Training Log: Cadet Matthew T. Warren,
September 15, 2528, 0100 hours
Holly and I went into town for a romantic dinner after training finished for the day. It’s going well between us, better than any of my high school relationships. Looks like I’ll have a date for Christmas and New Years.
We returned to the campus at 10, where Holly chose to go to bed, but I decided to have a drink with Liam in the bar. We’d only just started when a fight broke out between Jack Della Bosca and Marc Casey, one of the second year-cadets, who was on bar duty this week. The bar was cleared out quickly, and Liam and I went back to our rooms.
I got back to the room at 11:00 pm to find Val sitting at the table, which was covered in leaflets, the ones we got at a seminar on the elective courses next year a few days ago.
Before I could say anything he asked me about my date with Holly. “It was at a seafood restaurant by the bay. Meals around $30 each. Good background music, pleasant conversation. We split the tab.”
Val nodded, approving. “And she’s not here because…”
“Waiting for the third date. So anyway, what’s with the brochures?” He explained that he was trying to choose an elective, and that he'd set himself a deadline for it – the end of September. I rolled my eyes. “There's already a deadline, and it's seven months away. What's the hurry?”
“I can't fly for shit, I need to spend the next seven months practicing for wherever I end up, because, right now, I can't see myself on a carrier.”
Alarm bells started ringing in my head. This is not the guy I met the day we moved in. I sat down. “Val, you are ten times the pilot I am. I'm doing mechanics because it's the only path I have to a carrier. My flight rating in the entrance exam was 56, I'm never going to be a frontline fighter. What was yours?”
Val looked up. “95. But that was on a glorified arcade game. It didn't have kamikaze pilots and friggin' simulated wind. It also didn't have the capacity to wipe out your entire squadron in the process.”
So that’s what this was about. Not surprising, the rest of the class hadn’t exactly been supportive. “Dude, that was not your fault. It probably would have happened no matter who was leading, none of would have been any more prepared for the wind than you were. Anyway, no one knows why the entire network crashed, it must have been badly connected or the wrong program was chosen or something. I don't know, I’m not an expert. But, again, not your fault.”
“Doesn't change the fact that no one is talking to me. Except you and Selina and Holly.”
“Well, Holly isn't, but that's not…” I paused, kicking myself. True, Holly hadn't been talking to him, but she'd been kind of fixated on me since we met. “No one blames you anymore except Della Bosca and if you’d seen him in the bar downstairs, you wouldn’t be listening to him either. You just need to put yourself out there. Help Marcus with the simulators and prove you're good at something. To the squadron and yourself.”
Val reluctantly agreed, but I don't think I've had that much of an effect. The guy is in serious need of a confidence booster or he'll end his career before it starts.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Chapter 3
Training Log: Second-Year Cadet David J. Harrison
September 8, 2528, 1800 hours.
OK, where to begin...
The fighter simulators are still crashed, thanks to Cadet Porter. OK, that's kind of unfair, but in spite of his computer talents, he hasn't been willing to step forward and help fix the program. I guess he's trying to avoid attention. The only people speaking to him are Cadets Warren and Cassidy. The hostility has mostly died down though, except from Cadet Della Bosca, for some reason.
Without access to the simulators, Commodore Fraser's been filling in classes with lectures about his war experiences. The first lecture was how the war started, but of course, we all know that one: how terrorist leader Fillipo Bolichet seized control of guerrilla cells in six countries, arranged six simultaneous coups and annexed half of South America in a matter of weeks, merging it into one country: “The People's Democratic Republic of Usogumbia.”
Actually, it was largely democratic, for the first couple of years, and the regime was nothing but beneficial for its citizens, which is why the UN never took action against them. Until, supposedly as a result of overpopulation, Bolichet made the decision to invade Panama and conquer it. An expansion that the UN considered unjustifiable.
Open war broke out after the failure of negotiations over the status of Panama, as the UN diplomats were held hostage. A battalion of US soldiers were sent into the city to rescue them, but were pinned down and forced into a guerrilla war. The violence escalated, until three months later when the US managed to drive the Usogumbians out of the city. By this point the diplomats had been killed.
It wasn’t over yet. Over the next several years, the Usogumbian military attacked and attempted to invade nearly a dozen countries, and they continued to expand over South America. They invaded Brisbane, Havana, Windhoek, Acapulco, Miami, Kingston, Luanda, Port Moresby, Tokyo, Singapore - basically any city within a radius of the Pacific Ocean. None of the attacks succeeded, but the civilian losses were enormous.
Finally, the Usogumbian military was so depleted they couldn’t use the “overpopulation” justification anymore, and signed a truce with the UN. They had failed to gain any territory, but in those few years, they had a devastating effect. Including on Commodore Fraser, it seems.
Since everyone knew this story from 9th grade history, no one was especially interested. But his second lecture was a lot more captivating. Fraser's story was a first-hand account of the Battle of San Francisco, December 27, 2502. Fraser was assigned to the TCSC Giza, in orbit over the Pacific. The ship's sensors detected a squadron of Usogumbian bombers on course for San Francisco Bay, and the Captain launched fighters to intercept. Lt J.G. Quentin Fraser was among them.
