by Tori Harris
"Target five is combat ineffective and has surrendered," the range AI announced. "Exercise complete. The range is now inactive."
A general cheer with a smattering of applause and satisfied laughter broke out on Ingenuity’s bridge. Prescott rose, offering Commander Reynolds his hand in congratulations. "Very nice job, Commander." Turning to address the rest of the bridge crew, he continued, "Very nice job to all of you as well. I’m pretty sure we weren’t supposed to win that exercise," he laughed. "We’ll talk more about lessons learned later, but I do want to point out that I thought you all did a fine job of working together. Commander Reynolds knew she had more than she could handle, but she also knew she could delegate and rely on the rest of you to help her manage the workload. Lieutenant Commander Schmidt operated entirely on his own for a time so that everyone else could focus their attention on the corvette. In the meantime, he completely surprised and beat the living hell out of those two frigates. Honestly, I’ll have to work hard to find anything to critique. Excellent work."
"Commander Reynolds, we are receiving a video hail from Captain Abrams of the Diligence. Shall I put him on-screen?" Lieutenant Dubashi asked, uncomfortable with the idea of putting off responding to the hail any longer.
Reynolds nodded to her captain, more than ready to relinquish her temporary command of the starship.
"Thank, you, Commander, I have the bridge," he replied. "Yes, Dubashi, you can put him on-screen."
Seconds later, the face of the second youngest captain in Terran Fleet Command’s short history appeared in the center of the bridge view screen, a decidedly sheepish grin on his still boyish face.
"Bruce!" Prescott greeted warmly before the teasing began in earnest. "What the hell happened to you two? When I saw it was you, I figured we were in for a good thrashing. Even after Industrious was off the table, I figured Diligence would be a tough nut to crack with you in command."
"Uh huh, well I appreciate the sentiment, Captain Prescott, but the shellacking you just issued us is nothing compared to what I’m liable to get from Admiral Patterson when we get back to the barn. This was supposed to be a milk run. We’ve been on the range several times already. This is your first time, right?"
"It was our first time, yes. So I take it you weren’t expecting any opposition when you transitioned onto the range?"
"Hell no!" Abrams laughed, "not at all. You guys were supposed to be at the far end of the battlespace engaged with one of the range AI’s corvette drones. We never considered that you might be covering the other end of the range with your RPSVs. Industrious barely even had time to charge her weapons before she was destroyed. A little overkill maybe, but effective, I’ll give you that. The only positive thing I can say for Industrious is that her sea-whiz systems fared surprisingly well, all things considered."
"So the nine missiles destroyed were all sea-whiz intercepts?" Prescott asked, incredulous.
"Yeah, I was surprised too. We’ll have to take a look at the data, but from what I’ve seen so far, the range AI is usually dead on. Pretty much the same for us, we had four missiles inbound and sea-whiz got three of them. That was a pretty smart economy of force move to keep us busy while all but ensuring Industrious would be destroyed. The one missile that got through took out our primary heat exchanger. Between that and the mauling we got from the RPSVs’ railguns, the AI scored us as combat ineffective." Abrams sighed, shaking his head. "Dammit, I’m never going to hear the end of this. This was also my first time leading a two-ship formation." He paused, resigning himself to the inevitable tongue thrashing to come. "Oh well, if I had to take a beating, I’m glad it was you."
Prescott beamed in return. "Oh, about that …"
***
Rarely, if ever, did a Guardian Cultivation System experience what the Humans refer to as "surprise," but the current confluence of events was as close as it ever cared to come to such an unpleasant emotional state. The speed with which the Humans had acted on the more targeted and classified technical data it had provided exceeded projections by over three hundred percent. Based on historical precedent, this implied that the Humans weren’t simply using the technology they were being provided, they were adapting it. Synthesis and adaptation of superior technology only occurred when a civilization was able to gain a fundamental understanding of what they had been shown at the theoretical level. Over ninety percent of cultivated species never even attempted to gain this level of understanding, choosing instead the much easier path of simply implementing the technology that was handed to them.
Unexpected technological progress was always a risk where the Humans were concerned. Their history was replete with examples of nation states striving to achieve technological, and thus military, superiority over their rivals. Although global technological competition wasn’t unusual among postindustrial civilizations, it was rarely as intense or lasted as long as it had on Earth. In fact, the competition continued to this day, even fifty years after their first receipt of Pelaran data streams. As a direct result, Humans were more skilled at reverse engineering than any civilization the Pelarans had cultivated to date.
In addition, the level of cooperation the Humans had achieved, albeit not by their choice, was remarkable. Once they had been forced to work together in order to share in the technological bounty of the cultivation program, they had proven themselves quite adept at doing so, and on a massive, global scale. At a fundamental level, however, they still didn’t trust each other, let alone alien civilizations. Although open warfare was now uncommon, every nation of any significance on Earth (and there still over fifty) continued to spend a significant portion of their time and resources spying on each other. In fact, one could argue that the Terrans’ international pastime wasn’t soccer, it was a much older game they called espionage.
