trans_9 | After action [open]

Entry tags:

After action [open]

Thrawn had gathered and reviewed every scrap of information Stacy had about the disastrous battle with the Ohm--every after-action report, every camera angle. Now, in the Sensorium, he was watching the skirmish unfold in three unsettling dimensions. It was a reconstruction, only as good as the crews' accounts and his own tactical skill. The latter, at least, was formidable.

Parts of the battlefield were empty, grayed-out in a literal "fog of war," where Thrawn had too little information to fill them in. They shifted and flowed as the fight progressed, crewmembers and Ohm disappearing into them and then popping back into existence where the records picked up again.

Gradually, however, the blank spaces were disappearing, as Thrawn ran various scenarios and decided on the most likely. Combat would pause, reverse itself, and then resume with tiny differences, again and again, as bit by bit, with infinite patience, the Grand Admiral recreated the battle to his satisfaction.

If he had any say in the matter, no confrontation with the Ohm would go so poorly again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yes," Thrawn said dryly. "That's the sort of performance that ends careers--if anyone here had one left to end, of course."

"Do we even have incentive to not screw up here? I mean, I've heard something about Violations and Punishment, but it also sounded more like that was just punishment handed out for deliberate misconduct and not just really stupid calls."

Not that the problem with this battle was stupid calls, Axl knew. They might have actually been better off with even an incompetent commander. No, the problem here was that there was nobody to make the calls in the first place.

Thrawn raised an eyebrow at Axl. "Surviving a battle isn't enough incentive? Everyone lived this time, but that, I assure you, was a fluke."

Axl snorted. "On the front lines, sure. For someone calling the shots? Maybe, maybe not."

He was young -- and even if apparent age didn't mean much for him, he was still young by reploid standards -- but Axl had still seen plenty of bad command decisions in his short life. Thankfully, most of them had been on the part of the Mavericks, not the Hunters. Some of them had been simple idiocy, some had just come from Sigma's complete lack of concern with how many of his own forces survived if it got him what he wanted.

Either way, it left him suspicious.

"A commander would have to be actively malicious to do much worse than this." Thrawn waved dismissively at the battle simulation. "Without a command structure, you don't have a battle, you have a riot."

"Not denying we need one. After all that, I don't think anyone can unless they're criminally stupid." Axl frowned. "But if people start panicking about getting somebody, anybody, in charge, yeah, I'm a little worried about how that's gonna end."

"Someone aboard has to be qualified." Thrawn's voice could have dried out Tatooine.

"I'm more worried about intentions," Axl said flatly.

He cocked his head at Axl. "A qualified commander is one with the proper motivations...though I do understand that some militaries settle for less, to their detriment."

Axl shrugged. "I may just be suspicious because of where I'm from. But in my experience, wars of genocide are good at getting people on both sides to do some pretty stupid stuff."

"Wars of any kind do that. Because the stakes are so high, they magnify follies." Thrawn looked at Axl, expression and voice both serious. "But what's the alternative?" With a thought, he ran the battle back to the beginning, and then played the entire thing through at high speed, the advance of the Ohm somehow even more threatening in the abstract.

"There isn't one," Axl admitted glumly. "At least, not one worth considering." He watched the battle fast-forwarding. "I'm still getting over the numbers, I guess. I mean, back home we were pre-spaceflight, pre...interdimensional whatever, so of course everything was smaller scale, but I don't think even the worst uprisings even came close to numbers like that. And if their forces are split and this is just one part of their force..."

It was a sobering thought, even for someone normally as upbeat as him.

"My home universe has had faster-than-light travel for tens of thousands of years. We have strategies for this sort of war." Thrawn shook his head and grimaced slightly. "Unfortunately, a single vessel can't implement any of them."

Axl gave a low, impressed whistle at that. Every technological development worth speaking of in his work had come within the last century or so. The idea of a culture with tens of thousands of years of high technology behind it was hard to get his mind around.

"So what can a single vessel implement?" His gaze flicked over to the data from the space side of the battle; though he'd been fighting on the ground, Axl was a lot more interested in the part of things he hadn't been there to see.

And if he was going to be starting flight training soon, he was going to have to start thinking about this stuff, anyway.

"A wide variety, especially a ship as large as this one. It depends on the objective, and we currently don't appear to have one." He looked at Axl, and for a change raised both eyebrows, and shrugged. "It would be up to the commander. If we had one."

That was the tone of a man who knew what he was talking about. And there was something else about his tone -- something that bothered Axl, a little bit, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was, so he pushed that thought aside for now. "That your area of expertise, then?"

"You could say that."

It was a vast, staggering understatement, and Thrawn delivered it with a deadpan cool that suggest an alternate career in Sabaac should he ever get tired of the military.

"Are you going to go for command?"

It was a very blunt question. But then, for all that he'd been raised on stealth and subterfuge -- or maybe because of it (it did get tiresome) -- Axl could be a very blunt person.

"Unless someone can demonstrate they're more qualified, it would be irresponsible of me not to," Thrawn said. "But there are people from dozens, possibly hundreds of universes. I know where I stand in my own, but not with respect to others."

It wasn't false modesty, not entirely. Thrawn really would step aside for a better candidate--he just didn't think there was one out there.

Upfront. Axl could respect that.

"It's a lot of completely different fighting styles to work together," he said, looking at the replay again. "You or whoever else...they've got their work cut out for them making something cohesive out of all that."

"I've done it before," Thrawn said. "The wildcard is the crew's willingness to accept military discipline. They're not volunteers, and conscripts rarely turn out to be good soldiers."

"Whether most people accept it is just gonna depend on whether they think you're worth the respect." Axl shrugged.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

After action [open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

translation: don't ask the player about tactics, man. >_>

pfffff I know that feeling well. S'ALL COOL.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject