Chương 54: 24.Electronic Warfare Course 24-1

It was around the second spoonful of protein paste at lunch that I started to suspect the Federation wasn't actually trying to train us into soldiers. It was trying to confirm whether human beings could maintain basic metabolic function under sustained humiliation. After marksmanship, the NCO Division cafeteria worked like a large gray chewing machine—swallowing batch after batch of post-training students and spitting them back out.

Metal tables, white lights, hot food, flavor approximating some kind of administrative penalty for being alive. Jess sat across from me, poking at the allegedly high-density nutritional paste with the dedication of a professional.

"You know," she said, "every time I eat this, it tastes like someone fed it to a mechanical dog first and then took it back." I looked down at my portion.

"That image is going to stay with me. Thank you." She shrugged.

"Don't mention it. I've always been committed to improving my roommate's dining experience." I was about to take another spoonful when the announcement screen above the cafeteria flashed a new message. New student afternoon session: Tactical Theory Fundamentals / Mixed Classroom A-3. I stared at that line for two seconds. Jess had seen it too. Her expression immediately became something worth pitying.

"Oh. That class."

"What about it?" She set down her fork with the tone of someone explaining funeral procedures to next of kin.

"It's a mixed session. Upper House and NCO Division together." I looked up.

"So?"

"So you'll be seeing white uniforms."

"I saw them at the gate."

"Different." Jess leaned in slightly, dropping her voice.

"At the gate, they were just standing above you. In a mixed classroom, they'll open their mouths." … Right. So the afternoon session of today's psychological damage was still to come. Mixed Classroom A-3 was on the middle level of the central academic block. Not the highest reaches of the Upper House, but nowhere near the zones where NCO Division students normally moved with any comfort. The corridor got cleaner. The wall color shifted from gray to a slow, washed-out white.

The floor was polished enough that you felt your shoes weren't poor enough to deserve to walk on it. The smell of machine oil and sweat thinned out, replaced by something lighter, colder, more presentable. Deeply unpleasant. The kind of place that made you think one specific thing: Some people breathe more expensive air even when they're just being educated. A-3 was tiered seating.

Large, well-lit, a full tactical projection wall at the front, a three-dimensional star map module suspended at the center, and seating divided into two sections—no official markings, but everyone understood which color went where. White uniforms on the left. Gray uniforms on the right. The Federation loved this arrangement. Even without drawing a line on the floor, it always found a way to make everyone sort themselves along the line they'd already drawn in their heads.

When Jess and I walked in, the white-uniform side was already well-populated. Shoulders level, collars clean, spines straight, even the angle at which they opened their data boards looked like it had been standardized. By comparison, the gray-uniform side looked like a batch of unfinished goods that had been dragged out of a workshop, rinsed of blood, and told to sit up straight. I'd barely sat down when someone in the front rows said, very quietly:"Special-transfer students attend mixed sessions?"

Not loud—but the white walls bounced it into my ears just fine. I looked up. A few white uniforms had glanced over. Nothing overtly offensive in the look, but that evaluative quality—does this configuration make sense? —was thoroughly Upper House. Jess nudged me with her elbow.

"Hold it."

"I'm holding it."

"Your face doesn't look like it."

"That's just how my face is." She almost laughed and turned quickly back to the front. At that moment, a girl came in from the white-uniform side and took the center seat in the front-left row. And I immediately understood what Jess had meant. Some people don't look like top students. Some people look like the textbook itself decided to stand up and check in. Chestnut hair, green eyes, uniform so clean it looked freshly printed from the school regulations.

She sat, set down her data board, adjusted her cuffs—each movement steady, smooth, correct, correct enough that you wanted to reach around and check whether there was a barcode on her back that read standard answer. Jess spoke near my ear, barely moving her lips:"Aida Rosen."

"Oh."

"Upper House."

"I could tell."

"Senatorial family, branch line."

"You can tell that too?"

"No, I just know." I watched the textbook-made-flesh in the front row.

"Does she always look like that?"

"Probably," Jess murmured.

"Word is she's never late, consistently top of the rankings, strong in tactical theory and oral briefings, and even her complaints sound like constructive feedback." I was quiet for a moment.

"That's genuinely frightening."

"Right?" The tactical theory instructor came in shortly after. Not the boot-on-deck-shaking kind—a lean-faced, cold-eyed man who looked at students the way someone looks at a pile of filing boxes that hasn't been sorted yet. No pleasantries. He opened his materials and immediately threw a simulated ship interior schematic onto the projection wall.

"Today's topic: standard response to close-quarters contact inside a vessel," he said.

"Assume you are on the mid-deck of a Federation supply ship. Communications delay: 3. 2 seconds. Partial pressure loss in the interior. Enemy squad has breached through the maintenance shaft. You have a five-person section: one lightly wounded, one comms operator, one heavy weapons, one precision shooter, one acting temporary commander. Present a stabilization plan within two minutes." This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. I studied the schematic.

