The Optimum Project

Chapter 46

THE END and other strange things

The rest of the simulation went down pretty much as expected, the entirety of the group turned on each other until the last one standing was June, who only out lasted the others because a stray asteroid got in the way of the deep-voiced Guy's shot. After they went down I vented some O2 out the rear of my ship and glided silently behind her, turning the power back on and firing at her at the last possible second. The sim had automatically recognized that I was the last active fighter and all the other ships that were still disabled reactivated and flew towards The Titan, on autopilot apparently. That was it, the end.

I got out of my fighter and turned around from the ladder to find myself nose to nose with a very pissed off Drake.

"So," he seethed, "you think you're some kind of hotshot because you took down all your wet-behind-the-ears cadet opponents?"

I shrugged nonchalantly and said simply, "I just wanted the super-charger."

Drake suddenly seemed to think something was funny, "Did I say something funny to you sir?"

His laugh dried out to a rough chuckle and he leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees and looking right into my eyes, "We knew you were the best out there, even without... external assistance," he glanced at my arm when he said this, and I suddenly realized that for a top secret project, a lot of people seemed to know about TOM.

"You seem to fail to realize that his earlier statement was that the cadet who took you down would receive the super charger."

Well, speak of the devil, and his bad news.

My eyes narrowed at Drake, "So the supercharger was bogus? You knew that I would be the last one standing, and you phrased the declaration so I wouldn't get the supercharger if I was."

He smiled, "He finally gets it, but we weren't for sure, so we did get out a low level supercharger just in case, nothing as the one as powerful as we promised though."

I snorted, "Figures."

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A Crash course in super chargers

Superchargers are in fact micro-drives for fighter engines. Fighters were not designed for warp-space travel, they are too small to fit a full sized drive into and too fragile to handle the exit blast that follows the warp, but a supercharger kinda fixes that. Small jumps of 30-50 meters can be done with these superchargers because they trigger a counter inertial field that dissipates the exit blast and converts it into an energy blast released via your cannons.

Multiple scenes of military footage (the stuff officials can see, civilians not allowed) shows fighters with superchargers warping behind defensive lines and crippling small destroyers before warping back into offensive formation, and are a main reason the alliance ***** REDACTED****

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I blinked, tom had just downloaded a file on superchargers for me because I was thinking I could build my own... But what about that file was redacted? I looked back at the text, which was displayed on my mental HUD, it now read:

Multiple scenes of military footage (the stuff officials can see, civilians not allowed) shows fighters with superchargers warping behind defensive lines and crippling small destroyers before warping back into offensive formation, and are a main reason the alliance is so powerful and effective even today.

I closed my eyes and pulled up the photo of the original copy, because there was an original, and saw as plain as day that the text read '****REDACTED****' there was a serious cover up going on here, but by who? And why?

Looks like I've got more than one reason to look over my shoulder.