Nebula (18 page)

“The AFO team could keep us informed of any changes in plans since you will have direct connections into the alien message traffic that reaches the robots. If they keep to their usual procedures, everything will get to the robots and go into storage, so we should be able to read all the mail. You might also be able to do things to nudge them in the right direction. Any questions?”

Harry was the first to reply. “So far you haven’t told us much beyond what we already knew. So what were the big secrets?”

Haverford bristled a bit, not being used to criticism this direct, but he replied very calmly. “Right, so far nothing big, but there’s more. In order for any actions by our fleet to look to the aliens like it’s on behalf of a world government, we have to make sure that the nations don’t react in some way that gives it away. Imagine what would happen if we all of a sudden launch ten or twenty UFOs from our ocean bases. It would set off a major panic and they might even try to shoot us down. You need to understand that if we’re launching a diversionary operation like the maneuvers that I mentioned, we’d need to do that without obviously trying to avoid detection. That wouldn’t seem normal to any aliens who were observing activities on Earth. So we need to make sure that the nations don’t take any drastic measures.”

“Well, that seems like a tall order,” Nigel commented. “I can’t imagine any of the world powers just sitting by when a bunch of UFOs leap from the ocean and go zooming off into space. They might not fire on you but they’d sure stir up a lot of commotion in their own militaries.”

“You’re correct,” Haverford replied. “We’re not that naïve. We’ve planted our own agents within government circles, some directly in the government bureaucracies and at very high positions and others in some of the trusted organizations that advise the chiefs of state and senior legislators. This is the very sensitive part of the plan. If we need to send our warships out before the enemy is totally debilitated by disease, we’ll need to explain everything to the national leaders before doing anything, and we’ll need to be prepared to take control of government operations, especially the military commands, if the national leaders don’t cooperate. It’s important that we are able to keep things on Earth looking normal when our ships take off for whatever diversionary operation is needed. Nebula has everything in place to do whatever is necessary, including a plan to seize control of global communications and other key functions in the governments. All of this is detailed in those unlabeled boxes.”

He stopped at this point and waited for any questions or comments, but none were offered. So he turned the floor back to Brad for any words that he might want to add.

Brad pointed to the large screen display. “You’ll want to familiarize yourselves with the rest of the details in the overall plan,” he said. “We just covered the top level, those first three boxes at level two in the tree. As Colonel Haverford said, there’s much more detail spelled out in the boxes, but you’ll have to go to the full plan itself to work through them. In most cases, there’s something that our team on Mars will have to do, either to provide intelligence or to take some sort of action. So spend the next few days learning more about all the contingencies and options. Then we can talk some more about our role.”

“One more question,” Harry said as Brad finished. “Are we now going to be part of the military organization? Will we have ranks and all of that stuff? Are we going to have to fight the aliens directly on Mars?”

Brad grinned as he replied. “Harry, that was three questions, not one. But here are your answers. You will not be drafted into our army. You’ll remain civilians under my command, as you’ve been from the start. Yuri will become my second in command, but he’ll also continue to be a civilian. You can wear whatever you want. If you like the kind of uniform that Brendan is wearing, we can get some for you, but it’s your choice. I expect that you’ll just want to wear what you usually do. As for combat on Mars, I have to admit that it’s a possibility, a distant one, but a possibility nevertheless. We’re primarily a forward intelligence team, but you already saw that we have a well-stocked arms locker at the forward ops base, and I’ve already encouraged you to become proficient with them. When we first discussed this, I tried to imply that it was mainly for recreation and just to get you used to using the weapons. Now you can see that it’s more important that you do become proficient, at least to some degree. If the main plan does branch off to one of those other three lines, we may find that we need to do more than just monitor and try to steer things through our control of Robby and the other two.”

Gladys had the next question. “It’s always been pretty clear to us that Nebula has a military arm beyond just the AFO, but we never had the whole picture. This fleet that you’re describing is pretty big, even if it isn’t as big as the alien fleet, and is it the total force or is there something more? What does Nebula’s military organization look like? Is there an org chart? Who are the generals and admirals?”

Brad replied again. “It’s not as big and bureaucratic as the national military establishments. We have a single mission and are purpose-built for it and only for it. There’s the fleet and the AFO. That’s it for our armed force itself. Brendan commands the fleet, and I command AFO. We report directly to Billingsley, and he reports to Seduro and the Nebula Board of Directors. There are no generals or admirals. Brendan has officers under him, and his fleet is organized into task groups of various sizes and types, but I’m the only military officer in our chain of command. We’re lean and mean, not to say that Brendan’s fleet is fat and happy. They’re pretty lean too, and they may have to go up against a very big opponent. If it comes to that, it will be David against Goliath again, and we hope with the same outcome.”

Haverford nodded. “Yeah, maybe David and Goliath, but we’re hoping for something more like a Trojan horse. Treachery and surprise are better than skill and luck. That’s why we’re banking on the AFO team to get us to a point where my ships have a fighting chance.”

“There are also our covert agents in the governments,” Brad continued. “They’re the ones who will inform the governments if we need to launch our ships, and they’re also the ones who would coordinate the seizure of control if that becomes necessary. They’re backed up by others who live at Nebula Ops and would be deployed to the surface if and when that operation is needed. But none of those people are in the military arm. They’re in a covert operations branch of Nebula, and they report directly to Seduro and the board of directors. At this time, their main purpose is to provide security. You may already have guessed that I was assigned temporarily to that organization for some specific operations, like the recruitment of some AFO team members who we thought would need a bit of persuasion.”

Harry certainly knew what Brad was talking about, and from Nigel’s reaction, Harry guessed that he’d been subjected to similar treatment.

