Synchronicity War Part 1, The (21 page)

Johansen’s Engineering Officer didn’t take long to let his
CO know that Shiloh’s supersonic refueling procedure was feasible and very
likely preferable from the point of view of not having his beautiful new ship
shaken apart. With that opinion on the record, Johansen decided to try the new
procedure. With the CFPs due in just a couple hours time, the refueling attempt
would only be a partial test. Just long enough to see how the ship handled at
supersonic speeds, plus one brief attempt to scoop gases. While Vanguard slowed
its orbital velocity in order to drop into Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, the
squadron’s six exploration frigates were already so far away that they’d be
hard to detect if their location wasn’t already known, and only Johansen knew
where they were now.

Shiloh was gratified to see that the high speed dive into
Jupiter went as expected, with virtually no turbulence, and the single, five
second opening of the scoops filled the holding tank with enough hydrogen to
process a worthwhile amount of the heavy hydrogen. For once, the simulation and
reality matched perfectly. Vanguard broke out of Jupiter’s atmosphere just as
the five CFPs decelerated into orbit. With contact made between Vanguard and
the five drones, Shiloh heard Johansen speak to him over the intercom.

“Okay, CAG. Let’s see if your drone jockeys can take on my
frigates.”

Shiloh grinned, even though Johansen couldn’t see him, and
said, “This should be interesting.”

Shiloh didn’t know where the frigates were or from what
direction they’d be approaching. He did know that at least one, but possibly
more, would head out far enough from Jupiter’s gravity well to allow for
micro-jumps in order to test the jump detection gear.

Shiloh opened the channel to the five drones and said, “This
is Commander Victor Shiloh. I’ll be your CO for this simulated war exercise.
The ship I’m on is to be defended against a simulated hostile force of six
ships. CFP0001, you are designated as the Flight Leader. Deploy your flight, and
patrol with passive sensors and jump detection gear only. Recon drones can use
active scanning. Intercept unidentified ships with near misses by unarmed
attack drones at your discretion. Confirm your understanding of the simulated
nature of this exercise, CFP0001.”

The response was immediate.

“CFP0001, call sign now Iceman. Simulated nature of this
exercise understood. When will we get to fire at real targets, Commander?”

Shiloh laughed hard enough that Johansen and the rest of the
Bridge crew probably heard him. CFP A.I.s were much ‘smarter’ than the limited
electronic brains of the typical recon or message drone, but the lab geeks
insisted that they weren’t sentient. Shiloh was becoming more and more
convinced that they were, or were at least in the process of becoming sentient.
He had worked with all five of the A.I.s at the Alpha base long enough to
detect slight differences in attitude and response time between them. Before he
left Alpha Base, CFP0001 had already asked him about the tradition that human
pilots had of adopting a call sign. Shiloh had explained it as best he
understood it, and that had been the end of the conversation. Now it was clear
that 0001 had picked a call sign. Shiloh wondered if the other four had done
the same thing. He was willing to bet money they had. The question about
getting to the real action was also typical of 0001’s … Iceman’s increasingly
gung ho attitude.

“Patience is a virtue, Iceman. I have it on good authority
that you and your fellow … fighter pilots will see the real thing in due
course. For purposes of this exercise, my call sign will be CAG. Proceed at
your discretion, Iceman. Good hunting.”

“Ah roger that, CAG. It’s good to be working with you again.
We’ll make you proud.”

Shiloh was stunned by the sentimental nature of the reply.
None of the five had shown any inclination to behave that way at the Alpha
Base, and the added ‘ah’ was a deliberate affectation that Iceman must have
picked up from listening to the human test pilots. He focused on his Tactical
display and saw that the five drones were already maneuvering away at a high
rate of acceleration. From this point on, he would sit back and watch. The com
channel to Iceman and to the other four was still open, but he knew that any
communication between the drones would be a stream of digital signals sent so
fast that he couldn’t possibly understand them.

