The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

“Madam President?” Kommodor Marphissa waved at her display again. “We need to destroy that flotilla.”

“No, we don’t. We need to defeat it. What do they want? To slow us down. To inflict damage on us. To keep us occupied long enough for the snakes to gain full control of that battleship. We won’t let them do any of those things.”

Marphissa nodded in the manner of someone who wanted to acknowledge she understood what had been said but not necessarily what it meant. “What will we do instead?”

“We will get past that oncoming flotilla without engaging it, brake our velocity far enough to release the shuttles carrying our ground forces assault team close to the battleship, then accelerate again and engage and defeat the other flotilla as it returns to fight us.”

Another nod of partial understanding. “How will we do that, Madam President?”

Iceni smiled. “I have established our goals and objectives, Kommodor. As you are the flotilla commander and experienced operator of mobile forces, I will leave it up to you to find the best means of accomplishing those goals and objectives.”

“I . . . see.” Marphissa stared at her display for a little while. “Thank you for this opportunity to excel, Madam President.” Remarkably, not a bit of sarcasm came through when she said that.

“I have every confidence in you, Kommodor.”

Marphissa sat for long minutes, just looking at her display, saying nothing, her eyes intent. Finally, her hands moved, tracing out possible actions so that the ship’s maneuvering systems could produce predictions.

“Kommodor?”

Jerking out of her absorption in her planning, Marphissa turned an annoyed scowl on the operations specialist. “What is it?”

“Kommodor,” the specialist said with a nervous swallow, “I was thinking, if the ISS is controlling the other flotilla’s mobile forces, and if they are running them on automatic controls because the officers are dead or under arrest, then those are the same automated systems as our own mobile units use.”

“Your point?” Marphissa snapped.

“If we run a simulation in which our automated systems are controlling the actions of the other flotilla, it will tell us what the automated systems on the other flotilla will actually do in response to anything. We can predict their reactions.”

The annoyance dropped from Marphissa’s face. “That is an excellent observation. The limitations of simulations are always the inability to know what the other side will actually do, but in this case we could know that precisely. Set up the simulation.”

“Yes, Kommodor!”

Iceni leaned closer to Marphissa. “Why isn’t he a subexecutive? I mean, a ships officer or leytenant?”

“I will look into that,” Marphissa replied.

As the simulation went online in part of her display, Marphissa went back to work, her expression gradually going from tense to a sort of qualified satisfaction. “It can be done, Madam President. I will have to download commands to the other units in the flotilla to ensure the timing is right. The hardest part will be the braking maneuver to reach the battleship. That will stress our units the most.”

“But we can do it? It is within the capabilities of our warships?”

“Yeeessss.” The affirmative reply was drawn out enough, tentative enough, to inspire some worry.

“Show me.” Iceni ran the plan through her display, watching the motions play out in accelerated time. Some of the maneuvers would push the strain on the warships very close to the red zone, where a ship would literally come apart under the stress, but none of them actually pushed into the red. In theory. In practice, the plan would create strains that might spike too high for individual units. “We’ll need to override the automated maneuvering safeties,” Iceni commented.

“Yes, Madam President. The safeties wouldn’t let us do this.”

Play it safe and lose, or risk it and have a chance of winning? Why was she here if she wasn’t willing to run risks? “Well done, Kommodor. I approve your plan. When do you intend downloading the plan to the rest of the flotilla?”

“Eleven minutes prior to contact. We’re all within a light-second of each other, so that allows plenty of time for ship systems to accept the plan and be ready to execute it at ten minutes prior to contact.”

“But not very much time for the commanders of those warships to realize what they’re going to do.” Iceni regarded the plan again. “That may be a good thing. If they have time to study this, they may start thinking and decide there’s mistakes.”

“Even the Syndicate system couldn’t manage to get us to completely stop thinking,” Marphissa replied.

“Some people never needed any encouragement to stop thinking, Kommodor, and some never started thinking at all. Send this to Colonel Rogero now, so he can prepare for loading his soldiers. We’ll be under some serious g-forces while his people are getting into the shuttles, and even with combat armor that will make things difficult for them.”

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