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Academy Days

Part 4

for ArrowQuivershaft

by Draconicon

Arrow had thought Runout would be the most stressful thing that he might be forced to do as part of the AGATE program. It still was, but it was facing some stuff competition.

"Systems Officer, where's my firing solution?!"

Orion's shout echoed across the simulated bridge, the harris hawk standing as the acting captain no less a stern, forbidding figure as ever as the red-tailed hawk forced himself to focus on the situation at hand. Data from a half-dozen screens fed him information from all different parts of the ship and he had to balance it all out and determine what their resources actually were.

"Shifting power from atmospheric thrusters to weapons now. Full power in twenty seconds, viable firing power in ten," he said, aware of the almost-mechanical nature of his voice and almost fascinated by it.

Almost, because there was even more information that he had to juggle. More incoming shots from the enemy, a sag in the orbit that they had to maintain to avoid collapsing into the planet's gravitational well, information from the engines telling him how quickly they could rev back up and how he would have to balance all the power that was being routed, re-routed, and re-re-routed all over the simulated ship.

"What's our shield situation?" Orion called down.

"Holding - Reinforcing!"

He cut the engines completely, throwing the shields momentarily to full power. They caught the splashing lights of the enemy shots before he shunted all the power back to the engines, save for what he had already diverted off to the weapons. A new boost, blasting them up to the height of their orbit, then dragging it back out and into scanners to check for anything that was coming -

"Sir, enemy fighters coming around the planet, bearing just off the bow. Intercept in three minutes," one of the other cadets in the lesson called out.

Orion just nodded, the hawk striding between station to station. Here and there, he would call out an order to one of the others that were on a back bench, some gunner or other officer that was trying to manage their own station and weren't part of the overall operations like Arrow was, or -

He saw the declining shield, knew that someone else on the other side might have noticed it, and slammed the engine power back to the shields. Just in time. Scans down, engines no longer hot, but the shields were in place to catch the missile that had been sneaking up on their engine vents.

"Good, Systems Officer. Good."

Orion's praise meant little compared to the stares from everyone else as he kept juggling multiple systems at once. Arrow had no mental energy to take hold of the praise or counter it as he would normally do; his attention was completely wrapped up in the simulation and how the hell he was going to get through this without screwing up. It did not help that this simulation, that this 'game', was engaging him on so many levels.

This is not classwork. It is a game. I should not be here, he thought.

But at the same time, he would have been so very disappointed if he was not. He didn't understand why. He hated Runout, which was a more active simulation of combat but no less a simulation for that. He hated the way that it allowed those that were bad at classes to stand at the same level without - so it felt - putting in the same sort of work that the academics did. It was a constant reminder of how his classmates could just let themselves slide so long as they did good in that one thing while he put all his effort into everything but -

Ping.

"Main weapons overcharged, captain," Arrow called out.

"Fire when ready, gunnery officer," Orion said.

"Firing!"

There were several simulated 'pew pew' laser sounds. If he had been watching the simulation, Arrow had no doubt that he would have been rolling his eyes at the childish sort of imitation of a laser weapon. As it stood, he was so absorbed in it that he couldn't think of any better sound.

"Diverting weapon power to countermeasures for their counter-attack, reserving 30% for the engines for a boost out of the gravity well - no, 20%."

He had to keep in mind what the scanning officer said about the fighters coming around the planet. If he boosted them too hard, the intercept vector would be missed, or they'd overshoot and go past, and have to deal with fighter-craft right on their tail.

Every decision keyed into the next one. Every choice to divert power adjusted the resources that the ship had to bring to bear, and every shot that got through reduced their resources further. Even deflecting the shot could end up wasting more resources than taking it, depending on where it would land, so he had to be focused enough to determine that rather than wasting all his time pushing the power here, there, and everywhere else. He was a mix of engineer, power juggler, and more, and it was pushing him to his limits for the first time since he had arrived at AGATE. Nothing had ever challenged him like this before, and he was loving it in spite of himself as he juggled another series of numbers.

