Battlespace (12 page)

“Two hundred years ago, Mr. Shugart,” she concluded, “we reached up, rang the door chimes, and announced our presence! If the Hunters are out there and still listening, they
will
hear us. Quite possibly they already have!”

“And we don't know how much time we have, either,” Dominick added. “Maybe the nearest Hunter base is a thousand light-years away, and we have eight centuries left before they hear us. Or they could have heard us a hundred years ago, and that they're still arguing, trying to decide how best to deal with us.”

“Our AI cultural simulations
have
suggested that a long-lived civilization will tend to make decisions, and to act and react, very slowly, very deliberately,” Kowalewski pointed out.

“There you go,” Colby said with a chuckle. “Maybe we don't have to worry about them after all. But I need some
thing more than guesswork about the long-term survivability of a civilization before I'll accept the crazy notion that bogey men half a million years more advanced than we are might be coming after us.”

“General Colby,” Congressperson Durand said, “half a million years or ten thousand years…it makes no difference, either way. Our technology was a mere three or four centuries ahead of the Ahannu and a thousand Marines forced some millions of them to accept peace in a couple of days.”

Well
, Ramsey thought,
it hadn't been quite
that
simple.

“My esteemed colleague is correct,” Congressperson Wayne R. Reardon, of the Military Appropriations Committee, said. “I submit that it would be better to make friends of these people, than to make them enemies.”

Ramsey thought-clicked to raise a noumenal icon, indicating that he wished to speak. Normally, it was wisest to maintain a low profile at briefings heavy with high brass and politicians, but the idiocy factor was growing worse by the minute.

“Colonel Ramsey,” Admiral Harris said. “Your thoughts?”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Ramsey said quietly. “Ms. Durand, Mr. Reardon, with respect, you miss the point. Whether we fight them or not, whether we make friends with them or not,
we do not have a choice
! Basic military strategy demands we find out as much about them as we can, just as far away from Earth as we can.”

“Colonel, how can you possibly talk about basic strategy in a case like this?” Durand wanted to know. “This situation is unprecedented! We don't know what we're up against!”

“Partly true, Madam Congressperson.
Partly
true. We don't know who we're up against or what their full capabilities might be. However, we can analyze the situation in the light of past military experience. If this stargate operates as we believe it does, it represents a strategic chokepoint.”

“Excuse me…a chokepoint?”

“A place which the enemy
must
control if it is to send forces against us. Think of a narrow strait on Earth, like the Strait of Gibraltar, but back in the days of surface wet-navies. Anyone who wanted to control the western Med on Earth had to control that passage, to keep the enemy from sending fleets in from the Atlantic.”

“Don't patronize me, Colonel. Aerospace assets make surface fleets and straits irrelevant.”

“The point is…if the Hunters or other potential enemies must come through that gate, then it is a chokepoint. Deny them control, and we are safe. Surrender it and they can strike us when and where they choose.”

“But what if the Hunters are already on the way?” Reardon demanded.

Ramsey shrugged. “Then we've already lost. We could be in for a replay of ten thousand years ago, with Earth rock-bombed back to the stone age.”

“Then we shouldn't send ships out-system that we'll need to protect us here.”

“Sir, if we're up against a foe capable of deploying ships like the Europan Singer, all the warships Earth can deploy would not be capable of stopping even one of them. We can spare eight ships to investigate the Sirius stargate. In fact, we must.”

“Tell me this, Colonel,” Durand said. “If you get out there, take the stargate and then find yourself facing something like the Singer or worse coming through…what do you do? What
can
you do?”

“We warn Earth, first of all. The Hunters may have faster-than-light technology that makes stargates superfluous…but if they don't, they'll have a nine-to-ten-year minimum flight from Sirius to Earth, just like us. And, while we can't yet use Builder com technology to have real-time conversations between the fleet and Earth, there's a chance that we'll
find one of their interstellar communicators on the Sirius Gate, which would give us instantaneous communications with Mars. If so, that gives you over eight years back here to prepare.

