“Yes, I see. Hmm.” He pondered that for a few seconds then smiled. “I have the perfect solution. The sub-basement in this building was originally designed to be secure against chemical, biological and radiological attack as a backup facility. It’s set up with a conference room, offices, kitchen facilities, storage areas for records, and even temporary sleeping accommodations. Best of all, it isn’t being used. Only personnel who are authorized with the necessary biometric data on file can get access, and I’ll arrange for your team to get access. That will undoubtedly take a couple of days to arrange, so you’ll have to make do with the facilities above. Is there anything else you need to get started?”
Neither Shiloh nor Kelly could think of anything else.
“Good. In that case I’ll leave you two to get started while I make some calls.”
Shiloh and Kelly saluted, and as they turned to leave, Howard said, “Remember Shiloh, two hundred and forty hours.”
Shiloh chuckled and replied, “Yes Sir, I’ll remember.”
As the two of them walked through the outer office, the Admiral overheard Kelly ask Shiloh, “What’s the deal with two hundred and forty hours?”
Chapter 5 You’re Not Nearly Devious Enough
After spending the most recent 72 hours in the sub-basement think tank, Shiloh emerged from the Space Force HQ and realized that he had lost track of whether it was day or night. He had been expecting evening dark and instead was blinded by the late morning sunlight. He was dog-tired, but Admiral Howard had his report, and they had completed it within the 240 hour deadline. The Admiral had generously ordered them to take two whole days off, and Shiloh intended to spend the first half sleeping, and the second half eating decent meals. His mind was so preoccupied with the prospect of sleep that he almost walked right by Lt. Cmdr. Johansen who apparently was waiting for him.
“Forgot me already, Skipper?”
Shiloh jumped with surprise. “Angela!”
“So you do remember me. That’s nice to know. Jeez, Skipper, you look like hell!”
He laughed. “Tell me about it. I’m not even sure what day it is. My stomach is telling me it’s time for supper, but somehow I don’t think it’s that time of day.”
Johansen nodded and smiled. “Lunch actually, and I have a suggestion in that regard. Why don’t you join me for a nice, leisurely meal with an alcoholic beverage of your choice, and I’ll tell you the good news?”
Now it was Shiloh’s turn to smile. “It’s a deal. Lead the way, XO.”
Twenty-five minutes later they were seated in a quiet and comfortable restaurant, with a beer in Shiloh’s hand and a glass of red wine in Johansen’s. She broached the subject first.
“I heard that you asked for me to join the planning group.”
Shiloh nodded. “Yup. The Admiral said that you were ‘unavailable’. He didn’t elaborate. Damn strange, too, considering we didn’t have any trouble getting anyone else we asked for, even though some of them had to come from a lot further away.”
Johansen looked amused. “Yes, well ... the Admiral had a little assignment for me. I guess he felt he couldn’t risk telling anyone at the time, but I don’t see any reason why I can’t tell you now. The Admiral wanted my help in convincing GED to allow access to the UFCs.”
Shiloh waited for her to continue. When it became obvious that she didn’t intend to, he prodded her.
“Well? Did they agree? Come on! Tell me!”
His XO laughed. “Yes they did! All of the UFCs they have now are already busy making more. It won’t be long before we have several, then dozens of them.”
“That’s great! So how did you and the Admiral convince GED’s Board to give up their monopoly?”
Johansen looked around before answering. “That’s just it. The Board didn’t give up anything. We bypassed them altogether. You see, up until now we’ve dealt with the Board as a whole, and everything was done out in the open. When I suggested to the Admiral that we consider unconventional strategies, he took that to heart. After he appeared before the Oversight Committee, and you joined the SPG, he called me in. We kicked around a few scenarios, starting with the hijack idea I suggested and gradually migrating to other less dramatic and less risky possibilities. What we finally came up with was so damned obvious that we both cursed ourselves for not thinking of it sooner.”
She paused for effect.
“We decided to bribe the Chief Executive Officer of GED.”
Shiloh was stunned by the simplicity and straightforwardness of the idea, but then he started having doubts.
“Wait a minute. Just because someone takes a bribe doesn’t necessarily mean that they stay bribed. What happens if the Board finds out their CEO has sold access to their money machines? They’ll just fire him and name a replacement who will countermand the previous orders, stop the production, and transfer of the new UFCs to Space Force control.”
He was about to say more but she beat him to it.
“Skipper, you’re not nearly devious enough. We’re not relying on the CEO’s honesty to stay bribed. We are going to make him a series of payments, each one contingent on not only having continued production of the units, but also contingent on the Board not finding out about it. The key is that we secretly recorded the whole transaction and all the conversations. After the deal was done, we let the CEO know that if he double-crossed us, not only would we would tell the Board that he sold out the company’s monopoly for a bribe, thereby ruining his career, but we would also see to it that the recordings were leaked to the appropriate investigative authorities, and he would eventually be thrown in jail. And because this is too important to risk something going wrong, we also took the precaution of bribing some of the key technical personnel to make sure that the correct production orders were being carried out, as well as to give us a heads up if the CEO tried anything funny. Naturally we didn’t tell him that we had bribed his staff, too. As far as the Board finding out the truth, they’ll only know what the CEO tells them. If somehow they eventually do discover the truth and bring charges against him, we have a pardon all ready for him, and he knows that it’ll only be implemented if he’s been cooperating with us.”
