McKnight's Mission

by Caleb Wachter

  “Why do you need medical equipment?” McKnight asked with a furrowed brow.

  “The only mobile scanners we have with tight enough tolerances in the target EM bands are the ones attached to the imaging suite,” he explained, having already worked his way through this particular aspect of the plan.

  “Those aren’t ‘mobile’ scanners,” she quipped.

  “They will be once I pull them from the suite,” Tiberius retorted as he pulled up a supply inventory from the ship’s central databanks.

  “Fine,” she allowed as he found that they did indeed have the necessary DI nodes in storage, “how long will it take you to build and test the units?”

  “Shield modulation is tricky,” he muttered as he flipped through page after page of the ship’s inventory before flagging another few pieces he would need to have pulled from storage as soon as possible, “we’re going to have to build an individuated unit for each ship, and then we’re going to have to slave their helms together so their relative positions don’t change more than a meter or two.”

  “That’s against regulations, Lieutenant,” McKnight said severely.

  “And it’s the only way I can do what you’re asking me to do,” he said levelly. “Unless you want to risk a runaway grid overload on every ship in the formation, there is no way we can combine all of these ships’ shields into a single, reinforcing unit. If these ships wander even a few meters from their positions in the formation, the whole system will be thrown out of balance and every emitter in the system will overload in a cascade—like dominoes.”

  “I understand what a cascade failure is, Lieutenant,” McKnight said coolly.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he apologized. “But you need to understand that I don’t see any other way to do this; if we’re going to get in close enough to the enemy base to nullify their range advantage, this is the only way I can see how to do it.”

  McKnight sat down in one of the now-empty mess hall seats and drummed her fingers on the table contemplatively. “This is a violation of Cox’ Law,” she said ominously, referring to an unofficial ‘law’ governing the operating of military hardware via centralized processing equipment like the Lieutenant was suggesting. “We did that once on the Pride of Prometheus and got away with it, but that was limited to fire control…there was another instance a Raubach virus very nearly took control of our DI in no small part because we’d built workarounds into the system on Mr. Fei’s advice.”

  “It’s dangerous, there’s no doubt about it,” Tiberius said sympathetically. “But if we limit each ship’s helm control functions to a single, centralized point—more like slave-rigging than fully connecting the individual systems—we’ll give ourselves the best chance to maintain ship formation while minimizing the risk of an AI spawning in the virtual network.”

  “Which ship gets control?” she asked pointedly.

  “That’s definitely an issue,” he mused. “The only ship commander who didn’t show up was the captain of that bulk freighter, and since it’s the largest ship—and the one with the formation’s primary shield generators—his is the obvious vessel to direct the others.”

  “So we just need to contact the freighter’s captain and coordinate with him,” McKnight concluded, but Tiberius shook his head.

  “I tried to do that during the meeting,” he explained. “All I got was some kind of an automated directory tree; I tried to bypass it but I had no luck. I don’t think whoever it is over there wants us to know his—or her—identity.”

  “I guess we need to dig into the directory,” McKnight said with exasperation that Tiberius shared.

  “I’ll put someone on it,” he nodded.

  “Will these ships be able to reorient within the formation?” McKnight asked after a respiratory pause.

  Tiberius opened his mouth to reply in the negative, but a moment later he snapped his teeth together and ruffled his brow in thought. “I suppose it’s possible…” he allowed slowly, “but that would require linking the shield grid modules into the helm control program. Normally I’d say the programming difficulty would make it impossible in the timeframe we’ve got, but Mr. Guo—Fengxiao, that is,” he added as an afterthought as he remembered that many from Mr. Guo’s world adopted courtesy names, “might have done something similar in his work on load-balancing virtual resources.”

  “Assign him to your team,” McKnight ordered. “He doesn’t have anything pressing on his slate at the moment, and this could prove to be decisive in the upcoming battle. But XO,” she added, fixing him with that same cold, hard look he had seen in her eyes the first time they had met, “this plan needs to remain secret from the crew for the time being.”

  Tiberius stiffened, “I’m not in the habit of lying to my people, Captain.”

  “Nobody’s asking you to lie,” she scowled. “But revealing the full truth, even a few minutes early, might undo the entire operation. We already know Lynch had a handful of operatives in the MSP; what’s to make us think the Raubachs haven’t also infiltrated one or both of our warships?”

  “What’s to make us think those pirates out there are actually loyal to Lynch?” Tiberius retorted.

  “They’re not all pirates,” she said neutrally, “and after my dealings with Lynch, I have the distinct impression that he values loyalty above all else. I don’t trust them either,” she said severely when Tiberius began to sigh, “but we don’t have much of a choice at this point. We’re committed to this course, and we need to see it through.”

  Tiberius considered arguing further, but he knew she was right. For better or worse, they were committed to going through with this attack. “Even if we get into position using this trick, Captain,” he said deferentially, “we’re still outgunned at least two to one.”

