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Day 90/2544
It wasn’t quite the middle of the night when Janicot entered the underground complex that housed the SSU’s version of Oracle, but it was only half an hour to sunrise. Major Foster met him at the entrance to the lower level.
“I know I told you to wake me in the middle of the night if necessary, but I was hoping to get the results by phone, Major.”
Foster’s expression was gratifyingly apologetic. “That would have been a long phone call, Sir. Some of Oracle’s results can best be understood in a visual format.”
Janicot grunted his acknowledgement as he walked past her. She quickly caught up to him as he spoke. “Can you at least tell me verbally if Oracle thinks we have a chance of winning this war?”
Foster sighed. The Admiral wanted a yes or no, and the answer to his question was too complicated for that. “Do we have a chance of winning? Yes. Is the probability of winning high? No.” To her surprise Janicot didn’t respond. When they got to the conference room where the briefing would take place, he stopped and looked at her.
“Well, at least we have a chance. I’m relieved to hear that. Okay, Major, you take as much time as you need to fill me in.” He turned and entered the room without waiting for her response. When he sat down at the oval table where the rest of her staff were already seated, she activated the 3-D holographic projector and called up the first image.
“Thank you for coming down here, Admiral. I’ll just quickly summarize what we asked Oracle to analyze, and then I’ll get to the results of that analysis. As you know, Oracle was tasked with projecting the most likely sequence of events and the long range outlook based on an assumption that Operation Sledgehammer, and specifically the Makassar component of that operation, failed completely. By that I mean that none of our four Savannah-class heavy cruisers return and no significant damage is done to the industrial infrastructure on Makassar. It’s that last aspect that has the most impact on our future prospects. The graph in front of you shows Oracle’s projection of warship tonnage in thousands of metric tons. SSU tonnage is shown in blue. FPS tonnage in red. Because of our efforts to widen our industrial capability to more member planets, our tonnage capacity increases faster than the FEDs over the next 12-18 months, but when Makassar starts to convert its capacity to shipbuilding instead of capacity expansion, their resulting rate of increase in tonnage eventually exceeds ours by several hundred percent.
“I should point out here that this represents the Base Case, which is defined as the projection of the status quo. In other words, what you’re seeing there is the outcome of decisions that have been taken so far, and this is only the logistical side of the equations. It doesn’t take into consideration Strategy and Grand Strategy. The SSU’s decentralized nature is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It’s an advantage from the point of view that the loss of any individual planet will not represent a significant portion of the Union’s total economic and military strength. It’s a disadvantage from the point of view that there will be many more planets that need to be defended. On the FED side, there are only two planets that have strategic value and therefore need to be defended, and they are Makassar and Hadley, both in the Franklin Tri-system.
“At this point I have to address a major issue and that is the impact of having a Majestic computer directing FED Strategy and Grand Strategy. How do you program an Oracle device to anticipate the far more sophisticated thinking of a Majestic device? My staff and I have been asking ourselves that question, and I regret to say that so far we haven’t been able to come up with an answer. If Oracle could anticipate the thinking of a Majestic computer then it would BE a Majestic computer itself. Therefore, the SSU faces a very difficult challenge. In order for our Oracle to come up with a strategy that has a decent chance of succeeding, we needed to program Oracle with our Grand Strategy. As you know, Admiral, Grand Strategy is the political outcome that all military strategy is designed to achieve. In very simplistic terms, we want the FEDs to let us break away. The question becomes how do we convince them to do that? Defeating them in a series of direct military confrontations either in space or on the ground is unlikely given their current and expected numerical superiority UNLESS we engineer battles at a time and place of our choosing when we’re confident that we can win. The strategy I’m about to describe is risky, but it seems to be our best chance of achieving our Grand Strategy.
“Oracle was told to determine the FEDs best economic and military strategy, and once that was calculated, then determine the best counter strategy that we should follow. The overall FED strategy is actually quite simple. At some point, they’ll have the resources to attack, conquer and hold an SSU planet. The obvious target is Sparta. They know that Sparta is the administrative hub and the single most important economic contributor to the SSU. If Sparta falls, the SSU will fall into chaos until a new capital can be agreed upon and set up. In addition to the obvious immediate economic and military impact on the SSU, there would also be a huge psychological blow. Oracle predicts that news of Sparta’s fall would motivate some of the less developed member planets to renounce their membership and rejoin the FPS if there’s no continuity of government. With enough momentum, that psychological impact could even spill over into the more developed group of planets such as Hekla or Gryphon.
