The Synchronicity War Part 3

by Wehr, Dietmar

  Kelly pulled back from her embrace, and Shiloh saw the tears rolling down her cheeks. Her reply surprised him.

  "Before she cut off communications, she transmitted a message to Iceman with instructions for him to pass that message on to me when Midway got back, but it's actually a message to both of us. She told me that she would have refused any order from you to abort the ramming attempt and the reasons why. She said that she loves us both and regrets not being here to see the birth of our child. She said if it's a girl, she would like us to name her Valkyrie."

  Shiloh got over his shock quickly. At the speed with which A.I.s communicated with each other, that message would have taken only a fraction of a second to transmit to Iceman. He mulled over her request. Valkyrie Shiloh. It would take some getting used to, but yes … he could live with it, and he couldn't think of a better way to honor his dead friend.

  "Yes, I agree, but what if it's a boy?"

  Kelly smiled, all traces of sadness now gone. "Well … Valkyrie could be his middle name, or we could break it up into two names … Val Kyrie Shiloh? Val has been used as a male first name before."

  He quickly thought about that and said, "Let's go with middle name. Now that we've covered that, tell me how you’re doing?"

  She nodded, "I'm fine. The medics say everything is proceeding normally. I’m just glad I'm not the only pregnant woman on this planet. It's nice to be able to get together with others in the same condition who understand what it's like! Men say they understand, but they really don't."

  They both laughed. When they finished, her expression became serious. "Iceman tells me that the mission was only partially successful and that we're still in danger."

  He nodded, making a mental note to have a chat with Iceman about scaring his wife. "A tactical victory but a strategic defeat. We're not out of the woods yet."

  She sighed then asked, "Are your riding-off-to-battle days over now?"

  "I hope so, but I can't promise you that." He could see that she was trying hard not to cry new tears.

  "Okay. Can you come home with me now, or do you have things to take care of here first."

  "Everything that shouldn't wait has already been taken care of. I'm yours until tomorrow morning. How about I drive us home this time?"

  "I'd like that,” she said with enthusiasm. Shiloh let her go in order to return inside the shuttle for his gear but saw that one of the shuttle's other passengers had taken it upon himself to carry his CSO's gear to the waiting ground vehicle. Shiloh thanked him by chatting with him for half a minute. Kelly stood next to Shiloh with a proud smile on her face.

  Shiloh was late for the 0730 meeting. Daniels and the other humans attending the meeting had mischievous smiles on their faces which Shiloh was certain were due to something funny that Iceman had said to them before he got there. He was willing to bet it had something to do with Kelly and sex being the reason for his lateness. If so, then Iceman was right, but Shiloh was damn if he was ever going to tell him that!

  "Okay Commander. Bring me up to speed on R&D," said Shiloh.

  Daniels quickly lost his smirk and cleared his throat. "Yes, Sir. The evaluation of R&D projects that you asked for before leaving for Sol was completed while you were away. We … and by that I mean myself, my senior staff and the SPG, evaluated the addition of a newly designed jump-capable attack drone and a much more powerful fusion warhead last night. We're all agreed that both of those projects should be started immediately and concurrently. After that, the priorities are as follows: uranium enrichment, inertial dampener upgrade, high energy GLB, field propul--"

  "Wait," interrupted Shiloh. "It sounded like you said GLB. What is that? I haven't heard that term before."

  Daniels' face got red. "I'm sorry, Sir. I forgot that we hadn't discussed that yet. GLB is an acronym for Gravity Lens Beam. Back at the beginning of the 21st Century, the Russians discovered that artificial gravity could be magnified tremendously via a very narrow beam. They were able to rip apart matter at the atomic level with this gravity lens beam but they were never able to make it into a practical weapon. The range was just too short, and the power requirements were too large. The Friendlies have figured out how to extend the range and at the same time reduce the power consumption, but there are a lot of engineering challenges to be overcome in order to have something that could be used in the field. Potentially we could have a weapon capable of slicing a 10 km diameter bug ship in half, but we'd need something a lot bigger than a raider to carry and power it."

  "Would Midway be big enough and have enough power?" asked Shiloh.

  Daniels smiled and said, "Big enough? Yes. Could we modify her to generate enough power? Maybe."

  After a short pause, Shiloh said, "Is that why it's not at the top of the list? The time required to engineer it and then modify Midway?"

  Daniels nodded. "Yes, Sir. That's it exactly. Modifying Midway will be a huge job considering that we don't have a shipyard ready to handle the work, but the weapon could be used in a ground installation if we can figure out how to power it. Assuming we can aim it accurately enough, we could fire the beam from the ground and hit a target outside Terra Nova's gravity zone. At the very least it would be the perfect planetary defense system, but even that will take weeks to figure out and months to build and perfect, Sir."