  “Lynch has a team of operatives behind enemy lines that should be able to even those odds,” McKnight said quietly, causing Tiberius’ eyebrows to rise in surprise. “And even if that team fails, I doubt Lynch would throw his resources into the breach like this for no good reason. He hates the Raubachs, but he’s clearly not blinded by that hatred. He’s spent years—possibly even decades—planning this attack and I doubt he’d throw away this many loyal associates in a low percentage attack.”

  “But we don’t know what he’s got up his sleeve,” Tiberius objected.

  “What we do know is that the bulk freighter out there is his ship,” McKnight said pointedly. “It’s also the only member of this little fleet for which that can be said. So whatever his surprise is, I’m guessing it’s inside that freighter. We’re just going to have to trust him.”

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but his type doesn’t strike me as overly trustworthy,” Tiberius grumbled.

  “That makes two of us, Lieutenant,” she said grimly. “But right now he’s our best option to accomplish our goals out here. Whatever he’s hiding on that freighter is going to be enough to turn the tide; we’ve just got to have a little faith.”

  Tiberius cocked an eyebrow incredulously, “That’s an odd thing to hear a former Intelligence Officer say.”

  “I never put on the black gloves,” she said darkly, and from her affect Tiberius knew it would be wise to drop that particular line of inquest. “But one thing I’ve learned out here is that if the universe is going to put you down, there’s nothing you can do about it. You’ve got to press on as best you can and let the chips fall where they may.”

  “I’ve never been religious,” Tiberius sniffed, thinking back to his old man’s incessant harping and droning about ‘Saint this,’ and ‘Demon that.’ “I don’t think I’ll be changing that any time soon,” he added with thinly-veiled disgust at the flood of childhood memories he found suddenly permeating his thoughts.

  “Neither will I,” she agreed, much to his surprise, “but I’m not talking about gods, saints, or demons; I’m talking about faith in our fellow sentients. Whatever differences we might have with Lynch, at least we share the goal of evicting these Imperials as
quickly and efficiently as possible from the Spineward Sectors.”

  “That’s a good note to end the meeting on,” he said, waving the data slate, “I’d better get to work on these modules.”

  “Dismissed,” she nodded, and Tiberius went to find his Chief Engineer.

  “Sure,” Penelope nodded, “we can whip those up for you in about three days.”

  “We need them done in two days, Pen,” Tiberius chided.

  Pen sighed, “You know, I think I liked you better back when you were on our side of the rad-shielding. I’ve only got one of the micro-printers working, and its tolerances aren’t tight enough to produce these shield control modules at maximum speed. You’re talking about extremely fine tolerances, which we can meet, but without a second printer I don’t see how we can speed it up.”

  “What about converting some of the local DI nodes?” Tiberius pressed. “We’ve got plenty of extras in stock.”

  Penelope shook her head, “Bachmann and Turner say the nodes would need even more work to refurbish for this task than just building the units from scratch. And we need these units to be completely identical on the interface side; there’s no room for even nano-level discrepancies in response times, or the whole grid will go into a harmonic cascade.”

  Tiberius leaned against a nearby bulkhead and ran through the possible solutions in his mind. “What about using a single DI node to handle the brunt of the cogitation? We could get away with smaller individual units if we centralize the processing—“

  Pen shook her head forcefully, “That would be fine if we were talking about one ship. But we’re talking about multiple ships separated by several hundred or, possibly even several thousand meters. The latency for our communication processors, even operating at theoretical maximums, is still too high for this degree of control. There’s a reason this kind of thing doesn’t get done, sir.”

  He scowled at her last jab, which was one he himself had used in the past when dealing with belligerent higher-ups. “I’m not fighting you here, Pen,” he sighed. “I’m trying to figure out a way through this that doesn’t put us into battle without something resembling proper field tests.”

  “And I’m saying it’s a miracle that you came up with this much on your own,” Pen said with equal parts exasperation and deference.

  Tiberius’ brow lowered thunderously, “Don’t use that word, Pen.”

  “What word?” she asked, recoiling in surprise at his change in mood.

  “We don’t do ‘miracles’,” he growled as even more thoughts of his father—his insane, wrongheaded, and impossibly lucky father—surged into his mind. “We adhere to solid, fundamental principles and we diligently observe protocol while meeting whatever challenges come our way using innovation, cooperation, and old-fashioned hard work.”

  “That’s quite the mission statement there, Boss,” Pen said with a lopsided grin. “Been working that one up for a while, have you?”

  Her infectious smile disarmed his previously sour mood, and they shared a laugh which trailed off into an awkward lull in the conversation. “You’re sure you can’t get this done any quicker?” he asked, knowing they had already confirmed that particular suspicion. For some reason, he still felt obligated to try for a different answer.

  “No can do, sir,” she shook her head. “Frankly, I think we’ll be doing good just to keep the printer online long enough to get them pumped out.”

  “Then you’d better get to it,” he said with a nod toward the machinist’s shop.

  “Yes sir,” she snapped a salute, which he returned. Their eyes remained locked together for a brief moment before they turned and returned to their duties.

  “Try it now,” Tiberius ordered after making the final modifications to the prototype shield control unit. The other units were being manufactured even as they tested this first one, which was being fine-tuned using the ship’s individual shield grid control system.

