Chapter 26: Post-mortem of a Training Session

Richard leaned towards me, “Did you have a full crew for this simulation? It sounds like a desperate defense.”

“Every billet was filled, but the tracking team was new. The AI said that they were the best team available,” I admitted.

“I wasn’t part of it,” Andrew protested.

“I don’t make those decisions. The AI units keep track of everyone’s performance in training and simulations. And from what we’ve been told you haven’t been participating in the training, so your scores would have been low,” I said.

“Can we listen?” Commander Nelson said. “I think we won’t need to listen for too long before the point I need to make will be easy to comprehend.”

Richard and I sat up straight and nodded. Commander Nelson smiled and looked up. “AI, start from the briefing that Captain Walker gave before the simulation started.”

There was a strange pause and then the speakers began to hum. It sounded like the drone used in the simulations to increase our immersion in the simulations. The drone was quickly broken by my voice.

“Everyone, this is not a simulation we will or even can win. Someone in command decided to create a scenario where we are tested on our ability to handle a hopeless situation. The mission is simple, survive for as long as we can and keep all Sa’arm ships from reaching a planet. We are going to take damage. We are going to end up with casualties. Be mentally ready for your station to turn off if the AI decides you have died. All of us will die in this last stand. We know this might happen, and if it does I’ll do my best to find a way for us to survive, but for today we have one battle cry. None shall pass!”

There was a long silence and then the ping signaling the start of the scenario rang out. I tensed in my chair as I heard my voice change into a commanding tone. “Tracking, start building a picture. Where are the nearest ships. Targeting group, I need your displays up and mirrored. Guns!”

“Releasing all gunners now,” Tilly’s calm voice rang out. “Jarl and Thane teams are using the bow elevator, Aesir and Vanir are at the stern elevator.”

“Split the ship into our standard four quadrants for now. Each team should be in one quadrant,” I commanded. “Engineering, we’ll need to have full power available. Helm, turn us to starboard. For now, we want our bow following an orbital path, but be prepared to make a full reverse. We hold the line here.”

“Two quadrants will be facing away from the alien line of advance,” Tilly said.

“We’ll make adjustments soon,” I said. “For now, I want them out on the grid and getting their formations set. Helm?”

“Turn to starboard, maintain orbital path, prepare for full ship reverse,” DeMarcus’ voice called back calmly.

“Always, always repeat back my commands,” I reminded him. “I need to know you heard me correctly.”

“Ma’am,” the voice of Kirk, the lead for our targeting team called out. “Tracking is providing us a clear picture for all areas except for the port side area above the plane of travel.”

“Tracking?” I called out.

I heard a whiny voice. “Um ... I was adjusting the controls and the enemy ships vanished. I don’t know what’s wrong. The instant diagnostic says that the unit is working normally.”

“Engineering?” I called out.

“We haven’t taken any hits, but do you want to send someone from damage control?” Herb, our engineering officer called out.

“Its not damage,” Vincent added in. “I’m already running some drones to check on all the connections between the arrays and the panel, but all diagnostics indicate that the problem is software based.”

“Controls?” I asked.

“Its not me!” the whiny voice insisted. “I’m looking at the panel and all controls are set correctly.”

“Philip, can you check their panel?” I called out.

“Working on it,” he said.

“Helm, we’re going to need to roll the ship constantly. I know it will make holding our vector a bit harder, but I want the area that is considered above the ship to be constantly shifting. Let’s try to ensure that we can get good scans on all areas of the sky occasionally.”

“Roll ship, aye,” DeMarcus said. “How fast a roll?”

“Keep it steady at a pace that will return us to this profile every two minutes,” I replied. “Tilly warn the gunners.”

“Ship rolling at a steady pace due to tracking failure,” Tilly said. “Passing on the alert. Oh, Jarl seven just had a motor blow. Do I have them return for repair?”

“Vincent?” I called out.

