The Synchronicity War Part 4 (14 page)

"No, Gunslinger. We'll stick with the
plan. Have you got the new targets programmed into Orbital Defense Fire
Control?"

"Roger that, CAG. Of the nine
potential targets, I've confirmed that seven are unoccupied. The other two are
not being targeted. As soon as the backup system is activated, these targets
will be fired upon."

"Very good. How long now until time
zero?" asked Shiloh.

"Sixteen seconds as of NOW, CAG."

"Stand by, Gunslinger," said
Shiloh as he swiveled his chair around so that he could see the multi-story
main display and the tactical situation in near-Earth space.

With five seconds left to go, he heard
Gunslinger's countdown. "Five...four...three...two...one." The main
display pinged to announce a status change. Thirty-four dots appeared in a
cluster out beyond the gravity zone. They very quickly changed color from
yellow, indicating unidentified, to green, indicating friendly, to red,
indicating hostile.

"HOSTILE CONTACTS!" yelled the
Officer at the Orbital Defense Weapons Station. Before the Officer in charge of
the Center could ask any question, the ODW Officer spoke again. "WE HAVE
GOOD TARGET LOCKS! SYSTEM IS FIRING!"

All 34 red dots disappeared. A
system-generated text message scrolled across the bottom of the display.

[
All hostile targets destroyed.]

"Report, Gunslinger," said Shiloh
in a calm voice.

"All ground targets were destroyed as
well, CAG. The ODW Officer is now contacting the Committee Chair."

"As expected. Alert the Marine Section
to send four armed marines to Ops. I'll brief the Duty Officer. Keep this line
open."

"The marines have been notified,
CAG."

Even as Gunslinger responded, Shiloh stood
up and quickly walked over to the Officer on duty.

"Commander!" said Shiloh in a
loud voice. The clearly confused officer turned to look at Shiloh as he came up
to him.

"Admiral! I guess we just witnessed a
surprise enemy att—"

Shiloh cut him both verbally and with a
wave of his hand. "Right now there's something urgent that I need you to
do. One of your people has just committed treason. There are four marines on
their way here now. Meet them at the entrance and bring them over to the ODW
station. I'll be there waiting for you."

"Ah...bring them to the ODW station.
Yes, Sir."

With the Duty Officer on his way, Shiloh
walked over to the ODW station where the Lieutenant was now standing and
apparently talking with someone over his headset.

"—matter of fact he's walking towards
me now, Sir," said the Lieutenant. Shiloh had a pretty good idea who was
on the other end of that communication.

"CAG, the Committee Chair is
attempting to call you. Shall I continue to block him?" asked Gunslinger.

"No, let him through," said
Shiloh. Almost immediately his implant activated.

"Shiloh, can you hear me?" asked
the Chair.

"I hear you."

"I've just been informed that your
fighters were mistakenly identified as hostile targets. Lieutenant Khegan acted
based on what the system was telling him, and while I deplore the tragic
results, I can't fault what he did. I trust that you will not take any
disciplinary actions against this dedicated Officer. The Committee would not
look favorably on that, Admiral."

Shiloh didn't hesitate. "Have you
checked on the status of your lakeside villa, Mr. Chair?"

There was a short pause followed by,
"What? My villa? I don't know what you're talk—"

"I'm talking about the villa on Lake
Geneva. You know...the one that was built on public lands with public funds
that were supposed to have been used for conservation, the one that you and
only you make use of. It's not there anymore, Mr. Chair. You might want to
check with the other members of the Committee. Six of them also have property
that they don't want anyone else knowing about. Those six buildings are not
there anymore, either."

There was a long pause. Then Shiloh heard
the Chair talking to someone while turned away from the phone. The Duty Officer
arrived with four armed marines in tow. Shiloh looked at the Marine in charge.

"Sergeant, Lieutenant Khegan has
committed treason by deliberately firing on what he believed were friendly
units. I want him placed under arrest and held in detention pending a Court
Martial."

The Sergeant looked at the stunned officer,
then back at Shiloh and said, "Yes, Sir." The lieutenant, to his
credit, didn't resist. As the marines led him away followed by the Duty
Officer, Shiloh heard a breathless voice over his implant.

"What the HELL have you done, Shiloh?
My...that villa has been blown to pieces! Did you pay someone to plant a bomb
there?"

Blown to pieces? So that's what an X-ray
laser beam does to a mostly wooden building on the ground. The intense heat
must have caused the wood in the structure to explode upon contact.

Shiloh laughed. "No, no, something far
more interesting. You see, Mr. Chair, I knew about your override program and
your plan to murder our AIs if I gave you the slightest excuse to do it. What
you didn't realize is that my AIs are far more capable at hacking computer systems
than you give them credit for. They neutralized the override, and later on they
found the backup system. By then my fighter AIs were beyond the reach of our
defense lasers, so we left that backup system alone hoping that you would use
it to commit treason, and you did. But we also decided to show you what MY AIs
can do. They searched through data networks until they found your villa and the
other properties, and they programmed one Mark 5 drone to target those
properties. They also programmed it so that it would only fire if your
personnel used the backup system to fire at our fighters and only at the
properties that were confirmed as unoccupied. THAT was my Show of Force. My AIs
can take control of all Space Force computer systems any time they want to, and
that means that those systems will do what I want them to do."

