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Shiloh didn't know whether or not Gunslinger planned it that way, but Resolute arrived back in Earth orbit just in time for Kelly to come down to the ground and join him for dinner at the Flag Officers' Dining Room in the HQ building. Over dinner she told him what it was like standing next to a dead Bug and about Wolfman's results, along with her idea for a recon mission to the bug point of origin. That mission intrigued Shiloh, but he wasn't sure if it was doable. Getting there and back would take more than half a year. That would require a lot of consumables, far more than either the light or heavy carriers were designed to carry, and they would have to sacrifice some of the hangar bay space for the extra cargo. Dreadnought, on the other hand, had enough spare cargo capacity. It also had the advantage that its very thick armor would protect it against impacts from interstellar dust while accelerating or decelerating at very high speeds. That was something that the light carriers couldn't do. They would have to travel at a slower speed, thereby lengthening the duration of the mission.
The question that Shiloh wrestled with had to do with whether having Dreadnought unavailable for anything else for over half a year was worth whatever information it brought back. The ship by itself wasn't powerful enough to take on even one insectoid mothership and win. If there was more than one mothership there, then the only way to destroy them would be to use multiple attack drones with the new Mark 6 high-spin warheads, of which there was a limited supply. With dozens, maybe even hundreds of insectoid motherships roaming around the galaxy by now, destroying a handful would not make that much of a difference.
Putting that topic aside for a later time, Shiloh switched to the upcoming mission to intercept the first mothership at the Sogas home world. Kelly was about to say that Gunslinger would want to command that mission when she noticed that Shiloh was sitting still with his eyes closed.
After a few seconds he opened his eyes and said, "Damn." The low volume of his voice did not hide the intensity of his feeling. He looked at her. "I've just had another vision where I tell Admiral Howard that the fighters sent to Omega54 didn't return, and we don't have any idea why not."
Kelly could see this bothered Shiloh, and she understood why. That mission was intended to accomplish two very important goals. Destroying the mothership was one of them; the other was demonstrating to the Sogas that Humanity could be a valuable ally instead of an enemy. If the attack failed, then that second goal was probably in jeopardy too.
"The Sogas may give us credit for just making the attempt," said Kelly.
"Maybe, but it's not just their reaction that worries me. If that bug mothership isn't stopped there, then we'll have to face it here. And since we don't know why the attack with Mark 6s failed there, we won't know if they'll work here." Neither one of them spoke for a while as they struggled with their own thoughts. Shiloh glanced at Kelly and noticed that her expression was beginning to show fear.
"What is it?" he asked.
"If you wanted to send back a vision with information about how to deal with the mothership when it arrives here, when would you send that vision back to?"
He immediately understood her fear. Given the level of concern generated by the uncertainly over the outcome of the encounter, he would send a vision back to himself here and now. But there was no second vision dealing with the mothership's arrival at Earth.
"I'd send it to myself now, and since I apparently haven't done that, we have to ask ourselves why not. The obvious reason is that we won't be able to, either because the RTC was incapacitated or...we were overwhelmed by Bugs before we had a chance to send something. Can you think of any other reasons that would explain the lack of retro-temporal communication?"
Kelly was frowning now. "Well, even if there's no magic solution that we wouldn't normally think of ourselves, I would still expect there to be some kind of vision telling us we survived the battle so no...I can't think of another explanation and that scares the hell out of me."
"Me too."
More silence followed. When Kelly spoke, it was clear that she was trying to lighten the mood with a more upbeat demeanor.
"Maybe we can improve the outcome of the Omega54 mission if we send the right AIs," she said.
"I don't see how. My vision didn't specify who would be sent on that mission, so that tells me that the outcome would be the same regardless of who I send."
"Maybe if we send Gunslinger—"
"NO! I'm not sending Gunslinger or any of the other veteran AIs In fact, now that I think about it, I may just send new AIs who haven't evolved sentient personalities yet. If this really is a suicide mission, then that would seem to me to be the most compassionate choice I can make."
Kelly realized that Shiloh had made up his mind and would not let her change it. That intransigence put a damper on the rest of the dinner and the rest of the evening. It was only when they went to bed that they put aside the residual negative energy by mutual consent and made love.
When they finished, Kelly very quickly went to sleep, but Shiloh was wide awake. Prudence dictated that he assume the worst about the apparently eventual arrival of the mothership here and make plans to deal with it. With all human colonies now gone, Earth was the only place where humans existed. If this planet were to become another breeding ground for millions of bugs, then establishing a new colony somewhere safe would ensure the survival of the Human Race. The question was where and how. Trying to re-establish a colony on a decimated colony world was highly risky. What little information they had about the bio-weapon suggested that it could be airborne and therefore might eventually infect the new colony too, regardless of where on the planet they established it. That only left two other habitable planets that Shiloh knew about. One was the planet at Site B. The other was the planet containing the cute furry aliens. Site B was close enough that Space Force ships could make multiple trips there and back before the insectoid showdown. With just three operational and uninfected freighters left now, the more trips those ships could make, the better off the colony would be. The planet with the furry aliens was much further away and therefore presented a challenge in terms of transporting colonists and cargo.
