by Aer-ki Jyr
Her team had eventually come up with the tactic of saturating low orbit with thousands of small armed satellites over the target zone…which thanks to the mechanics of this challenge could be accomplished by placing them in the appropriate orbital positions at the beginning of the simulation instead of having to deploy them around the entire planet. It was a bit of a cheat, but Morgan and the others knew that passing and moving on to the next challenge was the bottom line, so they’d pulled out all the stops and threw everything they had at the endeavor.
Using missiles to track and down the blockade runner had been their first tactic, but the gaps between satellites had been too large and the speed of the fleeing ship nullified most of the missiles’ usefulness unless they were pre-fired towards an estimated intercept point…which had been their second idea.
After days of repeated failure Morgan had insisted that they try long range lasers and ‘sting it to death’ with the low powered weapons. After working on the firing program and filling the area with as many satellites as the simulation would allow, which pegged out at 5,643, they ran through the first simulation, watching as the satellites auto-fired on the target with no manual input or flying required.
The blockade runner flew through the satellite field and escaped in short order, taking a few hits in the process. Morgan and the others ran it again and again, making alterations in the distribution pattern of the satellites and tweaking their designs until, on the 36th attempt, their defense grid succeeded in getting a lucky hit on the aft end of the cockpit that triggered a small internal explosion which destabilized the thrust and sent the blockade runner spinning about erratically…granting them a ‘win’ on the scenario.
Their points score was extremely low, as were those of all the teams save for the 2s, who had succeeded in snatching the overall team lead by tripling the 7s’ score and besting the 6s’ by a factor of 5. They had, not unexpectedly, been mum as to how they had achieved such a high score and moved on to the second team challenge, and then the third while the others struggled just to pass the first.
As of now, there were four available team naval challenges, all of which the 2s had passed, and while they waited for the trainers to release the 5th they were wisely using the spare time to go back and try to scrape up additional points on the completed challenges that allowed for multiple retries, some of which were more than a year old.
Morgan envied their success, which she had heard was due in no small part to Paul, who had been besting everyone in the individual naval challenges, save for the gunnery drills, which Morgan was using to negate some of the points bleeding. He had risen from 10th to 4th in the individual ranks in less than a month, and even as everyone else began to get accustomed to the space warfare simulations, Paul still maintained a considerable skill gap on everyone else, which was more than compensating for his lack of swimming skills.
That meant trouble for Morgan, though she still maintained a sizeable points lead, because the naval challenges would take up a significant portion of the run-up to their final stage of training, which was due to start in a couple months if their current progression held, though with the setbacks everyone but the 2s had been experiencing, that timetable might get delayed.
They were still going through a myriad of other challenges simultaneously, but if Paul’s and the 2s’ dominance in the naval disciplines held up, they’d run away with the team title and he might even knock her off the individual lead…which meant she had to buckle down and grab as many points as she could in his weak areas, or in this case his slightly weaker gunnery skills.
Paul’s laser scores were currently lower than Morgan’s by about 11% and he was currently working on the small missile challenge, which they’d dubbed as ‘intercepts’ for the little spitballs’ ability to track and take down larger, slower moving missiles. Her score there had been average, and she didn’t think he’d be able to easily beat it, but she was planning on going back to it and the others later if need be to scrape up some more points.
Right now she was ahead of him in the individual challenge cycle, progressing through simulations that he hadn’t worked up to yet or had chosen not to tackle at this stage. Each of the trainees were on their own personal schedule, but Morgan had made a point out of getting ahead of the others so she could take the time if need be and double back to try and raise her old scores, much as the 2s were doing now as a team.
Then again, if she scored extremely high the first time through she wouldn’t have to go back again, which was why she was hammering this particular challenge. Though there was no clock to go by, she could feel her targeting mojo flowing and tried to dive into it as much as possible. She was so focused and, to be honest, slightly numb from the constant targeting, that she didn’t even realize when she’d finished and visibly shook when the targets suddenly disappeared and her stats popped into view.
It took her a good three seconds to realize what was going on, then smiled slightly when she noticed her time was 19:47…the best to date by any of the trainees, and a score that she doubted Paul would even come close to.
Morgan rubbed her eyes as she assessed her current condition. She wasn’t brain fried yet, but her hands were a little numb from gripping the controls with such intensity. She pulled up her watch in front of her face so she could see in the dim light, confirming that she had time for another two runs.
Taking a slow, calming breath, Morgan reset the terminal and readied herself to jump back into the targeting frenzy. If she was going to earn top honors then she needed to stick it to Paul as much as she could, and that meant getting back into the zone before she lost the mojo so, bleary eyed or not, it was time to keep cracking.
She restarted the program and picked up from where she had left off, nailing the first dozen targets quicker than she had the previous time, she thought. There was something to be said for not taking breaks during training, because the body and mind adapted to the task at hand, whatever that may be, and right now it seemed she was adjusting into a rail gun zombie…which was exactly what she needed if she was going to improve over her last score.
