If this deep dive was anything like the one on the lost hawk, then I had access to all the systems and quickly started feeling around for the sensors where I believed they should have been. It took me a few agonising moments of watching the ship get closer before I found the sensors and managed to access them.

  I smiled to myself seeing the line of engagement appear and suddenly understood my weapons system's range. I turned my attention to accessing those weapons when I felt the weird feeling of them firing, causing my confusion as I hadn’t done that. I watched the missiles fly across space towards the incoming ship, that clearly began to panic and perform evasive manoeuvres as they fired off lasers to protect themselves from my missiles.

  I was enjoying the show and was surprised when a second volley fired from my hull, moments later I realised why, when I saw the enemy ship stop its erratic evasive manoeuvres and began flying towards me again as its lasers scored its first hit on a missile. I mentally glanced at the timer, seeing only a few minutes had passed, and let out a groan.

  ”This is going to be a long engagement, if we don’t destroy their ship.” I mumbled to myself.

  I decided to leave this to whoever had control of the weapons and defences and began expanding my mind to access all the ships systems, wanting complete control of this ship. I quickly managed to get control of many communications and life support, and was currently working on weapons when I saw the enemy ship launch some sort of pod at us.

  Not wanting to find out what it was for I quickly redirected power to a thruster to flip the ship onto its side and fired the lower thrusters knowing they were the most powerful thrusters for evasive manoeuvring as they were designed to slow down the descent of the entire ship's weight when landing.

  I watched the pod fly past, missing by a few miles. I let out a sigh of relief before the thrusters ignited, and it began to turn towards us. Narrowing my eyes, I gritted my teeth, and routed power to the rear thrusters, increasing the ship's speed to avoid the pod's new path. I had kept one eye on the enemy ship and was frowning as it seemed to be having trouble controlling its flight course properly, almost like the pilot didn’t know what they were doing. Frowning slightly, I quickly made sure I had access to the laser defences and turned the ship back towards the enemy ship while making sure that pod that seemed to have a thing for me didn’t manage to reach me.

  I was ready to turn away and accelerate further at any sign of aggression from it, but as it got into laser range and seemed to be still struggling, I decided to go ahead and fired a single laser cutting into its hull near engineering. Moments later the engines shut off and a few moments after that it began broadcasting a surrender signal.

  I smiled to myself and turned the ship so that I could scoop the enemy ship into a hangar bay as I passed the pod, missing its engines with a laser by a couple of hundred feet.

  ”Damn, that little bastard is fast.” I muttered to myself before calling out, “captured enemy ship in hangar bay 7.”

  ”roger, sending marines to capture the prisons!” A voice said from somewhere behind me.

  I nodded to myself, and glanced at the disrupter timer, checking to see how much time I had left before I could warp out of this star system. I turned my attention back to the little pod as I slowly grinned.

  ”Alright, 20 minutes to dance, then this girl has a carriage to catch” I giggled softly as I started getting a proper feel for the new larger body.

  I suddenly rolled the ship as I fired off some thrusters to get it to spin and bare its front side down on the pod’s rear, firing the lasers at it. I felt a slap of annoyance when the lasers missed due to the pilot's slight course changes so he could weave through the lasers.

  ”Damn, this annoying sod is good. I have to give him props, but I’m done playing now.” I growled.

  I winced as I tried to shift the ship like I had moved the drop-ship, but I found the thrusters on this small sect ship just weren't up to the manoeuvres I wanted to perform. The pod had missed crashing into the sect ship by less than a kilometre, and as I moved out of the way, I saw the pod trying to change course into me at the last moments. I breathed out a sigh of relief when I realised it had too much momentum to change course so drastically, and fired off lasers at it.

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  I let out a small cheer when a laser grazed a thruster, killing it, but the pod continued on its chase to land on the sect ship. It caused me to start to wonder, ‘why? Its ship was captured. Why was it trying so hard to latch onto this ship?’ I quickly routed all power to the thrusters to create distance from the pod as I started running through possible reasons.

  “Check the enemy ship for explosives… there has to be a reason this pod is so determined to make contact with our sect ship” I called out.

  I spent what felt like forever waiting for a response to this, only for something to be launched at high speeds out of the hangar bay. My mouth fell open a few moments later when the pod changed course and started chasing whatever it was.

  ”They had a homing beacon onboard to guide the pod. You managed to keep them from meeting… very impressive flying Commander.” Itshu Biyu’s voice said from a foot away from me.

