by Nick Webb
Sepulveda stirred. “I can help with that.” Proctor was mightily impressed the man had managed to keep his mouth shut until that point. Politicians usually couldn’t help themselves, and she’d been worried that Sepulveda would assume he’d be in charge. But there was no way she was going to defer to an inexperienced civilian on any of this. Even if they were technically her commander in chief.
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“Interstellar One has T-jump engines. We can get there in a few minutes. Same with the Independence. If we … uh … infect everyone on those two ships with the Valarisi, would that be enough to control one of those moons? Mr. Granger?”
“I honestly don’t know. I bet I could control one. Maybe two. Not all ten that are left.” Ten. Proctor had almost forgotten about the destruction of Ido, in addition to Titan.
“So, the two ships make a pit stop at Earth. Swing by long enough for Granger to summon a moon or two and possibly help stave off the five Swarm ships. But they should be attracted to Penumbra, no? When we detonate the anti-matter bombs? So once they leave the Sol system, we follow them there with the fleet, and the Granger moons. Hopefully beating them, given our T-jump engines.”
Proctor shook her head. Ugh. Civilians. “I’m sorry, Mr. President, as far as I know the only ships equipped with T-jump engines are the two ships you mentioned plus the Defiance. There’s no way to get the fleet from Earth to Penumbra on time, barring some sudden ability to convert a q-jump engine into a T-jump engine.”
Granger tapped the table. “We don’t have to. The moons’ quantum jump drives are based on a technology that’s … too complicated to go into here. Suffice it to say, they’re even better than T-jump engines.”
Proctor waved the screen off. “Ok, that takes care of the moons, but what about the fleet?”
Granger shrugged. “No reason the moons can’t take on a few passengers. Line them up down the phased-energy port that you flew down when you came to collect me, and then the train leave the station.”
Proctor began to smile. The plan was falling into place. “Ok. One last glaring hole that I see. Fighters. Each Swarm ship we’ve seen so far has had thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of fighters. There is a literal swarm of sentient, angry Swarm piloting fighters that will be attacking our shuttles that are affixing the interdictors on their hulls. I just don’t see a way around that.”
Silence.
“A bunch of anti-matter torpedoes?” said Zivic. “Take out a few hundred thousand fighters at a time, give the shuttles enough space to make their move?”
Proctor shook her head. “There’s too many. Fifty ships, lieutenant. Potentially millions of fighters. That’s just too much going on for a bunch of anti-matter torpedoes to cut through the noise.”
More silence.
Rayna cocked her head up to the ceiling, talking to the ship as she often did. “You hear that, girl? They’ve all forgotten about your superpowers. Don’t worry, I still appreciate you. You and me are tight. Go way back, we do.”
Proctor swiveled her chair towards the chief engineer. “Rayna? Care to enlighten us?”
“Shelby? You don’t remember the technical briefing? When you were first brought aboard a month and a bit ago?”
The briefing? The one the late Commander Yarbrough gave her on her first shuttle ride over to the Independence? “Which one? Yarbrough’s? Or yours? I admit, I’ve been a little distracted the past few weeks. I think with good reason.”
“Not that limp-dicked traitor dead guy. Mine. I told you all about it. It’s actually incredible, when you think about it. At least, I thought it was.”
“Rayna. No time. What is it?”
Rayna glanced back up at the ceiling. “Oh baby, I’m so sorry. Don’t worry, I’ll remind them.” She looked back down the table at the confused faces. “The inaptly-named central computer. It’s not central. It’s distributed. And remember the kicker? It’s infinitely cored. We developed it at IDF Engineering just in case we ever faced something like the Swarm again, an enemy with vast numbers of relatively low-powered craft.”
“I’m not following, commander. Please elaborate,” said Proctor.
