Synchronicity War Part 1, The (9 page)

“Yes, Sir, but I do have a question.”

“Ask it.”

“The group could spend months coming up with ideas. How do
we know when to stop brainstorming and give you what we have so far?”

“That’s a good question.” The Admiral stopped walking and
looked thoughtful. “Okay. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll give you two days to
identify and collect the rest of the group, three days to brainstorm ideas, and
five more days to crunch the numbers and prepare a report. That means that two
hundred and forty hours from now I want a preliminary document in my hand.
Remember, substance is more important than format. It doesn’t have to be
pretty, okay?”

“Yes Sir.”

Howard nodded his approval but didn’t continue walking
immediately. “One more thing, Commander. I’m sure this next point is redundant,
but this is too important to risk a misunderstanding. I don’t expect the
Planning Group to work 24 hours a day, but I also don’t expect its members to
work from 9 to 5. Do you understand what I’m saying, Commander?”

“Loud and clear Sir.”

“Good!”

They started walking again. When they got to the Admiral’s
offices, Shiloh saw that a Lieutenant Commander was waiting in the outer
office. The Admiral made the introductions.

“Commander Shiloh, this is Lieutenant Commander Amanda
Kelly, my senior planner. Kelly, this is the Officer whose reports you’ve been
studying all day. He’s going to be temporarily assigned to the SPG until his
ship is ready for action again.”

Kelly and Shiloh shook hands and exchanged the usual
pleasantries. Howard gestured to his inner office and led the way. Once inside,
he pointed to two comfortable chairs facing his desk. After everyone was
seated, he leaned back and looked at both of them carefully.

“This Strategic Planning Group is an unusual creation. Right
now it’s very ad hoc and unofficial. Eventually that will change, and it will
become a formal department with its own budget and bureaucratic red tape. But
for now, because it’s unofficial, we have the flexibility to bend the rules a
bit. Normally the senior ranked officer would be in charge, and I’m aware that Commander
Shiloh is the senior officer. However he will be returning to his ship in
several weeks, and I think continuity of leadership of the planning group is
more important than following the normal rules of seniority. Therefore I’m going
to make Commander Kelly the Team Leader of the Special Planning Group.”

Kelly smiled and said, “Thank you Sir.”

Howard shook his head. “Don’t thank me, Commander. I’m not
doing you any favor. The Team Leader is going to get a lot of flak from the
legion of armchair critics who think they know more than you do. If I’m doing
anyone a favor, it’s Commander Shiloh. He gets to fight this war on paper for a
few weeks, before going back to doing it for real. Now that I’ve thrown you
into the deep end, Kelly, I’m going to tie one hand behind your back. As Team
Leader you have the ultimate say in how the group operates and what goes into
the report. But because Commander Shiloh is the only ship CO who has won a
battle so far, his insights deserve to be taken seriously. I’m not saying you
have to accept every idea or suggestion that Commander Shiloh makes, but I do
expect you to listen to them carefully. I trust that will not be a problem,
Commander?”

Kelly shook her head. “No problem at all, Sir.”

“Excellent. What do you need to get started?”

Shiloh and Kelly looked at each other, and then she said, “Well
Sir, we’re going to need physical space to work. The conference room downstairs
will do to get started but we’re also going to need cubicles and desks,
terminals to do research, and eventually we’re going to need room to store
records that need to be kept in a secured location.”

“Yes, I see. Hmm.” He pondered that for a few seconds then
smiled. “I have the perfect solution. The sub-basement in this building was originally
designed to be secure against chemical, biological and radiological attack as a
backup facility. It’s set up with a conference room, offices, kitchen
facilities, storage areas for records, and even temporary sleeping
accommodations. Best of all, it isn’t being used. Only personnel who are
authorized with the necessary biometric data on file can get access, and I’ll
arrange for your team to get access. That will undoubtedly take a couple of
days to arrange, so you’ll have to make do with the facilities above. Is there
anything else you need to get started?”

