After spending the entire day practicing swings, Dylan headed to the research sector of the dreadnought. They were also responsible for repairing and improving the battle suits when it was necessary, and he had to make sure that his battle suit would be in top form before the next mission, whenever that happens.
When he arrived there, Dylan found some soldiers also planning to talk with the researchers about the same thing. One of them was Francis. The others were probably members of his team, but they weren’t talking at all.
In the end, he had to wait for half an hour since every single one of them took five minutes to ask what they wanted, and only one person could enter the research room of the battle suits. Dylan had never been there before, so he was curious.
Once the last of them left, Dylan entered the room and found several round machines storing several battle suits. Dylan couldn’t even begin what they were doing since they looked like some type of giant, thick ring, and he could only see the battle suits through a thick layer of glass. In that room, he only found a single woman wearing a lab coat. She had long, straight black hair that was tied up in a ponytail, but it was a bit messy. She probably had been working nonstop for a while.
The woman was analyzing the data of the battle suits and then typing something on a portable terminal. In the next moment, the machines would start to work while spinning or making the battle suits glow.
“How can I help you?” The black-haired woman asked and then turned around. “Wait, did I see you somewhere?”
“Probably not,” Dylan replied while looking at that woman, who was probably in her mid-twenties.
The researcher was wearing some thick glasses, and those made it almost impossible to see her eyes, but they were a deep green. She probably had been forcing her eyes too much while working. That was why she needed such lenses. Dylan couldn’t help but wonder when they would make some breakthroughs in other fields like medicine.
“Ah, you are Dylan Ulrich,” the researcher said after quickly typing on her terminal. That was some fast typing speed. Dylan didn’t even see her fingers. “You are almost an exact copy of your mother’s appearance. You don’t look very feminine, though.”
“You don’t say.” Dylan furrowed his eyebrows.
“I am joking, I am joking,” the woman said. “It doesn’t seem that you inherited her sense of humor.”
“Did you know her?” Dylan asked. “I am not sure you would be around the time she was working as a researcher.”
“No, but I read all the data from her research. She was a genius ahead of her time.” The woman's eyes began to glow. “I wished that I could have met her. If she were alive, I am sure that she would have made our technology and knowledge twenty years ahead of all other ships.”
Dylan felt a bit happy after hearing that, but he also felt that more expectations were falling on his back. He felt sorry for it, but he was a combatant through and through. He won’t make advances when it comes to science and anything related to it, at least for now when he wasn’t showing much interest in it.
“You also must be the rookie that showed excellent results in yesterday’s missions,” the woman said. “I got curious, but soon was too busy to see your name. Oh, where are my manners? My name is Natalia. Nice to meet you.”
“Dylan Ulrich… about my battle suit,” Dylan said, since he imagined that he would stay there for a whole day if he let Natalia do and talk as she pleased. “What can we do about it?”
“Well, for starters, you can increase each parameter of the armor using the same value multiplied by one hundred. That will improve the performance of the armor, and you will also feel your body adapting to the ether faster,” Natalia explained while guiding Dylan to where his battle suit was. “While that doesn’t seem much, you need to understand that each increase will basically have two times the same effect, since you will also absorb part of the ether.”
That makes sense, since Dylan could run at twenty meters per second. The battle suits basically made him two times stronger while improving his potential as well.
“We didn’t obtain much from the analysis of the monsters yet, but we also believe that aside from a core that will be added to your armor to increase your movement speed by ten percent at the very least, we also think that we can use the data of the giant mutant to add a healing effect on your battle suits,” Natalia explained. “It might take at least one week for us to get enough data and then to be able to run some simulations, but the ether of the healing core will also make you heal faster out of combat. When you are not wounded, you will recover stamina faster as well. As for the costs of each core. The speed core will probably cost one kilogram of concentrated ether to be installed and will be able to be improved at least ten times with our current technology. Each upgrade will cost a bit more ether, though.”
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Natalia was really something else… Dylan was quickly getting overwhelmed. In any case, he decided to add the speed core to his battle suit and use the remaining ether to increase its power. That increased its power by five, so he was looking forward to the changes.
