Post by Lorpius Prime on Feb 21, 2010 23:45:12 GMT -5
The Humans almost got away with it.
As it was, three days passed before the embassy's computer intelligence alerted Yenga Goying to the potential oversight in the incident report and daily logs. Then she spent a good portion of her next working day reviewing data to check the plausibility of the AI's suspicion.
Ordinarily, her next step would have been to take her analysis to Horexker to get an opinion from the embassy's military staff before reporting to the Ambassador. But by the time Yenga had reached a preliminary conclusion, she wouldn't have been able to meet with the military attaché before the next senior staff conference anyway. Yenga decided to go ahead and raise the issue in front of both Horexker and Ambassador Goyeharg.
"So what's on your mind, Operative?" the Ambassador asked once the civilian staff had made their report and departed. Yenga had noticed that he still addressed her using her title rather than her personal name in front of others.
"Well, I'm not sure yet how important this may be. I've only just started making conclusions, or I would have run this by Commander Horexker first."
She looked at the military attaché. For a moment, Horexker looked annoyed, but he gestured for her to continue.
"I think the Humans' big military exercise a few days ago was at least partially intended to disguise the launch of a ship."
Goyeharg remained outwardly impassive, but Horexker's wings fluttered, "I never saw any alerts that might have suggested that."
"This barely crossed Hyong's notification threshold. The computer didn't have any reason to give it military flags."
"How exactly would they sneak a ship past our sensors?" Horexker wasn't so stupid as to wholly deny that such a thing was possible, but all the same he was clearly offended by the notion.
"Well it's definitely urgent that we upgrade the network. It was never very good, but we never thought the Humans were capable of defeating it even so. Now I'm sure they've just never tried. Even if I'm wrong in this case, it's pretty clear that there are deficiencies which even the Humans can exploit."
While Horexker mulled this, Goyeharg spoke again, "Assuming for the moment that you are right, what do you know about this ship?"
"Very little. We didn't detect it directly, or I would have been telling you about this much sooner. Actually, I may be getting ahead of myself even calling this a 'ship'. What we recorded were a series of high-energy bursts that probably came from a pulsed reaction drive. I think a ship is the most likely payload, but it could have been anything."
"And you said this pulse drive was disguised by the Humans' weapons demonstration?"
"Yes," she answered the Ambassador firmly. "Again, the computer came up with a series of alternatives that could explain the sensor data, but I think you'll agree with me that an engine is just about the only plausible scenario."
Yenga tapped her computer, and the conference room's volumetric projector called up the display she had prepared. A blue hemisphere representing Earth appeared in front of the three embassy officials. Yenga pushed another control, and a series of red dots arranged in a flat grid appeared above the planet.
"Each of these points is the location of a nuclear explosion which occurred during the second phase of the Humans' exercise. These were mostly single-use suicide drones which even the Humans probably realized were hopelessly obsolete. They were detonated in a specific pattern, progressing as you see…"
At the touch of a command, the red points of light began to flash, one line at a time moving in a smooth wave.
"So you think each wave was timed to match the pulses of the reaction drive?" Horexker asked.
"Yes," Yenga confirmed. "What got the computer's attention was a slight discrepancy in the shape of each apparent blast. We can estimate the vector of all the suicide drones at the time of detonation using the blast shape."
A further tap on the computer, and the red dots morphed into small arrow-tipped lines indicating speed and direction of travel.
One vector in each wave of detonations differed from all the rest, and each pointed to the next rogue line in the series.
"I see," the Ambassador said. He sounded contemplative, but he was giving Yenga a look of sheer delight.
Horexker asked, "Where is it heading?"
"I can't say with any precision. These vector plots are very general estimates, the resolution on our sensors is just too poor. We can't even be certain just how powerful each of these explosions was. Without any data on the size or shape of the payload, there's a pretty wide margin of error on any course plot."
"Okay, but what's the general direction."
"Well, it's heading towards the inner system, away from our colony. For the moment, anyway. It could be heading to one of the inner planets, or to Jupiter, or it could be intended to slingshot around the sun and come back towards us or the Kekregka colony."
"Could it be targeted at the sun?" Goyeharg asked.
"Yes… but I don't think that's likely."
