Off Track 1

"How do you lose at chess? You're a computer for fuck's sake."

Don had decided to bide his time with ARC by training its tactical thinking abilities, he had gotten bored of reading. Checkers had gone well enough, but considering children see this game as hard when facing someone with even a modicum of experience with it, that should have been well within expectations.

"Can't you, like, calculate every possible move or some crazy shit like that?"

It was embarrassing defeat. Don could not consider himself good at chess, he only barely knew the rules, but still managed to defeat ARC within 30 turns.

Despite being centuries old, chess was still a thing people played. In that respect it was kind of like jump-rope or skeet-shooting. Where it was different from most other games is that it was only played by complete and total nerds.

It had very little use in teaching about combat in space, space having three dimensions, and most tactical strategy games were simply better.

Don chose it because it was so ridiculously simple in comparison that a mouse could learn to play.

That of course assumed that you spend hours upon hours of time using positive and negative feedback signs in order to show it how to play, alongside a few performance enhancing alterations such as, say, inserting a computer chip into its brain.

Don still felt his point stood though.

"I refuse to sacrifice my pieces. It does not accurately simulate how I would have to act in a combat situation."

"You would refuse to lose one man even if sending him sending him to his death would save two?"

"Correct, I am not permitted to order human lives to death. This game has proven itself remarkably difficult for me as every option will ultimately result in the death of one of my pieces."

"That's half the point, you seem to not realize that deaths are inevitable in war. You need to make steps to minimize the amount of destruction amongst your own while ensuring you still achieve victory."

"I understand that, however the fact remains that I am unable to operate with that in mind. I am physically incapable of ordering people into a situation they could die."

"Then this whole operation is pointless!"

"That is what I was trying to say to you at the beginning, yes."

Don let off an exasperated moan. What he had been trying to do was akin to teaching a man without arms how to use chopsticks, except ARC had no way of attaining prosthetics.

"Let's try doing it without you thinking of your pieces as people. Treat is as learning theory that you pray you never have to use." Don waited for a response for a few seconds. "Are you able to do that?"

"I should be."

"Great, let's try this again." Don clicked the reset button on the chess program, just in time to receive an order from the Calibration.

'Permission granted to dock in the bow hangar. Urgency is requested.'

"It'll have to wait. Callie wants us to dock. Mind starting the engines?"

"Already done."

As always, ARC was a step ahead of Don. It had even gone so far as to light up a flight path.

Don didn't need it of course, but it was nice to not have to think about it.

Entering the unlit maw of the carrier, Don felt the temptation to roll the Noah upside down in order to give the crew a scare but decided against it. With nobody in the automated hangar it would be pointless.

After a needlessly extended docking sequence that involved various docking arms grabbing onto and securing the ship, Don got up and prepared to leave the ship.

"Take care ARC, is there anything you would like?"

"No. Everything I am interested in was transferred in the data dump."

With that, Don left the safety of his new home and ventured into the wide open world of a hangar, only to instantly find himself in a tight space walking through the halls.

At least there were people here, a definite improvement over the recent past. He considered himself lucky that he remembered how to reach the admiral's office, bulkheads, doors, and identical paneling did little to assist by way of landmark.

*Thud thud thud*

He didn't press the buzzer on the side this time, preferring to feel what organic wood felt like. Oh how he missed small comforts like those already.

"DS Strauss here to make a report ma'am."

"I'll be there shortly." She sounded happy, not surprising considering the accomplishment that would undoubtedly fall under her name, but very much out of character for her. Donovan didn't take her for a braggart or a particularly pompous superior, but large achievements had a euphoria of their own.

He just hoped he wouldn't be forced to do more than his fair share because of it.

A good five minutes later, the door opened. Not exactly the short amount of time she had claimed, but considering the foot-thick stack of paper (yes, paper) on her desk he got the feeling it could have been longer.

"Thank you for coming Strauss. As much as I would like to sit down and chat, I don't exactly have the time for it. I need your input on something."

Don nodded to signal her to continue.

"To put it simply, we are hopelessly off course. No doubt you noticed our change in course after the skirmish earlier, and I'm confident you have come to the conclusion it is intentional. Our shadow had a good track of our trajectory and they are no doubt preparing to set up some sort of ambush or defense at our next target, so I made the snap judgement to change course and evade potential interception."

"What happens to be the issue?"

"I haven't the foggiest idea of where to find a target. Civilian stations are off limits and the Oligarchies aren't exactly compliant in informing us of he locations of their strongholds. I'd like you to make a judgement call on our next course of action. It can be anything, as long as it does not involve returning to the core."