“And if worst came to worst? We would destroy the Sirius Gate.”

“My God,” Reardon said. “How? That thing is enormous!”

“What we've learned so far about the gate,” Kowalewski told them, “indicates that it is
very
strongly made. However, the forces it houses—a pair of orbiting black holes, we think—are nothing short of incredible. Disrupting the movement of those black holes in any way would quite probably tear the stargate to pieces. We won't know for sure, of course, until we actually get out there. However, it seems more than likely that a large enough thermonuclear or antimatter war-head would upset the balance of forces inside the ring enough to do the trick.”

John Knowles indicated a desire to speak. He was a Deputy Undersecretary of Space Military Activities at the State Department and as such held the unenviable position of liaison between the UFR's extrasolar operations and planning and the governments of other nations.

“There is another aspect to this situation,” he said. “Other governments have expressed an interest in this operation. The European Union and the Chinese Hegemony both have repeatedly pointed out that our actions at the Sirius Gate have very serious ramifications for other nations of Earth as well. The EU, in particular, is…ah…suggesting that we include a detachment of European warships with Operation Battlespace.”

“The hell with them,” Harris said.

“Their participation could be invaluable,” Knowles pointed out. “They sent the relief force to Ishtar twenty years ago, remember.”

“Yeah, arriving after our Marines had taken the place over
and forced a peace treaty out of the Ahannu. Who needs them?”

“We may have them, like it or not,” Knowles said. “We have been informed that the EU and the Chinese are preparing an interstellar task force of their own. Things might move more smoothly if we incorporate their forces, planning, and objectives in with our own from the start.”

“Yeah,” Dominick said. “And it could be another case of them exploiting our coattails. They're afraid we discover some really useful ancient tech on that thing out at Sirius and want to make sure they get their share.”

“Well, that's only fair…” Reardon began.

“No, ma'am, it's not! We take the risks, we foot the bill, and then they step in and take whatever we find? We fought the U.N. War a century ago to prove we didn't have to take that kind of crap.”

“Right,” General Colby added. “Or else they insist on doing it their way: with their commanding officer and their agenda. Let me ask you this. When have the French
ever
been right in a military crisis?”

“Please, General Colby!” Durand said. “Save your cultural bigotry for outside this noumenon!”

“That's not helpful, Mark,” Dominick added. “If the EU and Chinese want to tag along, there's not a lot we can do to stop them. But we can insist that our men and spacecraft remain under our control. I would reject utterly any suggestion to do otherwise.”

“We understand your reservations, General Colby,” Reardon said. “They are noted. However, the principal question before this meeting is whether or not we should proceed with Operation Battlespace at all. The risks, as have been noted, are appalling.”

Again Ramsey indicated his desire to speak. “Colonel Ramsey?” Harris said.

“I submit, ladies and gentlemen, that it is far riskier to do
nothing. Throughout its history, a primary mission of the U.S. Marines—arguably
the
primary mission—has been to be the first to fight this nation's battles, and to do so as far from our home shores as possible. I, for one, would much rather fight the Hunters of the Dawn at Sirius than in southern California and I imagine most of you feel the same.

“But there's something else, absolutely vital to the safety of Earth…and that is knowing our enemy.”

“But we know nothing about these…people,” Durand insisted.

“Exactly. Which is why the MIEU-1 must go to Sirius.” Ramsey thought a moment. “Sun Tzu put it best, I think. He said if you know yourself but not your enemy, you'll be victorious half of the time. Know your enemy but not yourself and, again, you win half of the time.

“But if you know yourself
and
the enemy, you will always be victorious. Or so claims Sun Tzu. Well, gentlemen, ladies, we know the Marines and what they're capable of. Now we need to learn about the enemy. And that is why we have the MIEU-1.”

“And how will you learn anything about him if your fleet is destroyed in the first few moments of the engagement?” Reardon asked. “Eh?”

