The two simulator rooms faced each other at the far end of a corridor on deck seven. The doors on the left were sealed shut with a sign declaring that the systems within were undergoing maintenance. The doors to each room were double the normal width of doors on the ship as simulator units were largely pre-assembled and only finished on site.
Ellie opened the door and discovered, despite her best efforts, that she was the last person to arrive. Dominique waved at her. Aiden smiled his serious smile. The twins stood to one side, arms folded, faces impassive. The other cadets stood in groups, sharing exited tales of their first flights and future dreams.
Commander Archer turned around as the doors opened to let Ellie in.
'Good afternoon, cadet,' she said.
'But I'm not late,' said Ellie.
'You're the last one here. Class starts when everyone is ready. And now we can start.'
Ellie flushed red and headed for the back of the group where no one would see her. Rebecca was there. She bent over and whispered to Ellie, 'Don't worry about it. Everyone's been looking forward to this. It's the next best thing to flying for real.'
Ellie nodded without turning her head. There was a bright side. It wouldn't do to forget about that. She was finally here. Now she could show them what she could really do.
'By the end of today,' Taylor was speaking, 'You will be familiar with the basic layout and operation of the ST-12 training spacecraft, colloquially called the Starling. You will come to think of these cockpits as a second home. Here you will learn to fly as a team, working together to complete objectives. You will be operating in flights of two or four, depending on the objective. You will never operate solo. Do you understand?'
'Yes sir!' the class chorused.
'And why is this so, cadet?' Archer said. He pointed at one of the boys directly in front of him. Evidently he didn't know the answer because Taylor pointed at someone else.
'You,' he said.
'Because we fly as part of a squadron, and a squadron is always stronger than a single pilot.' That was Aurora, thought Ellie. Or Celeste. They even sounded alike, a snippy arrogance that implied you were wasting their time.
'Correct, textbook answer cadet. The team is always stronger than the individual. It's why we operate as a combined force, as a unit. I would always take ten average pilots working together over a hundred aces working alone. Teamwork gives you the edge. I know that you are all at least competent or you wouldn't be here. By the time I am done with you you're going to be the best in the fleet.'
The door opened again to admit a junior officer. He saluted Commander Archer and nodded his greeting at the rest of the room. He handed Taylor a clipboard and datapad, then walked to a central semi-circular console.
'This is Lieutenant Tariq Awan. He will be your squadron's operating tech in charge of mission simulations. He also has your pod assignments. Over to you, lieutenant.'
'Thank you sir,' he said. 'I just need a moment to finish set up. Pod assignments are on the wall chart already.'
'There you go people, find your pod, get seated, and the Tariq will begin the first exercise shortly. I will see you soon.'
With that, Archer left the room, and without the Commander to demand her attention, Ellie looked around her for the first time.
The simulator room was octagonal. The door she had come in by was on one straight edge. Giant black data cores filled the walls either side of the door. Think cable clusters snaked from the side of each rack and connected them to eight cockpit sized modules sitting on raised platforms. They were much smaller than Ellie had expected them to be. She thought they would be full sized fighters, but of course it made sense they would only need the cockpits. She wondered how realistic they could really be.
Each pod looked like the top part of a cockpit had been bolted onto a grey and angular platform. The machines were well-worn. Bright metal edges reflected the overhead lights where paint had been worn away by class after class of cadet stepping in and out of the cockpits. There were four pods on each side of the room, two for each side of the octagon, all of them facing the middle of the room. Beginning with the simulator to the right of the door, numbers one through eight were stencilled in white on the front of each simulator in a clockwise pattern.
The wall opposite the door was dominated by a large screen. Lines of code raced down the screen until it was filled, and then scrolled upward too quickly to see. The data cores hummed, lights blinked, and the eight pods shifted as system checks began on the hydraulics, haptic feedback systems and other simulated control surfaces.
Ellie checked her assignment, and climbed into pod three.
It felt wrong.
