The Synchronicity War Part 2 (34 page)

“Iceman, make sure that Alvarez’s team take a
close look at the power units of that raider. I want to know if
it’s suffered metal fatigue or any kind of degrading from this
mission.”

“Ah, roger that, CAG. She’s going to be
disappointed that the wife isn’t pregnant yet considering how hard
you two are trying.” Shiloh was tempted to ask how Iceman knew how
often he and Kelly were having sex but then decided that he didn’t
really want to pursue that topic.

“I’m not so sure about that. It just means the
two of them will have that much more to talk about. Valkyrie and
Kelly have become quite close you know.”

“Ah, we know, CAG. You’re forgetting that all
A.I.s know everything…well, almost everything, that other A.I.s
know.”
Ah, so THAT’S how you know so much about our sex
life!
Shiloh decided to try to change the subject.

“What ETA for 001 touchdown at the spaceport
would you calculate?”

“0911, CAG.”

“That’s fine. I’ll make sure I’m there to
witness it. It should be quite a sight. Notify Vandal that I’ll be
taking my shuttle down in a few minutes.”

“Ah, Vandal has been notified and the shuttle is
being prepped. Have a good flight, CAG.”

“Thanks, Iceman. CAG clear.”

“Later, dude.” said Iceman. Shiloh laughed as he
rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. Iceman had picked up ANOTHER
affectation. He wished he knew where Iceman was finding these
expressions.

Later that night, as Kelly was straddling
Shiloh’s face down body and massaging his back, she said,

“Something occurred to me today and the more I
think about it, the more worried I’m getting.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Why haven’t they started searching for us? When
we attack them, they’ll know that we’re not extinct and when they
acquire RTC, they’ll be able to warn themselves to begin searching
for us, don’t you think?” Shiloh thought about that for a while
before responding.

“Well, if they’re still dependent on heavy
hydrogen to generate power, then exploring all the way out this far
will be difficult and time consuming because of the need to refuel.
It could be that they were warned and are searching but haven’t
found us yet.”

“You don’t sound too worried.”

“I’m not actually. We’re not even close to
having RTC working but we’ve received multiple transmissions from
the future. That tells me that they’re not going to find us until
we’re strong enough to fight them off and by then I’d expect us to
get another vision concerning their attack so that we’ll be
prepared for it.” Kelly stopped the massage and lay down on top of
him.

“There’s another possibility.” She whispered.
“Maybe they’re not searching because they don’t know we exist
because we don’t attack them.” Another stretch of silence while
Shiloh pondered the implications of THAT idea.

“Or…they’re not searching because when we do
attack them, we overwhelm them so fast that they don’t have time to
send a warning back.”

“Even if we found and attacked their Home World,
do you think it’s possible to damage them that much, that fast,
that they couldn’t send some kind of warning to themselves?”

“Ah, I see the problem. Their warnings and our
warnings have all involved specific battles and as we know, RTC
warnings are most effective when they’re sent back to help defend
against an attack, but the attack has to still take place in order
to avoid a time paradox. If we attacked their Home World, and they
somehow warned themselves at an earlier time to search for us and
prevent us from attacking, then the attack doesn’t occur and
there’s nothing to warn themselves about and around it goes. If the
attack goes ahead and is so overwhelming that their civilization is
crushed, then they no longer have the ability to warn themselves
about the attack and therefore lose any advantage that they might
have gotten from a warning. That’s why our attack has to be with
overwhelming force. Not just dozens of raiders but hundreds.” After
a pause, Kelly said.

“I know they’ve killed billions of us but does
that give us the right to kill billions of them? Is it just revenge
we’re looking for now?” Shiloh surprised her by responding almost
immediately.

“No. Not revenge. Or at least not JUST revenge.
When there’s a mad dog in your neighborhood and he’s just killed a
small child, you don’t just stay inside and lock the doors.
Somebody’s got to hunt the animal down and end the threat once and
for all. We didn’t provoke them and they still came after us.
Sooner or later, they’ll find us again. If we get the ability to
stop them, don’t we owe it to future generations including our own
children to do that?”

