Shooting range F at the UAF base in Sol's Ward was the most simple one, used for basic soldier training. The weapons of course didn't use live ammo, but sent light signals to the targets and mimicked a recoil. There were still a few old veterans over 50 who claimed that you could never get a true experience from practise weapons, only from "real" guns. They were obviously still using second generation force weapons and never heard of motion feedback.
Haylen, who had only used a second gen force weapon once, knew that the real difference between firing a practise weapon at a marker at the shooting range, and firing a real weapon on the battlefield, was that in the latter case, you're more likely to hit someone.
It was a while since he'd been here last. During his initial soldier training the recruits naturally spent a lot of time here, but once they had moved on to the sim training grounds, visits had been scarce. As he set up targets for himself and Xander, he noticed that the glitch in the upper left segment of the outer circle was still there. An error in the code that noone had noticed until the shooting range was already being built, or was noticed but couldn't be found within reasonable time, or wasn't important enough to waste time and resources on. Like so many other things in the UAF.
Xander showed up a few minutes later than they'd agreed, which apparently was a hundred times more stressing for him than for Haylen.
"I was reading, and I lost track of time, and I hadn't set any reminder or alarm or anything because I thought I'd remember, and..." Xander stopped himself and fidgeted with the spinner ring on his finger. "I'm very sorry."
"Not on a space mission, eh." Haylen handed one of the training guns over to Xander.
"Thanks." Xander turned the gun around a few times. "Do we start right away?"
"Yeah, targets be rigged an' all, so..."
"I'd like to take it apart and put it together again first, if you don't mind? I need to practise that part too."
"Sure."
Xander smiled, a little insecure, but began to disconnect the weapon parts and put them on the table next to the firing line. "How are you?" he asked as he glanced up at Haylen. "I hope you didn't have to spend all your week off in sickbed."
Haylen shook his head. "No, I had time to go to my sis too."
"Oh? Where does she live?"
"M04 on Nineteen."
"Does she work in the mines?"
"Sort of. Engine maintenance, dismantlement, stuff like that."
"I upgraded code for one of the older engine models they use out there, UAV-5."
"Yeah? Helped'er fix one of those when I was there."
"I hope it wasn't anything code related." Xander smiled awkwardly as he started to put the gun back together again.
"No, mechanical."
"Good. Then I still wrote that code. Unless your sister hates it...?"
Haylen smirked a bit. Luka had mentioned the software upgrades at one point, and her exact words had been: "At least it be askin' 'how high' when I tell it to jump, instead of t'rowin' itself out de wrong window wit'out even opening it first". Haylen wasn't sure how well Luka's expressions would go through to someone who didn't know her though.
"She was less angry wit' it."
Xander nodded hesitantly.
"She don' like any software more complicated than a calculator anyway..."
Xander snickered then, and attached the last part on the gun. "Well, I'm done."
"You sure?" Haylen looked at the gun, that indeed looked very complete.
Xander looked at the empty table. "I think so. At least there are no parts left."
Haylen looked at him as he checked the mechanism. "Dat how you be codin' too? 'Think I'm done, at least there are no letters or hatches left.'"
"'Hatches'?" Xander looked at him with a mildly amused expression.
"Yeah. Dem t'ings holdin' the words toget'er."
They looked at each other, Haylen blankly, Xander with a held back smile.
"If you teach me how to hit the bullseye", Xander said, "I'll teach you the correct term for those 'hatches'."
"An' if I already know, you still want de lesson?"
"Oh yes. Your knowledge of code doesn't affect my ability to shoot."
Haylen cocked his head in a 'well then'-nod. "A'ight, go stand at de line."
* * *
"I'm mildly offended now that they didn't teach us that elbow trick at the shooting course we had", Xander said as they sat down to have a cup of tea in the canteen later. "All the targets I could have hit..."
Haylen shook his head shortly as Xander offered him the sugar dispenser.
"Not even a trick", Haylen said, "it be part of the technique. Weird an instructor wouldn't know."
"He was sort of an ass. I had a feeling he'd rather be at the frontlines than teaching a group of tech recruits how to use a petty handgun." Xander put sugar and milk powder in his tea and began to stir it as he talked, an automatized procedure that indicated several years of practise.
Haylen moved his own tea infuser around with what he imagined a more concentrated look than Xander, watching the hot liquid turn darker and darker.