“The Marines have made reconnaissance into an art. We are in the process of organizing two of the MIEU companies as a special Marine Recon unit. And…we also have Cassius.”

“Cassius?” Durand asked.

“Part of our command constellation…the network of humans and AIs that comprise the MIEU's command element. Cassius? Why don't you introduce yourself.”

A bright star appeared, marking the artificial intelligence's focus of attention in the noumenon. “Hello,” a deep and mellifluous voice replied. “I am Cassius.”

“What's special about an AI?” Durand wanted to know.

“My experience, for one thing, Madam Congressperson,”
the voice of Cassius replied. “And, in reference to the discussion on reconnaissance, my ability to deploy copies of myself within suitably equipped hardware.”

“Copies?” Durand asked. “What do you mean?”

“Cassius is a computer program,” Ramsey said. “A very complex one, but a program, nonetheless. And, like any program, he can duplicate himself, so that we have two of him…or a hundred…or as many as we need.”

“Yes, but why?”

“I think I can answer that question, Colonel,” Cassius said. “Madam Congressperson, in a military deployment such as Operation Battlespace, the most valuable asset is manpower…the presence of individual Marine riflemen tasked with taking assigned objectives and holding them. Sirius is 8.6 light-years away from Earth. If a Marine is killed or seriously wounded, that Marine is out of the fight, and there is no way to replace him or her. An artificial intelligence such as myself, however, so long as there is sufficient available hardware, can make copies of myself virtually indefinitely. I could, for example, download a copy of myself into a suitably equipped SF/A-2 Starhawk. That copy could then pilot the vessel close to the Sirius Gate, in order to take measurements or probe for defensive positions, weapons turrets, that sort of thing. If the Starhawk is destroyed, the copy is destroyed as well, but no human Marine is harmed.”

“How do you feel about that, Cassius?” General Colby asked. “I mean, your copy would be as much you as you are, wouldn't it? Just as alive—if that's the right word?”

“The copy would be identical to the original in every respect, although from the moment of splitting off, the copy would begin acquiring memories and experiences from the new perspective, of course. So far as the copy is concerned, it would be the original, with all of the original's memories down to the instant of separation. In so far as AIs think of
themselves as ‘alive,' sir, then, yes, the copy would be as alive as the original.”

“And you wouldn't mind being sent on what might amount to a suicide mission?” Reardon asked.

“I—or my copy—would not see it as ‘suicide,' Congressman. Military-grade AIs are designed to follow orders, to attempt self-preservation as a means of carrying out the assigned mission, but to do so without undue concern about personal survival. We do not feel fear in the way humans do—if that is what you mean.”

“I…see….”

“We anticipate using a number of Cassius copies on this operation,” Admiral Harris said. “If we are able to make contact with the beings controlling the Sirius Gate, it may well be Cassius, or one of his downloaded clones, who does so.”

“It's important to remember,” Kowalewski added, “that Cassius and programs like him have a number of tremendous advantages over humans in this sort of work. They are un-afraid for their personal safety. They have immediate access to all of the electronic data stored within the mission's computer net. They have reaction times measured on the order of milliseconds. If they find they need to speak ancient Sumerian, or some other obscure language in the database, they can do so. And they can be in immediate contact with the mission commanders and other personnel as needed, through noumenal linkage.”

“Then why send humans at all?” Reardon wanted to know.

“There are still some areas that humans excel at,” Ramsey said. He grinned. “Not many, but a few. We're more flexible and can think outside of the box…outside of programming parameters, in other words. We're better at responding to surprises. Humans can rely on intuitive processes. AIs cannot. We can act on a hunch, or a funny feeling, or a sense that something is wrong…and AIs cannot. Hell, we can tell
jokes
and AIs can't. Not yet, anyway.”

“What does telling a joke have to do with commanding a Marine expeditionary force?” Reardon wanted to know.