"Oh come on that wasn't so bad."

"..."

"What?"

"..."

"Are you just gonna pout like a 6 year old for the rest of the day like that?"

Having landed at their destination after about 60 minutes of the so called 'extreme maneuver conditioning course' Terra had lost most of her dinner along with her mood.

"What the h.e.l.l was the point of that?"

"The extreme maneuver conditioning course is meant to show how bad a landing under enemy fire can be, and to show how important g resistance training is to new recruits."

"Well I haven't received that training yet.."

"You're about to."

"How? we're in Homestead, right?"

"Nope."

"What do you mean? You have your council meetings, right?"

"I have, I'm already there."

With a slight smile Dax's cybernetic eye lit up behind his eyepatch as the Stinger's ramp lowered and revealed a gra.s.sland outside.

"Dax? Where are we?"

"In the middle of nowhere, on the fringe of Kingdom territory. Today you're going to spend all getting to know this craft's in's and out's."

With a smile on his face Dax prompted Terra to follow him outside.

"First lesson, point out the relevant part of the craft when I name it, incorrect answers will incur penalties~"

"Okay, I can do that."

"Then let's start, first item: Landing gear."

"Those right there."

Pointing at the metal landing gear that stabilized the craft against the ground, Terra made the first correct guess.

"Primary lift surface."

"The wings?"

"Incorrect. The primary lifting surface is the entire craft itself, wings are nice, but not needed. 20 pushups."

"What, the entire craft? Are you for real?"

"First rule of aerodynamics for marines: Even a brick can generate enough lift to fly, provided it moves with sufficient speed. As such having wings like a bird is not sufficient for flight provided you have engines that are powerful enough. 20 pushups."

"O-okay then."

Accepting her punishment Terra dropped to the ground and started doing push ups as Dax continued his lecture.

"As a marine of the Galactic Empire you will come to love this craft as your mother, your husband and wife, and your G.o.d at the same time. If your Stinger is not properly maintained you will die, for example if the ammunition feed system is not maintained it can and will fail, resulting in a feed failure that at best will jamm the offencive weapons, making you craft unable to fire back and protect you, and at worst blow up you and all of your friends.

If the landing gear fails you're going to die when it takes flight from a high powered electro catapult, h.e.l.l if the anti grav generator has a hiccup/and or a bad day it will generate tidal forces strong enough to tear you and everybody apart at a molecular level, and you'll-"

"Die, yeah I got it, I get the general picture. That was 20."

"Die without realizing it yeah. Moving on, control interface."

Restating the game Terra looked at the craft as it pulled its wings and engines in to its body.

"Its behind there right?"

pointing to the front of the craft a particularly st.u.r.dy armor Terra made her second correct answer.

"Good, next is primary life support."

"Can I go inside the craft?"

"Sure."

On his prompt the loading ramp opened once more, allowing Terra to walk inside again. Looking around at the empty insides of the Stinger Terra closed her eyes and listened.

"Hmm~ Next to the crawlway that leads to the c.o.c.kpit I hear the sound of… A small electrical pump…. And what sounds like electrolysis in a contained chamber, so over there?"

"Good answer, you really have excellent ears, let's go outside for the last one."

Going into full lecturing mode Dax continued his monologue as he stopped and turned around to look at the Stinger.

"Now the primary power core is a micro fusion power plant that's located in?"

"-The bottom of the fuselage right below the seatings."

"Correct, now for the most important one, please point at the primary propulsion."

"That one's easy, the engines mounted at the tip of both-"

"Incorrect, give me 50."

"Wait what? Bulls.h.i.+t."

Not buying that the ma.s.sive engines on the Stinger were its primary source propulsion Terra refused to take her punishment.

"Just like wings the engines are nice, but ultimately not needed for flight. ICI make the Stinger takeoff without using secondary population please."

[DIRECTIVES CONFIRMED, PRIMING ANTI GRAV DRIVE, STANDBY… DEVICE PRIMED, READY FOR TAKEOFF.]

With ICI cold and artificial voice as a que, the area around the Stinger started feeling strange to Terra.

"What is happening?"

"Ah this is the first time you've felt it directly, this is a anti grav drive."

"Anti grav?"

"Specifically its a multi faced 6th generation graviton annihilation field generator."

"you're not making any sense…"

Looking at Terra in disbelief as he had already thought her this Dax breathed a deep sigh.

"Every particle in this plane of existence has a?"

"- Ah, a positive and a negative spin counterpart."

"And a graviton is?"

"The elementary particle/field/force that binds s.p.a.ce and gravity to our plane of existence? So by generating a 'anti-graviton' it annihilates the graviton and creates a zone in s.p.a.cetime with weaker gravity?"

"Close. By annihilating gravitons in an area it lessens the effect of gravity and does not affect time, but all generators are rigged to not allow a zero graviton or negative graviton zone."

"But why would you stop before zero?"

Believing that if one eliminated gravity completely one could move way faster, Terra made the same mistake as so many had done before her.

"What is gravity as a force?"

"The force of attraction between objects in s.p.a.ce that increases with ma.s.s."

"Close enough, and what is the opposite of that?"

"Of attraction? That would be repulsion…. Oh G.o.d. has that happened before?"

Realizing the terrible truth and implementation of negative gravity Terra's face turned grim.

