The Synchronicity War Part 4 (6 page)

"I think that maybe we're not
considering all options. What if the time machine is completed after the Bugs
cut through the Sogas and after we take care of the bug ship? Wouldn't that
work just as well?"

"You're correct that there wouldn't be
any technical or logistical reason why we couldn't build it then, but would The
Old Man approve that kind of mammoth project just to save two AIs, CAG? The war
will have been won by that point, so why bother? That's assuming of course that
we can fight off new Sogas attacks over the next 152 days."

Shit! She has a good point. Once the war
is won, the only reason to change the past would be to rescue two AIs. We
wouldn't go to all that trouble to save two humans. Wait a minute! It isn't
JUST two AIs that we'd be saving. Over fifty AIs were lost in that battle along
with over a hundred humans. And by switching to an alternate timeline who knows
how many more AIs and humans might be saved as well?

"That's not how we'll sell the idea to
The Old Man. Space Force lost a lot of its brothers and sisters in this last
battle, and I have a feeling that there'll be more combat before this war is
over. Potentially saving all those lives is something that Howard just might
buy into if we pitch it to him the right way at the right time."

"What if he still says no, CAG?"

Shiloh took a deep breath and said,
"If The Old Man still won't approve the idea, then we'll get the time
machine built without his approval. I give you my word, Valkyrie."

"Your word is good enough for me,
CAG."

                                               *
* *

Gunslinger performed another systems check
of his sentry frigate. All systems were operating perfectly. The Sentry Frigate,
formerly Exploration Frigate #344, was orbiting Haven outside of its gravity
zone. Stoney's fighter along with the three members of his fighter 'wing' were
holding position one light second into the gravity zone. Their modular lasers
were warmed up and ready to engage any object heading for the planet.
Gunslinger's job was to launch a spread of attack drones armed with the old
Mark 1 fission warheads at the six enemy ships that would emerge from Jumpspace
in less than 30 seconds if Blackjack's data was correct. Gunslinger was quite
proud of the fact that he was conning the frigate that used to be commanded by The
CAG himself. Four recon drones had been carefully positioned to give immediate
radar notification of the enemy ships. A quick check confirmed they were ready
too. It was almost time to begin the operation. Because Sentry Frigates were
only capable of launching two drones at a time, the six attack drones had to be
launched in stages. Their programming would ensure that all six hit their targets
at exactly the same point in time. To avoid giving the enemy any time to jump
away after launching their bio-weapon shells, that interception point would be
one point five seconds after the ships emerged from Jumpspace.

With the launch sequences pre-programmed,
all Gunslinger had to do was watch. At the correct time, his Sentry Frigate
fired its first two attack drones. Five seconds later it fired the second pair,
and five seconds after that the third pair.
This is too easy,
thought
Gunslinger. When the internal chronometer reached the specified time, six enemy
ships dropped out of Jumpspace and into a barrage of converging radar beams
that pinpointed their position precisely down to a few centimeters. Almost
immediately all six ships fired their bio-weapon shells and then vanished in
nuclear fireballs as the drones hit. Four of the six bio-shells were caught in
the explosions and vaporized as a side effect of Gunslinger's attack. The
bio-organisms contained in the other two shells were almost certainly killed by
the radiation from the drone warhead blasts, but the fighters burned them
anyway as soon as their optical and radar sensors were able to distinguish the
targets from the background radiation and electro-magnetic pulse effects. 

Gunslinger waited until his ship's radar
equipment was able to burn through the residual energy coming from the dying
fission blasts and was surprised to find that the six enemy ships were
completely destroyed. Based on past combat experience, the older and lower
yield Mark 1 warheads should only have been powerful enough to vaporize half of
the enemy's typical 20,000 ton warship. He was expecting to see large glowing
hunks of metal or even clusters of smaller pieces, but there was nothing left
of any of them. Where the Sogas deploying a new class of ship that was smaller?
That might explain how they had managed to build so many of them so quickly.

With his mission accomplished and
confirmation that Stoney's fighters had done their jobs as well, Gunslinger
transmitted the order for the fighters to follow his ship out of Haven orbit to
line up for a direct jump back to Sol. As his ship accelerated, Gunslinger
transmitted the All Clear signal to the Haven colonists who were hiding in the
forests around the settlement. The Colony Leader's thanks gave Gunslinger an
unfamiliar feeling of what he could only classify as satisfaction. It was good
to be of service to humans, and he was looking forward to some exciting combat
in the Sogas home world system.

                                            *
* *

Ten days of R&R with Kelly went far too
quickly, but the two of them did their best to make the most of the time they
had together. Kelly told Shiloh that Valkyie had conveyed to her how pleased
she was with their new relationship. It didn't take long for the rest of the AIs
still on Earth to find out about it either. Shiloh nearly choked on some food
he was eating when Blackjack called to ask how copulating with Kelly was
different from doing the same thing with other human females. Shiloh managed to
restrain his initial impulse towards anger by remembering that the AIs were
genuinely curious about all aspects of human physiology and psychology. It was
that moment when he felt Iceman's loss most deeply. Iceman was also curious,
but he at least understood that some subjects were too sensitive for Shiloh to
talk about comfortably.

