The Synchronicity War Part 2 (12 page)

The timing of all these additions concerned
Shiloh. Delays were inevitable. Every CO knew that shit happens and
timetables, especially urgent ones, almost never get completed on
time. That meant that 3rd Fleet would have little time to train as
a complete unit before the scheduled jumping off date for Operation
Uppercut. To get as much training in as possible, Shiloh ordered
Valkyrie and TG 3.2 Leader Bettencourt, to conduct a series of
training exercises with Valkyrie’s fighters and Bettencourt’s
frigates. Shiloh knew Bettencourt from the fiasco at Zebra9.
Bettencourt had been promoted to Senior Commander but unlike the
Zebra9 mission, Shiloh now outranked him at least temporarily.

During the following weeks, Shiloh kept his ears
open for any word on enemy activity only there was none. The whole
volume of space between Human space and alien space was eerily
quiet. Four weeks into the preparation phase, a new shipment of
fighters arrived from Epsilon Eridani accompanied by the first
Sentry Frigate (#109) commanded by Iceman. Resolute wasn’t ready to
receive any fighters just yet so they had to stay in lunar orbit.
FS109 was passing through Sol on its way to Nimitz Base and then on
to take up its station in the Early Warning Network but Iceman and
Shiloh had the opportunity to chat by audio channel.

“Congratulations on your first ship command,
Iceman.” Shiloh knew he had to wait for 2 1/2 minutes for Iceman’s
reply due to light speed lag of the distance between him and the
109. The reply, when it came, was typical Iceman.

“That’s Helmsman Iceman to you, CAG. That’s the
A.I. equivalent of CO for a human. My permanent rank is still Group
Leader but when I’m conning the 109, I can legitimately insist on
being addressed as Helmsman. Conning a ship is so different from
piloting a fighter, CAG. So many more systems to monitor and more
external sensors to experience. I love it, CAG. When I’m conning
this ship, I’m not bored and that’s a huge improvement from being a
fighter pilot although it would be nice if these sentry frigates
had the same acceleration as a fighter. Over to you, CAG.” When
Shiloh finished laughing, he said,

“Well, if we’re going to be picky, then you
should address me as Vice-Admiral CAG, Helmsman Iceman. Over to
you, Helmsman.”

“Ah, roger that, Vice-Admiral CAG.
Congratulations to you on your first taste of flag rank. When it
becomes permanent, you and I will have to kick back and compare
notes over a couple of cold beers. How’s Valkyrie working out? Over
to you.”
He’s not nearly as funny as you, Iceman, but then again
none of the other A.I.s were.

“You’re on. I’ll pay for the beers. Valkyrie is
working out just fine. He and VF001 are playing tag with Senior
Commander Bettencourt’s frigates out past Neptune. By the way,
we’re bringing Maverick, Hunter and the others back from Bradley
Base. They’ll get back just in time to be re-assigned to VF002 and
003. Over to you.”

“Don’t get too attached to them, CAG. The Sentry
Frigate program is ramping up, now that they’ve got all the bugs
worked out. Some of our boys will be yanked back before you depart
for Zebra19 and given their own frigates. Just sayin. Over to
you.”

“Understood. Have you had any
further…insights…into the shape of things to come? Over to
you.”

“Ah, negative on that, CAG. Gotta go now. I’m
coming up on a high speed rendezvous with a tanker and what with
all the other things I’m monitoring now, chatting with you might
actually distract me from paying attention to the refueling
procedure, if you can believe that. As soon as I’m refueled, I’ll
be jumping away so good luck at Zebra19 and I’ll see you on the
other side. Helmsman Iceman clear.” The brevity of the conversation
was surprising as was the fact that an A.I. could actually be close
to being overloaded with data and tasks but even the old
exploration frigates had dozens of sub-systems that had to be
monitored constantly. At least Iceman wasn’t bored. Shiloh had
heard some of the A.I.s complain about being bored and he had
always assumed that they were pulling his leg but apparently they
hadn’t.

“Good luck to you too, Iceman. See you on the
other side. CAG clear.”

