Entering the classroom, I went to the board and began mapping out notes on orbital mechanics. The truth about space is that you were never truly still. You were always in orbit of something, the planet, the star, the galaxy. It was important to recognize this because this was the underlying principle behind all our navigation and travel equations. I started with a map of this system and began to add important figures on all the bodies in the system. The gravities of the planets and star, the velocities as well, anything and everything I could think that might come into play during a mission. I had already given parts of this lesson to Gwayne and Daren a couple of weeks prior, but I had no idea what Amy’s background in astrophysics was and this lesson was one of the most essential.

I pulled up a gas giant and began proposing simulation paths to do gravity slings, trying to demonstrate how one could use a gravity well to conserve a craft’s deltaV. It was an important trick and while Lancers didn’t use it very often, we still needed to know how. To be perfectly honest, we needed to know how better than the capital ships, because we didn’t have onboard supercomputers to do the bulk of the calculations for us: we needed to perform those calculations in our head.

A few minutes laters, Gwayne and Daren entered, just a few minutes early. “Good morning gents.”

“Morning commander,” they chorused taking seats at terminals and looking over the gas giant model I had been working on.

A few minutes passed and Amy hadn’t arrived yet. “I guess we’ll get started then. This is, as you’re aware, the model for X37-b, one of the gas giants in the system. I’ve modelled out a few different gravity sling maneuvers to demonstrate how different incoming velocities and approach angles affect the outbound angle and velocity.”

“These paths are alright, commander, but wouldn’t something like this be potentially more useful?” Daren asked, drawing an approach vector and letting the software extrapolate the outbound vector.

“What makes you say that, Daren?” I asked taking a closer look.

“So you see, with this angle and velocity, at the perigee you will be able to apply minimal thrust to adjust your course wildly, giving you a maximum flexibility to adjust course.” He showed this by adding a small burn at the point he described, showing how you could have a substantial number of output courses from rather small adjustments at that point.

“That is very useful if you need flexibility. It’s not very good if your enemy can predict your trajectory early on.”

“Always true, but you can’t dismiss a tool just because you don’t see the use right now. You’ve said so yourself.”

I smiled and just before I replied, Amy walked in. “Good morning commander!”

“Amy! Where were you? You’re over fifteen minutes late for training.”

“I was just running behind. There were a lot of people in line for the showers.”

“Don’t be late again. This is unacceptable behavior for a pilot.”

“I promise I won’t!” She had a slightly watery eye, like she was about to cry.

“Look over this model and tell me what it tells you.” I stood over her terminal as she explored my model, taking a look at all the lines.

She turned it about, reading the numbers and figures, pulling up notes on them. I began to work on my pad, pulling out a scenario that was on the list for beginners, and making some adjustments. I never ran scenarios as they were initially made, it was too predictable and pilots would get used to playing the scenario instead of the practicing their abilities. After a few minutes of glancing at her working through the model, I returned to her.

“So what does it tell you?”

“Well this planet has a gravity of 4gs and based upon these incoming velocities and vectors, you can get these outbound vectors.”

“And?”

“And that’s what it says.” She looked at me as if I was playing a joke on her.

“That’s useless.” I looked at her flatly. “Unless you can extrapolate from these figures, you aren’t doing anyone any good out there.” I pointed towards the outside of the ship.

“What do you mean?” She looked like she was about to cry. “I read the model and understand what it says.”

“No, you read numbers I created and repeated them back to me. Pilots can’t just look at a model and reiterate it back. That’s how we lose pilots when we’re facing the enemy. A pilot must be able to read the plots and find the path that provides maximum efficacy to accomplishing the mission. Unless you put steel on target, you’re just dead weight.”

“That’s so unfair. I wanted to be a pilot and have fun with the rest of you.”

“I’ll admit, being a pilot is fun. But unless you’re an effective pilot, you aren’t doing any good by being here. Read ‘Fundamentals of Orbital Mechanics’ and show me the solved problem sets for chapters one through seven by the end of the week. Now get dressed in your flight suit, we’re doing simulators in thirty.”

She sniffled and nodded. “Yes commander.”

I turned and left, walking to my locker to get into my flight suit myself. It was always hard breaking in a new pilot. They had many misconceptions about how piloting worked, and if you didn’t break them from those, you lost pilots. I gritted my teeth as I zipped up my suit, hoping against all odds she’d at least be able to handle the lancer.

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It wasn’t my first time breaking in a new pilot, but it was the first time I had one making me feel guilty for shattering their image of how easy it was to be a pilot. I’m sure it felt like hazing, having her wingmates sitting there just watching how I laid into her, but they had been there not long ago. We all had been there, except maybe the first few. They had to find out the hard way the nuances of the Lancer and how they must be deployed against the enemy. I didn’t envy them, but I thanked them daily for developing all that I used to train my pilots.

I left my locker, heading to the simulator room. Daren and Gwayne were there waiting for me and I gave them a casual wave as I closed the distance. “This should be a breezy simulation today, but I want to give Amy a chance to demonstrate her skills and learn the nuances of the lancer before we start working up for real operation simulations.”

“Sounds good to me, Commander.” Daren gave me a slight wink. “Let’s do this and see how our rookie demonstrates her abilities.”

