Space Dragon Allepexxis

by C. K. Pershing

  When Paress did, his view whirled around to show that he was in fact spinning quickly. He wondered what the giant dragon spinning around looked like from the outside. He pushed and pulled the sticks to their separate maximum positions and Allepexxis’s spin went into a wild tornado. The speed of the spin was shown at 325.4 miles per hour.

  He was amazed at the power of the Machine’s centrifugal damper that made it seem like he was only watching something on his screens and not actually sitting inside the dervish. For that matter, the damper was probably what allowed Allepexxis to do the maneuver without flying apart from the stress. He eased the sticks back to their neutral position and the Machine came to rest.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Behlen asked.

  “Yes sir,” Paress said, smiling.

  “Okay, now we’re gonna have you run full speed. So, turn away opposite from the control center and push both sticks all the way forward.”

  Paress did as he was told and Allepexxis took off at a gallop that gained speed as it went, topping out at 457.9 miles per hour. If he eased back on one stick and kept the other stick all the way forward, Allepexxis’s course would curve into the direction of the forward-most stick. Although he knew his cockpit was quickly rising and falling by about fifty feet with the Machine’s body as it galloped along, Paress didn’t experience any of that thanks to the inertial dampers and gravity controls. To him, the ride was straight and smooth with only a hint of the full acceleration provided to give him more a sense of travel. His view was similarly locked down, moving at a flat line.

  “Do you want more feedback?” Behlen asked. “Some Space Knights like to feel more of what they’re piloting, while others start to feel sick. You currently are set to get zero vertical feedback and about two percent horizontal feedback to give you a small tug. Casten can adjust that.”

  “Hmm, let’s try ten percent horizontal, and five vertical,” Paress said, pulling out random numbers.

  “Okay,” Casten said and suddenly Paress could feel himself pushed farther back into his seat with the speed. It wasn’t so bad, but the sudden rising and falling, although smooth, made Paress start to feel seasick.

  “Turn off the vertical!” Paress said, and Casten obliged. The up and down motion was gone and Paress could feel his stomach settling down. “Whew.”

  “Believe it or not, there are some Space Knights who have all damping turned off,” Behlen said. “But they’re usually not humans or if they are, they have bodies that are Blessed with extreme toughness or something similar. They need the visceral feedback.”

  “Not me!” Paress gasped and Behlen chuckled. “Casten, take horizontal down to five,” Paress said. Seconds later, Paress didn’t feel pressed back as much into his seat. “I think that’s good.”

  “Your screens can be similarly tuned,” Behlen said. “But I’d advise against it. Even if your body doesn’t feel it, you’ll be surrounded by the visual of rising and falling and your brain will probably translate that into more seasickness.

  “No thanks,” Paress said. “Let’s keep things as-is.”

  “Are you sure?” Casten asked, grinning.

  “Yes!”

  “Okay then…”

  “Now it’s time to make #25 jump,” Behlen said. “Go ahead and lift both sticks slightly.”

  Paress did what he was told, pulling the sticks up while keeping them tilted forward. Allepexxis leapt into the air and came back down, the sticks coming back down into their bottom positions at the same time.

  “The farther you pull the sticks up and the longer you hold them, the higher and longer the jump,” Behlen said.

  Paress experimented with making jumps almost a half mile high and a mile long and tiny little skipping jumps.

  “Just like with forward motion, jumping works the same,” Behlen said. “If you pull one stick up, you’ll jump in that direction.”

  Paress pulled the right stick up and Allepexxis jumped sideways to the right. He wondered if… He pulled the right stick up again and then tried pushing the left stick down. Just as he suspected, the stick did push down, and the opposite motions resulted in Allepexxis doing a clockwise spin in the air.

  “Very good!” Behlen said. “Now, go ahead and try some different stuff with everything you’ve learned so far.”

  Paress put Allepexxis through a series of wild maneuvers including mid air spins, leaping backwards and then taking off at a high speed run. He pushed both sticks forward and when he reached top speed, he did a long high leap, but when he reached the height of the jump, he pulled both sticks back and pushed them down, unsure what would happen.

