What Do You Mean I'm The Captain Of A Yandere Mercenary Company?

Chapter 808: Exclusive Testing

I strapped myself into the pilot seat as the machine powered up.

The screens then booted up, including two screens that showed the faces of the researcher and the engineer that I had spoken to earlier.

”Miss Tera! Is everything working well?” Rosalia asked, her bunny ears twitching in anticipation.

I blinked, ”Err... I mean... I only just started up the Exo-Knight... But if you really want me to say it... Everything looks ok so far?”

”Miss Tera! What about the energy levels?! How is the generator doing?!” Friederike asked, leaning forward like she was about to ram me with those ram horns of hers.

I shifted my gaze towards her, ”Well... Like I said... I only just started the machine but... I guess the screens all show that the machine is functioning well within proper parameters?”

Both of them nodded seriously like I just told them something revolutionary.

Seriously, are you two alright?

Please don’t drag me into your personal company drama ok? I’m just here to do this job and fuck off from here...

I received another call and this time it was from Gary, his face appearing on a screen above the two girls.

”Tera... I just got a message telling me that you will be answering to the Head Researcher and Head Engineer directly so your assignment will come from them. Good luck.”

He didn’t even wait for my reply before he cut the call, leaving me with the two girls still watching me intently.

Why does it feel like he was running away?

Well... Alright then... I kind of figured that when they called me up in the Exo-Knight anyway...

Rosalia then started fiddling with her personal terminal before nodding at me, ”Miss Tera... Since this is a completely new machine, we would be doing some stress tests on it to see its performance. Once you’re ready, please detach yourself from the maintenance bay and head outside the station.”

I cleared my throat, ”Ahem... Before we start, could I just ask a question?”

”Of course!” Both of them nodded at the same time.

”Why me?” I asked simply. ”I mean... If you want the best pilot, Yumiko is clearly the better one if it’s between the both of us... So why are you picking the second best instead of the best?”

”Ahahaha~ That’s easy,” Rosalia laughed heartily. ”That’s because your piloting style is different from others! Even if we look at Miss Yumiko’s performance, it already falls in line with what might be expected from pilots at her skill level.”

”Are you telling me... I’m here because I’m outside of the bellcurve?” I asked.

”In a way... Kind of?”

Huh... Good to know...

I took a hold of the controls and detached the Exo-Knight from the maintenance bay before I moved the Exo-Knight to the edge of the hangar.

I sucked in a breath before I pushed the throttle forward, making the Exo-Knight jump out of the hangar and into open space.

Engaging the thrusters, I pushed the machine forward and boosted towards the first location that was sent to my map as my rendezvous point.

I realised I was not alone this time as there was a C Class Medium Freighter floating there.

Checking the map, the ship was shown to be a friendly and the scanners showed that the ship belonged to the company so it must be related to why I’m here.

Sure enough, Rosalia spoke up when she looked up from her personal terminal.

”Ah! It seems like you’ve reached the starting point, Miss Tera! We can start the test then!”

I cleared my throat, ”Ahem... I think it would be better if I was actually told what I’m doing here.”

Friederike snorted, ”Hmph. That’s right you stupid rabbit. You need to tell our test pilots what the objectives are or they wouldn’t even know what you’re testing for.”

The rabbit girl scowled at her goat girl colleague, ”I was getting to that, if you would just shut your mouth for five seconds.”

Rosalia then turned to me, ”Ahem... As I was saying, Miss Tera... We will be starting the test here... As you might have realised, the Exo-Knight you are piloting is armed this time as we figured seeing it being piloted in a more practical setting would give us more reliable results as well.”

”At least this is one thing that I can agree with you on,” Friederike muttered offhandedly.

Rosalia ignored her and continued, ”The ship you see with you will be launching drones that will attempt to impede you during the test. For now, I want you to try and complete a flight course while a few drones attempt to shoot at you with practice lasers.”

Hmm... So basically this is going to be an obstacle course with some enemies shooting at you periodically... I can deal with that.

I nodded, ”Got it. Send me the map data and let me know when to start.”

Friederike tapped on her personal terminal and my map gave out a notification beep before it showed several waypoints that I would need to pass through. The first of the way points appeared directly in front of me as a glowing circular gate.

Two triangular shaped drones then flew out from the freighter and hovered nearby, watching me.

”You can start whenever you are ready, Miss Tera,” The goat girl informed me.

I took a moment to study the map before nodding at them, showing that I was ready.

Right after that, I pushed the throttles forward, accelerating the Exo-Knight through the ’gate’.

The two indicators on my map that marked the drones quickly turned red as they flew after me from behind.

They immediately fired two lasers aimed at my back as I flew towards the next gate in front of me.

I pulled at the thrusters, engaging them to send the Exo-Knight into a side roll to avoid the two energy beams that came streaking past me while still maintaining my flight path.

I kept the screen that showed my back at the edge of my vision as I pushed the throttle forward again, boosting me towards my next checkpoint.

As I got close to the next ’gate’ the two drones fired again, still aiming for my back.

Instead of rolling, I pulled back on the thrusters to slow myself down, letting the energy beams pass in front of me while I executed a turn, letting the momentum carry me through the gate as I rotated myself to face the direction of the next checkpoint.

The moment I passed through it, I engaged the thrusters once more and boosted away, flying past the drones as I sped towards the next checkpoint.

That was when another red dot appeared on my map and I realised they launched another drone to chase after me.

I’m going to assume that they would just keep adding another drone as I passed through more checkpoints at this rate.

That means I really have to speed this up if I didn’t want a whole swarm of them chasing after me...

I pushed the thrusters to their limits as I boosted the Exo-Knight forward, accelerating myself towards the third checkpoint.

I then saw a flash of light from the corner of my eye and immediately initiated a barrel roll manoeuvre, the laser piercing through the space that I would have been if I had flown straight.

The first two drones then caught up with me, both of them firing their lasers one after the other.

I pushed at the throttle stick, changing the direction of my travel for a moment to avoid the first laser before I shifted myself back on the path to avoid the second laser.

I wondered if I was allowed to use the shield that was strapped to the Exo-Knight’s arm to block the lasers but since I could still avoid them for now, I decided not to.

The drones tried to shoot at me again as I got close to the third checkpoint but I was already used to their pattern by now and avoided their shots pretty easily, the Exo-Knight dashing through the ’gate’ before I turned towards the fourth checkpoint.

Unsurprisingly, that caused another drone to be launched from the freighter and it tried to intercept me on my way to the next checkpoint.

I altered my path as I baited its laser out from it before I corrected my flight path to completely avoid it.

At the same time, the other three drones also shot their own lasers at me and I pushed the throttle to the side to initiate an emergency spin, killing my momentum and pushing the Exo-Knight off course before the beams converged at where I was just a second ago.

I then flipped back around and dove straight through the last checkpoint, completely untouched.

The red dots on my map also changed back to blue as the drones stopped targeting me and returned to the freighter.

I then turned my attention to the two girls that were my audience and...

”Wahhhh!! Look, look!!! Look at all this data!! Are you even seeing this you stupid rabbit?!!”

”It’s you who should be seeing this!! Look at the performance!! It blows anything we expected off the charts!!”

”You know nothing about what you’re even looking at!!”

”No, you are the one who is clueless!!”

”Why don’t you come over here and say it to my face?!”

”You wanna fight, bitch?!! I’ll go over there right now and beat your ass!!”

”Oh please, you’re not going to do anything.”

”You wanna bet?!”

Erm... Hello? I’m still here, you know?