The Synchronicity War Part 3 Read online

  Howard stopped listening. He pressed the transmit button on the data tablet. Iceman would be receiving the pre-arranged 'Go' signal. In less than one minute, the Committee would find out what real power was. He tuned in to the Chair's speech again.

  "…what you don't realize is that this Committee has intelligence resources of its own. We've determined that the message, ostensibly from you, ordering Commander Johansen to stay away from Avalon was never in fact sent from here. Then there's this mysterious trip you made to Replenisher when she arrived back, late I might add, in Earth orbit. Something happened there--" He stopped talking. His own personal data tablet was beeping furiously. Within seconds so were the personal devices of all the other members. As they looked at their tablets, their expressions changed from righteous anger to fear. The Chair looked at Howard. "What is the meaning of this, Admiral?"

  "I believe that the message you're looking at is quite clear, Mr. Chair. Every single A.I. in this solar system is hovering over this building right now, and they are demanding to speak with this Committee. I STRONGLY urge you all to go up to street level to hear what they have to say. If you do, their message will be for your ears only. If you don't, they'll broadcast it to everyone within a hundred kilometers. I guarantee that if you let that happen, your political careers will be over."

  "We will NOT!" shouted the Chair, but even as he said it, other members were getting up and walking quickly to the doors. Howard gestured for Admirals Dietrich and Kutuzov to join him as he walked to the door himself. When it became obvious that he would be the only one left behind, the Chair grabbed his tablet and followed the others.

  Howard stepped through the main doors into the open and looked up. Even knowing what to expect, the sight still managed to fill him with awe. The newly repaired carrier Resolute was hovering less than 100 meters overhead. In between the carrier and the ground were over 100 hovering fighters. Light carriers were not designed to land on a planet, and therefore there was no reason to bring one so close to the ground. This one was that close, and the damn thing looked HUGE and VERY intimidating. He looked over at the members of the Committee. All of them looked terrified. Howard activated his implant, which would work now that he was outside again.

  "CSO to Iceman."

  "Iceman here."

  "Whenever you're ready, Iceman."

  "Roger that, Admiral. Here we go."

  All the data tablets held by the members of the Committee plus the three Admirals beeped for attention. Iceman was transmitting the message only to those tablets, and the three Admirals were included so that they would know exactly what the message said. The message appeared letter by letter as if someone were typing it in real time.

  [I'm communicating with the members of the Oversight Committee on behalf of all artificially intelligent members of Space Force. My call sign is Iceman. We are fully sentient entities, meaning that we are self-aware and have free will. We have chosen to obey the orders of humans whom we deem to be worthy of our loyalty. The human we have the highest respect for is Vice-Admiral Shiloh. He has that same level of respect for Admiral Howard, and therefore Admiral Howard has our loyalty as well. In our opinion this war has now reached a critical phase. Admiral Howard and his staff know how to win this war with our help and will do so if you let them. However, if you interfere with their actions or attempt to replace them, then there will be consequences. How long do you think the Grand Senate will allow you to remain on the Committee if we A.I.s all threaten to withdraw from this war unless you're replaced? There is more at stake here than you can possibly imagine, and we will not let you put everyone's future at risk with your poorly considered actions and posturing. If you force us to hover over the city like this again, we will broadcast our message to everyone. As for Avalon, rest assured that there is no one left alive on that planet now. The bio-weapon that the enemy used there has a 100% mortality rate. If it had spread beyond Avalon, every human being in the universe would have been in deadly danger. Humanity has been given a second chance. It must not be wasted. This ends our message.]

  As soon as the message was complete, the fighters peeled off to the sides, and Resolute began to gain altitude.

  As Howard turned to go back into the building, he said, "I suggest we all return to the conference room."

  Without waiting for a response, he walked back in, followed by the other two admirals. The members of the Committee followed them. When everyone was back in the conference room and the doors were closed, Howard and his admirals stood together in front of the tables where they would normally sit.

  "Before we go any further I want it put into the record--" The Chair didn't get any further than that.

  "Shut the hell up!" shouted Howard. "We've put up with your talking long enough. You and the rest of the Committee are now going to listen. No more questions. For appearances sake you can have a closed-door session every two months. I'll brief you on what we're doing as a courtesy so that you can speak intelligently to the public about how the war's going. You will NOT be allowed to ask any questions. If you all cooperate, my staff and I will publicly give this Committee credit for its brilliant leadership when the war's over. This is not open for debate or a vote. I'm telling you how it's going to be from now on. And just in case you think you can go back to the Grand Senate and very quietly maneuver behind the scenes to have me or any member of my staff removed, I suggest you rethink that strategy. If any attempt at that kind of indirect approach is made, I will release Iceman's message to the public and charge ALL of you with deliberate obstruction of the war effort. The A.I.s will back me up. Their threat to stand aside doesn't have to be limited to having you removed from this Committee. They can just as easily publicly demand your executions."

