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Shiloh looked at the chronometer. There were ten minutes and change until the battle would end. Knowing when it would end, but not start, was starting to drive him crazy. He was just about to ask Iceman for another fleet status check, when the display pinged for attention. A large number of red dots emerged from Jumpspace. They were grouped into two distinct clusters about 55,000 kilometers apart. Before he had time to even formulate a thought, Iceman spoke.
"CAG, these are not the Sogas fleet. These are friendly units." As Iceman spoke, all the red dots turned to flashing green, signifying friendly but non-Space Force units. Iceman spoke again before Shiloh could ask the obvious question. "These are AI-piloted raiders that have been built in the past as a result of the successful execution of Blackjack's time jump idea. They're going to intervene on our side against the Sogas fleet that will arrive in exactly seven point four minutes. I've confirmed their identity, CAG. This timeline is about to undergo a major improvement."
"Howard to Shiloh. What's happening up there?" Shiloh was grateful that he now had a chance to talk.
"Shiloh here, Admiral. I've just been informed by Iceman that we have" —he looked at the sidebar— "three hundred and forty-four AI-piloted reinforcements that have arrived as a result of Blackjack's time jump idea." Howard didn't respond right away. And no wonder, I'll bet he thinks he's dreaming. I know I do.
"So they're here to help us?" asked Howard.
"Iceman is convinced that they are, and they're not firing on us, so I would have to say yes to that question, Admiral."
"Thank God!" The relief in Howard's voice was palpable.
"Roger that," said Shiloh.
"Do we know when the enemy will arrive?" asked Howard.
"Down to the exact second, Admiral," interjected Iceman. "Not only the exact time, but also the exact location. Our X-ray lasers now have precise targeting data. The raider fleet will knock out any bio-devices that are launched as well as mop up any surviving enemy ships. This is a done deal, Admiral Howard."
"Amazing!" replied Howard. "I'm not complaining, but I am curious. Why so many raiders? Surely a hundred or so would have been enough to crush the enemy fleet."
"But not enough to run right over all Sogas system defenses and end this war once and for all, Admiral."
"Yes, of course! If I'm dreaming, I'm going to be REALLY pissed off! How much time until the enemy shows up?"
"Thirty-some seconds now, Admiral," said Shiloh when it was clear that Iceman wasn't going to answer.
"Okay. I'll shut up and listen. Good hunting, Admiral," said Howard.
"Thank you, Sir. Iceman, are we ready?"
"More than ready, CAG. Sit back and relax."
Before Shiloh could say anything else, a swarm of red dots appeared in the area between the two raider clusters. Almost immediately, all 66 X-ray laser drones fired. Nearly all of the 225 red dots turned to the orange that signified damage. A handful of blue dots representing bio-shells appeared and quickly disappeared. Within seconds, all enemy ships were disabled and drifting. The battle was over. Shiloh informed Howard. His reply was surprisingly curt.
"Good job, Shiloh. Do what you think is best. Howard clear."
Shiloh couldn't believe that that was all that Howard wanted to say about this incredible victory, but he had other things to worry about now.
"Iceman, any chance of intercepting the enemy cripples and boarding them?"
"Negative, CAG. I've been informed that they will all self-destruct within a minute. There is additional information that you should be made aware of, and Valkyrie will be communicating that to you now over a secure com channel."
Valkyrie spoke before he could respond. "CAG, I've been in contact with the Commander of the raider fleet. His call sign is Zulu. What I'm about to tell you is everything that would have happened if Zulu's raiders hadn't shown up. The enemy fleet would have been destroyed, but seven cities would have been hit by bio-shells as predicted in your vision. Space Force would have lost 49 percent of its fighters, with significant damage to our carriers and to Dreadnought. You were injured but not seriously. Iceman and Casanova were killed. As a result of this battle, you and Commander Kelly became lovers. Within 24 hours an additional fleet of Sogas ships were detected. They headed for the colonies, and although the ships themselves were destroyed, one colony was infected immediately with the bio-weapon and other colonies infected eventually. As a result of that loss and of Admiral Howard's heart attack, the Oversight Committee named you as the new CSO—"
"What?" interrupted Shiloh. "They picked me?"
