CHAPTER 5
“Captain Price, the engineers have been working around the clock to get Indefatigable spaceworthy and in better shape than ever before. Your sensor data from the mine attack was extremely valuable, for both future defensive and offensive capabilities and tactics.” Speaking was Julian Stephens, the engineering director of the Commonwealth’s lunar shipyards. Stephens was an engineer’s engineer with his thin frame, hawkish nose, and flat-topped, closely cropped hair. His appearance was what could only be described as “standard engineer—timeless.” He could have been picked up and dropped back in time in virtually any era post-1900. He was also one of the smartest people Price had ever met.
Stephens was at the front of the briefing room eagerly pointing to various features on a virtual 3-D rendering of the Indefatigable that hovered next to him, responding to his every command of movement left, right, up, or down, with so many zooms in or out, that Price was almost dizzy. It was profoundly good news that the ship was not only repairable, but easily so. The damage that appeared extensive was mostly in areas of the ship made from modular components that were easily replaceable. Price was eager to get back aboard and see the repairs himself, but that would have to wait at least another week.
“Your inability to see the drones coming aft was particularly disturbing. We knew that the radiation from the fusion torch would make it difficult, but not impossible, to detect lower-emission vehicles within an approximate three-degree cone from the plume’s centroid, but how did the enemy know this? True, this wavelength-specific blind spot is basically the same on all the Commonwealth and many of the other Earth ships for the same reasons, primary of which is that we all use a variation of the same fusion propulsion system design. You were not, however, totally blind in this region. Your aft sensors were blinded, overloaded, at only a few specific wavelengths—those at which Commonwealth-designed fusion torch emissions are brightest. Other Earth ships have slightly different emission characteristics, but not radically so. Emissions peaks at those wavelengths is partly driven by the fundamental physics of the fusion reaction and partly driven by history and the evolution of a specific system design,” Stephens said.
“Excuse me, Dr. Stephens, I have a question,” said one of the other briefing attendees to Price’s right. Price did not know the questioner’s name, but he knew that the speaker served aboard Indefatigable’s sister ship, the Australia. He might not have made the connection as quickly had the man not spoken with such a thick Aussie accent.
“Yes?”
“Please expand on what you mean by ‘history and evolution of the design.’”
“There are myriad decisions made by the physicists and engineers who first designed the basic torch we use and the many iterations of improvement and refinement that have been occurring since we began using them several decades ago. For example, the primary direct byproduct of the hydrogen/hydrogen fusion reaction is helium. The reaction is not one hundred percent efficient so there will also always be leakage of unfused hydrogen isotopes into the plume as well as trace amounts of the materials used to construct the fusion drive itself. These elements are superheated and emit light at specific wavelengths. The ratio of hydrogen to helium and between the various hydrogen isotopes emitted is specific to the design, as are the other trace elements emitted. A separate group of equally talented engineers started with the same basic reaction, but using slightly different materials in the reaction chamber or the exhaust channel would almost certainly result in a noticeable variation in the ratios of expelled hydrogen and helium and the leaked trace elements. This would result in the plume having a hugely different spectrum and intensity. The Indefatigable should have only been blind in that very narrow viewing region to the exhaust plumes of other Commonwealth ships. Your sensors would have been able to detect plumes from Chinese-designed fusion propulsion systems because their specific design evolved away from ours and we know what their emissions look like.” Stephens paused and reoriented the projected ship so that the audience was looking straight up the business end of its fusion torch.
He continued, “The enemy missiles were either extremely lucky, exceptionally good guessers, or had inside knowledge of our capabilities. From what we can tell, the missiles maneuvered into your blind spot over a period of time using nonfusion propulsion, which your sensors didn’t detect, and then adjusted their emission plume to exactly match that of Indefatigable’s, making them invisible to your sensors. According to their sensor data, the same thing happened to the Linyi and, most likely, to the South Dakota. It is my opinion that of the three options I offered, the only one that makes sense is that they have been watching us for a very long time. Long enough to know the limitations of each country’s shipboard sensors and to have a design such that they could adapt to whichever ship they happened to be targeting.”
“You are saying that the missiles were designed specifically to target specific ships with specific known emissions characteristics? You are sure that this isn’t just some generic capability they have that just happens to make us vulnerable?” interjected someone from the back of the room whose voice Price didn’t recognize.
“If I were to hazard a guess, and that is exactly what I was asked to do by Commonwealth Intelligence, then I would say yes. Each ship was independently targeted by a missile that knew the weaknesses of that particular ship, or at least its design heritage or country of origin,” Stephens replied.
“Can you fix the problem?” asked Price.
Stephens turned to Price and for the first time today, smiled and nodded.
