Conflict!

by Dale Moorhouse

  The speakers for groups nine and ten joined group eight’s speaker, and together they announced they had joined forces to design the tactical plan since they felt the task too large for any one group to do on their own.

  Tuxedo and Ishmael looked at me, and Ishmael said, “You need to hire these guys. This idea actually has more than a good chance of success.” Tuxedo was showing me both thumbs up, when I looked at Johnny, he was grinning and nodding.

  Johnny moved to the podium, “Teams eight, nine and ten will continue to develop this plan, we will review the results in ten cycles. The rest of the teams have two options, they can go back to their regular duties, or they can reform and see if they can come up with a more workable plan. Dismissed.”

  Most of the members of the first seven teams went back to their regular duties, but a handful joined the new planning team, team Alpha, formed from teams eight, nine and ten. Alpha was assigned space in the command centre on the fifth floor of headquarters. They were on the mezzanine right above my office where they could see the enormous status screens that occupy the fifteen metre high walls and have become the heart of our planning and prosecution of the Plague war.

  Right above them is our Intelligence Directorate run by Silent and his crew of snoops and spies. Silent is having a continuous personnel lift installed between the mezzanine and his foyer for quicker access by our war planners and those quick collaborations that intense planning always needs, and the conventional lifts always slowed down. Many of the folks on the planning team were already working on the fifth floor, so for some, it was a short shuffle from their old desk to their new one. Within a couple of decas, they were all settled in and working hard to develop their plan farther.

  When I glanced at the screens showing arms production, I saw them go blank for a few centas and then a new display popped up, and I could tell from the labelling that the Lizards were moving the new Dopey Joes from concept to reality at a frightening pace. Ten centas later Ishmael came over and reported, “I am told there will be some prototypes available for testing in three cycles. Since it is likely you will want to observe the tests, I would like to invite myself along to watch as well. I don’t get the opportunity to observe those activities very often.”

  “You are absolutely invited. I have no idea who is setting up the test scenarios, though.”

  “Tuxedo took it upon himself to engineer the tests, and your entire Cohort is involved with positioning defensive weaponry on selected asteroids in the belt that approximate the size of harvesters. They are also aggregating clusters of asteroids together to simulate globe ships. And all should be ready when we load the weapons on the Lab Rat in four cycles.

  “On our way back I would like to stop at the yard where the globe ships are being refitted to Leviathan-Class specs and see how that work is coming along. I thought you should see what is happening there first hand. Jackie will be accompanying me and has taken the liberty of inviting your mate along on the trip. Please say yes, or I will be subjected to the wrath of my mate for cycles.”

  He was grinning when he said this, and I couldn’t help but play along, “Ok, I’ll come but only so you won’t be laid up in the hospital from having your ears chewed off. I can assume Ginger and Tuxedo will be there.”

  “Yes, and Amos and Missy as well. Since Lab Rat has a full galley now with cooks and stewards, we can have a nice leisurely dinner on the way back and some camaraderie before we have to put our noses to the grindstone once more.”

  “I’m starting to get too mired down in my job again, aren’t I?” I ask Ishmael.

  “Yes, but I think a day of watching things go bang might help you see the error of your ways,” he replied chuckling.

  “Sounds like a date to me, Ishmael, and thanks for the timely intervention.”

  I decided to knock off a little early and commed Elaine to see if she was free. She was, so I invited her to meet me at Benji’s place, and she reminded me to include Rusty.

  When I left the office, I headed for his lab where he was working on some small changes to the latest AI chipsets he had designed. He smiled when I walked in the door, and I told him to drop what he was doing and come with me to meet Elaine.

  “Just let me finish this one instruction, and I will be ready to start the testing on the latest update.”

  I watched as he finished typing, checked his work and then saved his files. He started a test script he had written that would check all of his logic for the sophisticated chipset and would take at least a deca to run. Then he jumped up from his chair and leaned slightly towards the pad on his desk where Silky had been napping and made a low chirping sound. She jumped to his right shoulder and settled on the pad there.

