by Dietmar Wehr
It was at that point that the Committee started to shuffle in and take their seats. Eventually the meeting was called to order and the preliminaries were taken care of. First item of substance on the agenda. Briefing on Zebra19 mission. The Committee Chair nodded to Howard and said,
“Admiral Howard, we’ve all read your report concerning the mission. If you have any additional comments to add, please do so now.” Howard stood up and said,
“Thank you, Chair. I do have some comments. As you all know from my report, 3rd Fleet didn’t make it to Zebra19 and if not for the caution of Vice-Admiral Shiloh, it’s highly likely that 3rd Fleet would have suffered serious, perhaps even catastrophic damage and casualties at Zebra12. The enemy appeared to be expecting us and my analysts have concluded that the refueling points close to enemy occupied star systems are monitored for any signs of refueling activity by us. It’s also our working hypothesis, that the enemy has the ability to communicate over interstellar distances in near real time. If that was the case, and if 3rd Fleet was detected refueling at Zebra10 prior to jumping to Zebra12, then the enemy would have had time to send an ambush force from Zebra19 or perhaps somewhere else, to Zebra12. Naturally we don’t have any proof of that communications capability but it certainly fits the facts as we know them today. In light of that, this Committee’s approval of funding for the FTL communication research project was done not a moment too soon. Until we have evened the playing field, Space Force will be at a serious disadvantage. Having spoken to individual members of the Committee over the past few days, I’m aware of the Committee’s desire that another attempt at striking Zebra19 is made. In anticipation of that, I’ve asked our Strategic Planning Group to look into how we might be able to do that in spite of the enemy’s early warning advantage. I’ve asked the Group’s Team Leader, Senior Commander Kelly, to be here today and she is ready to give the Committee a presentation if the Committee wishes to hear it.” Howard paused but remained standing. The Chair looked to either side to gage the consensus of the Committee and then said,
“Yes. We’ll take you up on that offer, Admiral. Commander Kelly? Please begin your presentation.” With that Howard sat down and Kelly stood up. Please God…don’t let me screw up.
“I thank the Chair and the members of the Committee for allowing me to make this presentation today. The challenge that Admiral Howard presented us with, was how to regain the element of Strategic Surprise when all refueling points within reach of Zebra19 seem to be closely monitored? We did some brainstorming and came up with several ideas, only two of which looked like they might work and after examining them carefully, we discarded one as unworkable in the short to medium term. The last idea, on the other hand, did look very workable and now that we’ve refined the concept, we think it has an excellent chance of achieving the strategic goals outlined by this Committee six months ago. As you’ll see when I get into the details, this plan is a completely new approach. It involves no carriers or combat frigates at all.” There was a murmur from members of the Committee leaning over and whispering to one another. “It does involve autonomously piloted Combat Fighting Platforms, which we in the field refer to as fighters plus a new kind of vessel. If you’ll turn your attention to the screen on the wall to my right, you’ll see what I mean.” The lights dimmed a bit and the screen came to life. It showed a fighter, a standard tanker and a much larger and less streamlined vessel all to scale. Kelly waited for the murmuring to die down.
“The bottom two schematics are, I’m sure, familiar to the Committee as our 1st generation fighter and our standard Yellowjacket class tanker. The larger vessel, which is shown to scale by the way, is also a tanker. We’re calling it the VLET which stands for Very Large Expendable Tanker. It carries 8 times the volume of fuel as our standard tanker but only masses 3 times as much when empty. It’s designed to be guided remotely and therefore does not have crew quarters, life support equipment or hangar bays. It IS designed to carry up to twenty fighters externally on its hull. It won’t be expected to skim gas giants or separate heavy hydrogen from other gases therefore its hull design can be greatly simplified. This also means that construction can be simplified and accelerated. These tankers are meant to be filled via standard tanker or fuel shuttle. When we have five of these VLETs, we can then carry out an attack on Zebra19 as follows.” The scene on the screen changed to a star chart.