Resolute was late being commissioned to no one’s
surprise but by then her officers and crew had been chosen. Some of
them came from Defiant which Shiloh expected. Shortly after her
commissioning ceremonies, Maverick and Hunter were brought back by
tanker. They were added to VF001 to replace two other veteran
pilots that were ordered to report to Epsilon Eridani to take
command of two more Sentry frigates. The rest of what Shiloh
thought of as the original ‘A Team’, which had been dropped off at
the Bradley Base, were on their way back now too. Bettencourt’s TG
3.2 now had 4 frigates. A fifth was expected back any day but the
sixth was behind schedule at the shipyard. In other words, it was
business as usual. With two squadrons available now, Shiloh put
Valkyrie in charge of training both of them. Based on his
recommendations, Howard named Vigilant’s CO and VF003’s CAG. Shiloh
didn’t know either of them well but they had outstanding records.
With those missing pieces of the puzzle now in place, Shiloh
decided that it was time to start planning the actual strike on
Zebra19.

The problem was that Zebra19 had LOTS of
targets. So many in fact that even Valkyrie agreed there was no way
for 75 fighters to successfully attack them all. With that much
activity going on, there had to be a sizable defensive force there
too. The single biggest target was a moon, orbiting a gas giant,
which had over a dozen distinct operations of some kind on the
surface. Since the moon had no atmosphere to speak of, those
surface facilities had to have been some kind of mining or
industrial complexes. The other potential targets were located on
other moons and on over 34 asteroids. The challenge was to plot the
best approach vector, which would allow the fighters to make a high
speed pass of the industrial moon, in such a way as to enable the
carriers to pick them up quickly and jump away before the defending
forces could intercept them. There were two possible ways of
approaching the Zebra19 star system. Zebra12 had four gas giants
and no apparent enemy presence. Zebra15 had one gas giant and no
apparent enemy presence. Of the two, Zebra15 was significantly
closer but both could be used as refueling points on the way in and
back out again. The difference was that refueling at Zebra15, would
leave the carriers and frigates enough extra fuel upon their
arrival in Zebra19, to engage in less risky high speed maneuvers,
with the potential option of refueling at Zebra12 on the way back.
If, on the other hand, they topped up their fuel at Zebra12 on the
way in, those same high speed maneuvers would then force them to
refuel at Zebra15 on the way back. With only one gas giant, Zebra15
represented a chokepoint that the enemy could potentially blockade
if they reacted fast enough.

Shiloh wished that the recon frigate had
surveyed the nearest star systems beside and behind Zebra19. If
those systems were also vacant, then Shiloh would have seriously
considered jumping past Zebra19, then refueling, then jumping to
Zebra19 and the fuel saved from not having to make a 180 degree
turn there, would have let the carriers and frigates engage in the
high speed attack maneuvers with enough fuel left over to get to
Zebra12 with four refueling points to choose from. But they didn’t
have that information available. The fuel problem was complicated
by the fuel consumption of the fighters, which depended upon how
far away the carriers would launch them from the target, how fast
they’d be going by the time they got within Mark 1 attack range and
how much deceleration they needed to do in order to match
velocities with the carriers afterwards in order to be recovered.
He was glad that Valkyrie was capable of not only calculating all
the variables for any given scenario but also coming up with new
scenarios as well.

When he was comfortably familiar with all the
astrogational parameters of the problem, he said.

“Intercom…Bridge communications.” The reply was
almost immediate.

“Bridge Com here, Sir.”

“Gordon, I want you to set up a voice and data
link with Squadron Leader Valkyrie and patch that thru to me here
in my quarters.”

“Right away, Sir.” The connections took less
than 5 seconds to establish.

“Valkyrie here, CAG. I calculate that you want
to discuss the Zebra19 mission plan with me. Is that right?” Shiloh
laughed. He hoped he wasn’t that predictable all the time.

“You got that right, Valkyrie. Given the
location of the two nearest refueling points at Zebra12 and
Zebra15, I need your help to calculate the optimal approach and
departure course, which will give 3rd Fleet the most flexibility in
terms of fuel reserves for maneuvering while in Zebra19. Can 3rd
Fleet refuel at Zebra12 going in and coming out with sufficient
fuel to attack the two largest concentrations of targets and still
be able to maneuver and microjump if necessary?”

