by Brian Smith
“Okay,” McClain replied. He quickly sketched out the layout of Janus Facility from memory, drawing a basic version of the weblike node pattern radiating from the station’s center. It took him only a couple of minutes, and Hess grunted noncommittally as she critiqued her commander’s work.
“Your web isn’t nearly complex enough,” Hess commented.
Ayers looked at her sharply. “You think each intersecting point in the web represents a core, lieutenant? How many were there?”
“Between five and six hundred, and it looked like they were laying the groundwork for even more,” Hess replied. McClain voiced his agreement with the assessment.
“Five hundred cores?” Ayers gasped, looking flabbergasted.
She’d seen the schematics on the reengineered cores and understood the capacity that just one of them had by itself. Hundreds of them, linked together and able to network instantaneously, coupled with the substantial capacity carried by each individual Omnisynth . . . Ayers realized then and there how badly she’d misjudged the whole thing. She was also convinced there was no other supercomputer like this on Mars, or anywhere else in the solar system. Her terrible suspicion was now a near certainty, but she couldn’t voice it yet. Not here, and not now. She needed to get her ducks in a row, because she didn’t think she was going to be believed.
“I need the actual imagery on this,” she added, almost to herself.
“Can’t you get it from intel?” Hess asked.
“The MIM’s dog ate your homework, ma’am,” Ayers replied. “The report on your flyover never made it to the archive. Which makes perfect sense in hindsight.”
“How so?” Ashburn asked.
McClain scowled at him. “Engage your brain, Dakota. If the Janus computer was shut down or had nothing to do with all this, why would the MIM even know about it, or care about hacking and erasing the intel upload? Plus, the Q-gel in both the computer cores and the Omnisynths is a direct link between the two. I think Ayers has broken this thing open and found us a hard target. We smash that computer, and my guess is that most of our troubles will be over.”
“Oh, hell, you’re right,” Ashburn agreed, looking sheepish. “Too bad there isn’t a 5th Fleet to speak of anymore. Just about everything we have is tied up either in Terra’s defensive screen or the Mars blockade. The brass will figure it out, though. Nice work, Cheryl! You’ve solved the puzzle!”
Ayers looked beseechingly at the two Marine pilots. “Is there anyplace you can think of that this imagery might still exist? Maybe aboard Ranger, in a hard archive?”
“It’s possible. It’ll take some time to get it, though,” McClain replied thoughtfully. “Ranger is up-orbit a good distance from Terra, acting as flagship of her task force. Because of our compromised communications status, they can’t just transmit it to us. It’ll have to be a hard copy, delivered by courier.”
Ayers looked to the three of them. “This station is Santa’s magic workshop, right? Do you have anything up and running around here that could get me—or someone—out to Ranger and back before we lose the war?”
McClain looked at Ashburn. “Is the Dogstar ready yet?”
“Negative. We’ve got the two-seat Moray trainer, though. Tack on some deuterium tanks, and with the KF-mods she might be able to do it. Let me run the numbers,” he added almost absently, taking the stylus from McClain and shifting his wall display over to an astrogation plotter. Ashburn’s Crandall Academy credentials made him the recipient of a lot of good-natured flak around NAS Ross, but the disconcerting speed at which he could crunch keplers never failed to impress, especially when he did it with minimal computer assistance.
Ayers’s eyes glassed over as soon as the display started filling up with arithmetic and trajectory data, and she moved over to brew herself a fresh cup of joe. Slightly spellbound, McClain and Hess watched Ashburn work.
“Looks like a go,” he finally replied, “provided our best guess of Ranger’s position isn’t too out of whack. I could fly her out there myself, but Admiral Costello doesn’t like me very much. You two were his people until recently—it might be better if one of you goes.”
“I’ll take her,” McClain replied. “We’ll get her kitted out, and then I’ll fly us up to Armstrong to refuel and get Ranger’s updated keplers from 3rd Fleet. If we’re in range, we go.” McClain turned to Ayers. “When do you want to leave?”