"Mr. Vershaft, the calculation program is there for a reason," Orion said.

"Am I getting anything wrong?"

"Not yet."

"Then let me work."

He could not believe such impertinence had squeaked by his beak, but there it was, and it was already too late to take it back. He'd just have to be good enough that it was allowed to stand.

And so, he focused ever more. Twenty missiles were flying through space, three of which were wobbling under the countermeasures already. They could take no more than six of them without losing too much hull integrity for a safe mission, and they still had those fighters ahead. If they -

That was it.

"Redirecting countermeasure power supply to the engines. Shunting two available boost cores to the engine."

He was trusting others to be smart enough to catch up with him, something that was a rarity for the red-tailed hawk. In class, there were few that could. In Runout, there'd been a handful. Here, he had been operating almost solo, running other departments that were falling behind and forcing them to be on his level.

But with everything else going on, he had to trust them, and -

Everyone's seats jumped in a simulated jolt, the engines burning in the simulation. They shot forward, overshooting the intercept point, and just like Arrow had worried about earlier, the fighters fell in behind them. The fighter-craft were right on their tail, pushing their engines to close the gap between the bigger ship and the little ones, and their little splatter-shots, while not that damaging in and of themselves, would rapidly become more problematic if they were able to get any closer.

"Five...four...three...two..."

Just as he hit one, the missiles that had been locked onto their ship swung around, locked onto the fighter-craft instead. The jolt had thrown off the lock-on mechanisms just enough to get them to need another target, and the fighter-craft were close enough to fulfill that role. The engineer had been smart enough to get Arrow was suggesting with the diverted resources.

With that threat done, they were able to move to a different position. He shunted more of the power to the less-damaged, more efficient guns and shield emitters on the other side of the ship, juggling everything that they had to make sure that everyone had what they needed to do their job.

He was doing the work of a Systems Officer, and he was doing it well.

The simulation eventually ended with a victory on their side, and every student, Arrow included, slumped back in their chairs in relieved disbelief that they had gotten through that. Orion nodded at them as he took center-stage, looking down on them.

"That was a well-conducted battle. There were errors, but as cadets, you handled yourselves well. You would not have disappointed those that would be directing you in a real fight."

Arrow nodded. He had gone well past that, and he knew it. The fact that the ship had survived that volley, the fact that they had managed to squeak past the fighters rather than dealing with them and the missiles at the same time, and so many other moments that they had barely survived: it was all down to him. And even if Orion didn't say it, even if the harris hawk didn't mention it in a way that the other students would hear, they all knew it, too.

What he didn't know, and what he was still trying to figure out, was why he wanted to do it again.

"You are released to your classes," Orion said. "If you are already at the end of your class shifts, you are released to meal or study, as appropriate."

"Thank you, sir!" the class roared with a quick salute.

Arrow saluted as well, struggling to get to his feet. As the other students filed out, he felt Orion's gaze burning into his shoulderblades, and despite it all, he felt the beginning of a smile. He had done something that the other students probably had never done, or at the very least, had done rarely. He had done all that, and won, without using the computer.

It was hard, though, and he was feeling it. The strain had left him with a headache that he could already tell wasn't going to be gone by morning. He would be feeling this until the day after next, at least, but it was mixed with the sweet, sweet feeling of utter triumph. He had done it. He had won.

Why does that matter? he thought. It shouldn't. I am not doing anything that I do in the classroom. It's basic math...why does it matter?

He didn't know. But until he could figure it out, he would at least enjoy the satisfying pleasure of having won in the first place.

The End

Summary: Arrow is put through a simulation lesson of being on deck, and finds himself surprisingly well-suited to it.

Tags: No Sex, Birds, Bird, Red-Tailed Hawk, Hawk, Sci-Fi, Simulation, School, Combat, Officers,