Fraser and his group managed to shoot down more than half of the bombers before they could reach their targets. The rest of them evidently chose to abort the raid and were chased back to the bay. Fraser's wing destroyed three more, and the remaining one went into a Kamikaze dive at the Golden Gate Bridge. Fraser and his wingman Lt. Michaelson folowed it, forcing it through the gap before opening fire. However, the top of Michaelson's fighter was broken off by the low flying under the arch, and the fighter had gone into the bay. Michaelson's body was recovered a day later.
As the group left, mesmerised by what they had heard, I stayed behind to ask Fraser if he knew when the simulators would be fixed. He answered that no one on campus was qualified to fix them, so he was going to call in an outside specialist. In the meantime, the other groups would take turns to have days off, so that we'd have access to simulators and keep from falling behind. I thanked him and turned to leave. He called after me that I should try and talk Cadet Porter into assisting on the repairs – he needs to make a better impression, and he's already supposed to be a computer genius. I told him I'd been thinking the same thing, and he smiled.
It was only later, as I was eating dinner, how much impact hearing the story had had on him. He had been breaking up emotionally the whole lecture, especially when he talked about Michaelson. I don't think the class noticed, they were probably read it as part of his powerful storytelling style. But if this is what it feels like, Commodore Fraser has to be relieved of his post.
September 8, 2528, 1800 hours.
OK, where to begin...
The fighter simulators are still crashed, thanks to Cadet Porter. OK, that's kind of unfair, but in spite of his computer talents, he hasn't been willing to step forward and help fix the program. I guess he's trying to avoid attention. The only people speaking to him are Cadets Warren and Cassidy. The hostility has mostly died down though, except from Cadet Della Bosca, for some reason.
Without access to the simulators, Commodore Fraser's been filling in classes with lectures about his war experiences. The first lecture was how the war started, but of course, we all know that one: how terrorist leader Fillipo Bolichet seized control of guerrilla cells in six countries, arranged six simultaneous coups and annexed half of South America in a matter of weeks, merging it into one country: “The People's Democratic Republic of Usogumbia.”
Actually, it was largely democratic, for the first couple of years, and the regime was nothing but beneficial for its citizens, which is why the UN never took action against them. Until, supposedly as a result of overpopulation, Bolichet made the decision to invade Panama and conquer it. An expansion that the UN considered unjustifiable.
Open war broke out after the failure of negotiations over the status of Panama, as the UN diplomats were held hostage. A battalion of US soldiers were sent into the city to rescue them, but were pinned down and forced into a guerrilla war. The violence escalated, until three months later when the US managed to drive the Usogumbians out of the city. By this point the diplomats had been killed.
It wasn’t over yet. Over the next several years, the Usogumbian military attacked and attempted to invade nearly a dozen countries, and they continued to expand over South America. They invaded Brisbane, Havana, Windhoek, Acapulco, Miami, Kingston, Luanda, Port Moresby, Tokyo, Singapore - basically any city within a radius of the Pacific Ocean. None of the attacks succeeded, but the civilian losses were enormous.
Finally, the Usogumbian military was so depleted they couldn’t use the “overpopulation” justification anymore, and signed a truce with the UN. They had failed to gain any territory, but in those few years, they had a devastating effect. Including on Commodore Fraser, it seems.
Since everyone knew this story from 9th grade history, no one was especially interested. But his second lecture was a lot more captivating. Fraser's story was a first-hand account of the Battle of San Francisco, December 27, 2502. Fraser was assigned to the TCSC Giza, in orbit over the Pacific. The ship's sensors detected a squadron of Usogumbian bombers on course for San Francisco Bay, and the Captain launched fighters to intercept. Lt J.G. Quentin Fraser was among them.
Fraser and his group managed to shoot down more than half of the bombers before they could reach their targets. The rest of them evidently chose to abort the raid and were chased back to the bay. Fraser's wing destroyed three more, and the remaining one went into a Kamikaze dive at the Golden Gate Bridge. Fraser and his wingman Lt. Michaelson folowed it, forcing it through the gap before opening fire. However, the top of Michaelson's fighter was broken off by the low flying under the arch, and the fighter had gone into the bay. Michaelson's body was recovered a day later.
As the group left, mesmerised by what they had heard, I stayed behind to ask Fraser if he knew when the simulators would be fixed. He answered that no one on campus was qualified to fix them, so he was going to call in an outside specialist. In the meantime, the other groups would take turns to have days off, so that we'd have access to simulators and keep from falling behind. I thanked him and turned to leave. He called after me that I should try and talk Cadet Porter into assisting on the repairs – he needs to make a better impression, and he's already supposed to be a computer genius. I told him I'd been thinking the same thing, and he smiled.
It was only later, as I was eating dinner, how much impact hearing the story had had on him. He had been breaking up emotionally the whole lecture, especially when he talked about Michaelson. I don't think the class noticed, they were probably read it as part of his powerful storytelling style. But if this is what it feels like, Commodore Fraser has to be relieved of his post.
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