Power-napping worked wonders for recovery, but it also would take one out of the zone, which was why Morgan rarely rested during the day and forced herself to stay active until the evening, while most of the others would catch a quick nap during lunch or in between sessions if they finished early. It had been painful for her at first, but she believed that it now gave her a wiry edge to her focus, emotions, and senses as well as an increased ability to delay fatigue when it arose that the other trainees lacked.
That was one insight that she had kept to herself, and no one else had appeared to take notice of her mildly atypical behavior, which was fortunate. If she wanted to be the best of the best…which she very much did…then she was going to need to use every trick in the book to stay ahead of her fellow trainees, for they were truly beasts, in every aspect of the word. Morgan didn’t have a single top score in any of the subcategories, with her best being a 7th in agility drills.
No matter how proficient she got in one area, there was always a dozen or so trainees that would best her, even though she tried diligently to outwork them, though not always succeeding, but even when she did it was never enough. They were too good in their specialties for her to match, but she never completely gave up trying.
The single most important reason she was leading in the overall points race wasn’t that she came into the training with a load of skills, but that she learned and adapted faster than the others. Second most important was the fact that she didn’t appear to have any weak areas, unlike Paul who had swimming as his Achilles heel. Most of the others had at least a couple areas where their scores dipped significantly, but Morgan didn’t, due in part to the fact that she worked hard on every new discipline until she mastered it. Passing a challenge wasn’t enough for her…she felt that she had to conquer each one to the point where she became confident and comfortable in her skills.
Morgan was neari
ng that point now with the rail gun challenge, though to attain true confidence she needed to be able to pass the par time repeatedly and not just get by it once or twice out of sheer luck. Though she didn’t know it, she did rank first in another stat…that being number of individual challenge attempts. She was running a good 30% higher than the others because no matter what was thrown out before her, she obsessively had to beat it, learn from it, and then own it.
When she eventually ran out of time for this individual challenge session, she left the simulator room bleary eyed enroute to the training parks and another team challenge in the jungle zone. By the time she got to the equipment room she’d shaken off the screen-staring haze and was ready to have at the turret-laden gauntlet run, completely focused on the challenge at hand and not the 36 seconds she’d shaved off her rail gun challenge.
Dwelling on the past was something Morgan didn’t indulge in, and celebration had always seemed to fall into that category for her. She preferred to live in the moment, with an eye towards the future and the challenges that lay beyond…always in motion and never stagnant.
With paintball rifle in hand and personal shield slung over her back, Morgan and the rest of the 6s headed off down the connecting tunnel towards the jungle park and the dense foliage that easily hid the annoying turrets, setting her mind to the task of getting past them to the end of the course, scoring more points for both herself and her team.
7
Paul took a seat in one of the desk-like simulator pods, sealed the hatch behind him, and brought up individual challenge F-5C. The lighting turned dim and the wide screen in front of him displayed a large space station similar to those currently used by Star Force, but one much more compact with the rotating disc plate nearly obscured beneath blocky add-ons, most of which were covered with thick armor plates.
It was a defense station…and Paul’s mission was to destroy it as efficiently as possible given unlimited resources. On a popup menu at the bottom of his screen was a choice of different ships, weapons, and fighters he could select for his attacking fleet, but he ignored them all and studied the station closely. The key, he knew, was in identifying the defensive capabilities and tailoring his forces to exploit its weaknesses.
He smiled approvingly as he noticed several upgrades to the trainers’ designs. Placed on multiple corners of the blocky double-pyramid shaped structure were weapons pods…two heavy lasers coupled with a light chain gun for point defense.
A week ago Paul had passed another individual challenge in which he had to design a small station to defend against incoming missile attack, and that triple weapon pod had been part of his solution. Now it seemed the trainers were going to use his own adaptations against him. He felt a bit of sarcastic pride at having taught them so well.
He rotated the camera view around the station, identifying more weapons emplacements. The designers had gone to excessive lengths to make this a difficult target to take down, equipping it with not one, but two heavy rail guns which would knock a hole in any capital ships that Paul chose to deploy. Furthermore, the defense station had enough medium rail gun batteries and quad laser turrets peppering the hull to rack up heavy damage against any large scale attacking force.
They’d even covered against a drone attack by placing point defense light lasers and missile intercept clusters at strategic positions around the station to avoid any blind spots that the tiny, remote-controlled weapons platforms could hide in. He’d heard that some of the 3s had wreaked havoc with the little devices in the second team challenge when the trainees had been tasked to hijack an armed convoy. They’d successfully chewed away at the escort vessels with their small lasers from blind spots in the ships’ firing zones, and based off this station’s defensive schematic, the design team had guarded themselves against that tactic being employed again.