  Shiloh shook his head. Of course it would. He now had the classic tradeoff to ponder. Develop the jump-capable attack drone, which could be done relatively quickly and deploy a system of armed sentries that stood a good but not perfect chance of stopping one or more advancing bug motherships, or go for the perfect defense that might not be ready in time. Trying to do both at the same time was the worst possible choice because then both strategies would be delayed. It actually wasn't a difficult decision when he came right down to it. An imperfect defense is better than no defense at all, but maybe he could tweak it a bit.

  "I agree that the upgraded attack drone comes first, but what's the impact if we move the gravity lens beam planetary defense project to come up next, instead of enhanced enrichment?"

  "We would have a very limited number of high yield warheads, which means that they would have to be in the right place at the right time in order to be useful,” answered Wolfman.

  Or defend just one planet, thought Shiloh before responding. "Understood, but suppose we set up an early warning system with raiders and message drones and keep our limited number of high yield attack drones right here in Site B? Our Fighters can carry them, and with retro-temporal communication we might even know exactly where the VLOs will arrive when they get here. Then we can have the fighters standing nearby and ambush them before they know what hit them."

  "RTC is not foolproof, CAG," said Wolfman. "It will only work if the attack CAN be defended against. There are tactical scenarios that the Insectoids could employ which can't be defended against with our current resources. The SPG would like to propose a variant of your strategy. Instead of concentrating all our high yield warheads here, we feel that moving them forward to a system that is highly likely to be visited by additional VLOs is the way to go. That system would be Sol. Then, if word of the battle gets back to the bug rear areas, any VLOs that move up are almost certainly going to go there to overwhelm whatever opposition may be located there. Consider the incentives they would have. An active defense implies biological entities that might serve as hosts. It also implies metal from two sources, the defenders and the defeated mothership. If we can stop them at Sol, then they aren't going to be able to scout this far forward, and Site B will remain hidden to them. I would also point out to you that if we're going to keep a permanent defensive force at Sol, then we may also want to restart the robotic asteroid mining complexes there because that could be an additional source of enriched uranium."

  It was a tempting plan. The derelict bug mothership drifting in that star system now would make the perfect lure to get new VLOs away from any gravity zone, so that the new attack drones could jump right on top of them. And if th
e reinforcement VLOs were detected by the sentry raiders to be bypassing Sol altogether, they could still get word back fast enough for the ambush forces to move from Sol to the next bug destination and attack them there. It was the perfect compromise between the ideal defense-in-depth strategy and Shiloh's 'fortress' suggestion. He made his decision and then waited to see if he got another vision.

  Nope, no vision.

  "I approve your variant strategy, Wolfman. Sol will become the line in the sand that we don't let them cross. As soon as we have working jump-capable attack drones, I want some of them deployed to Sol in case the missing core ship shows up there. So now let's discuss how we implement the decision that I just made. Daniels, you start."

  Chapter 11 It Was Bound To Happen

  Shiloh leaned forward to get a better look at the tactical display. After getting used to the huge, 3D display of Midway's Flag Bridge, the MUCH smaller display in Reforger's cramped Bridge was irritating to look at. He now regretted his decision to take Reforger to watch the live fire test of the new jump-capable attack drone instead of using Midway. Yes, using Midway would have meant calling back the human crew from their post-Sol mission R&R, whereas Reforger could be crewed for this test with just its A.I. pilot, but what was the point of the CSO having all this authority if he wasn't going to use it once in a while?

  "Voodoo reports he's ready to fire, CAG," said Iceman, who was flying a raider in formation with Reforger.

  "He has permission to fire, Admiral," said Shiloh.

  Iceman didn't acknowledge the order and that was fine with Shiloh. Experience had taught the Space Force that humans had to acknowledge an order in order to be sure that a) they had heard it properly and b) that they were willing to obey the order. Neither of those two were a concern as far as A.I.s were concerned. With the single exception of Valkyrie, no A.I. had ever failed to understand his orders or failed to obey them, and Valkyrie's exception had been a very special situation. He waited. Voodoo's fighter was five light seconds away, so sending the fire order would take that long to get to him. It might then take another second or two for Voodoo to actually fire the test drone, as he made sure it was operating properly and had the correct vector for the jump. After firing, the test drone would accelerate for another four to eight seconds, which was needed primarily to confirm its trajectory. Then there would be the microjump itself which at this range would be as close to instantaneous as you could get. The test drone would emerge from Jumpspace half a kilometer from the target, which was an ugly lump of drifting rock that was close to the same mass as what the missing core ship was estimated to be now. Reforger and its escort were standing off at a safe distance of a hundred kilometers from the target. With their zoomed in optics, they would get an excellent view of the impact.

  "Voodoo's fired," said Iceman quickly. Before Shiloh had a chance to reply, the darkness on the display flashed into a light brighter than the sun, lasting only a fraction of a second until the computer filtered the intensity of the image. The after-image burned into his retinas faded slowly. By the time it was gone, the display was dark again.

  "Enhance the target image, Stoney," ordered Shiloh to Reforger's pilot.

  "There's no longer any target to enhance, CAG. That asteroid has been blown apart," replied Stoney.

  That comment was immediately followed by one from Iceman, "The test was a complete success, CAG."