As the fighters and sentry frigates began
to trickle in from their separate missions, Space Force began to make progress
in dealing with the aftermath of the battle. Enough repairs to Dreadnought's
Command Section had been done to enable Shiloh to visit the ship and personally
look at the Main Bridge where the melted remains of both Iceman and Casanova
were still waiting to be removed. The repairs to the extra two AI stations were
still to come, but at least the damage to the hull was repaired. Shiloh could
enter the room without needing a pressure suit. The lighting wasn't completely
repaired yet either, but there was enough to see what he needed to see. He was
wearing a device hooked around his right ear containing a video camera so that
Valkyie could see what he saw.

Valkyrie's AI station was still intact. He
looked more closely and marveled at the fact that the metal enclosure around
her quantum brain didn't have a single scratch on it. The other two stations
were half gone and the remainder just misshapen lumps with blistered edges. At
Valkyrie's urging, he managed to get the top of the enclosures open. In both
cases, the football-shaped device that was the AIs brain was partially gone,
vaporized by the intense laser beam as it slashed its way through the room.
Shiloh could see the inside of what was left, and it made him feel as though he
were looking at the exposed brain of a close friend. The two stations were
close enough that Shiloh was able to crouch down between them and carefully
place one hand on each of the damaged pieces. He lowered his head, closed his
eyes and said a silent prayer for the souls of Iceman and Casanova.

When he raised his head and pulled his
hands away, Valkyrie said, "May I request that you remove their remains
and personally supervise the recycling of the materials, CAG?"

"I'd be happy to do that,
Valkyrie," said Shiloh. After some effort he was able to pull both half
brains free from the brackets holding them. While the remains were small in
volume, the brain casings were filled with materials of different kinds and
were heavy enough that he had to hold on to them carefully. He was panting from
exertion by the time he got to the section of the shipyard asteroid where mined
ore was being smelted down to its usable metals. He told the operators of the
facility what he wanted to do. They offered to take the two pieces from him,
but Shiloh refused. After receiving some instructions, he stepped into the
recycling station and carefully set each half brain into the loading bin. When
he was back outside, he moved to stand in front of the Operator's station and
pointed his video camera at the view screen that showed the loading bin. The
Operator manipulated his controls, and the bin tipped over to drop the two
brain cases into the white-hot recycling chamber.

"On behalf of Casanova and Iceman, I
thank you, CAG," said Valkyrie.

"They will be missed. Let's make sure
they didn't die in vain, Valkyrie," said Shiloh.

"Roger that, CAG.

Howard picked up his data tablet and opened
the next file in his Inbox. It was a report from the SPG. He smiled, wondering
when Cmdr. Kelly found the time to approve this report with all the time she
was spending with Shiloh. They were trying to be discrete, but rumors were
already flying around the HQ. After all, how discrete can you really be if you
practically live in another officer's quarters 24 hours a day? Not that Howard
minded. He heartily approved in fact. He returned his attention to the report
and was soon frowning.

"Intercom...connect me with Commander
Kelly...no, wait. Connect me with Wolfman." No sense possibly interrupting
something intimate between Kelly and Shiloh.

"Wolfman here, Admiral. Are you
calling about our latest report?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. I
understand that we only have to plan for defense against the Sogas for another
five months, and I see the advantages of shifting to mass production of our new
F2 fighter, but I'm not convinced that we shouldn't do the same thing with
raiders. So what if the raider production and assembly line will take two
months to build? Once it's built, we'll get a new raider every three days!
What's wrong with that?"

"Ah, I see that you've only read the
Executive Summary. If you'll scroll down to Appendix A, you'll see the timeline
of the alternative production schedules. The first column shows how many
raiders would be available on specific dates with the production and assembly line.
The second column shows raider availability if we dispense with the assembly
line and build raiders one at a time in our existing shipyards."

"I'm looking at that data now,"
said Howard. "I see that by the time the Bugs reach the first Sogas colony,
the assembly line will have produced twenty-six raiders while the shipyards
will only have produced fifteen. Don't we need all the raiders we can get our
hands on, Wolfman?"

"But will we need twenty-six raiders
at that point, Admiral? As soon as the Sogas learn about the Insectoids,
they'll forget about us and use all their available mobile assets against the
insectoid mothership. From our point of view, the war will effectively be over.
If we're going to use raiders against the Sogas, it'll have to be earlier. If
you move up the shipyard column to the point when the total jumps from five to
ten, you'll see that we'll have ten raiders when there's still two months of
potential combat left. How many raiders will the assembly line have produced by
then, Admiral?"

Howard nodded with sudden understanding.
"Zero. Okay, I get it now. If we expected the war to last more than five
months, we'd be better off in the long run building the assembly line, but for
the short window of opportunity where raiders can be of use, we're better off
building them in the shipyards. So why wouldn't it be the same for the F2
fighter?"

"The reason is the difference in size.
The F2 is roughly one third as large as the raider. It has far less components.
That means the assembly line is much shorter and can be built sooner. When it's
operating at capacity, it will produce a new F2 every 20 hours. If we only used
shipyards to build F2s, we would actually have fewer available for the last
eleven weeks of the five month period."

"Yes, that makes sense, and I see
we'll also have more of the older F1 type arriving from Site B too. Hmm. Now
that I see what limited use raiders will be in the near term, I'm wondering if
it makes sense building them at all. If we use our shipyards to build raiders,
we'll have to forget about finishing the two light and one heavy carriers that
are partly finished. They might be useful to have someday if we're going to
have lots of fighters. Comments?" asked Howard.