Very quickly, the five of us grew restless. A three-hour session of various board games interspersed with caffeine and snacks makes for a fun party, but as that drags towards eight hours, things get more tedious.
“Alright, if I have to roll another die, I am going to kill someone. So, new activity?” asked Leo. There was some grumbling from Konrad, who apparently enjoys the dice rolling, but everyone else murmurs in agreement.
“How about we do a tournament?” I suggest. “There's a pretty good sim loaded onto these tablets; I'm sure we can set up a bracket. Think of it like getting a baseline of how we all perform before our brains melt,” I offer with false cheer. That gets some smiles all around. Sarah jumps up to start drawing on a whiteboard.
“Okay, I know how Vic, Leo, and I all measure up from academy scores. Though I wanna be on the far side of a bracket from Vic—no offense, but we have played each other sooooo much. I want a piece of someone new. Jiang, Konrad, what were your sim scores like?”
Sim scores are vital for graduation at the academy here on Mars. Starting with 1000 points, the minimum to pass is 1100. To earn points, students play sim matches—casual matches give or deduct 1 point, while official matches with advisors watching give or deduct 5.
You have to get good at the sim to pass, but people rarely play unless they think they can win. By the end of the first year, except for Sarah, no one had played me outside official matches.
Matches can last up to 2 hours, and with assignments, playing more than 3 times a week is rare, except during tournament week. In theory, playing 3 times a week and winning every tournament match can earn 455 points a year, with a 'perfect' score over 4 years being 2825.
Of course, someone winning every tournament match would be hard-pressed to find many willing to play them in a casual match. As such, my score of 2494 and Sarah’s 2499, separated by a single match, were more reasonable record-setting scores.
“2450," replies Konrad with a shrug. "Top of my class, short of your record." Jiang is quiet for a minute before giving a triumphant smile. "2537," he answers, "The current academy record." He seems smug about the delivery, probably deservedly so.
"Wow, congrats Jiang!" was Sarah's only response. If she was taken aback or upset about her score being beaten, she didn't show it.
I was a little pleased that it was beaten. It didn't make the fact that I didn't have the top score any less of a sore spot, but at least Sarah didn't have it either. Plus, with this little casual match, perhaps we could see just who really was the best.
"Alright, here are the brackets," Sarah murmured while filling in names. "Bracket A will be me, Leo, and Konrad; you two can figure out who gets a first-round bye. Bracket B will be Vic and Jiang." She nodded, satisfied, and after some negotiating of who would go first, the match started—Sarah and Leo.
I tried not to pay too much attention. Sarah and I had played over and over during our time in the academy. Often our matches were a game of second guessing how we might second guess each other.
Tedious.
What I did pay attention to were the ships in the sim. Nearly a decade ago, the ships we used in the sims were hypothetical, approximations of ships and weapon systems that didn't yet exist. The new updated sim was populated almost entirely with ships that did exist, including different variations of standard ship types and plenty of retrofitted non-military ships adapted into service with all sorts of weapons systems.
You might write up tactics for a whole class of ship, but the role of each specific ship might not fit perfectly into that unless you were aware of the quirks of every non-standard ship in the fleet. Unlike the recreational game I had been playing last night, the setup we chose here was more long-form.
We would each get the same 200 ships, with more than 2/3 of them being corvettes, and plenty of those were retrofitted civilian ships. Not all of those ships would work in a generic role. Plenty were cargo ships fitted with large guns. The lack of armor and generally slow-firing weapons made them very poor in the typical corvette role.
Some ships were outfitted to be essentially magnets for enemy strike craft, basically giant blocks of metal that would take a long time for strike craft to disable. While they might be useful fighting against our alien foes, they were next to useless here except to ride on the outsides of formations and absorb the odd shot to keep more valuable ships safe.
The larger ships were a little more consistent. Frigates were almost exclusively built into a point-defense role, making them lethal against enemy strike craft and not half bad brawlers against lighter-armored corvettes.
There were only four cruisers and a single dreadnought-class ship. Three of the cruisers were set up to work as carriers, while the last, built slightly earlier, was a heavy weapons platform with armor thicker than some corvettes were long. It was probably the most valuable ship in this engagement, capable of dishing out the most damage in weapons range against any type of target.