We waited a few minutes, updating our simulators with the latest adjustments from our real lancers, letting it load up all our latest parameters, including g force tolerance. It was an important process as you grew as a pilot because the simulators had built in limiters to prevent rookies from hurting themselves.

Amy showed up more or less right on time, her flight suit on but not properly fitted. It was loose all over and looked like it had been thrown on in a rush.

“Amy, what is with your suit?”

“I’m sorry commander, it isn’t fitted properly at all!”

“I can see that, but why isn’t it fitted?”

“I have no idea. I got sized and everything… but it’s so loose.”

“Did you tighten it down?”

“Tighten… it… down?” She said each word slowly like I was speaking some foreign language.

“Nevermind, I’ll show you.” I stepped close and began to adjust each portion of the suit to properly hold against her body. This would protect her from blood pooling in the wrong parts of her body and maintain proper blood flow at speed. When I had finished I took a step back and smiled. “There you go, ready to fly.”

“Thank you commander!” She cried happily, trying to throw her arms around me.

I sidestepped the assault quickly. “Let’s get going, we need to use are simulators before we run out of time.”

“but…” She began but nodded and went to a fourth simulator and sat down, strapping in.

We each got into our own pods and got settled, strapping in and loading up the simulation. The mock cockpit went dark and then illuminated with the current status of the sim. The four craft were tailing a natural asteroid, which was conveniently passing close to a pair of enemy destroyers.

“Alpha two, three, head for the far destroyer on my signal. Hard burn then cut back. Their missiles should get caught in your exhaust and either lose you or be destroyed. Alpha four, stick close and follow my lead. Don’t engage until I greenlight it.”

“Roger Alpha one” Alpha two and three chorused.

“Yes commander.” Alpha four said cheerily.

“This is a combat situation Alpha four, you will address me as Alpha one.”

“Yes com-Alpha one.” She seemed slightly deflated by that rebuke.

“Let’s kick this puppy.”

The four of us split off, our craft splitting in two directions with everyone following the plan. Alpha four seemed to be reasonably proficient in handling the craft, presumably having spent some significant stick time during her prior assignment. Hopefully she didn’t assume this mission was one of the defaults just because of the opening being very similar to one of the others.

I pushed down on the throttle, coasting quickly along the surface of the rock as I rounded on the destroyer. Flipping a cover on my control stick, I pressed a button unleashing a volley of white hot chaff that would burn hotter and brighter than my own vessel hopefully delaying identification of Alpha four and I for a few moments longer. I pressed in some keys, looking over the structure of the destroyer and identifying targets of opportunity.

“Alpha four, take the underside of the craft and strike at the targets I highlight for you.”

“Yeehaw” is all I hear before I see her pushing her throttle way too hard, closing with the enemy vessel. I can tell from her thrust vector that she’s closing through the craft’s active fields of fire instead of the path I gave her.

“Gosh dang it” I mutter as I punch my thrust as well, diving into the fray as well. I took the course I had planned for her, angling my ship so that I can open fire earlier than normal and attempt to disable it before Alpha four gets herself killed. We were going to have words after this session, because disobeying me in the black would not be accepted.

I watched my sensors as the enemy began to open fire, kinetic barrages pouring into space filling the void before us with hot bits of metal that could turn us into clouds of plasma with a glancing blow. I hit my engines into a turn that would keep me out of the thick of it as I kept pouring on the speed.

I heard Alpha four begin to panic and scream and cut my comms with her to focus on closing the gap. Finally I had entered the outer limits of my range and activated my lances as I scanned for my best target options. Deciding quickly, I picked two regions that I knew hid the reactors for the guns. Not going to put the enemy out of commission, but it would at least spare Alpha four and allow us to survive the engagement.

I pressed down on the trigger and let fly, my lances pushing away from my craft at many magnitudes of acceleration more than what my feeble body could handle. I cut thrust at the exact same moment and spun end over end and began to accelerate away from the enemy, attempting to kill my momentum towards my foe. My sensors flashed moments later with two direct hits confirmed, damage reports following. The guns were down on that side and while the enemy was slowly rotating on its axis, Alpha four was letting fly as well.

I counted the seconds as I pressed the acceleration to my limits, my vision going dark for a bit as I killed my momentum and began to pull away at an odd angle. I eased off it and checked my sensors, the enemy was gone, but Alpha four was making a slow looping turn back towards the rendezvous. I reactivated my comm channel with her.

“Alpha four, kill your momentum and plot a direct path back to the rendezvous.”

“I’ll do my best Alpha one.”

I rolled my eyes and slowed my acceleration as I watched Alpha two and three closing on the rendezvous. “Good job Alpha two, three. Glad to see you executed that flawlessly. We’re going to be held up by Alpha four treating her fighter like a plane.”

“Roger that Alpha one. We’ll slow acceleration to wait for her to catch up.”

I sighed quietly and rolled my neck as I entered a formation with Alpha two and three. We kept our acceleration low as Alpha four caught up and then we pulled away, exiting the scenario through a specified point.

A screen came up displaying the score for the mission. ‘Congratulations, you successfully accomplished the scenario and disabled the enemy vessels! Piloting and marksmanship has been assessed for the pilots: Alpha one 4532, Alpha two 6043, Alpha three 5642, Alpha four 232. Exit the simulators? Yes/No’

I sighed, shaking my head and pressed yes. Now I needed to confront Amy and discuss her performance and what I would require before she could join us on a real mission.