“The standard enemy tracking software currently requires exactly one core of processing power. For stupid coding reasons I won’t go into, if you try to distribute the computational load to more than one processor, the software shits its pants. And so most starships, with a few thousand processors or so, can track, predict, and engage up to about a thousand different enemy fighters once you account for the rest of the ship’s functions that need processing power. That was developed in response to Swarm War One. It wasn’t needed during Swarm War Two because they changed their tactics to brute force. Anti-matter beams. Artificial singularities. But over the past decade we decided to re-address the old need, and so we invented the infinitely cored computer, with dispersed distribution. It’s not actually infinite, of course, it’s just that we’re not limited by any physical constraints to go up to an arbitrarily large number of processors, which, when you think about the historical development of the processors starting with Intel, it makes one wonder—”
“Thank you, commander,” said Proctor, half exasperated and half intrigued. “But how to we use it? Why is this helpful?”
Another glance up at the ceiling. “I can’t believe it either, dearie.” Her eyes dropped back down again to everyone watching her. “You’ve got upwards of a million enemy fighters to track, predict the movements of, and engage. We’ve got a million processors, at least. You do the math.”
Proctor closed her eyes and tried. After a few moments she shook her head. “Ballsy? Zivic? Ideas? How can we use this?”
Ballsy stirred. “Well….” Then he shrugged. He turned to Zivic. “Son?”
“Slave all the shuttle’s navigational controls to the cores. One each.” He glanced at Rayna, “Will that let each shuttle avoid any enemy fire? I mean, can the cores communicate like that? Will they … uh … shit their pants?”
She cackled, rubbing her hands together. “Go on,” she said.
Ballsy interrupted. “Wait, then we can run each one through a translator algorithm, like Lieutenant Qwerty came up with in the first battle over Britannia. Lieutenant? Will that work?”
Qwerty fired an invisible finger gun at him. “It sure will. Just like the program enabled predictive capabilities to the computer to know when the Swarm ship was going to move while we were inside it, it should work the same on an individual fighter. Especially given how they’re piloted by organic beings. Those are easier to predict for a translator algorithm than something computer generated.”
Zivic smiled. “Ok. And then, on each shuttle, we’ll need a way to place the interdictors on the hulls of the Swarm ships. Uh … it’s crazy, but the only thing I can think of is … physically strapping a vacuum-suited person to the top, with a bag of interdictors in one hand, each of them with meta-glue smeared on it, and as the shuttle passes a target location, the pitcher throws a strike. When they’re all in place, we flip the master control switch on the Independence, and wham. No more q-jumping for the Swarm.”
Ballsy struggled to contain his snorted laughter. “That’s absolutely insane. Which means, it’s perfect.” He put a hand on Zivic’s shoulder, slapping it a few times. “I’d slave three or four fighters to cores on the Independence, as an escort for each shuttle. With the whole fleet there we should have enough fighters for that. It’ll allow the pilots to focus exclusively on targeting. With a few thousands targets each, they’ll need it.”
Proctor nodded. “And you’re forgetting one thing that should be to our advantage. We’ll be falling into a black hole, people. Just a few million kilometers out from the event horizon. You can bet the Swarm ships are going to immediately start conventional acceleration away from the black hole, to slow their descent. That means every single fighter, every single ship out there is going to have to account for that extra acceleration vector. Essentially, every craft will have to
maneuver, while simultaneously burning with almost maximum thrust, upward, out of the black hole. It won’t slow the descent enough, of course, nor do we want it to for the plan to work. But it gives us an added advantage because our cores should be able to handle the extra thrust vector calculation with ease, whereas the Swarm fighters are piloted by organic beings. It’ll be terribly complicated for them, assuming their computers can’t do the same thing. Tim?”
She glanced at him for a confirmation, but he shook his head. “I don’t think so. But I honestly can’t remember. The Swarm aren’t big on artificial intelligence. They’ve never wanted to risk something becoming smart enough to destroy them. Which was why I focused on AI for so many millions of years, early on. The caretaker was the result of that work….” She noticed he was far more glum than he ever was when she’d known him thirty years ago. He was subdued in a way that made her worried. Like he’d lost his will to live. Not surprising, given that he’d already lived so long.
