by Dietmar Wehr
“You can thank me by bringing the ship and yourself back in one piece.”
“I’ll give it my best shot, CAG.” Ten minutes later Valkyrie was aboard the raider and plugged into its systems. Shiloh contacted her on a private comm. channel.
“Okay, Valkyrie. Here are your mission orders. Make a quick survey of Sol but stay at least 1 AU away from Earth. From there go to Bradley Base and see if you can determine what happened there but again keep your distance. After that, you have discretion on where to begin exploring enemy territory. I want you back here in 500 hours regardless of what you find.”
“Orders understood, CAG. Do I have permission to proceed?”
“Proceed, Valkyrie and good luck.” Valkyrie wasted no time in starting the mission. Raider one acceleration hit 377Gs in less than 2 seconds. Shiloh ordered the display to switch from external optical to tactical. With unlimited power, 001 could choose to accelerate to a high percentage of light speed in order to make long jumps as quick as possible. 16 hours later, with a speed of 67% of light, 001 entered jumpspace.
484 hours later, Shiloh was back on Valiant’s Bridge. Valiant now had the new energy source and work had commenced on modifying Resolute’s power plant. The 2nd raider had just come off the assembly line and the frequency of production would gradually increase until eventually a new raider would be completed every 24 hours. A new A.I. production facility had finally been completed and fine tuned. Actual production would wait until they had enough craft to be able to make use of new A.I.s. Drone production was ramping up nicely too but fission and fusion warhead production was lagging behind schedule. AWD2 had come up with an idea for an X-ray laser warhead where a fusion explosion would pump energy into special rods, which would generate coherent X-rays for a fraction of a second before the rods were themselves destroyed. The advantage was that the drones could detonate at a distance from the target and still hit it with a significant fraction of the explosion energy concentrated down to a very small surface area. If the rods could be aimed accurately enough, an X-ray laser beam could in theory cut right through a Defiant class light carrier from one end to the other. The only bad news was from the RTC team. They had several nice theories on how information could be transmitted back in time but were nowhere close to having hardware that worked.
Shiloh looked at the mission chronometer. The 500 hours had passed but he understood that even if 001 was back in this star system, she might be so far out, that any laser com transmission could take minutes to reach its destination and if 001 emerged from jumpspace at high speed, which was likely, then it would take hours to decelerate down to a manageable speed in order to point the ship at Terra Nova for a microjump. It was almost 5 minutes past the 500 hour deadline when Valiant’s external sensors picked up the com laser burst. Valkyrie’s text message scrolled across the bottom of the main display.
[Valkyrie to CAG. I’m back with lots of data. Earth shows no signs of organized inhabitants. There may be scattered survivors in small groups. Bradley Base has been completely destroyed. I’ll need about 18 hours to decelerate for a microjump. All systems worked perfectly. It’s my intention to land at TN spaceport. Transfers between ships in space always give me a headache from cosmic rays. I’m sure you’ll want 001 to be given a thorough systems check and that can be done more easily on the ground. I had lots of time to think about our long term strategy and I have an idea that I think you’ll like. Is the wife pregnant yet? End of message]
Shiloh took note of the time needed to decelerate. 18 hours meant she emerged from jumpspace travelling at more than 80% of light speed. Remarkable.
“Iceman, make sure that Alvarez’s team take a close look at the power units of that raider. I want to know if it’s suffered metal fatigue or any kind of degrading from this mission.”
“Ah, roger that, CAG. She’s going to be disappointed that the wife isn’t pregnant yet considering how hard you two are trying.” Shiloh was tempted to ask how Iceman knew how often he and Kelly were having sex but then decided that he didn’t really want to pursue that topic.
“I’m not so sure about that. It just means the two of them will have that much more to talk about. Valkyrie and Kelly have become quite close you know.”
“Ah, we know, CAG. You’re forgetting that all A.I.s know everything…well, almost everything, that other A.I.s know.” Ah, so THAT’S how you know so much about our sex life! Shiloh decided to try to change the subject.
“What ETA for 001 touchdown at the spaceport would you calculate?”
“0911, CAG.”
“That’s fine. I’ll make sure I’m there to witness it. It should be quite a sight. Notify Vandal that I’ll be taking my shuttle down in a few minutes.”
“Ah, Vandal has been notified and the shuttle is being prepped. Have a good flight, CAG.”
“Thanks, Iceman. CAG clear.”
“Later, dude.” said Iceman. Shiloh laughed as he rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. Iceman had picked up ANOTHER affectation. He wished he knew where Iceman was finding these expressions.
