My Friend the Emperor

by William Lee Gordon

  I would forever be grateful to Valys but I still had my grand plan and I needed to get on with pursuing it.

  If I’d been dedicated to the curriculum before, now I was attacking it with a vengeance. I kept my grades high but now I also took pride in showing up my peers on individual assignments and competitions. It didn’t make any difference if it was a physical competition or an intellectual one; I wanted to be the best. I felt a special satisfaction when besting any upperclassman that I might be paired against.

  I thought I had matured and that I was now laser focused on my future like every patriotic cadet should be. Little did I realize that I was digging myself ever deeper with each contest; that I was still as naïve and blind as ever…

  ΔΔΔ

  “As you all know, the final for this course will consist of a seven-day battle simulation.”

  The Combat Tactics professor droned on… “You all went through a similar simulation at the beginning of the semester but this one will be much harder and more extensive. Your first simulation wasn’t graded and its objective was to simply demonstrate to you everything you didn’t know and to give you an idea of how you might apply what you learn in this course to real-time situations.

  “Unfortunately, that simulation was cut dramatically short because of the misguided heroics of your very own simulation captain, Cadet Nicolay.”

  I was keeping my eyes on the professor but I couldn’t help but notice the glares coming from some of my classmates.

  “Yours and the other Cadet Group will now be the first two groups to ever enter into your final simulation cold turkey.

  “Remember,” the professor continued. “You will not receive an individual grade for this simulation; the losing team will simply have their current grades lowered by one level and each member of the winning team will have theirs raised. If you’re barely scraping by this test could flunk you, and if you’re already acing the course winning will earn you a commendation on your record.

  “Oh, and the rank assignments from the previous simulation will remain the same.”

  Now, everyone was burning daggers into my back and a number of ‘arshole’ coughs and ‘eat shrak Nicolay’ whispers were audible.

  I really didn’t think I was being treated fairly by the professor. Actually, I didn’t think anyone had been objective about this whole situation. Initially, after that first battle simulation, everyone in my class had congratulated me. It was only after the ramifications were explained to us that I went from hero to pariah.

  The Academy was divided into Cadet Groups. Each group consisted of 15,000 cadets. Each Combat Tactics class was 100 strong and represented a ship, so there were 150 ships represented on each side of this exercise. Because my class ranking was high I had been appointed as the captain of my class’ ship.

  The highest-ranking members of our Cadet Group were assigned to oversee the fleet. There were 15 lieutenants, each in charge of 10 ships, and Cadet Lewinsky had been given the simulation rank of Commodore and had overall command.

  Of course, the ‘enemy’ was made up the same way. So, all in all, there were 30,000 cadets involved in the exercise.

  It was really an accident that I had won the seven-day simulation for my Cadet Group in five minutes.

  The objective of the exercise was simple. Since we were the attacking force we were to destroy the enemy’s flagship. The evading force had to either get past us to escape on the same heading we had arrived on, or destroy our flagship. The confrontation was to take place in an uninhabited star system with three gas giant planets. Each of them, of course, had a number of moons – which is what made the exercise so tactically challenging.

  I was visiting an acquaintance in his large dorm room one afternoon when he left me alone to go use the head. While he was gone I realized that someone in the next bunk over had left their Smartpad behind.

  It was also on.

  The title on the screen designated it as EFF Frequencies and Codes (EFF stood for Empire Friend or Foe). I still didn’t think too much of it until I realized that these were the codes for the opposing force we’d be facing in the next week’s exercise.

  I have a very good memory so I didn’t have to write anything down and I doubted the nearby media globe would know where I’d gotten the information from. On the other hand, I didn’t see too much reason to get excited; I didn’t have a practical use for the forbidden knowledge.

  I hadn’t given it much thought until we were boarding our simulated ships in ‘orbit’ above. All of us would transit to the target system and then our Cadet Group’s fleet would rally at the outer edge of the system while the opposing Cadet Group’s fleet would rally at the inner gas giant. Once in position, the ‘Live Exercise’ order would be given and we would be under the command of our Commodore.

  Somewhere during the transit an idea began taking shape in the back of my mind. I knew right away it was a bad idea… or was it? The objective was to win, wasn’t it?

  The truth is I hated having to do fleet exercises in the first place. Combat Tactics was a required course for everyone at The Academy but I knew my career path would take me into civil service. This all seemed like a gigantic waste of time and maybe Valys had been right; maybe deep down I really did have a stubborn streak in me.