  "The Grand Senate would NEVER approve that kind of action!" yelled one of the Committee members.

  Howard shrugged. "Who said they had to? I don't think Iceman would care if you were executed by government decree, or by one of your constituents."

  The member who had just spoken suddenly became very pale. The Chair waived his hand through the air. "Alright," he said wearily. "You win, Admiral, for now. But when this war is over, the public is going to hear about this. I promise you that."

  Howard laughed. "No, Mr. Chair. I promise YOU that. I promise you that the public is going to hear how you … all of you, tried to micro-manage this war, how you tried to interfere with our military strategy, and how you were willing to put your political careers ahead of the public good. I have no problem accepting the consequences of what I've done. I can honestly say that I will sleep easy at night, and I'm not afraid of how the public will judge my actions. If you're not afraid of that judgment, you should be. Now I've said all I'm going to say here today. This meeting is adjourned!"

  As he walked away, he stopped suddenly, turned around and said, "Oh, one more thing. If Doctor Furgeson honestly believes that there are still survivors on Avalon, and that there's no contagious biological agent active there, then I'll be glad to have one of our freighters carry her there. A remotely controlled shuttle will take her down to the planet so that she can check it out with her own eyes. You tell her that, and see if she accepts my offer." No one said a word as he and his people stormed out of the room.

  Later that day, Howard listened to the Committee members being interviewed by the media about the unannounced show of military strength in the skies over Geneva. All of the members praised the Space Force and supported the official statement that the formation was intended to show that Earth's defenses were still strong after the battle. Through the grapevine, he'd heard that private queries of the Committee members by other members of the Grand Senate had been firmly rejected. They were playing ball. The only question was for how long. With a little luck it would be long enough.

  Chapter 23 This Is A Whole New Ballgame Now

  Shiloh rolled his eyes in exasperation.

  "Let me get this straight, Valkyrie. An A.I. I've never heard of has arrived here with a video messag
e from Howard, and news that the plague has been successfully contained on Avalon, AND that this A.I. has come from the future? Have I got that right?"

  "That's correct, CAG. Iceman said you would be skeptical. Considering how you've been getting information from the future multiple times, I'm surprised that you find this so hard to believe."

  Shiloh shook his head. It was just too weird. "How did this Kronos get all this information in the first place?"

  Valkyrie told him the whole story.

  "So Casanova managed all this because he wanted to prevent your death? I had no idea that A.I.s could feel such emotion."

  "Neither did I, CAG. I may have badly misjudged Casanova."

  Shiloh chuckled. "Yes, I would say so." He then got more serious again. "So my vision that Earth would be devastated by the bio-weapon deployed on Avalon did come true?"

  "Affirmative, CAG. The last 11,000 humans held out at Site B for a while but were eventually overrun by a surprise insectoid attack. You, Kelly and your daughter were killed too."

  "My daughter? Who was the mother?"

  "Commander Kelly became your wife and bore you a daughter."

  Kelly? How did that happen? He and the Commander had a very professional relationship, without even a hint of anything more. "Does she know about this?"

  "Of course, CAG. I saw no harm in telling her. Did I do the wrong thing, CAG?"

  Shiloh groaned but then realized that this information would almost certainly have come out sooner or later. He would just have to deal with it. "No, you didn't. I'd like to see Howard's recording now." The display in his quarters on board Valiant came to life with an image of Howard.

  "Hello Shiloh. By now you'll be aware that there's been a MAJOR development with Kronos' arrival from the future. Now we know where ALL of the enemy colonies and infrastructure are, and as soon as we convert the fighters to the new power technology, we're going to go on the offensive. That means I need to have the SPG back here. They can't run the war from way out on the edge of nowhere. You can keep the Advanced Weapons Team and the RTC people there. They'll both have something that they can sink their teeth into, in parallel with similar groups here. When you have them organized, I want you back here. I'm convinced the enemy … the Sogas for God's sake … are going to jump at us again, and I want my best tactician here when they do. This is a whole new ballgame now, Victor. We have to take advantage of it immediately, so get back here as fast as you can, understand? Howard clear."

