The Synchronicity War Part 2 (4 page)

[
Analysis of your data reveals that enemy
fleet opened fire on recon 1st wave far faster than can be
accounted for by the response time of living organisms. Those ships
are controlled by A.I.s too, CAG. Adjust your plans accordingly.
Message ends
]

Shiloh felt the hair on the back of his neck
stand up. He’d seen enough by now to appreciate how much more
effective A.I. controlled fighters were compared to human pilots.
The prospect that Iceman and his boys had to survive against a
superior number of combat starships under A.I. control with
virtually instantaneous reaction times made him sick to his
stomach. It was only with a supreme effort of will that he
prevented his stomach from heaving right then and there. His body’s
reaction made him realize that he would feel the loss of Iceman and
his fellow pilots just as deeply as if they were human. What
difference did it make if a sentient being had a brain composed of
quantum circuits instead of organic cells? If anyone asked him that
question, his answer would be an unequivocal “none!”

There’d be time to morn Iceman and the others
later. Right now he had a vision to fulfill. He stepped over to the
Helm station.

“You saw Iceman’s bombshell?” he asked
Tanaka.

“Yes, Sir.” her voice was somber too. She
clearly understood the implications for the Strike Force.

“Good. As soon as we start getting hit with
enemy radar, I want the ship to start and maintain a random and
fast evasion pattern. I don’t want us on the same vector and
acceleration for more than a second at a time. Make sure it’s
completely random. I don’t want those alien A.I.s figuring out that
we’re using some kind of predictable algorithm and anticipating our
next moves. You can overload the inertial dampeners if you feel
that’s necessary. Warn the crew now so they have time to get ready.
Can you do that, Sumi?” There was no hesitation whatsoever in her
reply.

“Yes, Sir. I can do that.”

“Good! Very good!” He smiled at her and gave her
a pat on the shoulder as he turned away. Looking at the
chronometer, he realized that the XO didn’t have a lot of time to
get that evasion program ready. Tanaka wasted no time in notifying
the crew.

“Intercom…shipwide…Attention all hands, this is
the XO. Prepare for evasive maneuvers that may overload the
inertial dampeners. Stow all lose gear and strap yourselves in.
This will be a rough ride and it may commence without any further
warning. Tanaka clear.”

As he sat back down in his Command Chair, Shiloh
strapped himself in securely, while he watched the tactical
display. The time indicator showing how much time was left before
the range to the enemy dropped to zero, was itself dropping fast.
The enemy fleet was moving towards Defiant at a rate of over 9,000
kilometers per second and Defiant, even though she was frantically
trying to slow down, was still moving towards the enemy at a rate
of just under 2,000 kilometers per second. When the time to zero
range dropped to 15 minutes, the range would be down to 5,199,385
km. During those final 15 minutes, Defiant would move sideways in
addition to the forward motion it would still have. When the 15
minutes dropped to zero, the ship would be 812,000 km off to the
side of the enemy’s projected trajectory. With laser fire
travelling at the speed of light, it would take any laser beam
fired at Defiant, just under 3 seconds to reach her. The enemy’s
problem was in figuring out where Defiant would be by the time the
laser pulse got there. A random evasion program should in theory
prevent the ship from being hit although if it had to dodge 55
laser pulses, then there was still some risk of getting hit by a
lucky shot. They just had to accept that risk and pray.

While he was still thinking of the probabilities
of random hits with long range laser fire, the timer dropped to 15
minutes and Tanaka initiated the planned course change. Defiant
spun 90 degrees and resumed acceleration in that new direction. The
ship still hadn’t been hit by enemy radar nor did Shiloh expect it
to at this range. Even when they would detect enemy radar beams
hitting the ship, the range would have to drop considerably more in
order for the radar beam to hit the ship and bounce back to the
enemy fleet with enough residual energy to be detected. That was
the drawback to using radar to detect hostile starships. They could
see you long before you could see them. Right now the only thing
the enemy was seeing was the recon drones that were using their
radars to track the fleet’s progress. Three waves of recon drones
had already been destroyed when they got close enough for accurate
laser fire. There were two more waves already on their way and
Defiant would deploy at least two more before the range dropped to
minimum.

