[▲] INS Robert A. Heinlein, Caminha Waypoint
"Tiaha's using forty-year-old marauder modules. They can't use anything out of our caches. We should just hand them some new Proteus marauders. None of the pilot interfaces have changed, just the power distribution matrix across the main frame and cabling harnesses."
Lieutenant Jackson's barking laugh was the strangest thing Nim had heard in weeks—as was the fact that he was laughing at something she said instead of screaming at her for something she did. "The Navy's never going to give allies of convenience a wing of marauders fresh off assembly you dumb shit."
Moving to the last fighter from Tiaha that had been towed in missing its main engine assembly she said, "What, so we're taking them with us but we're not giving them the ability to fight on our level? Isn't that kind of like shooting ourselves in the foot?"
"Command probably thinks a self-inflicted wound is preferable to getting one in the back of the head from a gun we gave fair-weather friends," retorted Jackson with a chortle, tossing her a plasma cutter as though he had read her mind.
"Bullshit. Tiaha isn't going to back out of anything they've straight up said they'll do, and they've said they're allying with us at least until Churaumi is retaken. Those guys don't lie, like, ever." Climbing up the fighter's boarding ladder she seated herself just behind the cockpit and popped the panel concealing the aft diagnostic cabling. It was getting significantly easier to do one-handed considering her left arm would be encased in a homeostatic sleeve for the next day, mostly to keep her from itching as the skin was regrowing. Predictably everything beneath the plate had been melted into a shiny sheet of platinum and silver when the engine had been shot off. "Those Hashemites though... They're some uptight assholes."
"Tiaha said they're allying with Captain Michael," corrected the deck boss. "The man, not the whole Navy—big difference, probably caused a lot of people's panties to ride right up their asses. And we've already been told that the Hashemites can't ally with anyone because nobody's consulted their pashas, or whatever."
"Caliphs."
"Just another politician. Fuck 'em all or send them to boot camp." He glanced up from his inventory report. "Well?"
"Dead scrap," replied Nim with a shrug. She tossed the cutter back down to him having never fired it up. "Tertiary hit liquefied the wiring."
A well-articulated string of profanity exited the man's mouth as he input the result on his report. "That's the last one. Makes for three no-flys and just six we can fix."
Swiveling around on her rear Nim hung her legs off the side of the wrecked Proteus. "What else you need LT?"
Jackson thumb-keyed in a few more notes on his computer. "Get off that marauder and go see if you can get the first one up--"
The synthetic voice of her computer's pager interrupted the man. "Lieutenant MacNamara, report to the Captain's office on the bridge immediately."
The deck boss gave her a critical glare. "Now what did you do?"
Holding up her one good arm Nim hopped off the wrecked Proteus and landed neatly on the deck. "Nothing that can be proven and prosecuted."
"Uh-huh," said Jackson with a sneer that said he obviously didn't believe a word out of her mouth.
With a shrug Nim saluted the deck boss and took off at a jog towards the maglev. Packing into a car of shift-switching maintenance personnel she made it to the bridge somewhat later than 'immediately.' Noting that Captain Michael had yet to put up any of his old ship models or even put a book on his wall shelves she saluted the man as he beckoned her in and pointed to the empty chair next to Cooper Russell. Baskerville's project lead looked only slightly better than he had when she had met him for her suit recalibration. At least he had managed to brush his hair and his teeth.
Folding his arms across his chest Michael leaned back in his chair and eyed the doctor with a frown. "Fill the Lieutenant in, Russell."
Russell stuffed his hand into a pocket on the front of his jumpsuit and handed Nim a red encrypted computer. "All right, here it is. The SIF is equipped with an experimental human-machine system interface we're calling the Elevated System Interface."
"Original."
Ignoring her sarcasm Russell continued, "It's a limited autonomous information retention and management system, more robust than your standard VTI--"
"The SIF is flying a sandboxed AI," interjected Michael, obviously irritated with Russell trying to explain his way around something he thought was simple. "I have been told it was the only way to pack in the standalone calculating power needed to facilitate the ship's ability to perform long-range interdiction."
Nim stared at the red computer in the palm of her hand, then squinted her eyes at the Captain. "I'm sorry, sir... what?"
"Technically it's not an AI," muttered Russell. "That would be illegal."