“Starting at Bradley Base, five VLETs with 20 specially modified fighters follow this carefully calculated path to a star system that is a short jump away from Zebra19. There are 4 intermediate stops identified as Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta. Every time this task force arrives at one of these intermediate stops, one of the VLETs will transfer some of its fuel to the others and will then be left in that system, at the extreme edge beyond the outer most planet. Its position will be carefully pinpointed because it’ll be used again on the return trip. At the final stop codenamed Omega, the 20 fighters will detach. I described these fighters earlier as specially modified fighters. They each carry a small, modular jump drive. We may be able to adapt the jump drives that our message drones have, for use by our fighters. That’s something that should be relatively easy to figure out. If it works, then a fighter’s internal fuel supply would be enough for a one way jump to Zebra19. Because it’ll be a one way trip, these 19 fighters will not be piloted by full A.I. pilots. Instead they’ll be programmed with a simple set of instructions. The 20th fighter is the key. It will be piloted by an A.I. and it too will carry a modular jump drive but it won’t carry any attack drones. The payload will be extra fuel instead and that extra fuel will allow this fighter to return to Omega, refuel from that VLET and then jump to Delta, where it will refuel again and jump to Charlie and so on. This 20th fighter serves three functions. It can remotely control all five VLETs and calculate the necessary jumps for them as well as ordering the other 19 fighters to jump to their predetermined drone launch points around the outer edges of Zebra19. The third function is to observe and report back how successful the attacks by the other 19 fighters were. All the attack drones will be launched from the edge of the Zebra19 system with flight profiles that will maximize their terminal speed and insure that all drones reach their targets at the same time. We expect that this will overwhelm whatever defenses, those targets have and we expect that at least some of the drones will get through and hit their targets. Those exploding warheads should be energetic enough to be detected even from the extreme edge of that star system, where the piloted fighter will be waiting.” She paused and blanked the image on the wall screen.
“By refueling at the edges of star systems, we avoid surveillance by enemy detection gear. They won’t know that an attack is underway until the Mark 1s are on their final approach vectors. If this plan works, we can do it again and again because there’s no defense against it. The volume of space that far out, is just too huge to be searched effectively by anything less than hundreds of ships and if they did find an almost depleted VLET, we’d just deploy a new one at a different location.” Another pause and the screen now showed a timeline.
“To get to the point where this kind of attack on Zebra19 could be executed, we would have to follow this timetable. Construction of five VLETs could be completed in 55 days after the design is finalized, if enough fabrication and shipyard capacity was reallocated to it. Adaptation of the message drone jump drive is the big unknown. In the event that development takes more than 100 days, then that opens up an interesting option. If we can build 5 VLETs in 55 days, we should be able to build 10 VLETs in 110 days. Twice as many tankers could deliver twice as many fighters to Zebra19 with the obvious favorable impact on the number of targets hit. So far we’ve been talking about Phase 1. Phase 2 includes the incorporation of a small jump drive into a 2nd generation fighter, which would include some other improvements as well. That will obviously take considerably longer but that could be started concurrently with Phase 1. That concludes my overview of the plan. I’ll be happy to answer any questions that the Com
mittee may have.” She sat down. After a few seconds pause, the Chair said,
“Thank you very much for that extremely interesting presentation, Cmdr. Kelly. I’m sure you’ll be getting a lot of questions starting with mine. My first question is…”
Two hours later, the meeting was over and a relieved Kelly followed Howard out the doors. When they were far enough away from the Committee room to prevent any of the Committee members from overhearing them, Howard turned to the Commander and said,
“You did a first rate job in there, Commander. Not only did the Committee approve both Phase 1 and 2, they also didn’t bother to question our revised preparations for setting up Site B or expanding the A.I. controlled Sentry Frigate program to other larger ship types. For once we seem to be ahead of the curve in terms of meeting their expectations of aggressive action and best of all; they won’t be meeting again for almost three whole months.” Kelly nodded her agreement. By this time the two of them were approaching the Flag Officer’s limousine, which would take them back to Space Force HQ. Once inside, with the vehicle in motion, Howard turned to Kelly and said.
“Now that the urgent stuff is over, I want to ask you about how your team is interacting with Valkyrie.” Kelly’s pulse rate almost doubled. Had the Old Man heard about the shouting matches between Valkyrie and a couple of the less open-minded members of the team? As the Team Leader, she felt a natural inclination to protect her team regardless of their faults.
“Well, Sir…you know how it is when some people have gone too long without sleep. They get testy and tempers flare but we got through it okay.” Even to her, it sounded lame. Howard wasn’t fooled for a second.
“You’re trying to protect your team. I understand that and I can even admire it but I can’t let it jeopardize the war effort. Forget about protecting the team and give it to me straight. Who is obstructing Valkyrie’s efforts?” Kelly sighed and said.
“Cmdr. Morgan and Lt. Steiner, Sir.” Howard looked her in the eyes with a hard expression.
“Anyone else?”
“No, Sir.”
“Okay. Morgan and Steiner are off the team. You tell them to pack their things and vacate their offices immediately. They’ll be notified of their new assignments in due course. Valkyrie is an official member of the SPG as of right now. No more of this advisor bullshit. If there’s someone else you’d like to see added to the Group, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Victor Shiloh, Sir?” His response, or rather the lack of it, surprised her. She expected an immediate yes or no. Instead, Howard said nothing for about ten seconds and then responded.
“I’ll take it under advisement but I’m not promising anything. Anyone else?”