“I need to get back to Ops,” Haverford said. “It was a pleasure meeting all of you finally. I look forward to working with you.” He then shook hands with Brad and left the room.

“So,” Brad said. “Now you have a general overview of the plan. We have copies at Ops, and you’ll be given spaces in the planning staff area so you can read up on it. I’ll introduce you around to the staff, but for now let’s just relax. It’s been a busy day.”

They then broke and went their separate ways. Visiting VIP quarters at Nebula Two had been assigned to each of them, so they had a lot of spare time until the next morning. Since none of them had much chance to explore this base during their previous visits, they took the opportunity to look around, each going in his or her own direction, depending on their specific interests.

*

The next morning, all nine AFO team members plus several maintenance personnel boarded two shuttles back to Ops. When they got there, Brad left the group and went off to the planning staff area while the other eight returned to the laboratory.

“I’ve been thinking a bit about Igor and that other new model,” Ludmila said as they walked into the lab. “I think that we may be able to use them a lot sooner than we thought. The computing architecture really isn’t all that different from the older models. There just seem to be some features that were added on top of the basic system.”

She turned to Judith. “Let’s check it out. I’ll need your help with the electronics. There are those two extra fiber links that we’ll need to unravel, but from what I’ve seen so far, I think that you’ll be able to make sense of them once we can open them up. My suggestion is to start with the worker. It will be a bit simpler, but it should still show us all the main features that we need to deal with.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Judith replied. “When do we start?”

“How about now? I’m sure that Brad would like to have an option to use them, and everybody seems to be in a hurry-up mode, so why wait? The two robots were moved here from Nebula Two once Doug’s mechanical work was done, so they’re ours to play with.” So off the two of them went to figure out how to deal with the two robots.

The other six went to their permanent quarters to freshen up and then met at the mess hall for a decent breakfast, something that Nigel called a “proper breakfast” even though he usually complained about the lack of stewed prunes. None of the others shared his complaint.

*

Breakfast had become more or less a ritual for the nine AFO team members. No one knew how this started, but each morning at about 8:00 am, they gathered at the same table in the corner of the main mess hall and sat quietly, munching on whatever seemed to each of them to be most appetizing. Brad and Nigel were the only ones who always chose the same things to eat: Brad with his sausage, scrambled eggs, hash browns, toast, and coffee, and Nigel with what he called his proper English breakfast, minus the stewed prunes. He could be relied upon to complain about that missing ingredient.

But this day was different. When Ludmila arrived, she was very excited and also clearly sleep-deprived. “The problem with Igor and that other robot is solved,” she announced as she approached the table. “My assistant and I have been up most of the night working on it, and we have it beat.”

“I was wondering where you were all night,” Yuri commented. “Couldn’t it have waited ‘til morning?”

Ludmila didn’t even hear him and just continued. “We should be able to have both of them up and running in a couple more hours. There are maybe a few thousand more lines of code to write, but most of it will just be some boiler plate that we can paste in from the library that we already use for the other ones.”

“Calm down,” Brad replied. “Go get something to eat, and you can tell us all about it.”

“Yeah, I can use a cup of coffee,” she said and went over to the coffee machine and poured a cup of strong Brazilian roast. Then she returned and sat down in her usual place at the table.

The others watched quietly as she took a couple sips and then resumed her description of the night’s work.

“It turns out that the difference with the older models isn’t all that much. Judith was able to trace the electronics paths, and the main thing that she found was that the two other fiber links go to small modules that were added to the standard components. Except for those two modules, everything else is identical, so all we needed to do was to figure out what those modules do and to check the code in the main processors against the code in the older models. That part was really easy since we have all the original code to compare against, and the new code was just a series of patches added to it. The new modules were easy too. They just provide very simple functions and very clear logical connections to the main processing.”

“So, what do the new models do that the old ones don’t?” Yuri asked.

“Quite a bit,” Ludmila replied. “Remember when I said that the new model of sentry looks like it’s meant to be a soldier, not just a sentry? Well, that’s a fact. We now know for certain that it does have that capability. We verified that the two new links definitely are there to add ability for coordination among robots and aliens and for supervisory commands that can override everything, and there are small changes in the main processors that look like they increase ability to use multiple types of weapons, not just that ray gun that the sentries all carry. They even installed logic like the things that Harry and Yuri developed to handle the complex interactions. The amazing thing is that the software itself seems to be pretty simple. Whoever did the programming is a real artist; it’s the best that I’ve ever seen. The elegant way that they built the code helped us figure out what it does and how to make the mods that we need. We also found that the changes to the worker robot are identical to Igor’s. Those new models of worker are also able to act as soldiers, but they wouldn’t be as good at it as the sentries.”

“Will you be able to adapt them so we can have supervisory override when they also work with the aliens and whatever robots they bring with them?” Brad asked.

“Even better,” Ludmila replied. “We’ll be able to hide our presence, and we’ll definitely be able to take control, just like with the older models. But we would also be able to use Igor and the other one as entry points into the command and control network among the other soldier robots if they join that network. If we took them to Mars and the aliens decided to use them to add to whatever else they brought with them, we might be able to override all the alien commands and make all the soldier robots in the network obey us. The only thing that I can’t do right now is partition the memories like in the older models. The interface with the new modules made a change in the way that data is stored and updated. I can hide anything that we do. It just wouldn’t get into storage at all. And I can get us into the alien storage areas, so we can see all the records, including all the communications and orders. But it would take more time to do the full reorganization of the storage to give us our own secret storage area. That seems to be where the only hard problems are.”