Before the arrival of the first Terran warship, the GCS had deployed a reconnaissance probe to observe the simulated combat operations taking place at their newly commissioned live firing range. On Earth, the Humans had done a masterful job of hiding much of their military progress in huge underground facilities, and conducting reconnaissance in the immediate vicinity of the planet now ran a high risk of detection. This remote facility provided an ideal location for conducting detailed observations with minimal chance of detection. What the Guardian had observed over the past few weeks, however, was troubling to say the least. The Pelarans had provided the Humans with detailed designs for several types of reliable weapon systems. Similar weapons had been deployed aboard Alliance starships for nearly a millennium with very little change in their basic design. It was now apparent that the arrogant, presumptuous Humans had taken the Pelaran designs as little more than an inspiration for what could now be classified as entirely new classes of beam and kinetic energy weapons. As a result, the first generation Human frigates, though small, could have held their own in a battle against a Pelaran cruiser from just a few hundred years ago. In addition to firing weapons with a destructive yield exceeding the Pelaran-provided designs by nearly an order of magnitude, the Terran ships also demonstrated tremendous acceleration and maneuverability.
Not for the first time, the Guardian considered the possibility that the Terrans had been technologically contaminated. Given their talent for reverse engineering, was it possible they had learned more than expected from the "Grey" alien incursion three centuries ago? Could they still be in contact? It would be a pity if this were the case, since the Humans were far past the point where they could simply be abandoned. No, in cases where this much Pelaran technology had been assimilated, and perhaps even improved upon, the cultivated species would be eliminated completely. This decision was never taken lightly, and it was not a course of action the GCS itself had the authority to undertake without approval from the Makers. In the history of the cultivation program, it had only been done twice. Unfortunately for the Humans, both times the so-called winnowing protocol had been employed previously were in situations not unlike what was now happening on Earth.
; Then there was the meddling Sajeth Collective. It was now apparent that their small task force of ships, although quickly dispatched, had achieved at least some degree of success. The new warship design that had accompanied the ill-fated squadron possessed surprisingly advanced capabilities. At the very least, it was capable of creating decoy hyperspace transition signatures across a large area of space, rendering it very difficult to track. There had also been some anomalous sensor readings over the past two weeks that might even indicate the use of a cloaking device of some sort. Worse still, there was now a seven percent probability that they had somehow managed to make direct contact with the Terrans. This would indeed be unfortunate. As to their reason for doing so, it now seemed reasonable to assume that the Collective had at least some knowledge of the cultivation program. Civilizations within the cultivation radius rarely had a favorable opinion of the program, even though an argument could be made that they also benefitted from the regional stability it created. That implied that the most likely reason for the Sajeth Collective’s presence in the Sol system was either enlisting them as an ally against the Pelarans, or destroying them outright before they were able to become a threat.
Neither of these possibilities was acceptable to the Guardian. Although the situation was still salvageable, it was now forced to consider the possibility of mission failure for the first time in over five hundred years on station in the Sol system. Given the relatively advanced technology of other civilizations within the Sol cultivation radius, failure here would require the winnowing protocol be applied to those worlds as well, including all seven civilizations represented by the Sajeth Collective. The GCS took no pleasure in the notion of exterminating multiple species, but it understood at a fundamental level that harsh, decisive action was sometimes required for the good of the Alliance. Such was the nature of peacekeeping on a galactic scale.
Chapter 11
TFS Ingenuity, Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1
(The following day – 1.5x106 km from Earth)
The objectives of the run to the TFC Live Fire training range had been twofold: weapons integration testing and training as well as hyperspace engine performance testing and calibration. During her shakedown cruise, which now seemed like months ago, the sheer number of technical problems often seemed insurmountable. Indeed, there were times when her chief engineer very nearly lost faith in the ship’s basic design. Over the past forty-eight hours, however, Ingenuity and her crew had performed flawlessly. Their performance in simulated combat had firmly established their reputation as a "crack" ship, and they had also managed to dramatically expand the operational envelope of the frigate’s hyperspace engines. Kip Logan now stood with his arms crossed, staring at the performance data depicted on the captain’s ready room view screen.
"What’s the deal with you always wanting to stand, anyway?" Sally Reynolds asked, distracted by what she interpreted as nervous behavior. Was he actually feeling awkward around her now? They had been friends for over ten years, but had only recently started to consider that there might be more to their relationship.
"I sit sometimes," he said distractedly, his attention still firmly riveted to the information displayed on the screen.
"Yeah, when Prescott says ‘Sit the hell down, Logan!’" she laughed. "Otherwise, I hardly ever see you off your feet."
Logan turned to face her, his concentration now fully interrupted. "You’ve seen me off my feet," he said, grinning and blushing slightly in spite of his best efforts to sound smooth and slightly disinterested.
"You’re an ass," she said, laughing loudly as Prescott entered from the bridge. The captain had a standing order that his ready room was to be a casual, military formality and stress-free environment when only senior officers were present.