Shiloh queried the tactical computer for time
left before the Strike Force launched their attack drones, based on
data sent back by Iceman. Fourteen minutes. They seemed to take
forever. Enemy radar began hitting Defiant’s hull when the range
had dropped to 2.25 million km. As planned, the ship began evasive
maneuvers and some of them were indeed violent enough to
momentarily overload the inertial dampeners. Shiloh was certain
that by the time the maneuvering was over, there were going to be
at least one or two cases of whiplash among the crew, if not
more.

When the time to attack drone launch reached
zero, Shiloh looked at the tactical display but saw nothing for a
couple of seconds. Then the display pinged for attention and Shiloh
saw a new cluster of blue dots emerging from the green dots
representing the Strike Force. The blue dots accelerated at almost
800Gs towards the enemy fleet while the Strike Force, having shot
its bolt, now veered off at 400Gs on a new course that was 90
degrees from Defiant’s new vector. From Defiant’s vantage point,
the ship had veered off sideways and Iceman’s fighters had veered
off vertically which would allow both of them to maintain contact
via the relay drones without the enemy fleet intercepting the com
laser pulses.

With less than a minute now until the attack
drones reached their targets, this was the time that worried Shiloh
the most. If, for whatever reason, the enemy A.I.s decided to use
their radars to look behind them, they would see the attack drones
coming at them with plenty of time to fire at them. Firing at them
didn’t guarantee hitting them. Attack drones were designed to be
difficult to detect accurately and were small enough to make a
direct hit difficult too. With 44 seconds left to impact, Shiloh
heard the Weapons Officer yell out.

“They’re scanning behind them!” At almost the
same time, roughly a third of the blue dots disappeared. 63 attack
drones were still functional. Now the question was…would the enemy
laser batteries be recharged fast enough to fire again before drone
impact?

“They’ve stopped scanning!” yelled the Weapons
Officer. Shiloh nodded. No sense in helping the enemy drones more
than was absolutely necessary. He was sure that they would resume
scanning as soon as their lasers were recharged. With 9 seconds
left to impact, the enemy must have fired its lasers again because
51 blue dots vanished leaving 12 attack drones still on track and
now that it was obvious that there wasn’t enough time left for the
enemy to fire again before being intercepted, the attack drones
turned their radars on and headed straight for their targets. Time
to impact hit zero and 12 red dots in the enemy fleet also
disappeared. That left 43 ships. Shiloh was disappointed that they
didn’t get more of them but now his main concern was Iceman’s
fighters. Even though they were piling on velocity at 400Gs, their
forward momentum would overtake the enemy fleet so quickly that the
Strike Force would be less than 7,500 km from the enemy fleet at
their closest approach. Practically point blank range for laser
fire.

Shiloh clenched his fist and banged his chair’s
armrest when one of Iceman’s fighters disappeared from the display.
Turning his head he said,

“Weapons! Pick an enemy target and fire all
lasers! I know our hit probability at this range is shit but maybe
we’ll get lucky! Keep firing until I tell you to stop!”

“Commencing fire now!” replied the officer.
Shiloh turned his attention back to the tactical display and became
aware that the Bridge had turned dead quiet. Everyone was watching
Iceman and his boys trying to get through the deadly gauntlet. Even
the Weapons Officer was omitting his usual cadence regarding his
lasers’ recharge cycle. A quick glance at the sidebar data on the
Strike Force showed Shiloh that Iceman was still operational.
CFP0055 call sign Undertaker had a red status indicator of LOS.
Loss Of Signal. So far he was the only one. As the minutes slowly
ticked by, Shiloh was amazed that he wasn’t seeing more LOS
indicators. He expected the fighters to be slaughtered quickly but
they weren’t. Eventually there was another LOS and then a few
minutes later another and another. Shiloh jumped with surprise when
the Weapons Officer said,

“Sir, we’re still firing and our lasers are
beginning to overheat. Shall I continue firing?” A quick look at
the range showed that they were now almost 1.5 million km away from
the enemy.

“Cease fire. Did we hit anything?” asked
Shiloh.

