Varga looked at the result for a moment, then at Ning as he climbed out of the pod.
"Good," she said.
That was all, but Ning noticed she wrote something down on her tablet as he passed.
A few weeks later, he was sent back to the facility a third time.
This session was harder than either of the previous two. The simulation placed him in a space battle around an orbital station, where the Mekharans had disguised themselves as damaged human vessels drifting among the station's docking arms.
His sensors were almost useless against them.
The disguises were perfect, their signals indistinguishable from those of the real vessels around them, and several allied units fell in the opening minutes before anyone realized what was happening.
Ning watched the drifting ships for a while before he noticed something.
The real damaged vessels drifted exactly as their damage dictated, spinning slowly and tumbling in the directions their broken engines and torn hulls would have pushed them.
