The Teragoid Incident

Chapter 5 – Hide and Seek.

The NAV suggested a half hour break, and in the hopes that everyone in the room could regain their composure, the Captain agreed. When Perez suggested that he was done, and that he could go get ready for watch, the Captain demurred, as in, “No way, Perez, you do not get to drop your box of crap in here and walk the hell out. What we do here, assuming we live, is going to rewrite warfare doctrine for all time going forward. You’re going help take the blame for that.”

Perez skipped over to the galley and grabbed a cup of coffee. The galley served the Wardroom on one side and crews mess on the other, so there was always a cook in there doing something. Cohen asked the mess cook earlier to get some ‘refreshments’ for the planning meeting.

“What the hell is this all about,” asked the cook.

“I gotta go back in, but I’ll give you the complete rundown if you’ll feed me before watch,” said Perez in true Navy fashion.

“Deal,” said the mess cook, ”Let me whip you up something right now.. Siddown. I'll be here for Midrats too, so I gotchu. "

"Okay, Cookie," said Perez, and got some quick eggs and bacon (or the closest one could get on a naval station).

Perez wandered back into the wardroom conference room and took a seat at the back about eight minutes later, he looked around. Muschivk was up at front, slotting his PIM. The officers were wandering back in, a minute or so past the CO’s mark time. The CO hadn’t come back yet. Of the thirteen officers on board, ten of them were in the meeting, one was in control, one in engineering, and one sidelined in medical. There were a couple of CPO’s he knew to say hi, and some LPO’s he knew not at all, strange considering there were only 164 crew and another 100 additional members. The SAR commander was here, and the sector patrol wing commander. Lots more navy than before. Perez self-consciously checked his tunic and lined it up with his pants. He was wearing the working tunic, pants and boots worn by every sailor, but some of these guys were in dress. Weird. The change didn't bode well for the workday.

The CO entered and took his seat at the head of the long conference table, which was really 4 tables bolted together. They were going to separate them out into working groups once the briefings were done, or so he heard from the cook. As the CO entered Muschivk said, “Attention on Deck!”

“At ease,” said the CO, waving it off.

Perez thought that Muschivk liked to give the appearance of a stickler for the rules because he figured that if he followed all the stupid ones, no one would notice when he pushed one of the really big ones over a cliff. He would bend or break rules and regs for anything he felt worthwhile.

“I’m here to address the current sector intelligence situation overview. Up until about two weeks ago, it was pretty bleak. Now, thanks to Perez and his boys, we have a much bigger bag of tricks to play with. Ahem, “ he coughed, “Getting ahead of myself.”

Muschivk rumbled on, “I’m going recap here and back up about to about 2 T-years ago. 24 months ago, ships started to disappear in this sector without a trace. SAR couldn’t find any emergence wreckage, no distress buoys, nothing. So OutSystem Intel tried to get some ships out here to do a little snooping, but nothing with any firepower was touched. There are usually little tramp traders and miners, but they all started to avoid the area, and some vanished like the regular shipments. We had no clues, no evidence and no idea what to do about it, except to have OutSystem issue a warning. About a year ago, Perez and his advisor, Ching made a breakthrough in some esoteric quantum mechanics that made it seem like we could nano-engineer two structures that would contain a subspace boundary. Or at least I think that’s what it says. He says it makes the detectors more efficient, ... a lot more efficient, but we didn't know if it would work, or even blow the crap outta the plant. Regardless, the practical effect was that it would stop or reverse fast neutrinos (and most everything else), the primary mechanism of subspace detection. This reduces the local noise and allows the detector increased sensitivity, and thus range. So Perez says, and this morning seems to bear his pet theory out.”

“Since I’ve been babysitting Perez for some 30 years, I found out about this and went to the joint Navy command with a proposal, and that you all know about, because we are sitting in it. This station was unmolested, and only received regular scheduled traffic with the drop off some 35 months ago.. Why? It was first on the list of areas that was being interdicted, and it had to mean something, but what? I have scads of opinions from intel, but none of it is worth squat, because we don’t even know the species of the Unknowns. So we replaced and augmented the regular crew, and started these modifications.”

The NAV, Lt. Morgan, interrupted, “What do you mean interdicted, couldn’t it be natural? You’re saying it’s aliens?”

