by Chris Hechtl
“That bad?”
“Typical,” the praetor sighed. “Sometimes I wonder why I took the job. The perks definitely aren't enough to pay for the crap you put up with,” he said. “So, I'll rant and rave later. Why don't you head me off by telling me about von Berk's treasure? I heard you had a visitor today,” he said.
“You mean Nutell?” the vice admiral asked. Admiral Cartwright nodded. “Okay, well, top off the list, the claims Doctor Milligram and Linnaeus made have been backed up by proven data in the lab. They can do what they said, and in a controlled environment.”
“Okay,” the praetor drawled.
“Which means we can use them. And if what we've been hearing about is half as accurate as we're fearing, we'll need soon enough.”
“Okay,” the praetor said.
“I'm not just talking about faster normal navigation,” the OPS officer said, waving a hand. “We're talking the ability to hyper skip. To even come in on any vector we choose.”
“Yes, as long as we have the proper navigational aids to handle that task. Remember that,” the praetor warned.
The OPS officer grimaced, then nodded. “Okay, you've got me there. But with them alone we can add 10 percent to our ship's hyperspace efficiency and speed. That's a big boost there. Throw in what we've gotten from El Dorado and we're looking at something closer to a thirty or perhaps even 40 percent jump. That will cut transit time between El Dorado and the home system down to months.”
The praetor's eyebrows rose in surprise. Slowly he nodded. “Okay, I see where that is valuable. And I know about the strategic advantages.”
“Yes.”
“So, that paid out, or will once we get them into production. For the moment they are a finite resource. I'll definitely make certain they and Milligram aren't fed into the games. So, how do we build off of that success and address the holes? A.I. is the next item on our list,” he stated. “With A.I. our ship efficiency rises and we get that boost to navigation. But we need reliable constructs, damn it,” he said.
“To date we haven't kept a captured A.I. for long. They are usually prone to suicide or insanity or complete unreliability,” the vice admiral said with a grimace. “Which means we've abandoned finding a complete A.I. matrix to clone.”
“So we're back to square one?”
“Not quite. R&D have learned a bit from dissecting code over the years of course. It's helped us improve our computer software efficiency.”
“Hell, just stripping out the viruses and crap did that,” the praetor growled. “What about this INTEL bonus Linnaeus mentioned?”
“He might be referring to the captured material from ET and the ships he caught. There wasn't much there; obviously, he didn't bring everything. He left a lot behind in Nuevo Madrid,” Lewis said. Both men scowled. “But it wasn't just what he had that got INTEL's interest,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Apparently Irons was passing out boxes in his wandering years. Little doohickeys about yeah big,” Lewis said, measuring out a box the size of a package of cards with his fingers. “It's a powerful computer with a couple petabytes of memory. He and his A.I. loaded it with all sorts of survival goodies. And of course they tossed in some monitoring and back doors.”
“We know this how?”
“The Barnacle Bill and a couple other spy ships brought in samples to Admiral Frost. Frost sent them on to us by courier,” Lewis explained.
The praetor grunted. “This is the first I've heard of this,” he said. He had thought Frost would have kept it for himself. Either he had kept a copy or he'd sent the only one he'd had in order to curry favor to get out of his posting.
Or someone had been watching him and he'd been forced to behave. Anything was possible he reminded himself.
“Up until someone got into tearing it apart, no one knew how valuable it was,” the OPS officer replied. “But they didn't even need to do that—which by the way, was a bad idea. The damn thing flatlined,” he said.
“Hopefully they made a backup,” the praetor growled.
Lewis exhaled noisily. “Apparently not since they had another sample. That one they were more careful with. The interesting thing was the voice recognition. One of the lab monkeys mentioned A.I., and the box overheard and rather helpfully put up a tutorial on how to write scripts to create your own.”
“You're kidding,” the praetor demanded, eyes wide. He began to laugh, softly at first, then rumbles as he began to rock. Finally, he dashed a tear. “Well, don't that beat all!”