“You’re old. You’ve earned it,” she said, patting his hand. “Ok, that settles it. Let’s run through the numbers and calculate an optimal elevation above the black hole to detonate the anti-matter devices. Mumford? You got that?” He nodded. “Also, please have your technical staff assemble enough meta-space shunts that we can attach to the anti-matter bombs when we get our hands on them.” She tapped the table with nervous energy. “Next. Let’s send out a system-wide call for shuttles. Everything. With Mr. Sepulveda here and the fact that Britannia just exploded, I think we’ll have no trouble conscripting from civilians what we can’t grab off Wellington Shipyards. Mr. President? Can you and your staff handle that? And get them all loaded on either the Independence, Interstellar One, or the Defiance. I’d say we’ll need at least one per Swarm ship, but I can’t imagine we could fit any more than that. Also, we’ll need the anti-matter bombs from President Avery’s secret program. I assume you know where the last were stored. Can you handle all that?”
Sepulveda stood up, apparently excited to finally be doing something helpful. “I do have a staff that is in desperate need of something to do. Yes, we can do all that. Admiral?” he walked over to her and held out a hand. “Now I get it. I see how we won thirty years ago. I’m just honored to be a part of it this time around.” He faced the rest of them. “Good luck, everyone.”
The president left, followed by his secret service escort.
Proctor stood up. “Last thing. We need Q-field interdictors. Lots of them. Fifty ships. At least, oh,” she ran the numbers in her head, “a thousand per ship. Mumford, check the numbers for me. And that means we should probably have two crazy people strapped to each shuttle, each tossing five hundred. Whitehorse? Can you and your tactical team track them down? Wellington Shipyards may just have enough, but I don’t know.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Proctor turned to Captain Volz. “Ballsy, you and Danny and Liu be the ones to carry out the … infection. I hate that word.”
“Transformation?”
“Better. However you three and your companions decide to do it, let me and the relevant people know what the plan is, and put it into effect asap.”
“Aye, aye, admiral.”
She pointed at Qwerty. “Lieutenant. You and Commander Scott need to make sure that each core can run through it’s own predictive algorithm before coupling into a shuttle’s nav package. Make sure it works. Then scale it up. Got it?”
“Sounds like a plan, ma’am,” his customary drawl extending ma’am into two, possibly three syllables.
Polrum Krull stood up too. “Shelby Proctor? What shall we do? What shall the Dolmasi do?”
“I’m afraid we have the most straightforward, and dangerous job, Matriarch. You. Me. The rest of the United Earth fleet.”
Krull inclined her head. “And that is?”
“To distract them. To present them a target to pound, until the shuttles finish their job.”
Chapter Sixty-Four
Flight Deck
ISS Independence
Gas giant Calais
Britannia system
Much of the prep work was taking place on the vast flight deck, and that’s where Zivic was prepping all the fighters with Moonshine, Ace, Barbie, Spectrum, and the other pilots. Each fighter was slaved into a computer core on the Independence, and a protocol was established to quickly do so for the fighters they’d hopefully pick up at Earth.
“Son, there you are.” His father ran up to him. The man had grown so large that Zivic hadn’t known he was still capable of running. But the Valarisi inside of him seemed to be having an invigorating effect. “It’s time for you and the pilots to get your medicine.”
He tensed a little inside. “Oh. That.”
“Come on, don’t be a wuss. It’s just a prick. So … don’t be a prick?” He held out a little device with a tiny needle at the end.
“Dad, it’s so weird. Will I still be … me?”
Ballsy rolled his eyes. “Do I seem like me?”
“A little too much sometimes, yes.”
“Then let’s get a move on. Places to go. Aliens to kill. Come on.”
He reluctantly held out an arm, and Ballsy stuck him with the needle in the bicep, then rubbed his own still-bloody finger on it. “We would have preferred coming up with some way to extract some of the Valarisi matter and just inject it in you like civilized people, but this will have to do in a pinch.”