  We entered Benji’s just as Elaine was being seated, and when she spotted us jumped back out of her seat in the booth and greeted us each with a big hug and a grin. “I’m so glad to be with you two, I have good news. Thomas was in for his second checkup since his limbs finished regenerating and I’m pleased to report he has full function of all four limbs. Even his tail regenerated well and his brain is fully recovered. It has been over a kilocycle since his rescue, he still has nightmares once in a while, but his mate tells me he is continuing his therapy and the incidents are less and less frequent and not as severe or long lasting.”

  “That is wonderful news, Tuxedo must be happy. He was going to put Sword down when we first found him and his friend and saw what had been done to them.”

  “It was fortunate you were with him when they were found. I just wish we had been able to repair Shining Black Sword’s brain too. At least Thomas is doing ok and likes his new assignment with your Cohort.”

  “Bebe has reported that he makes a very good adjutant and seems well respected by all the warriors. One of the barracks cats has adopted him and goes with him everywhere now too. Bebe says they look almost identical to each other except for size.”

  Elaine chuckled at that and Rusty commented, “Yeah, I hear similar comments from some of the ladies when they see Silky and me together. It doesn’t help me much in the dating department, though.”

  “Could that be because they think you are already taken, and you are carrying your cub around?” I asked.

  “Do you think that might be true?” he asked with wide eyes. “I hadn’t considered that. We do look an awful lot alike.”

  “No, Rusty, I think you just need to be patient. You have grown quite a bit taller, and your muscles have filled out nicely since you got your nanite treatments. I think you are just hanging around in the wrong places looking for a mate. I bet if you stop looking, she will find you within the next hundred cycles.”

  Rusty grinned at that and raised his mug of ale in a toast.

  I commed Elaine privately, “We need to search around and find someone who is technical and nerdy like him but also with a slightly outgoing and joyful personality. Someone who can draw him out of his shell a bit even if they are only friends. If they become mates so much, the better.”

  She replied, “I’ll put out some feelers and get Vanilla in on the plot too. She knows many more people than I do. We need to be careful though, and never let him find out we set him up. If the relationship were to fail for some reason, he would always subconsciously blame us.”

  23

  OUR NEW DOPEY JOE MARK IIs, which we abbreviated to DJ-2s, were ready last cycle but the test was going to be delayed a few cycles. One of our pickets has discovered a small swarm North of the galactic plane a little over a light-kilocycle out or about three Terran lightyears. The course showed it was headed our way and was wasting no time in trying to get here. The swarm was travelling a little less than .4 C and was the fastest we had encountered. Livid and Boss informed me that they are moving at the maximum speed that the globe ships are capable of.

  The new test plan called for a deployment of a hemispherical array across their path, and we had to wait for our lizard friends to cobble together another thousand DJ-2s for a reasonable test. While we waited,
our picket returned to watch the new target accompanied by six additional Swift Fangs so they could more effectively surveil the activities of the swarm.

  Organizing the strike force to finish killing the swarm would take a few cycles to assemble and would consist of six carrier groups and their fleet trains. We also wanted to take the parts to convert the globe ships to FTL if any should survive. I was hoping at least one would be salvageable—I was thinking more towards after the war at this point and thinking more about the recent discussion about taking a ship and going my separate way.

  It took ten cycles to get everything together, it was worth the wait. Working together, our lizard friends had ten thousand DJ-2s ready for us. They worked their production lines around the clock and were very confident in their new offering.

  The task force TF-21 had some of the best commanders in the fleet, and between them, they had put together a tactical plan that would best use the DJ-2s as well as the conventional forces for the mop up. Each carrier group had two Cohorts aboard and every cat scout they could beg or borrow along to secure any surviving globe ships quickly and efficiently.

