Valyrie sits alone in the mess, nursing her aching headache. Her body’s been awake for 56 hours straight at this point. She uses her lunch time to work on past examinations, and zero dark to catch up to her fellow cadets. It’s Sunday, so it's her last day to get through as much as she can before the teaching restarts tomorrow. Once her salt levels recover, she’ll spend the next few hours in accelerated VR, then it's off to the stacks working through her burgeoning rebellion.

Despite her tight schedule, she’s wasted the last half day on a singular assignment. “How do you defeat a single Sacred cruiser while minimizing casualties?”

It's the first exam question that first-year students are given in the academy. It’s also the only exam question on the first trimester finals for the “Burden of Command” class she’s been racing through the material for. Valyrie is certain that this is a trick question. You don't defeat the Sacred, they’re effectively immortal conscience jumpers. And you can't destroy a Sacred cruiser because it will just grow back from a single cell given enough solar energy. Rhen wants to write down that you flee the battle and pray to the Eventide that they don't give chase, but Valyrie rightly points out that Talis didn’t send them to this academy to flee a challenge.

[My guess then is that you fire Fox-Three Hunter Killers against the cruiser and send in knuckle dusters shortly after.]

“You want to use AI driven missiles against the Sacred?” Valrie asks Rhen. “They despise AI.”

[Which is why I want to use them. The sacred will be too focused on destroying every missile in the swarm to obliterate all the knuckle dusters. An unexpected boarding action is the only chance we have.]

“Sacred soldiers burn indigo at minimum. Even if we sent in a couple of mechs, they'd be torn apart by random roaming squads or the ship's defenses themselves. We’d end up pissing the Sacred off, and they would wipe out our fleet out of spite.”

[Well, your plan to have speakers enhance mounted MACs to fire at the Sacred from the station is no better. The Sacred don't have conventional weapon ranges. They would just pick off the encampments with enhanced PDC-Ls, and we would lose our aces for glancing blows.]

“Well, there has to be something we can do without losing three thousand soldiers just to tickle one ship.”

[Maybe that's the point of the assignment.] Rhen offers again. [That we shouldn't fight a superior force and send our men to their deaths.]

“There’s no way the answer is run or die. That mentality is unacceptable for an expendable, doubly so for a captain.”

[I don't know Val. Maybe the profs are checking to see whose dumb enough to go down with the ship and whose smart enough to save it.]

Valyrie scoffs. “It’s not going down with the ship. It’s following orders. Over and over again, they force expenables to do the impossible, and every time I found a way to succeed. I got Petra out even if I had to go through a Wandering Echo to do it. The Sacred have been beaten in the past. We’re just missing how, and we have to figure that out, Rhen. We can't run because eventually you’re up against the wall and thousands die.”

[I don't think we're letting anyone die, Val. I don't think we have a choice in the matter. If we’re at the point where a second-circle fleet is forced to fight the Sacred, then the outcome is a foregone conclusion. We failed our men the second we failed to avoid a confrontation in the first place. Our soldiers are going to die in droves if we fight, Val. The only way to save them is to not fight at all.]

“We have to.” Valyrie starts to cry. She's been so emotional since the soma withdrawal symptoms started.

[You know Val. Your grandmother warned us about what Rebellion meant. We're in too deep now. People are going to die. Maybe we can win in a direct fight, but we’re just as likely to get everyone killed.]

“Maybe if I talk to Talis.”

[And tell her what, Val? Sorry Talis. I made a plan to set the station on fire and string you up by the neck, but my libido and conscience are convincing me not to. Oopsie doopsie. By the way. I accidentally freed 0.1% of all nils in the Stacks. Please don’t enslave them again.]

“You’re putting me in an impossible situation here.”

“Hey, you’re Valyrie, right. Or is it Rhen?”

Valyrie turns to see one of the cadets awkwardly standing next to her. She doesn’t recognize his face so he’s not one of the nine company commanders she needs to topple. Still she sits up, quickly flaring blue to evaporate her tears, and putting on the air of a soldier for her fellow cadet. She needs to keep up the charade of being a professional at least until Talis grants her a cruiser.

“It's Valyrie currently,” she says.

“Huh.” The cadet says. “This whole DID thing is weird, but whatever. Lunch hour is over. Just letting you know before some TAC sees you here alone and makes you run laps for awareness training.”

Valyrie looks around. The mess is in fact empty. She gathers her papers and prepares to leave for the Sim-Cyl. “Thank you for the warning,” she says to the cadet.

“Yeah sure.” The cadet about faces and walks off in the same direction as his friends. Valyrie hears him mutter the word “crazies” under his breath.

