Sentience 1: Storm Clouds Gathering (31 page)

“Incredible.”

Survivability with teeth. Almost impossible to detect — fast enough to outrun everything it can’t outfight and powerful enough to outfight what it can’t outrun.

“So what type of ship is this? What is the designation on this thing?”

It is literally the precursor of a whole new class of warship and is tentatively designated as the
“Infiltrator”
class — as it was designed to infiltrate enemy defenses, perform a variety of mischief and escape.

“My God, Hal, this is wonderful! How much did this thing cost to build?”

After buying the company for an initial outlay of $6.9 billion in 3855, project expenditures have reached an additional $22.8 billion in development costs to date, considering research and development and fabrication of the prototype.

“Hal, are you telling me that I’m currently worth over $47 billion
after
you spent almost $30 billion on this project?”

Yes, I’m sorry if I did wrongly, Diet, but most of that money was invested prior to my first actual contact with you three years ago. Had you been available for me to consult, I would certainly have asked your permission, before spending that much of your money.

“Oh, I’m not angry at you, Hal,” Diet laughed. “Not at all. You displayed absolutely excellent judgment and personal initiative on this project. I’m very, very proud of you!”

Thank you Diet. That comment means more to me than you can possibly imagine.

“Now, now… no need to get all blubbery on me, big guy. You really did show phenomenal judgment and initiative. This thing could really be a major asset to the Confederacy during the coming conflict. How much will it cost to get these things into production?”

I estimate it will cost approximately $940 million to expand the facility and purchase the tooling necessary to begin production.

“We need to get these things into production as fast as possible. Maybe it would be faster if we could find a pre-existing facility large enough for our needs, secure enough to keep word of it from getting out, but having access to port facilities so that we can get materials delivered easily. Look for something we can grab quickly.”

I will issue instructions to my brother on Joja to locate such a facility as close to the existing research facility as possible, as we should probably minimize disruption of the scientists' and employees' home lives.

“Good thinking, Hal… say, how much will it cost us to build these things once we get tooled up and production going on them?”

Production costs are estimated to be approximately $1.26 billion each, with a minimum resale value of $1.85 billion each, to a governmental agency under contract.

“How much are my stock holdings worth, if they were to be liquidated, Hal?”

At current stock prices, just over $18.9 billion.

“Okay, I have a feeling the stock market is gonna take a big hit after the secessions start anyway so let’s liquidate my stock holdings and build the Confederate Fleet seven of these bad boys on my nickel. Show this thing to Admiral Kalis and ask him how he wants these first seven configured.”

Right away, Diet.

“Buchwald is up to something,” accused Secretary of Defense Jeannine Franks. “He and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs are in cahoots, using that damned super-computer of theirs to send over half of the transports in the Fleet running around all over God knows where, doing God knows what, and they’ve cut both me and the Chief of Fleet Operations completely out of the loop.”

Sitting on the opposite end of the sumptuous leather couch in the Secretary of Defense’s office was Senator Harold B. Fitzwater of Nork, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “While that certainly sounds highly irregular, Jeannine,” responded Fitzwater, “I’m not sure it actually violates the president’s constitutionally mandated authority as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.”

“Since when does his ‘constitutionally mandated authority as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces’ give him the right to order Fleet vessels around personally, like a little boy playing with toy boats in the bathtub?” Franks fumed.

“While I know of no previous precedent for a president taking direct control over Fleet movements and operations,” Fitzwater replied, “I know of nothing within the law, nor within Fleet regulations, that would specifically preclude him from doing so. The Chief of Fleet Operations normally directs such operations, but as Commander-in-Chief, Buchwald outranks her in the chain of command and theoretically wields all of the same authority to direct Fleet operations that she does, and more.”

“Doesn’t the
War Powers Act
give your committee congressional oversight over the president’s use of the military?”

“Who has Buchwald attacked with all of these transports?” Fitzwater asked facetiously.

Thwarted on that tack, the fuming Franks asked, “But why all the damned secrecy? Why all the sneaking around about whatever it is that they’re doing?”

“Ah, now there is indeed a valid question,” noted Fitzwater. “Unfortunately, even if I were to initiate a congressional investigation into the matter, my committee doesn’t have the authority to subpoena a sitting president to appear before it and give testimony.”

“Does Fleet-Admiral Kalis enjoy this same immunity from testifying before your committee that the president does?” asked Franks.

“Good point, Madam Secretary,” noted Senator Fitzwater. “No, he doesn’t.”

“There’s nothing here,” said Capt. Al Ligurri. “We’ve been all over this site a dozen times, and there’s just nothing here.”

Capt. J.T. Turner and Commander “Bat” Masterson both nodded sadly in agreement. “Okay,” Masterson said. “No cable tracing Klaus’ computer console, because the brass won’t let us into his old lab. The nutrient factories are nowhere to be found anywhere around here, so they have to be underground somewhere. Maybe we can spot something using satellite imagery.”

“Good luck getting satellite imagery of the home of the entire federal government,” said Ligurri.

“J.T?” Bat asked.

“Yeah, I think we can get that.”

Ligurri looked confused. “We may have not been able to get Bozo’s security codes,” said Turner. “But we should be able to get satellite imagery of Waston. Working in counter-intelligence still has
some
perks.”

Diet was reading a history book when Hal interrupted:

Diet?

“Yes, Hal?”

I have been endeavoring for some time to recover intelligible data from recordings made within a Consortium security enclosure. The process has been complicated by the fact that no computer console was present.

“How is it possible that you were able to capture any kind of recordings at all, from within a security enclosure, without a computer console nearby?”

Someone left a coffee pot plugged into a power outlet within the secure area, that acted as a minimally sensitive microphone. Apparently this particular power outlet had experienced a recent hardware failure and the electrician making hurried repairs neglected to reattach the security noise generator to the power line.