“Yes, Captain Price, we can. We are adding three sensor pods to your ship that will be mounted on the outside circumference about midway between fore and aft. The pods will have cameras pointing aft to look for other ships’ fusion plumes. They will be 120 degrees apart and when their images are combined, they will have the ability to see anything within the region of the former blind spot. No one sensor will be able to view the complete three-degree cone, but taken together, you will no longer be blind there.”
“Dr. Stephens, I’m also concerned about the ability of our point defenses to take out the missiles. The system seemed to be quickly overwhelmed,” Price said as he kept Stephens’s attention.
“Unfortunately, that isn’t a problem with a quick fix. To replace or redesign the weapons systems on a ship like Indefatigable would take months, more likely years. I’m sure the weapons group is busily coming up with devious new systems for future ships, but there simply won’t be anything new to help you or any other Commonwealth ship anytime soon,” Stephens replied, walking to the other side of the visualization.
“On a rather troubling note, it appears that they had at least some form of artificial intelligence onboard, coordinating their attacks. The way they split into three groups, slowly regrouped into your torch blind spots, and concentrated their attack on the South Dakota, which they correctly identified as the flagship, implies that the missiles had much more than the standard autonomous-operations capabilities in our munitions.”
This was a troubling development. With the emergence of AIs in the latter part of the twenty-first century, there was a movement to restrict their access to weapons and they were globally banned from having access to weapons of mass destruction. The world (or most of it) was prepared and most countries had signed on to the United Nations Treaty on Potentially Sentient Artificial Life which limited the development of self-aware AIs. The treaty also allowed countries to forbid the creation of AIs altogether, which many did for various religious, cultural, or sociological reasons. The USA-, Commonwealth-, and Chinese-aligned countries embraced artificial intelligence to a point. The complex systems that many believed could become self-aware were expensive to create and maintain, leaving the societal niche for their use available mostly to government, the military, big corporations, and the very wealthy. In the military and banking were where most AIs resided.
The most sophisticated AI constructs, like Lord Nelson, were created for the Commonwealth’s military. Under the UN treaty, placing AIs on missiles or space mines armed with nuclear weapons was strictly prohibited. Giving even limited-capability AIs complete control of such destructive systems was outlawed from the start and no country on Earth was known to have violated the prohibition. The same farsighted people who drafted the UN treaty before AIs had even been created foresaw the dangers of giving such power to nonhuman potential sentients and acted on it.
They were dealing with a foe who had no such prohibitions.
“Our shipboard AIs can take autonomous tactical command during combat. How is that different?” asked the Australian officer.
“The AIs on Commonwealth ships, and others like them, often take tactical control during combat operations because of their faster reaction times and the fact that the ships are essentially their bodies. Humans react quickly in fast-moving situations like hand-to-hand combat without consciously thinking about how to move their hands, arms, or feet. Training and human reflexes are the keys to such encounters. Ships and their systems are analogous. It only makes sense to give the AIs temporary command and control. The difference is that we have to authorize them to do so and the safety protocols only allow for this tactical control to be temporary, revocable anytime by the ship’s human captain,” said Stephens.
“Is it possible we are not dealing with biological aliens who happen to have killer AIs but are instead up against just killer AIs? Do we know?” asked another officer from somewhere in the back of the room.
“I’d better let Major Castillo answer that one. She’s here from navy intelligence,” said Stephens.
Major Castillo certainly did not look like anything like an engineer. She was all military. From her uniform to her very demeanor, she exuded professionalism. Some might call it professional stiffness. She looked like either an intelligence officer or a lawyer.
“It is certainly possible we are dealing with AIs, and if the only data we had was from the encounter Captain Price had with them, then that might be a perfectly reasonable theory. But we do not believe that to be the case. The data from the ships that escaped the Nikko system as it was being attacked showed ships of similar size to our own, maneuvering in such a manner that they would not turn any organic passengers into butter. If there were no biological life-forms on those ships, then there would have been no need to constrain their accelerations and maneuvers as they did. No, we believe the attackers are biological, just like us,” said Castillo. She spoke with a French accent, one that was slightly nasal, making Price think she was likely Belgian by birth.
“That really finishes my briefing so I will now turn over the floor to Major Castillo,” Stephens said as he stepped aside and began to make his way from the front of the room to the back.
“Dr. Stephens, before you go, may I ask about my ship’s AI? Were you able to restore Lord Nelson?” asked Price.
“Absolutely. I should have told you before the meeting began. We were able to repair the damage to his systems, which were mostly in the data pipes allowing him to communicate. As soon as he was cut off from you and the rest of the crew, he placed himself into hibernation,” replied Stephens.
Major Castillo walked to the front of the room and turned to face the rest of the attendees. Price wondered if she had to consciously avoid clicking her boots as she turned.
