Chương 90: Vibes Based Warfare

Meno kept his eyes on Morlando, waiting for the punchline that did not come. Classified usually meant government. Government meant military, intelligence, or some group with a fake-boring name and buildings nobody admitted existed. The conversation had gone from strange trillionaire meeting to potentially lethal in three sentences.

"You have to be more specific," Meno said.

"I'm definitely not signing up for something that vague. Important client could mean anything." Morlando leaned back in the sunken seating pit, his cable-rigged jumpsuit loose around his neck.

"Normally, this is where I would have you sign an NDA. This goes beyond that. Anything written down becomes a problem."

"That does not make it sound better."

"Your tasks would be limited to VR," Morlando said.

"The danger is mostly whether your body can take it. If you agree to continue this conversation, you cannot talk about it to anyone." Meno looked toward the door the guards had left through.

"Is it the government?" he asked.

"Military?"

"Neither."

"Are you pretending it's a client so I test stuff for you?" Morlando paused.

"Maybe." Meno laughed once.

"Who in their right mind would agree to this?"

"Probably the kind of person who wants to earn a million credits per successful simulation." Meno almost launched himself out of the seating pit.

"What? That much?"

"Yes," Morlando said.

"But if you want to know more, you have to agree."

"Then I decline." Morlando's mouth stayed open a fraction too long. Meno felt the number in his ribs, stupid and huge, but the shape around it was wrong. A million credits could fix his life. It could fix his mother's life, cushion Lysa if anything happened, buy enough time that streaming stopped feeling like a cliff edge. It could also be bait on a hook tied to people who thought contracts were optional.

"I'm not saying yes to something I know nothing about," Meno said.

"Money is good, but I can make it with my stream." Morlando went very still, all the nervous motion draining out of him at once.

"Okay," he said.

"I didn't want to do it like this." Meno's hand went still around the glass.

"You will get paid," Morlando said.

"But if you don't agree, I freeze your Streamline account under safety review. Smaller platforms and sponsors will not touch you after that. Your streaming career ends before the week does." Heat climbed behind Meno's eyes. This asshole. This rich, twitchy, cable-wearing asshole had flown him across the continent, fed him pizza, complimented his data, then put a hand around the only thing Meno had built before it even cooled. There was no clean way to punch upward from where he sat.

Feltforge could ban him from private platforms, bury him under terms of service, and make every lawsuit cost more than his entire life.

"Wow," Meno said.

"Amazing." Morlando did not look away.

"Are you sure you don't want to call your bodyguards back before I punch you in the face?"

"You are overreacting. All you have to do is climb into a VR capsule occasionally and try to pass a simulation. It will be more intense than usual."

"Why go this far?" Meno asked.

"Can't you hire someone who actually wants to do it?"

"Almost nobody qualifies. From that small pool, most already work for someone else or are watched too closely." Morlando tapped the table.

"We have the edge because Veyrath gave us your data." Meno raised his voice.

"What kind of simulation?" Morlando reached under the small table. A hidden vertical holder rose from the surface. He took out a small high-tech device shaped vaguely like a document stamp, except smooth, black, and unpleasant. The holder slid back down.

"Your left arm." Meno looked from the device to Morlando.

"What the hell is that?"

"We already hacked your phone, but that is insufficient."

"Great sentence."

"This is a subdermal stamp. It imprints beneath your skin, so we can track location and vitals at all times, even where electronics do not work. It is for your own protection." Meno should never have agreed to the meeting. He had expected legal threats, maybe a ban debate, maybe some insane negotiation. He had not expected blackmail and tracking tech. Success had lasted a few hours before someone stronger found a way to take it from him.

"If I refuse?" Morlando did not answer. That told Meno everything he needed to know. Meno pulled up his left sleeve. Morlando pressed the stamp against his forearm. It lit once. Cold pressure touched the skin, then nothing. When Morlando lifted it away, there was no mark. Meno rubbed the spot and felt exactly the same, which somehow made it worse.

"It is an unmanned hypersonic fighter simulation," Morlando said.