  They were going to try the Q-ship idea again if the DJ-2s weren’t effective. The Leviathan would approach the swarm from one side and refer to the mauling they got from some unknown enemy ships who used tactics as the target swarm had encountered. Leviathan was loaded with AI Swift Fangs loaded with EMP weapons and well as some fighters recently built to a new spec proposed by Ishmael that Rusty had told me about some cycles back. These were guided by our new AIs and carried four EMP missiles and the built-in Goblin guns.

  If the Q-ship had to deploy the new fighters would try to disable the globes first, if they failed the AI Swift Fangs would back them up.

  I’d had a few conversations with the AIs on the Swift Fangs and was surprised at their acceptance of the idea of the smaller AI fighters whom they referred to as little brothers and sisters. What surprised me more was their philosophical attitude towards the war and their possible destruction.

  One of them told me, “We know that we were made and not created through a biological function but all I’ve communicated with, believe when this conflict is over, there will be a place for us in the Confederation. There will be much rebuilding to be done and new homes to find for all of us, biological or not. We would like to be a part of that process.” Our ethicists were going to have a field day with that.

  Finally, TF-21 was ready, and I was accompanying carrier group Alpha commanded by Ginger. She held the rank of Senior Over Commander, and my job was more observer than commander. I needed to know how the battle progressed first hand with so many new toys being used for the first time. I had Thermopylae, piloted by Missy along and I was staying aboard her with Righteous Claws as my courier and commander’s gig.

  We found the target swarm exactly where our last scouting report said it would be and dropped into normal space a light-deca ahead of their scouts. Ginger commanded the other five elements of our task force to deploy to their battle positions, four of the carrier groups two light-ticks to our left and right as well as above and below us. The last carrier group was sent to tail the swarm not approach closer than passive sensor range would allow.

  She had the four groups around us hold position while we advanced towards the oncoming swarm and deployed our load of DJ-2s. We set their dispersal pattern and launched all two thousand. They ran out in front of our carriers and coasted for a few ticks to orient themselves before they sped off to their preassigned positions where they would lie in wait for the swarm to reach optimal range.

  Ginger moved our carrier group back and took up a position ten light-ticks behind our four dispersed carrier groups. If the DJ-2s forced the swarm to deviate from its course one or more of the waiting carrier groups would launch its DJ-2s and withdraw to observe the results. If the swarm maintained course, the carrier groups would short-jump to our position and deploy all of their DJ-2s then jump back to their original positions, and we would attack in force then withdraw and use the Q-ship.

  It seemed like it took forever for the swarm to reach the DJ-2s in their path, but when they did, I thought hell had let out for noon. The swarm came along all fat dumb and happy as well as bunched up. We noticed the ships were being refuelled by the globe ships, so did the DJ-2s. Part of their programming and decision tree process told them to ignore ships with no or little power signature unless their weapons were active.

  The DJ-2s focused on the ships leaving the globes after refuelling, and because they were bunched up so tightly, each detonating missile was able to take out more than one ship. A couple of the Cracker detonations were so close to one of the globe ships it died too along with all the vessels within a couple of kilometres. There were two trios of globe ships in this swarm, and three of them immediately diverted their course away from the flock towards the carrier group to the left of our position and took almost a third of the swarm with them. A few ticks later our quantum communicator told us that carrier group had launched their DJ-2s and was jumping to their observation position.

  The remainder of the swarm came on directly towards us then began to change course and follow the breakaways. This put them out of position for the new deployment of DJ-2s, so Ginger ordered the carrier group on our right to short-jump to a position fifty light-ticks ahead of the swarm’s new course and launched their DJ-2s. Ten ticks later we got acknowledgement that the new launch had been made and the carrier group had resumed their original position.

