Chương 245: 97. Ship-to-Ship Combat Simulation

The first thing I saw when I stepped onto the bridge wasn't my own station. It was Ash. He was already there. And whether it was some cursed buff baked into Tobita's borrowed officer's cap or just his own bearing, the sight of him — Upper House uniform, sitting straight in the captain's chair at the elevated rear-center of the bridge — actually looked convincing from across the room. Not the movie-poster kind of cool, coat billowing in a manufactured wind. The other kind.

The if he ordered hard right rudder right now, everyone would move first and ask questions later kind. I stood there for two seconds, feeling something deeply unreasonable stir in my chest. This world is genuinely unfair. Some people put on one extra hat and their presence score jumps thirty points on the spot. Meanwhile I'd spent last night cramming until my soul nearly left my body, and my reward was— I looked down at the station to my front-left. Great. Really great.

Someone — I had reasonable cause to suspect Tobita himself, with Jess as an accessory — had taken a plain sheet of white paper, written on it in painfully neat handwriting, and taped it squarely to the front of the console. TACTICAL OFFICER Ordinary paper. Handwriting tidy enough to make you want to peel it off, crumple it into a ball, and shove it down someone's throat.

"Something wrong, Tactical Officer?" Jess's voice drifted over from behind my left shoulder, carrying that specific early-morning brand of punchable cheer. I didn't even turn around.

"I don't have the energy to fight you right now."

"Sounds like last night really worked, then." She dropped into her own seat, clearly delighted.

"Those dark circles look very professional."

"Thanks. If I die at this station today, your name goes first on the will."

"I'd be touched." This woman has no heart. Confirmed. I set my pad down and finally took stock of the full bridge layout. Roy wasn't sitting. The helm, forward-right of the captain's chair, was built for standing operation — one hand on the wheel, the other resting near the throttle box, shoulders squared. The exact posture of a model student dragged into an exam hall thirty minutes early who'd decided to spend the time lining up his pens. And beside him — Maki. She hadn't taken the XO's chair.

She stood half a step back and to Roy's right, in a position that gave her a clean line of sight to the forward view, the helm, and the captain's chair behind her, all at once. Not pushing forward. Not blocking anything. Nothing wasted. Which was exactly why, one glance was enough to think: right, that's obviously where the Executive Officer stands. On the left, front to aft: Radar, Comms, Tactical Operator.

Lieutenant Manny, the ship's regular radar officer, was nowhere in sight — presumably written out of the sim's rotation and given the day off, or more precisely, sparing us the specific experience of breathing quieter automatically with a real professional standing at our elbow. So the seat was filled by — Akari. The second I saw her sit down, my first reaction was relief. Good. As long as it's not D. Not that I have anything against D.... Fine, I have several things against D.

But handing Radar to the kind of person who'd whistle at the first alarm felt like watching the Yukikaze's morale sink before she'd even cleared dock. Lan took Comms almost silently — head down, adjusting headset and frequency bands, movements clean enough to suggest she'd always belonged there.

Jess, by contrast, made a whole production of the Tactical Operator's seat — pulled the chair back an inch, then let it glide forward again, the entire motion radiating I know you're stressed, so I'm going to look this relaxed purely to bother you. CIC was already running. Evelyn, D, and Harvey stood in a triangle. Akari wasn't with them, tied to Radar instead, but the intel chain still crackled with a dangerously volatile energy. D had his eyes on the projection. Harvey was cross-checking parameters.

Evelyn hadn't said a word yet, but just standing there made it clear: that corner wasn't going to be quiet today. Good. It's never the console that makes a station real. It's the moment a person steps into it and the whole position starts looking like it could bite.

"Excellent. Starting to look like something." Tobita stood in the center, scanning left and right, satisfied like a man admiring a high-risk piece of teaching equipment he'd just finished assembling. My reasonable suspicion: in his eyes, we weren't students. We were a freshly powered-up simulation-suffering system. He looked up toward the main interface.

"Computer. Begin simulation exercise. Execute Scenario I-1558." The system's cold female voice answered from overhead.

"Acknowledged. Executing Scenario I-1558." The bridge lighting dimmed a notch. The starscape beyond the main viewport washed and reset, the quiet outer space overlaid with a pale blue grid that rapidly expanded into full tactical display. Friendly markers lit up. Civilian shipping lanes traced into view. Out at the edge of the sector, a thin ring of debris drifted like a lazy smear of grey. Ash adjusted the cap he clearly still wasn't used to. His voice, when it came, was a shade lower than usual. Steadier.