Both her racer and Valkyrie (which she still thought of as hers) both had the control yoke positioned between her knees, with the throttle on the left. Here the flight stick was on the right, built into the armrest. It made her lap feel strangely exposed, and her right arm sat in the wrong place.
She wriggled into the seat. It wasn't comfortable. Whatever padding had once been here had been worn away by time and trainees.
Ellie felt for the pedals. They were too far away for her, but she quickly discovered they could be adjusted and brought to a comfortable position.
The rest of the cockpit was a mix of new and unfamiliar. The Valkyrie shared a similar general layout and design philosophy, but it also felt more refined that this Starling. The simulator felt blocky, like each different element, each display and control surface, had been constructed separately and installed here with no regard for how they sat together.
Although unknown to Ellie, this was exactly what had happened. Simulator pods were reconfigured as needed, and this meant a modular approach to the control systems was used. At this early stage of the cadet training program , it was felt by those who made such decisions that the advantages in cost of flexible, physical controls outweighed the minor inconvenience of muscle memory when the cadets graduated to real fighters.
Ellie rested her hands on the controls and imagined flying it for real. She could get used to it, she was sure. The placement of the flight stick to the right was the only real difference.
She was prevented from investigating further by an announcement from the lieutenant.
'Ladies and gentleman, you should by now be familiar with the theoretical operations aspects of the ST-12 space superiority platform. Please put on your helmets and we'll begin the first program of the day.'
Ellie had ignored the helmet so far. It rested on the front of the cockpit, below the canopy hinge. She pulled it on and adjusted it until it sat comfortably on her head.
Tariq continued, 'You will be unfamiliar with the Mark three helmet. If you need help please raise your hand.'
Ellie watched every other hand go up. The lieutenant started moving around the room in an anti-clockwise direction starting from pod number eight. Most adjustments only took a moment. The helmets were unfamiliar but not complicated. He reached Ellie's pod and stepped up to help her automatically. Cadets always needed help first time. Ellie however sat ready and waiting.
'Cadet Young, have you secured your helmet?'
'Yes sir!'
Tariq looked it over, then pushed one side of her head. There was no slack. Everything was proper and correct.
'You've worn a Mark three before, cadet?'
'Um. I don't think so.' The Valkyrie helmets fitted in the same way as these. Were they Mark three? Ellie just thought they were helmets. Since she arrived on the Paris, everything seemed to have a letter or a number or a dash or an abbreviation. Starling was a perfectly good name for a spacecraft , she thought. Why complicate it with S and T and the number twelve?
'You don't know?' came a voice over the intercom. It was one of the twins.
'We can talk to each other?' said Dominique.
'You're share a channel for the first lessons,' said Tariq. 'But until you have a need to speak, stay quiet. I don't want the channel filled with noise. Carry on, cadet,' he finished. He climbed down from Ellie's pod and moved on.
When the last two pods were secure, Lieutenant Anwar returned to his console. His semi-circular workstation was not quite centred in the room, so he had a clear view of all eight simulators plus the central display. His own console was filled with dozens of smaller screens, each one showing a video feed of cockpit, plus simulated status, telemetry, mission parameters, and all the other details he needed to run the training.
'Let's get started,' he said. He pressed a button, and eight cockpits closed and latched shut.
Ellie's momentary thrill passed quickly. Once the cockpit closed she could still see the rest of the room. There was nothing realistic about this. The Lieutenant pressed another button and the room vanished. Now Ellie's view was completely different. Instead of the simulation room, Ellie saw through the canopy a triangular tunnel. Twin light tracks stretched along grey walls, converging and vanishing to a point some distance ahead where she could see the launch bay doors.
Ellie lifted herself higher in her seat. The rest of the Starling now existed in the simulation. Wings extended from beneath the cockpit with a shallow sweep backward. She saw the thruster exhausts at each wingtip and could make see the microswitched venting flip back and forth in response to her playing with the controls. Beneath her, which Ellie couldn't see, the Starling sat in the housing for the magnetic launch sled.