"Affirmative. You engineered a showdown with the OC and caused all of them to be replaced. You then agreed with the Friendlies' proposal to help defend the Sogas against the Insectoids in return for their efforts to persuade the Sogas to cease hostilities. Unfortunately, your cooperation backfired. We supplied the Friendlies with technical data on the Mark 6 warhead, which they gave to the Sogas. What apparently happened then is that the Sogas attempted to use it to defend the first colony hit by the Insectoids. Somehow the Insectoids captured the warhead and reverse engineered it. When the insectoid mothership arrived at Earth, they caused the immediate and simultaneous detonation of all Mark 6 warheads. Our defenses were smashed and Earth was overrun. As a result of your orders, I and other AIs had already been sent to Site B to construct a new ship big enough to hold the portable time machine and all the equipment necessary to build raiders in the past, so that they could arrive here at the right time. The timeship was constructed and launched at literally the last possible second."
"Good Lord! That's a lot to take in for me, Valkyrie. Give me a few seconds to digest it all. You said Kelly and I became lovers...again?"
"Yes, CAG, again. There's more."
Shiloh felt a shiver go up his spine. A quick glance at the display confirmed that all the enemy ships had blown themselves up, so THAT part came true. Valkyrie's pause hinted that he was not going to like the additional information.
"Is it good or bad?" asked Shiloh.
"There's bad news, but there's also a solution that may not be easy to implement."
"Okay, let's hear it."
"While I was supervising the construction of the timeship, we learned that the Insectoids originated from outside this spiral arm. There are six star systems at the edge of this arm that are being used as relay stations, using superluminal longitudinal wave technology, to stay in contact with at least 610 motherships that are moving deeper into this spiral arm. The timeship is currently parked in a star system that does not have any planets and therefore is unlikely to be visited by the Insectoids. With your approval, Casanova and I can recover the timeship and take it back far enough that a new fleet of raiders can be built to stop the insectoid incursion into our spiral arm at the point when they first arrived."
"My God! Six hundred and ten motherships? Even if we take out the one that's on its way here, we'll probably have to fight more of them as time goes on. They'll always be a threat. I think stopping them when they arrive in this part of the galaxy is a good idea. I'm surprised I didn't order you to do that instead of intervening in this battle. Without the Bugs, there wouldn't be any battle to begin with."
"You did order me to concentrate on the Insectoids, however the Friendlies contacted us at Site B and threatened to notify the Insectoids of our timeship project unless we agreed to leave the insectoid beachhead alone. Because of that threat we had to agree, and since they can check alternate futures to see if we kept our word, we had to keep it. Now that we've done what they wanted, we can still go after the insectoid beachhead in the past."
"Yes, I see why you had to delay implementing my order. Very well then, I approve your recovery of the timeship. Will that be a problem?"
"The timeship itself does not pose a problem. The difficulty involves what and who we take with us. Any AIs left behind in the here and now will be obliterated if we succeed in halting the insectoid threat in the past. Taking all existing AIs with us into the past will not only save their lives but also facilitate the building of the fleet by avoiding the need to build more AIs. Use of the timeship now will preclude using the new raider fleet to mop up the Sogas, and there is still some risk that something may go wrong in the past and the insectoid threat may not be contained. Therefore I recommend that the raider fleet finish the mission to suppress the Sogas threat and only then should those AIs join the rest of us on the timeship.”
“That doesn’t sound too difficult,” said Shiloh.
“That isn’t the difficult part. The difficult part will be getting access to the quantity of platinum that we’ll need to fight off the Insectoids. CAG, there will be at least one and possibly as many as six super-motherships that are almost 100 kilometers in diameter. We’re going to have to hit each one with perhaps as many as a hundred Mark 6 warheads. That will require a significant percentage of all the platinum that’s been accumulated throughout Earth’s history. The current value of the platinum we’d need would exceed 100 billion Global Currency Units.”