It all sounded very plausible to Shiloh, but he still had questions.
“How do we know that the CEO isn’t just stringing us along? He may very well want to build more UFCs just like we do, but if he plans on withholding control of the new units when they’re finished, then what can the Space Force do about it? We’ll be right back to square one again.”
Johansen was shaking her head. “Part of the deal with him is that our technical personnel will be present as the new units are built. They’ll be fully trained in programming the UFCs. When the new units are finished, they’ll be loaded onto Space Force supply ships and redeployed to different and, as far as GED knows, unknown locations where our personnel will have complete control. We can then build anything we want. For a while our UFCs will be building even more UFCs and their supporting equipment. The dispersal strategy means that even if an alien attack on our Home system should destroy the original GED units, they’ll only have destroyed a small percentage of our productive capacity.”
Shiloh smiled with appreciation. “Very nice. That will make the Strategic Plan much easier to implement.”
Johansen leaned forward. “I’m dying to know what the Plan includes. Can you tell me about it?”
“Yeah, sure. I don’t see why not. As far as I know, it isn’t a classified document. In fact, I wouldn’t mind getting a fresh perspective on some of the things we came up with. The Plan isn’t cast in stone. We’ll be adding to it and revising it as we go along, so your input could be quite useful. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let’s order some food, and then I’ll tell you the highlights of the Plan.”
Which is exactly what they proceeded to do.
After their food and beverage order had been taken, Shiloh leaned forward and said, “Okay, as I recall, there are some 89 specific recommendations in t
he Plan. The overall strategy calls for limited reconnaissance and raiding operations in the short run, followed by a gradually stepped up tempo with more aggressive missions as the force structure permits. That’s where things get interesting. We know from GED records that an Exploration Frigate can be built in eight weeks by a UFC. An FE masses about 20,000 metric tons, so that works out to 2,500 tons per week. The Plan calls for the eventual construction of 800 million tons of warship and support ship capacity.”
Johansen whistled in amazement. “My God! Is that even do-able?”
Shiloh chuckled. “It is if you can create hundreds of UFCs through exponential growth. The problem with that huge tonnage figure is that it includes a lot of REALLY BIG ships. I’m talking monsters in excess of a million tons each! Now, even if you have multiple UFCs working together to fabricate parts, these battleships will still take a couple of years to build, at least, and that doesn’t include the design phase which will probably take a year all by itself. The Plan recognizes that we can’t wait that long to get offensive muscle. We have to acquire something more capable than exploration frigates, and we need them now!”
Johansen nodded. “Okay, so what’s the answer?”
“The answer is a series of increasingly larger units as time goes on. Based on our encounter, the group agreed that exploration frigates are too vulnerable in terms of armor to risk in a standup fight. So the Plan calls for the design of an autonomous fighting platform, which you can think of as a super large drone. The AFP will be a generic design that can carry a variety of modular payloads. Everything from a single very powerful laser turret, to multiple decoy or attack drones. Even to a small self-contained refueling unit that the AFP could use to skim gas giants and process small amounts of heavy hydrogen that can be transported back to the Mothership as a way of refueling larger ships without risking them in a gas giant’s upper atmosphere. Each AFP would be very heavily armored. They can be carried externally using the same racks that we use to carry smaller drones externally. Empty, they’ll mass slightly less than 2,000 tons, so a UFC should be able to build five of them every four weeks, once we get the design perfected. Eventually we’ll have large carriers that will carry dozens of them. Until then, they’ll have to be carried by supply ships or tankers. They’ll be designed to avoid detection both from passive and active scanning, and their small size will make them hard to hit. Since they won’t have human crews, they’ll be able to withstand acceleration in excess of what our inertial dampeners can handle, and that will make them very maneuverable. And if their primary weapon system is used up or disabled, they’ll ram an enemy ship if a window of opportunity presents itself, and the small tactical nuke that each one will carry will detonate on impact – or if the aliens try to dismantle it.”
Johansen’s face showed an expression of devious delight. “I love it! What else?”
Shiloh chuckled. “Okay. How about a manned vehicle that’s about one third the size of an exploration frigate, designed to be carried into battle by a larger ship, with just enough room and life support for four to six crew, for up to 10 days. It will be heavily armored and carry a salvo of fast but short duration missiles, armed with x-ray lasers that will accelerate at high speed and detonate close to the target. The high-energy x-ray laser blast will slice through enemy armor like a hot knife through butter. The gunboats – that’s what we’re calling them – will be maneuvered in groups. In addition to the combat version, we’ve also looked at specialized versions like electronic counter measures, and refueling and resupply models. Each gunboat can be produced in about four weeks.
“We also came up with a whole range of ships types. Long range reconnaissance ships, battle cruisers, million ton dreadnoughts, carriers that can carry a combination of gunboats and AFPs, support ships and mine/satellite layers.”
