Marching out of the Academy compound in a double file line is the most excitement that most of the cadets have felt in years. It’s like they’ve finally succeeded and become real Line Mecha Pilots. In a way they have, they are certified on the machines, they just haven’t had the opportunity to operate outside of training scenarios before.

The Academy is outside of the city, due to the noise generated by mecha operations, so the trainsition from the academy to the woods is almost instant. Kepler Terminus is a sparsely populated and tropical world, with no frozen poles, where going into the woods is nearly synonymous with anything outside of a settlement, a blessing for Mecha operation.

Near the Academy is a dense tropical forest with a variety of large carnivoires, but nothing that should be a threat to a mecha. That’s not really the point though, sending the Cadets out into the woods to review the security of the outlying villages is an exercise in confidence, not practicality. The local security forces would have already taken care of anything that threatened the locals.

Taking up the back, with only Colonel Black in a Crusader Class Mecha behind him gives Max an excellent view of the operation styles and capabilities of the others in the group. The difference is easy to pick out, the regular piloting class is a bit rough with their controls, distracted by things around them and lacking practical experience to make their operations smoother. The Special Forces Candidates are much more competent and focused, operating naturally.

On the other hand, Nico seems to have gone insane inside her Mecha. It’s making the strangest gesture, with its hand against the top of the chassis. Then Max realizes she’s piloting by entirely mental link using her Innate Talent and the Mecha is copying her scratching her head._.

[Nico, pay attention, the mecha is scratching its head along with you.] Max sends to her units heads up display and her unit turns and gives him a thumbs up.

Being patched into all communications and watching the strangely behaving unit, Colonel Black is laughing inside his cockpit. The Cadets trained by General Tennant are an odd pair, but they’re incredibly capable.

He hasn’t realized that Nico is piloting with her Innate Talent, instead the Colonel thinks that both Cadets are just so attuned to their mecha that they’re instinctively moving them to match what they want their body to do. Max hasn’t realized, but his mecha gestures with its hands when he talks, the same way he does, just in a more robotic manner.

He also notices that both of them are carrying close combat weapons, an addition that General Tennant must have made to their kit, but also one that the Colonel approves of. When he was still a combat officer, he preferred to have a pair of close combat guards in front of him to keep hostile targets from directly engaging his entirely long range focused mecha.

His mecha doesn’t leave one free hand like so many do, instead it uses a Battle Cannon hard mounted on one arm and an Ion Destroyer on the other. At a distance, it is devastating, but when targets get in close he can be at a disadvantage.

Unlike the General, he doesn’t suspect that anyone would try anything against his cadets on this mission, he just likes to be prepared at all times. It makes a good impression on others, and you don’t get to be a Colonel without being somewhat of a politcian.

An hour into the mission the difference in training becomes very obvious, as the regular class Cadets start getting tired, being used to training in virtual reality. The level of concentration needed to pilot isn’t the problem, they’re simply not used to the constant physical exertion.

The academy only has twenty of the physical simulators, as they’re incredibly expensive and getting funding for more hasn’t been easy. with a hundred piloting students a year, their usage is fairly limited.

Getting students used to real conditions is the hardest part of the job out here in an outlying system where nothing is viewed as high priority by the central government. But despite that, his academy still turns out some of the highest quality pilots anywhere.

The instructors in the lead have just called a break when Colonel Black starts detecting something strange on his sensors. He thought it was a central government equipment signature, but then it vanished and a few seconds later the same thing at another location.

He’s not the only one that noticed. Cadet Nico also caught the blip on her sensors, and she passed the warning on to Max.

[Keep your eyes open, we’re about to have visitors.]

The display screen on the left side of his cockpit blinks with the message only seconds before a local government transport comes onto the units radar, as if the unit had just been started.

It’s up ahead at the next village, nothing abnormal about that, but if there’s one thing they’ve learned about the Academy is that everything is a test. Everything.

The transport doesn’t move, waiting in the village while they take their break. Max keeps aware of anything that might be hiding around them, but can’t find anything out of the ordinary. He’s started to relax his vigilance when they reach the village and find that the vehicle on their radar is a road maintenance crew, cutting back new growth to keep the road clear.

The road crew foreman talks with the lead Instructor for a moment, explaining that the road is blocked and the main class students are ordered into action. Clearing overgrowth is possibly the most common task for patrols, since the jungle here grows so quickly.

The Special Forces Candidates take positions around the main group while Max and Nico take rear guard duty with Colonel Black. The actual clearing duty only takes four at a time, two to cut with the saws provided by the village and two to clear debris.

They rotate through every fifteen minutes and the squad slowly makes progress. The next village is their overnight stop, and the destination of the road crew, who are extremely relieved to have the help. Their transport has a crane arm for clearing cut debris, but the mecha are much faster.

By the time they arrive, Max is certain he’s heard the life story of half the Cadets, but the crew’s questions bother him. Aren’t they asking a bit too much about the Academy? And why would a local road crew even care?