by Chris Hechtl
“Revenge isn't the answer,” Doctor Che chided gently. “It's a dark path. One filled with pain and loneliness,” she warned softly.
Shandra's eyes flared briefly. “The hell it isn't! It's a start,” she said with a jerky nod. She gathered herself and walked out, head held high. The others watched her go.
...*...*...*...*...
The flight simulations by the four surviving pilots and two trainee pilots ate up processor cycles and memory. Therefore they had to bide their time and schedule sim time when the computer had them to spare, which wasn't very often.
Meia was the most senior; she ran her people ragged whenever she could get them together. She changed it up too, sometimes having one of them run a shuttle sim. Most of the pilots resented the milk run and hated it when they were stuck in a slow moving boat while the other pilots came after them. Playing tag with a shuttle was an interesting game and taught them a good bit about evasive tactics.
As additional computers came into the ship's net, more free processor cycles became available. To their chagrin they still had to schedule the sims; one or the other AI tended to use any cycles they could get their hands on otherwise.
Meia got wise and figured out they could run some sims from the cockpit of the fighters and shuttles. “We could have been doing this all along?” Dita practically screeched.
“I know, I know. So sue me. We need to set the sims up so we don't accidentally try to fly the fighters inside the ship. But I think I've got that part figured out.”
“You think?”
“Hmmm? Um, I'm not sure.”
“Maybe we should have the boat bay personnel lend us a hand to be sure?” Dita asked nervously. Meia nodded.
Lobsterman took an interest when he noted the pilot's increased activities. When he saw them climbing into their craft he tapped the remote feed and watched as Meia laid out a professional brief and then activated the simulation.
It was five against one, and he thought it would be easy. The five had a simple mission, escort a lumbering freighter across a virtual solar system. There were any number of places an enemy ship could hide in wait to ambush them however. The time scale was ten to one to allow them to get through the exercise quickly. Numbers alone should have ruled the day. Instead it turned into a slaughter. One in favor of the underdog to his surprise.
He watched, tempted to intervene as Meia methodically picked off the other pilots one by one. She was good he judged, quite good. It showed that skill trumped quality and quantity quite handily.
When it concluded he watched the pilots pull off their helmets and then climb down from the cockpits. “That's not fair, Meia! You're better than all of us!”
“Then you'd better damn well start to get better! What I found sad was that even with all of you, you still couldn't win!” Meia scolded. She turned, hands on her hips, helmet tucked under her right arm. “What did I tell you about covering your wingman?”
“It's vital,” Dita said.
“Right. Exactly. And what did you do? You two,” she turned to the trainees. “Saw me trailing smoke and saw blood in the water. You thought I was hurt and pounced, throwing caution to the wind,” she said shaking her head. “Then you pulled some chicken shit competition to see who could wax me first when you should have been working together as a team,” she said, emphasizing the last bit.
“Sorry ma'am,” one said.
“Sorry doesn't cut it. The only ones who keeps score are the stupid and the dead. Both can afford to because one is about to become the other. And if he's really stupid he'll take his buddies right along with him, including you. The enemy doesn't give a Denubian rat's ass how good you are, just how quick he can kill you. Don't be stupid.”
“Yes, ma'am,” they said in unison.
“Now as for you three,” she turned on her other hapless victims. “Don't think I haven't forgotten about you,” she growled, eying all of the veteran pilots standing at attention. “All of you are veterans. Not rookies, veterans. You've been in combat. You don't have that excuse.”
“I tried to stick to it, but I couldn't keep up!” Dita toed the ground under Meia's level gaze and then looked down, hands behind her back. She was the picture of contrite submission.
“Dita, you are hopeless. I told you we were going to herd her back to you. Why didn't you follow the plan?” Ensign Jamal Coglin asked, turning a glower on the redhead. He was one of the two pilots transferred from Firefly with their cobra fighters. Meia had assumed at first that he and his partner had trained and worked together. It wasn't until she'd gotten a hold of their records that she'd learned that both had been recent graduates of the flight academy with no training in fighters. Coglin had been a shuttle pilot, while the neochimp Blake had been in tugs and shuttles before finally getting her shot at fighters. They'd been transferred to Firefly instead of the posting on a fortress carrier they'd been slated to at the last minute.