"What would be the point?" Horexker asked, completing her thought.
"About the only strategically significant point in the system that we can rule out as a final destination from this information is Earth itself."
"What's your best guess, though?" the Ambassador wanted to know. "You aren't completely sure of anything else you've said so far."
"No, I'm not," Yenga admitted. "But I have even less information from which to predict a destination, it'd be pure speculation."
"So, speculate," Goyeharg ordered.
Yenga sighed, "Based on recent events, I'm worried that this might be an envoy to the Charterlings. Or it could be carrying some secret cargo to the Tadpoles, though I couldn't think of what. In either scenario, the Humans would have good reason to try to hide it from us.
She paused for a moment, "I could also make a case for Mercury as the destination, in which case the Humans are not trying to hide from us so much as the Tharn. Or, it could be the start of some sort of sneak attack on our colony—but I hope not, and I don't think the Humans are quite that stupid."
Horexker added, "In the same vein, it could be headed to Jupiter, but intended as an attack on the Charterlings, possibly even the Kyhyex."
"Almost as stupid," Goyeharg chuckled.
"Right." Yenga shrugged, "Without better information on just what this thing actually is, there's just no good way to predict its purpose."
"So then we need to find out," Goyeharg said.
Yenga's wings fluttered uneasily. "While I'd certainly like to, it may not be simple. The exercise was mostly conducted on the far side of the planet from our colony. That's part of the reason behind my suspicion that this was intended to hide from us. But it also means that the colony's observation equipment probably didn't record anything useful. Some of our system patrols might have gotten a better look, but I doubt any had their sensors pointed at Earth at the time."
"But we know about it now. It can't be that hard to find, can it?"
Horexker and Yenga shared a glance.
"Unless there are further emissions," Horexker said, "it's just a cold rock on an unknown ballistic course; we might not be able to find it without running a gravitational survey. A ship could probably do the job in a few weeks, but if we divert one to the inner system, the Humans will probably notice."
"We may not want the Humans to know that we've discovered even as much as we have," Yenga explained.
"You want to do nothing?" the Ambassador sounded like he doubted his advisors' sanity.
"We can tell the colony to keep watch for anything useful. I'm not worried that they could get through the defense grid undetected, so this doesn't seem especially urgent. I think our recommendation should be to remain passive for now."
"I agree," said Horexker.
Goyeharg's expression was unhappy, "I'm not going to like feigning ignorance the next time I speak to Councilor Khatib."
Yenga met his gaze, "I think you'll survive, Ambassador."
They told Casey Rukavina that he would be able to ignore the cold. They were almost right.
Maybe if he'd had something else to do, something to engage his mind, or maybe if he'd been able to really sleep, then he wouldn't have noticed the cold. But Casey couldn't sleep. He could doze, sometimes for hours at a time, but it wasn't quite the same. Some part of his mind, even if it was dim and distant, was still aware of his surroundings. And there wasn't much to think about except the cold.
Distraction was difficult. Except for his fingers and eyes, Casey was completely immobilized. He wasn't as fanatic about exercise as many of his fellow spacers, but at least physical exertion was a good way to keep occupied. Here, it wasn't an option.
Unfortunately, neither was electronic entertainment, even though that would have allowed him to remain mostly stationary. Casey did have a discretionary energy budget, which he could have used to play some games or watch some movies. But it was severely limited, and would have to last for months. Casey didn't want to risk blowing through it all at the beginning; for fear that the boredom would get even worse.
This would have been a good opportunity to teach myself to knit, he thought. Then he could have done something with just his hands. Heck, something useful might have even come of it. The thought of a sweater was immensely appealing to Casey right now, even though he knew it wouldn't actually do anything to help with the cold.
Casey had heard people use the metaphor chilled to the bone before. Now, with cryonic fluids circulating through his body instead of blood, he felt that he had a unique claim on the term. Some people had been colder than Casey was right now, but none of them had lived through the experience.
Actually, it was more accurate to say that none of them had woken up. Yet. Casey didn't really want to write off the other members of his crew, all of whom were in blissful deep-frozen sleep right now.