"Quit treating my Lieutenant like she's an idiot and use your big words," said the Captain. "In fact, start assuming that everyone on my ship will get the basics of what you say and also has the intelligence to use a dictionary if they don't. We do not have all bloody week to get this briefing done."
The scientist groaned at the man's insistence but nodded. "The Elevated System Interface is as near to an unrestricted artificial intelligence system as we are comfortable with putting in a military vessel such as the SIF. It can make independent decisions based on information stored from previous encounters—an ability we do not give VTI."
"Sure, VTI has no long-term storage capacity," said Nim, nodding. "Comparison analysis is based on database references and real-time information feeds. So?"
"This is not so with the ESI. It retains previous decisions as well as their immediate and long-term outcomes, altering its future processes accordingly. How it does this is by mapping what we call the 'decision pathways' of its pilot, allowing it to assess and analyze its current problem based on previous encounters its pilot has had with the same variables and then offering resolutions based on things its pilot may have actually forgotten."
She scowled at the man for a moment. "You've had that fighter mapping my brain?"
"Your fighter's onboard battlesphere intelligence system has been monitoring your neural processes, yes," replied Russell. "Its baseline functions are entirely based on Cole Winston's decision pathways. For all intents and purposes the ESI is a copy of his mind but unburdened with his particular... impediments."
"What the hell's wrong with Winston? The ear-pulling thing is weird but that seems the a normal level of freak for your people."
Chuckling at her assessment the man said, "He would have liked to have heard you say that. Cole is a high-functioning autistic, exceedingly rare in the modern era of prenatal screening and remediation therapies. He becomes..."
"Borderline psychotic," supplied Michael.
"Unbalanced when facets of his life are cast into disarray," continued Russell with a sneering look at the Captain. "Hence why we can't place him in direct control of the SIF—the chaos inherent to live combat would likely cause a mental breakdown. But it's simplest to just think of the ESI as an extension of him."
Nim turned the computer over in her hands a few times, the shrugged. "Sure. The Baskerville weirdo is managing my battlesphere intel. That it?"
"Well, now that we've decided the ESI is up to spec, once we hit Arnarson in twelve hours we'll be executing the final test of the SIF's long-range interdiction capabilities."
"I've always wanted to see what it's like to hit FTL in a fighter."
With a mischievous grin Michael said, "Good, because we're going to send you through a jump gate and hope you live to tell us about it."
"What?"
"We still haven't figured out exactly how to create an independent jump gate without draining every system on the SIF of power and causing a post-exit blackout that lasts about five minutes," mused Russell, his eyes focusing on something beyond the bulkhead of the Captain's cabin. "We're close, but not close enough to risk the ship when we're going to need it for the Churaumi op. So Heinlein will be firing off a stable jump gate and you'll be piloting the SIF through that instead."
Crossing her arms against her chest she sat back in her chair and balanced the heel of one boot atop the toe of the other. "And how do you expect me not to get crushed? SIF is about a thousandth of the mass minimum for current jump tech, not to mention the fact it doesn't have Casimir rails."
"It's possible by hitting the bridge at FTL velocity instead of accelerating in to it as normal. The ESI will also be concurrently altering the FTL bubble dynamics to manipulate your transit mass as exit vector changes based on your entry vector." The man waived his hand back and forth, apparently trying to shoo off any questions he considered irrelevant. "If you want an exact rundown I'll have Yaya and Thomas give you the math."
"Yeah... I barely qual'd in bridge mathematics. Just a heads-up." She watched the Captain's face for a moment, then turned back to Russell. "Why do you need a pilot for this test? You can just fire off a survey drone at FTL speeds with this ESI system in its guts to find out if it's possible or not."
Russell tapped his nose and nodded. "That's how we concluded it's feasible. But reversion creates a system lock that can't be recovered from by VTI. Redundancy systems in large ships compensate for situations like that but it fried the drones. You'll need to initiate a manual reboot of systems outside of your exosuit. I hear you've got a protocol for that."
"For my Stuka," Nim muttered. "Not the copy of Winston's brain you've got running the SIF's systems."
"Cole assures me things will function the same." Suddenly his demeanor shifted and the man seemed to age decades. It was as drastic as when he had gotten snippy after she had called him a ditch humper during their first encounter. "The target area and speed for the jump are unforgiving. If you miss you'll either skip off the event horizon in any number of directions and possibly freeze to death before we can pin down your exact location, or you'll be crushed into a super-dense micrometer-sized bit of metal off Heinlein's bow. Using a bridge generated by a strike carrier is the largest target area we can provide, however."