“Therefore the administrative functions represented by the Capital of the SSU cannot be allowed to be conquered by the FEDs. With that said, Oracle’s strategy is to shift the administrative, economic and military command structure of the SSU from Sparta to another secret location, which is being referred to as Site X for the time being. Political control will remain on Sparta with the understanding that Site X will assume political control in the event that Sparta is invaded and conquered. A duplicate Oracle capability will have to be built at Site X as a backup system. The location of Site X will remain a carefully guarded secret even from the SSU political leadership. It would be dangerous for you to know where Site X is if Sparta was conquered and you were captured. Setting up a backup Capital, so to speak, is THE defensive move needed to insure continuity of SSU government. All SSU member planets will be told that continuity of government will take place from and through Site X.
“The offensive part of Oracle’s strategy is designed to force the enemy’s hand into attacking Sparta prematurely, and this is how we’ll accomplish that. A task force composed of unarmored cruisers and modified freighters carrying ground forces will attack specific economic and military targets on Earth and in the SOL system. These targets will include shipyards, fabrication plants for ship parts, command facilities, training and support facilities for ground forces, commercial shipping and any navy ships that happen to be on Earth at the time. Targets containing civilians will be ordered to evacuate before those targets are fired upon. With careful planning and execution, civilian casualties will be kept to a minimum. The long term impact on the FED’s ability to prosecute the war will be small, but the population will realize how vulnerable they are if we should decide at a later point that civilians are legitimate targets. Their reaction is expected to polarize public opinion between two opposites. One extreme will call for a negotiated end to the war, while the other will demand an immediate retaliatory strike on Sparta. Oracle predicts that General Trojan will be ordered to launch an attack on Sparta with whatever forces he can quickly organize. By the time that attack force reaches Sparta, we’ll be ready for it and, here’s the risky part, if we can defeat the attempt and inflict serious losses on the FED forces, to be quickly followed up with another precision strike on Earth, then public support for a negotiated peace should soar and the Federation Council will be forced to make a peace overture.
“In terms of defending Sparta, Oracle is recommending that as soon as we finish building the two cruisers that are under construction right now, we concentrate all further construction here on Sparta exclusively on missile boat variants. Construction on other member planets will continue to include jump-capable warships. With minor modifications, those warships will be capable of carrying externally, from other member planets to Sparta, missile boats that have already been built. The estimate is that by the time the FEDs attack, Sparta will have over 50 missile boats, plus 20 cruisers, plus over 100 ground-based missile batteries.”
When it was clear that there was a break in her presentation, Janicot responded. “What odds does Oracle give for a successful outcome of this strategy, Major?”
“One chance in three, Admiral.”
Janicot tried to keep his face from showing his dismay. “Why so low?”
“It’s a function of the combined probabilities of each component event. The successful conclusion of the first attack on Earth is not a sure thing. The pressure on General Trojan may not be strong enough to make him act prematurely. But most of all, the battle at Sparta may not be the clear victory that would be needed for the second attack on Earth to take place quickly enough to galvanize the civilian population. If these events take longer than expected, the FED buildup at Makassar will start to play a role as well by stiffening the backbones of their politicians. Finally, Oracle is including an adjustment that represents its best guess as to how much Majestic might degrade our chances. If the FEDs didn’t have Majestic, the odds would be almost 2 to 1 in our favor.”
“I have trouble believing that Majestic would make that much of a difference,” said Janicot.
“Well, referring back to what I said earlier about the difficulty of Oracle predicting what Majestic could do, my staff and I are convinced that Oracle has actually underestimated Majestic’s impact.”
“Is there any way we can improve the odds more than that?” he asked. Foster hesitated and Janicot picked up on that. “There’s something more you haven’t told me yet. What is it?”
“Within the next 12-18 months, we’ll know whether the strategy I’ve just outlined will work. If we’re still at war after that, then something’s gone wrong. We would then need to switch to a different strategy that is difficult to predict at this point. Oracle was asked what initiatives could be started now that would at least give our side more options for the long term strategy. Only two initiatives had any chance of improving our odds. The problem is that both involve a high degree of uncertainty with regards to timing. If the timing is quick, our odds increase, but if the timing is slow, we might actually make the odds worse.”
“Okay. Let’s hear them,” said Janicot.