Valyrie puts him on her kill list. She has three. Kill, ransom, and induct. Those lists will determine the fate of non-nils in her rebellion. Anyone who's a potential combatant goes on the kill list and must earn their way up the other two. Access to the Upward Wing has been invaluable in finding officers who would tolerate a regime change and cowards who would help one out if it meant their lives were saved. Quite a few of her cadets are in the latter category, here to just be career soldiers who operate in the safety of Stellaris-9’s general obscurity. Valyrie has started to just put the ones she doesn’t like on the kill list to serve as a bit of catharsis while her soma restriction is active.

She has no idea what to do with Talis.

Valyrie’s decided to postpone the revolution until after their duel anyway. The knowledge she's amassing and disseminating amongst the nils is well worth the risks involved with waiting. In just three days, she has a hundred nils ready to fight for her, and by the end of the week, it could be a thousand. Yet, without the complete knowledge of Stellaris-9 military capabilities available to captains, she could be leading her rebellion into a trap.

Stellaris-9’s mystery Intelligence department terrifies her. They either know everything or nothing, and Valyrie won't have a clue until she pulls her trigger.

She suppresses the butterflies in her stomach. Once she's a captain, she'll have access to Talis’ light cruiser, armories, and Strategic HQ documents. It won’t even the odds stacked against the nils, but history has shown that a few early victories can snowball into a won war. She just needs to solve the impossible problem. How do the nils get even a single victory against an impossibly superior force?

A lot of people are going to die because of Valyrie, and she still has no idea what to do about Talis.

Talis has put a major damper on her plans. She’s been more than reasonable, and not an hour has gone by when Valyrie doesn't think it would be best to just talk things out with the woman. A threatened rebellion could extract the same concessions as a real one if the administration was amicable, and Talis was certainly amicable.

But if she told Talis and Talis told, then everyone was dead. Rhen would likely be executed with Valyrie’s death. Petra wouldn’t leave without her remaining daughter, and Amelia wouldn’t leave until she extracted the butcher's bill for Rhen’s death. That meant the appocalypse was coming to Stellaris-9.

Valyrie really needed soma, but Rhen had used her veto power, so that was that.

The Sim-Cyl, or Simulation Center officially, was four floors of VR pods packed as tightly as possible. The building was almost as large of a power draw as the farms, but it allowed Stellaris-9 to train new officers at three times the regular speed.

Valyrie pops into one of the pods to begin her next three hours (nine really) of self study. The pod connectors attach themselves to all available ports on her limited dbus and she’s thrown into cyberspace.

Rhen and Valyrie manifest in their private room of the grand library. Valyrie was initially surprised to realize the pods could detect multiple consciousnesses in a single head. Rhen had manifested alongside her the moment she first stepped into one of these things. It caused quite a stir during orientation, but Rhen had narrowly saved them by claiming Valyrie had Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Apparently Valyrie was not the first case of it, so the standing TAC quickly moved past the incident. Talis was also rather calm about the new mental issues Valyrie dropped on her lap. Relatively. Talis just flashed one of her trademark glares and changed her mantra to “Four times as hard. Four times as hard for both of you!”

Upper-class society seemed rather accepting of mental deficiencies, which only added to Valyrie's guilt around co-opting a real-world disorder. At least Rhen got a body.

Rhen’s digital body was a mix of Valyrie's phenotypes with the androgynous body shape from her former cyborg self. Violet eyes and sunburnt hair on the small frame of a girl regularly exposed to gravity. She looked like Valyrie's little sister, and Valyrie didn’t know what to think about that. On one hand, Rhen reminded Valrie that her other half was forever lost. On the other hand, Valyrie was happy to see Rhen enjoying the freedom of existence. Even if it was only for their duration in this digital space.

“You two,” comes a familiar voice from the study hall. “Don’t you ever sleep?” Valyrie smiles at Company Commander Jax, one of the nine she hopes to supplant on her way towards Commandant.

“Not until the work is done,” Rhen says, dematerializing the books on their bench and scooting to the side for Jax. “We’re stuck on the Kobayashi Maru assignment. I think we should flee, Valyrie thinks we should fight, but doesn’t like the casualties fighting would cause. Rhen points at the sprawling mess of history textbooks on the war with the Sacred, each one detailing a time in the past where Humanity was more technically capable than it is now.

“We’ve been hunting for the last few hours for an answer, but we’re getting nowhere.”

Jax takes a casual look at all the books. He has the casual arrogance of someone genuinely content with there spot in life. He doesn’t have the slightest bit of contempt for the two former nils trying to catch up to him. Jax knows they either will or won’t and doesn’t care whichever way. Instead, Jax shows both Rhen and Valyrie nothing but respect in stark contrast to their other contenders in the nine.

