by Dietmar Wehr
With that out of the way, he checked to see if any of his crew were still nearby and was surprised to find that Chenko was at Space Force HQ. He arranged for her to get a message asking her to meet him over lunch. When she arrived at his table in the Officers Dining Room, the first thing she said was.
“I heard they relieved you of command of the 344! Why did they do that?” Shiloh shook his head.
“They offered me the Sentinel just like you heard and I turned it down. That’s why.” Chenko reacted with uncharacteristic shock.
“You did what?”
“Yup. I turned it down. I’m not the right man for that command. Howard and everyone else seem to think I’m some kind of tactical genius and I’m not.” Now Chenko was clearly angry.
“Well you’re certainly better at it than most of us. Now they’ll assign someone who isn’t half as good to the Sentinel and he or she will probably screw up royally! For Christ sake, Shiloh, how can you be so selfish?” Chenko’s use of his surname for the first time surprised him. She was clearly upset.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Svetlana. You’ve learned to trust my judgment during our deployment on the 344. I’m asking you to trust my judgment one more time.” Chenko said nothing and looked away, clearly still unhappy. After a few seconds, Shiloh tried to change the subject.
“Do you know who will take over command of the 344?” Chenko sighed.
“Yes….I will. Temporary promotion to Commander until further notice. Unofficially I’ve been told that if I don’t screw up during the next deployment, the promotion will become permanent.” Shiloh nodded.
“Good for you, Svetlana! You’ll make a fine CO.” She gave him a small smile in acknowledgement of his compliment.
“Thank you, Sir. Do you know where you’ll be assigned to?” Shiloh told her about the AWDT Base. She nodded.
“Well, I suppose if you’re not going to be commanding a combat ship, then helping with weapons development is the next best thing. Good luck with that, Sir.”
“You too, Svetlana.” She nodded once again then turned and walked away. Shiloh spent the next 36 hours doing things that would make the time go faster. He had difficulty getting to sleep that night, wondering if he had done the right thing. He was no closer to figuring out an answer to the mystery of his visions than he was before. What began to really bother him, was the question of why his visions were only showing his confirmation of favorable decisions when his actions would have been different if he hadn’t had those visions. Which came first, the actions or the visions? It seemed as though the visions were coming first but that made no sense because the visions were of future events, that depended on him taking the right actions. How could an effect precede the cause? It would have made far more sense if he had the visions AFTER deciding to take those actions because then the visions would be confirmation of something that he was going to do anyway but in each case, his decision to take the correct action happened after his vision. Thinking about it eventually gave him a headache.
When it was time to board the shuttle that would take him to the transport ship, Shiloh was resigned to his course of action. If he’d made a mistake, then he just had to find a way to make the best of it. The trip to the Alpha Base in Epsilon Eridani, took almost three days and transport ships weren’t known for their comfortable accommodations. As it turned out, the accommodations at the Base were even worse since the Base itself was so new, parts of it were still under construction. Naturally, those parts included living quarters for the base personnel. Until they were completed, Shiloh and most of the others assigned there, had to sleep wherever they could find enough space and had to be content with emergency rations until the kitchen and mess hall were completed. It took a bit of pushing but Shiloh eventually found out what his assignment was. He was the Weapons Development Board Liaison to the Base, which was a totally unnecessary position as far as he could tell. The WDB didn’t need a liaison to the AWDT Base because the Base Commander and the Project Leader both reported directly to the WDB anyway. The Liaison position was clearly intended by Admiral Howard to punish Shiloh for his perceived lack of fighting spirit.
With literally nothing to do, Shiloh made up his mind to make himself useful in any way he could. When enough of the other technical and engineering staff had arrived to allow actual work to begin, Shiloh made sure he sat in on all meetings. One thing became clear very quickly, that Shiloh wasn’t expecting. The Alpha Base wasn’t going to be doing basic design and prototype construction. That was being done closer to Earth. What the Alpha Base would do was to take prototypes already built and test them as much as possible under simulated field conditions to assess equipment reliability and then figure out the most efficient way to mass produce the resulting production versions. Once that had been figured out, other facilities in the Epsilon Eridani system, would become the production centers for those weapons. The first weapon system that the AWDT base would work on, was the modified version of the AFP Autonomous Fighting Platform. Base Commander Korolev had been right. The concept had changed. With the original concept being a small AI controlled drone, that would be used for long duration patrols and long range combat operations, supplemented by larger, human piloted gunboats, someone had suggested the obvious which was to build one common platform, that was highly modular and could be configured either as an unmanned drone or, with the proper modules attached, as a manned vehicle. While the advantages of using a common basic vehicle were obvious, there were some disadvantages as well. In order to be able to carry a human crew, the vehicle had to be larger than the original drone concept, which meant that the new ships wouldn’t be able to carry as many of them as planned. To offset that, it was pointed out that the larger vehicle could not only carry a powerful enough laser to actually be a threat to enemy ships, but could also at the same time carry an impressive load of smaller recon, message or attack drones as well.
