Friday. 10:40 Kranz Center

John was giggling maniacally at his cube. This was getting to be a normal thing that made his fellow command cadets highly uncomfortable. Those very same cadets swore up and down that John was a megalomaniacal villain.

In the five days since starting their wargames John’s fleet had defended itself and attacked sixteen other fleets. And won each encounter decidedly. Though that didn’t mean he won the fights without suffering any casualties. One-quarter of his fighter fleet was gone, looting the crippled and disabled capital ships had recouped some of those losses but he was still well under full strength.

In terms of ships, he had only lost thirty hulls between the cruiser, frigates, and destroyers. Most of his ships had suffered some form of damage. Though once again, through some creative thinking and blatant looting, he was able to effect field repairs to keep the ships in fighting shape. Ablative armor was also able to be swapped out with intact portions from the derelict vessels.

“Cadets, you have twenty minutes to review the turn’s results. Before the end of the day, I want three orders from everyone. We will run them tomorrow morning at 07:00. You will have four orders to submit over the weekend. Your homework is due by 07:30.”

The instructor paused for a moment, “Please take care in your orders. While fleet-wide orders are easier to enter in, your fleet will then lack finesse and focus on its actions.”

John was already long past reviewing the results and was testing his new orders. Slipstream signatures were detected in orbit around the vessel his fleet was already stationed at. This was both excellent and terrible news for John. A fleet was going to transition into real space, but how long exactly wasn’t entirely known.

John locked his workstation and walked up to the center of the room. There was a queue forming for the instructor. John waited impatiently inline until it was his turn to ask his question. Thankfully that wait wasn’t long as most of the answers were some forms of ‘No you can’t do that.’

“Yes Cadet Lief, how can I help you?”

“How accurate is the simulation with respect to projected slipstream turbulence in real space?” John asked matter of factly.

The instructor looked up from his terminal, “Why do you ask?”

“I’m wondering if the simulation tries to recreate translation as it does in real life. The goal of it is to see if I can calculate an estimated amount of time for the translation to occur.”

The instructor smiled at the interesting question, “Very interesting question cadet. It is modeled to be as realistic as possible. That being said I would presume some slack should be estimated due to the macro scale like this.”

“Understood sir. Adding some slop to the assumption. Thank you, sir.”

John turned and walked back to his cube. When he sat down, he immediately started to research slipstream turbulence. His first three hits were useless. On the fourth paper, he hit a jackpot. It contained everything John was looking for.

He sat back in his chair and began pouring over the research document. John copied the appropriate information and brought up a VI the students could use to do certain heavy-lift type calculations. After a short wait, it came back with an estimated arrival time of thirty-seven minutes.

“Well shit,” John whispered to himself, “Not enough time to properly deploy the fleet.”

John did the next best thing though. He ordered the fleet to close on the disturbance and engage battle stations. All fighters and bombers were to be launched and take up positions above where the enemy ships would jump into real space.

Issuing the next orders would be so much simpler if the enemy fleet had transitioned into the system. Instead, the orders John was working on were a nested mess of if-statements. John shook his head as he thought through the third-order he had yet to start. It would be another mess like this one.

When the bell rang, John was still not finished with the order. He packed his things together and walked out of the room. It was a rare event indeed for him to have homework to do. John smiled at the situation as he thought, ‘there’s always a first time for everything.’

18:45 Lounge

Despite it being Friday night, the group was mostly doing homework. The key exceptions were Andern and Nathan. Both of whom were done with school for the week, though both vowed to work on homework in the morning.

“John, how’s your fleet doing?” Kristin asked.

“Uhm,” John paused as he thought, “How close to Confederate space are you currently?”

“You answered a question with another question,” Alice smirked at John.

“You caught that, did you now?” John smirked back at his wife.

“I’m in the general area,” Kristin answered in a very guarded way.

John answered immediately, “Ah cool. I’m on the other side of the galaxy. I am doing really well. Down a bit on drones though. Might be able to replenish my stocks when they run.”

Kristin cocked her and looked at John suspiciously, “What do you mean replenish your stocks?”

