills after that.”
“Same destination as me.”
Calsira had finally grown comfortable with the control gauntlets and wanted to re-sharpen her shooting sense.
The two of them strode down the cavernous corridor built for mecha traffic. A separate human-scale walkway ran along the wall for anyone not inside a machine.
After a short walk they reached a shooting range large enough for dozens of mechas to train simultaneously. The layout itself was ordinary; the difference lay in the targets. Instead of paper silhouettes or human-shaped boards, the range used synchronized augmented-reality projections.
“Looks a lot like the ranges I trained on.”
Calsira gave a quick briefing for Jincheon’s benefit. Gravity or zero-G, target evasion level, everything adjustable. Hit the targets with the practice rifle and that was it.
“Distance and movement change with the level.”
She also pointed out the massive partition panels that divided the lanes and carried the difficulty settings.
“If it’s this identical, the Zabalcan Empire must have found the same kind of training hall in their own ruins.”
“Sounds fun. In that case…”
Jincheon claimed a lane and began setting the right-hand panel.
We’re heading into space soon, so start with the space package.
Environment: zero-G. Evasion level: maximum, of course.
“Wait—if you push the evasion that high—”
“So what? If it’s too hard I’ll just lower it.”
“Then go ahead and try.”
Hmph. Moving and shooting are completely different stories.
Max evasion made the target move like an S-class mecha piloted by an ace. It never fired back, but pure evasion alone made it nearly impossible to hit. Calsira decided Jincheon had grown arrogant from mastering movement too easily and needed a taste of failure; she stopped trying to talk him down. She still offered the one piece of advice that mattered.
“For reference, in zero-G a laser rifle flies in a perfect straight line. Inside a gravity well you have to aim a little high on long shots.”
“Because of gravity? I’ll figure it out once I try.”
Settings locked, Jincheon hit the synchronization switch and gripped the tethered practice rifle. Five seconds later the word START flared across his monitors and the hangar view dissolved into open space.
Augmented reality had begun.
Space junk field. Filthy environment right from the start.
Debris of every size drifted past. Somewhere inside that cloud was his target.
Beep-beep-beep!
A tiny red box locked onto a speck on the synchronized monitor. Already used to the machine, Jincheon zoomed the main camera to maximum without flinching. A dark-brown mecha resolved against the black.
Buzzing around like a fly.
Five hundred kilometers out. Even at full zoom it was no bigger than a housefly. Dark paint, debris-choked background, ace-level pure evasion. A beginner would have panicked and quit on the spot. Jincheon only grinned and raised the rifle.
The Gareld’s aiming system painted predicted paths for both target and laser. He followed the cues and fired. The holographic laser streaked out—and missed cleanly, of course.
“Tch.”
He re-aimed and fired several more times. Every shot carved empty space the target had already vacated. A laser moved at light speed, yet five hundred kilometers was still not zero travel time; the target kept slipping the beam.
Irritation and challenge rose together. Jincheon stopped shooting and opened a channel.
“Hey.”
“Yes? Ask away.”
Calsira had already watched the status board light up with misses and allowed herself a private smile—until his next question wiped it off her face.
“How do I turn the aiming system off?”
“…Excuse me?”
“I can’t hit a damn thing following its advice. It just clutters the screen and the constant beeping is getting on my nerves.”
“You do realize how far that target is, right?”
“Yeah. Roughly five hundred klicks.”
“You’re going to hit a moving target at five hundred kilometers without the aiming system?”
“I’ll still use the zoom. Just tell me how to shut the thing off.”
Calsira was speechless. The sheer absurdity of sniping a maneuvering target at that range bare-eyed left her reeling. His tone made it clear argument was useless, so she simply told him the shutdown sequence.
“Ahhh… finally comfortable.”
Jincheon settled back into the sights.
Zero’s dialed in. Now I just read the bastard’s movement.
His eyes flicked across the magnified monitor at high speed.
Now!
The simulation targets still obeyed physics. By watching the thruster and booster flares he could reverse-calculate the optimal evasion vector and know exactly where the machine would be next.
He squeezed the trigger. The laser lanced out. A small explosion bloomed.
“Got it!”
“Wh-what? You hit it just now?”
Jincheon whooped. Calsira forgot the channel was open and muttered in pure disbelief.
A new target spawned and began to move—faster this time, weaving through the debris in its dark-brown camouflage. Explosion. Explosion. Another explosion. Jincheon’s continuous sniping chained the kills until the allotted ammunition ran dry and the session ended. He looked like a child who had just found a new favorite toy.
“H-h-how did you do that just now?! You only said you turned it off, right? Right?”
“Nope. Kept it off the whole time. Completely unusable junk. Even the Calsorn Empire had some real design problems.”
“….”
Consecutive hits at five hundred kilometers with no aiming system. Calsira’s brain threw every scrap of common sense and technical knowledge at the problem and returned a single verdict: impossible.
“Nice. Now gravity well.”
He switched to planetary conditions and missed the first few shots.
“Feels different from vacuum. So if I do it like this…”
Muttering to himself, he resumed fire. Boom-boom-boom! Inside atmosphere the detonations actually carried sound.
“This is the feel. I need both senses locked in or it’ll bite me later.”
Calsira had followed him only to stop any bad habits from forming. Instead she watched him grow on his own and could not close her mouth.
I… was far too arrogant…
Everyone had called her a genius. She had the kill record to match, so she had believed she was a genius of mecha combat.
What people usually call a genius is just someone a little better than average in their field. A true genius is the kind of existence whose personal ability alone can change the flow of an entire era.
Jincheon had said that once while talking about martial arts.
An existence that can change the flow of an era with personal ability alone…
Watching a man snipe hundreds of kilometers without any aiming system, Calsira finally understood: she was not a genius. She was merely outstanding.
I may be walking beside the man who will bring a new wind to this entire universe…
The longer she stayed with Jincheon, the more certain she became that—good or bad—he would leave a deep mark on the stars.