"I noticed your aim is extremely steady", Xander pointed out with a somewhat shy look at Haylen. "Not only your aim, your whole... well, posture, so to speak. Most people move or twitch involuntarily every now and then even when they're not physically active, but you're perfectly still almost always. Are there implants regulating that to, or are you a natural?"
Haylen noticed the quick glance Xander shot at at his right hand as he said that about involuntary twitching. Ironically, his right hand was twitching slightly right now. It did that on occasion, had done so ever since he had the T7 implants. It had been only the fingers back then, but spread to the forearm with the T9 upgrades - probably a flawed neurolink that caused some chain reaction. It was more likely to happen after using his amps more than usual, but sometimes the twitching occurred for no obvious reason. No attempts had been made to fix it. It was barely noticeable; didn't cause much trouble, didn't really have any negative effect on his average performance. Not important enough to waste time and resources on.
"Implants. Or... side effect of the clot-counters."
"Clot-counters?"
"Uh... for coordination an' calibration of motorics."
Xander took his teacup in both hands and leaned forward on the table, interest perked. "How is that considered a side effect?"
"Means less micropauses, so more strain on muscles an' tendons, less blood circulation."
"Is that why flex your fingers or wiggle your feet and that sort of things on occasion? I noticed because it seems conscious, and not something you do because of nervosity or so", Xander added, and took a sip of his tea almost before finishing the sentence. A faint blush colored his cheeks.
"Were taught to do it unconsciously, but yeah."
Xander smiled. Haylen hoped it was because he got the attempted joke. People often thought that Haylen were taking things a little too literally and started explaining what they meant, when all he'd done really was a bit of wordplay. Maybe he should learn how to flex his face muscles too to counter misunderstandings.
"Why you have force field implants?" The implant talk reminded Haylen to ask about this, since tech personnel normally didn't have that kind of implants.
"It's actually a prototype for limb replacements", Xander explained. "It's meant to serve as an alternative to physical prosthetics with artificial neurosystems. Force field hands instead of this." Xander gestured with his prosthetic hand.
Haylen nodded some. His tea had reached what Ziva used to call 'sandpaper level', and he lifted up the infuser from the cup and put it on the same plate Xander put his a little while ago.
"So you can type with a ghost hand if you want?" He took a sip of the strong, bitter tea.
Xander snickered. "A ghost stick, perhaps. It's not very refined, to be honest. I can lift and move objects and I can hit small keys and buttons, but so far it can't form even a pincer grip. I don't believe yours can either?"
Haylen shook his head. Shield, hook, and sharp or blunt fist weapon. That was basically all the forms he could produce.
"However", Xander continued, "since I got plenty of space inside my fake hand for a serious battery, it's very strong. I can lift shuttles with this."
Haylen nodded slowly. That was kind of impressive.
Xander must have picked up that expression at least, because he hurriedly added: "Only for a short time, of course. The batteries won't last forever and I still need to counterweight it and so on." He cleared his throat and drank more tea.
Haylen smirked a bit.
"I wonder", Xander said, with caution underneath the curiosity, "your implants are basically a whole network of components connected to your skeleton, while we common force field imps only have one command chip in the head, a neurolink to our hand and one or two projectors. I know it normally takes several weeks for soldiers who get military amps on even lesser level than the ones I have to recover and adjust, before they can even begin their training, but the Tyrian Tanks were fully amped and trained in less than a year. Wasn't that... stressful? Painful?"
Haylen looked at his tea, and tilted his head a bit to the side. "They sedate soldiers too before surgery, you know..."
Xander snorted lightly, but with an amused smile. "Yes, I didn't expect them to drill in your bones without sedation." His expression turned more serious again. "You know what I mean, though."
...the pain was in every cell, thousand knives and nails and hammers, he barely recognized his own voice as it screamed and cried out all that unbelievable, ungraspable, unbearable pain, hands held him and voices talked but he couldn't tell what they were doing or saying, or what he was doing himself, and then the world faded again...
"Well yeah, hurt a bit, but... With great amps comes great painkillers, right." He poked the handle of the tea infuser on the plate, making it move around slowly.
"I hope so, or I might have second thoughts about upgrading this hand."
Xander joked, of course. But Haylen wouldn't have blamed him if he wasn't.