Chapter 5: Separating the Oddballs from the Truly Odd.

While most of the first wave of “temporary guild invites” were making their way to Reforged space, Adrian and Amy immediately started trying to figure out what everyone’s best and worst features were in the guild. They conducted a series of mock-Universe At War scrimmages, where Amy and Adrian each commanded one side through a pre-determined scenario.

One battle involved taking a base with overwhelming force. The defenders had to inflict as much damage as possible before withdrawing, while the attackers tried to swarm the position, destroy as many defenders as they could, and prevent the survivors from forming the core of a later counterattack.

The next represented an escalating skirmish. Scout units would attempt to locate the opposition, and once battle was joined, timed reinforcements were released from different directions. It gave the commanders a chance to see who pressed too hard during one stage of the battle, who understood when an advantage was temporary, and who recognized that sometimes the correct tactical move was to break contact long enough for quick armor repairs and ammunition reloads.

They made sure everyone who could be online for the exercises got a chance to show what they could do, working through one team and then the other.

The two “A-Listers,” as Adrian and Amy had already started being called, made one decision before the mock fights began.

They would command.

They would not fight.

Both were skilled enough that putting either one directly into a battle risked distorting the results. Better to see how the recruits performed against people somewhere near their own level.

Adrian and Amy quickly discovered that this was much easier to say than to endure.

They were both very grateful for the mute buttons on their microphones.

Sitting beside each other in the Training Center, they tried not to gripe, groan, or otherwise react audibly to the mistakes being made in front of them.

It was not easy.

Amy, in particular, much preferred being in the middle of the action herself. She repeatedly found herself on the verge of getting genuinely angry at pilots who didn’t understand why she was ordering them to fight defensively when, as one of them put it, “There are enemies right there to shoot!”

During one scout exercise, what should have been a brief contact turned into an eight-on-eight melee at nearly point-blank range because several pilots either failed to hear or simply ignored repeated orders to disengage.

Everyone wanted to impress their commanders.

Apparently, the best way to do that was to ignore them.

Adrian watched Amy reach over and toggle her microphone off.

Then, after a moment’s consideration, she reached over and muted his as well.

Adrian raised an eyebrow.

Amy unleashed approximately eight seconds of uninterrupted profanity.

Adrian found himself mildly impressed.

At no point did she appear to reuse the same swear word.

She covered nearly every one he knew, several he did not, and at least two that he had a vague suspicion were Spanish or Portuguese.

Then, after a couple of seconds, she gave Adrian a rueful smile and indicated that he could unmute himself. Then she went back to giving orders as if the air hadn’t turned metaphorically blue just seconds before.

“Second Lance, disengage. There’s an enemy force coming over the ridge. You are overextended. You do not have proper support. Pull back now before it becomes a rout.”

Adrian gave her a nudge and, covering his microphone, muttered so only Amy could hear, “Feel better?”

Amy nodded once, then went back to giving orders.

At the end of the first day of mock battles, they both pulled off their headphones.

Adrian sighed.

He had spent the last few days giving Elias a hard time about all the work a guild leader had to do before Elias could get around to what he considered the fun part.

Adrian was very glad Elias wasn’t in the room.

Otherwise, he probably would have said something unbearably smug like, Now you know how it feels.

Adrian desperately wanted to go blow something up in the Arena.

Not train.

Not push himself.

Just engage in a little highly therapeutic dissection of whichever random players volunteered to fight him.

Then he looked over at Amy.

His side had won four of the six skirmishes.

Hers had lost four.

It wasn’t entirely her fault. Different pilots, different mistakes, different scenarios. That was the whole point of the exercises.

Amy knew that.

Apparently knowing it and enjoying it were two different things.

The losses were starting to wear on her.

“Do we need to do a debrief? I know command isn’t your preferred thing, but you did well out there. We got pushed to the absolute limit in a couple of those close ones.”

Amy grimaced. “How do you do it all day?”

Adrian considered that. “What, command instead of fighting?”

Amy nodded once.

Adrian indicated the notebook he’d been writing in during the skirmishes.