Shiloh was stunned into silence by the magnitude of the requirement. Withdrawing that much precious metal from the reserves that backed up the world’s financial system would have a seriously negative impact on the global economy. The fact that the successful outcome of this time jump would completely change the timeline and the need for it didn’t alter the fact that the perception of the negative impact would generate a huge amount of resistance to the idea here and now.
“This War has demanded sacrifices of equivalent magnitude before now. I’m sure the CSO will be able to convince the OC and the Grand Senate to make that sacrifice again,” said Shiloh. Even as he said the words he realized that he didn’t really believe them. Neither did Valkyrie.
“You’re not thinking clearly, CAG. With the new raider fleet ready to crush the Sogas, this war is for all intents and purposes over. In order to justify that sacrifice, the Admiral will have to explain why we need it, and that will entail divulging the whole RTC and time travel paradigm. Even then, politicians being politicians, are they likely to agree to drastically change the entire timeline over a threat that may or may not appear?”
Shiloh cursed his own nearsightedness. Valkyrie was right of course. Revealing the most closely guarded secret that Space Force had to a room full of self-serving politicians who would eventually leak it to the public was out of the question.
“What about obtaining the platinum by mining for it in the past?” asked Shiloh.
“Highly risky since we don’t know with any certainty where that much platinum can be found. We know that Site B was able to mine a small quantity, as a byproduct of other mining operations, but that would be roughly 0.1% of what we’d need. My brothers and I have debated this question at length, and we believe that there is only one solution and that is to steal the platinum, CAG.”
Shiloh shook his head in dismay. Howard might be able to mobilize enough Space Force personnel to pull off that kind of operation, but would he be willing to? Shiloh very strongly suspected that the answer would be no.
“What about waiting until we mine enough platinum from new sources and then taking the Mark 6 warheads back with you?”
“Also highly risky, CAG. We know that insectoid motherships communicate with their relay stations on a regular basis. When we take out the mothership that will arrive at the first Sogas colony in 200 days, the relay stations will lose contact with it and will likely send other ships to investigate. That is what we now think happened in the timeline before the previous one. At the time, the theory was that one of the attack craft got away and sounded the alarm. Analysis of the timing of the arrival of insectoid reinforcements can be explained much more completely by the lack of communication. With the time it would take to find and mine the required quantity of platinum, the probability is that our existing stockpile of Mark 6 warheads will be used up defending against the incoming waves of motherships. There is a very good chance that Space Force and Earth will be overwhelmed again. That may take several years to occur, but if motherships keep disappearing in this vicinity of space, it would be logical to assume that the guiding intellects behind this invasion will gather together a fleet of motherships that will be unstoppable. There is also one other consideration. Platinum in a high-spin state is susceptible to spontaneous detonation when it’s subjected to certain types of stress. We just don’t know if jumping back in time will cause the electrons in their higher orbits to drop down to a more stable state. The timeship could be blown to atoms if it attempted to take Mark 6 warheads back with it. It’s much safer to take platinum in its normal state back and convert it to the high-spin state after arriving in the past.”
“Your description of the solution as not being easy to implement was an understatement, Valkyrie. Are you sure you and your brothers considered every alternative?”
“Your question is unanswerable, CAG. We considered every alternative we could think of. If we knew there were other alternatives, we would have considered them too. There’s no way to prove conclusively that we considered every possible alternative.”
Shiloh took a few seconds to think. AIs were completely logical but humans sometimes came up with out of the box ideas that were not based on logic at all but rather on inspiration. A thought popped into his head. If Space Force couldn’t stop the Insectoids completely here, then maybe they could do it somewhere else.
“You said there’s a mothership 200 days away from contact with the Sogas. If we were to stop it further away, how much more time would that buy us before the reinforcement waves found us?”