After three days, Dylan was free from the muscle pain, even though he pushed himself to the limits in the simulator. It was probably because he made sure to rest properly between training sessions.
In the next few days, Felix decided to release the unedited version of the mission’s footage. Some of the soldiers didn’t like that since they felt like they fought poorly, but no one blamed them since the monsters that had been found made everyone feel the creeps. Dylan didn’t like that because it bothered him. Claire would call him all the time to meet his old classmates, and they began to treat him even worse than before… as if he was some sort of idol of a friend.
The real trouble was that it motivated people to train harder to become soldiers… on paper, that was a good thing, but in reality, they were fooling themselves while thinking that everyone could do that if they trained hard. The real hard part was keeping their nerves under control when fighting, and the simulator wasn’t good enough to test the recruits yet.
“Soldier Ulrich. Thesecond in command, Felix requests your presence in the briefing room.”
A mechanical voice suddenly echoed in the simulator and forcefully ended it. Dylan frowned since he was training, and it was in the middle of the day… Usually, people are called for missions in the early parts of the morning. Also, he didn’t think that anything would happen so soon.
While furrowing his eyebrows, Dylan headed to the briefing room. He wanted to take a shower, but while he wasn’t informed that he needed to hurry up, he decided to be cautious, just in case.
Upon arriving in the briefing room, Dylan frowned since he only found ten people there. He could tell that he was the last one to arrive, so that seemed weird… Why would Felix debrief only ten people? Six of them were members of the previous Assault team, and three others were members of the Sabotage team; Shon was among them.
“It seems that everyone is here, now and then. Let me explain the situation,” Felix said, and then he showed a map of the current solar system that they were crossing. “We just passed nearby W1, the second planet of this solar system that contains fifteen planets, and we are about to reach the third. We will call it W2 for convenience’s sake. W2 has been explored a bit by the crew of the Glacic, the Russian spaceship. However, the team that explored that planet missed the deadline to leave the planet and is currently stranded on that planet.”
“Did they require assistance to rescue their soldiers?” Francis asked.
“Not exactly, because their conditions are currently unknown, they lost contact three days ago, and the mission started six days ago,” Felix explained and showed another spaceship on the map that had the shape of a long spear that was between the third and fourth planet of that solar system. “They inquired if we were planning an expedition to that planet and revealed what happened. They are fully aware of the costs and risks of a mission like this, and that is why they didn’t ask for help.”
Dylan sighed. According to history, the Glacic was one of the first spaceships to leave Earth two hundred years ago. So it made sense that they would be ahead of the Dreadnought. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t ask for help… did they have that many soldiers to spare? In the first place, they would only send the best soldiers to such a mission, so even their best were expendable? That didn’t make any sense. If it was a matter of pride, that would make things look even more stupid. There should be a reason for that.
“To be honest, we were planning to investigate only the fourth planet of this solar system. That would give you all one extra week to rest and prepare,” Felix said. “Still, the commander of the Glacic was kind enough to send the data that they have about that planet. It has many ether spots where we can mine for it. However, the conditions of the environment are harsh, and there are many lifeforms where their soldiers are strained. Even with the battle suits, they must be reaching the limits that their battle suits can handle. That is, if they didn’t solve the matter with their own hands.”
In the end, they were soldiers. They probably wouldn’t go down without a fight, but sometimes, there is nothing to gain from fighting. Going down without having to fill the belly of a monster alien wasn’t an option that they would have discarded.
“I assembled you all here to discuss the possibility of rescuing the Russian soldiers. That would be the main goal, and the secondary goal would be to bring some samples of the lifeforms of that world. I already confirmed that they are different from the ones we met so far, considering the data that we got.”
“It doesn’t matter if they belong to a different ship or were born in different circumstances. While we ultimately are soldiers to protect the Dreadnought, I still want to help my fellow soldiers who share the same goal of protecting our species,” Francis declared, with his arms crossed and eyes closed.
“That is all well and good, but we need a proper action plan. Otherwise, we will just be taking unnecessary risks,” Shon said while looking at the map of that planet. “How much time do we have to come up with a clear plan? Also, it isn’t like you to be indecisive about anything second in command.”