  A moment later, Petty Officer Bachmann acknowledged, “Module online.”

  Tiberius looked down at the screen beside the shield control module, which was connected to the experimental device via a series of wires and bars, and saw that the system appeared to be operating within the virtual system he had constructed to test it. The numbers across the board looked to be in line with what they needed to be, so Tiberius began the testing in earnest by simulating a massive impact to one virtual facing of the shield unit.

  The unit responded precisely as he had hoped it would, by shunting the shield grid’s energy appropriately and also sending the helm control inputs which would keep the vessel in optimal position after accounting for the relatively minor movement caused by the weapon’s impact against the virtual shields.

  “That went well,” he muttered as he moved on to the second test. “Come on…” he whispered as he threw the switch to simulate an evasive maneuver, and again the system responded precisely as he had hoped it would. The course adjustments were properly fed to the virtual helm he had set up within the testing sandbox, and he felt a thrill of excitement when the system appeared to have taken every significant factor into account and dealt with it in real time.

  “This is amazing,” crewman Turner breathed as he monitored several other virtual readouts. “We’re operating well within the tolerances here, Chief.”

  Forgiving Turner’s slip into irrelevant privilege—Tiberius was no longer anyone’s ‘Chief,’ having assumed the post of ship’s Executive Officer—Lieutenant Spalding shared his longtime comrade’s enthusiasm but did his best to hide that fact.

  “Let’s throw this thing a curve ball,” he said in a raised voice. “I’m running tests three, five and six concurrently for this next one.”

  Where other engineers would have protested, Tiberius was proud to hear his colleagues acknowledge excitedly, “Yes sir!”

  A few seconds passed before Bachmann declared, “I’m ready to go here.”

  “Same here,” Turner nodded, and the tension was palpable in the room as Tiberius reached for the activation icon. If this worked, it could very well revolutionize the way that small formations of warships operated.

  His finger hesitated before pressing down on the button, and to his delight the system appeared to compensate properly for the myriad inputs that were sent into it. The helm control system responded perfectly to the multiple direct hits from six different angles, and the shield grid smoothly rebalanced following each impact. It took them several minutes of parsing the data to determine that the unit had, indeed, accounted for every single variable they had thrown at it.

  “I’ve got something here, sir,” Turner said anxiously, causing Tiberius’ heart to leap into his throat.

  “What is it?” he demanded.

  “The outer ships on the formation,” Turner explained, shaking his head in frustration, “I’m showing three of them disconnecting from the system.”

  “Blast!” Tiberius cursed, slamming his hand into the nearby workbench. Then he caught himself and pointed at one of the readouts, “Why is the grid still up? If three ships were knocked out of it, the whole thing should have collapsed in a cascade.”

  “That’s the thing, sir,” Turner said hesitantly, “it looks like the system compensated for their removal before the grid collapsed.”

  Tiberius felt his heart stop and, before he even gave the order to do so, Bachmann had cut power to the unit. The ship’s XO manually disconnected all of the lines to the unit, and only after he had done so did he exhale—and only then did he realize his heart had resumed its rhythm and was now pounding in his ears.

  “Did that just happen?” Turner asked, his face ashen and his fingers trembling.

  “I don’t know,” Tiberius said after a long silence. It was entirely possible that, given the amount of processing hardware they had allocated to this particular project, an AI had spontaneously manifested within that virtual network. “What I do know,” he said, steadying himself as he activated his com-link, “is that we need to go over the data
line by line before we run any more tests.”

  “Yes sir,” the duo agreed somberly.

  After several seconds of silence, the ship’s XO activated his com-link. “Mr. Guo, report,” Tiberius ordered after raising the technician.

  “It would appear we succeeded,” Fengxiao replied. “Virtual resource usages were well within established parameters; the unit did not exhibit a greater than 0.02% variance in power consumption; and my firewalls detect no adverse data fragments within the buffer. Your preventative actions were correct, but ultimately unnecessary; the device functioned precisely as you intended for it to function.”

  “How did it resolve the problem of the shield cascade?” Tiberius demanded, unconvinced that he had not, in fact, just come within nanoseconds of summoning what a more superstitious person might call a ‘data demon.’

  “It would appear that the program was able to predict the pending cascade before it manifested,” Fengxiao explained after a few seconds’ silence. “For these tests, we established relatively high thresholds pertaining to operational security calculations; if we had lowered these thresholds, the program would not have disconnected the three ships as it did.”

  “Meaning…” Bachmann mused, “the program tried to do what was best for the mission’s success—”

  “By sacrificing three ships full of people,” Turner finished for his crewmate.

  “If that’s not the calculation of and adherence to a cost-benefit ratio,” Tiberius said darkly, “I don’t know what is.”

  “I understand your trepidations,” Fengxiao said confidently, “but I do not believe that your fears are justified. Our protection protocols were developed specifically to avoid this type of manifestation. And, as I said, the system appeared to operate well within our established parameters.”

  “Just the same,” Tiberius grudgingly allowed, “we’re going to go over every line of data from this test before we resume. I’m not turning this thing back on until I’m satisfied it’s safe.”