"Essentially an advanced drone." Meno waited for the normal part. None arrived.

"You have lost it completely. What do I have to do with any of that? You also said it wasn't military."

"It is not." Morlando tilted his head.

"Do you see the issue?"

"That's all I see."

"We are not developing the craft itself. We are making the control layer. These vehicles move too fast for direct human control. The AI handles execution, but its tactical judgment is poor with our current data." The casual tone made Meno's stomach pull tight.

"It is fast," Morlando said, "but conservative. By the book. It retreats too often, refuses good risks, and when we increase risk tolerance manually, it dies faster."

"I'm lost for words. Did you confuse me with a pilot? Because I assure you, I have never flown anything."

"You are not flying anything directly. You will be in VR. The AI handles mechanical controls through the connection. You are given a scenario. Your job is to come out on top." Morlando's eyes caught pale light behind the AR glasses.

"Then we use your data to shape the AI."

"Is it Solar?"

"No. Much smaller." Morlando stood.

"Enough chatting. Test run." Meno stayed seated for one stubborn second, until the Streamline threat drove itself back into his soul like a nail. He stood and followed Morlando out of the office. The guards tried to fall in behind them, but Morlando waved them off. As they passed Sophie's office, Meno leaned toward the open door.

"Great job, Sophie. Thank you so much." Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Sophie looked up, confused, like someone had stepped on her tail. Morlando glanced back.

"Bit juvenile, are you?"

"Exactly. Totally unfit for any of this. Maybe you should reconsider and do it yourself." They entered the elevator, where Morlando input another code.

"You heard my bodyguard," Morlando said.

"My reaction speed is below average." The doors opened into a sterile corridor of white tiled floors, pale walls, glass panels, and rooms full of lab equipment. An old man and an older woman in lab coats stood before layered screens, both wearing AR glasses and moving their hands through invisible controls. They noticed Morlando and stopped immediately. The man looked around seventy, with barely any hair. The woman looked about sixty and carried herself exactly like Mrs.

Maranda, Meno's old high school math teacher, who had treated incorrect answers like sin. The old man extended a hand.

"Hello, I'm—""No introductions," Morlando said.

"Let's get to the point." Meno shook the man's hand anyway.

"Cool. I'll call you Grandpa and her Teacher." The old man frowned.

"Why does she get to be a teacher while I am just Grandpa?"

"Grandpa is better." He considered it, then nodded once. Somehow, that tiny piece of nonsense made the room feel less deadly as they led Meno deeper into the lab. The largest room held the largest capsule Meno had ever seen. A sleek black shell, three times the size of his X7, with cables running from it into the walls and screens arranged around it like the capsule had its own command center.

"This is a Soma-XUltra," Morlando said.

"One hundred million credits. Not commercially available." Meno's X7 had cost twenty thousand and already felt like a miracle machine. He had no idea what a hundred-million-credit capsule could do, but his body started objecting in advance. Morlando turned to Grandpa.

"Alpha-1 simulation." Grandpa looked distraught.

"I must advise against that. He has never done this. He needs acclimation and gradual onboarding."

"Alpha-1." Meno took one look at Grandpa's face and decided he preferred not knowing. Teacher pointed toward a cable-lined jumpsuit similar to Morlando's.

"Remove everything and put that on." Meno waited for privacy that never arrived, and his dignity took a debuff.

"Great," he said. The suit hung loose at first, but Teacher pressed a control and it tightened around him, shaping itself to his frame before she opened the capsule and revealed the thick gray liquid inside. Meno pointed at it.

"Why is it full of suspicious soup?" Grandpa handed him a sleek flexible mask that covered his face and ears, with two cables hanging from each side.

"Breathe normally."

"I was planning to evolve gills." Nobody laughed. Meno climbed in, and the liquid received him with the warm, dense resistance of mud. It hugged his limbs and slowed every movement while cables from his suit were plugged into slots around the capsule. Then the mask sealed around his mouth and nose, and Meno felt less like a player than equipment being prepared for use.

