The Petrovski Effect: A Tess Novel

by Randy Moffat

  Bear cocked his head and sought a distraction.

  “Even ELF—Extremely Long Frequencies or something similar?”

  Dyer shook his head.

  “Way old news . . . Subs are difficult. ELF is still secure and works through water well enough, but it’s too damn slow to be of use in operations of this kind. It’s an over simplification but essentially one wavelength equals one bit of information. With the miles long wavelength ELF uses and despite some amplitude and noise tricks we know it takes almost an hour to send a paragraph. Worse . . . it isn’t very good for two way communications—To be frank, we have done away with it. The battlefield problem today is that linking ground, sea and air force applications to real time intelligence means we have to communicate many times in an hour—even many times in a minute. For that kind of work you need regular frequency ranges or something just as flexible. LASER systems are OK too, as far as they go, but they require the submarine to raise its mast to send a microburst—which is what I am talking about . . . break the surface and Bam! They see you. If they see you then you are targeted.”

  Dyer looked around. No one looked too lost so he drove on quickly.

  “Bottom line is that we need something radically new; something technologically very superior and completely off the opposing forces tech map—I have sold the idea to Big Brother of seeing if the method will be to develop something so far out of the box that it leverages quantum effects . . . which leads us to Paragraph two of this operational order.: This team is now designated Team ‘Quantum-Kink or . . . simply Q-Kink.’” A slightly satisfied upturn of his lips stopped short of a smirk, but acknowledged Bear’s unintended authorship of the team’s name. “The Mission statement of Team Q-Kink is to proceed at the location of its choice that best supports its plans and as of this date and time to attempt to develop a model, test a model, improve the model and then finalize a communications system that utilizes quantum effects to provide ultra-fast two way communications, through most mediums, especially water, between elements of the fleet over the horizon. Later we can worry about other services. You need to finish initial phases within 12 months and all phases within 30 months from now. In short, get the damn thing into production and in the fleet in just under three years . . . oh . . . by the way . . . it has to fit in a submarine without taking up the whole damn boat . . .”

  Dyer paused for air, looking around in a challenging fashion but there was still no comment about who, what, when and where. He raised an eyebrow and drove on.

  “Paragraph three—Scheme . . . This will be a four phase operation. The first phase will be research and development and should last about 12 months. If you cannot give me a thumbs up, or a real hope of one by the end of this phase the operation will be scrapped and the team disbanded. If you give me a green light instead we go on to phase two. The second phase will be model planning, construction, testing, and fine tuning—call it another six months plus or minus. Phase three will be development of standard models robust enough to withstand the GI test and extremes of operating conditions; another six months. Phase four is fielding to the fleet and training the fleet to use it over a year or two. My intent is that you will assemble your team and run Phase One in its entirety without any outside agencies. If your plan seems feasible, then Q-Kink Team will also lead Phase Two until more players are needed sometime close to the end of phase two—the stop point will be a demonstration of working capability where we will have to obviously and understandably bring in a bunch more players and brief them. Phase 3 means I bring in a leader of flag rank who will be appointed at that time to influence command structures and the congress around mass production and money. Team Q-Kink then will become technical advisors to that officer during this phase. Phase 4 will obviously be production and fleet issue. The end state of the operation will be a fully operational system that allows the fleet, but especially submarines to perform real time communications worldwide with using a system that does not force surface use and cannot be intercepted.”

  Dyer looked around. Wong was stroking his chin inscrutably. O’Hara’s look hung a little between awe and worry with pretty creases between her eyebrows. Bear played with the haft of his pen thoughtfully, holding it rather like a spear, his best imitation of an Inuit crouched by a seal’s breathing hole in the ice, willing to wait hours for the single heartbeat needed to strike and therefore to eat. He would not move until the right moment and it had not arrived.

  Dyer grinned crookedly, his reward to the room for quiet instead of questions. He moved on.

  “Paragraph four—Logistics . . . undefined at this time . . . not knowing what you need I cannot tell you what you have, but all governmental materials and supplies are of course available with an A plus priority. You will have carte blanch to purchase from the civilian sector at your discretion.” He glanced at O’Hara and addressed her directly. “This is intended to be a small team; you will have to handle logistics and supply as well as the money, are you up to that Ms. O’Hara?”

  O’Hara considered and then answered in a way that endeared her to the Admiral and Bear at the same time.

  “What does unlimited mean exactly?”

  Dyer poked out his lower lip.