Casey wished he could be in deep-frozen sleep right now. But Earth Fleet had decided that there were too many variables to automate this entire end of the project. Someone needed to be on-duty to make actual command decisions. Even if that someone was drugged far beyond any reasonable definition of mental competence.
Casey enjoyed several minutes of silent laughter imagining a DUI trial for this. It was improbable in the extreme that he would hit anything. That was good, since an accidental collision would cause something closer to an extinction-level-event than a fender-bender.
Slowly, Casey became aware of a beeping noise, the sound of the computer attempting to gain his attention. His eyes flicked to the clock, and Casey realized that his mind had been wandering for almost two hours. Someone on the Earth Fleet team who had prepared this crazy mission had realized the potential for problems with a command officer who couldn't be counted on to keep focus. That person had had the foresight to set up the command console to track progress on the scheduled reports and tasks, and beep at Casey if he made no inputs for a certain amount of time. It was like an alarm clock Casey couldn’t turn off. On some level, he knew it was a good thing; otherwise he wouldn't get any of his work done. But on another level, he wished that the same person who'd designed the system had had the forethought to give him something to do when he wasn't writing reports.
His mental curse turned into a mental sigh as Casey focused his eyes on the low-power electronic ink display in front of him. He was almost finished sending the latest status update to the Commodore. The deviation from the intended course so far had turned out to be less than half a percent, which was almost too good to believe with untested equipment going through a procedure that was not exactly error-proof even under ideal circumstances.
Casey had to concentrate on moving his fingers as he went through each keystroke. For a wonder, he actually got through the remaining few sentences without drifting off again. He entered a final command, and the message went into the queue to be sent off at the next scheduled transmission window.
These were the easy tasks. In the worst case, if Casey did actually fail to compose his own updates, the computer would still send the vital astrogation information on its own. His own purpose was just to watch the wheel in case anything weird happened.
No, the hard part would come at the end, when Casey would have to start using information sent back to him to plan the final details of this operation on his own. The Admirals had enough information to sketch out his basic flight plan before he even launched. But no one knew enough about what was waiting for him at the other end to make any useful tactical suggestions. He would have to work it out on the fly. At least by then, he would be able to shut off the anesthetics dulling his mind.
Not that that would do him any good if the cold had already driven him insane anyway.
As it was, three days passed before the embassy's computer intelligence alerted Yenga Goying to the potential oversight in the incident report and daily logs. Then she spent a good portion of her next working day reviewing data to check the plausibility of the AI's suspicion.
Ordinarily, her next step would have been to take her analysis to Horexker to get an opinion from the embassy's military staff before reporting to the Ambassador. But by the time Yenga had reached a preliminary conclusion, she wouldn't have been able to meet with the military attaché before the next senior staff conference anyway. Yenga decided to go ahead and raise the issue in front of both Horexker and Ambassador Goyeharg.
"So what's on your mind, Operative?" the Ambassador asked once the civilian staff had made their report and departed. Yenga had noticed that he still addressed her using her title rather than her personal name in front of others.
"Well, I'm not sure yet how important this may be. I've only just started making conclusions, or I would have run this by Commander Horexker first."
She looked at the military attaché. For a moment, Horexker looked annoyed, but he gestured for her to continue.
"I think the Humans' big military exercise a few days ago was at least partially intended to disguise the launch of a ship."
Goyeharg remained outwardly impassive, but Horexker's wings fluttered, "I never saw any alerts that might have suggested that."
"This barely crossed Hyong's notification threshold. The computer didn't have any reason to give it military flags."
"How exactly would they sneak a ship past our sensors?" Horexker wasn't so stupid as to wholly deny that such a thing was possible, but all the same he was clearly offended by the notion.
"Well it's definitely urgent that we upgrade the network. It was never very good, but we never thought the Humans were capable of defeating it even so. Now I'm sure they've just never tried. Even if I'm wrong in this case, it's pretty clear that there are deficiencies which even the Humans can exploit."
While Horexker mulled this, Goyeharg spoke again, "Assuming for the moment that you are right, what do you know about this ship?"
"Very little. We didn't detect it directly, or I would have been telling you about this much sooner. Actually, I may be getting ahead of myself even calling this a 'ship'. What we recorded were a series of high-energy bursts that probably came from a pulsed reaction drive. I think a ship is the most likely payload, but it could have been anything."