Kevin looked up and started to laugh, “The moment you can turn to piracy you do. Nice thinking outside of the box..”

John shook his head, “Hey, that's rude to assume that. This shit isn’t piracy. It’s scavenging. They are totally different.”

Kristin stood up and dropped her tablet, “YOU CAN DO THAT?”

John was taken aback by Kristin’s question, “Yeah, why did you think we couldn’t do that?”

“But in war…” Kristin began to protest but ended her statement before she finished it.

“If I’m air locking people for their munitions that are going a step too far. Pilfering munitions from a dead ship, that’s being resourceful and staying in the game. Also, one of the reasons my fleet is swimming in food.”

“Goddammit, I’ve had a problem with my fleet's morale because of rationing and using primarily energy-based weapons.”

“Ok, I got the winner. I’m done with this disgusting mess.”

Kristin looked over at John’s tablet and her jaw dropped, “Uhm, can I see that?”

“Oooh, looking to cheat off of him?” Jessica joked.

John handed his tablet to Kristin. She was shocked at how detailed he made them. Individual ships were given a nest of orders to do based on what was happening. Suddenly the work she had done felt wholly inadequate.

Kristin handed his tablet back and began looking where she could add detail to her orders. She took a deep breath and realized that she’d need to up her game to match John if that was even possible. In any case, she was thankful she wouldn’t have to fight him, but a small bit of her did want to see how she’d fare against him.

Kevin looked up and grinned, “Looks like you guys have a fun semester planned.”

“Half of it anyway,” John smiled, “Can’t say that I care for my afternoon classes.”

Alice rolled her eyes, “Says the guy that finished his Statistics 405 class last night. I’m not buying that argument one bit.”

“Well, I have to attend the damn class. I can’t skip it,” John protested to the support of no one in the room.

“Are we being boring this weekend?” Theresa asked.

Andern and Nathan laughed, and both answered ‘yes’ in unison. John shrugged while the rest nodded their heads. Theresa looked a bit sad but resigned to their position.

“I am hoping to go shopping Sunday morning, but that is only going to happen if I get all this,” Alice gestured at her five open books, “All done by tomorrow.”

“Gross. My pile is exactly one book smaller though,” Jessica was also resigned to her fate, “But getting out at least once this weekend would be great.”

“FCS Championship is tomorrow at noon. Going to watch that. Beyond that I’ll probably try to wrap up another class while we nerd out in here,” John answered as he watched the hockey game on the TV.

“So are we really not going to get any more details on how you guys are married and now you are engaged?” Brian sighed as he pointed at the newly married and engaged couples.

“What’s to say? I was nervous as hell for the first ten days of our vacation,” Andern said as he threw the bag.

“Wait, were you going to ask her earlier in the trip and you just couldn’t work up the nerve to do so?” Kevin grinned as he asked his questions.

John looked at Kevin and whispered a bet. Kevin nodded accepting it. Kristin noticed this and then looked back and Andern. The three of them were grinning with anticipation for his answer.

“Oh, come on? Do you really think I’d do that?” Andern tried to act wounded at the insinuation.

The entire room stopped, looked at him, and nodded.

“Assholes, and yes that’s exactly what happened. I wanted to ask the first day when we went for a walk, but I forgot the damn ring in my bag. And then you know…”

“You know what?” Kristin was trying to hold back her laughter.

“It got crowded, then I got self-conscious. Then I got worried about what you said,” Andern was now pointing at John.

“What the hell did I say?” John looked confused before looking at Kevin, “By the way, you owe me twenty.”

“That you didn’t have a backup plan if Alice said no to you.”

“Not gonna lie, man, probably shouldn’t be something you plan for if the relationship is solid,” Nathan said, “Supposedly anyways. Not that any of you would ask me for relationship advice.”

Alice laughed, “Did you really try to think of a backup plan if I had said no?”

“No,” John was shaking his head, “I told him that I didn’t have a backup plan. I was basically yoloing it. I mean I figured you were going to say yes, but I didn’t know for sure.”

“My fiancé is a coward. Cool beans,” Kristin said slowly as she winked at Andern.