Nothing much happened for over 40 minutes, and Shiloh wasn’t
surprised. The frigates were limited to a much slower acceleration rate than
the fighters, and they were starting the exercise from jumping off points that
were so far away they couldn’t be detected with passive sensors only. Shiloh
was certain that Johansen had assigned vectors to her frigates that minimized
the chance of the drones detecting reflected sunlight off the frigate hulls.
Vanguard and Sentry had special hull coatings that absorbed 99.999% of light,
making them very hard to see against the usual background of space. Now,
however, they were orbiting Jupiter and would be clearly visible against
Jupiter’s much brighter background. Shiloh jumped when the first contact report
came in.

“This is Hunter. I have detected a light reflection.
Deploying recon drones now.”

Before Shiloh could respond, Iceman spoke. “Good job,
Hunter.”

Shiloh took note of the fact that Iceman had bothered to
translate that comment into human speech for Shiloh’s benefit. He could see the
bearing of the detected reflection as a dotted line on his Tactical display. As
soon as a second fighter or recon drone also caught a reflection, the two lines
would meet, and the point where they crossed would be the detected bogey.
Suddenly five red lines appeared, all intersecting at a point that wasn’t on
the first line. This had to be another ship that had just emerged from a
micro-jump.

“A single bogey has just been detected emerging from Jumpspace,
CAG. I’ve ordered Firefox to intercept.” said Iceman.

The fighter now moving towards the new bogey had to be
Firefox. Shiloh could see that the range between it and its target was almost
35 million kilometers. Jupiter’s mass made jumps within a radius of two light
minutes impossible. While the defending force knew exactly where the bogey had
exited Jumpspace, its course and speed were as yet unknown, but so far the jump
detection gear that each fighter carried seemed to have worked perfectly. The
frigates could accelerate at 133 Gs  – 1.3 kilometers per second squared –
while the fighters, which was how Shiloh had decided to refer to the CFPs,
could accelerate at just under 400 Gs – 3.92 kps squared. If Firefox and the
bogey were accelerating directly towards each other, the range would drop to
zero in roughly 78 minutes. Shiloh hoped Iceman would not commit all five of
his fighters, or even most of them, to long range interception attempts. The
bogey, having just emerged from Jumpspace, was very likely hoping to draw as
many fighters away from the vicinity of Jupiter space as possible. The first
contact could be just as far away, or it could be a lot closer. There was no
way to tell until a second contact bearing could pin down its location.

As more minutes went by, Shiloh noticed that Iceman was
keeping itself and the three others relatively close to Vanguard’s location.
Firefox’s range to its bogey’s estimated position was down to 25 million
kilometers. By this time, the reflected sunlight contact had disappeared,
almost certainly due to the bogey maneuvering with the reflected sunlight now
pointing in a different direction.
Launch recon drones and have them go to
active scanning
, thought Shiloh. He could have ordered Iceman to pass those
orders to the others, but that would have undermined the purpose of this test
to see if autonomous units could make the appropriate tactical decisions on
their own. Two minutes later, all five fighters launched recon drones. The
drones didn’t start scanning right away.
Good boy
, though Shiloh. Get
the drones far enough away from each other that their active scanning won’t tip
the enemy off to the approximate location of the fighters themselves. Another
10 minutes passed without new contact reports of any kind. Suddenly all the
recon drones commenced active scanning at the same time. The overlapping fields
of radar energy bounced off six new contacts. One was much further away and the
rest were all within two million kilometers of Vanguard.

“Gotcha!” said Shiloh.

He was expecting to hear Iceman or one of the other fighters
say something, but they didn’t. Instead, they acted. Firefox swung around to go
after a target that was closer to it. Each of the other fighters changed
vectors to intercept one of the other four frigates. Shiloh noticed that the
recon drones were using intermittent scanning to minimize the enemy’s ability
to pinpoint their locations and ‘destroy’ them with low powered simulated laser
fire. Even so, one recon drone, and then a second, shut down in response to
laser fire from their targets. If Iceman waited too long to fire his attack
drones, there wouldn’t be enough radar bearings left to give the attack drones
a good chance of finding their targets. But if they fired the attack drones too
soon, the drones would run out of fuel before reaching their targets. A human
pilot wouldn’t be able to compute the trade-off between the probability of
missing versus the probability of never reaching the target trade-off, but an
A.I. could.

