Chapter Five
The only thing comparable to losing a war is training for a war; in both instances you get your posterior handed to you.
-Javier Rimero, 1928 P.D.
Cold Fire looked around the spacious halls of Saganami Academy. He had just arrived (amongst tremendous pomp and circumstance) at the island as the first pony to go into service in the new Space Navy. He was the only pony in this class, but he had a suspicion that many more ponies would begin streaming in from all corners of Equestria.
Cold was always a bright colt, and he had just barely signed up for this opportunity. He thought he would probably excel at the electronics path, but just for the honor he had signed up for tactical. He had heard from Admiral Alexander-Harrington herself that Tactical was the fast track to command, and he wanted to command a ship.
A thought crossed his mind as he was thinking about that. Humans have fingers. Cold Fire didn’t know how he was going to operate complex things using only his hooves, but he knew the Admiralty was going to figure it out by the time he actually got into the simulators. That was another thing. He had to figure out how to use all this new technology. That was going to be hard. He knew the ponies had just been jumped ahead about two thousand years in advancement, but that was something for the Princesses to deal with. All he was doing was learning, and he found his modified bunk room without too much trouble. Very user-friendly, these holographic maps. He hoped the rest of it was as easy.
* * *
Cold Fire looked up at the cube with the frozen battle in it and felt a sense of elation run through him. He was actually going to be part of that in a few years. The flashing sidebars of battle damage were offset by the flood of green friendly lights that had swarmed and overpowered the red dots of much larger enemy ships. He knew he was looking at something which had been developed only four hundred moons ago, and that made this a very special moment for him.
Cold loved technology. He had always been looking for ways to advance Equestria’s tech base, and he was practically rubbing his hooves in glee at the possibilities of all of this new stuff. The counter-grav technology would make the pegasus’ jobs much easier, and the computers would make everypony’s lives easier. The farmers wouldn’t need more than one or two ponies per farm! That freed up an immense amount of ponies to work on new construction, and he had heard that the Princesses were planning to pump more than a trillion bits into some new shipyard that was going to be producing some of the smaller ships for the humans. Cold knew that the Alliance was always short on small ships, and that they appreciated the Princesses’ efforts greatly. He also suspected they didn’t know whether to trust the ponies or not, but that was okay. The ponies still didn’t completely trust them, and Cold harbored a thought that it would take very many moons for the two races to be fully integrated.
This thought brought him back to the speaker, some Admiral that Cold had never bothered to learn the name of. The Admiral looked out over the hundreds of human students and the one pony, and began his monologue.
“Students, today marks the day when you take upon yourself the task of defending your planet, system, and Alliance. You will be run ragged in this course, but we do this for your own good. Here at Saganami, we adhere to the idea that it’s better to be run ragged in the Academy when it’s relatively safe rather than pamper you through the process and throw you in the deep end and expect you to do well under the pressure of actual combat. Our job, ladies and gentlemen, is to make sure that you are able to do the best that you are physically and mentally able to.
“Nevertheless, some of you will die. You will come across a time when your best just isn’t good enough, when all the tactical genius in the world isn’t enough to save you from being defeated. You all must accept that now, or leave. You may think you’re ready to face the challenge, but you aren’t, and I know how it is. You think that I’m an old, pompous admiral who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Well, I was like you once. I thought I could face anything. I was told I wasn’t prepared for it, and they tried to give me all the preparation I would take, but it took the battlefield to really drive that home. Know that now.
“And on that note, tomorrow begins the simulations. You will find your sim assignments in your bunk console. Be there at 0800 sharp. We have a lot to do and not very much time to do it. I wish you all luck, and know that we really aren’t trying to kill you, we’re just trying to harden you up.
“You are dismissed, ladies and gentlemen.”
* * *
Cold Fire leaned back in his chair with a very tired grin as the last ship of the opposing force blew up. The latest simulation had been the hardest, and he had very nearly lost it. Indeed, he suspected a great many others had lost, just because he had done something which he believed was so against the Book that it gave the umpires a coronary.
Faced with twenty superdreadnoughts to his five, he had detached three of them before he came into his opponent’s sensor range, leaving the other two to run on a pre-planned course. The three had shut down all emissions, becoming a hole in space, and the opposing force had swooped right into the superdreadnoughts’ waiting broadsides. He had destroyed ten of them before the other ten even realized what was going on, and he had cut it down to seven versus five before the other ships fired. But then it was a long slogging duel from there, and he had his fellow shiphandlers’ maneuvers to thank for winning at all. In the end, he had lost two SDs, severely injured another, and the other two were left with reduced fighting power.
All in all, though, he considered that simulation a success. As he exited the sim chamber, he spotted the umpires talking to the Admiral (Tourville, wasn’t it?) and them motioning to his chamber. He saw the Admiral look speculatively at him, and he pretended to reach for an itch on his foreleg which brought his head towards the Admiral, and they quickly went about their business. Now what was that all about? Did I do something wrong? Cold Fire decided to let sleeping dogs lie, and he turned to go towards his quarters. He had just about cracked the second-tier Admiralty database, and he thought he had found a first-tier door as well. This was going to be a very interesting night.