"All stations, report ready." Right. It had actually started. I sank into the Tactical Officer's chair. Fire control, weapons, and threat-resolution interfaces unfolded in layers. Every weapon name that had nearly buried me last night was finally more than ink on a page — each one sitting quietly in its place in the actual system. For some reason, seeing them mapped onto real controls made me feel a little better.

Probably because anything dangerous enough to hurt you gets a lot friendlier once it turns into a button and a parameter, instead of staying an incantation in a manual.

"Simulation start," the system announced.

"Yukikaze approaching Third Route relay zone. Surrounding spacefield nominal. Detected: eight civilian signatures, three Federal IFF friendlies, two relay buoys."

"Radar confirms," Akari said first, crisp.

"No close-range high-velocity approach vectors. Debris band stable. Lanes clear."

"Comms clear," Lan said.

"Civilian lane data synced. Cross-checking friendly IFF codes."

"CIC confirming tactical plot," Evelyn added. The opening was smooth enough to feel unreal. I was still thinking that when Tobita spoke from the side, tone carrying a very punchable kind of leisure.

"Don't get comfortable. I-1558 isn't a freebie." Something in my chest tightened. Right. If this man ever handed us a clean opening, that would be the actual warning sign. The alert hit a second later — not the ship-wide red-alarm wail, something shorter and sharper, the kind that makes the back of your neck itch.

"Anomalous signal detected," the system reported.

"Bearing oh-seven-hundred, forward-right. Two new mid-range IFF contacts. Tagged: Federal supply escort units. Verification in progress."

"Hold on," Lan frowned.

"Supply escort? There's no scheduled transit on this lane today."

"Radar's got them," Akari said, fingers already moving.

"But they're wrong."

"Define wrong," Ash said immediately. Akari's voice stayed flat.

"Echo's there. Heat's there. Mass curve is off. Looks like a real ship — also looks like a real ship somebody carved by hand." If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"Signal spoofing," Harvey cut in from CIC.

"IFF format checks out on the surface, but the packet cadence is too clean. Textbook, not live."

"So — too real, which makes it fake?" D said.

"You actually understood that," Harvey said.

"I do have a brain occasionally."

"Quiet." Maki, flat, not loud. The bridge snapped straight back to work. I stared at the plot. The two new contacts held steady, forward-right — not fast, not aggressive, deliberately maintaining a very just passing through posture. Which was the actual problem. A real enemy charging in loud and obvious leaves nothing to decide. The genuinely bad ones are like this — they haven't done a single wrong thing, and everything about them still looks too right. Lan pulled the traffic log.

"I've got an active handshake request. Federal Seventh Supply Escort format, rotating unit IDs attached."

"Read it," Ash said. Lan read the string out. Listening to it, something felt off — not the content, the rhythm. Too complete. Like an answer sheet filled in ahead of time.

"Tactical, opinion?" Ash turned to me. Good. Staying up until my eyes nearly fell out hadn't been for nothing. The first person asking for my read today was the man sitting in Tobita's borrowed hat. I took a breath, eyes back on the display.

"Recommend holding weapons lock for now. If it's spoofed, they want us jumpy. Let's see where they're actually trying to steer us first." Jess followed almost instantly.

"Agreed. Their vector's safe, but the position's deliberate — wedged exactly between us and the relay buoy. Chase the IDs, and our attention gets pulled forward-right."

"Meaning," Maki added, mild, "the problem might not be those two dots at all." Ash nodded.

"Roy. Hold speed. Don't follow. Don't deviate."

"Copy." Roy's hands didn't so much as twitch. Tobita, off to the side, didn't interfere — just lifted an eyebrow a fraction. Translated: fine, at least you didn't kill yourselves in the opening scene. Then CIC lit up again.

"New contacts!" D shouted.

"Aft-port, edge of the debris band — three small targets! No IFF, low heat!"

"Radar missed them?" Ash frowned.

"They were blended into the debris background," Akari said, already expanding the sector map.

"Damn it — masking plus suppressed heat. Those two escorts really were bait." Lan's board lit up again.

"Forward escorts are boosting output, pushing a priority-ID handshake at us—""Ignore it," Maki said.

"Keep logging. No reply," Ash ordered. Right. There's the actual flavor of it. This isn't about finding the enemy — it's about who gets dragged along by the most plausible-looking lie first. I watched the three new contacts crawl out of the debris smear, mouth dry, head clearer than it had been all morning. Because last night's data — the warheads, the arcs, the constraints — had finally stopped being cursed archaeology and started slotting into actual thought. Low-heat, small, mobile, riding the debris in close.

Not here to scare us.