Three minutes later, three more recon drones had been ‘hit’
but each target still had at least two recon drones scanning it. Firefox was
the first to fire. Two attack drones streaked away on an intercept vector to
its target. Shiloh checked the vector and was pleased to see that Firefox had
done the correct thing. Attack drones didn’t use radar to see their targets
because that would have made the drones themselves vulnerable to enemy laser
fire. The drones used a low-powered laser to reflect off the target’s hull,
thereby creating the same effect as reflected sunlight. Because the low-powered
laser was a very narrow beam, it was unlikely to hit any kind of optical sensor
on the target’s hull, which would have enabled the target to pinpoint the
attack drone’s location. The attack drone then relayed the target’s bearing and
distance back to the fighter that launched it, via another low-powered laser,
so that the fighter A.I. could keep track of both the attack drone and the
target. In order not to give away the fighter’s position in case the attack
drone was detected, its intercept vector created a shallow detour slightly off
to one side. If the target assumed that the drone’s launch platform was directly
behind it and fired at that point, they’d miss the fighter by a wide margin.

When a second fighter launched one attack drone at its
target, Shiloh wondered how much longer the frigates would hold off from active
scanning themselves. He didn’t have long to wait before finding out. All five
of the closer frigates went to active scanning in an attempt to get accurate
bearings on the remaining recon drones. It almost worked. The fighter A.I.s
realized what was happening and were able to react fast enough to prevent most
of the recon drones from being ‘hit’ by return fire, by shutting down the recon
drones’ active scanning. With only their own radars to aim their lasers, the
frigates still had a tough time hitting the much smaller recon drones. As soon as
the recon drones stopped actively scanning, the frigates attempted to maneuver
to a new vector. The position and vectors of two frigates were still known
because they hadn’t been able to shake off the low-powered lasers from the
attack drones. That left three more frigates, aside from the one at long range.
Shiloh knew immediately what Iceman was attempting to do. The A.I.s could
easily compute the expanding circle that represented each frigate’s furthest
possible position over time. The three fighters that hadn’t fired yet continued
to close the range to the general vicinity of their targets. As soon as they
got close enough to ensure that the attack drones would reach their targets no
matter what the frigates tried to do, they ordered their remaining recon drones
to go back to active scanning just long enough to enable their attack drones to
acquire the targets and launch towards them.

As soon as all five of the nearer frigates were being
tracked by low-powered laser light, Iceman played his Ace-in-the-Hole. Each
fighter launched two more attack drones. These drones could also have fired
their low-powered lasers at their targets, but that wasn’t necessary. They
could see the reflected laser light from the other attack drones and homed in
on that. It didn’t take long for the Acting Squadron Leader of the aggressor
force to figure out that his frigates had to resume active scanning, even
though their positions would be clearly visible, if they wanted any chance at
all of surviving the drone attack. The problem was that attack drones were
designed to be as difficult to detect by radar as possible, with many flat
surfaces that bounced radar signals away from the radar source. They weren’t
completely invisible to radar, but the reflections were so small that the
frigates’ lasers had difficulty hitting them.

In a real battle, the attack drones would have rammed their
targets, and the kiloton fission warheads would have exploded on contact. In
the simulated exercise, each attack drone that made it through the defending
laser fire deliberately missed the target by a kilometer and transmitted a
signal on the monitored frequency to indicate a successful intercept. Four of
the five frigates were successfully ‘intercepted’. The fifth was not. Under the
criteria of the exercise, it was deemed to have penetrated the defending force.
The sixth frigate  attempted to get through, but with all five fighters gunning
for it, it didn’t stand a chance. With the simulation over, all of the recon
and attack drones shut down their engines and activated their homing beacons to
be recovered by the fighters that had fired them.