SOMETIME IN 217 UC, JUNIOR YEAR AT CANBERRA ACADEMY

‘FORCES LED BY THE MADAME SCARFACE DEFEATED NEAR THE ABASSAI SYSTEM!; The Metropolitan Naval Force under Captain Rubenfield suffer only light losses as they…’ the opening words of a particular front-page newspaper jumps out at me as I scan the rack for something interesting to read. It’s still early in the morning before our lessons start for the day so I figured I’d read something to kill time. Intrigued, I reach out for it but get stopped by the familiar sight of red-mane hair that appears next to my side.“Hooo? Your eccentric Trachenberg friend isn’t tagging along with you today?” Alexandra inquires as she peers at me and the newspaper.

“Oh, good morning, Alexandra, uhm… yeah, Friederika was kinda busy today,” I cheerfully say as I skim the contents of the newspaper article. It’s the middle of June or so, but this one is dated from a few months ago. Word must be awfully slow, I suppose. “What’s up? You wanted to do a quick simulation battle?” It’s rare for her to approach me for one, it’s usually the other way around. Speaking of which, I don’t see that brown-haired girl that was a part of her little posse—but her name kind of escapes me. “Oh yeah, where’s that little shy gal that follows you around? She sticks to you like a well-used gum…”

“Like a well-used gum…? Oh— HA↑HA↓WA↑” I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but her laugh reminds me of one of those seagulls when they see unattended food, “— you mean my sweet little Vinnie. Yes, she found herself preoccupied with stuff as well…” her squinting eyes gravitates more to the newspaper, “Hooo… only light losses?” Alex muses, leaving my question hanging entirely. It seems she is captivated by the headline much like I was. But then Alexandra cocks her head once the question finally gets through to her. “Oh, hmmm… yes, I did want to use you as a warm-up for the upcoming league with the seniors. You don’t mind, do you?” She asks with a grin revealing her unusually sharp teeth.

“Uh… yeah, sure. I think we have an hour or two to spare.” I close up the newspaper and put it back on the rack.

After we sign in to the booth, we make our way to one of the stadium-sized rooms assigned to us. Inside are two near-identical bridge-sized podiums—the only difference between them is one is red, and the other is lime-green. The red one has the serial number 007 stamped on the side and the lime one has 009. The flat area between the two is occupied by a black surface with railings separating it from the room’s passageways. “Which one do you want to use, Victoria?” Alexandra asks while leaning on the railing, “it doesn’t matter either way, though.”

“I’ll take the green one,” I respond as I make my way up the tiny steps to the podium. She nods and also takes her place at the red one. With both of us now situated, I turn the knob that activates the system. Almost at once the black surface luminescences with a blue glow—but nothing shows up yet. Glancing down at my monitor a company logo named TECHNIVORM INDUSTRIES accompanied by a rainbow and star flash across the screen momentarily, then it is followed by the boot-up sequence.

Initializing…

Loading all modules…

Computing scripts…

Syncing with the mainframe system…

After a minute or two of that, the menu finally appears with a set of options.

MOCK BATTLES

SETUP TOURNAMENT

OPTIONS

SETUP TOURNAMENT is grayed out, so I select MOCK BATTLES instead.

The new lobby menu that shows up displays a varying amount of sliders ranging from how many ships you want in a battle as well as several game rules from casual play to tournament competitive stuff. These can range from allowing a set number of reinforcements to warp in if you have enough points available, to setting the level of realism for ship morales—it can be acradey or make a ship ai retreat at the drop of a hat. Ship composition is also determined on this screen before a match starts.

There are several ways to win a simulated match. One way is to land a direct hit on the enemy’s flagship, another is to wipe out the logistic auxiliary ships, or either annihilate or rout all enemy forces. Morale is an important thing to consider for the kind of game you want.

“Shall we do equal-sized fleets?” Alexandra shouts from across the room, “or…” she over her podium with a crooked smile revealing sharp teeth, “…I could lower my numbers to give you an advan—”

‎ “No.” I reply sharply, “fight like you mean it!”

The fiery-haired Ruthenian’s menacing row of teeth disappeared, and I thought I even heard the click of a tongue from here. “Hooo… suit yourself, then… how many warships shall we do? Five hundred? A thousand each?”

There’s no limit to how many ships the systems can handle… though it does start to cap out at around forty thousand each. Not that I can ever imagine the Metropolitan Space Navy ever having that much or facing an enemy numbering that many. “Let’s stick small—so we don’t miss our lessons later. We should do around four hundred each. You can do as many auxiliary ships as you want though.” Auxiliary ships don’t particularly matter gameplay-wise—sometimes you move them around to resupply ships. Sometimes you can even repair damaged ships but it’s usually not worth it. Most of the time you use them as bait to make kill-zones.