"Close-in defense, priority standby. Wombat, ready," I said, almost before I knew I was speaking. I startled myself a little. Jess's head snapped toward me, eyes bright. Maki didn't look — just said, quietly:"Good." Done. Just that word, at that exact moment, and some circuit in my head was going to short out later, no question. Tobita, arms folded at the back of the bridge, finally let himself smile. Not the someone's about to suffer smile. The other one. Good. This group's finally starting to act like a ship.

Then the system voice again.

"Scenario I-1558, Phase Two initiated. Wide-spectrum interference increasing. External friendly IFF net experiencing delay." The bridge tightened. I watched the markers on my display flicker faintly and had exactly one thought.... Great. That was just the appetizer.

"Bearing oh-seven-hundred, forward-right. Thermal anomaly." Flat as ever, like reading a grocery list with zero emotional investment.

"Heat's increasing." My head came up. On the plot, the previously empty forward-right sector began lighting, one point at a time — not popping into existence, more like contacts that had been sitting at the edge of the screen all along, only now easing into view. Three seconds later: "IFF resolved. Galactic Empire military. Three hulls. Two standard destroyers, one light cruiser." The air on the bridge cinched instantly. Whatever still feels like class looseness had been hanging around got sliced clean off.

"Enemy's transmitting a surrender demand," Lan said, eyes on her panel, voice level.

"Respond?"

"Cut comms. Don't let them in." Ash, no hesitation. Good. At least our stand-in captain knew one of the scariest things on a battlefield is the enemy being suddenly, very politely, in your ear. He turned to Maki.

"XO. Order red alert." She nodded, took the internal handset off the wall. Her voice wasn't loud — steady enough that the whole bridge settled around it.

"Bridge secure. All hands, Condition One."

"Copy." She hit the shipwide key.

"General Quarters, General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations!" The lighting shifted again. Red strips lit along the interior frames. A translucent shield layer slid across the edges of the main viewport. Tactical priority jumped to the top layer. The sim didn't fire the guns or shake the hull, but the rhythm of Condition One coming online still felt like a cold hand closing around the room's throat.

"Weapons free." Ash looked at me.

"Captain transfers fire-control authority." My throat tightened. My hands moved before my brain caught up.

"Tactical accepting control." I confirmed the handoff. Every weapon interface on my board snapped green at once — bow guns, VLS, torpedoes, CIWS, AA dispersal chain — like every cursed name I'd memorized last night had come back from the dead to collect.

"All weapons systems green," I said.

"Locks open."

"Enemy firing!" Akari's voice cut through.

"High-energy signature!" You'd better know it backwards in your sleep — Tobita's line from last night woke straight up in my head. Before Ash could finish speaking, the threat panel had already updated: high-energy beam, first probing shot, interceptable.

"Deploy anti-beam burst charge," Ash ordered.

"Anti-beam burst charge, away!" I echoed and hit the trigger. On the display, a string of intercept flares bloomed directly ahead of the Yukikaze — not gunfire, closer to reaching out and tearing the incoming beam apart before it closed the distance. Almost the instant I pressed the key, the enemy fire dissolved into a wash of white.

"Tactical — free fire once they're in range," Ash said.

"Copy." Alright. Time to get properly acquainted with my own weapons. Or, more precisely — time to find out whether everything I'd crammed until dawn was going to save me, or finish the job.

"Enemy entering optical acquisition," Akari reported.

"In range."

"Main battery — Positron Beam Turret, Isolde." For one hysterical second, calling that out felt like a waiter announcing tonight's chef's special.

"Fire." On screen, the forward turret fired a compressed beam straight at the lead destroyer. Jess was already at the optics, voice sharp.

"Hit — but they deployed anti-beam too." Meaning: neutralized. My jaw tightened. Right. Understood. They weren't here to be targets.

"Tactical, option?" Ash asked. I looked at the enemy classes, range, angle, speed, the light cruiser's slow attitude change, and ran last night's categories at speed. Energy weapons get eaten by anti-beam charges. So hit them with something that can't be eaten that way.

"Recommend kinetic rounds, simultaneous missile launch," I said, steadier than I felt.

"They already spent anti-beam early — force them to eat mass and a guided threat at the same time." Friday special: heavy anti-ship missile paired with an AP kinetic slug. Side dish: the enemy captain's ulcer.

"Execute," Ash said.

"Enemy missile launch!" Akari called.

"Eight seconds to impact!"

"CIWS — Fire Bull, online. Auto-intercept." I locked CIWS to auto and stepped straight back up a layer. Let Fire Bull chew the missiles. My job was to break their teeth.

