The Synchronicity War Part 4 (32 page)

Shiloh felt a lump form in his throat.
What
noble creatures these AIs are, ready to step forward and commit to the ultimate
sacrifice without even being asked.

With his voice betraying his emotions,
Shiloh said, “I’m at a loss for words to express the depth of the gratitude
that I feel to our volunteers. On behalf of all humans I thank you all.”

“They have the word, CAG,” said Iceman.

Shiloh nodded, letting his head drop lower
in contemplation. Suddenly he jerked up.

“Wait a minute! If two thirds of the
raiders are going to be piloted remotely, how are we going to get their AIs
off? We didn’t bring any shuttles along on this mission in order to maximize
space for supplies.”

“There is a procedure that will work, but
it’ll be tricky, CAG. Each raider will have to move close enough to Midway so
that the nose section containing the pilot will be inside the ship’s fighter
launch/recovery bay. Humans wearing spacesuits will then be able to approach
the raider and extract the pilot manually. When that’s accomplished, the raider
will back out under auto-pilot, and the next one will move in.”

Shiloh groaned mentally. Raiders might be
small compared to Midway, but they were huge compared to the ship’s fighter
launch and recovery bays. Even a tiny error in judgment or maneuvering would
cause a collision that could seriously damage Midway and kill some of the crew.
But he couldn’t think of any other way of getting 58 AIs off the doomed
raiders.

“It sounds like a very time consuming
procedure,” said Shiloh.

“Roger that, CAG, which is why we should
get started on it right now.”

“Understood. I’ll give the necessary
orders. I’m not going to get much sleep over these next five and a half days,
am I Iceman?”

“No, CAG, you’re not.”

The transfers of the AI pilots went off
without accidents and were finished in time, much to Shiloh’s surprise. Midway
now had one Mark 6 drone on board. A message drone was on its way to Beta1
ordering Vixen to send his Mark 6 drone back to Sol via a fighter. Another
message drone was on its way to Howard to advise him that 3
^rd
Fleet
would be pulling back after the upcoming battle. The battle itself was only
observed in the abstract. None of the defending raiders risked giving the game
away by transmitting anything directly at Midway. Long range observation by
recon drones told Shiloh when the battle started and when it was over. He was
just as glad that he couldn’t see the volunteers die with his own eyes. Once
all the raiders had been destroyed, the five VLOs, which Iceman assured Shiloh
were NOT the same five observed by Vixen at Beta1, proceeded to exploit the
breeding potential of the Sogas home world. With half a dozen fighters loaded
with message drones and left behind to continue long range surveillance, Midway
and the cannon raiders made a careful exit and headed for the Avalon Colony
system, the former human colony that was closest to Sogas space. Time left
until the timeship repairs were complete was now 140 days.

Upon arrival at the Avalon Colony system, a
quick check of the recon drones stationed there revealed no sign of any
insectoid incursions or scouting. It wasn’t long before a steady stream of
message drones started arriving as all the various monitoring raiders and fighters
received word that 3
^rd
Fleet had relocated further back. No reports
of insectoid movement were received for the next three weeks. The five VLOs at
Omega54 were still there. Twenty-two days after arriving in the Avalon system,
a message drone from Beta1 arrived to report that the five VLOs previously
reported there had suddenly moved as a group on a trajectory that seemed to
point to the Sogas home world system. The timing of the move turned out to be
just right. There was exactly enough time after the battle for information to
be sent back to the alpha relays and on to Beta1.

Shiloh and Iceman considered the news to be
both good and bad. It was good that information on those other five VLOs would
now be coming in faster since they’d be closer, but bad that there were now ten
VLOs ‘digesting’ the home world of the Wolf-people. That might mean that they’d
be finished exploiting it sooner and therefore moving on sooner too.

It wasn’t long before reports started
arriving of insectoid scouting activity in Sogas colony systems. Some of those
colony systems had a fair bit of metal in the form of mining, refining and
manufacturing capacity, plus a limited amount of breeding potential too. As the
days turned into weeks, Shiloh and Iceman observed how the Insectoids carefully
explored and then exploited the entire Sogas empire. Every colony was visited
by one of the ten motherships, even if only for a few hours. Anything made of
metal was salvaged. Careful reconnaissance of colony worlds after the motherships
left showed no sign of any survivors.

When all Sogas colonies had been or were in
the process of being exploited, the motherships began to head off to
unmonitored destinations. The first five to leave headed in directions that
would not discover human worlds. Number six however might discover a human
colony world if its scouts ranged out widely enough from the mothership’s base
course. Shiloh knew from one of Howard’s updates that all human colonies on
this side of human space were ordered to stop using any kind of electronic
communication that might be detected by insectoid scout ships. Colonists were
also advised to abandon their settlements and hide in nearby forested areas or
caves. Even if the colonists all did that, and that was a big if, the buildings,
cultivated land and some of the larger machinery would be impossible to hide.
Any insectoid scout in orbit would be able to determine that there was some
kind of intelligent presence. It was a long shot, but if the scout didn’t
detect any EM emissions from a distance, it might not bother for a closer look.

With at least one VLO now a potential
threat to discover humans as a spacefaring race, Shiloh made the decision to
pull 3
^rd
Fleet back to Sol, leaving behind several fighters to make
sure that message drones from other systems were redirected back to Sol.

