Misinterpretation
Mo glanced at the sensor panel. Argamon! Two hostiles were on her tail. The incoming indicator flashed; the earpiece in her left ear emitted an urgent beep. “Where are you?” she snapped as she fired a countermeasure. Direct hit—missile neutralized—but with two hostiles pursuing her, one remaining countermeasure in her arsenal, and no decoys, she’d bought a minute at most.
The comm-piece in her right ear crackled to life. “I’m almost there,” David said.
“Hurry up! I can’t hold out much longer.”
Another incoming missile. Fire the last countermeasure or evasive maneuvers? A second missile appeared on sensors. Okay, this was not going well. Wait! Evasive pattern 23-A at half velocity just might . . .
She keyed a command sequence into the navigation panel and braced herself. The ship spiralled downward, pitched left, then right. The eggs she’d eaten for breakfast slid into her mouth. She choked them down. Through the nausea she focused on the sensors, her thumb hovering over the countermeasure trigger. A friendly appeared on the panel.
“I’m in range,” David said.
“Pull one off me.”
“Engaging.”
One hostile broke off pursuit. Her spirits lifted—they might get out of this!
Wait for the missiles to start converging . . . Ready, and . . .
She pressed the trigger. The countermeasure sped toward the missiles.
“Yes!” she shouted. Now to take care of the hostile still after her. Her eyes widened. Uh-oh. She’d forgotten to—
The cockpit shook and the panels went dark. “Simulation failed,” an impassive voice said in her comm-piece as she was slowly returned to an upright position.
No kidding. Thank you very much for rubbing it in. She slapped the navigation panel with both hands and groaned. Argamon! They’d almost had it.
“What happened?” David asked.
“Oh, a move I thought was brilliant turned out to be stupid. I tried taking out two missiles at once by getting them to converge.”
“Their programming would prevent them from destroying each other.”
“I know. But they were close enough that I only needed to hit one to take both out.”
“And you missed?”
“No, I hit.” Mo sighed. “But I didn’t take the increased damage radius of the chain reaction into account.” She’d blown herself up. Idiot. “Sorry.”
“It wasn’t all your fault. I ran into heavy resistance at the supply depot and took way too long to destroy the weapons cache. I was supposed to be on my way back when that patrol showed up.”
“Maybe,” she said, unconvinced. He hadn’t destroyed himself, and she wouldn’t have either, if she’d had more options available to her. The simulation had been completely unfair! How had the designer expected anyone to hold off the opposition with such a measly allotment of missiles, decoys, and countermeasures? She’d been outnumbered three to one, hardly conducive to whittling down a hostile with the fighter’s laser weapons.
“Come on,” David said. “It’s the first time we’ve tried this one, and it’s rated high difficulty. We did good.”
He’d done well; she’d committed a huge blunder. But she said, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Do you want to try again?”
She pulled off the helmet and checked her comm unit. “I don’t think we have enough time.” And she was no longer in the mood. “That’s it for me.”
“Okay.” He paused. “I’ll meet you in the lobby. I want to fly a short speed sim.”
Mo unbuckled herself, stepped out of the dim simulation booth, and pressed the Disinfect button to the right of the portal.
The soft lights in the corridor eased her transition from darkness to light—she didn’t even blink when she reached the brightly lit equipment room and handed her helmet to the attendant with a murmured “thank you.” If she ever flew an intermediate sim she’d have to suit up, but she hadn’t tried one of those yet. The novice ones required only a helmet.
She sank into one of the lobby sofas and stared out the large picture window. Last week the path outside had bustled with cadets hurrying to lectures and exams, but now it was empty. Most were on break; the only cadets remaining were those who’d just completed their second year and hoped to enter a specialized program for their third.
Mo swallowed. The next two weeks would decide whether she’d spend her third year training to be a fighter pilot or enter the general stream, putting herself at the mercy of the military’s whims when she graduated. Two years of books, aviacraft lessons, and barely palatable food had come down to this. She better not blow it—she’d rather spend her career flying than performing whatever mundane duties the military assigned to her. She’d hate to be stuck washing floors and cooking meals while Les was out blasting hostiles.
David strolled into the lobby. She pasted a smile on her face, still smarting from her miscalculation in the simulator.
“I can’t believe it’s only 08:00,” David said. “I’m still half asleep.” He yawned as if to emphasize his point. “You had breakfast yet?”
She grimaced, reminded of the eggs she’d almost deposited on the simulator floor. “Yeah, I have. But I wouldn’t mind a mug of tziva.” She had no reason to rush back to the room. Les wouldn’t be there, and Mo had just completed the one activity that might give her an edge in the upcoming evaluation. She couldn’t really prepare for the essay exam or interview, but the simulator test was a different story. Blowing herself up was hardly encouraging, though.
“When’s Lesley due back?” David asked as they left the pilot training complex and walked toward the mess hall.
“She said she’d arrive on the 10:12 train at the earliest.”
“She must get up at the crack of dawn for these meetings.”
“Normally, yeah, but this time she went home last night.”
David drew back in mock surprise. “You mean you managed to get up, have breakfast, and show up for 07:00 all by yourself?”
She couldn’t help but smile. “Believe it or not, I did.” When Les had beeped her, Mo had already had her shower. Rising early hadn’t been difficult—she didn’t like sleeping alone. Finney and her flaming 08:00 meetings! At least this time Les had been able to travel the night before, but Mo had selfishly missed snuggling up to her in bed. “Though she did beep me.”