“Thank you, Dr. Stephens. Please remember that the content of this briefing is top secret and compartmentalized. I am here to give you our assessment of the situation, again in large part due to the data provided by Captain Price and his recent journey to and from the Nikko system,” she said, pausing for effect at just the right moment. Price wondered why military intelligence people always seemed to have a flair for the dramatic.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the enemy we face is remarkably like us. It appears that their ships are of comparable tonnage, have comparable propulsive capabilities both in system with fusion torches and between systems with a version of the Hawking Drive. Their missiles and mines appear to contain nuclear weapons of comparable yield to ours, suspiciously so. If we were not sharing data so readily and completely among all the Earth’s spacefaring countries, one could reasonably conclude that these attacks were carried out by another terrestrial power and not some alien species. In short, a conspiracy,” she said, again pausing.
No one used the pause to ask any questions. Most, like Price, just sat there, listening to learn more. Price assumed she had more to say and he was correct.
“You have all read the reports from the Nikko survivors. To honor them, we have decided to call our adversaries the Kurofune. We assembled the world’s leading astrobiologists, xenoanthropologists, sociologists, and other experts to examine the intelligence we have gathered so far and there is only one thing they all agreed upon: that the data we brought them must be flawed in some way. It seems that the probability of us encountering an alien species now that just happens to have capabilities similar to our own, very similar to our own, now, in all the possible times in history that two galactic civilizations might encounter each other, is, for all practical purposes, zero.” She paused again to take a breath and a sip of water. Price had made the same argument before, just a few weeks ago at Nikko.
“Modern humans have been around for about three hundred thousand years, give or take. In all that time, we have had space travel for only about two hundred years. Out of three hundred thousand years. We live on a planet that is about four and half billion years old. Could evolution have driven two separate species toward intelligence, tool using, and space-travel capabilities that are essentially the same, including in general design, at the same moment in galactic history in a time space of billions of years? The experts we assembled say ‘impossible.’ And that leaves only one viable alternative explanation. The data provided by the Indefatigable is flawed or faked,” she said, now looking directly at Price.
The room was so quiet that Price could hear the beat of his heart as his blood pressure rose. He was stunned by the comment, the implied accusation, and was at a momentary loss for words. Realizing that everyone was looking at him to respond, he rose to his feet, composing his thoughts as he did so.
“Major, please elaborate on what you mean by flawed or faked data. Was there some other set of measurements I should have taken as the nuclear missiles were targeting my ship? Or perhaps my crew should have just not bothered with that whole ‘defend the ship’ thing and instead started taking pictures of the South Dakota being ripped to shreds without survivors? Maybe we should not have rushed to rescue the crew of the Linyi before their reactor leak poisoned them all? Or are you saying that none of these events actually happened and that we made it all up? I am not really clear on what it is you are saying,” said Price, his anger almost getting the better of him. He was every bit as incensed as his tone conveyed.
“Captain, with all due respect, I am merely pointing out the only possible alternative to an impossible scenario. The experts say that the data you provided cannot possibly match reality. Therefore, the data must be in error from either ineptitude or malfeasance.”
This time the room was not quiet, several murmurs were evident and more than a few mutterings of “impossible” or something similar.
Before Price could form a reply to what was now a challenge to his integrity and loyalty, the base commander, Colonel Williamson, rose to his feet.
Price had known and worked for Colonel Williamson since he was assigned to the Moon. Williamson was tough, but fair. He was from a military family that traced their service back to the middle of the nineteenth century and was proud of it. He was also known to be loyal to those under his command.
“That is enough, Major Castillo. I will not have the integrity or capabilities of one my officers questioned in a public forum. If you have issues or concerns about Captain Price, or any of my officers, you need to raise them to me, with ironclad justification, in private,” said Williamson, leaning forward as he made his point.
“Yes, sir,” Castillo replied, still looking mostly at Price.
“This meeting is adjourned. Dismissed,” said Williamson as he walked moved forward to where Castillo was standing.
“Major Castillo and Captain Price, please remain here,” added Williamson as the other officers filed out of the room. It took only a few minutes for the room to empty. In that time, Price calmed down—a bit.
Colonel Williamson, not wasting a moment once the room was empty, turned his glare toward Castillo as he spoke.
“Major Castillo, I would like to know right now if you believe that Captain Price has done anything improper in the conduct of his duties as an officer of the Commonwealth. But before you answer, if the answer is yes, then be Goddamned sure you have proof.”
“Colonel, I am not making a preferral of charges at this time,” she replied.
“‘At this time.’ But you plan to do so in the future?” Williamson asked.
“With the backing of my commanding officer, I intend to review all the records from the Indefatigable, interview some of the key witnesses, and then decide what the appropriate next step or steps might be,” she said defiantly.
“Is there anything else you would like to tell me or Captain Price?” asked Williamson, who anyone could tell was definitely not pleased.
“Only that Captain Price should tell Captain Ahuja that I said hello,” she replied, staring at Price . . .