“My, oh my. You folks HAVE been busy! Do you have any idea of what they’ll go with first?”
Shiloh nodded. “We unanimously recommended that the very first thing that should be put into production is an attack drone. Our drones are basically a standard body with power unit, maneuvering engine, fuel, and a guidance system with room for a modular payload, which up till now has been either a sensor package for reconnaissance/survey work or a data unit for relaying information. There shouldn’t be much problem designing a payload that has either a kinetic energy penetrator or a tactical nuke. Now making the attack version harder to detect, and more able to withstand combat damage, will be a bigger challenge and take longer to accomplish, but that can be phases II and III. The x-ray laser version will also take longer to perfect. The main problem we foresee getting combat drones into the field is quantity. The manufacturer wasn’t expecting to have to build large numbers of these drones quickly, so it isn’t geared up for that. It will take time to change, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few prototypes were ready for field testing by the time the 344 is ready to be taken out again.”
The two continued discussing ideas and thoughts for a couple of hours before calling it a night.
It was four days later that Johansen told Shiloh the bad news while they were on their way to HQ for another meeting with Admiral Howard.
“I hear that the call for volunteers for the recon mission has gone out,” Shiloh said.
Johansen looked away and nodded. After a few seconds she turned back to Shiloh.
“Yes, I know. I’ve volunteered.”
Shiloh was shocked, and it showed in his voice. “Why did you do that? You know it’s practically a suicide mission, don’t you?”
Johansen’s voice was calm as she replied, “I know that the mission is dangerous, but perhaps not as dangerous as you seem to think it is. First let me explain why. The call made it clear that anyone who volunteers for and survives one of these recon missions will automatically be promoted upon returning to base. That means I’d be promoted to a full Commander, and I’d almost certainly get a ship of my own, which is something I want very badly. How much longer they’ll continue to offer that incentive, no one knows, so if I’m going to take advantage of it, it may as well be now.
“Second, as far as the danger is concerned, here’s how I see it. The mission profile is to find alien infrastructure, bases or colonies. Maybe even their home world, if we’re lucky. We’ll be able to scan for energy and electro-magnetic emissions from the edge of each star system we enter. The only time we have to maneuver close to planetary bodies is if we have to move in from the outer system in order to refuel from a gas giant. Some of the internal space that’s normally used to carry refueling shuttles will be used to carry recon drones, instead. I hear that they’re not exactly known for being comfortable ships, either. ”
Shiloh was silent for about twenty seconds and then said, “Okay. I see your point. I guess if I was in your shoes, I might be tempted to do the same thing, but I’m going to be selfish about this and tell you that I wish you hadn’t volunteered. Now I’ll have to break in a new XO, and it’s going to be hard to find someone as good at it as you are.”
As he said it, he wondered if he should also tell her of his hope that someday they’d be more than comrades-in-arms, but she replied before he had the chance.
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
They were both silent for a minute or so, and then Shiloh asked, “So when are you due to report to your new ship?”
Johansen replied, “I’m supposed to report aboard the Gnat tomorrow at 0900 hours as her XO. Mission briefing will be later that day, and scheduled departure is for 1800 hrs tomorrow.”
“Well, do me a big favor please and come back alive.”
Johansen laughed and replied, “Okay. Since you asked, as a favor to you I’ll make a special effort to get back.”
They both laughed.
Chapter 6 Fly on the Wall
Lt. Cmdr. Johansen called the CO when the ship was half an hour from re-entering normal space at the target system.
“Yakamura here.”
“We’re half an hour from t
he target, Skipper.”
“Very well. I’ll be up the Bridge shortly, XO.”
“Understood.”
Shortly turned out to be less than two minutes. What Cmdr. Yakamura lacked in physical stature, he more than made up with the intensity of his personality.
As Johansen surrendered the Command Station to her CO, she said, “I have a feeling about this one, Skipper.”
Yakamura looked at her in surprise. “Well, XO, that makes two of us!”
Johansen stayed on the Bridge to see what the initial survey results would be. She stood behind Yakamura and off to one side. The remaining time it took to emerge from hyperspace went quickly. After the momentary disorientation of emergence was over, Johansen waited nervously for the initial reports. She looked over to the sensor station and saw several flashing red lights.
Just then the sensor technician turned to look at Yakamura and said in an excited but low voice, “We’re picking up lots of EM emissions. They seem to be coming from multiple sources very close to planets, which could mean they have installations on those planets’ moons.”
Yakamura, acting as if he had expected exactly that news, spoke. “We seem to have hit pay dirt, everyone. Our task now is to be a fly on the wall and get as much information about the alien presence in this system as we can, without taking too many risks. Getting a limited amount of information back to HQ would be better than not being able to get back at all.”
He turned to Johansen and said in a lower voice, “XO, I’d like your input into what we do next.”
Without waiting for Johansen to reply, Yakamura got up and walked over to stand next to the Astrogator’s station. Johansen followed and stood on the opposite side. With both of them leaning over so that they could communicate with the Astrogator without being overheard, Yakamura spoke.
“Okay, Tony. Show me how we’re oriented relative to this star system.”
The Synchronicity War Part 1 Page 8