He straightened up. “One thing you need to remember. It’s the only tactical doctrine that matters down there. Meat is meat, metal is metal. EVERY trooper that dies on the ground or in the air is a victory for the Chaos Lords. Your commanders may not agree. They’ll point at the tactical value of a full unit of high-intensity drones versus the life of one green trooper or tech. They are LYING. That is their job. In the end, while metal may cost a commander a thousand times more than training a troop, losing an entire mech battalion isn’t a victory for the enemy… losing a life is.”
The room was dead silent. He’d just articulated the unspoken truth every grunt knew and every officer denied.
“If it were up to me,” Wasserman said, “and it isn’t, we wouldn’t waste a single life reclaiming real estate that’s already been lost. Hell-worlds should be nuked from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” He nodded towards the goblins in the room, myself included. “Each of you has a much stronger tech gift than usual. You can coordinate drone strikes in person, via the minor node each of your drop pods possesses. You can stand back in your shuttle to control your units at least semi-remotely once you have dropped, rather than relying on stupid autonomous SI to take charge or leaving it to the ground techs who may already be overloaded tending to their own troopers.”
“Piloting can be handled by SIs. They are better fliers, better navigators, and better in static situations than you could ever hope to be until you are much higher level. That’s why troop pods don’t even have a pilot. The chair in your control pod exists to give you a place to sit your ass while you handle the drone units and, if you can, keep them active and repaired. It’s also decently useful for holding snacks and energy drinks.” That got another round of tense laughter.
“What you will be learning here is not piloting. You will be learning to expand your gifts and think tactically, controlling your drone squads and fighting for control against ME. I am an aura master. If you give me the chance, I WILL take your units away from you and force you to fail every exam. You will be learning to keep control of your units out of my hands, while at the same time exploiting their use at every possible moment to help keep troopers alive. If you can win a battle for them? Wonderful! That means less men die. If you have to throw your ARC-tier Seven artillery launcher into a hopeless battle with a bore worm to keep a unit alive, it doesn’t matter that the artillery could help take a primary objective… so can those troopers. Your ten-million-credit drone is better used as a scrap metal shield. Meat, to me, is a thousand times more valuable than metal.”
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He nodded at a lone E5 elven male who was sitting next to a beautiful red-haired baseline girl, presumably having been trying to flirt with her before Wasserman started talking. “Several of you are sorcerer or spiritualism trainees with a specialization in Golems. Your job is a little harder, because golems cannot carry the same kind of destructive hardware that high-end drones do. But it also makes it easier for you, because you will be provided with cores for some of the highest-end golem bodies the fleet can afford. Your control will be almost perfect, so I can promise you that your tactical ability and flexibility will be tested and taught far more intensively.”
“Most of you will have already played drone or golem support, either in fleet logistics or as part of a trooper squad’s support. Those of you who have delved with a team of troopers and survived? Congratulations, you already know three quarters of the problems you are going to be dealing with, and you’ve just doubled your chances of survival until retirement by qualifying for this J-School.”
He paused, his eyes scanning us again. “How many of you can do remote repairs?”
A number of hands went up, all of them, I noticed, belonging to goblins. I hesitated for a fraction of a second, calculating the risk of standing out against the risk of seeming incompetent, then raised my own hand.
Wassermann's gaze lingered on us. “I notice you are all goblins. Remember this. Almost all of the team techs you will be defending on the ground are goblins just like you. EVERY erg of energy you spend taking the burden off of their shoulders, from the relative safety of your pod, is a life you can potentially save. A goblin life just like yours. They have to split their attention and energy between their team, any team drones they might have, and trying to keep their own asses alive in essence-conductive light armor. You will need to split your attention twice as much as any other assault pilot. And by the time you finish this training, you will either be able to do that, or you will be back on the ground with them. Got it?”
A round of grim nods answered him. I was confident in my ability to multi-task—it was baked into my genetics—but if Chief Wasserman was actively contesting my drone control, I’d be fighting on two fronts: one against his simulated attacks, and another against my own instinctive urge to yield to his powerful, Paladin-class aura. It would be a hell of a burden.
