Having struck a deal with the council of the Ra'si, Dan, Mike, Jessica and River were on their way to see the HIMAG, or high mobility and agility testbed that Mike had volunteered to test-pilot.
[Are you sure you got this Mike? I could easily take your place.]
While Dan knew first-hand how good of a pilot Mike was, he was a little worried the more he heard about the HIMAG, while they were both modified for higher G tolerance, Dan's genetic enhancements were a magnitude more refined.
"Yeah, I'll be fine, besides I'm the only person here who has fought against a delta class and lived to tell the tale. I know what I'm doing, and I need you to cover my ass while I'm occupied."
[Vilco.]
Leaving the council building guided by Hank, Mike and the others still wearing their armoured flight suits now drew even more attention than before, but as Hank was joined by escorts the way at least cleared up and within 10 minutes they arrived at the Ra'si central development laboratory which seemed abandoned from the outside. However, that was because the entire campus had been commandeered to accelerate the development of crystal lifeform countermeasures. Passing through an armed checkpoint without issues, Hank entered a large lecture hall which was retrofitted into a server farm before shouting out.
"Cait! I have new parts for you!"
Making a few bestmen in white robes turn their head at his shout, nothing else of note seemed to happen with Hank's announcement, but after about a minute something finally happened.
"What? New parts?"
From a corner of the server farm, a researcher with pale white hair and ears sat up with a jolt, judging by her voice she had just woken up from a nap.
"Yeah! New parts!"
Having seemingly lit a fire underneath the researcher in question, she almost tripped over her lab coat which was a bit too large for her stature.
"So they can handle the HIMAG!? What kind of black site did you pull that kind of performance out of?"
"Mike this is Cait, she's the lead researcher and developer of the HIMAG platform that you'll help finalise the development of… Her appearance and attitude aside she's a competent and open-minded scientist, I hope you will treat her well."
Doing his best to keep a straight face, Hank introduced Mike to Cait, leaving Mike to do the same.
"Hello Cait, the name is Mike, and I'm not from a lab, at least not one from anywhere around here."
Taking off his helmet, Mike's appearance was met with gasps from all around, except for Cait who looked ready to dissect him on the spot, if not for Hank having grabbed her by the scuff of her neck to keep her in check.
"Cait."
Lowing the tone of his voice considerably, Hank quickly got the researcher's attention as a jolt went through her body and some of the blood drained from her face as she turned back towards her superior.
"Y-yeah, w-w-what's the matter Hank?"
Crouching down and meeting her eye-level, Hank grew a smile on his face which seemed to chill the air in the auditorium by a few degrees.
"I said I brought you some 'parts', not new things to research. Mike and the others here are part of a first contact group which has travelled here specifically to aid us… I don't need to tell you what'll happen if you start experimenting on them, do I?"
"N-n-n-n-no, SIR!"
"Good."
Standing back up and making sure he still had the attention of the entire room, Hank raised his voice again.
"Is that clear to everyone else in here!?"
"""""SIR, YES SIR!"""""
Having made sure his new associates would be treated correctly by his subordinates, Hank bid farewell to Mike with a tap on the shoulder.
"Someone from here will come by later and guide you to your accommodations, I look forward to the results~"
After Hank left Mike spent a few minutes getting to know Cait as well as what his work would entail before he was led underground where a HIMAG flight simulator had been constructed after the need for a pilot had arisen.
"Currently, the simulator can load up to 6 G while doing 3 axes of navigation. The scenario you'll need to pass is a high-speed test course which mirrors the needed level of mobility for the HIMAG to fulfil its design specs."
"I can only do 3 axes of navigation? Without the rest, I won't be able to aim or manoeuvre effectively. Even docking would be an issue."
While the sustained 6 G load was absolutely no issue for Mike, the lack of pitch, yaw and roll would be a major hassle to deal with as attempted to pass the course which would be set up by the eggheads.
"We'll account for that, I only need to make sure you can handle the G load."
"Rog' then let's get to it."
Ready to start it and get over the approval phase as fast as possible, Mike moved to climb into the simulator but was stopped by Cait.
"Not so fast buddy, we'll need to be able to monitor your vitals and have a way to give you fresh o2. Great part or not there's no way I'll risk killing you on the first day."
"... Fine."
While Mike wanted to argue against the fact that a mere 6 G was fatal, Cait had already succeeded in convincing River, so there was no way in hell he was getting into the simulator. Leaving the sim room, Mike was led into a medical room where he got out of his vacuum suit and had countless sensors strapped onto most of his body before he suited up again and went back to the simulator. The simulator in question was clearly also still in development and consisted of a reinforced spin arm with a gyroscopic pod strapped to the end, inside the pod was the cockpit, a single screen opposed the test pilot seat and a shitton of sensors and test equipment that monitored everything from the pilot's eye movements to the tensile strength of the simulator itself.
"So, how safe is this sim exactly?"
Handing his helmet over to River as he needed to wear a mask which supplied him with o2 inside the sim, Mike asked Cait about the safety features of the sim.
"Safety was and is our number one priority when we build this simulator, in addition to an automatic disengage and shutdown procedure triggered by irregularities in your heart rate, you can at any time suspend the test using a variety of triggers inside the cockpit."
Hearing of the safety features, Mike immediately spotted a problem.
"If you don't turn off the automatic shutoff due to abnormal heart rate this test is going to be over extremely fast."
"What? Why?"
"Check it."