The lid closed, darkness swallowed him, and he floated there seriously reviewing the life choices that had led from unemployed failed streamer to whatever this was. Morlando's voice came through the mask.

"Okay. Get ready. Instead of explaining how it works, we want you to figure it out yourself. You are not expected to succeed."

"That's inspiring."

"Once the simulation starts, we can no longer communicate. The capsule compresses your time perception. Every hour inside is ten minutes outside." Meno tested the mask pickup.

"And how long am I expected to do this?"

"Once your signals flash red, we pull you out."

"Maybe try yellow?" Morlando ignored him. Grandpa's voice came faintly through the line.

"Shouldn't we explain the basics? Based on his file, he has zero experience. We are wasting time."

"Are you saying your time is worth more than mine?" Morlando asked.

"Obviously not, sir."

"Good. Boot it up." The capsule came online. At home, logging in felt like slipping under water. This felt like electricity entering every nerve and waking them with a shout. Meno's skin tingled. His heartbeat sharpened. The lingering exhaustion from the raid cleared too fast, stripped away by a machine that did not ask permission. He could feel too much of himself: every fingertip, every strand of hair, the pressure of the mask, his lungs expanding, even the ugly awareness of organs doing their jobs in the dark.

Then his mind sped up, and the world became flight. He was not in a human body. He was a sleek black fighter jet about the size of a car, cutting through open sky. He saw himself from outside and inside at once, sensors giving him every direction his craft could perceive, not through eyes but through a constant field of position, heat, pressure, distance, and motion. There was no UI.

Functions sat at the edges of his mind instead: throttle, vector burn, lift surfaces, brake flare, heat tolerance, energy weapon, countermeasure pulse. He felt them rather than read them, which did not help much because he understood almost none of it. He was moving fast, and when he focused on speed, the craft answered. Mach 3. Meno held onto the word until the onboard AI fed him meaning through impression instead of speech. Three times the speed of sound. Low altitude envelope max: Mach 3.

Middle altitude envelope max: Mach 6. High altitude envelope max: Mach 9. Meno had no real sense of what any of that meant. He understood action speed and dodge windows. Mach was a rude number for people with degrees. He tested movement. A sideways turn dragged if he pulled too much, while nose up cut sharper but sent pressure rising through the craft. Nose down resisted him at first, then speed tried to run away. He climbed, and the sky darkened as the craft entered the middle envelope.

Mach 6 did not feel twice as fast. It felt like someone had replaced speed with a weapon. The smallest adjustment carried too far, and every turn had a cost. Too much angle bled control, but too little meant sliding past his target like a missed jump that lasted an entire country. Meno climbed again, into a sky that turned deep blue, almost black. High envelope. He pushed toward Mach 9, and the craft became a needle thrown at the horizon.

Pressure built in his mind as the sensors overloaded his normal sense of distance. Course changes had to be tiny. At that speed, a thought with too much angle became a death sentence, so Meno lowered the speed and descended before the machine, his brain, or both decided to explode. Mach 3 felt reasonable after that. He started playing: sharp turn, shallow turn, pull up, hard brake, small brake, burn forward, flip, spin. The speed was intoxicating. False Wings, but with no legs.

Chain Torpedo, but the whole body was the torpedo. A full burn was a kick, a brake flare was planting a foot, and a vector flip was twisting midair before the next platform. The more he imagined Veyrath movement, the smoother it became. High-speed flight stopped being a pilot thing and became spacing, and he had no idea how long he practiced before warnings flashed through his mind. Three targets in pursuit. Eliminate.

Meno looked back, which remained deeply uncomfortable because looking back meant thinking through sensors pointed in every direction at once. Three similar black jets chased him in a loose triangle, far enough apart to avoid colliding but close enough to box him in. Meno focused on weapons and found disappointment waiting. No missiles. Only low-range energy cutters.

"Well," Meno said inside the sim, though he had no mouth.

