Trades46 here,

I just wanted to repost my earlier chapters as they were too short and had many issues I wanted to fix before posting them again.

Chapter 1:

The skies over the Darius Interplanetary Aircraft manufacturing facility (DIA) was perfectly clear. The weather felt calm, with a sunny outlook with little clouds and a warm breeze was passing. It was one of those rare perfect days. That would be, if it weren't for the hangars which were full of life from engineers that are running around with parts, oil, equipment and other Silverhawk manufacturing tools. The peaceful mood was also ruined from the DIA lot which are filled with partially completed Silverhawk IIs and Silverhawk Gaidens all around.

The Belser have really begun pushing on the frontlines recently, and there are just honestly not enough birds from our side to keep them from doing so. The Darius Defense Administration (DDA) has been really putting pressure on manufacturers to quickly mass-produce the jets to strengthen the frontlines. It shows on the engineers' faces that they have been working overtime nonstop for a while.

I continue to walk down the hallways of the facility towards the more barren part of the DIA; the prototype testing facility. In front of the big doors, two uniformed guards by the doors give me a polite gesture, and I scanned my finger on the electronic panel. I continued to walk deeper into the complex as the door bolted shut behind me.

The woman at the front desk looked up at me as I entered the room, and after a moment of trying to recognize me, promptly passed me a clipboard and a pen.

"Good day Lt. Colonel Pratica. I need you to sign this first before you go the hangar," she spoke. "Mr. Grinnell would be waiting there for you. He'll give you specific follow-up procedures."

I quickly signed the document and returned it to her with a thank-you. I continued to walk past the electronic gates again with the biometrics scanner and proceeded into the hangar.

Make no mistake about it; this part of the DIA is definitely important and secretive. I don't recall many places where verification have to be performed on that many stages.

The prototype testing facility hangar was larger and better equipped than the standard hangars. Much equipment was neatly piled all around and many tools dangled overhead like Christmas decorations. The stars of the prototype hangar however, are the two shining new Silverhawk prototypes, the 'Legend' and my 'Next', which stood side-by-side facing the closed hangar gates.

The chief mechanic of the Next and my good friend, Grinnell Forman, noticed my presence. He excused himself from the other mechanics who were fiddling with the computers and final adjustments of the prototype in preparation of its test flight. He trotted over to me with a bright smile.

"Riga! You made it!" Grinnell jokingly stated. "I was thinking you might accidentally trip from the lack of sleep from this moment."

I gave a light chuckle and responded that if I did, I would've still flown it with a broken arm.

Jokes aside, we talk about the review of the procedures of this test flight. Grinnell also showed me his projector tablet to tell me of the final adjustments that he made to the Next after I piloted a revision in the simulator a couple of weeks ago.

With that done, I headed off to be suited up until I remembered a question which I had wanted to ask for a long time, but never quite remembered.

I asked Grinnell if he know who was chosen by the DDA as the test pilot of the other prototype; the Silverhawk Legend.

"I think the DDA also has ordered that both prototypes be tested at the same time to speed up progress" Grinnell replied to me. "I haven't met with the Legend's mechanics for a while, but I've heard that the test pilot picked is girl, a Lieutenant. Can you believe that Riga? DDA has a ratio of male to female of 14:3... Think about the odds…"

I pondered the question in my head after I headed to the changing-room to suit-up. I have personally done several tests in the simulators of the Legend, and from experience it is an incredible piece of engineering. The aircraft responded quickly to any input and possesses speed that is unrivaled to anything fielded by the DDA.

The problem is the G-forces in piloting the Legend are so astronomical that most test pilots fainted from evasive maneuvers even in the simulators. Not to mention that kind of speed and handling also required superhuman reactions to get the best out of the craft. It is capable of flying fast, but for most people it was impossible to attain such limits before the body gives up.

If there are going to be any records that would be set by a military aircraft, the Legend has no competition. The performance of the Legend is even too much for me. I was one of the top scorers in the testing simulation of the Legend, but still didn't make the position of the Legend test pilot.

Oddly enough, I don't recall any female test pilot I've seen during the testing period that attained scores required for either prototype. The more I think of it, the more I'm interested to meet this mystery female pilot and see her abilities up close.

In the midst of my thoughts, I wasn't really looking at where I was walking. Predictably in cases like this, you tend to walk into unsuspecting people, which I did. I managed to keep a foothold, but the other party blatantly fell over with a 'thunk' and a feminine 'Ahh. .'.

I quickly apologized for not looking ahead and helped her up. The person I bumped into was rather short; hence I had a good reason, or excuse, of why I didn't see her.

She is a rather young looking girl with long blond hair in a plain-looking dress, but most notable is a black metallic headband with something that resembles cat-ears on her head. "Gomen...*" she said rather quickly, and then continued on her way before I can ask any questions.

I just brushed the girl off my head as maybe the daughter of someone in this department and headed into the change rooms. After all, why else would they have headband with cat-ears on them in a high security military testing complex?

After putting on the flight suit and getting my equipment, I headed back to the hangar. The crew for the Legend has arrived and is are now running pre-flight checks. However, I still see no signs of the Legend's female pilot. Grinnell ushered me to the Next and gave me a projector tablet which connected to the DDA network. The projected screen quickly loaded and flashed the following message:

*Incoming transmission*
From: Darius Defense Administration – Testing Department

Col. Pratica,
The objective of this flight is to test and analyze the real-world conditions of these two prototype fighters and their systems. You will be deployed along with the Silverhawk Legend's test pilot in this practice run. Be advised that there will be weapons onboard to fully simulate the battlefield load-out, but since there are no adversaries in the operation they will not be deployed.

There would be 2 phases in this testing exercise:

Phase 1:
Follow the ground crew instructions for the basic instrumented testing. This will give as good baseline information of the performance of the prototypes.

Phase2:
You will be joined with the units of 288th Squadron to simulate combat-testing. The ground crew will initiate the Mock-battle program on your HUD and send you visual representations of weapon deployment and battle data.

The entire operation would be monitored by General Kristoph. You'll be communicating to him after takeoff. The ground crew will serve as the monitor of this operation; he'll be feeding you information during testing.
Remember, these Silverhawk units are one-of-a-kind prototypes with no others in existence; treat her carefully.

*Transmission terminated*

I then closed the mission brief and turned to Grinnell, who was looking in my direction with a somewhat flabbergasted expression on his face. Not only him, but the rest of the crew was also looking in that direction with similar reactions. Curious to the origin of their expressions, I turned around.

Imagine how your expression would be like once you piece together that the roughly 14 year-old girl that you just ran into earlier in a secured testing facility with cat-ears headband (which she still has on) is, apparently, the same person as the rumored mysterious female test pilot of the Silverhawk Legend.

Notes:

*I naturally connected Ti2's origin with Japan due to their technology (androids) and 'moe' culture (her cat-ears).
So I decided to let her use small amounts of Japanese pronouns and honorifics.

*Gomen - 'Sorry'

See you next update!