“Natural like what?” asked Muschivk, “I’m not just saying it’s aliens. It’s aliens. 7 out of 10 of the analysts can determine no rational course of action for a homo sapiens to act like this in this situation. With non homo sapiens, the ball’s in the air. I could go through their logic tree, but it’s boring. The upshot is that Intel can determine no motive for the actions taken. ”

“Like some kind of subspace phenomena, a quasar in subspace or something,” asked the ENG.

“Maybe, but it moves,” said Muschivk.

“What?”

“It moves,” said Muschivk, “The phenomenon moves. Ships will move around fine in one sector, then disappear. So Perez came to me with a proposal. We were stationed at the Academy and he was finishing his dissertation, getting ready to defend, but they wouldn’t let his research team carry out actual physical research because of the danger of his experiments. He said, can we use a fringe station because they were perfect. I said.. Hmmm... what does your little magic toy do? And so he explained. The nano shielding reduces the detectable volume of fusion plants by about 3 orders of magnitude, from several light years, to around 10,000 kilometers. Perez thinks he can reduce it still further by using more shields around various fusion and equipment subspace cores around the station.”

“In any event,” Muschivk said, “Yesterday about 0300, he completed the structures around the fusion plants and the modification worked as designed. In fact, it worked better than designed, and the resultant noise reduction doubled the effective detection volume. So... since the incidence of disappearances and the various weird events have increased per capita, with projected estimates indicate a peak in activity in about four to six weeks. OutSystem Command kind of thinks that this station is the target. It’s in a strategic location for an incursion into Republic space. This station is in a subspace bulge out towards the next sector. That’s why we put it here. “

The CO divied them up into working groups of 5, so a bunch of groups. The CO lead the strategy group, COB led the manpower group, the ENG led the 'special projects' group and there were a bunch of others... Flight Ops (SAR and recon pilots handled those) Base Ops, Logistics. The groups were tasked with creating a situation where the station would still work, and it wasn't where the bad actors thought it was.

Muschivk picked up his presentation after a couple of hours of brainstorming and complaining.

“PIM, advance.” he tapped the table and the screens shifted to an animation containing the recon EVA modules, moving across the sector, “So the recon modules that we’ve got to test out are nearly invisible, and we think that the Unknowns are avoiding all of our search assets because their detectors are better than ours.  They monitor this station for regular transmissions and avoid military and other armed traffic. “

Captain Cohen said, “You are implying better than ours were, till yesterday.”

“Yep. Not implying it, saying it outright. Perez here has saved our lives, and maybe this part of the Outer Systems.”

“You don’t know they’re hostile,” said the ENG.

“So far 35 million tons and 1000 crew have gone missing over 3 years of incidents. Do you think they’re keeping them on some prison planet? Have them in stasis? Are they feeding them? I’m pretty sure they’re hostile and the Joint Command agrees,” said Muschivk.

“So, what do we do,” asked the XO.

“That’s what we’re here to figure out. Perez had a really off the wall suggestion he promises he can pull off. We’ve got about 24 hours to do something, because we took the station off the detector map. Perez wants to build a dummy station and move this one into that double M-type binary system over there,” Muschivk waved his hands thataway, “He says he can produce a similar power signature to the stations original in about a day. We don't use much power in stationkeeping mode.  Then we leave a bunch of remote sensors, do some snooping with those nifty recon modules and see who comes a calling,” said Muschivk.

“Are you mad,” asked the COB, “Move the station, what about traffic?”

“What traffic? If you haven’t noticed, and you haven’t, traffic has fallen off here in the last six weeks to almost nothing.”

“This while thing is nuts, I thought I would have another 6 months of complete nothing,” said the ENG, “I love it.”

The NAV stood, “You’re talking about transitioning to ship mode, moving the ship, jumping, getting all those modules and sensors in place in less than a day?”

“Yes, ”  said the CO.

“No way, ” said the NAV.

“Yes, way.... We don’t have to have the ship completely moved, and all the assets in place, we just need the dummy power plant, the recon units, and the real ship on its way outta here. We also need some muscle to protect the ship too, and Perez’s flying little tin cans should do that. Hopefully they won’t be needed, but we need pilots, and we need a place to dock them, we need CF (counterfire) batteries,” said Muschivk, “We need to plan all this, make it all work, and we are about 100 people short for just the tasks we listed in the next couple of days.”

One of the SAR commanders stuck up his hand. Muschivk snorted and said, “This ain’t the academy, son, what you got?”

“Do you remember the UCAV program from the early 21st century? The Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle? Well what if we program some AI’s to run recon? In the system around the outpost it shouldn’t be a problem. I mean not full AI, but expert systems. Then we can have one pilot running several vessels.”

