“I’m just glad to be out of the hospital, sir,” Samuels admitted. “And doing anything.”
“Oh, you are going to regret that,” Roslyn said with a wicked grin.
The bridge of any Martian warship was also the simulacrum chamber. Civilian ships often split the two, leaving the Mage jumping the ship with a private sanctum at the center of the starship—but a civilian ship’s simulacrum could only augment the jump spell.
A warship’s unrestricted amplifier could augment any spell the Mages aboard cast, giving it a deadly weapon at shorter ranges. Combined with the general tendency of the ship’s commander to be a Mage and the need to save cubage and mass alike on the armored warships, the two were combined.
That left the bridge as a spherical space at Song of the Huntress’s exact center, roughly six meters across in each dimension. Every wall of the sphere was covered in high-fidelity screens that showed everything around the ship in perfect detail.
Positioned through the spherical bridge were the stations for the bridge crew, each a small platform with computer consoles a small step away from another platform. At the very center of the bridge was the simulacrum itself, a ninety-centimeter-long model of the hundred-and-twenty-meter-long starship.
Even at that, the magic of the amplifier matrix had been changed since the last ships Roslyn had served aboard. Those had all been exactly a one-hundredth-scale model, resulting in five-meter-long simulacra aboard cruisers and even larger on battleships.
Roslyn watched in silence as a dozen metrics on her screens slowly reduced. A warship could jump from close to a planet, but it was uncomfortable and rather dangerous. Normally, they would get a full light-minute clear of the planet—which was an easier task on a warship with magical gravity and ten gravities of acceleration than on a civilian ship.
“We are sufficiently clear for a safe jump,” Mage-Lieutenant Commander Lehr reported.
“Thank you, Lehr,” Mage-Captain Daalman replied.
The Captain was seated in front of the simulacrum and surrounded by a smaller set of screens. All of those screens were folded away now, giving the Mage a near-perfect view of the rune-encrusted screens that surrounded them all.
“Record for the log, please,” Daalman continued calmly. “We are jumping…now.”
She laid her hands—with the same silver runes inlaid on the palms as Roslyn and the rest of the Jump Mages had—on the simulacrum.
Years of practice on the Captain’s part made the whole affair far smoother than Roslyn dared hope her jumps would ever become. One moment, Daalman was placing her hands on the simulacrum; the next, a surge of disorientation washed over Roslyn and all of her screens were reporting different data.
“First jump complete,” Daalman said loudly, her voice tired. Jumping took a lot out of a Mage. “Lehr, you’re up next in ninety minutes. Let’s keep this show moving.”
Even with six Mages aboard, it was going to be a long trip.
6
The tutorial for the command portion of the new tactical operating system ended, leaving Roslyn and her subordinates looking at the wallscreen in her office with mixed levels of distaste.
“I don’t think I ever realized how much credit we needed to give the first crews to test out this kind of software,” Chief Westcott finally said. “I’m used to us receiving really complete and detailed tutorials that emphasize what we need to know.”
“This is not that,” Lieutenant Samuels agreed, the dark redhead looking at the now-frozen display with a shake of her head. “This is…”
“The basic tutorial on functionality prepared by the techs who wrote the software,” Roslyn finished for her. “They know what we need for the actual programs and work with active-duty officers to get to this stage, but the final tutorials and instructions have to be prepared by people using the system in the real world.”
She tapped a command, wiping away the tutorial video and replacing it with the practice version of the tactical operating system, the same main screen she’d gone over with Westcott when they began their plan for this.
“The six of us need to write and record those tutorials,” Roslyn continued, gesturing at the two junior officers and three Chief Petty Officers in the room with her. “And unfortunately for the Chiefs, all three of us officers are on the Jump Mage rotation, which means we’re going to be shattered even when we’re awake for the rest of the trip.”
If they’d been expecting serious trouble, Roslyn would have argued to keep at least one of the ship’s six Mages on a longer cycle than the others. Currently, everyone would jump the ship on an eight-hour cycle. That meant that they’d been asleep at least half the time and at less than their best the rest of the time.
“I hate to undermine the myth that the Chiefs don’t actually need officers, but that’s going to be a pain,” Westcott conceded. “We’ll make it happen. We’re the RMN.”
“The protectors of Her Majesty’s Protectorate,” Roslyn agreed. “I know we’re going to drop a lot of this on you three, but we all will be here, I promise. The XO and the skipper are aware of what’s going on too, so Kristofferson is available for backup when needed.”
“What about the skipper?” Samuels asked.
“My plan is to test our final tutorials on her,” Roslyn replied. “Captain Daalman is familiar with more iterations of the TOS than any of us except Chief Westcott. She’ll make a good first audience for the tutorials we put together—and so long as one of us is available to run the command interface, it doesn’t threaten the ship if she’s a bit rusty.”
No one was expecting trouble on this trip, but it was always wise to prepare for some trouble. Even ignoring Roslyn’s secret orders, she knew the ship needed to be ready for action at any moment.
“So, let’s go through this practice setup, shall we?” she asked. “Section by section.”
She studied the iconography for a moment, then