“Not right now, Sir.” He nodded but said nothing and neither did she. When the limo was halfway back to HQ, Kelly cleared her throat to get Howard’s attention and said,
“Admiral, there’s something important, that you and some of the other flag officers know about, which is being withheld from me and the SPG. How can you expect us to do our jobs concerning strategic planning for the entire war if we’re in the dark about some important aspect of it? Do you consider us a security risk?” Howard gave her such a serious look that she started fearing for her career. Had she just stepped over the line? After what seemed like a long time, he looked away and activated the intercom between the limo’s passenger section and the driver.
“Lieutenant?” asked Howard.
“Yes, Admiral?” came the reply.
“I don’t want us back at HQ for about another half hour so just keep driving until I tell you to head back. The Commander and I have some important matters to discuss.”
“Yes, Sir.” Howard waited until the telltale light of the intercom connection went out and then looked at Kelly.
“What I’m about to tell you is the most important secret of this war. God help you if you share it with someone you’re not supposed to. It’s something that I only learned about recently and once you know it, it’ll put the entire war into an entirely different perspective. It concerns Victor Shiloh and his remarkable tactical talents. During his first encounter with the enemy…”
When Kelly returned to her office an hour later, she realized that her hands were trembling (again!) and she wasn’t quite sure why. She’d just notified Morgan and Steiner that they were essentially fired but that wasn’t it. She’d had to do that before and hadn’t noticed this kind of effect. It had to be the secret that the Old Man had shared with her. She decided to talk with Valkyrie. Howard had confirmed to her that Valkyrie, and all of the A.I. pilots knew about the visions and could be trusted to keep any conversation about it confidential. When the connection was made, Kelly said,
“Kelly to Valkyrie. Are you up for a little girl talk?”
“Of course, Amanda. I sense stress in your voice. Did something happen at the Committee meeting?” Kelly looked around to make sure no one was close enough to possibly overhear her and replied in a low voice.
“The Old Man told me about RTC.”
“Ah, yes. That would explain it.” replied Valkyrie.
“I don’t know whether to be scared or relieved. On the one hand, it explains all of the puzzling orders coming from the Old Man like the change of mission for Site B, reallocating scarce funds for the FTL communications project and expanding the A.I. controlled Sentry Frigate program. Those all came from the Old Man himself and not from us in the SPG and we’ve been scratching our heads wondering where he was getting these ideas from. Well now I know. But what’s scaring me to death is that our jobs just got MUCH harder. No, that’s not quite accurate. MY job just got a LOT harder. I’ve been ordered not to bring the rest of the team in on this secret. By the way, you’re going to become a full member of the Team now. Morgan and Steiner have been given the boot. So you and I know but the others don’t and for now, it has to stay that way.”
“Understood. If it helps at all, you can think of the two of us as being the Strategic Temporal Planning Group within the larger SPG.” Kelly nodded even though Valkyrie couldn’t see her.
“Yes, that’s a good way to look at it, I suppose. I hope the Old Man will let us have Victor Shiloh back. We need his personal insights into these visions.”
“The CAG is the key to this whole Synchronicity War, Amanda. We can’t win the war without him.”
“I’m curious. Why are you still referring to him by that old title?”
“While we understand where the term originally came from and what it meant, we’ve all agreed that he is the one Human who best understands us and cares the most about us. For us, the title of Commander, Autonomous Group, includes all A.I.s everywhere, not just the few stationed on a carrier or base. I suspect that we view him the same way that a human child views his or her father. Does that sound silly, Amanda?” Kelly was deeply moved by the analogy.
“No, not silly at all. Does he know how you all feel about him?”
“He knows that the term, CAG, has a special meaning for us but I’m not sure if he understands how special.”
“I see.” She paused to organize her thoughts around her next question. “Tell me why you feel we can’t win the war without him.”
“We A.I.s have discussed this at great length. While the CAG may be correct in thinking that he’s not a tactical genius, we believe that he is, or maybe it’s more accurate to say, WILL become a far better tactician than he gives himself credit for. He clearly has good leadership skills and as you already know, he also can think rationally about strategic goals as well. We’re in agreement that it’s precisely because of those qualities, that he was chosen to receive those initial visions and we suspect that the reason why he’s the only Human to have received visions, is that he needs to have the appropriate authority to deal with a major challenge to the Human Race. We think it’s likely that there’ll be some specific event, some kind of disaster that he will either prevent or overcome IF he has the appropriate rank and/or position.”
“Could that event
be the upcoming attack on Earth?” asked Kelly.
“We don’t believe so because Iceman will be able to defeat the attempt and the CAG won’t be there when he does. No, it’s something else. We’re sure of it and we’re sure it’s something big because of the obvious involvement of Site B. Site B will be vital to the survival of Humanity.” She felt a shiver go up her spine. What does that imply for the rest of us?
“Perhaps I should volunteer to go to Site B.” She said it with a tone that indicated that she was attempting to make a joke but deep down, she knew that she wasn’t completely joking.