It took a few moments, but the effect was unmistakable.
He gasped. He felt a warmth inside of him begin in his chest, and it spread quickly throughout his body, extending down to his limbs and digits. It was like … a power source, a well of inspiration, a source of heat, a spring of wisdom, all at once. It was like….
“It almost felt like someone was just … born inside of me.”
“Someone was, son.”
A few moments later, he finally heard the voice. It didn’t say any words. It didn’t manifest as actual audible sound. But, in his head, he heard it. It started like music, like singing, except it had color. And emotion. So much emotion.
And it was saying hello.
“Hello,” he said out loud.
Ballsy touched his shoulder. “Ok. No time for chit chat with it. Let’s move. You ready?”
“The fighters are all ready, yes. And the pilots. Just waiting on the shuttles.”
Ballsy started heading towards the next pilot. “Oh, by the way. I’m taking Liu’s ship she brought with her. It’s bigger than a shuttle, but not too big that I can’t pilot on my own. We can strap a few marines to it, and it should be just as good. Maybe even a little better.”
“Oh. That’s a great idea.”
His father went on. “And I’d like you to be my escort. No one I trust more.” He bounced his head back and forth. “Well … maybe Ace. Barbie. Spectrum. But you’re definitely in the top five or te—”
“Dad,” he interrupted. “I’d love to. We made a great team last time. Let’s do it again.”
Ballsy smiled at him, then went off to finish his transformation work with the other pilots and deck hands.
Off near the doors that led into the corridor, Admiral Proctor was huddled in deep conversation with Polrum Krull. After a few moments, they both nodded, as if they’d just agreed to something. He supposed he’d find out later what it was.
He turned to finish making fighter prep, and nearly ran into Ace.
She was halfway through a deep, long kiss with Lieutenant Qwerty. “Oh. I’m … excuse me. Carry on.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
Bridge
ISS Independence
Gas giant Calais
Britannia system
Admiral Proctor strode onto the bridge of the Independence, and for a moment she had the stray thought that it could very well be her last time. Her last time ever setting foot on the bridge of a starship ever again.
“Don’t be superstitious, Shelby,” she muttered to herself.
The time was almost upon
them. She watched as the timer clicked down towards zero: the time when the five Swarm ships were supposed to reach Earth. Thirty minutes.
“Mr. Qwerty. Are you and Rayna done with the simulations? Is it going to work?”
“As sure as a coon having early brunch on Sundays, yes ma’am.” Proctor cocked her head trying to figure that one out, but Qwerty continued. “And we went and did ya one better. You know all these PDC’s we have dotting the hull? And how they’re essentially useless since the Swarm seem to rely on their energy weapons rather than torpedoes? Well, turns out that works in our favor. We’ve queued up each PDC cannon with, oh, about ten thousand computer cores each. Each one of those cores is tracking and predicting a Swarm fighter’s movements. And when it gets close enough to the Independence, bam! The PDC cannon control is transferred over to the relevant core, and takes it out. And even better, we’ve written an algorithm that will rank and prioritize the targets based on angular distance from each other, such that each cannon will only be moving a degree or so with each shot. Lemme tell ya, admiral, it’s going to be fireworks out there.”
She smiled broadly. Some of the best news she’d heard all day. “Genius, Mr. Qwerty. Send my compliments to Rayna.”
“Will do, ma’am.”
She swiveled the captain’s chair around and sat down. “And patch me in to Interstellar One.”
Qwerty tapped a few buttons. “You’re on, ma’am.”
“President Sepulveda. Are you ready on your end? What have you found?”
Sepulveda appeared on screen, breathing heavily as if he’d been running. “Just got word from the Calais Enterprises mining syndicate. They’re donating their entire fleet of asteroid miners. Even better than shuttles. More maneuverable. More durable. And even better, there’s exactly forty eight of them. Counting your shuttle over there, that’s over fifty.”