"I preferred melee anyway." The enemy jets fired first, launching three missiles while the onboard AI pushed a recommended evasion pattern into his mind. Climb, flare, countermeasure, disengage. Boring. Meno cut his engine, and the AI panicked through warning impulses. Stall risk. Loss of energy. Missile closure. Reignite.

"Shut up," Meno thought.

"You're annoying." The missiles closed fast. Meno waited until the range felt wrong in his bones, then burned forward for one second, cut again, flipped nose-over-tail, and blasted upward at a diagonal. The missiles ripped through the space he had just vacated, overshot, and widened into turning arcs to reacquire. He had not dodged them. He had borrowed them. Meno angled toward the leftmost enemy. It came in for an energy-weapon pass, confident that Meno's low-energy stall had made him easy.

Meno lifted his nose, cut thrust again, and let the craft slide forward ugly and unstable as warnings hammered through his mind. Structural stress. Airflow failure. Stall risk. The bait held. The enemy committed to the flyby. Meno fired a full vertical vector burn at the last second, snapping his craft upward. The enemy tried to pull up under him and flew straight through his engine wash. Heat and pressure slammed into its skin, its control line buckled, and Meno raked the energy cutter downward as he rose.

The jet caught fire and broke apart. One down. The other two split wider, while the three missiles turned back behind him. Meno climbed hard toward the high envelope and dragged everything upward with him. The craft shook like it wanted to scatter itself across the sky. The AI hated the angle, hated the heat, hated him personally. At the edge of high altitude, Meno cut thrust and flipped inverted, spending one strange fraction of a second horizontal, upside down, and falling backward through his own path.

Then he pushed acceleration to max and dove. The returning missiles tried to follow, but they were too sluggish. Meno barely slipped around their noses and dragged them across his wake toward the right-side enemy. It reacted better than the first, breaking off instead of challenging the pass, pulling away from Meno's attack line. Smart. Too smart for its own missiles. Meno kept descending, turning only enough to keep the enemy between him and the incoming weapons.

The enemy jet saw the trap late and tried to roll out, but the missiles had a wider turning path and less discretion. Two missiles hit it from behind, and the target vanished in a white flash. Meno dropped to the middle envelope and slowed to Mach 6, then Mach 5. The last enemy had overshot during the vertical chaos and now curved back into pursuit. It moved with more caution than the others, staying above and behind, preserving a tail position while refusing the obvious bait. Good.

Meno turned into a wide circle, and the enemy mirrored him. They carved a huge spiral through the sky, neither closing enough for the energy cutter, both trying to force the other into a worse angle. At Mach 6, every adjustment took space. At Mach 4, the circle tightened. At Mach 3, Meno could feel the other craft preparing to dive. He slowed to Mach 2, and the enemy came in hot from above, cautious but hungry.

Meno pulled vertical, burned hard, and spun until his path stacked over the enemy's like a sandwich layer. The move would have been stupid as a plane. As Veyrath movement, it was a False Wings kick into an overhead torso twist, turning a dodge into an attack line. He did not try to outfly the enemy. He let it pass where it wanted to pass, then burned sideways just enough to bring his nose around as the AI snapped the energy cutter into range. The shot lasted less than a second. The final enemy split in half.

Meno coasted through the debris trail.

"Okay," he said to nobody.

"That wasn't that hard." He still had no idea what he was doing. It was all vibes, movement, spacing, and treating a hypersonic craft like an angry body in a boss room. It had to be the tutorial simulation. The enemies only had one missile each. If they had more, the whole thing would have been more annoying. The simulation began to fade, and Meno felt disappointed. He wanted to fly longer.

He wanted to learn the turns properly, test the high envelope without panic, figure out whether engine wash counted as a repeatable kill condition. Fast 3D movement had always been fun, and this was the most illegal version imaginable. The capsule opened. Hands pulled him out of the gray liquid and removed the mask. Meno coughed once, blinked lab light out of his eyes, and sat up inside the open Soma-XUltra.

"Nice tutorial." He looked around. Morlando, Grandpa, and Teacher all stared at him with ashen faces. Morlando's mouth opened, then closed.

"That," he said, "was not a tutorial."