Along with physical combat, you will have to contend with electronic warfare. The hostiles will be trying to subvert your computer systems and turn them against you. Jamming may not protect you, as the hostiles could use a line-of-sight beam to initiate a system handshake.

All these things and more must be taken into account when engaging in space combat. The environment wants to kill you. The hostiles want to kill you. And your own instincts and lack of knowledge will kill you—and everyone around you—if you don’t master these fundamentals.

Now, some of you are thinking, “Won’t the ship mind or our pseudo-intelligences handle most of these things?” The answer is yes, they will. But not all the time. A ship mind doesn’t have hands. What they can move or fix is limited, and that goes double for pseudo-intelligences. In an emergency, some things can only be done by a human. And there have been numerous cases where the ship mind or the ship’s computer system has been disabled by enemy action. When that happens, these decisions will fall to you, the next generation of UMCN officers.

The next six weeks will be some of the hardest six weeks of your lives. That’s by design. The UMC doesn’t want anyone who is unqualified to step onto a spaceship where they can endanger not only their own lives but the lives of their fellow crew. Better that you wash out now and go back to being swabbies who only have to worry about keeping their boots polished and their jaws off the deck. If you don’t think you can handle this sort of responsibility, get up and leave. The door’s right there, and no one, not me, not your superiors, and not the UMC will think any less of you for walking out now.… No? Alright then. Over the next month and a half, my staff and I are going to put you through the wringer. You will wish you gave up. But if you do the hours, work hard, and learn from the mistakes of those who paid for their knowledge with blood and lives, then you have a good chance of wearing your officers’ pips—wearing them and doing justice to them.

So study hard, and at the end of this program, I expect each and every one of you to impress me with your knowledge of space-based combat.

That will be all. Dismissed.

APPENDIX III

TERMINOLOGY

“May your path always lead to knowledge.”

“Knowledge to freedom.”

—ENTROPIC LITANY

“Eat the path.”

—INARË

A

ABYSSAL CONCLAVE: sycophantic congress of Wranaui co-forms that resides upon the Plaintive Verge within the oceans of Pelagius.

ACUWAKE: see StimWare.

ADRASTEIA: moon in orbit around the gas giant Zeus in the Sigma Draconis system. In mythology, a nymph who cared for the infant Zeus in secret. Meaning inescapable in Greek.