Interlude: Professor Emiko Hirokawa

The day that changed her life forever began with a knock.

“It’s unlocked,” Emiko said.

The door to the office swung open and struck the plastic stopper on the other side with a bang. A woman strutted in with enough confidence to tell the professor she wasn’t a student. Emiko was struck by several other peculiarities.

The woman’s navy blue uniform was richly decorated. There were the usual commendations. The Lion’s Cross, The Severin Medal. Those were expected. Then there were the prestigious emblems, like the Albion Jewel. These were so widely known and limited that everyone knew the names of the recipients. And yet, Emiko did not recognize the woman before her with striking golden eyes and short curly locks.

“You are Professor Emiko Hirokawa?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Emiko folded her hands over the papers she was grading. “And you?”

“Captain Diane Lunova,” the woman extended her hand. “We’ve never met, but I work down the hall. Well. Worked. Military History and Practical Applications. I hear you teach astral navigation and game theory here at the academy.”

“You heard right, captain,” Emiko shook Diane’s hand. “What’s this about?”

Diane set an envelope on the desk.

“A job offer,” she said. “This here is an advance. It also details your pay for the duration of your tenure, benefits, the usual. I suggest giving the academy names of suitable downgrades for your post.”

Emiko slid the envelope towards herself.

“Downgrades?” she asked. She fetched a single sheet of paper from inside the letter. The numbers on the front page were staggering. “This can’t be real.”

“The rest of the faculty,” Diane slid into the chair opposite the professor, “tell me you’re unreal at the simulator. They say you’re the best this generation has seen.”

“They’re just games.”

“Let’s play a game then,” Diane grinned. “I love games.”

The captain snatched a sheet of lined paper from a pile of research papers and a pen from Emiko’s stationary holder.

“Assume these spatial coordinates,” she said. “You are positioned… here, at the center of three stellar bodies. Your objectives are four subspace capable capital ships firing from the cover of this orbiting asteroid belt… here and here.”

“...This is the position of Knight Captain Lionel at the Battle of Antiga, separated from his Reapers,” Emiko recalled. “His so-called miraculous escape.”

“Rightly so,” Diane said, “but with an added twist. Assume your adversary is capable of one trillion heuristic resolutions per second. In your opinion, what is the appropriate escape vector given these parameters?”

Emiko blinked.

“So these are Federation ships,” she furrowed her brow. “That makes Knight Captain Lionel’s escape impossible.”

“How so?”

“Lionel’s retreat from the Antigan Pyramid was a stroke of luck,” Emiko explained. “Lemmings-Hyder never considered the effect of three or more gravitational bodies on subspace entry.”

“How much does it matter?” Diane asked.

“Plenty. At least theoretically. Practically speaking, if the gravitational interactions are negligible, as is the case with many planetary systems, then Lemmings-Hyder engines are sturdy enough these days to not tear your ships apart. But the gravity wells formed by orbiting stars in this case require manual, real time computations by an astronavigation officer to correct for unstable trajectories.”

“Lionel was lucky for two reasons,” Emiko continued. “His ship, Hesitant Horizon, had been recently refitted with a fresh layer of graphene alloys. That probably saved his life, because when his ship reappeared, several parsecs off his initial destination solution, the entire hull had been grafted by tidal forces.”

“That sounds mildly unpleasant.”

“Second, the ships that had ambushed the knight captain could not pursue him,” Emiko said, “for the same reason that Lionel’s vessel was cut to shreds. They too did not possess the computational capacity to enter subspace near three gravitational bodies. At best they risked being ripped apart from the same forces.”

“That’s the best scenario?” Diane asked. “And what’s the worst case?”

“Navigational chaos,” Emiko answered. “Maybe you slingshot yourself into an inescapable vector. Maybe you expend all your fuel decelerating and find yourself beyond known space and starve to death.”

“Crummy way to go, I suppose,” Diane mumbled. “So back to the problem. You say escape is impossible?”

“Yes,” Emiko nodded. “For starters, Federation ships process firing solutions at greater speeds and with greater accuracy than the pirates the knight captain found at Antiga. They would not have given Hesitant Horizon sufficient time to calculate an escape vector. Even were she to do so, Federation ships are superior in every category at navigating subspace and have no problems computing the necessary arithmetic to course correct under the duress of multiple celestial bodies. Knight Captain Lionel would have been pursued, and killed, had he faced more capable adversaries.”

“That’s a bold claim,” Diane smirked. “Knight Captain Lionel was a hero from the civil war. His accolades surely are worth something.”

“Everyone during the civil war was a hero,” Emiko said. “Those who were not had been killed.”

