Fort Clayton’s classroom smelled of chalk, dust, and tension. Lieutenant Sarah Vega stood as Major Thompson mocked her strategy, calling it “childish and reckless.”
Sarah smiled faintly. “Let me show you.”
Within minutes, she orchestrated a simulation that exposed critical security flaws in the base’s defense system. Senior officers scrambled. Papers flew. Thompson turned pale.
The twist? Sarah had insider knowledge from a decommissioned classified operation, and every humiliation Thompson delivered only strengthened her credibility. The class now looked at him with suspicion — she controlled the narrative.
***********************
Fort Clayton’s classroom smelled of chalk, dust, and tension. The overhead fluorescents buzzed like trapped insects. Rows of officers in crisp camouflage sat rigid, notebooks open, pretending they weren’t already exhausted from the week-long war-game cycle. At the front, Lieutenant Sarah Vega stood beside a wall-sized digital map of the base, her pointer resting lightly on the southern perimeter.
Major Harlan Thompson paced the aisle in his usual performance. He had the habit of pausing behind younger officers just long enough for them to feel his breath on their necks.
“Lieutenant Vega,” he said, voice dripping with theatrical disappointment, “your proposed defense against a hybrid drone-swarm and special-forces insertion is, frankly, childish and reckless. You want to surrender the motor pool in the first ten minutes? Leave the airfield exposed? Are we running a summer camp or a United States Army installation?”
A few captains chuckled on cue. Thompson fed on it.
Sarah didn’t flinch. She never did. Her dark hair was pulled into a regulation bun so tight it looked painful, but her eyes were calm, almost amused.
“With respect, sir,” she said, voice low enough that the back row leaned forward, “let me show you.”
Thompson spread his arms magnanimously. “By all means. Dazzle us.”
Sarah tapped her tablet. The lights dimmed. The map sprang to life in three dimensions, blue icons for friendly forces, red for enemy. She narrated without flourish, like someone reading a grocery list.
“Red force launches at 0300 from the abandoned sugar mill six kilometers south. Thirty commercial drones, modified for thermite payloads. Simultaneous ground element—twelve operators in civilian pickup trucks, wearing our own uniforms, carrying forged gate passes.”
Thompson snorted. “Fantasy. Our guards aren’t idiots.”
Sarah ignored him. She advanced the clock. Drones rose in a silent swarm. The base’s radar registered them as a flock of egrets returning late from the canal. Counter-battery radars stayed quiet—someone had quietly reclassified that signature two years earlier during a budget audit. The drones crossed the wire unmolested.
On the hologram, tiny fires blossomed across fuel bladders and aircraft revetments. The motor pool became an inferno. Thompson’s smile thinned.
Sarah continued. The pickup trucks reached Gate Three. The sergeant on duty saw familiar faces, familiar vehicles. He waved them through. Inside the bed of the second truck, twelve operators unfolded like spiders, moved to the armory, and helped themselves. Thirty-eight seconds later the base armory was rigged with C-4. Sarah froze the simulation at the moment of detonation.
The room was silent except for the hum of the projector.
Thompson’s face had gone the color of wet paper. “This is rigged,” he snapped. “You’ve doctored the parameters.”
“No, sir.” Sarah tapped again. A new window opened: declassified header, crimson border, codeword PHANTOM ORCHID. “Joint Special Operations Command ran this exact scenario in 2019. I was the opposing-force intelligence officer. We got in with Home Depot rental trucks and fake FedEx uniforms. The after-action review recommended seventeen fixes. Fourteen were deferred due to cost. Two were implemented incorrectly. One was never implemented at all.”
She let that settle.
A colonel in the front row cleared his throat. “Lieutenant, are you saying the base is currently vulnerable to the scenario you just demonstrated?”
“Yes, sir. Today. Right now.”
Thompson tried to recover. “Even if true, you don’t embarrass the chain of command in front of—”
“Major,” the colonel cut in, voice like gravel, “shut up and sit down.”
Thompson sat.
Sarah advanced the simulation one more frame. A final red icon appeared: a covert beacon pulsing inside the base headquarters itself. She zoomed in. The beacon’s serial number was visible. Someone in the back row gasped; it matched the emergency transponder in Thompson’s own briefing podium, the one he insisted stay live “for rapid extraction drills.”
Sarah met Thompson’s eyes. “During PHANTOM ORCHID, we planted a tracker on the base commander’s vehicle. Same model. Same vulnerability. It still works. I activated it remotely five minutes ago, with your permission, of course.” She glanced at the colonel. “Permission was granted under training authority.”
The colonel’s expression could have frozen coffee.
Sarah turned to the class. “The point, gentlemen, is not that Major Thompson is incompetent. The point is that arrogance is a bigger hole in the wire than any budget cut. We stopped thinking like the enemy the day we decided we were too smart to be surprised.”
She killed the hologram. Lights came up. Dust motes drifted in the sudden brightness.
Thompson stood, mouth working soundlessly. For years he had built his reputation on public crucifixions of junior officers. Today the nails were in his own hands.
The colonel rose. “Lieutenant Vega, you’ll report to my office in twenty minutes with a full packet on those deferred recommendations. Major Thompson, you’ll accompany me now.”
As the room emptied, a young captain lingered by Sarah’s table.
“How did you know he’d take the bait?” he whispered.
Sarah unplugged her tablet. “Because every time he calls someone reckless, he has to prove he’s the adult in the room. Adults, Captain, are predictable.”
She slipped the tablet into her briefcase—inside, nestled in foam, sat a small black box with a faded PHANTOM ORCHID sticker. Decommissioned, officially. Destroyed, according to the paperwork she herself had signed.
She smiled, the same faint smile she’d worn when Thompson began his attack.
Some things, once built, are never really decommissioned. They just wait for the right classroom.
