This was just one of the many "marvelous coincidences" Eli encountered.
On the eve of the grueling final exam for the sector-level tactical simulation course, Eli scratched his head over a stellar hologram as tangled as a ball of yarn. He knew the logistics data backward and forward, but faced with multidimensional fleet maneuvers and calculations of Warp currents, his unaugmented mortal brain simply could not keep up.
Just as he was about to tear his hair out, a draft suddenly blew through the library's half-open window.
A scrap of paper stained with a little coffee drifted in from somewhere and fluttered down onto Eli's desk.
Eli was about to throw it away when he caught sight of its contents out of the corner of his eye. An extremely peculiar fleet formation had been sketched on it in wildly sloppy strokes, as though someone had been trying to disguise their usual handwriting. An arrow pointed to a line of tiny writing beside it: [Exploit the gravitational blind spot at the Mandeville Point. Use three transports as bait to trigger the current, while the main fleet glides silently toward the enemy flank.]
Eli's eyes lit up instantly. It was like being surrounded by mutant rats in a sewer, only to suddenly discover an unlocked drainage opening overhead.
The next day, armed with this downright "masterful" tactical approach, Eli defeated the simulation's xenos fleet by a narrow margin, barely scraping past the pass mark to earn that weighty graduation certificate.
On the day of their graduation assignments, the academy auditorium was filled with a solemn yet feverish atmosphere.
The noble cadets congratulated one another on their prospects. As he had hoped, Valerius Saul was assigned to an elite armored division in the very heart of Segmentum Solar, serving as a lieutenant colonel