"The Galactic Empire knows of at least 2 hundred thousand civilizations that have annihilated themselves by generating a strong enough anti graviton field to overcome strong and weak attraction yeah… But back on topic, ICI liftoff please."

[DIRECTIVE CONFIRMED.]

With a quiet humm the Stinger lifted off the ground, along with a few plants that had been near it and rose to about 5 meters.

"By eliminating most of the effect gravity has on the craft and creating a 'gravity well' above it the craft can achieve flight without the use of engines."

"Well I'll be d.a.m.ned…"

"That would be 50 pushups."

Accepting her defeat Terra got down on her arms and started doing pushups as she muttered to herself.

"If you can lessen the force of gravity then can't you also increase it?"

"Correct~ ICI give me a localized 5 g field please."

[CONFIRMED.]

"Ugh!-"

Falling flat on her face Terra suddenly struggled to breathe as if a fully grown horse sat down on top of her.

"Come on, that was only 20 pushups, you still have 30 to go so quit sleeping in the gra.s.s."

"Are. You. f.u.c.king-"

"Okay then, as the perfect instructor I am I'll do it alongside you.. Come on, 1.. 2..-"

Spending the rest of the day going over all the Stinger's functions, Terra felt like she finally understood more about it and how it worked, that is until the way back.

"So you know how in the wild eagles will sometimes drop their children from the nest to make them better at flying?"

"Yeah I do Dax…. What is this about?"

Feeling anxious about Dax's tone and sudden monologue, Terra stopped playing around in the zero gravity.

"Nothing in particular~"

[ADJUSTMENT BURN CANCELLED. ICI SYSTEM LOCKOUT CONFIRMED.]

"Dax?"

"What?"

"Are you for real?"

"What are you talking about?"

[5 MINUTES AND 24 SECONDS TO REENTRY, WARNING: INCORRECT DECENT TRAJECTORY, CHANCE OF CRAFT DESTRUCTION AT 96.5%]

"You better get on that."

"ARE YOU f.u.c.kING-"

Cutting herself short as she realized arguing would deduct from her a.s.sessment score Terra bounced off the wall and made her way into the c.o.c.kpit and strapped herself in as Dax slowly followed with a smile on his face.

"Give me control now!"

[YOU HAVE CONTROL.]

Looking around as the flight computer gave her control over the craft, Terra located the controls she needed.

"That's the stick, which doubles as a k.n.o.b controller to control translational and rotational motion…. Where's the throttle? Wait I don't need that."

Thinking out loud Terra rushed to remember what she had been taught by Dax.

"And grip the stick to enable it then gently- f.u.c.kf.u.c.kf.u.c.k-"

Sending the craft into a free spin by overcompensating with the rotational thrusters, Terra lost most of her composure.

"Enable SAS please!"

[SYSTEM, STABILITY AUGMENTATION SYSTEM, NOW ENABLED. HOLDNING ATt.i.tUDE, KILLING ROTATION.. WARNING RCS OFFLINE, NO POWER.]

"What do you mean 'no power'!?"

[RCS OFFLINE, NO POWER.]

"Enable rotational control system!"

[RCS ONLINE, SAS ONLINE, HOLDING ATt.i.tUDE: RETROGRADE.]

With the flight computer taking partial control over the craft it finally stabilized and started holding att.i.tude.

"Okay then.. Time to atmospheric reentry?"

[1 MINUTE AND 5 SECONDS, OUTER ARMOR AT 58% HEAT CAPACITY.]

"f.u.c.kf.u.c.kf.u.c.kf.u.c.k-"

As the Stinger gradually started to heat up from the friction of the atmosphere below Terra did her very best to survive.

---

[a.s.sESSMENT OVER, CADET RATING:B+]

"... I'm sorry."

Looking at the mostly charred Stinger that she had barely managed to land without cras.h.i.+ng outright, Terra was filled with guilt.

"What are you talking about? that was great."

Not really being that upset about the entire thing Dax had a large smile on his face as he congratulated Terra.

"Really?"

"Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. I honestly believed you would crash and die."

"What!?"

"What?"

As the sun slowly set on Kingsted the spysat-1 was about to enter sleep mode when a source of light blinded most of its sensors.

[ANNIHILATION EVENT LOCATED, CATEGORY 7.]

From s.p.a.ce the small fireball quickly grew in size and swallowed the surrounding forest as the shockwave made the earth ripple like a pond when a rock was dropped into it.

[s.h.i.+ELDING SENSORS…]

With the shockwave reaching the satellite in low orbit it was knocked out of operation temporarily.

[SENSORS RESTORED, ADJUSTING EXPOSURE.]

After a few minutes the satellite had rebooted and restored some of its sensors to operational levels, and it once more focused on the event. The original blast had only lasted a few seconds, but had superheated the surrounding air and created a blastwave that had carbonized all the trees in a 5 kilometer radius around the blast, and started multiple forest fires around that. The ground itself at ground zero had turned molten, and a large part of the surrounding atmosphere had been ionized and was creating lightningstoms by the sheer blastwave that was currently traveling around the globe.

[EVENT SIGNATURE IDENTIFIED: ANTIMATTER MIRV STRIKE CORE #515. DETONATION CONFIRMED, RADIATION CONTAINMENT NOT CONFIRMED.]