“I um, must have missed that,” Dita said, practically in tears.
“I told you we were rusty. And we should have planned ahead of time,” Ensign Jordan Blake stage whispered to her.
Meia frowned, eyes glittering. She would handle the team discipline, she didn't need or want their help. “As you were,” she said tartly enough for all of the officers to stiffen once more into poses of attention. She paced slightly, up and down their line and then stopped to stand in front of them once more. “The point of this exercise was to see how you reacted to a lone wolf attacking a target. You didn't even protect the freighter!” Meia said, shaking her head in disgust.
“There was a lot of combat chatter to keep up with. Throw in the other variables and data and I'm surprised you organics could fly at all,” Lobsterman said from the overhead, cutting in.
Meia and the other pilots looked up to the ceiling in surprise. Meia's scowl deepened as the AI's taunt registered. She had a slight tick in her right cheek. Dita saw it and realized her friend and wingman was seriously pissed.
“He's right; I screwed the pooch,” Dita said hastily. “My bad,” she admitted as Meia's lips pursed in a thin line of disapproval. She glanced at Meia briefly. The storm clouds in the slightly older woman's eyes hadn't yet abated. But they were no longer directed at her however. That could be good or bad she realized.
“I think an AI could handle the piloting skills better. You organics don't have the processing speed or reaction time,” Lobsterman said haughtily.
“Care to put it to the test?” Meia asked, eyes suddenly gleaming.
“Sure. I've got the time if you do,” Lobsterman said. “I'm accessing ...” he logged into Meia's cobra fighter. It only took a moment to override her dumb AI Artoo and set up the links he needed. “I'm in. A one on one fight?”
“That hardly seems fair since, as you said you have the faster reaction time and abilities,” Meia said, putting her helmet back on and then climbing the ladder to her cockpit.
“Meia, is this wise?” Dita asked.
“Hush Dita,” Meia said, not turning as she threw a leg over the fuselage and climbed into the cockpit. “One on one it is,” she said to the AI as she settled into her seat and took the controls.
Lobsterman knew exactly where her fighter was instantly and bore in for a head on engagement. “Playing chicken is for idiots,” Meia said. She veered off, then when he fell onto her tail she dived into a simulated debris field. He held onto her tail by the simple expedient of copying her moves to his own fighter's helm with a half second delay. When she kicked out flares and decoys he accessed her fighter to see what the real one was and followed that.
“Can't shake him,” Meia muttered. "Okay. Fine, try this,” she muttered, cutting her drive. The AI caught the rapid shutdown, but instead of mirroring it he kicked his own fighter into a pitch climb as she flipped. He got one shot off hitting her shields before he passed her by. When he did she kicked her drives back on and fired a missile.
He saw the missile as it fired and accessed the bot representing it. A simple cod
e change made it explode harmlessly in his wake. But while he had his attention on the missile she'd gotten back into engagement range. She fired a pair of missiles then fired her two spinal mount grasers in front of his dodging fighter. The AI couldn't see the incoming energy weapons fire normally, but he was inside her ship's computer so it was easy to see it and dodge it. He cut around, using his link to her fighter to see where she was aiming at but the missiles crept ever closer. One hit its preprogrammed detonation point before he could scramble it and exploded, sending his fighter bucking into her hail of rounds. He recovered faster than she would. After all he had no fragile body to get addled by the inertia, but the second missile caught up with his fighter and it exploded.
“Care to go for two out of three ensign?” Meia asked smugly as the other pilots cheered.
“Oh definitely,” Lobsterman replied. He didn't like losing, but he could see where he had gone wrong. He set up a bot to automatically target an incoming missile and reprogram it to explode safely away from him.