  At any rate, I made a decision…

  When the media globe hovering around on our bridge ordered us to turn on our EFF transponders I said, “Belay that.”

  The crew all turned to look at me.

  “Navigation, wipe our current settings and prepare to enter new codes.”

  Our ‘navigator’ said, “Get a grip Nicolay, Navigation doesn’t control the EFF and besides, they gave us an order.”

  “Who has the EFF controls?” I asked the bridge while ignoring the navigator.

  “Um, I do… Captain,” said a thin voice from the communications station.

  “Okay, get ready to enter new codes.”

  When she didn’t respond I said, “Did you hear me?”

  “Okay, okay,” she mumbled. She ran her fingers across her input screen and said, “Ready.”

  I gave her the codes.

  Now the entire bridge was looking at me.

  “Okay Navigation, move us out with the opposing fleet to their rally point. Once we’re there try to position us so that we’re directly behind their flagship.”

  “Can we really do this?” someone asked.

  “We’re doing it,” I said.

  A very tense 33 minutes later I was told we were in place and I heard the general announcement that all forces were in position.

  “Okay Weapons, you’re up. I want you to lock all weapons on the enemy flagship and prepare to fire on my mark.”

  “All weapons… sir?”

  “Yeah, don’t we have something like rail guns and energy weapons? That kind of stuff?”

  He simply nodded.

  “Okay then, get them locked in and wait for my order.”

  A few minutes later the announcement came, “The exercise is now live. Commodores, take charge of your fleets.”

  “Fire,” I shouted.

  ΔΔΔ

  No one had known quite how to react to our sudden victory.

  Our Commodore had been conflicted; on the one hand he was credited with the victory, on the other he’d never had the opportunity to give a single command.

  The professors had represented the full spectrum, from outrage to hiding smiles at the thought of suddenly having seven free days ahead of them.

  The administration had wanted to expel me for not following the orders of my chain of command until they realized that there hadn’t been time for anyone to give any orders. They had wanted to expel me again when I respectfully refused to disclose the source of my information. They confiscated the Smartpads of everyone in my class and I think they finally decided to keep me around on the off chance that I might be some kind of genius hacker.

  The 15,000 members of the opposing Cadet Group hated my guts.<
br />
  The only people that were halfway nice to me were my bridge crew. If the simulation screens had given us anything close to a realistic picture… our weapons were powerful. The flagship had simply vanished in the most incredible fireworks display anyone could ever imagine.

  But now the semester was drawing to a close and everyone was figuring out the ramifications of not having experienced the full simulation.

  So once again I found myself as the simulated Captain of a simulated ship in a simulated exercise. This time the grades would be recorded and could hugely affect a cadet’s future.

  I’d more or less had to pull my entire crew together and promise them that there would be no glory seeking shenanigans; I was taking the exercise very seriously and had every confidence that our Cadet Group would prevail.

  I wasn’t sure but while I got the impression that most of them were relieved, I think a couple were actually hoping I did have something up my sleeve…

  I couldn’t help but smile when not three seconds after the word came down that the ‘Exercise was Live,’ Commodore Lewinsky ordered me to attach my ship to his HQ squad and stay out of trouble.

  As each squad of ten ships started their powered descent into the gravity well of the system, spreading out the formation to hopefully englobe the enemy forces in orbit around the first planet, Commodore Lewinsky ordered our squad to hang back. He designated six of us to be Flagship killers. The idea was that as soon as the rest of our forces had whittled down the enemy we would be the spear that drove the killing point home.

  The other five ships of the squadron would remain behind as the rearguard for our flagship.

  It was a reasonable and somewhat textbook plan.

  Orbital mechanics was contra intuitive. The reason we needed classes like this is that it just wasn’t something that growing up on a planet at the bottom of a gravity well could possibly prepare you for.

  Your instincts and assumptions about getting from point A to point B were inevitably going to be wrong. Nothing travels in a straight line in space, not even light. That is especially true inside the gravity well of a star system. Add to that the fact that everything is constantly moving… the moons are orbiting the planets, which are orbiting the star, which is orbiting the galactic center, which itself is travelling through the universe at tremendous speed.

  Finally, don’t forget to factor in the reality that all of these bodies have a gravitational effect on each other, insuring that their orbits are slightly different on each revolution…

  Well, you get the picture.

  So, we found ourselves following a convoluted path down the gravity well, using gravitational slingshot effects to shorten our transit time.