"And you said this pulse drive was disguised by the Humans' weapons demonstration?"
"Yes," she answered the Ambassador firmly. "Again, the computer came up with a series of alternatives that could explain the sensor data, but I think you'll agree with me that an engine is just about the only plausible scenario."
Yenga tapped her computer, and the conference room's volumetric projector called up the display she had prepared. A blue hemisphere representing Earth appeared in front of the three embassy officials. Yenga pushed another control, and a series of red dots arranged in a flat grid appeared above the planet.
"Each of these points is the location of a nuclear explosion which occurred during the second phase of the Humans' exercise. These were mostly single-use suicide drones which even the Humans probably realized were hopelessly obsolete. They were detonated in a specific pattern, progressing as you see…"
At the touch of a command, the red points of light began to flash, one line at a time moving in a smooth wave.
"So you think each wave was timed to match the pulses of the reaction drive?" Horexker asked.
"Yes," Yenga confirmed. "What got the computer's attention was a slight discrepancy in the shape of each apparent blast. We can estimate the vector of all the suicide drones at the time of detonation using the blast shape."
A further tap on the computer, and the red dots morphed into small arrow-tipped lines indicating speed and direction of travel.
One vector in each wave of detonations differed from all the rest, and each pointed to the next rogue line in the series.
"I see," the Ambassador said. He sounded contemplative, but he was giving Yenga a look of sheer delight.
Horexker asked, "Where is it heading?"
"I can't say with any precision. These vector plots are very general estimates, the resolution on our sensors is just too poor. We can't even be certain just how powerful each of these explosions was. Without any data on the size or shape of the payload, there's a pretty wide margin of error on any course plot."
"Okay, but what's the general direction."
"Well, it's heading towards the inner system, away from our colony. For the moment, anyway. It could be heading to one of the inner planets, or to Jupiter, or it could be intended to slingshot around the sun and come back towards us or the Kekregka colony."
"Could it be targeted at the sun?" Goyeharg asked.
"Yes… but I don't think that's likely."
"What would be the point?" Horexker asked, completing her thought.
"About the only strategically significant point in the system that we can rule out as a final destination from this information is Earth itself."
"What's your best guess, though?" the Ambassador wanted to know. "You aren't completely sure of anything else you've said so far."
"No, I'm not," Yenga admitted. "But I have even less information from which to predict a destination, it'd be pure speculation."
"So, speculate," Goyeharg ordered.
Yenga sighed, "Based on recent events, I'm worried that this might be an envoy to the Charterlings. Or it could be carrying some secret cargo to the Tadpoles, though I couldn't think of what. In either scenario, the Humans would have good reason to try to hide it from us.
She paused for a moment, "I could also make a case for Mercury as the destination, in which case the Humans are not trying to hide from us so much as the Tharn. Or, it could be the start of some sort of sneak attack on our colony—but I hope not, and I don't think the Humans are quite that stupid."
Horexker added, "In the same vein, it could be headed to Jupiter, but intended as an attack on the Charterlings, possibly even the Kyhyex."
"Almost as stupid," Goyeharg chuckled.
"Right." Yenga shrugged, "Without better information on just what this thing actually is, there's just no good way to predict its purpose."
"So then we need to find out," Goyeharg said.
Yenga's wings fluttered uneasily. "While I'd certainly like to, it may not be simple. The exercise was mostly conducted on the far side of the planet from our colony. That's part of the reason behind my suspicion that this was intended to hide from us. But it also means that the colony's observation equipment probably didn't record anything useful. Some of our system patrols might have gotten a better look, but I doubt any had their sensors pointed at Earth at the time."
"But we know about it now. It can't be that hard to find, can it?"
Horexker and Yenga shared a glance.
"Unless there are further emissions," Horexker said, "it's just a cold rock on an unknown ballistic course; we might not be able to find it without running a gravitational survey. A ship could probably do the job in a few weeks, but if we divert one to the inner system, the Humans will probably notice."
"We may not want the Humans to know that we've discovered even as much as we have," Yenga explained.
"You want to do nothing?" the Ambassador sounded like he doubted his advisors' sanity.