“Why aren’t we talking about how those two eloped. Didn’t even ask if any of us wanted to join them in Vegas,” Andern quickly and deftly changed the topic.

“Now that was a smooth transition,” John said laughing, “Out with the details.”

“It was simple. Both of our families are fucking insane. This was the way,” Theresa succinctly answered the question.

The group laughed and continued to do a combination of homework and chat with one another. Productivity wasn’t that great, but it was far from zero for the group. The brief bouts of levity here and there were welcome to the group. The semester was only a week old, but they were already feeling the stress and workload hoisted upon them.

23:35 Academy Armory – Armor Range

One by one the group called it a night and went to bed. John mentioned he had to test something and would be quiet when he turned in for the night. He wheeled and locked the test dummy into place after replacing the sensors.

John was rummaging through the shelving units trying to find an amplifier device that he hadn’t active or synced with himself. After striking out four times he found a virgin unit. The reliquary powered up as John ordered to present the backplate. The backplate had space for three customizable modules. The center and right slots had kinetic shielding modules locked into them.

He detached the central shielding unit and moved it into the left slot. The psychic amplifier was locked into the central position. John then checked a couple of things on the armor plats and made sure there was sufficient clearance. Commands were entered into the reliquary which then withdrew the backplate and stored it within itself.

John changed into his unique void sheath while his VI was running diagnostics for the new sensors. He commanded the reliquary to armor him. It whirred to life as the boots were presented to him. The leg plates were being held by a pair of spindly-looking arms.

The micro fusion reactors turned on causing an oddly comforting hum and vibration that was felt within the armor. The reliquary then removed his right forearm plate and gauntlet. John chuckled that his hunch was true. It would armor him with the ‘normal’ armor and gauntlet. The second combination was then locked into place.

The forearm plate looked very similar with the exception of a one-inch square ridge that ran the length of the armor plate. Internally there were a couple of minor changes with the circuitry, though the main change was a direct connection to the central equipment module.

The gloves had smaller ridges on the outside of them that extended around the fingers into the palm. There was no armor in the palm like the normal gauntlets. There was however extra void sheath fabric present, but it was arranged in a geometric pattern. It pointed to the center of his palm.

Which would normally be useless except for his psychic amplifier. It was powered on and brought up to just twenty-five percent output. John ordered the VI to synch with his terminal and began showing readouts from the dummy. The VI noted the ‘odd’ readings that the amplifier was reading, but John simply noted the readout and made the VI ignore it for now.

John walked over to the spot on the floor that was a similar distance from the amplifier. He began channeling his anti-psychic energy in his hand. He was looking for the freaky reality tears he witnessed before but they weren’t present. He let the attack go. It struck the dummy much more quickly, and with a noticeable increase in intensity, than his naked attack the week before.

His suit’s onboard VI spoke up, “Sensors detected a force of two hundred sixty pounds of force struck the dummy. Inverse psychic energies detected thirty feet behind the dummy, though at twenty percent the intensity from the dummy.”

John looked at the results that were streaming into his HUD. It was clear the amplifier and channeling armor plates were doing their job. He was running some numbers through his head estimating higher-powered attacks. Then he laughed to himself and asked the VI to do the calculations for him.

“Even, estimate force with the amplifier running at fifty, seventy-five- and one-hundred percent output.”

“One moment please,” it replied as numbers began streaming through his HUD, “Fifty percent would be a force exceeding six hundred pounds of force with full power exceeding sixteen hundred.”

“We’re dealing with an exponential curve then. Keep your estimates for full power and let’s compare them against an actual attack.”

“Copy.”

“Set amplifier to one percent, reduce power to twenty-five percent after the attack is made.”

“Understood.”

The amplifier began drawing substantially more power from the fusion cores. John closed his eyes and focused within. He hadn’t done this in the previous attack, but this would let him know what his best-case scenario would be. When he was content with the channeling of the energies within him, he extended his hand and pushed the armor to his hand.

The channeling circuits that he built within the armor plates began to arc energy. The psychic energy began to collapse in on itself becoming denser and denser. The freaky tears in reality began to appear again. When John felt that he had compressed all that could be the attack was sent toward the dummy.