It took almost a month after his arrival, before the first prototype was delivered for testing. The testing program was a compromise between being thorough and fast. A thorough program would have taken up to a year or more but Space Force Brass decided that was way too long so the risk of technical glitches was considered acceptable in order to get the thing into the field as fast as possible. That was fine when they were testing the prototype in its autonomous configuration because any technical glitch would not put any human at risk but eventually they had to test it with humans on board and in control. The test pilots assigned to that duty weren’t happy with the simplified testing program, which they considered reckless and rightly so in Shiloh’s opinion.
When a test of the vehicle’s crew module almost resulted in the death of its test pilot due to a failure in the life support system, the test pilots refused to participate in any more tests until the crew module had undergone hundreds of hours of additional simulated field tests. Shiloh had a gut feeling that they couldn’t afford that much additional time. It wasn’t a vision, just a nagging suspicion that wouldn’t go away so he volunteered to pilot the prototype during human-controlled tests as planned. Those tests and their preparations, kept him so busy that time flew by. When the testing program was completed, Shiloh was surprised to learn that he’d been there almost four months. By then , the project to mass produce the upgraded production version was well under way. Normal practice was for the first few production models to be tested as well to make certain that they were being built to the required standard but just as the first production model Configurable Fighting Platform, as they were now known, came off the production line, Shiloh and the rest of the base personnel heard the bad news.
Chapter 12 - One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
After regrouping, the Space Force Command Staff had decided to try to engineer another ambush using the same tactic that Shiloh had used in Tango Delta 6. The ambush had backfired badly. In fact, it looked as though, the alien’s had set their own ambush. How they had managed that, no one knew but the result was that the Space Force had l
ost two full squadrons of frigates, including the new Sentinel. The message carrying the news, didn’t identify which other frigates were lost and Shiloh wondered if the 344 was among those lost. There was another surprise message in the same data transmission. Admiral Howard wanted Shiloh back on Earth to be reassigned. It appeared that his exile was over. He arrived back on Earth five days later and found himself back in Howard’s office the next morning.
After entering, Shiloh saluted and Howard reciprocated then gestured to the chair facing his desk. When Shiloh sat down, Howard leaned back and started speaking in a slow voice.
“When you successfully pulled off the makeshift ambush, I was sure that you had the skill and instincts we needed to win this war. Then when you refused command of the Sentinel, I thought you’d lost your nerve. That made me angry. So angry in fact that I made up my mind that I was going to prevent you from ever having a command again. I was going to make sure that you were given one useless assignment after another until you either resigned or retired. I realize now that I was being unfair. By stepping up to pilot the untested manned version of the CFP, your performance at Alpha Base showed me that you hadn’t lost your nerve. I still don’t understand the real reason why you turned down the Sentinel but I’m prepared to admit that my negative assessment and treatment of you was unfair and unprofessional of me. For that, I apologize.” Shiloh didn’t really know what to say to that so he just said,
“Thank you, Sir.” Howard nodded.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about giving you a useful assignment. With the time you’ve spent piloting the CFP prototypes, you’ve racked up more flight hours than anyone else. That makes you the closest thing to an expert on operational use of CFPs, that we have. We’ll soon have enough production models available to consider using them in the field. I’d like to hear your thoughts on how you think we should do that.” Shiloh wasn’t surprised by the question. He’d had lots of time to consider the answer to that question on his way back to Earth.
“Well, Sir, I have some ideas but it would help me if I knew where we stand now strategically.” Howard nodded.
“Fair enough. You know about the debacle at Tango Delta 5?”
“I heard the results of the battle but no details of the battle itself, Sir.”
“Okay. We sent a task force composed of a Command ship, three support ships, six tankers, and four frigate squadrons to TD5. The plan was to send two frigates to the vicinity of a gas giant, that previous reconnaissance had determined contained alien surveillance gear. We figured that sooner or later, the aliens would show up to check the activity recorded by their robotic station, and they would detect our two frigates while at the same time, we would detect their presence and order the frigates to microjump back to the vicinity of the Task Force. What we didn’t count on, was that the aliens were already in that star system in force and they had put their own bait in place. That bait amounted to 8 of their ships, orbiting the gas giant. Task Force Commander Mbutu took the bait and ordered three frigate squadrons, which included the Sentinel, to microjump to the gas giant. He was aboard her when the Task Force split up. As soon as the microjump was complete, 32 more alien ships also microjumped into the battle area. The odds against him were 5 enemy ships for every 3 of his. With that many ships on each side providing radar data, laser fire accuracy was as close to 100% as is realistically possible but as you know, the enemy had more powerful lasers. Our ships started dying faster than theirs. Sentinel was destroyed within seconds, taking Mbutu with her. His deputy leader had enough presence of mind to order the rest of the force to microjump away while also ordering the rest of the Task Force to rendezvous back at TD3. The microjump by the frigates was only partially successful. Because the alien’s ability to detect ships leaving jumpspace, they were able to pinpoint where the survivors jumped to and followed them. In hindsight, they should have jumped far away even if that took a while due to the slower speeds they were moving at during the battle. When the survivors were caught again, the Acting Task Force Leader realized his mistake and ordered another, much longer microjump. That prevented further pursuit but by then only six out of the original 24 frigates, were still able to microjump away. We have to assume that the rest were destroyed either by the aliens themselves or by our own crews to avoid capture. That defeat has rocked us back on our heels. We’ve lost so many frigates that our forward bases, particularly Bradley, are now considered at risk. On the plus side, two more Sentinel-class frigates are very close to completion which means they’ll be operational in roughly a month. Six more are also within a couple of months of completion. The first long range scout ship will also be ready in a month’s time. Construction has also started on the first two Heavy Cruisers and the first CFP Carrier. And as you probably know already, CFP production will be ramping up gradually to a projected rate of one a day three months from now. That’s where we are now, Commander.”
