Miliam’s conversation with Abigail came to an end when Aoibhe wandered into the galley with a knowing smile on her face. Before she could even say anything, Miliam gave her a deadpan stare and then rolled her eyes, knowing exactly where her mind was going. Fortunately she didn’t comment on it- she had the wrong impression anyway.
“I see you found someone to cook you breakfast, Abigail,” the pilot said instead, glancing at the empty plate in front of her.
“I have not the faintest of inclinations as to what you allude to,” Abigail replied evenly, sipping again from her cup.
“Well, I was making pancakes anyway, and she was giving me some good advice, so it wasn’t too much trouble to make a few extra…” Miliam told Aoibhe, feeling a bit confused.
Aoibhe chuckled. “Let me fill you in on something: Abigail can’t cook. She was probably hanging out in the galley waiting for someone that could so she could talk them into making her breakfast.” Her gaze shifted to Abigail, transforming into a glare. “I can’t believe you had the nerve to make the captain cook you pancakes.”
“Such harsh accusations. Are you insinuating I should be such a rude guest as to refuse an offer of refreshments from my host?” Abigail countered. Miliam looked between them like a deer in headlights, unsure if she should break them up or flee.
“To be fair, I’m a better cook than I am a captain…” Miliam said.
“Aye, well, give it time,” Aoibhe said, smiling at Miliam. She went over to the pantry and grabbed a snack from it. “Anyway, I’m just grabbing something to eat before my watch. Don’t mind me.”
After she left it was silent for a moment before Miliam stood to clean up her after herself. Abigail followed suit and took care of her own dishes as well. Once she was done, Miliam hesitated a moment before leaving, working up her courage.
“Would you mind joining me on the bridge for my watch? I want to try running some sims on my own and could use some advice.”
Abigail observed her for a moment before replying. “Would Aoibhe not be a more appropriate advisor for such an endeavor?”
“…she expects too much from me. I’m afraid of disappointing her and it would just make me more nervous,” Miliam admitted.
“In that case, your wish is my command, my lady,” Abigail replied, somehow making the cliché statement work.
Miliam left the room in a bit of a fluster, as was typical of her interactions with Abigail, and returned to her quarters to spend a few hours reviewing tactics. She knew Abigail had emphasized that mindset was her highest priority, but Miliam wasn’t going to be able to act with confidence if she didn’t at least have a foundation to work from.
Eventually an alarm on her grimoire alerted Miliam that it was time for her to relieve Tessa. She stood and stretched for a moment, then headed downstairs and onto the bridge to find Tessa spinning slowly in the captain’s chair while, to her credit, watching the sensor display screen intently.
Miliam hadn’t actually known the chair could do that until now.
“You’re relieved, Tessa,” she told the elf with an amused smile.
“Oh, thanks! See you later!” Tessa replied, speeding out the door without delay, leaving the chair spinning behind her. Miliam stopped it and took a seat, shaking her head. She took a few moments to review the sensor logs, which she just barely had an understanding of, and then began looking through the simulation settings. Aoibhe had set up the previous one, so she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for.
There were quite a lot of options, from scenarios to difficulty and even to the personalities of simulated crew members and enemy commanders. She had just located the ambush simulation Aoibhe used when Abigail arrived.
“Please excuse my tardiness. I did not keep you waiting too long, I hope?”
“You’re just in time. I was looking over the sim we ran last time. I think I figured out the settings Aoibhe selected,” Miliam told her, looking up to greet her.
“Indeed? If I may, I would advise you not to begin by replaying a scenario you have already experienced. You already know the answers, so it will provide little useful experience. Perhaps instead you might run a fully automated simulation with a AIs on both sides, so that you have an example to model yourself after,” Abigail advised.
“I didn’t even know that was an option…hold on.” She went back into the settings and realized she could indeed set a personality for every crew position at once. She was careful to also select the option to have the sim end automatically if the sensors detected any changes, and left one screen dedicated to the real sensor output. “Alright, here we go.”
She activated the simulation and it began immediately, opening just like the one from last night. A ship appeared on sensors and voices began playing from the comms at each bridge station. The Astrum Vitae began maneuvering nearly instantaneously just as it had with Aoibhe at the helm, and then a male voice began giving orders.
“Sensors, report!”
“Single corvette, firing improvised lances. No missiles detected. 55,000 kilometers and closing.”
“Helm, prepare a jump, approximately five light years, I don’t care which system. Comms, how are our countermeasures?”
“Jamming their sensors now, but they’re too close for us to project a mirror image without them immediately seeing through it,” came a voice from the communications station. Miliam had actually forgotten about this step when she ran the simulation herself; somewhat counterintuitively, the comms officer was actually in charge of both electric countermeasures and magic countermeasures, as on a ship this small their duties were otherwise fairly limited in combat.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“Focus on ECM but obscure our location. Even if they know we’re still there it’ll slow their targeting down.”
“Yes sir.”
“Engineering, I need you to do what you can to keep the barriers up, but do not let the capacitors drop below 40%. We’re going to need that power.”
“Sir!”
At that point, much to Miliam’s confusion, the dialogue ceased. She saw the sim was still running on her displays, but no one was saying anything.
“Did it hit an error…?” she wondered aloud.
“The captain’s job is finished. His crew knows their duties and he needs only intercede if the situation changes. Now his role is to observe and project confidence, which this ship is ill-suited to represent,” Abigail explained from her position standing to Miliam’s side.
As Miliam watched, the ship continued to dodge projectiles, which she noticed were hitting less often this time. Likely because Eun-ji didn’t have Aoibhe’s experience and failed to act in the absence of instructions from her captain. That was going to need to be addressed as well; there was no sense in holding off on beginning defensive countermeasures the way there would be with weapons, especially if the shooting had already begun.