  Allepexxis should go backwards and down to the ground, right? He was correct as thrusters on the Hyper Battle Machine’s body opened up, forcing the dragon to the ground while going in reverse. After landing, Paress sat there, marveling at the amazing ballet of movements the gigantic Hyper Battle Machine was able to do.

  “Okay, Paress, ready to fly?” Behlen asked.

  “Definitely.”

  “Okay, well, as you’ve probably figured out, flight is controlled by your foot pedals. The foot pedals pretty much do everything the sticks do. They go forward and backwards, go left and right, and lift up and down. To go into flight mode, just push your sticks in toward each other.”

  Paress did and Allepexxis lifted into the air using its repulsor drives. He was surprised at how easily it happened, expecting more drama to get something so big off the ground. Then again, battleships much larger than this easily get into the air, so why not?

  “Now that you’re in flight mode, all the same controls with the sticks as before apply. The difference is that you’ll be flying instead of running. So, do a quick spin to the right, then left, then slowly move forward. #25 moves much faster in the air and you can easily leave our private flight radius if you’re not careful.”

  Paress pushed the right stick forward while pulling the left one back, causing Allepexxis to spin right. Unlike the ground spin speed of 325.4 mph, the air spin was at 503.8 mph. He reversed the sticks and repeated the maneuver in the opposite direction. Then pushed both sticks forward slightly. Allepexxis began slowly moving forward at a speed of 50mph.

  “The sticks will move you on whatever plane #25 is facing,” Behlen said. “So right now, you’re at zero degrees horizontal, so whatever you do with the sticks will move you along that plane. Now if you were to tilt the Machine up at an angle of thirty degrees and push the sticks, you’d move along on that plane. To do that, you lift your foot pedals in a tilt back toward you. Tilting back increases the angle, tilting forward decreases.”

  As Behlen described how to do the maneuvers, Paress moved the foot pedals, his feet held securely by strong magnets in his boots attracted to the metal pedals. Allepexxis duly swooped forwards and up and backwards and down diagonally and then the same in reverse, with Paress throwing in some extra turns and spins along the way. He was really getting the hang of things.

  “To slide left and right in mid air, tilt both sticks in the direction you want to go,” Behlen was saying and Paress tried the maneuver, sending Allepexxis into a strafing motion.

  “If you notice, even if you change the angle of movement, the Machine will still face forward. You’re moving horizontally, but you’re not tilting horizontally. To do that, it’s a similar concept, but this time you’ll slide the pedals toward you on the floor. To tilt down, slide the pedals away. So as with changing the angle, back increases, forward decreases. Of course, if you pull or push all the way, you’ll go into a tumble.”

  As before, Paress experimented with what Behlen told him. He found that if he pulled his feet back toward him while tilting the pedals and pushing the sticks, Allepexxis flew forward on an upward diagonal angle while tilting back to face the sky. He could see how a good pilot would be able to combine all these moves to put his Machine into some incredible maneuvers. He also knew that would take a lot of practice as occasionally he slipped up and accidentally went flying off in a direct
ion or position he hadn’t planned.

  Behlen gave him plenty of time to try out what he wanted, occasionally leaning over to tell Casten something. Casten would nod and do something with his pad offscreen.

  “What if I want to do a barrel roll?” Paress asked.

  “Ah, good question. You’ll notice on your sticks there are two buttons at your thumbs and four along the front of each stick. Press the bottom thumb button. You’ll roll in the direction of the stick whose button you pressed for as long as you hold the button. Also notice that the button has sensitivity so the harder you press down the faster you’ll roll.”

  Paress held in the button on the right stick and Allepexxis slowly rolled right, but as he pressed the button farther in, the roll increased in speed until he was spinning multiple times. He did the same going left and tilted both sticks in the same direction and pulling them back. Allepexxis rolled counterclockwise while sliding left and backward. “This seems like a good way to dodge someone shooting at me,” he said.

  “Good idea,” Behlen said. “There’s an insane amount of maneuvers out there and your homework is to show me ten new ones tomorrow.”