“When you put it like that, then yes, we do owe
that to our children.”
Enough talk for tonight. Time to go to
sleep,
she thought.

It was still dark when Shiloh left their small
but comfortable house. Eventually it would be either added on to or
replaced with something bigger. They certainly had enough land to
do that. Maybe by then, the roads covered with crushed stone would
be paved. Still…when you’re driving a very basic ground vehicle
whose only virtue is its sophisticated suspension, then driving on
unpaved roads was actually a lot of fun.

By the time he got to the still pretty crude
‘spaceport’, the sky was starting to get lighter. The Operations
Center people were expecting him and had hot coffee waiting for
him.
Thank God Howard had enough presence of mind to ship us
coffee beans to grow more coffee along with hundreds of other seed
types.

The Tower had contact with Valkyrie. She was
still 21 minutes from touchdown. Shiloh put on a wireless headset
and chatted with her and let her chastise him for not having made
Kelly pregnant yet. He knew it was meant in a friendly way and
didn’t take offense. The others in the Ops Center got a chuckle out
of it too. When Valkyrie told him that 001 was entering Terra
Nova’s atmosphere, he stepped out onto the Tower balcony with a
pair of borrowed electronic binoculars. There were clouds at a low
altitude but he knew which direction to look at.

“I’m dropping through the clouds now, CAG.” When
the ship finally broke through the clouds, he gasped. What a
sight!

“I see you now, Valkyrie. From the ground 001
looks very scary.” The arrowhead-shaped craft massed just over
10,000 metric tons but was very thin which meant all that mass made
it long and wide. Even though the streamlined shape was no longer
necessary since the ship didn’t need to skim gas giants any more,
Shiloh was pleased that they’d kept the design. There was something
about the jet black shape that sent a delightful shiver up his
spine.
I’m reacting like a kid with a new toy,
he thought to
himself. 001 was getting close now and was slowing down. Shiloh
noticed that there was no sound at all coming from it. If he wasn’t
looking in the right direction, he wouldn’t even know it was there.
Valkyrie brought her down gently to a landing about half a
kilometer from the Tower.

“Excellent landing, Valkyrie. I’m coming out to
the ship. We’ll get you out soon.”

“Don’t rush, CAG. I’m not looking forward to
being stuck in a mobile ground unit for God knows how long until I
can get back into space again.”

“Okay. Tell me your idea.” said Shiloh in an
attempt to distract her.

“I’m surprised Iceman hasn’t told you already.
When we have a good idea of where all of the enemy’s inhabited
planets are, we attack them from the far side first and try to make
them think we’re a brand new adversary. That lets us retain the
element of strategic surprise.”

“I like it. If they think we’re someone new,
then they won’t feel the need to look for us on this side.”

“I knew you’d like the idea, CAG. I have another
idea too.”

“Tell me.”

If we built small, ZPG powered craft designed
for atmospheric and low orbital flight only, we A.I.s could
visually explore every square meter of this planet for you and it
would give us A.I.s something to do while we wait for the raider
fleet to be built. The craft wouldn’t have to be big, just big
enough for one of us, the power plant, one thruster, wings,
recording equipment and low-powered transmitter. We can have the
design and UFC production code ready within 24 hours.” That sounded
worthwhile to Shiloh too. Not only would exploring the planet from
low altitude generate lots of valuable data on resources, etc. but
keeping over 200 A.I.’s immobile or barely mobile with ground units
seemed to him like keeping a wild animal in a small cage. They
should all be in space but there weren’t enough spacecraft of any
kind to keep them all occupied all the time.

“If we can produce these atmospheric vehicles
without disrupting either the military or civilian production
schedule too badly, I’ll approve the idea. Go ahead and design the
thing and we’ll look into it further.”