Neither Shiloh nor Kelly could think of anything else.

“Good. In that case I’ll leave you two to get started while
I make some calls.”

Shiloh and Kelly saluted, and as they turned to leave,
Howard said, “Remember Shiloh, two hundred and forty hours.”

Shiloh chuckled and replied, “Yes Sir, I’ll remember.”

As the two of them walked through the outer office, the
Admiral overheard Kelly ask Shiloh, “What’s the deal with two hundred and forty
hours?”

After spending the most recent 72 hours in the sub-basement
think tank, Shiloh emerged from the Space Force HQ and realized that he had
lost track of whether it was day or night. He had been expecting evening dark
and instead was blinded by the late morning sunlight. He was dog-tired, but
Admiral Howard had his report, and they had completed it within the 240 hour
deadline. The Admiral had generously ordered them to take two whole days off,
and Shiloh intended to spend the first half sleeping, and the second half
eating decent meals. His mind was so preoccupied with the prospect of sleep
that he almost walked right by Lt. Cmdr. Johansen who apparently was waiting
for him.

“Forgot me already, Skipper?”

Shiloh jumped with surprise. “Angela!”

“So you do remember me. That’s nice to know. Jeez, Skipper,
you look like hell!”

He laughed. “Tell me about it. I’m not even sure what day it
is. My stomach is telling me it’s time for supper, but somehow I don’t think
it’s that time of day.”

Johansen nodded and smiled. “Lunch actually, and I have a
suggestion in that regard. Why don’t you join me for a nice, leisurely meal
with an alcoholic beverage of your choice, and I’ll tell you the good news?”

Now it was Shiloh’s turn to smile. “It’s a deal. Lead the
way, XO.”

Twenty-five minutes later they were seated in a quiet and
comfortable restaurant, with a beer in Shiloh’s hand and a glass of red wine in
Johansen’s. She broached the subject first.

“I heard that you asked for me to join the planning group.”

Shiloh nodded. “Yup. The Admiral said that you were
‘unavailable’. He didn’t elaborate. Damn strange, too, considering we didn’t
have any trouble getting anyone else we asked for, even though some of them had
to come from a lot further away.”

Johansen looked amused. “Yes, well … the Admiral had a
little assignment for me. I guess he felt he couldn’t risk telling anyone at
the time, but I don’t see any reason why I can’t tell you now. The Admiral
wanted my help in convincing GED to allow access to the UFCs.”

Shiloh waited for her to continue. When it became obvious
that she didn’t intend to, he prodded her.

“Well? Did they agree? Come on! Tell me!”

His XO laughed. “Yes they did! All of the UFCs they have now
are already busy making more. It won’t be long before we have several, then
dozens of them.”

“That’s great! So how did you and the Admiral convince GED’s
Board to give up their monopoly?”

Johansen looked around before answering. “That’s just it.
The Board didn’t give up anything. We bypassed them altogether. You see, up
until now we’ve dealt with the Board as a whole, and everything was done out in
the open. When I suggested to the Admiral that we consider unconventional
strategies, he took that to heart. After he appeared before the Oversight
Committee, and you joined the SPG, he called me in. We kicked around a few
scenarios, starting with the hijack idea I suggested and gradually migrating to
other less dramatic and less risky possibilities. What we finally came up with
was so damned obvious that we both cursed ourselves for not thinking of it sooner.”

She paused for effect.

“We decided to bribe the Chief Executive Officer of GED.”

Shiloh was stunned by the simplicity and straightforwardness
of the idea, but then he started having doubts.

“Wait a minute. Just because someone takes a bribe doesn’t
necessarily mean that they stay bribed. What happens if the Board finds out
their CEO has sold access to their money machines? They’ll just fire him and
name a replacement who will countermand the previous orders, stop the
production, and transfer of the new UFCs to Space Force control.”

He was about to say more but she beat him to it.

