Vampire was feeling good as the sim started and his reflective-armored troops moved in. However, to his horror, they were quite easily dispatched by the enemy ship. Shrapnel filled the holovision image almost completely, and then, the screen went black.
He looked around the room in shock, and found that many other screens were going dark too, one after another. Only one soldier, a guy who acted like he'd have a big, brutish body if he hadn't been standardized, was standing up and grinning as he "yessed" and pumped his fists around. Vampire could see that his technique wasn't scientifically advanced at all. He'd simply armored up his troops to the point that they seemed as big as cargo-bots, with 10-foot-thick armor and massive energy cannons. Their brute-force power let them go ahead and get blasted (without being destroyed) as they moved in, concentrating their fire on one part of the enemy ship. A few minutes later, the sim registered that they'd holed the ship's hull, and nasty-looking aliens much like oversized leeches were sucked out into space along with the ship's oxygen and what appeared to be a copious amount of brackish water.
Soon enough, the trainer addressed the group.
"A few of you thought that you could simply reflect the enemy's blasts back at them," he said with some disappointment. "I have to wonder, if it was that easy to defeat blaster fire, do you think that we wouldn't all have mirror housing just for our daily lives? Your Physics Modules must be faulty; you will be reporting to Maintenance after I am done speaking."
"Anyway, that doesn't work for a few reasons. The biggest one is that reflection of this sort only even has a chance of working against light energy, like lasers. But only backwards enemies are still using lasers - not ones who could build a ship like that. Most will be using things like directed fusion energy or charged particle beams, both of which can melt reflective material, scorch it so that it's no longer reflective...and usually, both. But even if they did use lasers, such shielding would fail surprisingly quickly, especially in a battle situation. That's because minute imperfections in the backing of a reflective surface will still collect heat, and once hot enough, the material melts. Then the laser can destroy whatever's behind it."
"Now. We have only one winner this time: BigWing, who used troops built up with many, many extra layers of our standard armor to clear his way. He gets a Cube of Supreme. However, he was not the winner of the prior competition. That means that there will be yet another test before we choose which ones of you will be joining the War Engineering Division, and which ones will be part of the general engineer corps."
Despite the similarity of the names, there was a big difference between war engineering and the general type. Most of the regular engineers were stuck doing things like figuring out the details of replacing planetary panels, devising plans for digging fortifications on hostile planets, and other relatively (or very) boring stuff.
Vampire wondered how else he could have thwarted the enemy attack. If he'd been a native Cybertronian, and heard stories of things like how Masher of the IOPC had set up converter systems to turn enemy attacks into electricity or charged-up Energon, he would have had a big advantage due to that clue as to what to do. Alas, he was a foreigner after all, and his culture hadn't regaled him with this and similar tales all his growing-up years. At least, he thought to himself, only one person had managed to breach the sim-ship's hull, and it wasn't even with fancy engineering.
Later, he would learn that many others thought of the energy-conversion method told about in the movies and local legends, but they had been held up by the need to get the design done, components built, and the system deployed quickly. All of their plans had been calculated to take too long, making their forces unready when the computer signaled battle time.
~~~~~~~~~~
After another week, Vampire was ordered to appear at a huge, lab-like room. Before that, he had reported to Maintenance, but there was nothing wrong with his Physics Module.
In the new room, he and 99 others would face another qualification test, this one meant to replace the one that most of them hadn't passed.
"A tough test is one thing," a new trainer said, "but when it's so tough that only one person passes, it is too limiting to actually be useful. Today, we will be doing something that every Decepticon should have some idea about: Raiding an oil field until there's nothing left but water. The difficulty is that this field is on a planet that is mostly water. In this scenario, you'll need to conquer a salty ocean 50,000 feet deep. Standard Decepticon rigging is not meant to handle nearly that much saltwater, so you'll have to modify it. Your modifications, and how well they work, are what will be graded."
"Oh, I also must mention that there are hostile, sea-dwelling aliens who will be trying to interfere with the raid. Therefore, your designs should also be tamper-proof."
Unlike the prior test, these designs were to be physically made. Many types of parts were already present, and if others were needed, the test-takers could ask the trainer to have them brought in. Apparently, they would be testing their apparatuses on some actual other planet! Many engines revved slightly with excitement at this realization, though all hoped that the other planet wouldn't actually be hostile.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Warrior's group had no trouble blowing up the incoming missile salvo before it got close enough to them to do any damage, and to his surprise, there were no groups of soldiers that approached on the ground. However, he saw a single man in standard white Arabic robes making his way across the desert, using a walking stick to help keep himself from falling in the shifting sand. He seemed to be rather barrel-chested, which didn't match the thinness of the hand holding the stick or the bony ankles showing above his sandals.
This man saw Warrior and started to walk straight to him, only perspiring slightly in the microwave-level desert heat.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
DeathStrike's next test was the toughest of all. He was not to delete or kidnap a particular human, but instead, infiltrate a highly-secure area.
"In this scenario, ForIntel and MilIntel have failed to replace the key man for our enemy's nuclear SAM system. This enemy has over a million of these SAMs, primed and ready to meet our front lines when we dare to get within range. All of them are currently in hidden underground silos, so many of us would only see them after they were launched. It would not only be a giant aggravation for us and cost us many bodies, but the fallout from these things would make the entire area unsuitable for slave labor for the next 100 years or more," DeathStrike's assigning officer said, setting the scene.
"Your mission is to infiltrate the main control room for this system and sabotage the system so that the missiles cannot be deployed. Preferably, you won't get caught before you accomplish this, or else someone may activate the missiles before you can stop him. Even more preferably, you'll use a method that cannot be reversed even if it is later discovered. Once you get the system permanently offline, you can sneak away. Try to resist the urge to stand and gloat once you figure you've nailed it. Sometimes, all it takes to make difference between 'permanent damage' and 'a temporary delay' is a strong desire to make a boasting enemy shut up. We Decepticons are known for 'rubbing our enemies' faces in it,' but in Intelligence, that is often discouraged for the sake of a mission's success - at least, until the High Command signals that the mission no longer needs to be classified."
