Cassie said, “The other option is to kill you and blow up the station. All our fleets would remain on station and defend themselves at that point, which means they’d have twenty-four million ships to run their new empire until they rebuild and can take the borders back one at a time. I suspect they’ll try that first, since it means they’re invasion plans are still on the table.”
Jessica nodded, “I agree, they won’t surrender. If they can’t get to the station to blow it up, those fleets will disappear fast and we won’t see them again for years, until they’ve more than doubled their fleet and come back.”
I nodded.
Jessica said, “The only flaw of course, is that when you expect your enemy to do one of two things, they usually take the third option.”
I snorted, “Noted. So, we have two tasks. One, we need to protect the station. We already have the place surrounded by dreadnought platforms. Those will see one of their cloaked ships two light seconds out, a full light second before they’re in range. We also know they move extremely slow, so we’ll have a couple of days while they fly in system to find them. Plus, the amount of time it takes them to modify whatever number of stealth probes they’re sending as subspace energy mines.”
Cassie nodded, “Agreed, we have at least two days, and we’re already scanning heavily for them so we’re ready.”
Jessica said, “If it was me, I’d set up a distraction of some kind. So if one of the colony’s is invaded by a couple of thousand ships, or some other scenario, that’ll be the time to be very alert here. Not that we can depend on the idea, but it’s a sound hunting strategy. The colonies are completely defenseless at this point, at least from even a tiny Vrok fleet.”
Cassie said, “You said two tasks.”
I nodded, and grimaced, “Do you remember when the committee told me to find their hiding fleets, and I basically laughed in their faces and said it was impossible?”
Jessica snickered.
I said, “Well, we need to do the impossible. We can’t afford to let them run off, only to face them again in sixty years with three times their numbers and god knows what advances. If we can take those ships out, it’s game over, and the Vrok will forever be stuck on their planets. Let’s go talk to my wife.”
Jessica sighed, “I’ll hate to miss that, but I should mind the store.”
I nodded, and then refilled my coffee before Cassie and I left to hunt down my wife in one of the labs.
“…not a good excuse Darrell, you should have said something to dad.”
The lab door swooshed open while my daughter was halfway through a sentence. She was obviously talking to Darrell while my wife was working on something else at the other lab table.
Diana turned her head and smiled, while my daughter looked at me in surprise, and then guiltily at Darrell.
“What are you doing here?”
I smiled, “Looking for the impossible, got a minute?”
Diana nodded.
I briefed her about our thoughts and the conversation that we just had. That the Vrok had two options, and we absolutely had to find and destroy their fleets in the next two days, or at least before their stealth attack failed.
Assuming of course, that it failed. If it didn’t, then it wouldn’t be my problem anymore.
The Vrok would never surrender, and they’d be hesitant to retreat for decades to recoup their strength, but they would do that if it was the only option left to them. Again, assuming of course, that there wasn’t a third option for them that we just hadn’t thought of yet.
My brilliant and beautiful wife laughed at me.
“That’s impossible, the void between stars is just too vast to find them.”
“Yeah, that’s what I told the committee when they told me to find their thirty million ships. But there has to be a way, or our fight with the Vrok will become multi-generational.”
I turned to Melody, “So what should he have said?”
Melody turned to Diana, “Too vast in normal space, what about subspace, where fifty light years is equivalent to a light second, give or take a few million miles. The subspace sensors can look out fifty light years in just a second, but it can look out as far as five hundred light years before the energy of subspace degrades the sensor particles too badly. So, a grid of two hundred ships by two hundred ships, six deep, could cover the entire galaxy. That’s only two forty thousand ships on average per galaxy. So, only a eighteen million two hundred and forty thousand ships to see all of subspace in all seventy-six galaxies at once. He could easily make that many probes by breaking up a single dreadnought.”
Wow, my twelve-year-old just tried to change the subject. Really smoothly too.
Diana shrugged, “They’re not in subspace, so how would that help?”
Melody said, “It wouldn’t, if they were loitering inside a star system, or close to a star system. But if they’re out in the void we should be able to pick up the effects of all that mass. Twenty-four million ships mass a lot.
“Remember, mass in normal space is what disturbs the energy in subspace. The energy distortions are too chaotic to recognize a pattern in the energy to pinpoint their location, but their mass will also skew the expected quantum frequency resonance in an area. That can be used to pinpoint them. If all the ships check the quantum resonance fabric between systems where it should be normal, that many ships will stick out for sure.”
Melody turned to me, “That will only work if they’re in the deep void between stars, if they’re too close to a system we could be picking up anything, like the Oort cloud, or an asteroid field. Also, if they’re in the void between galaxies, forget it. You couldn’t make enough ships to cover all that empty space if you had years, much less two days.”
“That sounds good to me,” and looked at Diana for her to confirm.
Diana nodded slowly, “That works, and it fits in with her research, so I’m not surprised she thought of it. It won’t let us see into star systems though. It also won’t tell us definitively, it’s more like a massive mass detector field. It won’t let us scan their ships.”