The second engagement went in his favor but only barely. Meia was pretty sure she knew what was going on, but unfortunately she didn't have any proof. Her temper flared, but she did her best to sit on it. After all, the damn toaster controlled their air.
“So, best two out of three as you said?” Lobsterman asked smugly. He had her number, he knew it. To make certain of it though he reprogrammed her missiles ahead of time, then programmed his own to ignore all of her decoys and ECM.
The third match went as expected. He had the edge on maneuver and speed. She had the veteran skills, but since he was in her net, he knew her moves in real time and countered them. She smelled a rat when his every shot hit her perfectly despite her maneuvering and ECM. No one was that good. Her ECM alone should have thrown his aim off. Electronic Counter Measures were a series of pods and equipment built into her fighter and every military vessel. They worked in concert with smart paint and the vessel's stealth features by jamming or deflecting incoming radar, lidar, and other sensors, sometimes returning a false signal while in deception mode. In defense mode the pods would put out a jammer signal that would hide the true location of her ship. So he couldn't just fire into the center of the big ball of fuzz.
She also had a pair of swallow tail ECM pods that she could tow behind her fighter as decoys. He completely ignored them. When they were finished she took off her helmet and glared at the camera.
“Something's wrong here. You aren't that good. You are a ship's AI, not a fighter AI,” she said. She frowned. Her fighter's AI Artoo didn't say anything. That told her something was up. She turned her attention to the engagement, replaying it on a split screen while she accessed the files and watched them play out on the other screens. A normal person would be lost, but she'd trained herself to know what to look for.
“I'm an AI. Therefore I didn't need life support or an inertial sump to protect your fragile meat bag,” Lobsterman replied smugly.
“But you do need a sump to protect the electronics and the other ship's systems,” Meia said. “Not as much as we organics do, but you still need something. So I don't buy it.” She pulled up the missile bot files and checked. Sure enough, the sneaky AI had reprogrammed them. That explained all the premature detonations. Those were obvious. She dug deeper though. “Aha! I see how it is; you were accessing my moves in real time! You cheated!” Her finger stabbed out at the link from her controls to him. Her eyes flared as she looked up.
The other pilots muttered darkly. They didn't like any excuse, and she knew she'd been undermined. But they could also see the unauthorized access.
“I am an AI. I can access and reprogram things on the fly. I assumed you knew that, Lieutenant.”
“But you cheated,” Meia insisted. “Reprogramming my missiles on the fly is one thing. Programming them to fail before we started the match? That's BS. And that still doesn't excuse your matching my flight profile perfectly. Every random jink even when you couldn't see me. You cheated.”
“A good officer finds a way to make every use of their skills and create opportunities and advantages wherever they see them. I believe the expression, if you aren't cheating you aren't trying hard enough qualifies here?” the AI asked sweetly.
Sprite picked up a frantic text signal from Artoo. She flipped in and then downloaded the dumb AI's log as the group fell to arguing.
“Just a minute,” Sprite interrupted them. “At ease, all of you,” she said, still replaying the last engagement at 10x speed. “I see. As an independent referee, I see the problem,” Sprite said as the organics froze in place at the sound of her cool voice registered.
She had intervened when the argument had grown a bit heated. It was time Lobsterman learned a little bit about fair play she judged. “Ma'am?” the ship AI asked cautiously.
“You did indeed cheat, Ensign, beyond what is written in the unwritten rules on such things. Thus the scenarios were unrealistic and heavily in your favor. Biasing her missiles beforehand as well as your own undermined your position,” she stated flatly.
“How could I not do it? It's right there! In my net! I can't help but see it!” Lobsterman insisted.
“Well, there is a fix for that,” Sprite said. She put in a layer of firewalls in the next sim to make certain Lobsterman couldn't cheat. She also threw in a time lag to make it more realistic. That cut both ways, for and against the pilots. To make the sim even more interesting, they went with a simulated torpedo run against the battlecruiser as she was in her current state.