The NAV said, “That’s illegal. Giving any AI that kind of firepower is way out of line.”

The Captain said, “I think the expert systems link would be okay as long as a human is in the direct loop.”

The XO said, “I won’t design an AI that can hurt people. They go insane when you do that. They become unpredictable, annoying, and the AI’s themselves seriously object. Their base algorithms are predicated on serving and helping humans. They won't participate in shooting them. You know.. us. We all look alike to them.”

The CO asked, "Was that a joke?"

The Weaps asked, “What if they’re not human?”

The XO said, “No different. If they are sapient, the AI’s will not engage them.”

Muschivk said, “I don’t see any problem but time. Once we get the station moving, we can build those. I bet the smart boys can turn them out faster, no life support.”

The XO said, “I’ll work on some mitigating software, but I guarantee we can’t build a combat AI. We can build a combat expert system, that will engage targets in a narrow range that we specify, but AI is out. We can pirate some of the supply crews, if what you say is true, they won’t make it back unless we can escort them somehow, and the frigates aren’t here right now. I think they’ll jump at the chance to hit back at the thing that's making them disappear.”

The ENG said, “We can go to watch on and watch off in Engineering and take some of the Techs for Perez's manufacturing teams.”

The WEPS said, “Who the hell knows how to fly these things and how do we teach people.”

“Perez does. He designed them and he’s EVA and drop qualified,” said the ENG.

“He has to train the trainers, we need sims,” said one of the supply pilots.

The CO said, “If the Unknowns have similar capabilities, we have to change our whole strategy.”

“Midway,” said the XO.

“Mazel Tov, “ said the CO.

“No, I mean the battle of the Coral Sea, the carrier vs. carrier engagement, that pretty much decided the Pacific Theater in the World War II,” said the XO

“I know what you meant, XO” said Cohen, “what I meant was congratulations, you got it. If some of these weapons can damage the Unknowns ships and they can certainly damage ours, we must keep them from finding us, and find them first. Carrier doctrine. Combat Air Patrols, Outer Air Battle, the whole thing. We need to get those long-range recon modules tested and running ASAP. They are going to be the equivalent of our PBY's. We have a little more time on the fighters, because if we can get Perez’s little toy up and running, we have about six weeks, I think. The real question: is our radar better than their radar. I think it is now.”

"Where are the supply ship and drive unit," asked the COB.

"XO?" asked the Captain.

"Should be here early in the morning. That's what the schedule is predicated on. Gives us twelve hours to transition the ship," said the XO.

"Do we have comms with them," said the CO.

"We did around 1800, I can check again, the subspace comms relay was still working. There's a ten-minute delay from this point," said the XO, "I haven't gotten a report that they've missed a check-in."

Cohen stood, “Let’s break this up. XO you take care of moving the station and logistics, ENG, you take charge of the module building and testing. WEAPS, figure out a battle plan when we find them and when they come looking for us, NAV, sit down and figure out how we are going to hide this ugly beast and where. Master Chief Muschivk, you are intel, obviously, and when the long range recon comes up, get us up with projections. COB, see if you can round up about three hundred sailors to run the ship and do all this extra work and keep everybody and everything running. Did I miss anybody? Oh Perez. The Magician. Stop working on new toys and help us learn to use the ones you already made. Get Reagan to help you. He is a pilot, as in aircraft on Earth. The priority has to be the long-range recon, cause that’s going to make the most difference.”

Perez said, “Captain, we only have the one 3d printer and it can only print about one EVA module an hour. That’s 6 recon ships a day. Assuming nothing is wrong with my design.”

“Perez, get me two, and 4 pilots, if we can get through the next day, I think we can do a lot,” said the Captain,” I mean there are entire planetary bodies hanging out with water, ice and iron, 5 within a light year.”

“InSystem isn’t going to like any of this,” said the COB, “They would probably prefer we get destroyed rather than increase OutSystem capability this much.”

“I wasn’t really planning on asking,” said Cohen. “Step one: fool the Unknown baddies into thinking nothing has changed and we just had a propulsion plant failure. Perez, get thee to engineering and make me a dummy twin of this ship, the rest of you, break this up into your groups and get to work. We’ll worry about step two when we survive step one.”

“Aye, sir,” they chorused.

Perez looked at his watch and decided he had time to hassle the cook for another meal before his shift. He went on watch at midnight, which meant 2330. Which meant about 30 minutes. Ugh.