Not surprisingly, Tal Aro’nh flew all the vessels of his cohort in perfect standard formation, a sphere-within-sphere arrangement familiar to all observers of Ildiran sky parades and military pageants. Warliners surrounded the outer perimeter, with escorts and cutters in layers within the circle. Aro’nh moved his ships en masse along a straight line toward the objective asteroid.

A flurry of sentry ships patrolled around the sphere-within-sphere configuration, orbiting in tight rings as they circled the main warliners. It was meant to be a defensive posture, but as the bands of fast streamers orbited in opposing directions, it created a spectacular visual image—designed to evoke cheers from distant audiences, not to demonstrate military proficiency.

Tal Lorie’nh directed his red team in a more chaotic configuration. The seven maniples of his cohort separated into individual groups of forty-nine ships, each maniple rushing forward in allied but discrete swarms. To the critical eye, red team’s approach had less finesse and no artistry. Then the seven individual maniples, each containing seven septas of warliners, broke apart and advanced pell-mell toward the objective.

One by one, six of Lorie’nh’s seven maniples careened into blue team’s complex sphere-within-sphere grouping, sending a ripple of chaos through Tal Aro’nh’s carefully choreographed vessels. The cumbersome configuration began to disintegrate, but at the old Tal’s barked orders, the captains of each ship in blue team returned to formation. The giant spherical configuration pressed inexorably toward the target, disregarding any threat that red team might make.

However, while six of the red team maniples were harrying the cumbersome but beautiful group of blue team ships, Lorie’nh’s seventh maniple accelerated rapidly toward the asteroid. They allowed themselves no diversion, surrendering all other considerations.

It was a simple enough tactic, and obvious in hindsight. By the time Aro’nh’s lumbering spherical configuration reordered itself and began to unfold its vessels, splitting open the outer shell of warliners to dispatch the central rank of landing craft, red team’s rogue maniple had already arrived at the asteroid. They dropped a rapid deployment of all cutters, releasing occupation forces of spacesuited Ildiran ground troops who planted their cohort’s emblem and activated their victory beacon.

The other six maniples of red team stopped harrying the opponent and retreated to surround the asteroid, preventing Aro’nh’s cohort from even approaching the objective. It was a total rout.

Before blue team managed to launch a single troop transport, Adar Kori’nh signaled the two military commanders and declared the exercise over, granting a complete victory to red team.

Tal Aro’nh looked particularly old, virtually fossilized, as he appeared before Adar Kori’nh in the command nucleus of the observation platform. He stood ramrod straight, his Solar Navy uniform impeccable, insignia and medals neatly arranged on his chest.

He had lost. Utterly.