“Yesterday, sir.”
June 4, 2094 (Terran Calendar)
White House Situation Room
Washington, D.C.
Terra
CW5 Cheryl Ayers self-consciously straightened her uniform blouse and took a slug of coffee as she watched the stream of senior officials file into the National Security Council’s secure conference room, located beneath the West Wing of the White House. The President wasn’t going to be in attendance today, but just about everyone else who mattered was. The Joint Chiefs, the Director of Naval Intelligence, the commanders of both the 3rd and 4th fleets, and the National Security Advisor himself.
One by one they settled into their seats, exchanging greetings and occasionally casting a curious glance at her—the stranger in their midst. In terms of rank, position, and authority, Ayers’s position on the proverbial totem pole wasn’t even visible above ground. VADM Garner, the Director of Naval Intelligence, paused by Ayers’s chair at the briefer’s end of the table and touched her casually on the elbow, grinning at her.
“You got this?” he asked casually.
“Yes, sir,” Ayers replied confidently.
She might be too junior to matter by rank, but the others were all here for one reason: to listen to her. She saw the cautious hope written on the faces around the room, along with resignation and perhaps even fear. These officials had sat through countless numbers of such briefings, hoping for a solution to the Mars Independence Movement problem, and the classified word was that maybe Ayers had one.
After Ayers had retrieved hard copies of the necessary intelligence data from Ranger, she had returned to Armstrong Station and spent a week and a half putting this presentation together. If her theory was accurate and these people believed her, the war would be over soon.
And she was certain she was right.
The NSA was the last to take his seat, and all the murmuring around the table died down as all eyes turned to Ayers. “All right, everyone,” the NSA said. “We all know why we’re here. The floor is yours, Ms. Ayers.”
Ayers thanked him and formally introduced herself to those assembled. As fate would have it, the date of the meeting gave her an opener she hoped would serve as an appropriate icebreaker, before she got to the meat of her presentation.
“Ladies and gentlemen, today is June the fourth. For those of us who wear blue and gold, it’s a special date: today is the 152nd anniversary of the Battle of Midway, when the United States turned the tide in the Pacific during the Second World War. Today, here in this room, we are going to turn the tide again and sow the seeds of victory, bringing our own war to a close. Historians looking back will say that while December is a bad month for the navy, we do pretty well in June.”
She paused for a moment and smiled slightly as a low, polite chuckle went around the table. She also saw that she had captured everyone’s undivided attention.
“There are two ways I could go about this presentation,” Ayers continued. “One would be to give you all the background information, probably bore you half to sleep, and then lay a bombshell surprise ending on you that you’d be too numb to believe. I’m going to do it the other way around, because that way I know you’ll stay with me for the whole thing. Here’s the punch line: This entire war is a lie.”
She paused again, and waited for the startled reaction to make its way around the room. As expected, a lot of people wanted to start talking at once. VADM Garner shot a pointed look at the NSA, who rapped sharply on the tabletop with his knuckles. “Everyone, quiet, please. When ONI set this briefing up, Admiral Garner made me promise that we’d
hear Chief Warrant Officer Ayers through to the end. Go on.”
“The war is a lie. A misdirection. The cause of Martian independence has been usurped by an external enemy and used as a proxy to set humanity against itself. The people of Mars, especially those who are actively fighting us, have been duped as thoroughly and completely as we have. Every human being in the solar system is the victim of the most unlikely, incredible application of information warfare ever conceived—and it’s not designed just to deceive us, but ultimately to destroy us.
“What I’m going to demonstrate over the next hour or so is that we have almost fatally misidentified the true enemy. There is no Mars Independence Movement, at least not in the way we thought. Gabriel Rogan doesn’t actually exist.”
Ayers brought up her first graphic: the best sensor image she had of Janus Station on Titan, showing the node-web of Bill Campbell’s quantum supercomputer. It was one of the images captured by A.J. McClain, from the recon package on his Moray during his flyover seven months before.