The look on Russell's face made Nim wonder if she had ever actually met the man before that moment. "That's how Aries really died, isn't it. The alpha didn't actually blow up."
"There was pressure from above to get the jump program out of development and in to operation," replied Russell quietly. "We used a much smaller bridge generated by a destroyer within our old research group. I suspended the failsafes that would have terminated the run-up if anything looked wrong and trusted that he could compensate, but there was a miscommunication between the destroyer and the ESI and it caused him to bounce the entry. It took us three days to track him down, and that was just because he had enough sense and remaining fuel to put himself back onto an intercept trajectory with the test fleet."
Nim stared down at her sleeved arm, feeling the sudden urge to stand up and punch the man in the face. Catching the look on her face Michael warned, "MacNamara, if you have a problem with this, say so now. I don't care if the good doctor no longer carries an active rank, you will not be striking anyone on this ship just because you're pissed off. Read clear?"
"Clear read, sir." Rising to her feet she saluted the man. "I'll be in the sim hangar with the SIF's mockup."
"Lieutenant, hold." Michael grabbed his cover off his desk and got to his feet. "Russell, get back to prepping this. MacNamara, you come with me."
Shooting the Captain a skeptical glare Russell nonetheless nodded and let himself out of the cabin ahead of them. Pulling his cap down over his head he pointed to the door. "Take the gangways, Lieutenant."
Nodding Nim lead the way off the bridge and to the corridor running parallel and above the centerline, maglev cars silently moving forward and aft beneath their feet. They were halfway to the simulation deck before Michael deigned to speak.
"I did not allow you to be assigned to the SIF because I believe you are the best choice, Lieutenant. The complexities and applications of the ESI dictated that Lieutenant Halpern be placed with the Baskerville Program due to her proficiencies in managing battlesphere intelligence as well as her experience with the Athena program. As far as all that goes, she is parsecs ahead of you and will probably remain so until she retires or god forbid is shot down."
Nim took the cue to stop walking and leaned against the railing with both elbows. "I always figured Lyall forced you into it, sir."
Placing his hands in the front pockets of his jacket he looked down at the centerline. "True, Captain MacNamara pushed harder than most Senators on reelection campaigns for you to be in that boat, but I could have told her to piss off without any repercussions other than that nasty glare you seem to have picked up from her. Even with her position on the SEC she can not dictate what I do with my personnel on board my ship."
Even though she really wasn't in a jovial mood she found herself grinning at the Captain's words. "Yes, sir."
Michael nodded sharply. "You are in the SIF because you flew your Stuka through a debris field at full throttle without VTI assets just to assist your wingman in saving my ship—our ship. Instinct and selflessness are qualities we like to think we can beat in to new recruits, but the truth is, all we do is bring them in to expression. If those things are not there to begin with they never will be, and you have them in spades."
"I thought you were of the opinion that what I did was a foolish risk of operational assets, sir."
"It was a goddamn stupid move on both your and Sparrow's parts, yes. I'd prefer it if we existed in a world where it would never happen again. But we don't, and it will sooner than most of us would like." He looked back at her with narrowed eyes. "You will succeed at this final test, Lieutenant, because no pilot I have ushered through my ship will fail at anything. Following that Heinlein will spearhead our entry into the Churaumi system utilizing everything that fighter can put out. But you need to decide soon whether or not the SIF belongs to you or is just a replacement for your Stuka."
His tone made her stand up straight and salute though afterwards it felt remarkably stupid to have done so. "Understood, sir."
"Glad we have an accord, Lieutenant." An incredibly rare smile highlighted the dozens of new stress wrinkles on his tired face. "I've looked at the jump equations the SIF will be using. It appears that you will have the easiest time hitting the mark if you follow as close to the Heinlein's centerline vector as possible without running up her engine block." He turned back towards the bridge, hands still in his pockets. "There are forty-two decks on this ship, as you well know. If I get forty-two proximity alarms during the test I'll owe you your next beer wherever we end up with a bar."
"Sir, I'll be going at FTL velocities. If a grain of sand hits at that speed it goes straight through the ship like a rocket-propelled plutoid."
"I am aware of that, Lieutenant. That's why, if you hit my ship, you're fired."
Nim grinned at her new challenge. "Yes, sir."