Chapter 30: No Calm Before the Storm

February 25^th, 2279

The following days had been spent in eerie silence aboard the SFC Rubicon, not unlike their upcoming opponent, whose walkways and halls knew no voices. Every single soul aboard the Rubicon was worried. They were going to attack a much larger and stronger foe and no one fully trusted RND that the Maka would cease fire when she inevitably would incapacitate the then formerly proud Rubicon. Half of them were expecting doom, half of them were expecting mercy, and none of them besides Basil were expecting a victory to come out of this. Also, most of them were secretly thinking the AI was simply more intelligent than Basil, which Basil guessed they would think, seeing fear in their faces, which insulted him greatly, intensifying his desire to fight and win, as now his ego was even more taking over than just annoying Adano or making a name for himself, his crew’s respect had felt way too good after the first weeks to ever give up again. Being captain was as addictive to him as his actual addictions.

The promised meeting was now taking place in the briefing room. Present were the Captain, Commander Nasz, Lieutenant-Commander Nocks, Lieutenant-Commander Perlas, Lieutenant-Commander Feterni, Lieutenant Korolev, Doctor Boddins, Ensign Ka’al, Ensign Ivern, and Ensign Mellir, which meant that everyone else – the seven engineers, Ensign Lin and Deputy Ellip – were gathered in the mess hall, having their own version of the same meeting, just with way less information and more dark humor. Down in the briefing room, Basil opened.

- Listen...

(At that word being said, Korolev rolled her eyes, for reasons soon to become way too clear.)

- ... we’re 20 hours out from the area of operations. Again, the SFC Maka is patrolling some set course there – she can’t leave the AOO – but we can, and she’s been only told that an allied vessel will attack her in a mock engagement. The detailed orders I have here assure us that she is set to stop firing as soon as we lose propulsion and / or weapons, but we’ve had our talks on that ... Anyways, it can be safely assumed that she’s aware of our frontal firepower, our thick armor, our maneuverability issues, our mines, and the cloaked fighter we have received. At least the latter has been scanned and isn’t bugged. Which is an issue of its own, as I still can’t figure out why RND would simply give us good tech. I’ll contact someone about this after the fight.

Noone was looking at the captain, most of them trying to look serious by sitting up straight and looking at their folded hands or their versions of such, Feterni turning some hand fur into little dreadlocks, Perlas nervously rubbing two legs together, unsticking some thread. Nocks was staring blindly ahead, still working on some designs on her iris screens, Mellir checking his latest weapons implant in his arm, he had worked with Nocks the day before to finish his autocannon. Nasz had her eyes closed and fins up, both vertically, a sign of high concentration among Catanians. Korolev was looking at the door, deep in thought, still angered that the captain hadn’t granted her audience, he had said it could wait but if she was right, it could barely do so. It was impossible to see where Ka’al was looking under his giant mask, but he was breathing at least, rubbing this thickly gloved thumbs together, which actually were claws in thumb form, but the Kebi preferred to keep their last resort weaponry hidden. The doctor was going around the table with his dual goat pupils per eye, checking for signs of stress or PTSD. Everyone showed them, besides the captain, who – to the doctor’s full horror - was fully juiced up with wide eyes and twitching corners of the mouth and now continued his setting of the scene.

- I cannot stress the importance of this enough. The Fleet is preparing to go apeshit over some unclear threat, seems like the military fraction in the Senate has won out. We’ve seen the weapons tests, we’ve seen the sabotage and murder, we now even sent Ellington on a quest to Procyon to find out why there is nothing heard about the cure for the Gill Plague.

(Korolev rolled her eyes again, earning her a spiteful glance from the doctor, who was at that moment doing his visual rounds on her.)

- ... Things are dicey already, and now they want to replace us with AI ships. Which means that whoever really steers the horse up there wants direct control over the military aspects. And we have a chance to stop that. RND’s egos, especially Admiral Vandermeer and that wilted copy of a human Captain Adano have cracked and they made the mistake to put on a show for everyone to see. This is our chance. We just have to take it. The Senate will see the footage. Now, around the room I want to hear what you have been working on. By rank. Nasz, you start.

- Sir, I have already voiced my concerns going into this at all. But if we have to, we might be able to fake a signal from Adano to submit to the Rubicon. When we sent our coded message that we are nearing the AOO, there was a coded message from Kappa 3. Nocks saw that one coming and we have it, just need to encrypt it and modify it.

- So, the Maka isn’t aware we are closing in?

- No, she is. We simply copied the message.

- How long till you have it encrypted?

Nocks cut in, not even switching off her glowing iris screen for this one.