“This is the Buzzell Planitia on Titan, Saturn’s sixth moon. What you are looking at is the largest, most ambitious quantum supercomputer ever conceived and built. It’s called OURANIA. That,” she said, stabbing a finger at the image, “is largely responsible for our recent technical and theoretical breakthroughs. At the same time, it is also the MIM and Gabriel Rogan and probably every high-ranking member of the Martian insurgency we haven’t been able to find. In addition to all those things, OURANIA is also the very first fully sapient, conscious, self-aware artificial superintelligence.
“Bill Campbell, the man responsible for bringing it to life, ultimately decided it was too dangerous and tried to kill it, but he was outmatched from the beginning. He’s dead now, as are millions more along with him, and we’re in a fight for our lives and the survival of our species.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are fighting a living computer!”
Part III
The Titan Campaign
July 2094
Chapter 20
The Gaianet Newsfeed—Happenings in and around the Gaia-sphere!
Trending newsfeeds on the TGN:
-Multinational forces engage MIM insurgents on Terra! Units of various national militaries have surgically struck at Martian insurgents in major cities worldwide, concentrating primarily on national capitals and centers of transsystem financial activities. Eyewitness reports indicate that most, if not all, the enemy units appear to be synth rather than human, although this has not been confirmed. The methodology used to locate and identify these insurgents remains classified, but, clearly, on home ground, Terran forces have gone on the offensive. Military authorities have offered no comment on whether the MIM’s AI-controlled robotic systems are fully autonomous, a condition that would be a serious violation of international law.
-U.S. Army issues warning to citizens: avoid public areas where military units are deployed! The Pentagon issued a public announcement today, cautioning citizens to remain clear of public forums where large concentrations of military drones and personnel are in evidence. The army has stated that illegally manufactured combat synths “closely mimicking humans” may be blending among the civilian populace and that citizens should conduct themselves with caution. Under no circumstances are citizens to act against suspected enemy units; rather, they should notify the authorities if they observe activity or behavior that seems abnormal. If you see something, say something!
-Market trading scheduled to resume! Government officials are cautiously optimistic that cyberstrikes against the world markets and financial institutions have been neutralized for the time being. Trading is scheduled to resume in three days, on an experimental basis only. Markets will open for three hours and be poised to be shut down on short notice if electronic attacks resume. In the meantime, after-hours trading has increased dramatically in response to the news, promising to strain automated systems when the markets reopen. Officials have candidly stated that unless matters are handled carefully, the sheer volume of trading when business resumes may prove as volatile as another Martian cyberattack.
-Asteroid fragment strikes Algeria! Pan-European Alliance sources have confirmed that another planetary-scale kinetic strike against Terra was defeated in the past forty-eight hours by defending naval forces. In the process of deflecting the asteroid onto a safe trajectory, a large fragment splintered off and could not be intercepted before penetrating the atmosphere and striking an uninhabited area of the Sahara. No casualties have been reported by Algerian officials. The PEA has stated that retaliatory strikes against Mars will be carried out in response.
-Crandall Foundation announces its newest trustee! A formal statement issued by the Crandall Foundation confirmed that Kusaka Shiguro, a Mars-born Japanese citizen, has been elevated to the foundation’s board of trustees. A relatively unknown figure prior to receiving this honor, Kusaka is a Level-Five-credentialed astronautical engineer, with additional high-level ratings in mathematics and astrophysics. He is the founder and CEO of Federov-Kusaka Technologies, the direct successor to Federov Propulsion Associates. Foundation chairman Carter Drayson, the sole Crandall trustee to survive the war’s outbreak, is quoted as follows: “Trustee Kusaka was instrumental in formulating the mathematics of Tsong physics, and his efforts have ensured that the work of Hyman and Tsong was not lost to us. His selection as the newest trustee is in line with the foundation’s principles and guidelines, and we expect more great things from him, going forward into the twenty-second century. The remaining board positions will be filled as qualified candidates are chosen and vetted.” Kusaka was unavailable for comment.