  We could see the enemy, or rather, we could see where the enemy squads had been seven minutes earlier. Distances in space were so vast that it even took time for light to cross it.

  The enemy ships were forming their squads into what looked like a number of highly elliptical orbits. It reminded me of electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom.

  This particular gas giant had thirteen major moons so their orbital coordination must have been a nightmare, but it was still a pretty standard defensive deployment. I probably would have tightened up the elliptics a little bit; the apogee of their orbits (the farthest point away from the planet) would take each of their squads pretty far away from the action for several hours at a time. We would simply expand our englobement a little further so it shouldn’t present a problem.

  The strategies were looking to be fairly straightforward.

  The strength of an elliptical defense was that it allowed the defender to keep his squadrons together and hopefully overwhelm a solitary englobing ship when their erratic paths crossed.

  The weakness of the formation was that it could be englobed, and that curtailed any opportunity to avoid battle or slip away unobserved.

  In this particular scenario it was also a cat and mouse game; we had no idea which squadron contained their flagship.

  The closer we got the better our resolution. We now knew that some of their squadrons were using variable orbiting speeds, making it all but impossible to accurately predict their orbits.

  I think I mentioned that I was good at recognizing patterns. I don’t know why I have this ability and it isn’t always useful, but right now alarm bells were going off in my head. At first I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me – then I saw it. I ran over to our sensor station and had the cadet there verify my suspicion by checking my math.

  I had to talk to the Commodore now.

  Just as I was opening my mouth to order a connection we received his orders to advance further into the system.

  “Commodore,” I said. “You can’t do that!”

  By now he was on the view screen so everyone on the bridge could see him.

  “Captain Nicolay, we’ve identified the enemy Flagship!” he said excitedly. “Get your ship there at highest possible speed and destroy her. You can follow this one simple order, can’t you?”

  “Commodore,” I said patiently. “The exercise will be over before we get to the Flagship. We’ve been snookered and unless you let me explain your flagship will be dust within minutes.”

  His initial reaction was anger – maybe because I’d suggested he’d been fooled? Perhaps his common sense came back or maybe his curiosity just got the better of him, but he ordered me to explain.

  “It’s the elliptical orbits – they’re not standard or even efficient. At first I thought they were just trying to be unpredictable…”

  “Of course they’re going to be unpredictable, you idiot.”

  I continued without pause, “Those elliptical orbits can be used to slingshot a ship into a much larger elliptical orbit – kind of like a comet. I’ve done the math… it can’t be an accident that a ship accelerating from each of those orbits could converge on our flightpath.

  “They’re using their Flagship as bait. They let us see it now because they want to thin out your rear guard.”

  Lowell, the Commodore’s First Officer stepped into the screen and contemptuously said, “What proof do you have of this, Nicolay?”

  “If I’m right gentlemen,” I said calmly, “in a few moments we’re going to be close enough to count the number of ships in each of those squadrons and they’ll each be missing one or two ships. We were too far away to see one single ship peel off from each squad – but they’re getting ready to converge on us at high speed at any moment.

  “Sir, you need to recall the fleet to your defense. Their other squads can’t possibly make it here in time to affect the battle, but if you send us away and don’t recall the others you’ll be dramatically outnumbered.”

  It was apparent to everyone that he didn’t want to believe me. He started shaking his head no and opened his mouth to speak when one of his bridge crew shouted out, “Sir! He’s right! Each one of those squads is running with nine ships – that leaves ten enemy ships unaccounted for!”

  “Recall the fleet,” he ordered while glaring at me with murder in his eyes.

  ΔΔΔ

  “How can someone so smart be so stupid?” said a voice from behind me.

  I turned my head slightly but I didn’t stop walking down the sidewalk.

  “Yes, I’m talking to you. Are you really trying to piss everybody off, or are you a true masochist?”

  Now I did stop. I turned around and faintly recognized a female cadet that I shared a Psychology of the Masses class with.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Okay, so you’re just an oblivious arshole.”

  “Are you done insulting me or should I schedule more time for it?”

  “You humiliated him!”

  “Who?”

  “Lewinski, who else?” she responded.

  “I won the exercise for us.”

  “Yes, but you humiliated him…”

  She was absolutely correct, but I didn’t care. I didn’t like military
tactics, but I was good at them. Just like I was good at negotiating business, treaties, and civil policy implementation strategies. They were all competitions to me and I wanted to win each one.