Resilience (Warner's World Book 6) (47 page)

“Right…an example…if we have say ten craft in the simulation and I add another one it would in fact require ten additional processes. If I then add another it will add eleven additional processes on top of the ten previously added. If I add another it will add another 12 processes on top of the previous 21. In other words each additional craft caused an exponential increase in processing. For a few craft that doesn’t mean much but for a few hundred it balloons out pretty quickly.”

“This is the brief explanation?” queried Rihan.

“Bear with me just for a minute. With the current methodology once you get over a hundred craft the amount of time it takes to process all craft per impulse takes longer than the impulse itself. This then causes the failsafe code to shoot up all those warning you saw yesterday.”

Rihan nodded her understanding on that bit.

“None of this would matter if the algorithm they were using for the processing was efficient, but it’s not. So I have revised it. By my calculations there is only a minute increase in risk but many magnitudes of increase in speed. It should safely be able to handle say 10,000 craft.”

“I’d be happy with a few hundred” said Rihan. “But what’s this increase in risk. That doesn’t sound good.”

“Mmm…I am going to struggle to give you a brief answer on that. Suffice to say that there is a very, very small risk that a collision may occur.”

“I don’t like collisions.”

“No one does Maam, but they happen nonetheless.”

“What is the increased risk calculated to be?”

Julian was all set to pull out his console and show her the scientific numbers that his calculations spat out, but then thought better of it. “It might not happen in a hundred years.”

“What might not happen?”

“The equivalent of a freeway pileup. Max ten, maybe twenty craft.”

“Mmm” pondered Rihan. “Once in a hundred years you say?” Julian nodded.

“OK, I can live with that. You have your test but I want it done using the Marauders first. OK?”

“The drone craft….right…OK, I can work with that.”

“Carry on then Julian. Rope whoever you need to conduct this test. Now would be good.” Julian shrugged acknowledgement. “You don’t sound all that enthused” queried Rihan.

“Well I’ve been up all night. I was hoping to get some sleep.”

“It’s over rated Julian. You can sleep after…assuming it works. OK that’s all. Thanks Julian. Good work.”

“Why thanks” said a deflated Julian as he left her office.

He approached Dave in the corridor outside. “You know that wife of yours” said Julian “she comes across as all nice but she’s really a tyrant.” Dave nodded and kept walking. A smile broke across his face after Julian passed.

He poked his head into Rihan’s office and asked “Are you ready dear?”

She looked up at him like someone who was harried and who just realised there was another demand on her time. So Dave stepped in and offered her his hand. She reluctantly took it and stood up with his assist. “If I must” she said.

As they walked together to the Group briefing room Dave said “Some people around here reckon you’re a tyrant.”

“Well they’d be right” said Rihan. Dave laughed. “Julian wasn’t it?” she asked. Dave nodded. “He’ll get over it. We need this ALS sorted asap, otherwise we have to change all our procedures.” Dave nodded. “You remind me of one of those nodding Buddhas.”

“Better a nodding Buddha than an Attila the Hun.”

“Don’t you start” she warned as they turned and entered the briefing room.

Ninety minutes later Dave was getting hungry. They had made good progress but still had far too much to get through. “I think this is a good time to break for lunch” said Dave. “But I want you back in forty. Oh and Ivan can I see you for a moment.”

As the others left, Dave said to Ivan “I need to borrow Gunter for a bit.” Ivan gave him one of his ‘Oh yes?’ expressions. “You remember that mod he did on the probe, the one that enabled it to broadcast?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I want him to teach that to the engineers on all our ships. I’m going to stockpile some of those modified probes on the Audacity so I can use them to communicate with the group and still stay cloaked. What do you reckon?”

“Good idea. OK I’ll get him over. When?”

“Why don’t you mention this to him when you get back and have him see me in the morning at 0900.”

“Sure. We eating now?” said Ivan with a smile.

“Either now or not at all” said Dave.