  “Yes sir!”

  “So tell me, if you want to change the angle of your side to side movement, how would you do it?” Behlen asked.

  Paress thought for a moment and then moved his foot pedals sideways along the floor. As he suspected, the Machine’s sideways angle did change and rotated clockwise the farther he pushed the pedals right.

  “Very good,” Behlen said, “you’ve got it. Now, some pilots actually like for the Machine to change the angle opposite to the direction the pedals are going. It all comes down to personal preference. Kinda like the pushing and pulling of the sticks. Some like for it to be opposite. Casten can change any of that to what you prefer. All the controls are customizable and as you get more used to piloting, you and Casten can work together to tweak them to your preference. You can even change the controls to something totally different than what they are now. It’s entirely up to you.”

  “Hmm, yeah, I see,” Paress said, as he tried some different maneuvers. It would take some time to figure out exactly what he wanted.

  “Okay, one last basic control. Changing your altitude going straight up and down. Any ideas?” Behlen smiled intently.

  “Uh…” Paress tried a couple different things, but he couldn’t make Allepexxis simply hover straight up and down. “If I push the sticks together…?”

  “You don’t want to do that unless you want to leave flight mode and go crashing to the ground,” Behlen said causing Paress to almost yank his hands off the sticks. “That said, sometimes you might want to come crashing down on to some poor unsuspecting enemy’s head. But not at the moment.”

  Paress’ eyes scanned the controls and brought up a blank. “I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

  “It’s kind of a trick question,” Behlen admitted. “I’ll give you a hint: on the ground this control did something else.”

  “On the ground…” Paress repeated. That meant it was something with the sticks. What control did he do on the ground that he hadn’t done in the air. His mind ran over everything until… “Ah!” He lifted both sticks and as he did so Allepexxis went straight up. The harder he pulled the sticks, the faster the Machine rose, flying up through the clouds, which Paress was shocked at just how quickly he’d passed. He pushed the sticks straight down and the dragon accelerated straight down. Once again, Paress knew that without the dampers, he’d likely be paste right now. As he got nearer to the ground, he pulled the sticks back up and came to a hover a couple hundred feet off the ground.

  “Excellent! Good job,” Behlen said. “So that’s most of the standard controls. We’ll get into the advanced stuff later. A couple quick extra things here and then we’ll have you shoot some stuff, okay?”

  “Okay!” Paress fairly shouted, already having fun, but overjoyed at the prospect of shooting something.

  “First of all,” Behlen said. “Your controls are all in automatic zeroing mode. What that means is that after you let go of a control, it’ll spring back to neutral. Some pilots prefer the Machine continues the maneuver until they manually counteract it. To take a control out of auto-zeroing, double tap the button under your pinky finger while you’re pushing the control. To go back into auto-zeroing, just double tap again. That works for everything.”

  “Okay, but I think I’m good with auto-zeroing,” Paress said.

  “Yeah, most people are. The second optional item is if you want to lock down a plane of movement. Just like with the controls, #25 will auto correct to a flat horizontal plane parallel to the nearest large surface it’s at, like a planet, moon, asteroid, large station, you get the idea. In space, it will automatically correct to the Universal Horizon.”

  “What’s that?” Paress asked.

  “Ever wonder why all starships always face the right way up when they all carry their own gravity? Why don’t some fly upside down from others for example? Well, all the known civilizations follow the Universal Horizon to keep that from happening. It sounds weird, but it makes things easier when approaching another ship whose intentions may be unclear, docking with various space stations, and other stuff. As long as everyone recognizes and keeps to the Universal Horizon, it keeps things simple.”

  Paress must have had an amazed look on his face because Behlen said, “I know. Like I said, it sounds weird. But space maneuvering mishaps dropped off a lot when the Universal Horizon was established.

  “It probably has something to do with the fact that most creatures exist in a horizontal plane relative to the center of their planet’s gravity mass. Fish float in the sea, but they still follow the rules of being ‘right side-up’. With a very tiny few exceptions, most of the known also races follow the idea of right side-up. You can change your vertical position, but you still are right side-up.