“Yes, however, it would require launching
fighters from such a long range and with such a low attack speed in
order to conserve their own fuel, that their vulnerability to
detection and counter-attack is likely to result in losses of 61.8%
or more with minimal damage to the targets.” Shiloh shook his head.
That was unacceptably high. Even if the damage inflicted was much
greater, he wasn’t prepared to knowingly sacrifice almost 2/3rds of
his fighter pilots to achieve it. There had to be a better way and
yet Iceman’s vision had implied some fighter losses no matter what
they did. Enough so that Iceman’s participation in the attack would
have made his survival questionable.

“If 3rd Fleet refuels at Zebra15 at some point,
how much would that reduce fighter losses?” Shiloh found the pause,
before Valkyrie replied, somewhat alarming.

“Your question precludes giving you a precise
answer. There are too many variables. Refueling at Zebra15 is not
recommended.” Shiloh was puzzled. Valkyrie hadn’t had any trouble
calculating the most likely outcome of refueling at Zebra12, which
was farther away but couldn’t do so for Zebra15? There was
something else going on here, something that Valkyrie wasn’t
saying.

“Why are you recommending that, Valkyrie?” asked
Shiloh.

“With only one gas giant, it’s the obvious point
for an enemy ambush. They’ll know that an attack is coming.”

“How will they know?”

“The bogus vision you received at Green4
strongly suggests that the enemy can also transmit data back in
time. Once the attack on Zebra19 is over, the enemy will figure out
how 3rd Fleet reached that system and we have to assume that when
they acquire the necessary technology, they’ll send a warning back
in time so that their defending forces can set the ambush at
Zebra15.” Yes of course they would! Now that Valkyrie had
articulated the idea, it was glaringly obvious and Shiloh wondered
why he AND Admiral Howard hadn’t figured that out themselves. But
something about the idea was troubling him and suddenly he knew
what that was.

“Does this mean that we can’t win this war? That
regardless of what we do they’ll always be warned ahead of
time?”

“No and no. We can win the war but not with a
conventional series of battles that advances into enemy territory
gradually. Retro-temporal communication favors the defenders. It
eliminates the element of surprise and allows the defenders to
implement countermeasures just as you did at Zebra9 and
Green4.”

“Well what about ambushing their ambush similar
to what I did at Tango Delta 6?”

“I calculate only a slight chance of success,
CAG. Regardless of who tries to ambush whom, they’re the defenders
and whatever we do, they’ll know about it afterwards and send back
a warning.” Shiloh wanted to slap his forehead. Another obvious
conclusion.

“So why was I able to pull off a surprise
reverse ambush at Tango Delta 6?”

“The most likely answer, aside from the fact
that your squadron was acting as the defender, is that the sole
enemy survivor of that battle, wasn’t able to provide enough useful
information on how you pulled it off, to be able to counter your
ambush. The obvious next question would be, why go ahead with their
incursion at all then? There are several possible answers
including, that the battle was too small to be considered vital to
the war, perhaps they did try to send a warning but it wasn’t
recognized as such or perhaps they decided to let humans win small
battles in order to make them overconfident so that they could use
their retro-temporal capability to win the big battles.”

“Isn’t there a chance that the defending forces
at Zebra19 won’t recognize the attempted warning as such?”

“Yes there is but I have no way of quantifying
how likely that is and would not recommend counting on it, CAG.”
Suddenly Shiloh understood why there were too many variables to
calculate a precise outcome. If you don’t know whether you have the
element of surprise or not, then all other calculations are just so
much useless mental effort. Shiloh took a deep breath and asked the
BIG question.

“So how do we win this war?”

“The short answer is, we stay on the defensive
while we build up an unstoppable offensive force, and continue to
expand our database of enemy inhabited systems, so that we’ll know
where their home system is by the time we have a fleet strong
enough to force its way there and deliver the knockout blow.”
Shiloh sighed as he nodded.

“And they’ll be trying to do the same thing to
us first.”

“Yes, CAG. Iceman’s vision clearly shows that
they’re going to attempt that at least once before we’re ready to
do it to them.”

“I’m going to talk with Admiral Howard about
cancelling this mission altogether. He has to be made to understand
that it’ll be a useless exercise that will only kill A.I.s and
humans whose survival would help us later on.”