The one dreadnought was a bit hard to assign a simple role. It had the same carrier capabilities as the carrier-type cruisers but lacked some of the normal artillery while having additional point defense. The entire ship was built around a skyscraper-sized railgun; a hit from the weapon would take out anything it hit. Of course, actually managing to hit with that sort of projectile would be quite hard. Its theoretical range was significantly longer than any other weapon given the speeds the projectile could reach, but actually knowing where an enemy ship would be in big empty space minutes from when the projectile would hit made using that high range tricky.
While Sarah and Leo get underway, Jiang gestures over to a free couch along with two more headsets we can use. Wordlessly, I join him, and we set to work picking out formations to throw at each other.
Offhand, I noticed the room was silent. Konrad had taken his first-round bye as an excuse to go get a snack and watch Sarah and Leo's match. Meanwhile, at some point I didn’t notice, a small gathering by the door had formed. Word must have gotten around that the new test subjects were doing something interesting. Even guards were getting in on watching. Perhaps El set up the VR headsets to stream the matches. Regardless, no one actually came in, so the breakroom, at least, was quiet.
The map wasn't random; we'd all be playing on the same one. In this case, it was a Mars-sized planet with a formidable asteroid belt. Both players would start at opposite edges of the asteroid belt and would do battle around the planet and throughout the belt. Larger ships would have limited ability to maneuver within an asteroid belt, while smaller ships could ambush more easily, making scouting more difficult. In short, it was a map that benefited defense and the use of smaller ships—something I was sure Jiang would be well aware of.
When setting up my formation, I entirely ignored the asteroid belt. I'd leave some ships in it, mostly a handful of less useful corvettes and a frigate or two and most importantly half my cruisers that I didn't mind losing. The majority of my ships, however, I staged near the south pole of the planet. The asteroid field of the map made it intuitive to treat the entire space as more two-dimensional than it really was. I suspected it was common for much of the fighting to be expected in the narrow band that made up the belt. My hope was that by coming at Jiang from an oblique angle, I could surprise him.
The match started, and I found the first benefit of my strategy is that I really only had to focus on my token scouting force within the asteroid belt. The majority of my force, just instructed to set into a stationary position over the pole, required very little focus.
The main trick was that half of my capital ships, particularly the majority of my carrier force, were poorly defended and positioned in the asteroid belt—right where I hoped Jiang would expect them to be. If he had a clear view of the battlefield, the ruse would be pointless. Still, if I could harass his scouts just enough with my own, I could manage to spring the trap.
First, I pulled all the strike craft from the two deployed carriers and sent them to join up with the carrier I had over the planet's pole. There, they could refuel, and I could, for at least a single sortie, still hit as if all my carriers were intact.
Second, I needed to pinpoint the positions of his capital ships—finding at least three of them for this trade to be worthwhile. Observing how he scouted and where his forces came from to destroy my exposed carriers in the belt would provide some of that information. However, I would have to be proactive in my scouting to ensure I knew enough.
The first part of the plan went off without a hitch; my forces were, to my knowledge, positioned without any of my ruse being intercepted by my opponent.
I had one more trick for scouting. Usually, for scouting, long-range scout craft—autonomous or manned along with corvettes for firepower—were employed. Fast and maneuverable forces could skirmish if needed but were better off gathering information and fleeing at the first sign of trouble.
The composition of my scouting forces was more dedicated than that. While I may have had fewer ships in the belt itself, I allocated nearly all of them to the scouting effort. As a result, when I first encountered Jiang’s ships—typical scouting composition of fighters and corvettes—rather than fleeing, I pushed my skirmishing force of mixed corvettes and frigates in, resisting any scouting probes except for one. I allowed that lone probe to continue towards my exposed and empty carriers.
Thats when I hit the first snag. I had been to aggressive and Jiang’s forces hadn’t yet encountered my carriers. I needed him to spot them, but I didn’t want to push them into an even more exposed position. That would be too obvious; he’d see right through the trap, or at least be suspicious.
I kept my aggressive scouting going, and so far, any reinforcements he might have sent in response had not yet arrived. His existing forces retreated, opting for skirmishes with my better-armed scouts. Things continued in that manner for a minute more, and my anxiety grew the whole time as there was information I needed that I did not yet have.