"Anti-ship heavy — Parsifal, away!" One more switch. Every cursed name from last night was running through my nerves now like heated wire, straight into my fingers.

"Mode switch complete. Kinetic — Tristan, fire!" Both attacks went out almost together — a missile trailing a long tail of fire, a kinetic slug spat from the main battery in its switched mode. I stared at the screen, throat dry. Jess called it before I could.

"Hits! Destroyer One — disabled, dead in the water. Destroyer Two —" a half-beat, "— penetrated." D slammed the CIC console.

"Beautiful!"

"Quiet," Evelyn said — her own voice noticeably tighter than a minute ago. Once a fight starts, it pulls you in whether you want it to or not, even when you know full well it's a sim.

"Cruiser launching strike craft!" Akari again.

"Six units, high-speed approach!" I turned to Tobita on reflex.

"Our fighters?" He answered, arms crossed, with exemplary inhumanity.

"Assume none." Fuck. Very Tobita, and exactly the answer I didn't want. Fine. No fighters. The ship handles it alone.

"Fire Bull, maintain intercept." I left CIWS on auto and bumped back up to the AA menu. Three cursed syllables floated up on their own. Wombat. Right. Your turn — cutest name, ugliest job.

"Anti-air flak — Wombat, fire!" The Yukikaze's flank erupted in a dense, staccato curtain — nothing elegant about it, pure Federal doctrine, like dragging a wire brush hard across the sky. Akari flashed a thumbs-up almost instantly.

"Splash! All six!"

"Tristan, fire!" I didn't give them time to breathe. Second round out. The slug skimmed the wreckage silhouette of the crippled destroyer and drove straight into the cruiser's midsection. One flash. Then another. Then the enemy signals went dark, one by one — the crippled destroyer first, then the second, finally the cruiser that had tried to stall behind its own fighters. On the tactical plot, the red shapes that had been glowing bright a minute ago degraded into meaningless static. The bridge held for a beat.

Then D's voice broke first.

"That was clean, Tactical Officer!"

"Shut up," I said. My palms were soaked. Maki, still standing by Roy, didn't turn to look at me. She just said, quietly:"Fire allocation was correct." That did more for me than D's shouting ever could. Because she wasn't comforting me. She was making a judgment call: this round, I hadn't gotten the ship killed. Ash, in the captain's chair, finally let out a breath of his own.

"Tactical, maintain readiness."

"Copy." My voice held steady. My inner monologue did not. Last night's memorization had actually saved me. Not just me — the whole ship, at least inside this closed little universe. Tobita stood at the rear, arms folded, wearing the expression of a man mildly satisfied his time hadn't been a total waste. I half-expected "not bad." What I got instead:"Second Tristan shot was point-seven seconds late." I nearly fell off the chair.

"... Are you a ghost?"

"No," Tobita said, perfectly level.

"I'm the Captain."

"The difference is smaller than you'd think," I muttered. Jess laughed beside me, offering zero solidarity. Tobita heard it, didn't chase it, just pointed at my console.

"First engagement wasn't bad. Not because you're a genius."

"... Thanks."

"Because you actually memorized the material last night," he said.

"And when Isolde got neutralized, you didn't panic and keep throwing energy weapons at the wall. That call was right." I blinked. Hearing something that close to praise out of him felt about as natural as watching tropical fruit grow out of permafrost. Also a little terrifying.

"But Wombat's spread was too straight," he added, crushing it flat in the same breath.

"Eight craft instead of six, and your right flank leaks."... Right. There he is. I felt immediately better. Maki glanced sideways, the corner of her mouth doing something it clearly didn't want to be caught doing. I strongly suspected she was holding back a laugh. Then the system voice cut back in.

"Scenario I-1558, Round One complete." I let out half a breath.

"Initiating Round Two." That half-breath jammed straight back in my throat. D produced a very unconvincing wail from CIC.

"There's a Round Two?!" Tobita looked over at him, tone as pleasant as a hanging order.

"Did you think the Imperial Navy would politely queue up and send their ships over one at a time, after watching you win the first round?"

"... No."

"Then shut up and keep going." The whole bridge tightened again. I watched the display start generating new red contacts and thought — my dark circles probably hadn't been deep enough. This was only the first engagement. And I was starting to understand: knowing the weapons isn't what makes a real Tactical Officer. Knowing the weapons is just the price of admission.

The actual job is sitting here, with everyone watching, waiting for you to decide which blade comes out next — and not letting your own hands shake first. I licked my dry lips and put my hands back on the fire-control board. Alright. Come on, then. If Tobita's going to pin me to this chair, the least I can do is hold it until the simulation kills me.