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tactics

Tactics, 8/20

Without so much as a 'good morning, class', Jim pulled up a ship to appear above the student's heads. He really enjoyed the Danger Shop too much.

"This is the Kobayashi Maru. She is a crippled civilian vessel that Star Fleet has ordered you to rescue from the Klingon Neutral Zone. Of course that does mean crossing from safe space to hostile territory to reach and evacuate them before you're discovered and then attacked by Klingon forces."

The ship stayed where it was, but was joined by another one slowly moving toward it as if to rescue the wee people aboard. It was interrupted as five more ships blink into existence to begin shooting.

"As you approach, several Klingon Birds of Prey uncloak, appearing around the Kobayashi Maru and begin to attack. You're completely outnumbered, outgunned and your shields won't hold for very long. There is no chance for other Star Fleet ships coming to your aide as you're the only one in the sector. So. I want you to tell me how you would win this simulation."

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How would you win?

Anemone knew nothing about the firepower or the abilities of the other ships, but she did know her Little Sibling.

This would be fun.

"Open all hailing frequencies," she said sweetly. "I'm going to call them honorless scavengers who prey on the weak and unworthy. That only cowards send five warships to do the work of one salvage vessel. If that doesn't get their attention, I'll start getting creative."

"If the Maru can't sneak out of there on her own while they're focused on me, I'll challenge whichever captain seems the most incompetent to one-on-one battle."

Five-against-one odds sucked, and they were all walking dead anyway. One-on-one was much better.

"A student of Klingon culture?" Jim replied, actually liking that solution quite a lot.

Anemone beamed. "I was Worf's school-assigned Big Sibling, and we've had other classes together," she said simply. "We have a lot in common."

Mostly in the 'humans are freakin' strange' school of thought, as well as 'strategic violence solves all problems.'

Re: Take the Test

captaininthree.livejournal.com - 2009-08-20 23:36 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Take the Test

death-of-hope.livejournal.com - 2009-08-21 00:30 (UTC) - Expand

"Do I really have to answer this question?" Because really.

"Yes, Bones. I don't recall you passing it."

Jim was an ass.

Bones rolled his eyes. Emma was right; he did need to start hanging around new people.

"Well I guess I'd have to cheat by re-programming the sim and then act like a smug bastard while taking the test."

Hoshi, being a communications officer, could only come up with one real option.

"Well, you're totally outnumbered, so your best bet might be to hail the Klingons and try to negotiate with them," said Hoshi. Then, timidly, she added, "And maybe you could blow up the warp core as a diversion when you have to get out of there when negotiations fail."

Ejecting the warp core seemed to be the catch all plot fixer. But that wasn't the point.

"You'd leave yourself at only impulse. How would you escape?"

"I was kind of counting on the warp core taking out the rest of the Klingon ships. I mean, it creates a pretty big explosion, right?" suggested Hoshi.

She'd never be able to make it as a warp drive engineer.

Tahiri went very quiet for a few minutes in which she might have been reminding herself that no, this was not an exercise in What Would Anakin Solo Do?

Or, you know, just considering her options, thinking that ship was the weirdest thing she'd ever seen, and deciding that "how would you win this?" was a trick question.

"What kind of fighter complement does this ship have?" she asked, finally. And where would you put it, anyway?

"You have the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 at your disposal." Hey, he was being nice and giving his ship. "Phasers and a limited amount of photon torpedo."

Sookie was so, so tempted to cheat on this.

"Is there any way we can negotiate with 'em?" she asked, resisting the urge to look in her teacher's head for the right answer.

"Klingons are more... the hit first and ask questions never type," Jim replied after a moment pause. Plus treaties weren't exactly on the Federation's side in this conflict.

"If the crippled ship doesn't have any life signs, maneuver behind it and then open the frequencies to request a negotiation," Danny replied after some thought. "If the crippled ship is important to them, they won't fire on it. And if it isn't, it at least acts as a shield.

"Otherwise, I would try to take them out as quickly as possible, and using as many evasive maneuvers as I could in order to save the shield for as long as possible. Maybe try to make them crash into each other."

"There are over three hundred living civilians on the ship, Mr Fenton. They don't care anything about the people aboard. They just care that you've crossed into their space."

Ellie thought for sure she was going to fail this test. "I guess I would, uh, try to negotiate with them. Somehow."

She really had no idea.

"And if that fails?" Jim prompted.

"I'm guessing firing warning shots would be a bad a bad plan," Ellie replied, wishing she could call her brother right now. He watched enough sci-fi shows to possibly know what to do.

"Hail the Klingons," Spock said. "Attempt to negotiate. It is not logical for them to attack if you are merely attempting to rescue a stranded vessel. However, these are Klingons, so perhaps we should not expect them to behave logically. Or rationally." Oh snap. "So we should also be prepared for a fight."

"One Federation ship against five of their Birds of Prey, Mr Spock?" Oh, he was enjoying this one.

"Victory is highly unlikely, but to simply not try is unacceptable," Spock admitted.

Ben had a bad feeling about this as he ran through various scenarios in his mind.

"Negotiating will be tricky since you're not supposed to be where you are," he said finally. "They have no incentive to listen to you explain how very lost you got, but shooting at them to get their attention won't work either because they'll just shoot back and then everyone's dead."

He tapped his fingers on the desk. "Hiding behind the crippled ship only works as long as they don't remember to think in all dimensions, so maybe five minutes. How long would it take to evacuate civilians?"

"Let's say a minimum of ten minutes. Transporters and shuttles can only do so much."

"Then you're vaped," Ben said quietly, "unless you can come up with a way to make the enemy ships explode, and it would have to be all of them and all at once, and you'd have to pray they hadn't contacted their chain of command already. Because being in the neutral zone is bad, but taking shots has definitely blown a peace treaty to hell."

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