"Shields up on the right side. Max acceleration towards the planet, dump all missiles. Keep the range out for as long as you can."

Crewmen moved quickly. The Oberon gently shook in a steady rhythm, as every few seconds another load of missiles was dumped out into space; starting out at the ship's impressive .7C momentum and accelerating from there.

"Stagger the engine activations. We're only gonng get one shot at this, lets have all of the missiles hit at once. Have them start off heading for Enemy Alpha, then switch to Bravo right at the edge of point defense range. Hold most of the ECMs for the last wave."

The Oberon slowly twisted space, pushing away from its existing intercept course of the Enemy destroyer; which of course corrected to aim for a faster intercept.

"We're seeing missile seperation on both Enemy ships. Not head-on... they're aiming to nail us as we pass the planet."

Derek studied the tactical map. His plan was to slingshot around the planet; originally hoping to do it without being noticed and already be close to safe hyperspace range by the time the enemy even saw him. "Hm. Weps. Set aside six of the ECM missiles, set them as mimics, and hold. We'll fire them during the few seconds the planet's atmosphere is between us."

The three ships twisted and moved, every moment their calculated intercept shifting. The enemy would have a fraction of a second; enough time to fire its hypercannon at range once; before the orbital path gave them the only cover big enough to shield them from a Hypercannon; an entire planet's atmosphere

The weapon fired faster than light. If this didn't work, he'd be dead before he even knew it. He could shift so that only one of those ships could fire before he was out of range; but that required a very specific trajectory, which made impact. The obvious approach was to aim every missile at alpha, and make sure only alpha could hit; and then pray the missiles did the job. Too predictable. The two ships were close enough to support each other's point defense. His only hope of damaging either ship was that just maybe those 409 missiles; every piece of ordinance he had other than the 6 ECM drones he was saving; would surprise them when they made their final course corrections at over .9C.

One minute til intercept point. The missiles all make abrupt turns; the last ones fired having to burn the longest, manuvering the least; the bait and switch did just barely good enough.Between them, the two ships both volleyed at the wrong spots for the first pivotal half-second; and then for the next second and a half, destroyed over three hundred missiles. He watched the tacnet as seventeen missiles detonated, bomb-pumped lasers smashing into Bravo. The rest... deflected off the shields. They'd been in flight too long, clearly the enemy had simply picked out and ignored the unarmed ECM warheads, letting them deflect off the rough field of

Bravo lost power. Advanced alloys earth had yet to manufacture kept it intact; some of its crew were likely alive, despite the minor venting of atmosphere at several points, and the direct strike on the fusion core. That Destroyer would, eventually, be repairable. But not in time to shoot.

Alpha dropped shuttles without slowing down; likely for search and rescue or repair efforts; and added a few more missiles to that volley that would be waiting for the Oberon when it came around the planet. Then... it fired.

This course left him with options for dodging; and he knew right when the enemy needed to fire before he lost line of sight. Unfortunately, he overestimated the amount of cover the gas giant would provide. He made his dodge at full acceleration at tjust the right moment; and then, afterwards, the enemy fired. Clipping the planet's atmosphere, sending boiling gas away from a mammoth storm system... and clipping the Oberon's tail. An abrupt shake. Systems went offline, damage control warnings sounded, the scoutship going ballistic.

A few seconds later, she passed the other side of the planet, completely without control; and it all ended in a flash of light.

***

Derek jerked awake in his room, suddenly recalling reality. The Oberon wasn't real. He wasn't playing cat and mouse with Enemy destroyers in some unknown system, trying to escape to bring a report home. A statistics screen popped up over his Icon.

Scoutship Evasion Program Trial

Attempt: [17]

Passing Score: [80/100]

Most Recent Score: [78/100]

Base Score: 28; Bonus: Elimenated one enemy Destroyer, +50 Points.

You have failed.

High Score: [86/100]

He could remember every single attempt. The mission was the same. Enter the star system. Scout out the planet; escape alive. During one of his early attempts, he'd made a slow sweep of the outer system, launched a few drones to make passive scans, and picked them up on the other side. His only passing score. A perfect score would be a 200; 100 for getting the ship itself in range so that you received full scan data, and escaping undamaged. 200 for killing both Destroyers that caught you. Getting the full data netted you 25 points. Escaping undamaged got you another 75. Getting any data at all; as he had with the drones; would net you 10 points.

There had to be a way. Enemy Destroyers had the same top speed as everyone else.. usually around .8C before traveling in a star system was simply too dangerous; but the smaller scoutships could get there faster. The only problem being that he couldn't plan out with foreknowledge... he'd forget about everything the moment the simulation started again. He had to do it honestly. Actually get better at handling a ship. He might have passed... once. But if he hoped to command a ship he needed to do things right.

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A gently rap at his door. He looked up... to see a familiar freckled face. Officer Smith. He thought for a moment... and turned his overlay back on. Suddenly, everything felt warm again. "I'm not on duty for another... two hours. What can I do for you?"