Engineering had only just begun to tap into mana from the capacitors when the navigation computer finished its calculations and the helmsman took them out of the system without hesitation. Miliam found Abigail looking at her expectantly, waiting to hear what she’d learned.
“…I was thinking about it like I needed to provide orders for every action the crew takes just like in the movies, and that was making me freeze up, because if anything went wrong it was all on me. I’m responsible for the crew, but they’re not puppets. I need to trust them to do their jobs and focus on finding out what’s going on so I can coordinate,” Miliam summed up.
“While I am no naval officer that seems an apt conclusion to make. You will also need to address your fear of death, of course, due to your tendency to make snap decisions in the face of it. Perhaps you should attempt a direct combat simulation this time?”
Miliam checked the simulation list, but she found that there were few good options for an even fight when it came to corvettes. As dedicated missile defense platforms they were typically operated as escorts, not solo combatants, and were poorly suited to fighting even the jury-rigged civilian craft most pirates used, which mounted more lances than point defenses. In the end there was one real option: a one versus one fight with another corvette.
Having selected that option, she began the simulation. This time a ship appeared over a light second away, well outside of engagement range. While she knew this was a combat sim, she opted to treat it as an unknown contact and proceed from there. Metagaming would just hurt her in the long run.
“Comms, hail that ship and find out what their intentions are. And…sensors, what can you tell me about it?”
“Aye, captain,” said the phantom at the communications station. She tuned it out as it began recording a message to the other ship.
“Looks like a single corvette. Their wave drive is ramping up and ECM is active.”
Remembering what the simulated captain had said last round, Miliam’s next orders were immediate.
“Comms, forget about that hail! Fire up our ECM and then get a mirror image up before they approach too closely!” Miliam called out, her voice sounding somewhat shrill even to herself. She gripped her armrest tightly to keep her hands from shaking. There was something about being on the bridge of a real starship that made these sims feel more real, and even if she knew it was a sim intellectually, her subconscious wasn’t getting the message.
She didn’t need to tell the helmsman what to do; they were already beginning to make the Astrum Vitae a hard target to hit. Instead Miliam watched as the hostile ship approached, inching closer to the light-second line. She was so focused on it that she nearly forgot to give the one order that relied on that distance.
“Oh, shit, weapons! Open fire the moment they’re in range!” she rattled off in a panic. A competent weapons officer would know to cycle spell types without being told, but if she were being honest, the fact that she didn’t explicitly tell them to was more because it didn’t occur to her than because she knew she didn’t need to.
Miliam watched anxiously as the range decreased and weapons fire began being traded. The first few shots went wide on both sides, meant more as ranging shots used to prod at each other’s countermeasures than anything else. Neither ship was equipped with anything other than countermissiles, but point defense lasers were added to the mix anyway, serving as a means of target finding and straining enemy barriers.
At this stage in a fight, the first ship to penetrate the other’s countermeasures would gain an advantage. Given how evenly matched the vessels were, that came down to the skill of the crews involved and luck, and based on the settings Miliam used, it was almost certainly luck that decided things. Free to observe instead of having a task to focus on, she noticed it before the crew.
“Concentrate fire here!” she ordered, designating a point in space on one of her displays where, for just a moment, the enemy ship’s MCM had been disrupted by laser fire and betrayed the location of its real hull. Her own vessel’s lance was cycling right now, but that didn’t matter, because the point defense lasers fired sustained beams.
With invisible lasers penetrating the other ship’s cloak, all their lance needed to do was use them as a target finder. Ships didn’t maneuver fast enough to alter their trajectory in the seconds before the Astrum Vitae’s lance was recharged, and the next shot, a beam of ionizing radiation, struck before its target’s barriermaster could adjust.
That was a double edged sword, giving away their own location, but the Vitae had gotten the first punch in. While the enemy barriermaster worked frantically to dissipate the radiation, the Vitae landed hit after hit with its lance until the other ship’s barriers failed outright. The next shot was ablated by the armor, but that only delayed the inevitable, and soon the hostile ship was dead in space.
Silence fell over the bridge as the sim ended and Miliam thought back, counting how many orders she’d actually needed to give. Five. There was no need to micromanage the ship’s power distribution- it was designed to balance the load optimally in the first place. She didn’t need to tell her weapons officers to keep firing, or her sensor officer to break through the enemy’s ECM, or her helmsman not to stop evasive maneuvers.
As long as she watched the bigger picture and reacted when the situation changed, that was enough.
“I’m going to do a few more, but…I might be starting to understand, just a little.”
----------------------------------------
Codex Entry: Mana
Known by different names across every culture, mana and magic are the foundation of modern society. Pre-magic human civilization knew it as "dark matter". While mundane technology outperforms its magical equivalents in some areas, others, like faster than light travel, cannot be performed at all without magic.
Every civilization discovers mana at a different point in its development- the dwarves did not discover it until they had already left their solar system on slower than light generation ships, while the fay discovered it before electricity. Or, for that matter, carpentry. Humans were somewhat unique in that they discovered mana and its application as magic dozens of times throughout their history, losing it and rediscovering it over and over again as prejudice and superstition drove its practitioners to extinction.
Fundamentally, mana is simply another counterpart to matter and energy, and interacts with both in various ways. Two primary uses of mana exist: one is to alter reality, and the other is to convert mana into matter and energy. The former, naturally, has a lower cost than the latter, as converting mana into another form requires even more mana to power the transformation. Both of these methods are, collectively, referred to as magic.