“Apparently,” Lewis replied with an indulgent smile. Apparently his boss had needed the laugh, he thought. “It’s grade school, but it fills in the blanks our people have missed and been frustrated on. So, they are now building it into our school curriculums and using it to build our own dumb A.I. With any luck the first will be ready to test out in a month or two.”
“No more copy and paste it seems,” the praetor murmured. “Good.” He nodded. “Good.” He echoed again. He looked around until he found the waiter. He waved to the man. “I think I'll have that drink now,” he said.
Act III
Chapter 31
Brigadier General Jersey Forth watched from his office as the Marines loaded onto the shuttles that would carry them up to the transports. Agnosta was exporting Marines now, almost as many Marines and soldiers as they got in it seemed. The kids came to the pastoral moon full of excitement and adventure. They left almost in the same state but hopefully with a hell of a lot of wisdom, training, and equipment to go with it. Maybe, just maybe it would keep them alive. It was too much to hope for that it'd keep them all alive though, he thought, turning away from the view.
Working with the Marine officers from Bek had been something of a mixed blessing. He was glad he'd thrown the army over to Pasha and that the other man had insisted on a hands-off approach.
That hadn't gone as well as the colonel had expected though when he'd come to the Marines with hat in hand for help less than a week later, he thought with a shake of his head.
He already missed Schultz. The Neodoberman had taken a lot of the headaches and handled them without them ever getting to his level. Now that the Neodog had shipped out, he was stuck making certain his replacements knew the job. Some did, but they were still working on their confidence on handling the decisions themselves.
Integrating the Bekian Marine officers had been tricky initially, he mused. He'd wanted to throw them at a division and let them build it on their own, but there was decided differences in their approach and methods, enough to make him reconsider that plan. He shook his head. Major Theodore Edward Bear IIXXX … and who the hell named their cub that? He thought wryly as he flicked a stylus on his desk. The Neopolar bear had finally settled in and seemed to be working out. And now that he was up to speed on implants and training, Jersey had been confident enough to toss him at his own division. The bear had his own way of doing things, but he was fortunate enough to be building the division from the top down instead of half ass like Pendeckle and the others had been forced to do.
The Nuevo army group had been far easier to handle. They had virtually a blank slate at the top, so they were actually grateful for the guidance and new chain of command when the Nuevo officers had arrived. Good for them he thought. His brief times with Lieutenant Colonel 101011 made him cherish the times away and made him want to stay clear with a certain amount of fervor. He was glad they'd settled the army group on their own island nearby. They still had to come over to the Marine base for supplies and to ship off-world through the spaceport, but at least they were mostly out of his hair he thought.
He frowned thoughtfully, mind turning to the bigger picture. Schultz was off to Antigua and then from there who knows. Most likely Pi sector, he thought. He should have thrown the dog at the damn Tau sector project instead he thought.
Pi sector, Tau, Agnosta, Antigua, Bek, Nuevo … invasions on Destria and Protodon, planned and now on hold invasions of Nuevo Madrid and Dead Drop … things we
re getting just a tad complicated. And they were going to get worse the bigger the branch grew.
The various staffs involved were still working on a plan to integrate and bring training up to homogenous standard across the board. Bek had its own ideas, and he had to stop himself and his people from stomping all over them. He'd come to learn that the bear was as stubborn as the day was long. He wuffled. If the bear was anything like the rest of the chain of command in Bek … but then, they did say jarheads were stubborn didn't they? Jersey shook his head. “We do it this way and not-made-here attitudes are best to be avoided,” he said out loud.
“Sir?” Lieutenant Lincoln asked from his open door.
“What brings you to Marine country, Lieutenant?” he asked, ignoring his statement.
“Sorry to bother you, but your secretary is out I guess and the door was open,” she said, coming in to the room. She came to attention. He nodded. “I've got the reports and additional requests, sir,” the army lieutenant said, handing him a memory chip.