By the time 3
^rd
Fleet arrived
back at Earth, there were only 59 days left until the expected completion of
repairs to the timeship. Shiloh was amazed at what Howard had managed to
accomplish while he was gone. Somehow Howard had gotten the OC to
‘unofficially’ persuade wealthy individuals and corporations to buy and donate
platinum to the Space Force. It wasn’t a huge amount, but it was enough for
another four warheads, bringing the total that would be available in a few
weeks to seven. Over 100 X-ray laser drones were now deployed in Earth orbit.
Production of GLB cannon parts had resumed now that all time machine parts were
finished being built. Five more cannon-armed raiders were waiting to be added
to the fifteen brought back by 3
^rd
Fleet. There was also a project
under way to adapt the GLB cannon designed for raiders so that it could be
mounted on Dreadnought’s hull in place of its laser batteries. With the much
higher power output from Dreadnought’s ZPG units, any GLB cannon would have a
much longer effective range. 

The next vision didn’t take long arriving.
Shiloh had literally just finished briefing Howard on 3
^rd
Fleet’s
mission when both men received a message from Iceman on their implants. Iceman
got right to the point.

“An insectoid mothership will arrive in 13
days. I have just received the precise time and jump coordinates. We’ll be able
to ambush it with a Mark 6, but taking out that VLO will tip off the rest of
the Insectoids that something is going on in this star system.”

Howard sighed. “So…they’ve found us. I
guess I knew this would happen eventually. At least after this coming attack, I
can make a legitimate case to the Grand Senate for commandeering a lot more
platinum. The problem will be in converting it fast enough to make a
difference, but we have to try. Shiloh, you’ll be the Field Commander of
course, but Iceman will handle the actual ambush. You two put your heads
together, and if there’s something you need, let me know, and I’ll see what I
can do. Was there anything else we should know, Iceman?”

“Negative, Admiral. I believe we’ll have
this next attack well in hand. It’s the ones after that that are uncertain.”

“Yes, even we humans have figured that out
by ourselves,” said Howard.

Shiloh said nothing. Iceman was right of
course. This next one would be the easy one. With that one destroyed, there
would be 46 days left until the timeship was operational. Somehow Space Force
had to hold the Bugs off that long. An idea occurred to him, but he waited
until he was out of Howard’s office and someplace where he could have a private
conversation with Iceman.

“CAG to Iceman.”

“Go ahead, CAG.”

“Did your vision confirm that we should use
a Mark 6 on this next VLO?”

“Negative, CAG. I assumed we would since
we’ll have four of them available by then. Are you contemplating using the
cannon raiders instead?”

“Yes I am, and here’s why. Right now the
Bugs probably think that the Sogas were responsible for the losses that
happened so fast that the motherships weren’t able to transmit any information.
Having a ten klick mothership vanish that quickly has to be a big concern for
the Bug Leadership. If we use cannon raiders, we should be able to destroy one
mothership relatively quickly. Would you agree?”

“Roger that, CAG. I see where this
discussion is going. You’re about to suggest that holding back our Mark 6s
allows us to maintain the deception that it was the Sogas who had the mystery
weapon.”

“Yes. We know the Bugs will send reinforcements
anyway, but if they think we also have that mystery weapon, it’s my belief that
they’re likely to call in a lot more reinforcements. If they’re prone to
overconfidence, then we should try to exploit that by not tipping our hand too
quickly.”

“Logical, CAG. It has the added benefit
that having multiple Mark 6s on hand as a reserve may tip the scales in our
favor when they arrive in numbers that our cannon raiders might have difficulty
in overcoming.”

Shiloh nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly!
And one more thing, the more practice we get with the GLB cannons, the more
likely we’ll be able to pinpoint the best areas of a bug mothership to aim at.”

“I like your thinking, CAG. That kind of
devious thinking is unlikely to have occurred to us. Will you be flying your
flag on Midway again during the ambush?”

“Unless Dreadnought is ready by then,” said
Shiloh.

“It won’t be. By the way, I’ve just
received a lasercom message from Valkyrie and Casanova. They want me to ask you
if you’ll take advantage of these next 13 days to renew your relationship with
Commander Kelly? What should I tell them, CAG?”

Shiloh laughed and said in what he hoped
Iceman would sense as a playful voice, “Tell them to mind their own business!”

“Message has been sent, CAG. Was there
something else you wished to discuss now?”

“No, nothing else now. CAG clear.”

                                                          *
* *

When the 13 days were up, Shiloh was once
again on Midway’s Flag Bridge, with Iceman on board as his Deputy Fleet
Commander. Midway was off to one side of the expected emergence point at a
distance of almost a million kilometers. Twenty raiders armed with GLB cannon
were less than ten thousand klicks away from the emergence point, and when the
VLO arrived, those raiders would actually be behind it. One hundred and
thirty-three laser-armed raiders were halfway between the emergence point and
Earth. They would take care of any attack craft that the bug ship might be able
to launch before it was destroyed by cannon fire. It was hoped that the Bugs
would see the raiders blocking their way to Earth and assume that the beams
causing the pinpoint internal damage were coming from them. With a little luck,
the Bugs might not scan behind them at all until it was too late.

The Flag Bridge was deadly quiet as the
countdown approached zero.

This will be interesting,
thought Shiloh. He was anxious to see how the new firing plan for
the GLB cannon worked out. Instead of one massive volley of simultaneous shots,
each of the 20 raiders would fire in sequence 25/100th of a second apart. By
the time all 20 had fired, the first one would be recharged and could fire
again. The idea was to try to identify which shot hit the power unit, and
thereby narrow down where power units were likely to be located for use in
future battles.