Memories of the Maverick's "Matroska Mistake"
09 Oct 2020Jay Le Chardon
In 3298 [u]Cadet[/u] - Jay Le Chardon was a force of nature, destined to have a great career with the imperial navy, and if he could prove to others he had the grit, onwards to important, clandestine, work for the Imperial Intelligence services. He thought he was phenomenal, he was a pillock. He thought the Imperial Navy were lucky to have him in their service, He was lucky the Imperial Navy had taken him in, but that's not how he saw it... And as the Navy had fostered him, he got pushed through his boundaries, he got better, and so did his results. But the better his results, the worse his attitude became, at least until the Matroska Mistake in 3298. Operation "Matroska" was named after the Russian [ancient earth culture] dolls, of which there were multiple copies of the same figurine, with each one a little bigger than the one inside. The idea was starting with thee smallest, the baby, as the chile played that the doll grew, they would add another layer to the doll making it bigger thus emulating the growth. When the languages and cultures of earth Homogenised, this word Matroska became synonymous with multilayered, and it was for this meaning that the Imperial Navy commanders in behind the mission named it "Operation Matroska" as it was a multilayered planetary assault. Starting with the smallest, there were soldiers on the ground, supported by light armoured vehicles, who in turn were protected by close "air" support, who ere being protected by the "air" superiority fighters, with the solar system being patrolled by clippers and cutters, and all this coordinated by the "brass" onboard the attendant Majestic Interdictor.
The 9th Of October 3298 had been a really good day for the operation in general, but a certain aforementioned maveric had his own opinion of how the day was unfolding, and from his point of view....
This particular flight had been a long sortie, on the voice comms there seemed to be an endless stream of calls from friendlies calling in targets, talking over each other and often their messages are being interfered with by the ship's proximity alarm as I'm coming in fast, and low. I know I'm about to become the bringer of death from above, but I've no idea if someone is lining up to do the same thing to me. The reason for this lack of awareness is that for the last 500m, klick, klick and a half, yep I'm moving that fast, and all that time I've been so low that the scanner is in terrain-following mode. Helpful for topographical information, frustratingly blinding me of longer-range situational awareness, leaving me particularly vulnerable to hostile ships outwith the terrain-following radar's limited range.
As I rapidly close towards the targets, I nudge the controls slightly into a half roll, followed by a little counter nudge to stabilise the attitude. Now flying inverted for better ground observation, another little nudge and counter so I'm now approaching with the nose "up" so weapons are pointing at the ground, balancing the thrusters against gravity and the obscure attitude of my ship, fixed weapons targeting with my Mk.1 eyeballs, I'm flying old-school! And like most old school pilots, I prefer flying something agile but fragile so it's light enough to support boom and ZOOM!!! Coming in FAST, and low, and inverted. 200m from the target, I "announce my presence" by starting to light them up, as I progress towards them I feed in a little bit of pitch "up" along with gradually transitioning thrusters to slow me and keep me raining down on the enemy for that fraction longer. Ideally, I'd want to do this in such a way as the nose starts moving towards vertical down when more or less directly overhead... But I'm tired, so I goofed the timing slightly, meaning when I was directly over the targets heads, I was a couple of degrees off them, they got off lightly. I correct the error and keep raining munitions on them as I exit. By this time, a mere couple of seconds since "announcing my presence", I'm 90% horizontal the right way up, but flying 100% backwards, transitioning to accelerate along that trajectory because I'm rapidly losing my line of fire on the target and travelling rapidly roughly backwards, give or take a bit of pitch and a smidgeon of yaw.
"OK hotshot, bet you can't do that again?" says one of the friendlies. I'm egotistical, so I walk right into it, "Challenge accepted! - Oscar Mike". Only, again, I'm tired, and I'm really starting to show it now as once again I've been a galut, and been too busy watching the weapons beads and not paying enough attention to the altimeter so when I roll and pitch up to start another strafing run, I clip the dirt! Noise! Dust! Commotion! And not on the target;-( As fast as the sound travels from the wingtip to my ear I move pips to shields and start catching the tumble. Within what seemed like a lifetime, but was in reality only a couple of adrenaline-fueled heartbeats I've stabilised the ship, I'm three and a half clicks out from target and moving fast. In the relative safety, I pop an SCB to patch the shields back up to something more resilient than a prayer to randominous, but I have to admit that I'm lucky they are still online to accept the SCB. I know I can't be doing that all the time, must sharpen up. That SCB delivered not only the much-needed replacements for the missing two and a half rings of shields I left in the dirt, but also quite a bit of heat damage. So, on one hand, I've got three rings of shields again, on the other I've got a lot of things sparking in the cockpit and the smoke is only just starting to clear, though which I can see "hull" percentage is down to 87%. Catlike reflexes saved me from being killed in a controlled flight into terrain, now cat like vanity is wondering did anyone see me hit the dirt?
Coming in low and fast again, as is my way, the start the usual roll to invert, and as the top of my left wing comes around to the two o'clock position, I start the counter roll burn, and at that same moment my narrow view of the world becomes one filled with purple sparks and fireworks?!?!? - PLASMA ACCELERATOR!!!! I'm not alone!!! Suddenly I'm very much awake, scared, but more importantly - focussed!
In a blur, I'm simultaneously going pips 4-2-0, changing firegroup, reorienting to gain altitude, and thumbing boost so I can quickly get above the altitude at which the scanner is hard coded to go to terrain following mode, and swivelling my head around frantically trying to see any glimmers of lights weapons or thrusters out there in the inky black knight sky using the old organic optical targeting sensors my mother gave me... The scanner flickers from terrain following mode to normal flight mode, and when it lights back up, it does so with two, fast-moving, white dots suddenly appearing below me at four o'clock low to which the ships voice pipes up "incoming missile". Before she's finished giving me that bit of good news, I clock two red dots just getting resolved on the scanner at ten o'clock high, and one o'clock high-high. As my brain is processing their positions a third red dot emerges from the first red dot, quickly followed by a fourth red dot emerging from the second, Fighters!!! Oh, frack! More white dots "under" (behind) me as the first salvo of missiles explode harmlessly far away somewhere over my rightsholder, but the fighters are closing fast and the dash still says I''m mass locked! a stream of parallel fast-moving cyan light beams catches my eye as it thankfully harmlessly cuts across my bow. Every fibre in my body coalesces in a choral crescendo screaming at me to say that this is going to be.....
Blackness.
Silence.
A faint synthetic female voice is now slowly getting my attention, speaking ever so faintly at first, but as not even a whisper, I can hear a distinct repetition and cadence to her utterances. With each repetition she increases the volume, until after a couple of repetitions it is no longer an elusive whisper, but an intelligible message that permeates the dark silence:
"Simulation ended - Simulator time exceeded!"
"Simulation ended - Simulator time exceeded!"
"Simulation ended - Simulator time exceeded!"
Cadet Le Chardon begins to see the irony of it all - His squad are on an outpost simulating deployment to a majestic interdictor, and while the other cadets in his squad were sleeping, he was simulating sleep deprivation to get himself used to function on less sleep than civilians, to make the time more productive. And while he was was simulating missions using a combat flight simulator to keep self awake. But now it was way past 04:30hrs, he had a real 16hr mission starting in about three hours. Well, a real physical simulated patrol of a contested system. So was that a real simulated mission? A Simulated real mission?
Simulated missions, during simulated sleep deprivation, on a simulated Majestic Interdicror, on a simulated deployment.
And at this time the sleep deprivation was working as he was tired and cranky and he thought each and every one of those layers of simulation was a mistake.
A massive multi-layered MISTAKE!
His Matroska Mistake...