Scaevola's Triumph (Gaius Claudius Scaevola trilogy Book 3) (33 page)

Gaius did this, then produced a small white light and directed it at his foot. He was now quite confident at producing light.

"Point at the ship, and tell your ship to approach it. Indicate how fast, and where you wish to end up."

Gaius pointed the light at the ship, then said, "Approach the right side . . ."

"Right with respect to what?"

"Me?" Gaius offered.

"That may change. There is a straightforward way of doing this, and that is to define the parts of the ship, with respect to some feature. Now, if you look at that ship, it has a clear nest of engine exhausts. Define that as aft. Opposite is fore. Now, if you look carefully, the ship has a plane, and that side," and the Ulsian indicated with his wand, "has no features. Call that the bottom, opposite that the top. Face the fore, head towards the top, and call the right side starboard and the remaining side port."

"Suppose what I call the bottom isn't?"

"Doesn't matter," the Ulsian said. "It's for definition only. If you see just one hatch on the side of a near cylindrical ship after you have defined aft, you might call that the port side, which defines the remaining three sides. The object here is to be precise, but not necessarily correct."

Gaius thought about this for a few moments, then said, "Expand view of ship, slowly."

The Ulsian looked at Gaius with surprise, and a tinge of respect, as the image of the ship gradually grew "closer".

"Stop!" Gaius ordered.

"Cancel order! Cease expansion of view!" Kuldek immediately said. He turned to Gaius and said, "You must be more precise. Stop what? The ship might stop anything, including life support."

"I thought it would mean stop the last open-ended order," Gaius frowned.

"We can arrange that," Kuldek agreed, "as long as you have given the appropriate orders to the ship. For the moment, assume you have not. Now, continue."

"Define that as aft," Gaius said, pointing his light at the engines, "and that as starboard." He frowned, then said, "I think that defines everything. With starboard, aft and the centre of the ship, I have defined a plane, but aft also describes a direction, so as long as starboard is defined as right with the head on top . . ."

"Correct."

"Then return to actual view," Gaius ordered, and when this was restored, he continued, "Move towards the ship, but stop moving when sixty meters off starboard, then circle around it and try to find a docking port."

"Interesting way to go about it," Kuldek nodded. "The alternative is to request the ship to determine where the docking ports are, and when you find out, select one."

"I suppose," Gaius muttered.

"Don't get depressed!" Kuldek said quickly. "You'll learn."

"I'd learn more quickly if you gave me more clues as to what I'm supposed to do," Gaius replied grumpily.

"But then I'd never find out how your thinking processes go," the Ulsian replied.

"And why do you want to know that?" Gaius asked with a touch of acid in his voice.

"Because," Kuldek replied quietly, "if we are going to adapt a ship to suit your thoughts, we have to know what drives your thoughts."

"Oh!" Gaius said. He was quite taken aback. "You mean, you adapt ships to their pilots?"

"Of course," Kuldek said, as if this was so obvious he thought everyone knew it. "We try to make it as easy as possible for our pilots to be as right as possible when the pressure's on. I'm getting you to do what you'd do without prompting. The alternatives are not criticism, but rather I am giving you new options to choose from. So, let's keep going."

The lessons continued for weeks, until Gaius seemed quite capable carrying out the basic operations of flying a space ship, or at least of ordering the ship to fly. Vipsania was making excellent progress, and was already considered sufficiently well advanced that she would be given command of a real ship to practice on. This included her flying it herself, manually working several controls while reading the necessary information from control panels. Lucilla was also making reasonable progress, although she seemed to find the process more difficult.

However, after a couple of months, the party were given three ships, and instructed to fly these and land them at a specified point on the inner moon. This was achieved, then they proceeded manually to land on the outer moon. This too was carried out uneventfully.

"That's good," Kuldek said. "Now you will each carry out simulated flights in which a sequence of disasters occur. There will be objects you might collide with, unexpected huge gravitational fields, and attack by enemy warships while you are unarmed. You must not worry about whether what you are doing is correct. The object is to do something as quickly as possible. You must immediately give the order that comes into your mind. If the ship doesn't understand, we'll instruct it, and try again. There are two objectives here. The first is to teach you what does and what does not work, and the second is to ensure that the ship you are going to fly understands what you say by reflex. You will each do this separately, and please don't discuss anything. Each of you will get a different ship, and it is important each is configured for its pilot."

Gaius found this part of the exercise straightforward, once he had learned the techniques of manoeuvring his craft. Conceptually, flying in a fleeing space ship was little different from fleeing from an archer on horseback. The women initially had more difficulty, but soon they too became adept pilots, at least in simulation.

They then had to undergo courses in navigation, and on elementary mechanics. Such mechanics were limited to how to repair the most likely faults in repair robots. This involved repairing leaky hydraulics, replacing 'clip-in' limbs and extensions, and replacing the "brain" cubes. Then there were survival courses, which involved how to live off the land if they crashed. Apart from the question of deciding whether the food was suitable, Gaius knew more about this than the instructor. By the end of the year, they were all credible pilots. They were also becoming quite tired of wearing this cumbersome headgear.

Gaius also began to feel depressed and apprehensive. The problem was the prediction. There were to be two women in his life. So far, there had been only Vipsania. Did that mean he was to lose her?

* * *

Ulse was also becoming depressed and apprehensive. News had arrived that, as Gaius had predicted, the two additional planets had fallen to the enemy. The invasion was now directed as if like a knife at the very centre of the Ulsian Federation. Something had to be done.

The Terrans agreed, although as Lucilla commented somewhat tartly, that something had to be more than the incessant meetings that sprang up.