“First, I heard of it. We’ve got a team ready through, send the gunball to the bow elevator,” I heard Vincent reply.

“Contact!” I heard someone call out from tracking. “We have four Sa’arm scouts heading directly towards us for our port side. They are ahead of us and slightly below us.”

“Divide the port side into quadrants and send everyone. I want one team on each scout. Tracking, those scouts aren’t jump capable, there must be a carrier out there,” I called out. “Helm, slow to half speed. We don’t need the speed and want to hold the line here.”

“Half speed, aye,” DeMarcus said.

“Jarls will take stern low, Thane bow low, Aesir shift to bow high, Vanir you have stern high,” Este’s calm voice called out. “Vincent, we’ll need Jarl seven back as soon as possible.”

“We have shots fired from two of the scouts. Looks like they are using heavy pulse lasers!” I heard called from tracking.

“Found the carrier, its got two hive spheres escorting,” another voice called from tracking. “The carrier is launching heavy ships, looks like destroyer sized for Sa’arm.”

“Clear the near sky,” I called out. “Tilly remind all of the gunners that they need to silence those pulse lasers. They can’t try to shoot down the projectiles.”

“Shoot the ships, don’t try to play point defense, aye,” Tilly said.

I remembered this moment. The situation was clearly designed to overwhelm the ability of the officers and gunners to keep up with what was happening. I was shaking my head at how icy cold my tone was as I tried to maintain the morale and organization of the bridge crew.

“What the fuck!” Andrew shouted. “It sounds nothing like what the sleep trainers showed.”

The playback paused with a loud chime. I closed my eyes and leaned back with a loud sigh. “It’s almost worse to listen to it again.”

“How long did you last?” Richard asked. “And would you rather step out and allow the rest of us to listen?”

“The fight went on for three hours of continuous fire. We managed to take out all of the scouts, three of the first set of five destroyer ships, and heavily damaged the carrier and one hive sphere before the engines lost containment,” I said. “It was brutal for the gunners and the damage control teams. If you consider a gunball that had to leave the fight for repair as a casualty we had sixty-seven casualties in the gunners.”

“You returned twenty-seven to the fight during the battle?” Bruno asked. “How?”

“Vincent is extremely good at prioritizing his teams and they’ve all developed specialties that they can fix faster,” I replied.

DeVonte was just staring at the ceiling. “You do that often?” he asked in a whisper.

“Daily,” Richard replied. “Although that scenario is a worst case that I expect doesn’t get run very often. Its there to teach certain lessons.”

“Very specific lessons,” Bruno said. “Although I imagine other lessons can be learned as well. I heard the tracking failure. What was the problem there?”

I snorted. “The person handling that quadrant for tracking had entered a poor command. They changed the spectrum that the arrays were watching. It was a spectrum that the Sa’arm ships don’t emit.”

“Oh god,” Richard said covering his face with his hands. “How did she not realize what she did?”

“She panicked,” I said. “She was trying too hard to impress me and didn’t pause to look at the settings she had used.”

“Ouch,” Bruno said. “I’m guessing that she’s not on your crew list after that.”

I nodded. “There are two others who have similar scores according to the AI. Robin is going back into the general crew pool. Perhaps another captain will be willing and able to build up her confidence and skills, but after that mistake the rest of my tracking team won’t trust her.”

Andrew looked flummoxed. “How?”

“What?” I asked.

Andrew turned to face me. “How can you keep track of so much? I heard you giving commands to every one of your officers, getting involved in the tracking question and still working to maximize the effectiveness of your gunners.”

“I’ve been running these simulations for almost two weeks,” I replied. “And this kind of discussion is something I do with my officers after a simulation. We’ll go over the performance of individual crewmen first. After that, we look into what strategies or policies we need to work on in the future.”

“Captain Walker has suggested improvements to several scenarios and has even written two that will be used regularly in the future,” the AI announced.

“Please tell me that the convoy defense is not one of the reused ones,” I muttered.