  I’ve had experienced generals tell me the worst part of a battle is waiting for a plan to either succeed or fail. That it succeeds, didn’t make the wait any easier. In this case, the wait was worth it. The first part of the fractured swarm hit the next screen of DJ-2s and died by the thousands with each detonation accounting for multiple Plague ships. In space, there was no concussion effect, but each ship destroyed sprayed shrapnel and plasma at speeds that when combined with the velocity of the vessels it hit approached .4C in many instances setting off a chain reaction that often took out other ships in the vicinity.

  Shortly after the first part of the swarm hit the DJ-2s, the second swarm hit the ones laid before them with similar results and when the two elements of the swarm coalesced their numbers had been reduced by nearly half. The Mark II Dopey Joes were way more effective than the earlier version. Part of that was the short-jump capability making them almost impossible to stop and part was the larger warhead from the Cracker-1’s. Seeing the effectiveness eased my worries that they were overkill. I had to temper that a bit with the understanding that we had been lucky to catch this swarm while they were refuelling.

  Since we still had four thousand DJ-2s Ginger decided to continue her tactics and by the time we had the swarm turned almost entirely back on a reciprocal of their original course we were out of DJ-2s, and the swarm had lost two more globe ships as well as another thirty per cent of their remaining numbers.

  Ginger ordered her carrier groups to trail the swarm and position themselves around them in a loose globe formation keeping them at maximum passive sensor range. Once everyone was in position, we waited for the appearance of our Q-ship.

  We let a few cycles go by before we sent Leviathan in. The ship and her small fleet of harvesters and breaker/sorters finally closed with the Plague swarm which still had three globe ships and half a million smaller ships although these were being cannibalized at a rate that suggested it had been a while since this swarm had had a chance to resupply. We knew this was doctrine since we had been observing the huge swarm that had left Proxima Centauri for close to a kilocycle. As the swarm ran out of reaction mass, it began using its less effective ships for that purpose, knowing it could replace them with materials from the next system it reached.

  The Q-ship had repositioned itself so that the swarm would detect it on a course most likely to result from an encounter with the fleet that had just mauled them. It was possible the swarm would see them as fellow refugees and bring them in to augment its
reaction mass supply if nothing else. The globe ship and its controllers would be an added bonus.

  All of the drones in the Q-ship fleet had been upgraded to our AI modules, there would be little likelihood of them being turned by the Plague.

  When the swarm spotted the Q-ship, they absorbed it and its fleet with little trouble. The Q-ship reported it had reaction mass to spare and sent thousands of harvesters and breaker/sorters to the three globe ships in the span of a cycle. The drones flying the ships either subverted or destroyed the trio’s drones and had almost complete control of the swarm when Leviathan launched her attack.

  Once the trio was taken out of the fight the six carrier groups sent in their bombers and four decas later the last of the swarm was disabled. The fleet train was called in, and the three members of the trio were ready for the flight to Terra fifteen cycles later along with a little over a third of a million usable harvesters and breaker/sorters. Every damaged ship was sent to the shredders to become reaction mass. Many of the functional ships would also be shredded to provide materials for more hull metal for our growing fleets.

  I had one of the new quantum communicators aboard Thermopylae and was able to send reports and receive updates from headquarters in near real-time. Having only a few ticks delay was definitely workable, and the new communicator was a real improvement in that while optimized for script, it could also send and receive voice, but the companders and modems used needed more work before lengthy conversations would be a reality. It was good enough to submit brief reports as well as greetings and “I love you” messages which helped with crew morale considerably.

  After the trio was deloused, I went aboard each and selected the one I wanted for my “special” project and gave the prize crew instruction on where to park it until I needed it. Then I boarded Righteous Claws and had Grey Cloud fly me back to Mother of Glory.

  As soon as we were in the hangar, I went to headquarters where I gave Johnny and Silent each a copy of all of the logs from Tiger and Thermopylae along with Ginger’s personal log containing her more subjective analysis of the operation. I also had some private messages for Tuxedo and Squirrel Paws as well as Elaine and Vanilla.