- Forget it. Had 1200 scripts running for hours now, this is not doable in the timeframe. I will keep them running but chances are we are already a burning hulk way before we even get to the top layer of encryption.

Nasz was hurt by Nock’s rough evaluation. That was her only idea and it was basically a waste of time, showing how little time she had had to get into the mode of thinking required by an infiltration vessel’s XO.

Nocks had already started speaking so she switched off her iris screen and the topic to her idea.

- See, I have been analyzing everything on the SFV’s AIs I could get my hands on, wanting to know which infrastructure they are using likely. We currently have 2 promising models in the Fleet, EQUI and G17b. As close to a thinking entity as possible but not sentient. Interestingly, G17b is rarely used, which makes me think it’s flawed, limited or even reserved for those AI freighters, as it requires lower energy consumption and a simpler hardware. Might also be the reason we didn’t find much in the way of upgraded CPUs on the Tillin freighter we liberated from our pirate friends ... So, I say, we are dealing with EQUI. It’s a closed-loop-system. Basically, the CPU and the ship are two different entities, only connected by one node, which can be hidden anywhere on the ship and looks like any other of the 12.000 nodes on any ship that size. Hacking it is out of the question. During testing – the first parts of EQUI’s testing were done publicly using drones before the fleet bought the program from EQUI-N0X ­– it revealed high performance on strategic and tactical thinking, but failed in all the CO-specific tasks. It could not get a prisoner to reveal information better than the average interrogator, it could not predict opposing intelligence operations better than our analysts, it could not send a cloaked drone into the Senate’s main chamber, which should have been the party piece. I guess that’s why we were chosen. The Rubicon represents a threat like our neighbors, striking from the shadows. If the Senate sees us being obliterated, it means all those pesky dangerous opponents scheming to trick us in war once more are easily defeated by their new AI fleet. What I am saying is this: It sucks at trickery. And we don’t.

- So, what would you suggest?

- Nasz wasn’t on the wrong track, we need to convince a logic-based entity that making an error is logical. I just don’t know how yet. I say we do a few flybys and test-runs and see how it behaves. They want a test, we give them a test.

The spirits were up a bit now, a prime time for Perlas to start his speech.

- Captain, as you know, our cloaking field is nothing but a bubble around the ship that simulates what you would see if nothing was there, yes?

- Yes.

That much, the captain knew.

- But you see, what no one seems to have thought about yet is that WE, the real ship, don’t have to align with the cloaking field. I suggest two possibilities: One, we enlarge the cloaking field for torpedoes we launch many klicks away from the target. They will travel on inertia after positioning close to our hull and only accelerate fully when told to do so, aided by our main salvo, timed to arrive at the same time as the direct torpedoes are much faster. In a one-hour approach, we can have 66 torpedoes ready, 30 outside and 36 in the launchers. All of them cloaked until moments before they hit their target.

Cool.

- Impressive idea, but you mentioned another?

- Ah, yes, apologies. If we mimic, say a freighter, who’s to say we have to be turned in the same direction as the freighter we’re playing? An enemy could approach us from the rear, not knowing they are looking down 6 massive barrels. In short: We can turn inside a mimic, aiming everywhere. The mimic stays in place.

- But if the Maka closes in or we do, she’ll spot both the cloaked torpedoes or a fake freighter?

- Unfortunately, yes, Sir. It will always result in a close-quarters fight.

- Hm. We might have to work on that. Feterni?

- I have no plan. Just updates. Our shields are up by 11 %, launchers fire faster by 6 %, our beams are not only twice as strong but also better-protected against incoming shocks. Also, we have reduced the turning radius by 8 % and accelerate and decelerate faster by about the same. We’ve also uparmored the Ion engines and have the aux generators all hooked up, they’ll allow us to remain at full battle consumption for a full minute more. On a side note, we also go to jump faster now, as we can store some energy in the core itself, charging up the quantum plates and fields much quicker. We’re about a second faster. That’s all I have, Captain. You and the pilots have already received updated simulations, you can train on how the ship handles now.

Nobody had really expected any creativity from Feterni, he had just stuck to what he was best at: Fiddling with systems until numbers got bigger or smaller. Basil just acknowledged his update with a nod, the constant upgrades would surely turn the Rubicon into a well-behaved machine in a year or so, but it meant little for the upcoming fight. Next up, now being eyed by everyone, was Korolev. She’d now several times shown a very different approach to the military minds on the Rubicon, so everyone was curious. Korolev however, needed to finally make the other officers listen to the latest theories she had developed concerning bigger things than just one fight, she only cared insofar as that the Rubicon had to survive.