Pulling the data up on her tablet, Cait's sleepy expression rapidly transformed before she checked, then double-checked the values before she almost tried to pry Mike's vacuum suit off of him to inspect the sensors directly.
"If it's around 5 then everything is still normal."
"Wha!-"
While a normal resting heart rate of a human in Mike's original world was anywhere between 60-100 BPM, a beastkin's was a bit higher at 120-140 BPM.
Meanwhile, Mike's current heart rate was 7 beats per minute, it was barely doing anything.
"While it isn't to the level of my companions, I am quite literally made to fly fighters. My resting heart rate is around 5 BPM, but when I'm actually doing something it climbs to around 390 BPM."
"3-390!? How is your-"
Hearing about Mike's frankly insane performance, Cait was ready (along with a few other researchers) to cut him up to find out how he worked, Mike quickly reminded her about the terms of their agreement.
"Remember what Hank said, I'm a 'part' not a research material."
[Touch him and I'll break every single bone in your furry fucking body.]
While Mike did his best to remain diplomatic, River had already turned on her voice distorter as she made a far more 'blanket' statement.
With the room falling silent due to River's chilling effect, everything seemed to come to a stop until Mike spoke up again.
"Disable the automatic shutoff due to irregular heart rate and prepare for the test. Let's get this over with."
[Are you ready?]
"Ready as I can be."
After getting a rundown of the controls and getting strapped into the flight sim, Mike tightly clasped the dual flight sticks inside the cockpit as it started spinning up to speed.
The control scheme of the flight simulator was quite different from what Mike was used to on the Wyrm, instead of a flight stick and a dual throttle control, the simulator, and the HIMAG by extension operated using dual flight sticks, each with 3 axes of freedom, and a pair of pedals. Basically, each flight stick was mapped to a single thruster, just like the throttle on the Wyrm where moving both the pedals forward would make the craft accelerate, the difference between this craft and the Wyrm however was that the HIMAG didn't just have a single pair of high thrust engines, it had 4 with an extremely high degree of thrust vector control. Mounted in pairs facing each other on either side of the HIMAG, the primary mode of the thrusters gave a considerable amount of forwards and backward acceleration, while the main nozzle of all 4 engines could rotate up to 90 degrees in all directions, allowing them to be paired up in two's or four's to pitch, yaw, roll and translate in along all axes of rotation on the final model, although Mike could currently only move forwards, backwards, side to side and up and down while a reaction control system allowed him to slowly roll.
Provided the HIMAG could live up to its design specifications (and a potential pilot could survive said specifications) the finished product would be able to move freely in all directions with 6 degrees of freedom and unparalleled acceleration.
In short, the HIMAG looked to be a high-mobility racer, something Mike hadn't gotten the chance to fly in person yet, thus he was very excited.
[Time to kick the fires and light the tires, let's get this show on the road!]
"... I think that means he's okay to start the test."
Used to Mike's bullshit and partly fluent in it at this point, River translated Mike's message as she resisted the urge to facepalm.
"Okay then… Commencing test now."
On Cait's command, the test started as the simulator started accelerating rapidly, but looking at Mike's vitals wasn't really that apparent.
"What the…"
"How is he not affected?"
While the surrounding researchers broke out in amazement or were just quietly dumbstruck, Cait found herself just staring at Mike's performance with a sense of wonder.
Finally, she had found a 'part' who could keep up with her innovation, the problem was maintaining access to said part.
After Mike crushed the test and qualified to be the test pilot for the HIMAG program an escort arrived to take Mike and the others to their arranged residence.
"This might go without saying, but don't speak in a language they can understand in here, and to be ultra-safe switch things up once in a while. We've just proved we're at least useful to them, but that can quickly change."
The luxury hotel suite the group had been put in consisted of a large lounge and multiple a total of 4 bedrooms with their own attached bathrooms in addition to a large bathhouse.
"Whatever happens we need a new ship… Without the Wyrm we can't bug out if they suddenly decide they don't need us."
Having collapsed lazily on a sofa, River had stripped out of her vacuum suit in record time before starting to think out loud.
"Yeah, that or we take over this shard and instal Jessica as puppet dictator."
"Hey!"
Right as Jessica and Dan were about to start arguing, someone knocked on the door.
"... Yeah, who is it!?"
After signalling to River to get her clothes back on, Mike answered from where he was.
"It's Cait, I have something important to discuss."
"Then come on in, the door is unlocked."
Nervously entering with all eyes on her, Cait made her way to the centre of the room where she pulled out her personal console and fiddled with it for a bit.
"There we go, I've disabled the surveillance so we can have a private chat."
"Why the hell should we believe that? You've just admitted that your state spies on us?"
Taking the word, Dan walked right over to Cait and towered over her. Still, Cait was undeterred.
"It is William that's spying on you, my boss Hank and Casper will make sure that stops next meeting. I'm here to try and establish a cooperative relationship in good faith, take a look at this."
Using her personal console again, Cait created a hologram which showed one of the Shard's countless hangers, a hanger where the Wrym was currently undergoing retrofit and repair.
"I've taken the liberty of outfitting your craft with the prototype weapon that's effective against crystal lifeforms in addition to upgrading the craft's powerplant, mobility and armour. With the current rate of progress, it will be ready in 25 hours."
"... Then we can leave when it's done?"
Not understanding why Cait would just provide them with leverage, Mike failed to notice the desperation in her eyes.
"Yeah, if that's what you wish to do, but if you stay I promise fair and equal treatment, the crystal lifeforms have started destroying shards, we're running out of time and you're our only hope."