  “Let’s call it ten million bucks to start—more later when cleared with me . . . that includes admin costs of course.” He looked significantly at Bear as if to say, ‘buy whoever you please and hurry up about it.’ He went on from the verbosity of this body language. “Within the bounds of moderation, this is not primarily about resources. I am giving you a problem to solve. Solve it!”

  It wasn’t much time, but Bear was damned if he would obfuscate about a dream assignment. Bear inclined his head fractionally in acknowledgement if not agreement.

  Dyer repeated his question to the Maureen.

  “You up to this, O’Hara?” The admiral barked.

  She jerked slightly in her chair as if goosed.

  “Yes! Sorry! I am up to it.” She said positively.

  Dyer nodded.

  “Paragraph five . . .” He said. “Command and signal—I am in overall command on this, but don’t look for much from me. This is only one of twenty separate projects I am working on or handling. This one is currently my seventeenth priority out of the twenty. Your direct project leadership from this point on is Mr. MacMoran here who reports to me. Commander Wong is second in command/XO.” He looked at Bear “Report in person to me once every two weeks or so, whatever the timetable will allow . . . but don’t repeat yourself . . . you got nothing to say, just say ‘Nothing further to report!”. You can reach me here at Redstone through secure net . . .” He rubbed his jaw. “OK. Thus ends my very military 5 paragraph pontification—what are your real questions?”

  He looked around expectantly.

  Bear grinned broadly, it was the cleanest and most succinct direction he had ever received from leadership . . . it also gave him the most freedom of action he had ever had in his professional life. He was dammed if he was going to tinker with it so he zipped his mouth firmly shut. His team looked at him and when he did not speak they remained silent too which spoke volumes about how well they would work together. Bear got grateful with his eyes.

  Bear stood up, a signal that Team Q-Kink had all they needed and they all followed suit so Admiral Dyer stood too.

  Bear grinned and him and stuck out his hand.

  “We had better get to work . . . I hear we are in a hurry. Can we use the room for a while?”

  Dyer returned the smile crookedly. Bear thought that once again he was secretly pleased that he did not have to babble on . . . a load was off his back and the yoke with the Q Kink milk pails had now clearly been settled on Bear’s shoulders with only a verbal shrug. Dyer shook Bear’s hand firmly. There was something of the air of a man handing out the blindfolds at a firing squad in the squeeze, but the Admiral’s eyes were bright with amused interest
and Bear smiled lightly back to hide any hint of inner terror.

  “You have the room for two more hours.” Dyer said, turned and left without a word.

  Bear looked at O’Hara and Wong with some satisfaction clapping his hands and rubbing them together in satisfaction. He had good confidence in Wong, and O’Hara had just shown herself to be savvy if untested.

  “OK, you both heard it teammates.” He began. “All we have to do is lasso, break, and harness a complete mystery of science in a few months . . . piece of cake! Here is my rough outline of an initial plan. One—Wong starts working a location for Team Q-Kink to work from. I want something that can be made secure fast. Check present and old government locations . . . I leave it to you to see what’s available, but give us someplace that we will have privacy to play around with the outer edges of known reality. You need to know I may be hiring academic guys or gals that are not used to military discomfort so we will be throwing some money into a quick fix-up of the facilities and I want a free hand with no interference by local minor power brokers . . . guys who own the base or facility and want to argue over my disconnecting the water line from their sinks or some crap like that. In short, we want privacy. We will also need good and expandable power, good electrical wiring, good water and lots of room to grow in unforeseen directions based on our research. Also think about feeding, secure net and transport access while you aren’t too busy. Check?”

  “Check.” Was all Wong said—Questions could come later.

  Bear grinned. He appreciating what Dyer saw in confident subordinates.

  “You have three days to give me a short list of three or four best choices and we will recon the terrain together fast and ugly. Once we choose the locale, it will be O’Hara’s job to get the rights squared away that will let us abuse the hell out of it. OK?”

  Both nodded back at him, busily sketching notes in cell phones.

  “Next, O’Hara . . . Get our budget under your personal control. I want you able to write a check in three days time. Second, supplies . . . start by gathering your materials. Since we have no idea what we will need , I will need access to lists of everything—everything that the government has to offer and start thinking about what strings will have to be pulled to get our hands on them fast. I define fast as a couple of days. Third, find a personnel expert and a lawyer to support us from outside the team—they will not have a need to know everything about us or the mission, just get them for generic support around pay, contracts and garbage like that . . . Some of team Q-Kink will probably be civilians and hiring them might get muddy and require fast contracts that meet government standards only if you do not look too closely. HUA?”