“Thank you, CAG.” The drive out to the ship took
mere seconds. When he got out of the ground vehicle, he walked up
to the ship and put his hand on it. It was the first time he’d ever
been close enough to do that. The assembly line on the moon was
automated with robotic machinery everywhere and when you’re wearing
a spacesuit, there’s not much point to touching the ship anyway.
But touching it now with his bare hand brought home to him how much
had happened in the last several years. He made the decision that
when the Fleet was ready to attack, he would order it to make a low
level fly past in formation, so that everyone on the planet could
see what they’d been working towards.

Shiloh watched as the A.I. support personnel
lowered the cradle, in the ship’s nose, that held Valkyrie’s metal
brain. Within minutes they had her moved to one of the mobile units
she detested so much. She swiveled the unit around so that the
optical pickup was pointed at him. The unit’s external speaker came
to life.

“You have no idea what a difference there is
between piloting a raider and piloting this thing, CAG.”

“You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like. All
of you A.I.s have been very patient and I appreciate that very
much. Getting all of you back into space is my top priority,
Valkyrie.”

“We know it is, CAG. Let’s get to the Ops Center
so that I can show you what I learned.”

Ten minutes later, Shiloh was looking at a small
display. The large, wall display, being a one-of-a-kind piece of
equipment, was one of those ‘nice to have but not vital’ things
that they would get eventually. On his small display, he saw a
section of the boundary space between Human Space and Alien Space.
The green dots were star systems explored by Humans with no Alien
presence that they knew of. The solid red dots were system known to
contain some kind of alien presence. There were also six flashing
red dots. Systems that Valkyrie had surveyed from the system edge
where there were signs of some type of alien presence. There was
also one flashing gold dot. That system contained a planet that had
an alien presence and was the right size and temperature to be a
good candidate for an alien colony.

“Any possibility that this planet is their Home
World, Valkyrie?”

“I very much doubt it, CAG. While I was
definitely getting some alien transmissions from it, the
frequencies being used were very limited in number, unlike Earth
which was broadcasting something on just about every possible
frequency.”

“Any chance of figuring out what those
transmissions were saying?”

“Oh there’s a chance but as Iceman would say,
don’t hold your breath waiting for the translation. We’re working
on it, CAG.”

“Glad to hear that. You did an outstanding job,
Valkyrie. Gunslinger will take 001 as soon as she passes her
systems and power unit check. Vandal will take 002 out as soon as
possible. Make sure he and Gunslinger know where you want them to
go. Tell them I want them back here within 500 hours from
departure. Let’s make that SOP unless specifically ordered
otherwise.“

“Roger that, CAG. Operation Snoopy will now
begin.”

Chapter 22 - Thank You For Sending That
Vision

Shiloh woke up to the sound of the comm. unit
buzzer. He gently moved Kelly’s arm from its position across his
chest and rolled over so that he could reach the unit. The room was
still dark and therefore it was the middle of the night. That meant
that this was either very good news or very bad news and he
couldn’t imagine any possible news good enough to warrant waking
The Old Man up in the middle of the night.

“Shiloh here.” he said in a low voice.

“Iceman here, CAG. I woke you because Gunslinger
has returned and has some extremely interesting data. We A.I.s are
pretty excited by this. Should I have waited until you were awake
on your own?” Shiloh was tempted to say yes but he reminded himself
that A.I.s in general and Iceman in particular seemed to be overly
sensitive to criticism of them by the CAG. If he said that Iceman
should have waited until morning, they might not wake him in the
future, for something that was REALLY important.

“If you’re not sure whether you should wake me
up, then wake me up. What’s the interesting data?”

“Gunslinger found a system, that seems to have
an alien colony, which appeared to be under attack. He detected
multiple nuclear explosions both in orbit and on the ground. There
was also some data which could be interpreted as coming from an
extremely large spacecraft. The problem is the data isn’t
conclusive.” Shiloh was wide awake now. If the aliens were at war
with someone else, that suggested the possibility that Humanity
might be able to enlist an ally.

“How big would this spacecraft be if in fact it
exists?” asked Shiloh.

“We’ll talking about something spherical with a
diameter of 10-15 kilometers, CAG.”

“My God!” gasped Shiloh.