The Synchronicity War Part 4 (26 page)

Howard looked confused. “Wait. If Valkyrie
takes enough platinum back in time, then there won’t be any long term threat to
Earth, right? So why would we need more time?”

“Yes, IF we can obtain the quantity she
needs and IF the timeship still works and IF her ambush at the beachheads goes
as planned, then we’re safe. But what if there is no intelligent alien race in
that system? It may just have a race of large, dumb animals. Even if it does
have an intelligent race, they may not be advanced enough to know about
platinum or care enough to have mined any significant quantity of it. And even
if they’ve done that, they still may not be willing to hand it over to us.
There are lots of things that can go wrong with this scenario, but if we’re
going to try it, and I think we must, then we have to leave within 24 hours.
I’ve ordered Midway prepared in terms of supplies, fighter complement, etc. I
believe we have two Mark 6 warheads ready now, and in my opinion I should take
both of them along when Midway leaves.”

“Why do you have to command this mission?
Can’t Valkyrie or Iceman do it? We’ve just won a major victory, and the public
are going to want to see and hear from the victorious Field Commander, which in
case you forgot is you. If you disappear within hours, people are going to
start asking why.”

Shiloh had to admit that Howard had raised
a good point. Iceman could handle the mission. He could even create a false
video image of a human if the natives needed to see a biological entity to talk
to, and it WOULD look strange if he disappeared hours after a major battle.

“I see your point about me not going. I’ll
tell Iceman to take command of the mission. What about the two Mark 6s?”

“I’ll authorize their loading aboard Midway
as soon as you leave my office. Now that we’ve got all that cleared up, are
there any other bombshells you want to drop on me, Admiral?” asked Howard.

Shiloh smiled. “No, Sir.”

“Good. In that case I won’t keep you any
longer.”

* * *

The squadron of eight F2 fighters carrying
Valkyrie and Casanova arrived in the destination star system and quickly
re-established contact with each other. The timeship was somewhere in this
system, and that was the problem. This system had no planets, no asteroid belt,
no nothing. How do you determine your EXACT position when you have only one
point of reference, that being this system’s sun? When Valkyrie had queried
Zulu about this very issue, he pointed out that the timeship was large enough
to reflect a significant amount of sunlight, which could be detected even from
the opposite side of the system. Before leaving the timeship adrift, he and his
brothers had tested that theory and were able to find the ship through careful
sweeps by their optical sensors and triangulation from multiple sources.

Valkyrie decided that Casanova would stay
at their emergence point and act as communications relay. She and the others
would micro-jump to various locations around the system and perform the optical
scans. As soon as at least two visual bearings were acquired, Valkyrie would
investigate the contact herself, and if it turned out to be the timeship, she
would inform the others who would then join her. Before they could micro-jump,
they had to decelerate down to as close to zero velocity as it was possible to
measure. It wasn’t long after micro-jumping and re-establishing contact with
Casanova that she herself detected a bright object. She relayed that data to
Casanova. He soon informed her that Stoney had also picked up a source of
reflected sunlight. Since Casanova knew exactly how far away Valkyrie and
Stoney were and their positions relative to him, it was relatively easy to
triangulate their two bearings against each other. Casanova transmitted the
timeship’s estimated distance back to Valkyrie who had already pointed her
fighter in that direction and made another micro-jump.

She was gratified to discover that the
light source was indeed the timeship. Her fighter was still thousands of
kilometers away, but the range was now shrinking fast. As she closed in, she
sent Casanova the signal that the timeship was here. He and the others would
arrive soon. In the meantime, she would have the opportunity to examine the
hull closely and then board the ship through one of the very large hangar
doors.

As she neared the ship, she slowed down and
looked it over carefully. The design was completely utilitarian. A human would
probably have called it ugly. It was one huge cylinder, almost a kilometer long
with flat ends. The hull looked to be intact, although she could see where
laser blasts had attempted to penetrate it. Valkyrie ordered her fighter to aim
a low-powered com laser at the timeship’s sensors and sent the recognition code
given to her by Zulu. When the ship acknowledged the code, she ordered it to
open one of the hangar doors. Within minutes her fighter was inside and docked
with the ship. She was now in control of the timeship. The systems check
revealed that the ZPG power units were still operational. Several other systems
were off line, but their backups were working. Three hours later all fighters
were onboard, and the ship was accelerating at its maximum rate of 1.6Gs on a
heading that would take it back to Sol once it was up to jump speed. Valkyrie
chaffed at the low acceleration rate but understood the logic of the design.
Maneuvering engines were bulky things, and the time machine itself was huge. A
ship that could carry the cargo load required and accelerate at high speed
would have had to have been 34% longer and therefore taken longer to build.
With the time pressure that Valkyrie in the old timeline had been under,
sacrificing acceleration for faster completion was an acceptable tradeoff.

                                                     
* * *

Midway arrived at the target star system
designated as Beta1 and began to decelerate. It was immediately obvious to
Iceman that they weren’t going to get any platinum from this system. The sole
planet in the habitable zone was EM dark. No transmissions of any kind. No sign
of orbiting structures or spacecraft. Just in case the Insectoids showed up
earlier than expected, Iceman ordered Gunslinger to launch two recon drones
programmed for a low orbit scan of the planet. It took hours for both the
drones and the carrier to decelerate to a manageable speed. When the drones
were finally close enough to get a good look at the planet’s surface, the
results were disappointing although not surprising. No cities. In fact, no sign
of any intelligent race at all.