"In a few minutes, I'm transferring over to the Alecto. I'll be a captain, and putting together a crew. I was looking through scores to pick out my new tactical officer, and noticed you were going through this test... again. I'd filled out every position in my crew, talked to them, got them settled, and we're officially starting up soon. And here you were. Repeating the same test... that you'd passed already. Whats the story?"

"Well. I barely passed. Once."

"You passed with an 86. I saw the records. You spotted a destroyer from outside the system, sent through some probes, got some data, and left. One extra point for blowing up an enemy sensor platform with a missile on ballistic. I probably wouldn't have blown the platform, but otherwise thats exactly what I'd have done. Exactly what you should have done, rather than going all kill, die, repeat on the same test."

"I need to get a higher score. Captain Peterson has a 100; and enough bonus points to technically make it higher."

"For a Destroyer captain, someone flying a ship whose job is to hold the line, he had exactly the right instincts. Risk the ship, cause damage, survive if you can. He still failed his mission on his highest-score run. Frankly, if I were his CO, I'd have never given him command of a scout after seeing that performance. He got the data and killed two destroyers; but he died. The scans never left the system. Its not a video game; the score isn't everything. If I were making the program, you'd have gotten zero points for kills, and only earned any at all if you made it out alive."

Derek grimaced, absently rubbing his head. "Fine. I'll leave it there."

"Good. Captain Amari wanted me to have a chat with you. I'll let her know."

Moments later, his Icon lit up. A message from Captain Amari. "Please come to my office. Now that I have an office. We're going to be going on slow-time for the final leg soon, and we need to talk."

"Well. Good luck with your ship. Captain."

Captain Smith smirked. "I won't need luck. And neither will you." She turned, heading back down the hallway, heading for her own ship. For just a moment, he watched her leave, enjoying the feeling; however fake it was; of admiring an attractive woman walking away. Except that she was technically just a robot right now.

He shook his head, and stepped out.. heading back towards the bridge; and to meet Captain Amari, who he couldn't recall having met before. The ship was... crowded. It felt alive, with dozens of people moving. American, african, asian, european; people of every part of earth, working together. Something did seem odd. Different from how he always recalled his days in the academy; though he couldn't quite pinpoint what it was.

***

Stepping into the office, he was struck by the drastic difference Captain Amari made compared to Peterson. Tiny, slender, with dyed purple hair as opposed to the practically bald and overpoweringly massive former captain. This desk would've been too small for Peterson. Was it a real desk? He checked for a moment. Yes; Amari had a real desk fabricated already.

"Officer Thompson, reporting, sir."

"Have a seat, Thompson." At first, he started to toggle the setting in his overlay to make it appear as if he were sitting. Only to notice an actual set of chairs. It was amazing how quickly you could get used to something. He carefully set down; he could hear the faint creak of the metal chair under his weight; something he hadn't noticed the lack of with the overlay.

"There's been a bit of a shake-up of crew. We've gone from one ship and a solid mass of rock to four; and from one captain to three captains and a commodore. Peterson's idea was to name them Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megaera, after the furies, and to rename the 13 after Nyx, their mother. The only Captain who went along with that was Smith... Jacobs named his ship the Megalodon, and there's so much back and forth on that one that we're considering officially calling it the Meg just to stop the arguing and let whoever's calling it fill in the blanks. I'm calling this ship the Lucky 13; but just leaving the labels as 13. Call her either as you choose."

"Now. I'm going to be blunt here. The 13 isn't a warship. She has guns, yes; but her primary purpose is building and terraforming. I'm building as much of a civilian crew as I can for the positions outside of weapons, but its a bit difficult; Nasa, CNSA and Roscosmos lost most of their people to the UN Navy, so I'm going to be at least mostly former UN people regardless"

"You're more familiar with the Earthforge-class ship.. which is based on the Survivor's plans for the Outreach.. than anyone else I'm bringing on. I'd been dead for months before you got to see the final updated version; though I've had more time with the real thing, since I did most of the construction here. I'll want you to overwatch our new navigation officers until we're confident in them, but you're going to be my XO; your official job is Terraforming Officer, but you'll be in command while I'm off-shift, and since this ship is primarily a terraforming and construction platform, the new org chart will be placing you as second in command."

"I... I'm not sure I'm ready for that."

"Peterson's XO just took over the Alecto. Jacobs is primarily an engineer; I honestly think he isn't the best candidate for a Scout captain, but... Our new rank structure is going to be a tangled mess for a while, and the commodore wanted to give the captain slots to our most experienced people. And like it our not, technically you're the most experienced man for the job here. And you'll be good at it. So. Are you going to go out on the bridge and run things while we go on slow-time... or are you going to shut down and take a long nap in the robot bay while I give someone else the job?"

Derek seriously considered shutting down. His encounter with Kelsey had reinforced the self-esteem issues he'd had since being kicked out of the academy, and he almost wanted to just die... or at least sleep until he could be another mindless cog in whatever nation the 13 built out here. But no. This had been his dream. As a machine he'd be able to actually slow down and watch the processes of terraforming a new world; smashing rocks together to make planets and carefully manuevering things to make the desolation into paradise.

"I'm in. Thank you, captain."

"Don't thank me yet. You've got quite a bit of work ahead of you."