Maintenance shaft, junction corridor, secondary airlock, power conduit, Observation Room data relay node. The problem wasn't hard. What was hard was that it definitely had a correct answer. Which is to say: the kind that looked the cleanest, conformed most closely to doctrine, and could be formatted into a color-coded flowchart for the teaching materials. The instructor raised his hand.

"Upper House first." Of course. Always Upper House first. The gray-uniform side generally had to wait for the standard answer to be delivered in full before getting a turn to add: and here's how you survive when everything has already gone to hell.

"Aida Rosen," the instructor said. Oh. Here we go. Aida stood. She barely needed to glance at her data board—she started speaking like someone had pressed a button labeled reliable output.

"Standard response: first secure the bridge-to-hub communication line, seal the two corridor segments adjacent to the maintenance shaft, deploy heavy weapons to the secondary corner position, have the precision shooter suppress the shaft exit, comms operator reports enemy breach direction, acting commander maintains formation and awaits command correction from above.

If partial pressure loss expands, prioritize pressure isolation at the mid-section, and if necessary, abandon the damaged maintenance zone to prevent the enemy from exploiting the narrow movement corridor to compound casualties." Clear, smooth, even the pauses felt deliberate. The instructor nodded.

"Solid. Standard." On the white-uniform side, a few people gave small nods—the way you'd nod at a well-formatted document that had finally been submitted correctly. I said nothing. Jess watched me from the corner of her eye.

"That expression of yours is dangerous."

"I'm just thinking about something."

"What?"

"Standard answers always look very clean." Her mouth twitched.

"Please, today, don't—""Gray-uniform side." The instructor's gaze swept across.

"Anyone want to add something?" … Wonderful. The Federation is so considerate sometimes. The moment you decide to keep your mouth shut, it opens the door for you. Nobody moved first. I could see several gray-uniform students in the front rows playing dead. Completely reasonable. Mixed session, Upper House present, theory instructor watching, and the walking textbook had just delivered a pristine answer—anyone who stood up now was essentially volunteering to have doesn't know their place stamped on their forehead.

I didn't want to move either. I really didn't. But that schematic was glowing at the front of the room and it was getting on my nerves. Maintenance shaft, pressure loss, communication delay, narrow corridors—under those conditions, Aida's framework wasn't wrong. It just looked like something written for people who had never watched someone die next to them. I raised my hand. The entire gray-uniform section reacted like they'd been jabbed with a pin. The instructor looked at me.

"Name."

"Hoshino Shimo." A few expressions shifted on the white-uniform side. Right. They'd probably heard the name. The special-transfer student who got flagged by the Disciplinary Committee at the gate, pulled out again during marksmanship, and reportedly showed up to enrollment with an escape tool in her luggage. Touching. I'd been here less than two days and my reputation was already outrunning my grades. I stood and looked at the schematic on the wall.

"If the enemy has already breached through the maintenance shaft and there's partial pressure loss in the mid-section, securing comms first and waiting for command correction will likely cost you the only window you have to pin them down at the chokepoint." I raised my hand and indicated two segments of conduit on the diagram.

"I'd blow the secondary power line first—knock out the lights in the second corner zone instantly—then use the maintenance hatch beside the shaft as a fake fallback route, funnel the enemy into the narrowing section. Heavy weapons doesn't need to hold a standard cover position; angle them at a half-oblique so the shooter only has to hold one line. Comms operator doesn't start by reporting—first cuts the local broadcast, scrambles the enemy's audio positioning.

Once they actually think we're pulling back, we reverse through the side maintenance passage and wrap around." The room went quiet. Very quiet. The instructor didn't interrupt. I kept going.

"As for whether to abandon the damaged maintenance zone—depends on whether there's anything in there that can be used to create false impressions. A supply ship isn't a battleship. A lot of spaces are packed with things that aren't worth much but burn well. You can't hold it cleanly. If you want to survive, you need to make the other side uncertain about how many of you are left, where you are, and whether they should risk getting any closer." Two full seconds of silence after I finished.

Then, from somewhere in the white-uniform rows on the left, someone made a very soft sound. Like watching someone fling mud onto a linen napkin. The instructor didn't smile. His expression didn't change. He just looked at the schematic and tapped the table once.

"Your plan has several problems," he said. Here it comes.

"First, destroying the secondary power line causes additional damage to the ship's interior. Second, delaying the comms report extends the window before command can correct course. Third, your false fallback route assumes the enemy will be drawn in as intended. Fourth, this is not a standard section-level response—it's a high-risk gamble." I nodded.

"Yes."

"Then why choose it?" I looked at him.

