Within range

                                    

                                              
Shooting range F at the UAF base in Sol's Ward was the most simple one, used for basic soldier training. The weapons of course didn't use live ammo, but sent light signals to the targets and mimicked a recoil. There were still a few old veterans over 50 who claimed that you could never get a true experience from practise weapons, only from "real" guns. They were obviously still using second generation force weapons and never heard of motion feedback.
                          
Haylen, who had only used a second gen force weapon once, knew that the real difference between firing a practise weapon at a marker at the shooting range, and firing a real weapon on the battlefield, was that in the latter case, you're more likely to hit someone.
                          
It was a while since he'd been here last. During his initial soldier training the recruits naturally spent a lot of time here, but once they had moved on to the sim training grounds, visits had been scarce. As he set up targets for himself and Xander, he noticed that the glitch in the upper left segment of the outer circle was still there. An error in the code that noone had noticed until the shooting range was already being built, or was noticed but couldn't be found within reasonable time, or wasn't important enough to waste time and resources on. Like so many other things in the UAF.
                          
Xander showed up a few minutes later than they'd agreed, which apparently was a hundred times more stressing for him than for Haylen.
                          
"I was reading, and I lost track of time, and I hadn't set any reminder or alarm or anything because I thought I'd remember, and..." Xander stopped himself and fidgeted with the spinner ring on his finger. "I'm very sorry."
                          
"Not on a space mission, eh." Haylen handed one of the training guns over to Xander.
                          
"Thanks." Xander turned the gun around a few times. "Do we start right away?"
                          
"Yeah, targets be rigged an' all, so..."
                          
"I'd like to take it apart and put it together again first, if you don't mind? I need to practise that part too."
                          
"Sure."
                          
Xander smiled, a little insecure, but began to disconnect the weapon parts and put them on the table next to the firing line. "How are you?" he asked as he glanced up at Haylen. "I hope you didn't have to spend all your week off in sickbed."
                          
Haylen shook his head. "No, I had time to go to my sis too."
                          
"Oh? Where does she live?"
                          
"M04 on Nineteen."
                          
"Does she work in the mines?"
                          
"Sort of. Engine maintenance, dismantlement, stuff like that."
                          
"I upgraded code for one of the older engine models they use out there, UAV-5."
                          
"Yeah? Helped'er fix one of those when I was there."
                          
"I hope it wasn't anything code related." Xander smiled awkwardly as he started to put the gun back together again.
                          
"No, mechanical."
                          
"Good. Then I still wrote that code. Unless your sister hates it...?"
                          
Haylen smirked a bit. Luka had mentioned the software upgrades at one point, and her exact words had been: "At least it be askin' 'how high' when I tell it to jump, instead of t'rowin' itself out de wrong window wit'out even opening it first". Haylen wasn't sure how well Luka's expressions would go through to someone who didn't know her though.
                          
"She was less angry wit' it."
                          
Xander nodded hesitantly.
                          
"She don' like any software more complicated than a calculator anyway..."