Alexandra shrugs then taps her screen to input in her ship numbers, and likewise, I do the same. We both press the CONFIRM button on our screens. Soon enough there is a hum as I am encapsulated by a virtual environment—and I find myself on a proper ship bridge in outer space. Hundreds of titan-sized ships drift outside the digitized cockpit windows in columns that seemingly go on forever and disappear as blips to the naked eye. No matter how many times I go through this I find it amazing all the same. The podium’s console shows a bird-eyes view of the battlefield, though my field of vision is obstructed by the fog of war which makes it difficult to make out where Alexandra’s fleet is.

“Are you ready?” I hear Alexandra shout from across the room through the digitized environment. Where she would be in front of me is instead rows of my fleet in space—a little immersive breaking when she shouts out like that, but what can you do about it?

“Yeah, I think I’m done with the preparation phase, we can begin now.”

“Lovely… I won’t be going easy on you, you know that, right?” Was the response from the endless starry void.

“Yeah… it’s just a learning experience, let’s go.”

The virtual environment disintegrated and the blue hue turned a blinking red signifying that I have lost the game. Again. Alexandra is just too good at what she does. I can practice all I want, but her full-frontal assaults are just too much to bear. Not even Friederika is often this aggressive. Despite my efforts to make several lines of defense, she pushed through despite surmounting losses and annihilated my capital ship directly.

“HA↑HA↓WA↑” It’s that cackle of annoying bird laughter again, “that was quite the splendid show!” Alexandra exclaims as we both exited our podiums and met halfway in the middle of the room to lean against the railing divider. “You put up a good fight this time around, Happ! I suffered quite a bit of casualties there.” She smiles like a fool revealing her rows of shark teeth.

“I’m surprised you didn’t pull back despite getting nearly annihilated. I think I still have about one hundred ships left compared to the thirty or so that made it to my capital ship.” I reply dryly, looking on at the game-over screen and the small polygonal ships drifting around the projected map knowing I’ve let down my polygonal mini-men for the nth time. “I don’t even understand the logic of how that is a win when I still have the numerical superiority.”

“That’s right, by all accounts, given the losses that should’ve been a defeat for me, but you know…” Alexandra looks behind us and then tugs on my shoulder to get my attention. “Something similar did happen in real life.” I squint at her with curious eyes,huh? “You know that article you read about the Scarface being defeated at Abassai?” I nod my head, and Alexandra turns around to have her back against the railing, arms crossed “—the Federation didn’t actually win against her.” I break my glance at Alexandra and look back at the drifting polygonal ships, “—in fact, we didn’t even suffer light losses—well, there was a contingent of accompanying Ruthenian and Merican ships that suffered the brunt of the action instead.” My grip on the railing tightens with each word, “the Scarface got away with minimal losses— and yet…” Alexandra’s voice trails off bitterly, “ and yet the home-front is deceived into believing it’s a victory!”

“Just how… exactly do you know all of this, Alex?” I look back at her, and she looks reasonably upset.

She straightens herself with a sigh and crosses her arms again, “Back home—I first learned about it when I went home during our last holiday break… it was front-page headlines for a couple of weeks. There were lots of resentment against the Federation, and even though I’m Ruthenian-born—neither Vinnie nor I were allowed to wear our Academy uniforms for fear of getting jumped, or at least my father thinks so… it’s crazy back home…” She pushes herself away from the railing and turns around to lean over it “the news we get here isn’t as bad, not the newspapers, anyways. Our newspapers—what you may call ‘colonial’ —are a lot more…” Alexandra stops to think of the appropriate wording, “—a lot more willing to lash out. They’re very critical. I heard there were even attempts at suppressing freedom of speech in the press… or something.”

“I had no idea…”

“But who knows who’s telling the truth? The Ruthenians, or the Federation?” Alexandra says with a deflated sigh, “maybe the Ruthenians are trying to downplay the success of pirate operations?”

“Why would that do that?”

‎ Alexandra only shrugs, “adults are beyond me. In either case—we drove the Scarfacepirate out, and isn’t that enough? Regardless of who faced the brunt of the force—we achieved the goal—even if it meant a… er… disproportionate amount of lives on our part.”

“Maybe a few losses by our definition counts as heavy for them? The Madame Scarface, I mean. I think what I’m trying to get at… is maybe both parties are overestimating the pirate’s total strength?” I ponderously add as the blue-aura projection switches off from inactivity.

“It’s a possibility… we may never know for sure. Maybe people hundreds of years from now laugh at us for getting hung up over this, ” Alexandra comments on the way out of the room, “you coming? Lessons are starting too—and our poor little Vinnie and Friederika will be worried sick as dogs looking for us, HA↑HA↓WA↑” And with that annoying seagull laugh, the red-haired Ruthenian leaves the room.

I continue to star at the sleek black surface in silence, pondering about our discussion before leaving the room to join Alexandra.