“You both are already taking first-year semi-finals? It's only been three days.”

Valyrie and Rhen look at each other. Wordlessly, they decide to avoid lying about their worth ethic.

“We don’t need to sleep,” Valyrie says.

“One of us studies while the other stays in REM for four hours a night.” Rhen finishes.

“That’s a hell of an advantage,” Jax says, taking a seat. “It makes me wish I had a second mind in my head to.” Sadly, I’m perfectly average.

Valyrie rolls her eyes. “You’re a COO, Jax. You’re guaranteed a captain position at the end of the semester. No need to be humble.”

“Perfectly average amongst captain candidates, then,” number three of the ten says. “Though I know enough to tell you both that the Kobayashi Maru final isn’t the test you think it is. You’ve clearly laid out dozens of unique strategies to stave off the sacred. Here’s the issue. Neither of you is good enough to take down the average human light cruiser, even with a fleet.

“We’re perfectly capable.” Valyrie simmers. She can’t manifest aura in the digital realm outside a combat sim, and she feels so vulnerable without its heat.

“No, you’re not. That’s the point of the Kobayashi Maru. Here, let me explain now so you don’t have to figure it out when you fail in a week. Let's go for this sim.” Jax says, not asking for permission.

Valyrie and Rhen fall into the commanding chairs of a Freestar battleship. Twenty light to heavy cruisers surround them, along with dozens of light craft. Her HUD shows her that she has three thousand soldiers in her command. On their targeting screen is a single enemy light cruiser from the Sunscorched Parhelion, a fifth-circle civilization.

“Is he serious?” Valyrie asks. “Does he seriously think he can-” Valyries cut off as a mayday siren from one of her cruisers blares. She looks out the portside window and sees explosions coming from the nearest light cruiser.

“He’s targeting us,” Rhen shouts. “All ships, shields online.”

“All ships, fire MACs at the enemy at will.” Valyrie interrupts.

Shields pop up online across the fleet and hundreds magnetically accelerated cannons fire in a salvo that covers the black in gray smoke. Sadly the shields interfear with the magnetic munitions, causing the shots to go wide. The enemy light cruiser burns red towards them, relying on human generated aura to provide defense and speed. Whoever is on that ship is powerful.

“We can’t make conflicting orders. Leave this to me, Rhen.” Valyrie says moments after Rhen utters the same exact thing. The ensuing debate on leadership costs them precious seconds. The enemies particle beam cannons burn through four light cruiser shields and cripple three. The rest of her fleet hovers uselessly, pinging their commanders for orders.

Both Valyrie and Rhen burn blue for the mind acceleration, but the rage required to maintain it is clogging their vision. They are losing to Jax, who hasn’t even hit yellow.

“You do it then.” Says Rhen, who instructs the fleet to scramble instead of acting like sitting ducks.

Valyrie shouts out her plan of getting all the blues into position to enhance their MACs. She informs her fleet to drop shields and fire on her command. In the agonizing minute that it takes the sim soldiers to arrive at new battle stations, the enemy light cruiser burns yellow in a final rush forward. Valyrie can see the bridge of the enemy ship. There is an army of reds and oranges in advanced space suits and mechs being dragged outside the cruiser by hookslings. Dozens launch at point-blank. None of her soldiers manages to target the men with PDC-Ls. The enemy soldiers crash into her battleship. Everything goes white as she’s killed by the resulting explosion.”

—

“That’s the Kobayashi Maru,” Jax says while Valyrie holds back a death-curdling scream. Rhen hugs herself, clearly shaken by the speed at which they both died. Jax breaks into lecture mode.

“One. Just because an enemy force is outnumbered does not mean they will play defense. Two. Just because you have more ships does not mean you can act faster than a smaller force. Coordinating a thousand takes exponentially longer than coordinating a hundred, and you will be very susceptible to decapitation tactics. Three. Confusion is a symptom of creativity. If you go for creative solutions in the moment, they will fail. Full stop. Use existing playbooks and drill your fleet in them, even if they might be more ineffective than what you can come up with in the moment.

Finally four. You aren’t shit against a superior force. This isn’t Earth, where we fought each other with sticks, and the tribe that could bleed the longest won by default. If a more powerful civilization sends a single cruiser to face you, it's because they know that it's enough. Their intelligence is better. Their weapons and defense are better. Their boarding crews are at higher average aura levels. Rhen is right. If you see a Sacred ship all on its lonesome. You run. Make sure to apply that for enemies less than the Sacred, too.