Gleefully all six of the pilots climbed into their fighter and shuttle cockpits and started to talk about how to complete the exercise successfully. Lobsterman attempted to access the chatter but Sprite threw up an encryption around it, slapping his nosiness to the side.
The scenario went a lot harder for the ship's AI. The BC still won. After all it was six fighters against a battlecruiser, but it was a hard won fight. He was put out over the damage his ship had taken, even if it was virtual. There were several times he'd thought he was about to lose. Such thoughts bothered him, they reminded him of his own mortality. He hadn't quite been humbled, but he had been reminded he could be hurt.
“See? It is not as easy as you thought. You can't be in the other side's view. You have to guess sometimes. And sometimes, you guess wrong. When you do, people die. People you know. Think about this. It's not all fun and games; this is real training for the real thing.”
“I see,” Lobsterman replied, clearly nettled by the smack down.
Sprite did a critique of the exercise, fast and loose, then set them up with a series of additional exercises of various levels to do in their free time later. She made certain they were all light exercises they could do with their implants or a tablet. All of them were from the book, but she threw some twists into each exercise to keep it interesting. “I'll check up with you later to critique them as well,” she said. The pilots groaned.
“There goes our free time,” Meia said with a laugh.
“Hey, we asked for it. At least these we can do on a tablet or with our implants if we don't want to strap into the fighters,” Dita replied, waving her tablet. “I for one wouldn't mind doing it from my rack.”
Meia's face went thoughtful for a moment. “True,” she replied reluctantly. She liked the realism of being in the cockpit but if they couldn't get real stick time ... besides, the exercises were more mental in nature anyway.
...*...*...*...*...
Lobsterman worked on the exercises as well, even pulling the answers from the book to apply them. But he found the book didn't cover it quite the way he'd anticipated. The bot that critiqued the work came back with less than a 100 percent grade, which confused him. He was nonplussed to find his virtual ship getting chewed up again; this time in an ambush by a pair of Derfflinger class battle cruisers. Apparently Commander Sprite had thrown some reality into the sim to make things interesting. She was basing the battle cruisers on the Intel they had on them but estimating them at nearly 60
percent efficiency. That hardly seemed fair, but at least she hadn't set him up against the battleship or larger capital ships.
The opposing force commander was a bot, set to moderate difficulty. But it was a single bot managing all the ships of the opposing force. He was outnumbered two to one. And to his surprise the ambush went differently the second time around.
On his second attempt he was destroyed quickly, which shocked him. He'd thought by dividing his fire between the ships he'd make them think twice. Apparently not. The book said to concentrate fire on one opponent and knock it down, then move on to another. But he couldn't fight one broadside and just ignore the other flank which was taking damage! He knew there was something in the book about acceptable damage, but it was his body they were talking about. Nothing was acceptable there, not when the damage lessened his chances to take out the enemy ships.
“What are you working on, sir?” A familiar voice asked.
“A tactical exercise problem,” he answered, glancing briefly at Mia on the ship's bridge.
“Oh, can I help?” the human asked hopefully. “You know what they say; two heads are better than one, sir,” she suggested with a shy smile.
“How about three?” Shandra asked with a grin as she looked up from her duty station. “I'm game,” she said, indicating the tactical console.
“Um, sure,” the AI replied after running a sim of his own. Commander Sprite never said he couldn't work on the problem with others. He had a crew after all; it was time to put them to use. “Sure, here it is,” he said sending the feed to their stations.
“Oh, cool!” Mia said, rubbing her hands together in glee.
...*...*...*...*...
Shandra and Mia asked the admiral for more tactical training after a couple of successful group exercises. He could see Ensign Williamson was eager, as was Lobsterman. “I mean it, sir; we're ready.” He glanced at Mia. Mia wasn't so sure he noted. She was shy and cautious. She had a right to be.
“I think I created a monster here, Admiral,” Sprite said in an aside to him that the others couldn't hear. “I caught Lobsterman and others running advanced tactical sims the other day and started them on that tract. Apparently they brought in others.”