I frowned, “The probe blitz still has a few weeks to go, minus a few days. I bet I can make enough probes to speed that up to a few hours. If they’re hiding near an empty system that should find them.”
Darrell said, “If you give me a million platforms to break up into stealth ships, I can have my internal stealth network finished within twenty-four hours instead of two months. We’ll have eyes on every system in all seventy-six galaxies. It would only be the void between galaxies the enemy could continue to hide in, if that’s where they are. Even more importantly, the enemy wouldn’t know they’ve been revealed. If one of your visible probes show up, they’ll just move.”
I shut my eyes, and sighed. That was either genius, or the dumbest thing I’d ever do in my life. Sure, give the independently thinking computer a million dreadnoughts, what could possibly go wrong?
“Alright, take them.”
Melody smiled at me. So, at least I’d pleased her if I’d just doomed the human race. Really, Darrell probably could’ve just taken them all, so there was that factoid to give me a little confidence.
“So, what should he have told me?”
She looked at Darrell, and I turned to Diana.
Diana shrugged, “Don’t ask me, I could only hear her side of the conversation, and she’s been deliberately vague in her wording.”
Darrell said, “I estimated our relationship had not yet grown high enough in trust to take my suggestion. During the battle you indicated unhappiness with the fact that your automated ships are little better than a hammer. It occurred to me we could change that, if you allowed me control of the fleets to carry out your orders.”
Oh… yeah, more uncomfortable shivers down my spines, at least the million ships he’d be breaking up into unarmed probes. Putting A.I.s in charge of the military would be like putting foxes in charge of henhouse security. It just sounded like a really bad idea.
/> “You can control that many, with fluid tactics?”
Darrell said, “Not by myself. The Atans have one A.I. per carrier herd ship. The one you’ve been in contact with and trading with is the Diaz. Tam’Diaz is simply a copy of Diaz that runs a single fighter, and all five hundred million of the fighters have a separately named Diaz, but they’re all Diaz. That way if one is destroyed, no A.I. is truly lost as their experiences are shared with the primary A.I. after each battle or mission.
“I could do something similar, there’d be a copy of me of this size and intellect running on all the ships, capable of independent decisions as pilots and captains, but they would all be me. Sub-copies. The idea occurred to me during your battle difficulties, but as I already said, I did not believe we had reached the level of trust required for such a step, and I would’ve preferred not to mention it until we had.”
I nodded, “Food for thought, we can discuss it again another time.”
He was right, we weren’t there yet, on the trust factor.
“I’ll leave you to get it done, the stealth network for the systems, and the void subspace scanner.”
Melody said, “We got it, dad.”
Chapter Thirteen
The command center was quiet as I got back and considered a few things. I was down to four fleets, and a million ships now. The six million I’d take from the Atans border leaving just a million in each spot as a token guard, would put me back up to almost six fleets with twenty-three million ships.
There was also the matter of the fleet on the border between us and the Vrok. That fleet wouldn’t be required anymore if we could take down the rest of the Vrok ships, so I wasn’t so worried about it and could use those in the hunt if we located the rest of their ships. That’d be twenty-seven to twenty-four million, in our favor, and didn’t count the hundreds of trillions of platforms.
Honestly, I wouldn’t even mind if we lost most of them in the trade, I didn’t need a large internal fleet after all. Once the Vrok were taken care of the outer fleets were enough, and a million ships in the void would be a whole lot of future colony packages.
“Hey Cassie, what do we do when we find them? Assuming they have always on quantum resonance pulse beacons, we couldn’t jump right on them and blast them. We’d have to jump in at the light second border and move forward, then open fire. But that’d give them plenty of time to open up wormholes. If we do find them in a galactic void between stars, how do we make them stand still long enough to kill them all?”
Cassie said, “Ask nicely?”
Jessica snickered, then threw me an apologetic look.
Cassie quirked a smile, “I don’t know. The void in galaxies makes the most sense though, either in the middle of nowhere, or very close by a system but outside the FTL line. It’s more tactical than out between galaxies if they’re close to tactical targets or places to protect, rather than two hours away by wormhole or more. Point is, that seems the likeliest scenario, we’re not lucky enough to find them all inside an FTL boundary.”
I snickered, “I came to that conclusion as well, I think Mel’s plan will find them, which is why I asked what I asked.”
Cassie got up to refill her coffee.
She sighed, “Too bad we can’t just prevent wormholes forming, the way they jam our jump drives.”
I tilted my head, and called Diana, just in case it was that easy.
Of course, it wasn’t. After I got done explaining why I was bugging her again, she said, “In theory a powerful enough gravity sheer could collapse a wormhole as it’s forming, but out from a light second there’s no way we could do it. It’s just too far to project the intense gravity fields it would require.”
Cassie said, “What if we took a page from their book. Cloak the whole damned fleet, jump just outside of a light second radius, then take your time and slowly move in over an hour or two so they don’t pick up the gravity drive. Once at point blank range we can just blast them all. The best part is we’ll be in the void, where there won’t be a whole lot of particles, or holes in them, to announce your presence like when they attack us. Assuming we’re right about that part of it.