"Because under those conditions, the standard procedure looks most like a very thorough piece of paperwork written for the dead." This time the white-uniform side didn't just make sounds—someone actually frowned. And in the front-center seat, Aida finally turned to look at me. Green eyes, steady, composed. No sharp offense in them—just the particular kind of disagreement that belongs to someone who's been studying the grain of the table when you flipped it over. She raised her hand. The instructor nodded to her.

Aida stood. Her voice was still clean.

"If every section handled close-quarters contact this way, the entire command structure would collapse. The acting temporary commander's role isn't to demonstrate individual field creativity—it's to keep the situation within the range that command above can take over. Otherwise, even a local win just leaves a larger risk for the rest of the ship." Good. That was also a beautiful answer. Standard answer, supplementary edition. Even the blade was well-mannered. I looked at her.

"If the local element is already dead, will command have a tidier situation to take over?" The air in the classroom pulled taut. In the back row, Jess had nearly buried her face in the desk—probably composing my eulogy. I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd already started mentally cataloguing my dormitory belongings. Aida looked at me. My line didn't draw any anger from her, which was somehow more aggravating.

"Local survival is not the only objective," she said.

"Mission sustainability, overall coordination, and the window for follow-up support are equally important." I smiled slightly.

"Sure. Assuming you last long enough for the follow-up." The instructor finally raised his hand.

"That's enough." Not heavy in tone—but clearly the kind of enough that meant: one more exchange and someone gets turned into a case study.

"Aida's plan is appropriate as the priority response within a standard command structure." He looked toward the white-uniform side, the way you'd stamp an official seal on a teaching document.

"Hoshino's plan may offer higher battlefield survival probability under specific conditions, but it over-relies on disrupting command nodes and demands an extremely high level of execution—it is not suitable as a general instructional model." Then he looked at me.

"This kind of approach typically appears in only two scenarios. One: veterans. Two: people who were pushed too fast." … Wonderful. Today's class, and a Federation instructor had nearly done a live psychological profile on me in front of the whole room. I said nothing. Because saying something would only make it look like a free bonus therapy session. The instructor pulled the discussion back and started talking about the replicability and overall command consistency of tactical frameworks.

I didn't really listen to the second half. Not because I didn't understand it. Because I did. I understood Aida's logic. I understood the instructor's logic. I even understood why everyone in this room preferred the clean answer. Because when something goes wrong with a clean answer, it's much easier to assign blame. The dirty answer sometimes genuinely saves more lives—but it's too ugly. Ugly enough that even if people walk out alive, almost nobody is going to write well done in the report.

When the bell rang, I picked up my data board and was about to leave when someone stepped into the aisle on my side. Aida Rosen. Up close, she looked even more like a human-shaped instructional standard than she had sitting down. Hair in order, expression controlled, even the way she stepped in front of someone maintained a precise sense of personal distance. I looked up at her.

"Something you need?" She didn't circle around it.

"Your plan was unstable." Oh. Very her, as an opening. I tucked the data board under my arm.

"Yours was more stable."

"Yes."

"Congratulations." She looked at me, no anger in those green eyes—just a very sincere incomprehension.

"Why do you always default to assuming support won't arrive, commands will be slow, and the situation will deteriorate to the point where gambling is the only option?" That question came out very level. Level enough to almost make me laugh. Because some people aren't being sarcastic. They just genuinely haven't lived the version of life you have.

I returned it:"Why do you always default to assuming support will arrive in time, commands will be useful, and the situation will be willing to fall apart according to your procedure?" Aida was quiet for a second.

"Because if everyone assumes the system is ineffective, the system actually becomes ineffective."

"What if the system is sometimes ineffective regardless?"

"That still doesn't mean you can put individual judgment ahead of the collective." I looked at her, and felt a very complete kind of irritation settle in. Not the kind that comes from someone being malicious. The kind that comes from someone who isn't entirely wrong—and whose not-being-wrong makes you want to flip the table anyway. I took the data board out from under my arm.

"Rosen. Have you ever actually been inside a compartment with real pressure loss?" She didn't answer immediately.

"In simulation class, there was—""Not simulation." I cut her off.

"The kind where you know that four seconds later, the person next to you is going to start bleeding from the mouth." Aida looked at me. Something shifted in her expression—very slight. Not offense. The discomfort of being pulled off the cover of a textbook without warning. She said: "No."

"Then there it is." I moved to step past her. She didn't immediately move aside.

"Your method has costs too," she said.

"I know."

"You could easily cause more zones to destabilize."

"And I might keep the people in front of me alive first." She pressed her lips together briefly.

"That way of thinking isn't suited for leading a unit." Oh. Now that was interesting. I turned to look at her.

"You think I want to lead one?" Aida seemed to pause for a moment. She'd probably assumed that anyone who dismantled a standard answer in class was at least partially motivated by a desire to prove themselves. Unfortunately, no. My current dominant feeling about leading people was: complicated, expensive, and non-refundable once someone dies. I looked at her.

"I just hate dying in an orderly fashion." Then I left.