  “So, everybody follows Universal Horizon and stays happy and relatively accident free.”

  “Even the Aldonis?” Paress asked.

  “Heh, surprisingly enough, the Aldonis are who came up with it,” Behlen said with a laugh. “Credit where credit’s due. Now of course, in a battle, anybody can do what they want. Ships like the Sieglinde under Sonni Lansen were really good at taking advantage of ships that only understood Universal Horizon. Sonni was tumbling through space and flying sideways and upside down and all kinds of weird stuff that confused the hell out of most of his enemies…”

  “I know!” Paress said excitedly. “I’m a huge fan of Captain… I mean, Admiral, Sonni!”

  “Good, so you know to do the same thing if it comes to a fight. Fighter and mecha jocks know all this stuff, but a lot of ships still don’t, so you can use that to your advantage. Just remember, though, if it’s not a battle, Universal Horizon. All the way. This is such a major thing that if you come at a potential hostile and you’re not following the ‘Horizon, they’re fully in their right to open fire. No excuses. If you’re damaged, you’d better hope your SOS damage beacon is working because that’s the only thing that’ll save you. And even then, you can’t always trust that’ll work with everybody.”

  “Got it,” Paress said. “Always use Universal Horizon in space.”

  “Exactly. Now, to get back to the controls. As I was saying, your angle will always correct back to the horizon depending on where you are. Notice how after all your maneuvers, #25 always comes back to the same horizontal plane as Elise Empyreah. Well, if you want to turn that off, just double tap the pinky button on your left stick while doing the maneuver. Of course, double tap to reset it.

  “Aside from battles where you’ll want to come at the enemy from confusing angles, you might have to line yourself up with a derelict ship tumbling through space or an asteroid or something similar. Auto correcting to the Universal Horizon would be a pain if you’re trying to board a tumbling, out-of-control starship. So you turn it off and match the tumble with #25, knowing it’ll be safer to board.”

&
nbsp; “I see,” Paress said. “I hope I remember all this, from the piloting to the historic stuff.”

  “Don’t worry,” Behlen said, “As with everything, practice makes perfect, and you’ll have plenty of time to practice.” After leaning over to check something on Casten’s screen, Behlen said, “There’s another automatic setting that’s kind of interesting. Go ahead and lower your Machine’s altitude as far as possible.”

  “Yes sir,” Paress said and pushed the control sticks down in the control he’d learned recently. Allepexxis’ altitude dropped and as the dragon neared the ground, it flattened out its limbs and body as far out as it could to keep from touching the ground. When it got ten feet off the ground, the sticks resisted and a chime sounded.

  “#25 is currently set to automatic ground avoidance,” Behlen said. “Since that’s a safety parameter item, you can change that by tapping your preferences screen on your far right and selecting ‘Ground Avoidance’. Set it to ‘off’ and then I want you to veeeeery slowly descend until you hit the ground.”

  Paress did as he was told and after switching off the ground avoidance feature, pushed the sticks down gently. Warning chimes sounded louder as he got closer to the ground, turning into a solid tone when Allepexxis’ body shook from softly pressing into the ground. Paress quickly stopped.

  “Good,” Behlen said. “And don’t worry, going that slow, you didn’t break anything. #25’s pretty tough— you’d have to travel a lot faster into the ground to hurt it. Go ahead and get your altitude up to about a hundred feet.”

  After Paress did so, raising the Hyper Battle Machine from the ground and into the air, Behlen said, “Now, on your preferences screen, change ‘Ground Avoidance’ to ‘Automatic Ground Mode’. You should be able to figure out what that means since it’s pretty self explanatory.”

  “When I get near the ground, Allepexxis will go back into Ground Mode instead of Flight Mode,” Paress confirmed.

  “How’d you know?” Behlen said with a wink. ‘To make it a little more interesting, go ahead and fly forward slowly while descending. Keep an eye on the Tactical Display on the left— the one where you can see the outline of #25’s body. It updates in real time as to what the Machine’s limbs are doing among other things.”