“You can even maneuver into their lines, so we can hit them all at the same time, instead of peeling them away from the outside and giving most a chance to escape.”
I grunted, “That could actually work.”
Diana smirked, “I’ll have the software ready.”
“What software, love?” I asked confused.
Diana laughed, “Why you called me? The wormhole suppression software, if you’re going to be at point blank range, it’ll work just fine. Just in case. One on one without platform support, our ships can take theirs out in five to six seconds, and it only takes about five seconds to open a wormhole. If they have their escape automated, about half of them could get away anyway.”
I nodded, “I can launch platforms as we fire too, that will cut a second or two off that time once all those extra turrets are firing. There probably won’t be enough room in their lines to launch them all, but even a thousand per ship would double the energy impact to their shields. Thanks, hon.”
Cassie said, “Your welcome.”
Troublemaker was trying to get me in the doghouse.
Diana snickered, “I think he was talking to me.”
Cassie laughed, “My mistake,” and tried to look innocent.
We all got to work, now all we needed to do was find the bastards, before they tried to destroy my space station with whatever their plan was.
I’d gotten the attack programming done, and I was busy with normal station work. It wouldn’t be until tomorrow morning at the earliest that we’d find the fleet, and another day after that before we could upgrade the station, and the day after that when we could expect the enemy’s attack, most likely.
I had concerns, many of them. I didn’t like the stealth network idea, it’d been too easy to justify in my head, which was probably how the Grays had justified theirs, millennia ago. I imagined the first time an ally betrayed me, it would be easy to justify keeping a close cloaked eye on their systems as well, instead of just a casual view from outside the systems.
It was a slippery slope. Yet… I was the president of a country, space station country, and it was absolutely necessary to keep an eye on our enemies.
Then there was the whole idea of cloaking twenty-seven million full sized dreadnought warships. I wasn’t all that comfortable with that idea either, but I told myself it was just the one time. We couldn’t afford to let them escape the seventy-six galaxies to establish a temporary empire and rebuild.
So easy to justify.
Lastly, I had concerns about Darrell, but to be fair to the A.I. most of that was in my mind. I was more than a little bit paranoid about the whole thing thanks to science fiction. So far, he’d been both a truthful and a respectful ally, and he was guarding my daughter’s life with vigilance. He was a bit too independent for my taste, but that wasn’t fair either, because all the humans I knew and in my life were damned independent as well.
He was his own being, and my ally, not a subordinate or slave, so I had to suck that worry up and try to get over it. What was it he’d said? Trust but verify.
It was those three worries in the back of my mind, while I distracted myself with trying to overcome the problems inherent in my implant without a base station idea for augmented reality.
Jayna walked into the command center with a grin on her face.
“You stirred up a shit storm, or I should say I did by sending all that data.”
I asked, “What happened?”
She said, “India, Mexico, Canada, Pakistan, Brazil, and the Philippines are all spitting mad. They didn’t know anything about any of that, and their experts verified the logs weren’t tampered with. They had no idea you advised against the attack this morning. They had no idea you were even working on upgrades, or that early AM this morning you were six hours away from having them. They had no idea you were lied to
and manipulated for the eight’s plan to blackmail the Vrok into surrendering.
“The other part of that is they’re all accusing the eight of having done the same thing to them. They blame the deaths of their ships and people on them, for holding back critical information for control. They’re accusing them of negligent manslaughter, and specifically Admiral Carter for that as well as gross negligence and incompetence, and they want to see him face court martial for it.
“It looks like the president’s wild lies to cover his ass just backfired in a very big way. It doesn’t matter if every Tom, Dick and Harry believe it, the other world leaders do.”
Jayna made a face, “On the bad side, the whole world is at each other’s throats right now, but we already have several orders from the other hundred and thirty-four colonies for replacement fleets. None of them are holding you accountable for the disastrous battle this morning as POTUS hoped.
“Except the eight of course. They’re all pissed you released classified information and made them look incompetent. They’re all trying to blame each other right now for the way it all fell out.”
I frowned, “How about the U.N. and the deal?”
Jayna said, “This new thing is distracting from that of course, for the moment, but I’d say it was in the bag, just give it a day or two for things to cool down. It’s a good plan, most of the world’s countries are solidly on your side and trust you to handle it and keep our territories in the seventy-six galaxies safe. The eight will have to go along with it, or look petty, even if they don’t, we’ll have the votes to get it passed.”
“Assuming they don’t veto out of spite,” I pointed out. Some of the eight were on the security council after all.
Jayna shook her head, “The possibility of that is small. As for the people, they’re split on the whole thing in those eight countries, but the other countries and leaders are solidly on your side where it counts, save the eight. It will be a rough ride at times, but there’s nothing new there either.”
“Thanks.”
I got back to work as Jayna left, but I wondered if this was one thing I’d never figure out. The Grays nanites just weren’t meant to implanted. It occurred to me that maybe I should just centralize where the quantum connections were, add the customer side voice and data phone as a small block of nanites on my end as part of the service. Then they’d only need the implant and not the phone.
Intergalactic Union Page 9