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Thankfully, Jiang at last responded to my aggressive early play with one of his own. A large force, comprised of many of Jiang’s frigates and, most importantly, supported by the cruiser fitted with heavy weapons, pushed back against my scouts. In my mind, this cruiser was the most valuable ship either of us had due to its armor, speed, and ability to take down other capital ships. It was joined by a significant contingent of strike craft as well.
While this response didn't reveal the location of his carriers, it did give me an idea of how far away they were. Given I could assume they were in the asteroid belt, it narrowed down their position.
I foresaw how the engagement would unfold a full minute before it commenced. As soon as I spotted Jiang's force, I initiated the retreat of my scouts toward the sacrificial carriers. Simultaneously, I amassed a large wave of strike craft to be directed toward where I believed Jiang’s main force of capital ships would be. With the heavily armed cruiser and most dedicated point defense ships pulled away to deal with my larger scouting forces, I hoped to secure one or two capital ships in exchange for the forces I was sacrificing in the belt.
Launching that attack, I turned my attention to salvaging what I could from the losing engagement I had orchestrated. Knowing roughly the range of the largest weapons on the brawler cruiser, I had been retreating my scouts toward my empty carriers. With my attacks launched, I tried to anticipate where the cruiser might end up to start shooting at my carriers.
Navigation within the belt was limited. While the better-armored cruiser could technically smash through some of the lesser debris, it was the kind of damage you wouldn’t usually want to incur. Unless Jiang specifically directed it, the ship would endeavor to avoid debris in its pathing. It was a risky assumption, but I was eager to see what the massive railgun on the dreadnought could do.
Without doing any precise calculations, I relied on eyeballing. I knew roughly where I would position the carrier two minutes from now. Although it was too wide a range to ensure a hit, I deemed it close enough to take the pot shot all the way from the planet's pole. When the shot arrived, Jiang would know where the dreadnought, and probably the rest of my forces, were. However, by the time it hit, either my trap would have succeeded or I would have lost anyway. It was a risk worth taking.
Two minutes in, everything still seemed on track. Jiang’s force had spotted my exposed carrier group and was moving aggressively to destroy it. I hindered him every step of the way with the ships I could throw into defense, not wanting to make it seem like I was actively sacrificing the force. The well-armed cruiser faced no issues; its armor was thick enough that the best my smaller ships could do was try to take out its less-armored engines. Unfortunately, maneuvering around the heavily armored wedge-shaped gun platform was easier said than done, and my token force was being decimated.
The force I had sent of fast-moving fighters, frigates, and corvettes had reached its top speed and would have to begin decelerating. For the strike craft and destroyers, I did decelerate, but for some of the corvettes, I left them at their full speed. They would shoot through the asteroid field in a wide swath before turning back around, and I hoped they would confirm the location of the enemy capital ships in the process.
Thirty seconds out from the railgun shell arriving at its presumed target, I was growing excited, my feet twitching even as I tried to focus on my actions in the sim.
My token force was being decimated. A tightening in my chest accompanied the sight of the disabled carrier, while the other was well on its way, most of the escort gone. It had always been a sacrificial force—no sentimental value attached, but they were significant assets here. Their loss, even anticipated was stressful. I pressed on, fingers dancing over the controls, determined to salvage what I could.
Jiang’s heavy cruiser was within 1000 meters of the railgun shell's path, better than I could have hoped given the guesswork involved but still not a hit. Meanwhile, my attack toward where I estimated his main capital ships to be was going well.
I had spotted two cruisers clumped together, and the dreadnought off a fair distance with its own escort. I ignored the dreadnought; with its more formidable escort and its own point defense, my strike force of mostly small craft would find doing any damage difficult. It was the escort around the carriers that had been most drained to support Jiang’s attack on my own exposed forces, so by the time his scouts saw my high-speed corvettes sprinting through the belt from a dimension he had failed to properly consider, it was too late. Waves of strike craft trounced into the under-defended carriers, and even as I lost my own token force, Jiang’s losses were starting to look comparable.
Jiang now knew where my main force was, bunched up at the pole. The remaining dreadnought and carrier I had matched his own carrier forces, and my own heavy cruiser had yet to expend any ammunition or take any hits to its armor. We had both lost a similar number of strike craft, and I had lost a dozen more escort ships. It wasn’t a decisive blow by any means.
