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.