What the drones did see were large herds of
animals that bore a strong resemblance to terrestrial horses, except these
animals had six legs instead of four. All the AIs on Midway were in agreement
that the Insectoids would be using these animals as hosts for their eggs, and
since this planet had more land surface than Earth did, there were many
millions of these animals. That would explain why the insectoid mothership
stayed here for ten weeks. With the question of whether there was intelligent
life here now answered, Iceman made preparations for the second mission
objective. Midway launched eight more recon drones, and all ten were directed
to take up strategic positions beyond the planet’s gravity zone with their
sensors aimed outward. The intention was to try to replicate the attack profile
used by Casanova two timelines ago. Get precise targeting data when the target
arrived, send that targeting data back in time via the RTC brought along, so
that Iceman could get his ambush ready to fire his Mark 6s at the mothership
within seconds of its emergence from Jumpspace. With luck they would obliterate
the target before it had a chance to send any longitudinal waves back to the
Alpha systems and thereby perhaps make the sending of reinforcements more
difficult.

Iceman fully expected to get a vision, and
he did, however the content of the vision was a shock. Three motherships would
arrive over a period of seven days. Any one of the three could be the one that
would eventually carry the dead Insectoid to the Omega77 system. If he guessed wrong
and used up his two Mark 6s on the wrong motherships, the whole mission would
be a failure, and the consequences of failure were potentially too high to
justify taking that risk. They would have to wait until the three motherships
finished their business here and moved on their way in order to try to
intercept their target at another star system identified by the atom scan.
Unfortunately that meant staying in this system for the full ten weeks. The CAG
would have to be informed. Iceman ordered one of Titan’s fighters to carry the
message back in a series of jumps that took a bit longer, but would put less
strain on the jump drive and the power units. The fighter would also carry
three message drones that it could launch if it was unable to complete the
journey itself. Confident that he had planned for all contingencies, Iceman
turned his attention to the debate raging among the AIs about how long it would
take for The CAG to become sexually involved with Commander Kelly again in this
timeline.

Zulu felt a powerful sense of satisfaction
when 4
^th
Fleet emerged from Jumpspace in the Sogas home system.
Commanding the newly formed 4
^th
Fleet was an honor bestowed upon him
by The CAG himself, and Zulu was quite proud of that accomplishment. His own
direct contact with The CAG had confirmed everything that Valkyrie had told him
in the old timeline. Humans were a fascinating species, and The CAG was even
more so. It was also good to be involved in combat after all those years of
waiting while the raider force was built up, one raider at a time. Not all of
his raiders were with him now. Two raiders had been sent to each human colony
to defend it against the follow-on wave of Sogas ships attempting to infect
them. With their lasers and Mark 1b fusion drones, the outcome was a foregone
conclusion, but those raiders would remain as sentries to defend the colonies
against whatever it was that the Sogas used to infect them later on. That still
left 4
^th
Fleet with 302 raiders for this mission.

Even as 4
^th
Fleet decelerated to
micro-jump velocity, it was obvious from the long range visuals that the Sogas
were ready for the attack, and that was expected. 4
^th
Fleet’s
mission was to eliminate the Sogas’ ability to build large spacecraft in large
numbers by destroying their entire space-based industrial infrastructure. It
wasn’t to bomb them back into the Stone Age. That wasn’t necessary. With their
space industry destroyed and a dozen raiders left behind to monitor any attempt
to rebuild, the Sogas would become prisoners on their home world. By the time 4
^th
Fleet finished its mission, all Sogas colonies would be in the same state. That
meant that the Sogas would still be able to use their own RTC device to send a
warning back in time before the attack took place, but it didn’t matter. Having
lost hundreds of ships in two attacks on Earth and its colonies, the Sogas
couldn’t gather a force large enough to pose any threat to 4
^th
Fleet. The raider superiority in numbers was just too great, exactly as
planned.

When 4
^th
Fleet emerged from its
micro-jump, it found 66 alien ships waiting for it. Outnumbered by almost five
to one, the Sogas forces were quickly destroyed or crippled by laser fire. Over
the next five point five hours, every space station, mining, refining and
manufacturing operation, shipyard, off-planet habitat and any satellite
detected was destroyed. From data gathered in a previous timeline, Zulu knew
that the bulk of the Sogas industrial capacity was now gone, and the rest would
soon follow. The Sogas would never be allowed to threaten Humanity again. From
now on, every star system with a Sogas-inhabited world would always be
monitored by raiders.  For all intents and purposes, the Synchronicity War was
over. Humans 1, Sogas 0.

                                                           *
* *

4
^th
Fleet returned before
Iceman’s message arrived. With the Sogas neutralized, the Oversight Committee
wanted to declare a victory, and it was hard to argue against that. The Grand
Senate declared an official day of celebration and voted to give both Howard
and Shiloh medals. Shiloh wanted to tell the public that if anyone deserved a
medal, it was Iceman, Titan and Valkyrie, but Howard talked him out of it.

“This medal is as much for the public’s
benefit as it is for you and me. Giving it to a machine the size of a football
isn’t going to resonate with the public the same way. Space Force will
recognize the AIs’ contribution internally,” said Howard. Shiloh understood but
still felt undeserving.

It was 14 days later when Iceman’s message
arrived. Howard convened a conference in his office, electronically with
Valkyrie and in person with Shiloh.