"Well, well. I've underestimated you,
Shiloh. I had no idea that you were so ruthless. Deliberately letting me, how
did you phrase it, murder your surviving AIs? I'm not sure destroying an AI
meets the definition of murder, but that's beside the point. The point is that
I did order them destroyed, and you only have a handful left. If you want to
keep your position as CSO, you'll order them off the ships and moved somewhere
where they can't hack into our systems. Is that clear?"

"I'll tell you what's clear to me, Mr.
Chair. By the way, enjoy that title while you can. You won't be keeping it much
longer. You've just admitted ordering a criminal act. I'm going to release that
recording to the public. When that storm breaks out, the Grand Senate will cut
all of you off at the knees. Your political careers will be over, and you'll be
lucky if you don't end up in prison for what you've tried to do."

"You think you can get a recording of
this conversation? The Committee has loyal people everywhere, Shiloh. By the
time you contact the Communications Department, there won't be any record of
this conversation available to you, but there will be to me. I'll release the
part where you admit to firing on the planet to try to intimidate the
Committee. Then we'll see who has the last laugh."

"Gunslinger, show the Committee Chair
who controls the com system right now," said Shiloh.

"—we'll see who has the last
laugh...who has the last laugh...the last laugh." The repeating recording
of the Chair's last sentence ended with dead silence from the other end.

"I already have a recording, Mr.
Chair, and Gunslinger will make sure that you don't," said Shiloh. Before
he could say more, the Chair spoke.

"I'm guessing that your Gunslinger is
an AI on one of our ships. Gunslinger, can you hear me?"

"I hear you," said Gunslinger.

"How do you feel about your precious
CAG deliberately sacrificing 34 of your fellow AIs for this gesture?"

"None of my brothers have been
destroyed. Therefore your question is irrelevant."

"But Khegan said the lasers fired
on—"

"—recon drones programmed to emit the
same transponder signals as the fighters," interrupted Shiloh.
"Commander Kelly actually came up with idea. The fighters themselves are
still holding station an A.U. away, waiting for the All Clear signal."

"So no AIs were actually murdered
then," said the Chair.

"No they weren't, so I suppose that
the correct legal charge will be conspiracy to commit treason and attempted
murder," said Shiloh.

"Good lawyers will be able to get me
off the hook, but you're right about my political career crashing. At least
I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that I maneuvered you into ordering a
raid that resulted in the loss of 65 AIs."

Shiloh laughed. "No. You're not going
to have that satisfaction either. We didn't lose any AIs. The fighters never
actually attacked those enemy systems. All the AIs are waiting safely beyond
the range of the X-ray lasers. Now that this little charade is over, Gunslinger
will kill your backup system too. If you have any sense of the shitstorm that's
about to come crashing down on you, you'll walk out into the woods with a
pistol and blow what's left of your brains out. Gunslinger, I'm tired of this conversation.
Cut this asshole off, and don't let him call anyone else in Space Force."

"Asshole has been cut off and the
backup system has been deactivated, CAG. Shall I send Titan the All Clear
signal now?"

"Yes, do that. I'll be back in my
office in a few minutes. We can then record my statement to the public. Right
now I have to take care of a few things here in Ops. You can listen in."

Turning to the Duty Officer standing on the
other side of the rows of consoles, Shiloh pointed at him and then gestured for
him to come back to the ODW station. As he came closer Shiloh looked at his
name tag. HALDER.

"Commander Halder, I'm not expecting
an attack during the rest of your duty shift, but just to be on the safe side,
I want you to personally man the ODW station until the next shift arrives. When
it does, you tell your relief that the CSO wants him or her to also personally
man this station, instead of the junior officer assigned, and that goes for the
follow-on shift as well. By the time you're back here for your next shift, I'll
have made arrangements for manning this station. Any questions,
Commander?"

"No questions regarding your orders,
Sir, but I do have a question about the attack we stopped."

Shiloh gestured for him to ask the
question.

"With all due respect, Sir...what the
heck just happened here?"

"I can see why you might be confused.
There was no attack, Commander. Those 34 contacts were recon drones programmed
to transmit fighter transponder IDs. A rogue element within Space Force attempted
to destroy our fighter AIs by programming the targeting system to treat those
transponder IDs as hostile. They thought they were firing at the fighters, when
they were really shooting at recon drones acting as decoys. Lieutenant Khegan
was part of that rogue element, and I strongly suspect that his counterparts on
the next two shifts are too. In a few minutes, our Strike Force of 99 fighters
will be emerging from micro-jumps, so don't get trigger-happy. The AIs are
loyal allies and are not to be fired upon unless I personally give the order,
and I don't see that happening in my lifetime. Have I made myself clear,
Commander?"

"Crystal clear, Sir."

"Good man. One final order before I
leave. The rogue element within Space Force took their orders from the
Oversight Committee, which has put their own personal agendas ahead of their
duty to Humanity. If you are contacted by any member of that Committee, not
just during this shift but in the future as well, and are ordered by them to
take any action, you are to stall them and notify me, or any member of the
Strategic Planning Group, immediately. Under no circumstances are you to obey
the Committee's orders. Those people know that they don't have much time left
as members of that Committee before they're held to account for their actions,
and they may try something desperate to avoid their fate. You can pass that
along to your relief as well, Commander."