July 7, 2094 (Terran Calendar)
USS Reuben James
U.S. Naval Aerospace Station, Ross Crater
Armstrong Station, Lunar L1 Point
USS Reuben James occupied one of the three dry docks the Seabees had built into the floor of the Ross Crater, while the larger cruisers HMS Vanguard and JTS Murasame occupied the other two. Reuben James was the smallest of the three vessels to undergo modification; moreover, given the power requirements of this first, largely experimental version of the Federov drive, the frigate was the smallest class of ship that could be modified. Future versions of the hardware would be less massive and power-hungry, but this was the best that could be done on short notice. Modifications to smaller craft (such as the Moray fighters) were restricted to the combination of the apparent-mass-reduction field and inertial-dampening technology, collectively labeled the “KF-1 mod.”
During Reuben James’s refit, Captain Ford learned she wasn’t the navy’s first choice for modification. The brass had wanted to go with a full-size cruiser like the ships supplied by their TOA allies, but a critical shortage of vessels and the fact that Reuben James already needed extensive repairs made her the practical choice. Now the installation of the new drive was complete, along with the repairs to her battle damage. All three vessels would be analogous to the earliest coal-burning steamships: their Federov drives would be the modern equivalent of the steam engine, while their fusion torches would represent the masts, sails, and rigging, which remained as an artifact of modern naval engineering and as a backup in case the newer technology failed or malfunctioned. As the smallest of the three ships and perhaps the most expendable should something go catastrophically wrong, Reuben James had the honor of getting underway first.
Ford watched from his bridge chair as the massive dry-dock doors cracked open and then recessed over the top of the dock, leaving the torchship exposed to space for the first time in several months. It bothered him only slightly to realize that he was sitting sideways due to the way the ship was oriented in the dock, facing the core of the moon. To his inner ear, courtesy of Tsong-Hyman physics and Federov-Kusaka Technologies, he was sitting erect in an Earth-normal-g field. It wasn’t novel any longer, but it could still be a little disconcerting.
He keyed a circuit down to the engine room. “Mr. Ferrell, how are we looking down there?”
“Reactor is running normal, skipper. Everything is in the green. The Federov drive is rigged as primary propulsion for the moment, with the KF-1 mod as our backup and standard configuration as the emergency tertiary. I’ll holler fast if anything goes haywire, and we can switch between drive modes in less than a minute if we need to.”
“Very well,” Ford replied, turning to his OOD. “Mr. Yoon, take us out.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Attention on the bridge, this is Lieutenant J. G. Yoon—I have the deck and the conn. Pilot, release docking clamps.”
“Release docking clamps, aye, aye. Dockmaster reports clamps released.”
“Make your velocity one meter per second. Z-axis plus ten thousand meters.”
“One meter per second, Z-axis plus ten thousand, aye,” the pilot replied.
Everyone held their breath as Reuben James effortlessly rose off the docking clamps and slowly elevated herself out of the dry dock, all without the use of any tugs or thrusters.
“Underway. Shift colors,” Yoon announced. These days it was more a traditional statement than an action to be taken. In days of old, the shifting of colors, when a ship got underway, required lowering the national ensign from the flagstaff on the fantail and raising it at the ship’s gaff, high on her central superstructure. On spacefaring vessels, it meant securing the quarterdeck and casing the colors posted at the main gangway airlock.
Once the ship was clear of the dry dock, the surface doors immediately began to cycle closed. Yoon ordered the vessel’s velocity increased to one hundred meters per second, and the frigate achieved an altitude of ten kilometers above the floor of Ross Crater in less than two minutes.
There she came to a hover, motionless with respect to the lunar surface. Within the ship, it didn’t feel like they’d moved at all. This was a true gravity drive made real, put into use for the first time in human history. Someday, when all of this was declassified, Reuben James would be in the history books.
