"Hey Charlette, that new transmitter working for you?" Loyd had booted up his pod and was waiting for his sister to finish her first sim link.
"Yeah, I'm just a little confused as to how this is going to work?" His sister's avatar showed up on his comms panel.
"You remember when I connected to you when you were at the lab? It's pretty much the same as that, accept the rest of the corps can finally stop calling me crazy." Loyd laughed, swapping over to the open comms. "Alright is everyone ready for me to release the restraints on your pods?"
"I thought you said these didn't have limiters?" Jim had popped up in his comms panel now as well.
"They don't, you just can't dive until I give the go-ahead."
"So, it's a safety protocol? In case we ever chase the rabbit too far?" Griffon popped up now with the rest of his squad.
"Pretty much. I'm just letting everyone experience it at the same time so none of you can back out and embarrass yourselves." Loyd said excitedly.
"Alright, then I've got a green light from everyone except for you. Wait why do we have forty-one people registered?" Jim looked very confused.
"That would be the next surprise." Loyd held his finger to his lips to quiet Jim.
"Alright, then I guess we're all ready." Jim just shook his head and braced himself.
"Then I shall take this time to say that I am sorry for hitting this ok button."
Loyd finished his sentence by hitting the button that allowed all of the pods to finish the connection sequence with the pilots. Loyd braced for the cries of pain but none came. Everyone was on the ground from the pain except for Griffon who just stood there waiting with Loyd. Then the pain was gone everyone started breathing again and stood back up.
"Well fuck. Please tell me that doesn't happen every time." Jim was panting and sweat was rolling down his cheek.
"Uhm, technically the pain didn't go away, your bodies have just gotten used to it already," Griffon said nervously. "But hey, all of your scores doubled at least. And I mean, there is the upside you only ever go through that once."
"I think I want to kill him." Sara had stood up now looking even worse than Jim had. "I know I've got the lowest score in the academy but I can still pilot. Why the hell would you have everyone go through that?!" Sara took a few deep breaths and dove for the barf bucket that Loyd had placed in everyone's pods.
"We have the first person to throw up, any other takers?" Jim was joking of course but from the sounds of it, quite a few people didn't think he was.
"You can both go shove it." Argo looked very green on the comms panel but still refused to throw up. "How did Griffon not get sick like this the first time?"
"Uhm, I was. I just didn't have anything in my stomach because of my surgery the day after my first dive."
"Oh yeah, you got the implant, right?"
"Yep, I finally saved enough for the one closest to the one you've got." Griffon was pretty pleased with himself.
"You realize mine is built into an artificial lung, right?" Loyd tried to hold back his laughter.
"Yeah, I do, but the actual implant was most likely just attached to its power supply so you didn't have to sleep on a charging pad."
"Maybe, I don't really care. Now back to our regularly scheduled training." Loyd pulled up the corps world he had finished making.
"Holy crap. How long did this take?" Jim asked flabbergasted.
"Uhm, I think the engineers can give you their best estimates. I started before they even showed up." Loyd turned to face the rest of the group who were all in just their pilot forms as he had revoked their use of CTAS for the time being.
"First, I would like you all to meet someone very special to the Earth Capture mission. You know, the one all of our parents signed us up for." Loyd smiled from on top of the pole he had made. "I would like to introduce my sister. Charlotte, here is the biotype CTAS that I will be piloting in order to take back the earth. That's right, we leave in a month's time and I get to go with all of you as long as we constantly stay stronger than everyone else. Now, I know what most of you are probably thinking-" Loyd noticed a lot of people were just looking around confused. "Oh crap, I forgot to disable that, one second."
He pulled up the menu for the sim world and disabled Charlotte's invisibility. Her body came into view standing roughly two stories tall. She was black as coal except for her eyes, which were a shade of violet. Her waist was very slim for a CTAS, at only two meters, or six feet across and her legs weren't grafted to the sides of some box. They were protruding from actual hips. Her sleek armor gave her an almost shiny look when she moved down closer to the stunned pilots.
"Hello!" The massive frame began to dissolve away as a much smaller version of it with a human face stepped out of the fading CTAS. The only remaining similarity, aside from her body-armor, was her eye coloration. She was smiling as she walked up to the group.
"Sorry if I spooked ya. I'm Loyd's sister, Charlotte! Welcome to the new hive!" She laughed, her voice reverberating throughout each of the pilot's heads.
"But they disabled the neural comm link. How can her voice be in my head?!"
"In order for someone to pilot a biotype, you need an injection of a bio-types' genetic material. All of your biotypes are being attached to the back of your sim pods as we speak." Loyd smiled down from his pedestal.
"So, wait, you forced us to upgrade? Why would you do that?!" several of the people from the group were getting angry.
"Because you only have a month before we ship you out." The general had come with the rest of the command staff. "We needed to accelerate your training as much as possible. Loyd voluntold Griffon there, and the rest of you were forced to accept this change by me." The General sighed taking a tablet from his new secretary. "I saw that you were doing combined training with Deric's team today. According to our new rules I have to allow you to train as groups but each group will be taking on a different base during the event, meaning that you won't be able to take on the base together." The General had walked over to the holo-table and placed his palm on the reader. "Subroutine Alpha, Whiskey, Oscar, Lima, activate."
"The AWOL subroutine? What does that do?" Loyd could feel something in his sim pod start-up but wasn't sure what it was. The first thing that he noticed was that he could smell stuff inside the simulation. That wasn't supposed to be possible without a biocomputer.
"Welcome to the new simulator, soldiers." The cadets were forced down to their knees thanks to the gravity scale in the simulator. "Better get used to earth's gravity quickly, the other group will be here soon."
Loyd had fallen from on top of his little pillar onto his back and gotten the wind knocked out of him.
"Damnit, I hadn't been told about that part. Everyone else alright?"
He got back to his feet as he managed to get used to earth levels of gravity.
"You stood up pretty quickly now, didn't you?" Deric had joined Loyd's sim world using the single-use key that Loyd had made for him. "Also, what's with the new pods you guys have gotten? Was there an upgrade you purchased that required the new pods?" Deric looked down at Loyd curiously.
"You know the bio-types? Say hello to the first bio-corps." Loyd wiped a bit of spit from his mouth. "Now training in earth levels of gravity."
Deric nodded completely confused. "Say that again, in common."
"We are, as of like twenty minutes ago, all super soldiers." Loyd finished standing up from his bent-over position and watched as Deric figured out what he had just said.
"Wait! Your all bio-type pilots now?!" Deric pointed at Loyd his lower jaw much closer to the ground than before. "How does that work and how do I get to that point?"
"You guys get your upgrade Sunday, I think. Be warned, it hurts like crap." Both commanders laughed as the rest of Loyd's group got to their feet.
"Man, why couldn't the general wait until the pain went away?" Jim had grabbed a stick from off the ground to prop himself up with. "Some of us are still getting used to mars gravity, after all."
"Well, not all of us are from Phobos, Jim. Heck, I don't even know where I was born at; they picked me up off the streets about a month after the first of us cadets got here." Griffon was already acclimated to the increased gravity and had started helping other people up.
"Yeah, well, let my guys find their feet and then we can get this training program started." Loyd grinned as he watched the others try to stand up. "This might take a few minutes."