"We can tell the colony to keep watch for anything useful. I'm not worried that they could get through the defense grid undetected, so this doesn't seem especially urgent. I think our recommendation should be to remain passive for now."
"I agree," said Horexker.
Goyeharg's expression was unhappy, "I'm not going to like feigning ignorance the next time I speak to Councilor Khatib."
Yenga met his gaze, "I think you'll survive, Ambassador."
* * *
They told Casey Rukavina that he would be able to ignore the cold. They were almost right.
Maybe if he'd had something else to do, something to engage his mind, or maybe if he'd been able to really sleep, then he wouldn't have noticed the cold. But Casey couldn't sleep. He could doze, sometimes for hours at a time, but it wasn't quite the same. Some part of his mind, even if it was dim and distant, was still aware of his surroundings. And there wasn't much to think about except the cold.
Distraction was difficult. Except for his fingers and eyes, Casey was completely immobilized. He wasn't as fanatic about exercise as many of his fellow spacers, but at least physical exertion was a good way to keep occupied. Here, it wasn't an option.
Unfortunately, neither was electronic entertainment, even though that would have allowed him to remain mostly stationary. Casey did have a discretionary energy budget, which he could have used to play some games or watch some movies. But it was severely limited, and would have to last for months. Casey didn't want to risk blowing through it all at the beginning; for fear that the boredom would get even worse.
This would have been a good opportunity to teach myself to knit, he thought. Then he could have done something with just his hands. Heck, something useful might have even come of it. The thought of a sweater was immensely appealing to Casey right now, even though he knew it wouldn't actually do anything to help with the cold.
Casey had heard people use the metaphor chilled to the bone before. Now, with cryonic fluids circulating through his body instead of blood, he felt that he had a unique claim on the term. Some people had been colder than Casey was right now, but none of them had lived through the experience.
Actually, it was more accurate to say that none of them had woken up. Yet. Casey didn't really want to write off the other members of his crew, all of whom were in blissful deep-frozen sleep right now.
Casey wished he could be in deep-frozen sleep right now. But Earth Fleet had decided that there were too many variables to automate this entire end of the project. Someone needed to be on-duty to make actual command decisions. Even if that someone was drugged far beyond any reasonable definition of mental competence.
Casey enjoyed several minutes of silent laughter imagining a DUI trial for this. It was improbable in the extreme that he would hit anything. That was good, since an accidental collision would cause something closer to an extinction-level-event than a fender-bender.
Slowly, Casey became aware of a beeping noise, the sound of the computer attempting to gain his attention. His eyes flicked to the clock, and Casey realized that his mind had been wandering for almost two hours. Someone on the Earth Fleet team who had prepared this crazy mission had realized the potential for problems with a command officer who couldn't be counted on to keep focus. That person had had the foresight to set up the command console to track progress on the scheduled reports and tasks, and beep at Casey if he made no inputs for a certain amount of time. It was like an alarm clock Casey couldn’t turn off. On some level, he knew it was a good thing; otherwise he wouldn't get any of his work done. But on another level, he wished that the same person who'd designed the system had had the forethought to give him something to do when he wasn't writing reports.
His mental curse turned into a mental sigh as Casey focused his eyes on the low-power electronic ink display in front of him. He was almost finished sending the latest status update to the Commodore. The deviation from the intended course so far had turned out to be less than half a percent, which was almost too good to believe with untested equipment going through a procedure that was not exactly error-proof even under ideal circumstances.
Casey had to concentrate on moving his fingers as he went through each keystroke. For a wonder, he actually got through the remaining few sentences without drifting off again. He entered a final command, and the message went into the queue to be sent off at the next scheduled transmission window.
These were the easy tasks. In the worst case, if Casey did actually fail to compose his own updates, the computer would still send the vital astrogation information on its own. His own purpose was just to watch the wheel in case anything weird happened.
No, the hard part would come at the end, when Casey would have to start using information sent back to him to plan the final details of this operation on his own. The Admirals had enough information to sketch out his basic flight plan before he even launched. But no one knew enough about what was waiting for him at the other end to make any useful tactical suggestions. He would have to work it out on the fly. At least by then, he would be able to shut off the anesthetics dulling his mind.
Not that that would do him any good if the cold had already driven him insane anyway.