Over the following weeks, Ning trained with the pilots almost every day.
Dorn started him in the Rank 1 Mecha and moved him into larger machines as soon as he proved he could handle each one.
Within the first week, he was flying Rank 2 models, and by the end of the third, he was being cleared to train in the Rank 3 machines the pilots used for their own exercises.
Each step up brought a heavier, more powerful machine, with more complex controls and greater demands on the pilot, and each one was a new pleasure to learn.
The training was relentless.
There were formation drills, in which Ning flew alongside groups of pilots in tight patterns around the hub, holding his position to within meters while the formations shifted and turned around him.
There were live-fire exercises at ranges set up in the empty space beyond the hub, where pilots fired real weapons at drifting targets and practiced engaging moving objects in open space.