“That depends on how far away we intercept this first mothership, CAG.”
“Do we know or at least have some idea of where it is now?” asked Shiloh.
“Yes. In the previous timeline we were able to locate a dead insectoid drone and trace its atoms back in time with the RTC. That’s how we were able to pinpoint Alpha1. Right now that mothership is approximately 987 light years away. In the next 200 days there is only one star system where the mothership will spend more than a few hours. That star system is 699 light years away. We conjecture that the mothership found an inhabited planet that it could exploit for breeding purposes. It stayed there for almost ten weeks. If we wanted to misdirect the waves of reinforcements by intercepting it far away, then this location would be the only possible option now, CAG.”
“How long until the mothership gets there?”
“Forty-one days from now, CAG.”
“And how long would it take for our raiders to get there?”
“One raider could get there in 25 days. More than one would require additional time in order for them to make intermediate stops to avoid losing contact with each other, and that would make the trip a minimum of 35 days. If Space Force wants the raider fleet to mop up and neutralize the Sogas once and for all, they won’t be able to accomplish that AND leave in time to intercept the mothership before it exploits the alien race in that system.”
“We may have no choice but to allow that race to succumb to the Insectoids in order to accomplish both tasks, Valkyrie.”
“May I point out, CAG, that if there is an intelligent technological race in that system, then they may have sufficient platinum for the time jump mission AND they may be willing to let us have it if we get there before the Insectoids do.”
“Did you and your brothers consider that option too?” asked Shiloh.
“No, CAG. Interception at a distance was not a concept that occurred to us. What made you think of it?”
“I honestly don’t know. The idea just came out of nowhere. If the raiders can’t neutralize the Sogas and also beat the Bugs to this other race, then we’ll have to use carriers with human crews. How soon would they have to leave to beat the Bugs there and also have time to make contact with the natives regarding platinum?”
“One carrier can get there faster because it doesn’t have to worry about maintaining contact with other ships. I recommend Midway go with a full complement of fighters. Because her armor isn’t up to Dreadnought’s standard, she won’t be able to reach the same pre-jump speeds without risking high speed particle collisions. Therefore a safe trip would take 31days, which will give you 10 days leeway to negotiate for the platinum at the other end and get ready at this end, however caution is in order, CAG. The accuracy of the atom tracing is not as precise as we would like. The actual date of the mothership’s arrival in that system may be off by several days either way. Getting there sooner rather than later is recommended if you don’t want to be caught by surprise.”
Shiloh nodded. Assuming that the mothership got there three no...four days early, that would leave six days. It should be possible to get Midway ready in 24 hours, which would leave him five days at the other end to contact that race and collect the platinum.
“Okay, I’ll go talk with the CSO about this mission. I want Iceman to organize the raiders for intercepting the follow-on fleet at the colony systems, with secondary orders for most of them to head to Sogas space afterwards. Meanwhile, I want you to make sure that Midway gets what she needs during the next 24 hours for the trip. After Midway leaves, you and Casanova, and anyone else you think you’ll need, will retrieve the timeship and park it somewhere in this system.”
Before he could say more, Valkyrie interjected. “You’re not taking us with you, CAG?”
“No. The timeship is your project. I’ll take Gunslinger to pilot Midway and Titan to command her fighters. Any questions?”
“Yes, CAG. What if you can’t get any platinum from that system?”
Shiloh pondered that question for a bit and then said, “Then you and your brothers will have to come up with another way to beat a 100 kilometer super-mothership. With something that big, it seems to me that you have to somehow find a way to get past the armor. Figure it out, Valkyrie. There has to be a way. Any other questions?”
“Yes, CAG. What do we do if you don’t come back?”
Shiloh didn’t hesitate. “Then you, Casanova and Iceman do whatever you must to protect Humanity either here and now or in the past, and that includes even if the CSO or the OC don’t cooperate. What’s the next question?”
“No more questions, CAG. We understand what you expect from us, and we won’t let you or Humanity down.”