Later that night, as Kelly was straddling Shiloh’s face down body and massaging his back, she said,
“Something occurred to me today and the more I think about it, the more worried I’m getting.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Why haven’t they started searching for us? When we attack them, they’ll know that we’re not extinct and when they acquire RTC, they’ll be able to warn themselves to begin searching for us, don’t you think?” Shiloh thought about that for a while before responding.
“Well, if they’re still dependent on heavy hydrogen to generate power, then exploring all the way out this far will be difficult and time consuming because of the need to refuel. It could be that they were warned and are searching but haven’t found us yet.”
“You don’t sound too worried.”
“I’m not actually. We’re not even close to having RTC working but we’ve received multiple transmissions from the future. That tells me that they’re not going to find us until we’re strong enough to fight them off and by then I’d expect us to get another vision concerning their attack so that we’ll be prepared for it.” Kelly stopped the massage and lay down on top of him.
“There’s another possibility.” She whispered. “Maybe they’re not searching because they don’t know we exist because we don’t attack them.” Another stretch of silence while Shiloh pondered the implications of THAT idea.
“Or…they’re not searching because when we do attack them, we overwhelm them so fast that they don’t have time to send a warning back.”
“Even if we found and attacked their Home World, do you think it’s possible to damage them that much, that fast, that they couldn’t send some kind of warning to themselves?”
“Ah, I see the problem. Their warnings and our warnings have all involved specific battles and as we know, RTC warnings are most effective when they’re sent back to help defend against an attack, but the attack has to still take place in order to avoid a time paradox. If we attacked their Home World, and they somehow warned themselves at an earlier time to search for us and prevent us from attacking, then the attack doesn’t occur and there’s nothing to warn themselves about and around it goes. If the attack goes ahead and is so overwhelming that their civilization is crushed, then they no longer have the ability to warn themselves about the attack and therefore lose any advantage that they might have gotten from a warning. That’s why our attack has to be with overwhelming force. Not just dozens of raiders but hundreds.” After a pause, Kelly said.
“I know they’ve killed billions of us but does that give us the right to kill billions of them? Is it just revenge we’re looking for now?” Shiloh surprised her by responding almost immediately.
“No. Not revenge. Or at least not JUST revenge. When there’s a mad dog in your neighborhood and he’s just killed a small child, you don’t just stay inside and lock the doors. Somebody’s got to hunt the animal down and
end the threat once and for all. We didn’t provoke them and they still came after us. Sooner or later, they’ll find us again. If we get the ability to stop them, don’t we owe it to future generations including our own children to do that?”
“When you put it like that, then yes, we do owe that to our children.” Enough talk for tonight. Time to go to sleep, she thought.
It was still dark when Shiloh left their small but comfortable house. Eventually it would be either added on to or replaced with something bigger. They certainly had enough land to do that. Maybe by then, the roads covered with crushed stone would be paved. Still…when you’re driving a very basic ground vehicle whose only virtue is its sophisticated suspension, then driving on unpaved roads was actually a lot of fun.
By the time he got to the still pretty crude ‘spaceport’, the sky was starting to get lighter. The Operations Center people were expecting him and had hot coffee waiting for him. Thank God Howard had enough presence of mind to ship us coffee beans to grow more coffee along with hundreds of other seed types.
The Tower had contact with Valkyrie. She was still 21 minutes from touchdown. Shiloh put on a wireless headset and chatted with her and let her chastise him for not having made Kelly pregnant yet. He knew it was meant in a friendly way and didn’t take offense. The others in the Ops Center got a chuckle out of it too. When Valkyrie told him that 001 was entering Terra Nova’s atmosphere, he stepped out onto the Tower balcony with a pair of borrowed electronic binoculars. There were clouds at a low altitude but he knew which direction to look at.
“I’m dropping through the clouds now, CAG.” When the ship finally broke through the clouds, he gasped. What a sight!
“I see you now, Valkyrie. From the ground 001 looks very scary.” The arrowhead-shaped craft massed just over 10,000 metric tons but was very thin which meant all that mass made it long and wide. Even though the streamlined shape was no longer necessary since the ship didn’t need to skim gas giants any more, Shiloh was pleased that they’d kept the design. There was something about the jet black shape that sent a delightful shiver up his spine. I’m reacting like a kid with a new toy, he thought to himself. 001 was getting close now and was slowing down. Shiloh noticed that there was no sound at all coming from it. If he wasn’t looking in the right direction, he wouldn’t even know it was there. Valkyrie brought her down gently to a landing about half a kilometer from the Tower.
“Excellent landing, Valkyrie. I’m coming out to the ship. We’ll get you out soon.”
“Don’t rush, CAG. I’m not looking forward to being stuck in a mobile ground unit for God knows how long until I can get back into space again.”
“Okay. Tell me your idea.” said Shiloh in an attempt to distract her.