“Yes, sir. The first option has to do with a shift in our shipbuilding strategy. Right now each of the 15 most developed member planets of the SSU are building ships based on common designs. The output of construction is limited by each planet’s technical, industrial and fiscal constraints. However, we could adopt the same building strategy as the FEDs. In other words, we pick a planet that has abundant raw materials and is not currently colonized. We then import enough industry so that it can expand capacity by itself and let it ramp up to the point where we can build large numbers of ships quickly too. Where the timing uncertainty comes in is a) how quickly can a suitable planet, one that is unknown to the FEDS, be identified, b) how quickly can the new site be made self-sufficient and c) how fast can capacity be ramped up? It may turn out that the war becomes effectively lost before output from the new site can make a difference, although...” She let the sentence remain unfinished.
“Although what, Major?”
Foster took a deep breath. “Well, as long as the new site remains undiscovered by the FEDs, in theory it can keep right on building warships even if the rest of the SSU has been reconquered. A massive attack on Makassar and/or Hadley months after everyone on Earth thinks the war is over would be a huge psychological blow.”
“Hm. That’s an interesting scenario but not one I’d want to count on. Tell me about the other option.”
“Yes, sir. The other option has the advantage of giving the overall probability of success the biggest boost but has the disadvantage of having the most uncertainty over timing. If we could develop a breakthrough in jump technology whereby our ships could shift from star system to star system much faster, then the effect would be the same as if we had a lot more ships AND it would create a Fog of War that their Majestic machine would have a hard time seeing through.”
“That’s a big IF, Major. Jump technology hasn’t improved in a couple of centuries. Last I heard, the general consensus among the techies is that it can’t be improved.”
Foster nodded. “Yes, that is the general consensus, which is why no one is trying to improve it. I agree that it’s a long shot, but if it can be done and done fast enough, it would shift the odds back to 2 to 1.”
Janicot leaned forward. “That much?”
“Yes, that much. In terms of our research and development priorities, none of the other projects come anywhere close to having that kind of impact. If our ships can show up where and when the FEDs least expect them, we can offset the advantage that Majestic would otherwise give them.”
Janicot slapped his hand down on the table. “Then R&D will be our backup plan in case the short term strategy fails. We’ll set up an R&D center here on Sparta.” He was about to say more when he saw Foster shake her head. “Not here?” he asked.
“Oracle recommends that all R&D be conducted on Zanzibar.”
“Why in God’s Name on Zanzibar? It’s practically on the edge of human-explored space.”
“Precisely. Oracle feels that Sparta or any of the other 14 developed planets are too risky in terms of having all our R&D eggs in a basket that might be the target of a FED invasion. All the scientists and technicians and their equipment have to be moved to some place that Majestic is unlikely to identify.”
“Alright, Zanzibar it is then, but moving thousands of scientists and technicians and their families and equipment from over a dozen planets is going to be a huge undertaking. It’ll take years just to set it up. Since we’re talking about R&D, did Oracle recommend any other new projects?”
“Yes, Admiral, 21 of them in fact. As you know, our second generation AMM is in production now. Oracle is recommending work on a third generation version, plus work on making enemy missiles less accurate, including electronic counter-measures, decoys and laser point-defense systems among others. On the offensive side, there’s a recommendation for development of both fission and fusion warheads. The rationale there is that if the FEDs are already developing such weapons and they build ships with neutron armor, we’ll be at a severe disadvantage if we can’t damage their ships. Developing our own nuclear warheads will not just level the playing field, it also gives us more options.”
“I hope you’re not going to suggest using them on civilian targets, Major. That’s a line the Chancellor has said he will not cross.”
“No, Sir, I wasn’t going to suggest that, but what about using them on deep underground military targets on Hadley such as Majestic’s hiding place?”
Janicot thought about that before answering. “Do we know where they’re putting that infernal machine?”
“Not with any certainty, but I saw data on several possible locations, Admiral.”
“I don’t know, Major. Enough nukes hitting military targets could make Hadley just as deadly to human life as direct hits on civilian targets, what with fallout and climatic effects. If the FEDs decide to go tit for tat, the loss of civilian life on both sides could end up being horrendous. If we win this war, I’d like to be able to claim that we acted honorably.”
Foster’s voice was subdued when she replied. “You should know, Admiral, that Oracle is predicting a 78% probability that at least one civilian target on each side will be destroyed by nukes if the short term strategy fails.”
“My God,” said Janicot solemnly.
“Yes, Sir,” agreed Forster.
“Is there more?” asked Janicot after a few seconds of reflective silence.
“We’ve covered the highlights, Sir. The rest is detail.”
Janicot sighed. “Okay, let’s hear the detail.”