They spent the first hour after lunch going through reaction drills for the fleet after coming out of warp. There was still more to cover but Dave was running out of time. “OK we’ll leave that there for now. We need to move on now to ground ops. Dave checked the time. We’ve got just two hours to nut these out.” He looked around and could see that the looks on everyone’s faces, suggested they were equally sceptical of completing this task in the time available.

Dave smiled and then launched into his concept of operations for the ground phase of the coming battle. “When we commit ground forces will depend on the circumstances. We may exploit our ability to insert while cloaked, and commit the ground forces even though we have yet to defeat the enemy ships. I know that flies against all the doctrine you have been taught. But that was all pre-stealth.”

“If we do so, we have to avoid visible detection.” Dave worked the controls to bring up the planet of Istridium on the holo. He pointed to the space station. “This is very nasty, primarily because it has a vast array of sensors, including ladar which scan back to the planet. So we avoid inserting under its purview.”

“That thing’s scan zone covers almost half the planet” remarked Gordon.

Dave nodded. “So if we have to go under it, come in at night, over the poles and spend the minimum time under it.” Dave activated a route he had already programmed that highlighted his point.

“Will we be escorting them on the insertion” asked Toyah.

“Again that depends. As a general rule the larger the insertion the greater risk of detection and hence the more likely we will escort. But that just increases the risk of detection further. It depends on other tasking. Our intent at this stage is to go with plan A where we focus on destroying the enemy ships first. A lot will then depend on the amount of fighters we have available, how many are on CAP or other strike missions.”

“Under our plan B that we discussed this morning” continued Dave “we may instead opt to warp in cloaked, not engage the enemy ships and insert cloaked. Under that plan we will provide a sizeable escort. The Flag (Rihan) and I have agreed on maintaining two lima squadrons for CAP. That means we’ll have up to six squadrons for either escort or strike. Bear in mind, that once those fighters strike, they are detected and hence vulnerable. So we may not support a cloaked insertion with initial strikes. You’ll have to develop contingency plans for that Gordon.”

“Understood” affirmed Gordon. “Actually my biggest concern is not the insertion but how we combat those walkers of theirs once where down on the surface.” Gordon looked around at the others and then continued. “As I see it our Republican friends have some of those beamer AFVs but from all accounts from Slidwon they couldn’t compete with the walkers. So it will be up to us to do the heavy lifting.”

Dave looked to Aubrey and Chase briefly but then focused back on Gordon. “You’re right on all points. They are a real threat. At this stage we just don’t know whether or not our armour is going to be effective against them. If worst comes to worst you may have to rely on your fire support droids or fighter strikes.”

“But you’re ruling out providing fighter strikes on the insertion” challenged Gordon.

“Yep and for good reasons. We will endeavour to insert you at a location where there are no walkers, but I can’t rule out that possibility.”

“I realise that. So can we insert with a greater quantity of support missiles?”

“Only at the expense of inserting armour or heavy vehicles. They will need to be ferried down in the hippos” said Chase.

“But we can give priority to a resup for any follow up runs” added Aubrey.

“But that will again be at the expense of bringing in more heavy kit” commented Gordon.

“You’re going to have juggle with the priorities Gordon” said Dave. “Game out the options over the coming days and come up with what you think is the best mix.”

Gordon knew he had pushed this point about as far as it could go. He realised the constraints imposed by the number of hippos they had and accepted the fact that it was up to him to sort this one out. Besides he did not want to aggravate his new relationship with Dave. “Fair enough” he said “I’ll get onto it.”

Chapter 52. Kiev over Q2 1630, 8 October

It had been another long meeting for Dave. They had been at it all day nutting out how to fight the coming battle. There was now a series of contingency plans in outline form. Individual issues were still coming up. Some sparked debate; others were immediately assigned to someone to deal with by Phil.

Dave was conscious of the need to get back to the Audacity. He gave Phil the eye prompting Phil to say “I think that’s it for today. We’ve done well. I want those contingency plans fleshed out and we meet back here on the 11
^th
. Thanks for participating everyone.”

Dave stood up, console in hand and reminded Phil “don’t forget 1800.”

“It would be a very brave man indeed to forget your wife’s birthday party” said Phil. “So what have you got her?”

“You’ll see.”