“Okay. Are you getting anywhere with the implant tech?” the general asked as he took the chip. He set it into his tablet and did a brief scan of the contents.
Technically they could have uploaded the data. But the lieutenant had something else in mind he noted as his eyes returned to his guest.
She grimaced ever so slightly. “We're not getting anywhere with army medicine if that is your question. We're still reliant on the navy medics,” she said.
“Which is probably just tickling your boss pink right about now,” the general said. Ever since the Nuevo duo had shown up, the requests for transfer to the army had been cut back and then dried up. Apparently the colonel had rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. But, he was getting the job done, the general noted.
Well, he did have a lot of help from a certain ancient yellow Neotiger he thought as he scanned the document. “I'm impressed with your engineering training program,” he admitted.
“Thank you, sir. The ground engineering was something the spacebees and your own Marines were overlooking, sir,” she said.
“Well, not quite, but I get the point,” he replied with a nod. “Deploying a small unit to Protodon like you did should go a long way to help smooth things over there. Are we still on track for a joint exercise next month?” he asked.
The lieutenant nodded. “I think it's a go, sir. The colonel hasn't objected at any rate. We need to work out the details,” she said. “We're limited on numbers of course. We also didn't discuss which scenarios to work on. I'm assuming we'll take turns being the op force?” she asked.
The general nodded. “I think that's fair,” he said, steepling his fingers.
“That leaves venue, sir. Is this going to be sims or in the field? And what type? Obviously we're not trained for space,” she said as she pointed to the ceiling.
The general smiled ever so slightly. “Heaven forbid we take you out of your comfort zone. I think we can do some door kicking,” he said.
She nodded and took her tablet out from under her arm and made a note. “Urban and suburban, I'm assuming IEDs and counter insurgency. Do you want to do a hot drop sim on a city or town? Full court press or small engagements, sir?” she asked.
“I like where you are going with this, Lieutenant,” the general said with a smile. “But for the first engagements let's follow the KISS principle. We can always build in complexity later,” he said.
She nodded.
“As for the rest,” he said, indicating she take a chair, “I think we can do a mix of both. We've got shoot houses on both islands; seeing unfamiliar surroundings would be good for our people I suppose,” he said thoughtfully.
“Yes, sir,” she said, eyes bright. “I was thinking …”
:::{)(}:::
Despite his misgivings over things, Nohar Rajestan had allowed the new powers that be to make him a warrant—a W-1, which was as high as he was willing to go. He'd taken the rank only so he'd be at the top; he'd seen enough of young pissants trying to tell him how to do his job to last a life time.
A noncom's job was to train and run the unit. It was up to the officers to direct the unit, shuffle paperwork, and generally be a pain in the ass to the noncoms. That was how army personnel were supposed to work, but until the fresh faces from Nuevo had arrived, it hadn't seemed like it was going to stick. They'd certainly got the generate paperwork and be a pain in the ass part down beforehand though.
He'd had a bit of … interesting interactions with Colonel 101011. His point of view of the base and chain of command and how things should be run was more in line with Nohar's, though he had a tendency to micromanage and absolutely hated reading or doing paperwork.
He wuffled a bit, flexing his ears. Both ears, since he'd gotten cloned rebuilds. And his arm, he noted, flexing both arms and then extending his claws. He flicked a clod of dirt off one, then let them retract partially. He had seen some small changes filter down from above as the colonel had settled in and started to flex his muscles. That had eventually gotten to the point where they could see the small changes in training and doctrine as well as the return of certain traditions and values begin to build up. He now had a sense of satisfaction from work and a sense of pride in what they were accomplishing.
He nodded briefly to a squad out for a morning run. They wore vests since they were traveling the open road where fast moving vehicles might not see them easily. Good, he thought with a mental nod of approval.