  I slumped in my chair, suddenly feeling like a ton of weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I watched silently as the pod met the beacon and then exploded. I shuddered watching the explosion and knowing undoubtedly that the ship would have been seriously crippled if not outright destroyed.

  A moment later I must have passed some sort of range or barrier because the warp drive suddenly became available for us to use even though there was still plenty of time left on the timer. I mentally rushed to the portal as I turned the ship, I was about to do the math to get us back on course when the navigation course suddenly changed, and I found all I had to do was leap into the portal, a moment later I had.

  I felt the ship sink with me into the grey tube that now surrounded the ship, and marvelled at it as the ship picked up speed. My eyes drifted to the edges of the tube again.

  ”AI, please activate assisted flight and access to the library.” I asked kindly.

  ”Engaging Assisted flight now. Sleep well pilot.”

  I was suddenly sitting at a desk in that large library again and looked down at an open book. I quickly recognised the spot I had left off at and began reading again, wanting to get my cert two before we left warp space.

  I buckled down and read every word carefully trying to burn each word into my memory, as I got closer to the end of the book I caught myself a few times rushing to reach the end before time ran out and had to force myself to slow down and read it carefully. Even when I did reach the end, I felt like there was so much I still didn't understand, the same woman from before appeared and asked if I wanted to take the exam or read it again. I chose to read it again instead of rushing into the exam. She bowed her head slightly and vanished as the book vanished then reappeared in front of me closed. I read through it slowly, making sure to carefully read it, trying to soak up as much as I could. By the time I got to the end of the book, I was ready to bang my head against the wall. I was about to read it again when I thought about having to leave the library soon and return to the deep dive. The next moment, it felt like a jigsaw puzzle piece fell into place and I suddenly understood the entire book. I had been looking at it from the wrong angle, I should have been looking at it from the point of a deep dive perspective. When the woman appeared to ask me the question, I choose to take the exam immediately, hoping I had enough time.

  The book vanished and was replaced with papers and a pencil. The questions were difficult, but I continued to look at them from a deep dive perspective. I slowly began to complete them one after another. However, towards the end, it began to ask questions about battle engagements and what to do with a bridge crew helping. None of which was covered in the book. I slowed a fair bit but fell back on my understanding from the battle I had just survived to help me get through it. When I was finally finished, the papers and pencil vanished a full minute after I placed the pencil down, causing me to panic and think I had screwed it up.

  “Congratulations, you are now a certified Star Ship Pilot grade 2. you are currently unable to begin studying for your grade 3 Star Ship Pilot’s certification. You have not yet met all the prerequisites, first, you must complete your grade 2 certification then you must fly a sect or capital ship in deep dive for 30,000 hours.”

  The woman then gave me a half bow and vanished with the library, causing me to blink as the grey tube appeared around me and the navigational computer was screaming at me to surface immediately. I quickly grabbed hold of the portal and began to pull myself up through it as I pushed the slight panic down.

  I let out a slight, yet still quiet, celebratory ‘yey’ as we surfaced out of subspace and the Lazarus showed up on my sensors. The pilot on their ship was instantly trying to insistently hail me, and I couldn't blame him when I noticed how far into the star system his ship already was. I mentally clicked ‘accept’ and decided to play this as if he were overreacting.

  “Hey, what's got you so nervous, it feels like you're banging on my door.”

  “Nervous! Is your brain shrink-wrapped! You are over half an hour late, not to mention my sensors are picking up a few new stress fractures in your hull. It's almost like you got into a battle and had to perform some manoeuvres that your ship wasn't designed to perform!” he screamed at me.

  “On the bright side, I passed my star ship pilot's second certification while we were in warp.” I said cheerfully, trying to ignore his reply.

  “Oh really, well, I guess congratulations are in order, well done on passing your second pilot's certification.” he said calmly and almost like he meant it before he lost it at me with the same breath. “Is that what you want, you damn shrink-wrapped insane coo-coo clock! You went into fricken battle as a star pilot with a first grade certification! You are insanely lucky to be alive!” I could hear him breathing heavily now.

  “Ah, it was nothing, I thought the pilot of the pod they fired at us was pretty good until we discovered he was using a homing beacon on the captured ship, once we launched that out the hangar bay, the pod went after it like a moth to a flame. That was like twenty odd hours ago, so I'm sure someone has taken the enemy ship's crew, stuck them in a brig and intimidated them until they screamed for their mummas by now.” I replied confidently.

  “You’re insane” came his simple reply.

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