“Thank you, Sir. May I ask what we’ve learned about the alien debris so far and also on the status of the jump detection project?”
“Unfortunately, the debris analysis hasn’t revealed anything really useful. Their technology seems to be more or less on a par with ours. None of the debris came from their weapons so we can’t analyze those. The jump detection project has made some useful progress. They’re testing some equipment that they think will give approximate location data on ships that have just emerged from jumpspace. The effective range is estimated to be 3 light minutes but accuracy drops off dramatically the further away the emerging ship is. Arrangements are being made to include the first field versions in the Sentinel class of frigates and long range scout ships as they’re completed. Do you have any other questions, Commander?”
“Just one more, Sir. Have our recon tankers found any more star systems with an alien presence?” Howard frowned.
“No…and the tanker that we sent out, after Gnat’s successful mission, never returned. We have no idea what happened to her. With the loss of most of our tanker fleet at Zebra 9, we couldn’t afford to risk any of the remaining tankers. We’ll resume long range scouting as soon as the new long range scouts come out of the shipyards. Anything else?”
“No Sir. Thank you for that update, Sir.” Shiloh paused to organize his thoughts. The aliens were moving inexorably closer to the Bradley Base and to Earth and the Space Force knew just as little about which star systems the aliens occupied as they did after the ambush at DT6. They seemed to be very aggressive in their efforts to learn as much about Human Space as possible. Keeping them from learning more had to be a high priority but the new weapons systems, and especially the CFPs, needed to be tested under realistic conditions to see if they performed as expected. So while stopping the aliens’ advance pointed to a defensive strategy, gaining operational experience with the new systems required a more aggressive approach.
“Well, Sir, I want to first say that the time I spent observing and testing the CFP prototypes was a useful experience. We learned some things that hadn’t been considered yet. For example, if more than one CFP is operating autonomously in an otherwise uninhabited star system, on some kind of sentry patrol let’s say, and alien ships shows up, what criteria do the AI’s controlling those vehicles use to determine what their reaction should be? Does one AI made a decision on behalf of the group? Or do they react individually depending on their relative positions to each other and to the aliens? One approach will be best under some circumstances while the other approach would be better under other circumstances. There are other considerations as well. There wasn’t time to do long term field tests. So we don’t know how mechanically reliable the production CFPs will be after they’ve been operating autonomously for months at a time. It’s considerations like that, that have me in a quandary. I recognize and understand the need to prevent the aliens from advancing further into our space. We need to deny them as much information about us as possible, while at the same time, learn as much about them as possible. Having said that, fie
ld testing our new ships, weapons and other systems, might be crucial to victory in the long run. With the CFP carrier at least a year away from being operational, our ability to concentrate a large CFP force will be limited and I can’t help thinking that CFPs won’t realize their full potential until they are used in large numbers. What I would hate to see is that they’re used in small groups as a way of stretching our limited number of frigates. I think that would be a grave mistake. With that in mind, I think the best use we could make now, of the limited number of CFPs that we’re going to have available in the near term, will be to assign them the base defense role at the Bradley Base. I’d recommend using them to accomplish the following objectives. First, if the jump detection gear can be made so that it can be loaded as a module, then we can use a small number of CFPS as jump detection pickets to extend coverage but also to increase accuracy by combining data from multiple platforms. Second, they would carry a mixed load of recon and weapon drones so that we’d have the option of tracking the alien ships without giving away the location of our own ships or platforms. Third, we’d have to arrange for communications between the Base and the CFPs so that their AIs can be instructed on the best way to coordinate any response to the alien incursion, without also tipping the aliens off to the presence of the CFPs. As far as the CFPs directly attacking the alien ships with modular lasers, I would recommend doing that only as a last resort. The longer we can keep the aliens in the dark about our CFPs, the better. Essentially what I’m suggesting is that, the system containing, Bradley Base become our line in the sand that we keep them from crossing. While we’re keeping their attention focused on that line in the sand, our long range scout ships will be trying to find their bases and inhabited planets, by jumping into unexplored star systems far away from any planets, to avoid jump detection, and then, if necessary, maneuvering deeper into the systems to get better data or refuel. When we find one of their bases or planets, then we can switch from a defensive strategy to an offensive one and take back the initiative.” Howard didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
