Nathan's engines revved as he took off, reaching his top speed in seconds. He made an immediate hard right hand turn around the tire pile.

The commander noted that with a smile. "Good," he said.

Spray watched this with intense interest. He winced as Nathan's side scraped another tire piling, nicking his grey paint. Nathan swerved around another, pulling off a near 270 degree turn, impressing the commander as he dodged a few drones emerging from the tire piling. The drones missed him and retreated back into hiding.

More appeared from behind the makeshift dockyards. Nathan took them out with a pair of missiles. Spray watched in amazement and let out a low whistle. He had to admit, Nathan was getting better at this.

The base commander watched before he gave the signal to release more drones, this time armed with dummy missiles. This was to test his ability to take a punch. The missiles were loaded with paint, each paint color signifying varying degrees of damage. Red was fatal, orange was critical, yellow was moderate, green was light, and blue was zero damage.

Nathan's Phalanx opened up with rounds of shells. One by one the drones fell but not before firing a few rounds of their own. Nathan took 3 blues, 2 greens, and 1 yellow. An orange missed his mast by inches. Nathan laughed as he continued on, racing towards the finish line as his rear Phalanx took out the drones behind him. The last remaining red drone fired its paint after him and just as he crossed the finish line it hit.

"Damn it!" Nathan swore. But he'd done it. He'd crossed the finish line before it hit.

The base commander blinked, and he was actually impressed. He smiled. "Well, now that was impressive, Nathan," he said. "You passed the course. Were you training in secret or something?"

Spray grinned. He knew Nathan had been training in secret, but he wasn't mentioning it.

The young ship merely winked at Spray but said nothing. "My secret sir." He replied.

The commander chuckled and approached the ship, patting him on the bow. "Well, good work. May as well get that paint cleaned off. And report to dock for some rest."

He turned and walked off, passing by Spray who kept a straight face. Once the commander had left, Spray taxied up to the ship.

"Nice work," he said with a grin. "You really did a good job out there."

"Thanks." Nathan panted. "I thought I was a goner for sure."

Spray smiled and nudged him with a wing. "Okay. Get some rest."

As he turned and taxied off, he caught a glimpse of something on one of the TVs in the barracks. Confusion washed over him as he heard the reporter speaking about something and his eyes narrowed. He inched closer, and at that point his ailerons twitched.

"Trouble?" Arleigh asked, seeing this. He knew that when Spray's ailerons twitched, it meant the plane sensed something bad. So far his instincts had yet to be proven wrong.

Spray turned, his eyes narrowed a bit. "Yeah. I don't know what though." He turned back to face the barracks, his eyes narrowing a bit more. 'The only question is, what's wrong here?'

He had no idea how bad it was about to get over the next few weeks.