  “HUA!” She replied automatically using the ubiquitous grunted acronym meaning ‘heard, understood, and acknowledged’ that had entered the military vernacular as every part of speech.

  “Great!” He glanced at his watch. “That will be the work for the next three days. We meet here at 1500 three days from now. O’Hara . . . please arrange for this room.”

  Wong was all military and stood without asking. Given a direction he was quivering to launch like a missile whose button had been pushed. O’Hara was younger though, a civilian and still asked the occasionally surprising question.

  “Where will you be?”

  “Me?” Bear grunted, noticing without acknowledging Wong’s scandalized look. “I am going out and see about gathering us up some geeks. Q-kink incorporated is hiring.” He rose and led the modest stampede out.

  CHAPTER 2—A WHOLE IN THE GROUND

  Three days after their initial meeting Bear and Wong were on a plane headed west.

  “Where are we going again?” Bear asked tiredly, he had been on the move constantly for 70 hours.

  “North!” Wong said, trying not to giggle—failing.

  Bear waved his hand looking over his shoulder at the flight crew manning the drink cart, making the ‘again’ symbol.

  Wong raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  “I’m dealing with personal demons.” Bear explained

  “Oh.” Wong said sympathetically. “What are they?”

  “Mine has beady eyes and a gleeful expression; in short, I’ve got an asshole for a deputy.”

  Wong chuckled into his palm in an Asian gesture and slouched back into his seat with a grin—his black eyes bright under naturally large epicanthic folds which puckered nicely as he smiled.

  “OK.” He said lowering his voice to a near whisper to keep it from fellow passengers. “First stop is Sugar Grove Naval Communications Center is in West Virginia. I don’t think the facilities there are as open and available like the second two, but as a location for naval communications testing it should be great. Lots of communications experts in the vicinity and it squats nominally in the center of the national radio quiet zone so it’s probably the best testing range for radio we have—if radio is any part of what we come up with. Second stop is Boron, California. Used to be an air station, and then was a prison for the state . . . it’s out in the sticks—well hidden. Nothing out there now but creosote bushes and sand for miles. It’s totally abandoned but has lots of room for experiments and no one will care much what we do with the facilities I think.”

  “And the third?”

  “Third is in Anglewood, Kansas—a really interesting location that one.”

  “How so?” Bear asked.

  “It’s a surprise! Wait’ll you see it.”

  Bear glared at him for a minute then turned after the departing drink cart and waved a few fingers at the retreating panty line of the flight attendant.

  “Miss!” he called.

  Wong laughed behind his fingers again with what Bear interpreted as a bit of the mania. Bear ordered two more gin and tonics to console himself and bring on some sleep.

  Two days later both men were visibly drooping in a rental car from Kansas City airport with Wong driving northbound along the Mississippi River headed for Anglewood. Wong had taken to singing to keep himself awake. He was yodeling “One flight up with a dirty blond named Aleuette . . .” and Bear suspected that he was a half octave off note and in the wrong key, but his musical theory was too weak to define either. It did not matter; the metallic grating of his XO’s singing might just as well have been static between his own dulled ears. Wong stopped.

  “What do you think so far?” Wong asked.

  “I think your singing is both mellifluous and malodorous. A neat feat that!”

  “Never mind the tunes . . . what about the real estate so far?” Wong asked.

  Bear rubbed his chin and then his red eyes.

  “You were right about Sugar Grove . . . an interesting place. I am glad you took me there; mostly because I intend to try and steal some folks from their staff for project-Kink as soon as I can. Overall though it was completely the wrong atmosphere for what I want to accomplish. The team I am working on building up needs to think totally outside any box that’s ever been built. Sugar Grove is a doghouse full of hidebound assholes—cheek to cheek and chock full of naval bureaucrats who have to be dress right dress with their bosses and their budgets. I haven’t got the time or energy to overcome that kind of mental inertia. As for Boron . . . it is OK for an empty hole in the dessert. It’s close to Edwards Air Force Base but the thing is a little too isolated for my tastes—especially because it is so far from the rail and air networks. Worse, whoever is currently spying on Edwards will end up spying on us . . . What’s the deal with this Anglewood?”

  “I can’t just blurt it out . . . not with us being so close to it!”

  “Yes you can . . . because if you don’t I’m going to smack you on the back of the head . . . not that anyone will notice a concussion or two on your uneven mental measurements!”