Paul pulled up an interior schematic of the station from available blueprints and noted the 5m thick armor plating covering vital areas. The thinnest armor he could find was just under .6m thick, covering the connective ‘tissue’ between the thicker plates which extended up past some of the intersections like fort ramparts. All in all, the trainers had designed a tough nut to crack this time, and Paul knew that any assault force he assembled would take heavy losses when he assaulted the station.
Fortunately he had another option, and he bypassed the preprogrammed ship designs and went to the customization screen. The program was familiar to him by now, and it didn’t take him long to design a new variant of ship. He ordered up only a single unit, placed it at a considerable distance from the station, then began the challenge.
The ‘Admiralty’ controls, as he liked to think of them, popped on screen around the edges in addition to a selection arrow similar to those used in popular RTS video games. Using the rolling ball on his control board, he highlighted his single large warship and input a flight path directly for the station and kicked in the engines at maximum power.
The heavy ship didn’t accelerate very fast, but Paul had included ample fuel reserves in the design, so he sat back and waited while it gradually picked up speed relative to the station. As it did he played with the targeting program and tried to get a lock on the station, but it was too far away for his zoom function to target, plus it was bouncing around a bit from the engine thrust.
Gradually the image enlarged and Paul guessed he could have tried for a lucky long shot with the medium rail guns he had attached to the centerline of the warship, encapsulated in an armored cone three meters thick, which was part of the reason why the ship wasn’t accelerating very fast. It was heavier than any of the standard designs, but only protected on the prow, with no armor on the sides, making it a very badly designed warship…or so the trainers probably thought.
Time to teach them another lesson in the art of space warfare.
When the ship’s fuel load finally burnt out the jiggling of the targeting reticule stopped as well. Paul used the ship’s thrusters to make a minor course adjustment, then targeted the station with the medium rail guns and fired off the full 20-round magazine one at a time towards the station with precisely aimed shots while he was still out of weapons range.
Mathematically speaking, he knew that the ship’s momentum would add to the muzzle velocity of the metallic slugs being fired, giving them more kinetic force upon impact, but also reducing the time to target and thus the amount of drift possible during transit…which meant slightly improved accuracy. After the ship’s entire arsenal was depleted, Paul switched viewing angles and watched from ‘above’ as the rounds traveled the distance between ship and station.
Three of the rounds missed the station cleanly, four others clipped the edges and ricocheted off at odd angles while putting deep furrows in the armor plates, but the other 13 that hit squarely against the station broke through the 5 meters of armor and into the station interior, clawing out much larger holes as the metallic rounds deformed on impact. Using his ‘omniscient’ camera view, he studied the damage to the station, curious as to how much damage he’d inflicted.
While the holes were aesthetic eyesores and decompression hazards, the damage was minimal to the overall structure. Had there been people inside, many would have died in the affected compartments, and Paul did note that several weapons batteries had gone offline, ostensibly because their power feeds had been cut, so that was an added bonus there, but it really didn’t matter.
The rail gun attack had been nothing more than an experiment of Paul’s, for the more he delved into the possibilities of space naval warfare, the greater concern he had with finding a way to protect their own ships. The kinetic velocities of attack weren’t limited like they were in atmosphere, and even with putting meters of armor plating over their hull, an attack such as he’d just launched would punch right through. There had to be a better way, he knew, but so far Star Force hadn’t developed an armor strong enough to stand up to physics involved, nor had they developed any other effective countermeasure.
Paul did know
of a countermeasure to the second part of his attack, though apparently the trainers didn’t…it was the old school defense screen, that had mobile ships deployed at distance around static targets to intercept enemies before they could do things like this…
Paul smiled as his navigational prowess shown true and his racing ship slammed into the approximate center of the station traveling several kilometers per second. Its armored nose cone punched through the armored hull, then the station exploded in a shower of debris with both large chunks and small specs of dust expanding outwards erratically. Even on slow-mo replay there wasn’t much to see, the collision having occurred so fast, but Paul did give the designers of the basic physics engine in the simulators credit, for the program didn’t glitch up and it provided quite the view as both the station and ship disintegrated in a mathematical fireworks display.
The challenge end symbol soon appeared on the screen along with an insanely high points score, given the fact that he’d only used a single ship to utterly destroy the entire station.
Paul popped open the hatch and left the simulator pod well ahead of schedule, planning on using the extra hour plus to get in some additional training time with the ‘mongoose’ four wheelers prior to their team challenge the following week. As he walked through the empty room he tossed a brief salute up at the one-way window where he knew the trainers were watching, underscoring the fact that he knew just how much egg he’d thrown in their faces.
Wilson, who’d made it a habit to be in the control room every time Paul or the 2s underwent a naval challenge, shook his head in a mixture of disgust and respect. He glanced over at the other trainers and programmers in the room, making brief eye contact with each of them.