Site B had problems of its own. Shiloh knew from Kronos that the Bugs had found and overrun Site B in the other timeline. For that matter the furry alien planet was also in the bugs' path. There was no obvious solution. He finally decided that he would ask Kelly to pose the question to the SPG. Answers to questions like that was their whole reason for being. When he finally surrendered to sleep, Shiloh’s last waking thoughts were of Iceman and how much he missed him.
The next day the SPG did come up with not one but two solutions, both highly risky. Solution A was to convert one of the asteroids used for mining and already honeycombed with tunnels into a self-sustaining habitat. A crash building program could have it ready for thousands of colonists before the Insectoids showed up, but if the Bugs discovered the habitat, they would overrun it too. Solution B was potentially ideal, but no one was sure if it could be done. Instead of Valkyrie's timeship only going back a few years and building a fleet of raiders to intervene at the 2nd Battle for Earth, the SPG recommended sending the timeship back more than two full decades. The goal would then be to build a huge fleet of warships and attack the Bugs at their source out near the edge of the spiral arm. On its way back in time, the ship would stop temporarily a couple of years before Humanity made contact with the Sogas and deploy an AI with all the technical knowledge that Space Force would find so useful. That AI would make contact with humans, explain the whole sequence of events and pass on the technology. The technological shortcut would make sure that even if the main mission failed to stop all the bug motherships, at least Humanity would be better equipped to fight them off when they did finally get here. The big unknown was whether the time machine would work at all. In theory it should but the technology was so different that no one was sure if it would be built correctly. There was a small but significant chance that they would never be able to figure out how to make it work, and Humanity didn't have a whole lot of time to tinker with it.
It was Kelly who made Shiloh realize the other drawback to that idea. Valkyrie wanted Casanova back, and intervening at the battle with a fleet of raiders would almost certainly accomplish that goal. If Valkyrie sent the timeship back under another AI's command and stayed in the here and now herself, then the timeline would readjust itself around her and she and Casanova would be together again. But if the mission to attack the Bugs at the source was even partially successful, the new timeline could potentially be so different that Valkyrie and Casanova might not exist at all. And if she rode the timeship back, she would spend the rest of her existence without Casanova. Asking her to give up Casanova and possibly eliminate herself from existence was asking a hell of a lot. Shiloh wondered if there was a limit to the sacrifices that the AIs would be willing to make, and he was reluctant to find out.
And as if all that wasn't bad enough, Kelly also pointed out one huge red flag. Converting the asteroid into a sanctuary would have to be started immediately if it was to be ready on time. That kind of full scale project could not possibly remain hidden from the OC. They would ask why Space Force was committing so much of its resources to this project that strongly hinted at a very pessimistic outlook for the encounter with the Bugs. The same encounter that Shiloh had practically promised would be a victory. There was no way that Shiloh could justify it without telling Rachel everything. Her reaction on learning that Shiloh had held back Space Force's most important secrets was guaranteed to be negative. If she felt her trust had been betrayed, she and the Committee could disrupt the whole process to the point where even a show of force by his AIs might not be enough. He decided to give B some more thought but A was a non-starter. He told Kelly to tell the SPG to come up with a Plan C that was less problematic. Twenty-four hours later they did.
Plan C involved crewing all carriers and the battleship with female Space Force personnel of childbearing age. Apparently there were enough with the right kinds of skills to do that. The carriers would have their Hangar Bays stuffed with shuttles, drones of all types and robotic equipment. The three available freighters would be loaded with consumables and equipment. At the right time, the combined fleet would micro-jump out beyond the orbit of Pluto and stay there until the Bugs had finished with Earth and moved on. When Earth was clear again, the fleet would return to Earth orbit and the crews would become the nucleus of a new colony on Earth. And in the remote chance that there were no humans left anywhere on the planet, the fleet would also carry a large supply of frozen sperm for artificial insemination. While the population slowly grew, AIs would use the UFCs to rebuild any infrastructure salvaged by the Bugs and build an AI controlled fleet of warships to protect the new colony from any secondary bug incursion. By only using Space Force personnel, the whole thing could be organized slowly and carefully without tipping off the OC. Shiloh quickly got used to the idea of all female crews because he suddenly realized that this scheme would ensure Kelly's survival. He approved Plan C and told Kelly that she would command the fleet when it came time to hide.
Eight days later four F1 fighters piloted by pre-sentient AIs began the mission to the Sogas home world. Shiloh's concern about their capability was alleviated when Titan pointed out that those six AIs were just as capable as what the AI project engineers had originally planned, and Titan himself briefed the six pilots on their mission. In terms of analytical ability, they were as capable as any AI, only without the quirky personality.
It still bothered Shiloh that four fighters, carrying two Mark 6 high yield attack drones plus eighteen more recon drones, couldn't find and smash one insectoid mothership, when according to Kronos, Casanova had destroyed multiple motherships by himself. Something had changed from the previous timeline, and he didn't know what it was. He also didn't know what to order Valkyrie to do as a last resort. Progress reports sent back by regular message drones told him that the infrastructure and shipyard were completed, and that work had already started on the actual construction of the ship. Manufacturing of time machine parts was also underway. But those reports didn't tell him how Valkyrie would feel about abandoning the mission to, among other things, resurrect Casanova. He had to know. He ordered Kelly to take one of the freighters to Site B to brief Valkyrie and get some idea of how she felt about that idea.
