Free Icarus by Stephen A. Fender

“Sounds easy enough,” Shawn replied, hoping to be done with the
technical lesson. Although he could wrap his mind around basic computer
operations, he had a feeling he’d never fully understand how his brain could be
linked to the fighter. Someone far smarter than he had built this thing, and it
wasn’t his job to learn how to fix it. He just had to learn how to control
it.  
       “Ready for preflight, Commander?” Drake asked over the intercom.
       “Sure thing,” Shawn replied with all the confidence he could muster,
rubbing his hands together and scanning through the controls once more. “Just
tell me how to start the engines.”
     
       An hour later, Shawn had a firm grasp on the basic operations of the
fighter. Raven had taken him through a quick instrumentation familiarization,
and even a few of the advanced operational levels before she was satisfied he
was ready for takeoff.
       The first level Drake had put them through was a simple point-to-point
mission. They’d flown out in a straight line from the simulated carrier, a
visually indistinguishable counterpart of the actual Rhea , circled a
navigation buoy, then returned to land—which Shawn was able to accomplish only
after crashing into the side of the carrier’s landing bay…twice.
       From there, the missions became increasingly difficult. Some levels
contained objects around which Shawn would need to navigate, such as asteroids,
manmade space debris, or unstable spatial pockets. With each type of navigation
hazard, there were multiple ways to circumvent it, and Shawn felt the old
fighter skills coming back with each passing moment.
       He was amazed at the overall realism in the simulator. Everything was
projected in three dimensions, with resolution so high that it was impossible
to distinguish it from reality. This was far different than piloting Sylvia’s Delight , and he hadn’t realized how much he missed being in the small,
cramped cockpit of a sleek and nimble fighter, nor was he aware of the passage
of time outside his sphere.
       “Well, Commander. It looks like you’ve got the basics down,” Drake
said from the control bubble. “What do you think, Raven? Should we see how well
he fares against some targets?”
       They weren’t scheduled for combat training today. Frankly, Roslyn was
amazed at how well her new commanding officer had taken to the simulated
Maelstrom fighter. They’d already progressed through today’s agenda and halfway
into their next session in record time. She looked to Shawn’s three-dimensional
image on her screen. “Well?”
       He nodded back with approval. “Let’s try it.”
       Brunel gave Shawn some quick instructions on weapon arming and
operation. She decided to just stick to the particle cannons and the infusion
beams for the moment, setting aside the various missiles and torpedoes for a
later training session.
       His first task was simple enough: destroy a small, non-moving object
directly ahead of his ship.
       Shawn spoke into the computer, requesting it to charge the particle
cannons to half intensity.
       “Ready,” the female voice responded curtly. When the target was locked
in, Shawn slowly depressed the trigger on the control stick, causing a
pencil-thin beam of blue-white light to emit from the tips of the wing-mounted
cannons. The beams neatly converged on the rotating, reflective object and
vaporized it instantly.
       “That’s one down,” Drake said.
       “Seemed easy enough,” Shawn replied, instantly regretting how cocky it
sounded.
       “Okay, now try this,” Drake offered.
       The target instantly reappeared in front of Shawn’s craft, but when he
attempted to shoot it, it moved slightly out of the way of his beams. Shawn
tried again, maneuvering his craft in line with the target, but it effortlessly
slid past his beams time and time again. Frustrated, he let out a grunt.
       “You’re giving the target too much information.”