It slammed into the dummy, slightly compressing its chest. The psychic sense was overloaded and died in showers of sparks. As did the sensors on the ground up to fifteen feet behind the dummy. John smiled as the suit reduced power to an idle state.

“The force of that attack was just over seventeen hundred pounds. Basically, a hard tackle in football. Not going to do much against a power-armored foe, but against a regular foot soldier that is definitely going to knock them off their game.”

John turned and walked over to the reliquary. Ten minutes later he changed back into his clothes. He had made a mess of things and grabbed a garbage can to throw away the destroyed components from his tests. When he was finished cleaning up and putting away things he sat down at the terminal and poured over the results.

“So, it can be weaponized. I can’t let anyone in on this. Eve, encrypt this information and send it over to my private server. Wipe this terminal clean. Also, scan any known military and public servers for any trace of these tests. I don’t want this getting out.”

“Understood, I will message you with the results of the web scan when it is completed.”

John signed out of the terminal and turned to stand up. Six marine guards and an older marine, one that he was acquainted with, were walking down the ramp. The old man smiled when he saw John walking toward him. He gestured to his guards to wait at the ramp as he walked over to meet John.

“Cadet Lief. I had hoped to see what you were testing here today. It appears I was a bit too late for that. How have you been son?” General Mizrahi said jovially.

John quickly saluted and then walked over to shake his hand, “Good sir, thanks for asking.”

“I heard you got yourself into some more trouble.”

John laughed, “When aren’t I? Alice and I did manage a Christmas break with no bullshit breaking out. Aside from running away from a bar fight that she started, but that’s a non-event in my life.”

“Did you really run from a fight?”

“I didn’t need to be harassed by the local police for beating up some boozed-up locals. Plus, I didn’t want Alice getting hurt. She can hold her own in a fight, but all of these characters were way bigger than she is.”

Mizrahi chuckled, “She’s got spirit, that is for sure.”

“What do you need from me, sir?”

“How would you like to go after Dr. Norman?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods, sir?”

Mizrahi smiled, “You won’t be missing any of your classes while we sail out to our target system. You can remote in on our ship. Once there we expect the mission to last a few hours. Any intel we get will be shipped back to Earth along with you. Your room onboard the CNS Vigilant already has some spare uniforms that will fit you.”

“I’ll want that my suit and weapons brought with me.”

The general turned and gestured at one of the men. They walked over to John’s locker and logged all of the weapons within. He then scanned the reliquary.

“We have spares of all the weapons on board sir. We’ll get a grav-lift and bring the reliquary with us,” one of the attaches said.

“Cadet, I’m giving you the field rank of First Lieutenant for the duration of this mission. You’re going to command a squad of my finest troops.”

“Thank you, sir, I will strive to make sure we all come back safe and sound from this.”

“You have five minutes before we’re leaving. I would strongly recommend letting your wife know that you’re going to be indisposed for a couple of weeks.”

John nodded and walked over to the terminal. He switched over to the communications tab and contacted Alice. She wasn’t answering though. John sighed and overrode the light and console controls in their bedroom. There she was, sound asleep in the middle of the bed wrapped up in a small fort of pillows and covers.

“Alice, honey, please wake up.”

Alice drowsily said, “Lights off.”

“No, wake up.”

Alice finally pushed herself up and looked at the screen on the wall opposite of their bed, “John, why are you on the screen there?”

John started to laugh, “Oh wow, it’s been three hours already. So you know how there’s this crazy-ass evil guy and his daughter or granddaughter trying to kill, capture or maim me?”

Alice was now more awake and now giving John the stink eye, “I am vaguely aware of that. What is happening?”

“I got drafted by the Marines. Gonna be gone for a week or two. Didn’t however get an out to avoid schoolwork though. That bit was a kick in the nuts.”

“Fucking hell, I wanted to help with that you know. Dammit, we all did.”

“Hey, look at it this way, if we don’t off him there’s always next time.”

Alice didn’t look impressed, “John, dear, now’s not the time to be a smartass. Be safe. I mean it.”

“Love ya too. Be seeing you soon.”

“Love you too,” Alice said hugging the pillow she had grabbed tightly.