“Skipper, you’re not nearly devious enough. We’re not relying
on the CEO’s honesty to stay bribed. We are going to make him a series of
payments, each one contingent on not only having continued production of the
units, but also contingent on the Board not finding out about it. The key is
that we secretly recorded the whole transaction and all the conversations.
After the deal was done, we let the CEO know that if he double-crossed us, not
only would we would tell the Board that he sold out the company’s monopoly for
a bribe, thereby ruining his career, but we would also see to it that the
recordings were leaked to the appropriate investigative authorities, and he
would eventually be thrown in jail. And because this is too important to risk
something going wrong, we also took the precaution of bribing some of the key
technical personnel to make sure that the correct production orders were being
carried out, as well as to give us a heads up if the CEO tried anything funny.
Naturally we didn’t tell him that we had bribed his staff, too. As far as the
Board finding out the truth, they’ll only know what the CEO tells them. If somehow
they eventually do discover the truth and bring charges against him, we have a
pardon all ready for him, and he knows that it’ll only be implemented if he’s
been cooperating with us.”

It all sounded very plausible to Shiloh, but he still had
questions.

“How do we know that the CEO isn’t just stringing us along?
He may very well want to build more UFCs just like we do, but if he plans on
withholding control of the new units when they’re finished, then what can the
Space Force do about it? We’ll be right back to square one again.”

Johansen was shaking her head. “Part of the deal with him is
that our technical personnel will be present as the new units are built. They’ll
be fully trained in programming the UFCs. When the new units are finished,
they’ll be loaded onto Space Force supply ships and redeployed to different and,
as far as GED knows, unknown locations where our personnel will have complete
control. We can then build anything we want. For a while our UFCs will be
building even more UFCs and their supporting equipment. The dispersal strategy
means that even if an alien attack on our Home system should destroy the
original GED units, they’ll only have destroyed a small percentage of our
productive capacity.”

Shiloh smiled with appreciation. “Very nice. That will make
the Strategic Plan much easier to implement.”

Johansen leaned forward. “I’m dying to know what the Plan
includes. Can you tell me about it?”

“Yeah, sure. I don’t see why not. As far as I know, it isn’t
a classified document. In fact, I wouldn’t mind getting a fresh perspective on
some of the things we came up with. The Plan isn’t cast in stone. We’ll be
adding to it and revising it as we go along, so your input could be quite
useful. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let’s order some food, and then I’ll tell
you the highlights of the Plan.”

Which is exactly what they proceeded to do.

After their food and beverage order had been taken, Shiloh
leaned forward and said, “Okay, as I recall, there are some 89 specific
recommendations in the Plan. The overall strategy calls for limited
reconnaissance and raiding operations in the short run, followed by a gradually
stepped up tempo with more aggressive missions as the force structure permits.
That’s where things get interesting. We know from GED records that an Exploration
Frigate can be built in eight weeks by a UFC. An FE masses about 20,000 metric
tons, so that works out to 2,500 tons per week. The Plan calls for the eventual
construction of 800 million tons of warship and support ship capacity.”

Johansen whistled in amazement. “My God! Is that even do-able?”

Shiloh chuckled. “It is if you can create hundreds of UFCs
through exponential growth. The problem with that huge tonnage figure is that
it includes a lot of REALLY BIG ships. I’m talking monsters in excess of a
million tons each! Now, even if you have multiple UFCs working together to
fabricate parts, these battleships will still take a couple of years to build,
at least, and that doesn’t include the design phase which will probably take a
year all by itself. The Plan recognizes that we can’t wait that long to get offensive
muscle. We have to acquire something more capable than exploration frigates,
and we need them now!”

Johansen nodded. “Okay, so what’s the answer?”