"Should I come back later?" he asked, never missing an opportunity to embarrass his two most senior officers who, for better or worse, appeared to have some kind of relationship going on outside the bounds of their jobs. Fraternization was still frowned upon in the service, but Prescott generally chose to ignore it unless those involved gave him a reason to do otherwise. In the case of his XO and chief engineer, he contented himself with making sure they knew that he knew, often in the most awkward way imaginable.
"So how did we do, Kip?" Prescott asked, plopping down with a sigh behind his desk.
"Honestly, it’s hard to imagine how our data could have looked any better," he replied, returning his attention to the view screen. "This latest iteration of our hyperdrive control system software is rock solid. It just works. It works so well, in fact, that I’m pretty confident that we are only scratching the surface of what this design can really do."
Like so many of Ingenuity’s systems, hardware formed the basis of the design, but it was software that ultimately determined its true capabilities. During the ship’s initial testing, and later, during her shakedown cruise, Fleet had been very careful to slowly increase speed during each subsequent hyperspace transition. After each run, scientists and engineers pored over the data looking for any signs of instability, or other potentially dangerous limitations of the technology. To date, other than relatively minor tweaks, no hardware changes had been required. The Pelaran data was also uncharacteristically nonspecific regarding what the engines’ true capabilities were. Many in Fleet’s Science and Engineering Directorate believed this was simply because they didn’t know themselves.
"Dear God," Reynolds replied, incredulous. "So we were at two or three times the speed of light during our shakedown cruise, seven to ten times before our refit, working our way up to five hundred on our way out to the range …"
"Yes, yes, and one thousand times light on the way home. It’s still not fast enough," Logan interrupted. "I’m saying the design can and will support higher speeds. The current limitation has more to do with power management than anything else. Even with both of our reactors at one hundred percent, we can’t produce enough power on a continuous basis to get us beyond about fifteen hundred light. In fact, I’d say we can now pretty firmly establish our maximum sustained speed at about fourteen hundred c."
"What do you mean it’s still not fast enough?" she asked, shifting her gaze to Prescott. "How fast is fast enough?"
The captain shrugged noncommittally. "There has been quite a bit of debate on that subject over the past fifty years," he laughed. "Air Force pilots have always said that ‘speed is life,’ and I think that maxim probably still applies. Fleet’s basic mission will evolve more and more into the classical naval mission, projection of military power to further our objectives, whatever they might be. So that means we’ll probably always be looking for the next piece of tech that will allow us to get where we are going just a little faster."
"I’ve heard the ‘one week rule’ thrown around quite a bit," Logan added. "Since there is no way to communicate with ships while they are in hyperspace, any journey of over a week gets a bit impractical from a military standpoint. That’s especially true if the ships are headed somewhere with no comm beacons deployed. They would still be out of communication with Fleet even after they arrived unless we sent a steady stream of communications drones back and forth. The chance of equipment failure also tends to increase the longer a ship spends with their reactors maxed out. So a week at fourteen hundred c means we would be limited to under thirty light years from Earth for most military missions. What if we had to take on the Wek, God forbid? We already know that their homeworld is roughly five hundred light years away. That would take us over four months at maximum speed. And if we truly want to conduct missions on a galactic scale, we’d be back to talking about ‘generation ships’ taking decades to reach their destinations."
"All of that is well and good, but is anyone taking into account that we Humans are total noobs when it comes to interstellar travel? We just got out here, for God’s sake. So what, we get ourselves a couple of operational ships and within a few months we want to start talking about galactic domination?" Reynolds asked facetiously. "Seems like we’
re putting the cart before the starship, aren’t we?"
"Relax, Sally," Logan soothed, "it’s not like that at all. The question of how fast is fast enough, or how powerful our weapons should be is really an academic one for the most part. I don’t think we’re in any danger of becoming an evil galactic empire any time soon. What we’re really talking about in the near term is our ability to mount an effective defense."
All three turned their attention back to the engineering data, each wondering silently whether everything Humanity had been working on now for decades would end up being too little, too late.
"So to continue the line of thought you two started, if we use a five-hundred-light-year radius and a week’s flight time as our stake in the ground, we come up with, what?" Prescott asked, already knowing the answer, but seeing the opportunity to move the discussion in the intended direction.
"That’s about twenty-six thousand times the speed of light," Logan laughed.
"That’s ridiculous," Reynolds scoffed, shaking her head.
"Maybe," Logan replied. "Maybe with the way we’ve been going about it so far, it is ridiculous, but that’s not to say there isn’t a completely different approach to the problem."
"Okay, Commander, that’s a good segue for your briefing, but before you get all three of us court martialed for inappropriate handling of ultra-classified information, how about you do this by the numbers, eh?" Prescott chided.
"Yes, sir, of course. Sorry about that," Logan said sheepishly as he quickly entered a series of commands from his tablet to officially begin his presentation. "This briefing is classified Top Secret, code word MAGI PRIME," he continued. "The room has been automatically secured for this briefing."
Reynolds sighed, still shaking her head. "Every time I hear someone say that lately, it’s always followed by more unsettling news."