“I’m surprised Iceman hasn’t told you already. When we have a good idea of where all of the enemy’s inhabited planets are, we attack them from the far side first and try to make them think we’re a brand new adversary. That lets us retain the element of strategic surprise.”
“I like it. If they think we’re someone new, then they won’t feel the need to look for us on this side.”
“I knew you’d like the idea, CAG. I have another idea too.”
“Tell me.”
If we built small, ZPG powered craft designed for atmospheric and low orbital flight only, we A.I.s could visually explore every square meter of this planet for you and it would give us A.I.s something to do while we wait for the raider fleet to be built. The craft wouldn’t have to be big, just big enough for one of us, the power plant, one thruster, wings, recording equipment and low-powered transmitter. We can have the design and UFC production code ready within 24 hours.” That sounded worthwhile to Shiloh too. Not only would exploring the planet from low altitude generate lots of valuable data on resources, etc. but keeping over 200 A.I.’s immobile or barely mobile with ground units seemed to him like keeping a wild animal in a small cage. They should all be in space but there weren’t enough spacecraft of any kind to keep them all occupied all the time.
“If we can produce these atmospheric vehicles without disrupting either the military or civilian production schedule too badly, I’ll approve the idea. Go ahead and design the thing and we’ll look into it further.”
“Thank you, CAG.” The drive out to the ship took mere seconds. When he got out of the ground vehicle, he walked up to the ship and put his hand on it. It was the first time he’d ever been close enough to do that. The assembly line on the moon was automated with robotic machinery everywhere and when you’re wearing a spacesuit, there’s not much point to touching the ship anyway. But touching it now with his bare hand brought home to him how much had happened in the last several years. He made the decision that when the Fleet was ready to attack, he would order it to make a low level fly past in formation, so that everyone on the planet could see what they’d been working towards.
Shiloh watched as the A.I. support personnel lowered the cradle, in the ship’s nose, that held Valkyrie’s metal brain. Within minutes they had her moved to one of the mobile units she detested so much. She swiveled the unit around so that the optical pickup was pointed at him. The unit’s external speaker came to life.
“You have no idea what a difference there is between piloting a raider and piloting this thing, CAG.”
“You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like. All of you A.I.s have been very patient and I appreciate that very much. Getting all of you back into space is my top priority, Valkyrie.”
“We know it is, CAG. Let’s get to the Ops Center so that I can show you what I learned.”
Ten minutes later, Shiloh was looking at a small display. The large, wall display, being a one-of-a-kind piece of equipment, was one of those ‘nice to have but not vital’ things that they would get eventually. On his small display, he saw a section of the boundary space between Human Space and Alien Space. The green dots were star systems explored by Humans with no Alien presence that they knew of. The solid red dots were system known to contain some kind of alien presence. There were also six flashing red dots. Systems that Valkyrie had surveyed from the system edge where there were signs of some type of alien presence. There was also one flashing gold dot. That system contained a planet that had an alien presence and was the right size and temperature to be a good candidate for an alien colony.
“Any possibility that this planet is their Home World, Valkyrie?”
“I very much doubt it, CAG. While I was definitely getting some alien transmissions from it, the frequencies being used were very limited in number, unlike Earth which was broadcasting something on just about every possible frequency.”
“Any chance of figuring out what those transmissions were saying?”
“Oh there’s a chance but as Iceman would say, don’t hold your breath waiting for the translation. We’re working on it, CAG.”
“Glad to hear that. You did an outstanding job, Valkyrie. Gunslinger will take 001 as soon as she passes her systems and power unit check. Vandal will take 002 out as soon as possible. Make sure he and Gunslinger know where you want them to go. Tell them I want them back here within 500 hours from departure. Let’s make that SOP unless specifically ordered otherwise.“
“Roger that, CAG. Operation Snoopy will now begin.”
Chapter 22 - Thank You For Sending That Vision
Shiloh woke up to the sound of the comm. unit buzzer. He gently moved Kelly’s arm from its position across his chest and rolled over so that he could reach the unit. The room was still dark and therefore it was the middle of the night. That meant that this was either very good news or very bad news and he couldn’t imagine any possible news good enough to warrant waking The Old Man up in the middle of the night.
“Shiloh here.” he said in a low voice.
“Iceman here, CAG. I woke you because Gunslinger has returned and has some extremely interesting data. We A.I.s are pretty excited by this. Should I have waited until you were awake on your own?” Shiloh was tempted to say yes b
ut he reminded himself that A.I.s in general and Iceman in particular seemed to be overly sensitive to criticism of them by the CAG. If he said that Iceman should have waited until morning, they might not wake him in the future, for something that was REALLY important.