What was a decisive blow was the railgun shot. The few scouts I still had in the area, distracting the heavy cruiser to the best of their ability to keep it in position, had done their jobs. The feeling of gratification I felt when the shell delivered a glancing blow off the back of Jiang’s ship had me give a little yelp of success. It was more luck than skill, but still the hit was good.
Even if the ship's engines weren’t disabled, it would be slowed, unable to maneuver; it would be a sitting duck for my next wave of strike craft, even if I didn’t include any other heavier ships to support it.
Jiang could either abandon it or concentrate his forces around it as if it were a station. If he abandoned it, I would be left with an insurmountable material advantage. Already at the pole, Jiang would have to pull his ships out of the belt to attack me, to make any use of the heavy weapons on his dreadnought—an engagement of ships he was still likely to lose, given my unmolested heavy cruiser. If he chose to form up around it, I would be hard-pressed to win in a single attack, but I would know where his forces were at all times; he would be unable to scout or attack dramatically without leaving himself vulnerable.
It wasn’t a total victory; things like local stations, supply ships, and reinforcements would sometimes be added as constraints to academy sims. But in this fight here—casual and in its own little vacuum, all tactics with no grand strategy—I was confident I had won and prepared to press my advantage.
Perhaps Jiang still had some tricks left; maybe he was just taking stock of his situation. We play another minute or so before he concedes the match. I remove the headset, enjoy the weight of concentration lifting from my shoulders. My eyes, tired from the focused gameplay, blink against the harsh lighting of the room, a manic smile on my face.
Looking around the room, I quickly try to compose myself. There are suddenly a lot of people watching. Many more lab coats and uniformed personnel had shown up to peek into the breakroom while I was focused on the sim; a few were clapping politely at my win. Sarah, Leo, and Konrad had been watching as well, checking in on the bracket. It seemed Sarah had beaten Leo; the next match would be her and Konrad, then I would get to play the winner. Belatedly, I realize we would probably end up playing each other again, and the taste that left in my mouth was almost enough to render my recent victory ash. Almost. I still felt the pleasant buzz of a close-run match resolving in my favor.
“Well played; I knew you’d been at one of the poles from the 5-minute mark, but I didn’t think it was going to matter. Shows me,” Jiang chuckled with the offer of a shaken hand. I take it enthusiastically and try my best to be a gracious winner. I fail and can’t keep the grin from taking over my face, but at least I tried.
“Isn’t this new sim great, Vic?” Sarah asked, gesturing to the headset I’d just stripped off. “It's so much nicer to look at, and the controls on those things are so smooth. It felt like I could flick around the whole map with just a twitch of my eyes, barely need the hand controllers, and there are so many cool maps. There's one where you can fight around the event horizon of a black hole. It's so gameified, but in a fun way!”
I nod my agreement. I hadn’t thought too much about those little quality-of-life changes when I was trying to win. It was familiar in a lot of ways to the more rugged sims we’d presumably all used in the academy. Still, she was right about it feeling a little like a gamified war game. There were features that someone had put major time into that only really helped immersion. It wasn’t as if there was a soundtrack or stunning visuals or anything like that. Someone had taken care to make the experience smooth, seamless, hiding some of the crunchy technical details behind smoothed layers of effort and commodification.
"Yeah, I had fun. It feels like graduation sims were just last week, so I'm kinda surprised at that," I shrugged. "Also, I really need a drink. I swear I can't believe that was 45 minutes!"
I part from the others and wander off to get myself a drink and a snack. Konrad and Sarah start their match, and I tune in to watch, pleasantly distracted from all that had happened in the last 24 hours. Earth might be choking with industrial smog, its colonies under siege, and the species at risk of extinction, but at least in this moment we were alive.
My brain might be melting into me-scream, I might end up a partially enslaved entity beyond human comprehension but at least for now I was still me.
It just felt nice to be surrounded by a bunch of peers, all in the same boat with similar interests. The cozy breakroom turned observation space was starting to feel like a place I could relax in, this group of strangers shifting closer towards friends.
In that moment of relative peace and comfort, Konrad jerks and slips off the couch. His body convulsing and twitching violently on the ground a limb striking Sarah in the leg while pink-red gore dribbles down the back of his neck, staining the cozy scene with unexpected horror. Sarah cries out for help, and somewhere, an alarm starts.
I take a numb sip of my coffee and shiver.