“Quite a morbid description of events, Professor Hirokawa,” Diane said. “Is this what’s being taught to students these days?”

“You’re not a student, and students should be taught reality, not fantasy,” Emiko shrugged. “The Federation allowed us the dignity of calling the war a stalemate in exchange for a galaxy’s worth of concessions. Fresh eyes come here and assume they’re going to be the ones who can outrace a Federation frigate. Reality will keep them alive.”

Diane tapped the sheet of paper again.

“So you’re saying it’s hopeless?” she asked. “If you were trapped like this, is that what you would tell your captain? ‘Hey! Sorry, it’s the Federation. We’re fucking dead!’”

“Look,” Emiko sighed. “What’s the point of all this?”

“It’s just a game, remember? It’s a simple question, professor. Is this game impossible to win?”

Emiko pursed her lips. It wasn’t technically impossible, but the game Diane proposed had been rigged from the start. And perhaps this, too, was all part of the “game.” What Emiko had learned over the years was that no game was unwinnable. You just had to change something, tilt the variables in your favor. Change the game.

If Diane had changed the nature of the enemies, then it stood to reason that Emiko could alter the circumstances of the player.

“Hesitant Horizon could not escape,” Emiko answered. “But a different ship could do it.”

“A different ship?” Diane scooched closer. “So something bigger? Like a titan?”

“Doesn’t have to be that dramatic,” the professor explained. “It just needs to be fast enough to compete with Federation caliber ships.”

“Build it.”

“Build it?” Emiko repeated. “I’m no mechanic, mind you. I can only describe what it needs to do.”

“What does it need to do then?”

“Well, it needs to be fast,” Emiko thought aloud, “A corvette would be best. Sleek design language, minimal armaments. That would streamline the computational load for subspace maneuvers. You’d still need a primary weapon, though. Maybe a pulse laser or some kind of plasma system.”

“You’d think it would need to be different from other corvettes,” Diane mused.

“That part’s actually the easiest.”

“Really? What makes you say that?”

Emiko’s mind began to race. She was starting to enjoy the exercise. In fact, the answer to Diane’s question was so exceedingly obvious, she was baffled why none of the engineers at the academy had ever mentioned it before.

“We only began producing corvettes after the civil war,” Emiko explained. “The Federation shared the technology to build small form Lemmings-Hyder drives. Corvette models also share the same baggage, a drive core for an onboard AI.”

“You want to get rid of it.”

“No. Replace it,” Emiko said. “A second engine core. No AI assistance. That gives us the speed we need.”

“What’s the point of a second core if we can’t take advantage of it?” Diane frowned. “We all rely on AI for complex maneuvering these days”

“Only Federation ships process information at one trillion heuristic responses per second,” Emiko replied. “And we source all of our onboard assistance from the Federation. This game requires a ship without an AI component.”

“Then who computes the escape vector?”

“Me, of course,” Emiko said. “Or was there someone else you had in mind? If this is a job offer, then I assume you’ve been interviewing me this whole time.”

Diane said nothing.

“You didn’t come here to ask me to invent a ship for you,” Emiko said. “The ship already exists. I don’t know how, but it exists. And you’re the captain. You’re looking for an astronavigation officer. Someone who can pilot without onboard AI assistance.”

Diane laughed.

“Well now that you’ve deduced an imperial military security,” she said. “You have no choice but to accept. Or be escorted away by military police for questioning.”

“You’ll be dragged to prison with me. You made it too easy to figure out.”

“Eh,” the captain shrugged. “It’s my first ship. Call me overly excited. I don’t care. I just want the best.”

Emiko glanced at Diane’s uniform.

“You’re too decorated for this to be your first ship,” she said.

“Remember what you said just a few minutes ago?” Diane said. “How everyone who survived the civil war was a hero?”

“Of course,” Emiko nodded. “Where did you serve?”

“Why don’t you take a guess?”

Emiko gawked.

“No way,” she blushed. “Hesitant Horizon?”

“Astronavigation,” Diane grinned. “I sure got lucky, didn’t I?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean–”

Diane waved her away. Behind that dismissive gesture, Emiko sensed in the captain a kind of tepid hesitation stirred with chaotic excitement. The captain had shown off a vulnerable side that drew the professor in. Emiko didn’t know it just yet, but she had already fallen for Diane’s first of many schemes.

“Of course you meant it,” Diane said. “But this is how all beautiful friendships begin, professor. Emiko, can I call you that? Now tell me, are you in or are you out? And please say you’re in because I spent a long time rehearsing all of this.”