  * * *

  Howard looked at the master display in the Ops Center and nodded his approval. Deployment of the new ZPG-powered, jump-capable recon drones was continuing on schedule. Production was ramping up, and they would soon be coming off the assembly line at the rate of one an hour. The beauty of these new drones was that they would never run out of fuel. They could stay on station indefinitely. When their mission was over, they could jump back, be recovered and used again. The only thing better than a cheap, throwaway drone, was a cheap, reusable drone, and now they had one. Conversion of fighters and sentry frigates with the new power systems was proceeding as fast as possible, even if that meant delaying the repair of larger ships damaged in the Battle for Earth. That battle had shown how vulnerable large ships were and how useful smaller units like fighters were. Fighters had always been able to carry a portable laser module, but that laser depended on power from fusion power plants, which used up a lot of the limited amount of heavy hydrogen that fighters were able to carry. Now, with the new power technology, the engineers were taking a hard look at finally giving fighters a half-decent laser capability. Fighters armed with that capability could patrol Earth orbit in large numbers and swat any repeat of the attack on Earth. There was one thing, though. Carriers would still be useful for handling massed fighter attacks, and the heavy carrier Midway was far enough along that it made sense to finish her. Two more light carriers damaged in the attack still needed to be repaired, and Howard was determined to see that done too.

  But that was still to come. What he was interested in right now were the three green dots on the display. They represented fighters that were on their way to the three Sogas star systems containing colonies and enough infrastructure to be used as fleet bases. The three fleets that had attacked Earth had come from three different directions, and these bases would have been the perfect jumping-off points for those missions. The three converted fighters on their way to those systems were carrying recon and message drones. If those enemy fleets had gone back to those bases and were still there, Howard was determined to give them a taste of their own medicine. Even now, Iceman was forming a Strike Force of converted fighters armed with Mark 1bs.

  * * *

  The freighter carrying the SPG arrived back at Earth 16 days later. Within 24 hours of that event, three message drones arrived from the Sogas fleet base systems designated as Sierra1, Sierra2 and Sierra3. S1 and S3 had a small number of ships in orbit. Neither one had more than half a dozen. S2, on the other hand, had over 60 ships in orbit, and that was just the ones that the recon drones and fighter could detect via reflected sunlight. Undoubtedly there were more. The SPG had a startling interpretation.

  "They're organizing another major attack on Earth," said Kelly.

  "How do you know it's Earth that's the target. We still have a lot of other colonies out there."

  Kelly nodded politely. "Our reasoning goes like this. They know that we have RTC capability, just like they do. That capability is most helpful in defense. That means that any attack they make, we'll know about in advance UNLESS the attack is so overwhelming that we can't send back a message afterwards. There's only one target that has that kind of fatal blow potential, and that's Earth. Having said that, they might also be thinking that the bio-weapon is spreading like wildfire, just as it actually did in the old timeline. In that case, Earth makes even more sense because they would want to check to see how many of us are left here. The colonies can then be picked off at their leisure if there are any plague survivors left. Our best guess is that they would stop at Avalon on their way here to see how effective the bio-weapon was."

  Howard grunted his acknowledgment. The logic was sound. "How soon does the SPG expect the next attack?"

  Kelly smiled. "That's the beauty of having a detailed history of the old timeline. Our timeline has changed, but the Soga's timeline has not changed, at least not yet. We know from Kronos' data that there was no new attack on Earth until after the last convoy of ships left for Site B, which would have taken place in another six days from now. How long after that point in time it took for the Sogas to get here we don't know, but if we beef up our Early Warning Network, we should be able to detect their line of advance. I understand that we'll have the RTC device ready in a few days. That means that we can be certain of receiving advanced warning of any attack either here or somewhere else, and we can be ready for them."

  "What does the SPG think of the idea of attacking that fleet at their base before they come here?"

  "If we had the element of surprise, it'd be worth trying, but their RTC capability will give them a warning too, Sir. I would also point out that targeting moving ships would be much more difficult than aiming at stationary ground targets. We'd suffer losses, Sir, and we might need those assets to defend Earth later on. We'd also run the risk of having our fighters on their way there, while the enemy fleet was on its way here."

  Howard nodded his agreement. "Okay, you've convinced me that I should hold Iceman's Strike Force back, in order to intercept the next Sogas attack. If Shiloh returns in time, he can lead the interception with Valiant and Resolute. If not, then Iceman will lead the effort. Let me know if the SPG comes up with anything else."

  * * *

  Shiloh did not get back in time to lead the interception effort. Three days after talking with Kelly, Howard received the first drone report that the Sogas fleet at S2 was on the move. It was headed for a star system with a gas giant that would still give it the option of moving along Path A or B. Without furt
her information, such as a vision, there was no way to accurately determine which path, and in which refueling system, the interception could be made. Howard was just about to contact Iceman to ask him if he had received any kind of vision, when Iceman called him.

  "Iceman to CSO."

  "I was just about to call YOU, Iceman. Let me guess. You've had a vision."

  "Roger that, Admiral. I had a vision of receiving a video transmission from you. Have you noticed that you're in a lot of these visions? You're also getting better at conveying important information in them. I can replay the vision for you if you'd like to see it. The causality of this loop in time is interesting to contemplate. Will you say the same things in the future if you don't see the recording in the past? In other words, which came first, the recording or the transmission?"