With the speech over it was time for qualifying. Phorphoros, arkships and elves could all wait until later. Now it was time to see how they compared to the rest of the competitors. Chris had to enter a separate room so the others wouldn't be able to see his performance so they wished him luck.
The officer course was about logistics, planning and reacting in battle. To this end, their challenge happened in VR. Each commander would be issued with a core set of recruits and would have to progress through increasingly difficult scenarios while also accounting for logistics. In essence, they just played an advanced strategy game.
The first couple of scenarios were quite easy for Chris. he had used a unique strategy of equipping 3 of his 5 recruits with close combat weapons. Two of them were using short-range guns and batons, while the third only fielded a shield. While the other candidates made sure to procure a wide range of supplies, Chris set his field very narrow. He focused heavily on getting resources and researching for a specific purpose. He was making an unbreakable shield.
He had planned to solve any problem with brute force. This plan came undone when dealing with the current scenario. In this scenario, he had to assassinate a target that was being protected on an island without any means of travel to the island. The island defences were supposedly impenetrable to any force the candidates could have created until this point.
This scenario was supposed to be a no-win scenario where the candidates realise they need to make connections to existing forces to solve problems. They were being judged about how well they attempted to find a solution.
Chris was looking over his map, he had an idea but he needed a location with the correct conditions. If there was one thing that Chris had learnt from his time in space it was that physics doesn't matter. If something was impossible just change physics until it was possible. He was applying this theorem to the current challenge. He also took advantage of the fact that this was a virtual world, so its physics was absolutely predictable.
His plan had 3 parts. The first was to pump heat into the ocean creating conditions for a storm to be created once the storm was created he would use the lasers to help heat the air up in pockets to redirect the storm towards the island. This was only possible because the physics of this world had been scaled down to a handful of key variables so wasn't as chaotic as real-world systems.
The next part required the usage of a large volume of low technology explosives that luckily could be made from the material he had already procured. These explosives were going to be used to cleave a large landmass off of a nearby continent in the hopes of creating a tidal wave that would be magnified by the storm.
The final part of this was where Chris would come into his own, using his new ability he would direct the melee specialist to use boats to ride the tidal wave into the base to complete the assassination. This normally wouldn't be possible due to latency in communication but in the virtual world, the recruits followed his order instantly and perfectly. This allowed for him to micromanage the members as they surfed with the boat. Using his ability he could see and make adjustments much faster than would normally be possible.
This strategy was a success, completely overwhelming the defences and outwitting the AI that controlled them. He was able to secure the kill and make it look like an act of god. This victory secured him first place in qualifying. A few of the invigilators had to check to see if he had cheated as they couldn't reproduce his results. Chris felt that this was a hollow victory as it was only possible due to the virtual environment. He looked forward to tomorrow where he would be using real recruits for his team.
Jania and the boys' were also suffering from the lack of humans in their qualifier. Being a soldier was a physical job so the exam was in the real world, and saw each competitor fighting in different scenario's against various autonomous drones. Jania and Null had completely dominated the competition. The ability to see 360 degrees, detect weapon energy buildup and analyse the AI made the task trivial.
Lukia was the new head of the super-soldier program he couldn't believe what he was seeing
"They aren't even looking before shooting and it seems they are dodging before a shot is fired. How did she go from the lowest to the top two?" he couldn't even do what these two were doing.
Jania had a suggestion to make the scenario a little more challenging "Little bro, let's do this knife only, winner gets bragging rights"
Null's only response was to get out his knife and give Jania a wide grin.
"They have to be taking the piss, there are 60 drones in this test and they think a knife is all they need," said Lukia. He felt like the two were disrespecting his scenario's. What happened next shocked him to his core, and made him re-evaluate everything he knew about peak human performance.
Null borrowed some of Infy power to enhance his physical abilities and Jania enter her berserker state. The two of them rampaged through their selected scenario's. Wherever they moved destruction followed. All the observers including their fellow competitors couldn't keep track of their movement or techniques.
Jania had finished just before Null and claimed the bragging rights. "Ha, I won, no one will be able to beat me!". Null was about to reply that if he could use full hybrid mode he would have crushed her but Infy told him to let her have this one.
"We'll see tomorrow," said Null over their link.
The three of them returned to the common room, which had a completely different atmosphere than before. All the competitors were watching them. Some glaring, some with wonder but everyone had taken note of these three unknown competitors. They had also drawn the attention of the higher-ups.
Lukia came over to collect the three as General Alexander wanted to have a chat.
"Hello, if you would all follow me, The General would like to have a word"
Null started signing something to the other two.
"What did he say?" asked Lukia
"He said, He wonders if you are as strong as John was because he used to have fun sparing with John" Answer Chris. The mentioning of John had triggered some bad memories for Jania, she was starting to shake before Null came over and hugged her to calm her down.
'sorry, Jania we didn't mean to upset you' said Infy over a private link just to Jania.
"Not quite but I hope to be close to his strength soon with some training" replied Lukia.
"He says too bad, that means you wouldn't be a challenge but hopefully he won't have to kill you like he did John" Chris reply had caused Lukia to stop in his tracks he was about to stay something but was interrupted by Chris.
"Come on, keep up doesn't the General want to speak to us?"
They got into the general office and to find the general and two cloaked figures that they had assumed must have been part of some intelligence agency.
"Welcome back to Mars, now what do we owe this pleasure?" asked the General, he had been told to try using a soft approach and hope they slip up and give more information than intended.
Chris had already informed the others not to answer anything he had suspected they would be able to interfere much even from the most non-committal of answers. Instead, they had decided to have Lisa lead the discussion via hologram.
Null press a button on his band and had Lisa appear.
Lisa started the conversation "Hello General, long time no see sir, but we have to skip the small talk. Can you please tell us everything you know?"
The General was about to tell her to know her place and that she needed to explain herself, but one of the cloaked figures intervene and told the story of how an Arkship had communicated it had found life on its targeted planet and that the Phorphoros had shown and gave his warning. After that, all the arkships lost contact.
The story had filled in some holes for Unit2317, Phorphoros had been able to use a loophole of a natural first contact to feed information to the humans. If they could find evidence that the elves had captured the other Arkships then they may have a case for asking the council to intervene.
Lisa thanked the cloaked man
"thank you for that information, it clears up some confusion we had."
"are you allies he spoke of, if so what help can you give us?" asked the man.
Lisa conferred with both Vark and Unit2317 to make sure she didn't overstep her bounds.
"We are an ally but not the allies he spoke of, we can't tell you anymore until humans reach a certain threshold. The amount of help we can provide will depend on if you reach that threshold. We are sorry if that answer doesn't please you" spoke Lisa, she knew she was treading a thin line here.
"can you tell us anything about that threshold?" asked the other cloaked individual.
"Sorry we can't, it is sort of a test to make sure you are ready, any help would be cheating" replied Lisa.