Although the meetings seemed to go on and on, eventually some form of a conclusion emerged. Gaius received a deluge of invitations to attend and explain how he knew those planets would fall. The Tin Man intercepted these calls, and after some discussion, arranged for Gaius to be interviewed, and his comments circulated planet-wide.

Gaius seemed quite self-conscious, especially since he was still forced to wear this cumbersome headgear. However, he managed to explain some of the fundamentals of military strategy, about how there had to be objectives that, if achieved, would considerably enhance the prospects of victory. Once the objectives were decided, the commanders then went about deciding how these objectives could be achieved, what stepping stones were required, and then they put together a plan that would enable these stepping stones to be achieved. If the strategy was good, all the stepping-stones would be in accord with the final objectives, hence once the invasion had gone so far, how the victories had been achieved at that point gave a rather clear indication of at least where this major objective was. Having got that far, it was quite simple to realize there were two more stepping-stones required.

So, what now? Sit back and defend Ulse?

Not at all, Gaius continued. They had worked out what the objective was, and how it was going to be attacked. Their defence had prevailed, and a major section of the enemy fleet had been destroyed. Now the enemy would have a very acute problem. They had advanced almost a thousand light years by travelling at a speed near that of light. They had started with a huge fleet, but each time they had conquered a planet, a fleet of sufficient size to defend a counter attack had to remain at each planet. Every ship surplus to that requirement should have been deployed to the attack on Ulse, and that would be expected to include the best of their main-line battle fleet. Much of the attack fleet had been destroyed, and now the enemy was constrained to those ships left to defend planets. They could not concentrate these forces without giving up planets, and they had no idea where Ulse would counter-strike. They also had the problem Ulse had had. News of the defeat would take a thousand years to get back to enemy home territory, and while reinforcements might be coming anyway, the urgency for them could not be appreciated. Now was the time to take the initiative.

Attack what?

That would depend on Ulse's objectives, and that was more subjective. An objective would be a planet that, if deprived from the enemy and added to Ulse's domains would have the greatest effect on following battles, or alternatively, it might be a planet that would help Ulse's cause, was well placed in terms of launching further attacks, and was felt to be relatively easy to retake. There was no clear answer, and in any case, there was little point in divulging targets to the enemy, thus allowing him to concentrate his forces there. Yes, the enemy commander may be able to work these out for himself, but he could never be sure, and the price for guessing wrongly was the loss of a further strategic asset.

How did he know that a large fraction of the enemy fleet was destroyed? That may have been only a tiny fraction.

If that were true, Gaius shrugged, then the enemy commander had just blown away victory. The defence had held, but not with much in reserve. Had the enemy deployed twice the number of ships, he would have prevailed. The only real way to gain victory was to decide on objectives, and throw everything at them.

But you might lose everything?

You might, but if you commit your forces in small lots, you will eventually lose everything. Of course you don't commit everything at an objective unless you think you will win. If there is an objective you simply cannot take, or believe you are unlikely to take, you should find somewhere weaker to attack. You do not send forces out to fight; you send them out to achieve something, in the expectation they will have to fight to achieve it.

So you feel it is wrong to send out small forces?

Not at all! Small forces are correct for lightly defended targets, or perhaps to harass the enemy, to attack his lines of supply, and so on. While the ultimate goal might be to attack the enemy's home planet, realistically that would be a long way in the future. The immediate objectives might be merely to retake a planet that might be a critical source of war materials, or one that was likely to lie on a line of supply, or perhaps merely to irritate the enemy, or perhaps as a feint, to obscure the eventual line of attack.

So what about building ships until we have an immense fleet, then sending out this immense force to the closest planet the enemy have, face their fleet, and defeat it?

That depends, Gaius pointed out, on the information you have. As a general rule, doing nothing to the enemy for a period is not the way to go about things. Yes, you are rebuilding, but so is the enemy. If the strategy is to defeat the enemy by outbuilding him, then impeding his building efforts by carrying out raids is an important contribution.

As for attacking a specific planet with massive force, you don't know their fleet is at the planet you have chosen to attack. They may install major defences on the planet and deploy their fleet on now unprotected Ulsian planets, or they may even abandon a given planet if their recent defeat leads them to change objectives. As a general rule, time is of more use to whoever had the most recent reversal of fortunes, as they are in the most vulnerable position to rapid attack. The more time you give, the better that side can rebuild and repair the damage.

While Vipsania was watching this, she could not help feeling that the debate was too dry. When she asked him about this, she was told that he had been advised to present things that way. She protested that nobody was going to be swung by this, and he had no answer.

But as it turned out, the Ulsians were swung. Gaius had given the advocates of action more material for their debates, and these raged on. At the end of each debate, which may have taken weeks, the debaters had to decide on a course of action, and achieve a two-thirds majority vote. The results of the votes poured in, all advocating action.

The next step was to go from the abstract to the particular. Such planning was to take place secretly, but many of the meetings had recommended that Gaius attend, in fact since many of the top Generals and Admirals had been recorded as being against such action, and since they also had a record of either losses or no combat experience at all, there were even calls for Gaius to be given a command of a small fleet. This call was greeted with absolute derision by one of the top Ulsian commanders, a commander who had actually won a small battle.

"That shows how much you know about warfare," the Admiral scoffed at one of the proponents of this course of action. "It is one thing to ride around on horses swinging swords, but it's a totally different matter to fight a modern war."

"Perhaps," came the dry reply from the clearly incensed Ulsian who had made the proposal, "and perhaps it's one thing to win a minor battle when you totally outnumber a small enemy patrol caught by surprise and a totally different matter to win a campaign."

The Admiral was furious. How dare this . . this . . criticize his victory. He was . . .

What he was did not matter. The seed had been sown. There was an increased ground swell. The problem for Gaius was clear. He had to discuss strategy with this Admiral.