Northfield Proving Ground · Bay 09 · 03:12 local

HN-9Warden

Forty tons. One pilot.

Hangar Nine is recruiting six test pilots for the Warden’s final certification year. It has been asleep since the last shift. Wake it up.

Cold start

Press and hold anywhere — or hold Space — to bring the reactor up.

Move to aim the drone’s searchlightScroll to walk around it

01 — Cold start

Standby to standing weight in 9.2 seconds.

The Warden idles at 0.3% reactor draw — just enough to keep the gyros warm and the coolant moving. What you just did is the fastest cold start of any frame in its class. Every pilot in the program has done it a few hundred times, and every one of them still grins when the lights come on.

T+0.0Ignition. The salt core reaches operating temperature in 3.1 s. You feel it through the seat first.
T+3.4Handshake. Forty-one actuators report in, heel to crown, in 0.6 s.
T+9.2Sync. The harness calibrates to your reflexes — not the other way round.

02.1 Systems · Reactor

A 42-megawatt heart, sealed for life.

A molten-salt core the size of a beer keg sits behind the chest plate. It is sealed at the factory and never opened again. It makes enough power for a small town and enough heat to boil the rain off the armour.

Output: 42 MW cont.
Endurance: 96 h
Failsafe: Passive drain-down

02.2 Systems · Actuators

Forty-one joints that know when you flinch.

Every joint is an electro-hydraulic actuator with its own controller and its own opinion. The knees carry 1,900 kilonewtons at full stride and still correct for a loose paving slab in under a millisecond. You decide where to go. They decide not to fall over.

Joints: 41
Response: 0.8 ms
Knee load: 1,900 kN

02.3 Systems · Armour

Bolted, not welded. On purpose.

Layered ceramic over a titanium lattice, hung in 212 panels. Every one comes off with a single socket size, so a four-person field crew can swap a shoulder in forty minutes — in the rain, at night, with you still in the seat.

Composite: 180 mm
Panels: 212
Field swap: 40 min

02.4 Systems · Hardpoints

The last thing you certify. The least interesting.

A six-barrel rotary on the right shoulder, a twelve-cell pod on the left, and a 2.1-metre forearm shield you will use more than both. Trials fire inert rounds only. Most of your hours go into lifting, bracing and walking — the Warden’s first deployments are disaster response.

Rotary: 30 mm × 6
Pod: 12 cells
Shield: 2.1 m

03 — The numbers the insurers asked about first

0mStanding height, heel to crown
0tMass with a full core — and one pilot
0MWContinuous reactor output
0km/hTop speed on flat ground. Yes, it runs.

04 — The test-pilot program · Cohort 09

Six seats. Twenty-three weeks. One very large first step.

Wk 01–08SimulatorA full-scale motion rig. You will fall over in here so you never do out there.
Wk 09–16TetheredThe Warden on a sixty-tonne gantry harness. Your first real steps, with a safety net the size of a building.
Wk 17–23UntetheredThe proving ground: rubble fields, flooded streets, night work, rain.
Grad.CallsignPainted on a shoulder plate by the crew who kept you upright.

You bring

1,500+ hours rotary or fixed-wing — or five years running heavy plant
Sustained 5 g tolerance and a clean medical
Standing height 1.60–1.93 m. The seat is not adjustable; the pilot is.
Calm. We test for it.

Captain Ines Varga in a grey flight suit, helmet under her arm, in the hangar — Capt. Ines Varga · Pilot 004 · Cohort 03

05 — Applications close 14 November

Your shift
starts at dawn.

Shortlisted candidates spend two days at Northfield: one in the simulator, one in the seat. Nobody arrives with mech experience. Nobody has any.

Begin application Pilot’s brief · PDF 2.4 MB

2,418 applied for Cohort 08 · Six seats · Northfield, Gate C