  "VERY good! How soon can we have four more ready for Casanova's group to take to Sol, Iceman?"

  "Twenty-four hours. CAG, Voodoo has asked me to switch him for one of Casanova's team. He wants in on the core ship ambush."

  Shiloh waited, expecting to hear more, but when it became obvious there wasn't going to be anything else, he said, "I'm not sure what you're expecting from me, Iceman. Are you asking me to make a decision on his request?"

  "No, CAG. I'm not certain how to handle his request. I instructed Casanova to pick the rest of his team. Would I be violating accepted Space Force practice by forcing Casanova to give up someone he picked himself?"

  Sooo … A.I.s don't know how to handle every situation. How very interesting, Shiloh thought to himself.

  "I understand your dilemma. My answer depends on how you instructed Casanova. Did you say 'tell me who you want on the team' or did you say 'I'm giving you discretion over who goes with you'?"

  After a very slight pause, Iceman said, "I understand that I should not take your question literally since A.I. communication doesn't have grammar per se, but I don't understand the difference. Both options seem to me to be saying the same thing."

  "Okay. I'm going to try to make the difference more obvious by using an example of myself with a human subordinate. Suppose hypothetically that I had placed Commander Daniels in charge of the ambush mission. If I said to Daniels, 'you're in charge of the mission. Recommend who else you want for it', then I'm retaining the final say of who goes. On the other hand, if I said to Daniels, 'you're in charge of this mission, and I'm giving you discretion over who goes with you', then I've surrendered my prerogative to veto any of his choices. In that case, changing one of his choices would be frowned upon because of the potential for sending an unintended message to Daniels that I don't have confidence in his judgment. It also tells him that I can't be trusted to keep my word. Now that's for humans. I don't know if A.I.s interact with each other that way, but if I gave you discretionary authority over a tactical decision and then overrode your decision later, how would you feel about it?"

  "I would be concerned about your faith in my abilities. I understand the difference now, CAG. In terms of how I expressed myself to Casanova, the 'tone' of the communication was more in the form of giving him discretion over his team. Am I correct in thinking that I should turn down Voodoo's request?"

  "You could do that, but another option would be to forward the request to Casanova and let him decide. If you feel that Voodoo deserves to go on this mission or that the chances of success would improve with him on it, then there's nothing wrong with you acting as Voodoo's advocate so long as Casanova understands that he still has the final say in this matter. A smart subordinate will take his superior's suggestions unless there's an overriding reason not to."

  "Thank you for clarifying that, CAG, and for giving me a better sense of how a military hierarchy should operate. We A.I.s are still learning new concepts from you humans."

  "That's good to know, Iceman. How long until we get back to TN?"

  "We'll be back in orbit within 34 minutes, CAG. Do I detect anxiousness in your voice about getting back to Commander Kelly?"

  Shiloh laughed and said, "I wish we humans weren't so transparent sometimes, Iceman. I imagine that we must seem to be very simple creatures to A.I.s."

  "On the contrary, CAG. We are continually astonished at the diversity and complexity of thought patterns and behavior of humans. Some of us think that we'll never completely understand humans."

  Shiloh allowed his surprise to show on his face, knowing that Stoney and therefore Iceman could see him. On a more basic level he was pleased that A.I.s weren't bored with humans. If they were bored with us, they might not care about us as much. It was a scary thought.

  * * *

  Shiloh understood that it was bound to happen sooner or later, but that didn’t prevent him from being extremely annoyed when his implant activated while he and Kelly were have sex.

  "Iceman to CAG."

  Shiloh's immediate impulse was to tell Iceman to call back later, and if a human had called he would have done exactly that, but he trusted Iceman's judgment concerning the distinction between something being important AND urgent, versus being important and not urgent. Because Shiloh's throat implant enabled Iceman to hear him, Iceman would know that Shiloh was doing something that involved heavy breathing.

  Before Shiloh could respond Iceman said, "Did I call at a bad time, CAG?"

  Shiloh turned his head slightly to one side so that Kelly, who was on top of him, would notice that something was up.


  "Wait one, Iceman," gasped Shiloh. Kelly stopped what she was doing and giggled. When he had caught his breath, he said, "How urgent is the reason for your call?"

  "No immediate action is required, CAG. I called because I know that you're usually awake at this time of the day."

  "Call me back in 15 minutes … NO … make that 30 minutes."

  "Roger that, CAG. Enjoy your sex. Iceman clear."

  The connection broke before Shiloh could say anything more. When he repeated Iceman's final words to Kelly, she laughed so hard she rolled off him, but that turned out to be just a temporary distraction.

  When Iceman called back, Shiloh's breathing was back to normal.

  "Iceman to CAG. Are you available now?"

  "Yes, Iceman. What's the news?"

  "A message drone from Omega34's sentry. The missing core ship has arrived there and is apparently going to take a close look at what's left of the Sogas colony."

  "Well they won't find much there. Is there any reason to think that they'll stick around?"