And it had only taken a bunch of hicks from the back of beyond to make it work. Go figure, he thought, shaking his head. He had wondered briefly about what things would be like when more of the Bek and Nuevo contingent showed up. Would they come in greater numbers? Entire units? He hoped so. The colonel had a lot to learn about paperwork and implants, but he was pretty good at leadership and managing the units in the field, Nohar thought absently as he strode across the quad to the admin building.
The first deployment of an army unit to Protodon had bothered him. But the reports had made it clear they were standing on their two feet and making a positive impression with Naval Command, the Marines, and the locals. That was a good thing, though he didn't care what the Marines thought of him … as long as they were respectful about it in public. He'd tear anyone a new one if they weren't and had made no bones about making that point of view known.
The Marines had staked out practically every bar near the bases. That had changed when enough numbers had come in for the army to effect some changes in their favor. It had also sparked some spectacular bar fights … or so he'd heard. He grinned ever so slightly at the memory.
He'd also put in a request for the games to be brought back. That had something he'd been surprised to have missed. The army/navy/marine games had been a big thing back in the day. He'd loved football, but hockey was almost as much fun to watch. He could care less about soccer though.
He hadn't been surprised when Colonel 101011 hadn't backed his request. But Lieutenant Lincoln had been more sympathetic. He knew she wouldn't buck it over the colonel's head though; that sort of thing wasn't done.
But maybe … if he bent the ear of someone off duty in a bar … if it was the right person say …
He scowled blackly. His drinking jarhead buddy Schultz was no longer around. He shook his head. Damn it anyway he thought in disgust.
:::{)(}:::
Lieutenant Colonel Dana Harley shook her head as she checked the breakage. Destria had turned into a tougher nut than Hidoshi's World to crack; that was for certain. The spaceport had been a nightmare. The wreckage from that skywhale was strewn all over the place and into the nearby town.
She frowned as she scanned the file the ONI spook she'd picked up had pulled for her while researching the enemy. The Death's Head Brigade. The whole motif with death, the death's head, skulls, etc was normal for pirates according to Lieutenant Liu, so nothing new there. There always was something about pirates and skulls. They all seemed to love the skull and crossbone imagery, the whole bad ass cr
ap. This though, this was something more, and she was afraid to know if he was on the right track or not. If she was reading his raw extract and compiled Intel reports and even taking in some of the scarier stories, it meant something that she didn't like.
Her unit was up against one of the best the empire had to offer.
She shook her head. Liu was still struggling with the concept it seemed, and so was Dana for that matter. ONI had figured that the empire reserved their best and kept them close to the throne to protect the emperor. The emperor's personal guard, she thought pensively. But apparently that wasn't true; they'd picked up enough hardware to let them know something else was going on.
She'd lost two entire squadrons in ambushes. One had been totaled by powered armor units in a hard-hitting ambush. The enemy hadn't taken anything except ammo, power packs, and food. Well, a few had taken grisly trophies, but they'd abandoned them when they had realized the heads had implants that could be tracked, she reminded herself with a grimace.
She was pretty sure Liu's data was right; they were a platoon of the Death's Head Brigade. Why they were out in the back of nowhere she didn't know. Experience? She shook her head. It didn't matter. What mattered now was how she dealt with it.
But if fighting them with their limited resources was like this on a minor colony world, it didn't bode well for the future when they invaded the empire itself she thought pensively as she examined the casualty reports again.
:::{)(}:::
The military had already canceled or postponed the planned invasion plans of Nuevo Madrid when Second Fleet was forced to retreat. The Marine forces staged in Protodon were told to wait there. They were to maintain training while doing what they could on the planet.
The Marine transports that were en route with the army unit to replace the Marines on the planet had yet to show up at any rate. The Marines had been ready and eager to go. Instead the crews as well as Colonel Pendeckle's unit were given rotating leave on the planet. The additional leaves were okay, but when some of the off-duty Marines toured devastation of the coast lines, they wanted to help. Some pitched in without being asked. Two corporals accidentally stayed longer than they'd intended and ended up briefly AWOL until they'd been recalled by an implant message.