“The answer is a series of increasingly larger units as time
goes on. Based on our encounter, the group agreed that exploration frigates are
too vulnerable in terms of armor to risk in a standup fight. So the Plan calls
for the design of an autonomous fighting platform, which you can think of as a
super large drone. The AFP will be a generic design that can carry a variety of
modular payloads. Everything from a single very powerful laser turret, to multiple
decoy or attack drones. Even to a small self-contained refueling unit that the
AFP could use to skim gas giants and process small amounts of heavy hydrogen
that can be transported back to the Mothership as a way of refueling larger
ships without risking them in a gas giant’s upper atmosphere. Each AFP would be
very heavily armored. They can be carried externally using the same racks that
we use to carry smaller drones externally. Empty, they’ll mass slightly less
than 2,000 tons, so a UFC should be able to build five of them every four weeks,
once we get the design perfected. Eventually we’ll have large carriers that
will carry dozens of them. Until then, they’ll have to be carried by supply
ships or tankers. They’ll be designed to avoid detection both from passive and
active scanning, and their small size will make them hard to hit. Since they
won’t have human crews, they’ll be able to withstand acceleration in excess of
what our inertial dampeners can handle, and that will make them very
maneuverable. And if their primary weapon system is used up or disabled,
they’ll ram an enemy ship if a window of opportunity presents itself, and the
small tactical nuke that each one will carry will detonate on impact – or if
the aliens try to dismantle it.”

Johansen’s face showed an expression of devious delight. “I
love it! What else?”

Shiloh chuckled. “Okay. How about a manned vehicle that’s
about one third the size of an exploration frigate, designed to be carried into
battle by a larger ship, with just enough room and life support for four to six
crew, for up to 10 days. It will be heavily armored and carry a salvo of fast
but short duration missiles, armed with x-ray lasers that will accelerate at
high speed and detonate close to the target. The high-energy x-ray laser blast
will slice through enemy armor like a hot knife through butter. The gunboats – that’s
what we’re calling them – will be maneuvered in groups. In addition to the
combat version, we’ve also looked at specialized versions like electronic counter
measures, and refueling and resupply models. Each gunboat can be produced in
about four weeks.

“We also came up with a whole range of ships types. Long
range reconnaissance ships, battle cruisers, million ton dreadnoughts, carriers
that can carry a combination of gunboats and AFPs, support ships and
mine/satellite layers.”

“My, oh my. You folks HAVE been busy! Do you have any idea
of what they’ll go with first?”

Shiloh nodded. “We unanimously recommended that the very
first thing that should be put into production is an attack drone. Our drones
are basically a standard body with power unit, maneuvering engine, fuel, and a guidance
system with room for a modular payload, which up till now has been either a
sensor package for reconnaissance/survey work or a data unit for relaying
information. There shouldn’t be much problem designing a payload that has
either a kinetic energy penetrator or a tactical nuke. Now making the attack
version harder to detect, and more able to withstand combat damage, will be a
bigger challenge and take longer to accomplish, but that can be phases II and
III. The x-ray laser version will also take longer to perfect. The main problem
we foresee getting combat drones into the field is quantity. The manufacturer
wasn’t expecting to have to build large numbers of these drones quickly, so it
isn’t geared up for that. It will take time to change, but I wouldn’t be
surprised if a few prototypes were ready for field testing by the time the 344
is ready to be taken out again.”

The two continued discussing ideas and thoughts for a couple
of hours before calling it a night.

It was four days later that Johansen told Shiloh the bad
news while they were on their way to HQ for another meeting with Admiral
Howard.

“I hear that the call for volunteers for the recon mission
has gone out,” Shiloh said.

Johansen looked away and nodded. After a few seconds she
turned back to Shiloh.

“Yes, I know. I’ve volunteered.”

Shiloh was shocked, and it showed in his voice. “Why did you
do that? You know it’s practically a suicide mission, don’t you?”

Johansen’s voice was calm as she replied, “I know that the
mission is dangerous, but perhaps not as dangerous as you seem to think it is.
First let me explain why. The call made it clear that anyone who volunteers for
and survives one of these recon missions will automatically be promoted upon
returning to base. That means I’d be promoted to a full Commander, and I’d almost
certainly get a ship of my own, which is something I want very badly. How much
longer they’ll continue to offer that incentive, no one knows, so if I’m going
to take advantage of it, it may as well be now.