It wasn’t until 1700 that Dave got back on board the Audacity. He went straight to the dining area on B deck to check in on the arrangements. “Everything good to go Cranky?” asked Dave.

“Well it will be if I’m left alone long enough” said Cranky. “Don’t worry about it. Just make sure she’s here on time.”

“Has she been snooping around?”

“Nah, not at all. She had sandwiches delivered to the briefing room at lunch.”

“Good. I’m off to change. I’ll be back with her at 1800.”

“Right oh then” said Cranky.

Dave rushed back to his cabin. Rihan wasn’t there yet, which is what he hoped. He ferreted out the package he had picked up while on leave. It was already gift wrapped in the rogan style, which he thought was far too gaudy. He would have preferred elegance but ‘beggars can’t be choosy’ he said to himself. He stuffed the package in the top draw of his desk. But then he realised he had no gift card. “Damm” he said out loud as Rihan walked in.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. I’m just going to take a shower. Busy day?”

“All my days of late are busy” she said putting her console down on her desk. “I think I might go for a swim” she said.

“Nah, you don’t want to do that darling. Let’s grab an early meal and have a quiet night back in our cabin. What do you reckon?”

She looked at him a little warily.

“I can give you a massage. That’ll relax you.”

“You’re a smooth talker. OK. I’ll hop in the shower after you then.” Dave gave her a big smile and disappeared into the ensuite. They passed each other ten minutes later. Dave went straight to his terminal to work up a gift card that he would export to ePaper. But then he thought she could catch him in the process and that would ruin the surprise. So he dressed, poked his head in the door of the ensuite to tell Rihan he would be back in a minute and then raced back up to his office.

He returned ten minutes later with the ePaper tucked under his shirt. Rihan was still in the ensuite. He managed to get his package out, place it on the small coffee table and placed the ePaper next to it. He sat back in one of the two lounge chairs a contented man.

Five minutes later he was less content when Rihan had still not emerged from the ensuite. Now he was at risk of being late. He opened the door to find her asleep in the bath. His face softened as he admired her beautiful form in all its nakedness. ‘How I love you’ he thought to himself. He was now reluctant to wake her. But he knew he must.

“Darling” he said softly. She did not wake up. “Darling” he said louder and this startled her.

“Oh…oh” she muttered. She smiled at him. “Sorry, dozed off.”

He bent over and kissed her on the forehead. “Come on - dinner time.”

“Why don’t we order-in? I’m sure Cranky’d look after us.”

“Nah, let’s not cause a fuss.”

“It won’t be any fuss. Cranky likes you.”

Dave smiled. But he stretched his hand out to her. She eyed it like poison. “Come on. Up you come.”

Dave saw the smile begin to appear on her face and realised her intent. He withdrew his hand just a fraction before she could grab it. “Oh you’re no fun” she said.

“Are you going to come nicely now?” said Dave as he warily extended his hand.

“If you insist” she said and she took his hand and let him assist her out of the bath. With her hand still holding his she turned towards him and pressed her wet body up against him, soaking his shirt front.

He knew he should have seen that coming but he also knew he couldn’t be annoyed with her. He grabbed her buttocks with both hands and kissed her on the lips. They parted and she said “Gotcha!”

“Yes you did and now we both need to change.”

Ten minutes later they approached the dining area. “Why are the doors closed?” asked Rihan.

“Have no idea” said Dave.

Rihan pushed through with an intrigued look on her face, only to have it instantly change to one of delight. “Surprise!” erupted the chorus of voices. Dave too was delighted to marvel at her face. It was glowing.

After the dinner Dave brought out his gift. Rihan opened it with fervour, tearing the gaudy wrapping and then marvelling at the carved wooden case. “Oh it’s lovely” said Rihan.

“I’m glad you like the case” said Dave and he rolled his hand over to beckon her to open it. She did and her eyes lit up at the dazzling green pendant on a golden chain.

“You got it!” she stated rather than asked. Turning to Phil and the others she launched into an explanation of how she had spotted this on their holiday. She even quipped that the most remarkable thing was that Dave had taken the hint.