“Yes, Sir. I believe that we took out one enemy
ship.” Shiloh looked at the display and nodded. The enemy fleet now
had 42 ships still intact and maneuvering so they had gotten one of
them. It wasn’t much but it was something. Defiant had earned her
first combat star. He made a mental note to congratulate the
Weapons Officer later but right now, he was more interested in the
Strike Force. They were down now to 14. The range was 256,000+ km
and rising fast. Shiloh’s ear implant crackled with an incoming
voice message.

“Iceman to CAG. It appears that the enemy fleet
has ceased firing at us and they’re not pursuing us. I guess that
means those of us who are left, will live to fight another day, eh
CAG? What are your orders now?” The rest of the Bridge crew must
have heard it over their implants as well because the whole Bridge
erupted with cheers. Shiloh knew that Iceman could hear those
cheers so he waited until they died down.

“Glad to hear that you and most of your team
made it through okay, Iceman. You’ll have to explain to me how you
managed that when you’re back aboard. Defiant will be proceeding to
Green4A to refuel. Rendezvous with us as soon as you can. You can
tell your boys that I’m proud of all of you. We won’t forget the
ones we lost today.”

“Ah, roger that, CAG. I personally will miss
Undertaker a lot. He had a wicked sense of humor, especially when
it came to human sexual practices. I have to confess, I still don’t
know what all the fuss is about. But that’s a topic for another
time. It’s going to take us a while to return to the gas giant.
We’ll be low on fuel by then too but we’ll make it okay. Don’t
hesitate to call me if you wanna chat, CAG. Iceman clear.” Shiloh
smiled and relaxed. The battle was over. What was left of the enemy
fleet was beyond radar range now but that didn’t matter. They were
going much too fast to swing around and attack Defiant even if they
wanted to and Shiloh was convinced they didn’t really want to.
Their mission was to attack the Avalon Colony. He’d check with the
Astrogator before he finished his duty shift but he’d be surprised
if the fleet’s last recorded vector was on a direct course for a
jump into the path leading to the Avalon Colony. He wouldn’t be so
obvious about it if he were in charge of that fleet and he doubted
that the aliens would be that obvious either.

The ship would stay at Battle Stations a little
while longer as a precaution and then it would get back to a normal
routine. He’d then head for his quarters for a badly needed 7 hours
of sleep. By then the ship would be in orbit and refueled. They’d
pick up Iceman and his survivors as well as Valkyrie and Skywalker,
then microjump over to Green4B to pick up the two sentries there
too. Now that he knew where the enemy fleet was headed, there was
plenty of time to do all that and still get there first and he
suspected the Space Force would need all the fighters he could
bring with him when that enemy fleet finally did arrive.

Chapter 3 - You Can Count On Us

When he woke up 8 hours later, he was pleased to
find that Defiant was fully fuelled, had recovered the fighters at
Green4A and was now approaching Green4B for a time-saving slingshot
maneuver around that gas giant that would put them on a course for
their first jump and also rendezvous with the two sentry fighters
at the same time. As he ate his breakfast in the Officers’ Mess,
one of his junior lieutenants walked over to his table and
said.

“Excuse me, Sir. Could I ask you a question?”
Shiloh nodded.

“Are we going to try to outguess where they’re
headed next, Sir?” Shiloh shook his head.

“No, and the reasons why are these. First, they
have too much of a head start. Even if we picked the right system
by chance, they might very well have refueled and jumped again by
the time we got there. Second, our chances of picking the right
system are small. They could have picked one of a dozen possible
destinations. Third, we’ve used up almost all our recon and attack
drones so even if we did regain contact, we’d have to get
dangerously close to track them and finally, I don’t want Defiant
to follow them to Avalon Colony… or some other inhabited system
only to arrive low on weapons and fuel, when getting there early
and resupplying might make the difference between a victory and a
defeat.” The Lieutenant nodded and said.

“Thank you, Sir. I guess the scuttlebutt is
right.”

“What scuttlebutt would that be, Lieutenant?”
The officer, having now realized he said too much, got red in the
face.

“Well ah…the rumors are that Admiral Howard and
the Senior Brass consider you to be a ah….tactical genius…Sir.”
Now what do you say to that?
Thought Shiloh.
Do I declare
myself to be a mere mortal and damage their confidence in me or do
I let them think I’m better than I really am?
He laughed and
said.