The illusion was perfect. If she had just woken up here she would have no idea she was in a simulator.
In front of her was the launch tube doors. They were closed now, but Ellie knew they would open, and beyond them was the stars, and when she was ready, the magnetic sled would accelerate her to launch speed in three seconds. Then she would be in space, and free. She waited for the instruction to go.
Her earpiece chirped as Tariq joined the comm channel.
'Lesson one cadets. The safe start up and shut down of your Starling.'
'What?' said Ellie
'Check your comms, cadet, I know you heard me.'
'But... when do we get to fly?'
'You can fly when you start up and shut down safely and not before.'
'But I know how to start a ship.'
'I see." Ellie heard a faint chirp in her earpiece as the channel changed. "Listen up, class. Cadet Young will be taking us through this first lesson. Pay attention and direct any questions to me afterwards. Go ahead Cadet.'
'Go ahead what?' said Ellie.
'Show us how it's done. Take your Starling through the start up sequence. I've disengaged the simulated safety protocols and I'm feeding your video to the rest of the class so we can all learn from your knowledge. Class, please remain silent during this lesson.'
Ellie said nothing. She knew he was trying to put her on the spot. But she also knew what she was doing. She had been flying her racer for years and she had flown a Valkyrie. That was a real ship, and the start button was under a flip panel to the left of the throttle, so it should be right there.
She left for it with her little finger, but there was no button. There was no button the other side either.
'Um,' she said.
'Problem, cadet?'
Ellie thought back. She must have read about this in the manual, before she skipped ahead to the more interesting parts. There was something about vectored thrust? No, that was for vertical take off. This was a mag sled, so she would need to disengage the locks, remotely power up the field coils in the tunnel wall, raise landing gear, ignite the engines to five per cent thrust, ready to hit high-burn as she left the launch tube, and then she would be away.
Painfully away of the class watching her Ellie found each control in turn and activated them one after the other. The cabin responded to each change as if she really was turning on superconducting magnetic coils four meters away, and as if the twin engined fusion drive really was powering up.
Confident she had the sequence right she hit comms.
'Ready to launch,' she said.
'Launch when ready,' said the lieutenant.
Ellie gripped the controls, and thumbed the launch button. Then she looked up, and only then did she realise her mistake. Her ship lurched forward and exploded in the tube.
The class cheered together in mock celebration.
'Congratulations, cadet. You just set a record for the fastest death in my class by quite some margin. Most cadets at least make it out of the launch bay. I suggest that next time you open the bay doors before accelerating, but that's just my opinion. After all, everyone knows how to start a ship, don't they.'
Tariq hit a sequence of commands to reset Ellie's simulation. The inferno outside her cockpit disappeared and the launch tunnel reappeared. The doors to space were still closed. He opened a private channel to Ellie's pod.
'Lesson learned, cadet?'
'Yes. Sorry.'
'Mistakes are part of the lesson, cadet. Just get them out of your system in here before you get out there. And next time don't assume you're the smartest in the room. I don't know where you came from and I don't care. In here you learn to fly. That's all I care about.'
'Sorry,' she said again.
'Don't be sorry, be better.' He cut the private channel and opened a public one. 'Alright class, fun's over. We're going to go through that again, step by step, until you can do it blindfolded. Let's begin.'
* * * * *
Tariq's warning about the blindfold turned out to be accurate. By the end of the day, they had each simulated startups and shutdowns of their Starlings in a variety of conditions, under different sensory inputs, under simulated attacks which shook their virtual craft so hard Ellie could hardly see the controls.
They would do it again and again. Sometimes alone. Sometimes in competition. Sometimes they would synchonise their sequences forcing them to hit each other's beats in perfect unison. Other times the ignition sequence would jump from ship to ship, each pilot suddenly being presented with an incomplete part of the whole, and forced to take another step, or to finish it completely, before it would jump away to the next cadet.
And then they would take a break and the Lieutenant would start all over again. This time, he blindfolded them.
And throughout all these exercises, the launch bay doors never opened.