Unity

Chapter 9

It took a day and a half to get through the first round of the tournament. Of the hundred squadrons that took part in the first round, only fifty remained. Our next fight wasn't until late Wednesday morning. Since we were the some of the first to go in the first round, we were one of the last to go in round two. We didn't mind. It allowed us to study and refine various plans. I also used this time to memorize names and faces of everyone in my squadron, as well as assigned positions for the tournament. The rest of the squadron started looking to me as their leader. There was no voting or ceremony, it was more of an unspoken agreement. We drew closer together as a squadron in that day and a half than we had the rest of the time at the academy. It saddened me that this was going to be our last week together after growing so close.

We walked into the classroom confident that today was going to go much smoother. I took my seat between Jen and Thad as Lieutenant Briggs walked to the front of the room and activated the screen on the wall. "This is the field of battle for your mission," he said, pointing to a black screen.

"But it's empty," Tina said.

"Exactly," Lieutenant Briggs replied. "Your mission is to eradicate an enemy fleet in open space. Each fleet will have the same composition, however, there is one caveat to this mission. Our Cruisers are undergoing maintenance, so you will be without cruiser support. Your fleet will consist of four battleships and thirty-seven fighters. You have forty-five minutes to plan your attack." We had an additional battleship and nine fighters to fill with the crews previously assigned to the cruisers. It only took a few minutes to make the assignments.

"How do you want to approach this?" I asked the others.

One of the battleship commanders, named Andrew spoke up, "There is no cover, so the only option I see is to fight them head on. I don't see any tactical way we could easily get the upper hand, especially without support from the cruisers."

"We also need to think defensively," Jen chimed in. "A single lost battleship would be hard to recover from. The fighters aren't going to do much damage, so I think they should be used as a screen to defend the battleships."

"I agree with what Jen proposed," I said. "I also think she was on the right track about losing a battleship. I think for this situation, first strike will be critical in deciding who wins. Missiles will be few and hitting anything at a distance with the rail guns will be extremely difficult. We should move in at an odd angle and hit them fast and hard. If the fighters do their job in keeping incoming ordinance at bay, we should have a decent chance at winning this fight." So far nobody objected to the plan. We started reviewing formations and defensive strategies when out of nowhere, inspiration hit me. "Jen, do you remember the trick we pulled in the cruiser sims?"

"You mean the missile smoke screen?" She asked.

"Yes. What if we were to try a variant of that?"

"You may want to fill us all in on your crazy plan," Rachel interrupted.

"We launch a bunch of missiles towards the enemy and detonate them early. If we use the cluster nukes, it will create a radioactive smokescreen that screws with the sensors. The EMP won't get past the hull on the battleships, but it might mess with the fighters."

"Okay, we momentarily blind them, but how do we use that to our advantage?" Andy asked.

"Let me show you," I answered with a smile.

All too soon Lieutenant Briggs cleared his throat and announced, "Time is up ladies and gentlemen. I'll escort you to the Sim deck. Good luck." We stood and followed him. We knew the way by heart, but for some reason he continued to insist on escorting us. We entered the familiar room that housed the simulators, and everyone made their way to their assigned groups. We started performing pre-flight checks. They tried to make everything as real as possible.