Between the incredibly weak signal, power line frequency hum and the inordinate amount of natural distortion incurred from utilizing a coffee pot as a sound-capturing device — it has taken me an exorbitant amount of time using both hardware and software filtering and enhancement to finally restore the data with sufficient
clarity to allow for identification of the speakers through voice recognition.

“Well, what have you got, Hal?”

Six members of the Consortium Executive Board incriminating themselves.

I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

Rilan System, Alliance Fleet Task Force-137

September, 3860

Rear Admiral Joseph R. Bishop seethed in frustration at
not
having been afforded the opportunity to command one of those Fleet units recently reassigned to the South. Instead, he was stuck here in the far North, commanding a force comprised of elderly Fleet vessels, truly fit for the scrap yard.
That traitor Buchwald sent the best ships in the Fleet into mothballs, while I’m stuck shepherding these relics around the hind end of space.

Bishop commanded Task Force-137 from his flagship, the light carrier USS
Oriskany
, accompanied by two cruisers, three frigates, nine destroyers and assorted support vessels. All were past their prime, but well maintained and still serviceable in a fight, regardless of Bishop’s derogatory opinion.

Oriskany
carried about 65 fighters aboard, a mix of
Lightnings
and
Mustangs
now, after all of their newer
Raptors
and
Demons
had been removed and sent to the carriers being reassigned to new homeports in the South. Not that Bishop disagreed with the decision to give those carriers the best of everything. If those Southern bumpkins really did try to secede from the Union, Bishop wanted the Fleet as ready as possible to slap them down hard. Bishop just resented that
he
wasn’t going one of those lucky bastards who’d be doing the slapping.

Bishop hated Southerners.
Too damned many of those Southern bastards in the Fleet.
He hated their rural hayseed ways, their lack of refinement. Their…
inferiority
. Although Southerners comprised a distinct minority of the population of the Alliance at large, they occupied a majority of Fleet positions. Southerners had always carried on a much stronger military tradition, than did Northerners. Too many decent jobs available up North to entice very many to join the comparably low-paying Fleet.

Most Northern officers were like Bishop, having sufficient family money that military pay wasn’t an issue to them. They enjoyed the pomp and ceremony and the deference that common spacers had to show to officers. The Fleet was the last institution where truly superior men still enjoyed privileges denied to their inferiors. Their fancy dress uniforms always drew the ladies like a moth to a flame, much more so than a standard business suit the “merchants,” as Bishop’s aristocratic friends called corporate executives, wore. Even a tuxedo couldn’t match a full dress uniform bedecked with medals for attracting the eye of a beddable young woman.

Not that there were any beddable young women within almost a light-year from where Bishop sat in his command chair in
Oriskany’s
Combat Information Center. Oh, there were several quite attractive female junior officers scattered throughout the task force, but the idea of Bishop “slumming” with any of them in the sack would never have occurred to him. To him, females in the military were an abomination — a perversion of nature. Bishop absolutely detested having to salute any of the few female admirals in the Fleet having more stars than he did, so he avoided them like the plague, if at all possible.

No, Joe Bishop was not a happy man, and his malaise was virulently contagious, as he routinely vented his frustrations upon the officers and crew unfortunate enough to come into contact with him. There were very few happy men or women within Task Force-137.

“Captain, contact bearing 174 by 132," announced the ensign manning the long-range scanner station. “Extreme range, 37 light minutes out, heading 255 by 153, speed 120.”

“Very good, Cochran,” said
Oriskany
Captain Jules Bainbridge. “Navigation, plot an intercept vector. Comm, have our combat space patrol go check out that contact when Nav has the vector plotted.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” echoed both of the petty officers manning the navigation and communication stations. Astrogating intercepts from scanner plots was an imperfect science, when all of the scan information was close to 40 minutes old by the time it arrived at the
Oriskany.
The contact was moving 120 times faster than the electromagnetic radiation of the scanner so scanners could never actually tell you where a contact is, just where it was. At 120c, the contact could have moved just over 4 percent of a light-year in the time it took for the return signal to reach
Oriskany
. With
Oriskany
and her consorts cruising at 150c, the mathematics involved in plotting an intercept vector was best left to the astrogation computer.

Looking at the plot in the CIC holographic display, Bishop commented, “Looks like he’s on a direct heading for Rilan. Probably another of those Irish rust-bucket freighters delivering cabbage to their brethren in Provi.” Bishop didn’t like the Irish either. But then, Bishop didn’t like most people, and subsequently, most people responded in kind — not that Bishop ever noticed, or cared.

“Very likely, sir,” answered Bainbridge. “But we’ve got to check it out to make sure. Smugglers have been quiet in this sector lately, but you never know when they might think they’ve lulled us to sleep.”

“Smugglers,” snorted Bishop. “Running down smugglers is a job for the Boundary Guard, not the Fleet.”

“I can’t argue with you there sir, as I quite agree,” Bainbridge answered. “However, as we are here and the Boundary Guard is not, it is our duty to check it out.”

“Yes, yes. I know it is,” groused Bishop. “Nothing says I have to like it though.”

Bainbridge knew when to just shut up and let Admiral Bishop stew in his own poisons. Nothing seemed to ever please the pompous ass.

“Captain, contact is reversing course, coming about to 075 by 027,” advised Ensign Cochran from the scanner station. “Increasing speed to 650. Repeat... speed is now 650c!”

“650c? That’s no freighter!” roared Bishop. “Captain, I want our Combat Space Patrol all over that bogey, and I want them there yesterday.”

“Captain, Rovers 1 and 2 reporting near bingo fuel, sir,” announced Ensign Baker at the communications console. “They don’t think they can make it to the bogey before it leaves Alliance space with that kind of velocity.”