Sorting out what's been posted so far... take two
A Line in the Sand
written by the Fenspace Collective
Prologue - June 2013
Deliberation
A small group of men were sitting around a non-descript table.
One of the men stood up and looked into the faces of each of the attending persons.
"Gentlemen, some of our spies in several Fen factions have forwarded important information to us. It is time to reveal and use our combined strength for the first time."
A short guy with an Italian suit groaned. "Skip the rhetoric, we are here to earn money, leave craziness to the Mads. If you got something profitable for this committee, spit it out."
The men standing nodded and continued. "As you all know, the Fen plan another of their conventions soon. What we did not knew is that some Fen were visited by a group of alien travelers a few weeks ago. These travelers..."
Someone else interrupted him: "Aliens ? You are crazy... there have been rumors of aliens since the Trekkies got up here. Don't waste our time with these rumors."
"... these travelers left after some days, but they left behind a small repository of advanced knowledge. From what my spies have told me it contains a lot of material about space science, advanced biotech and other things. Rumors suggest that these document will be released at the convention. I ignored these rumors until one of my spies on Hades Station forwarded me this paper."
He held up a small printout of maybe 20 pages.
"THIS, gentlemen, is a construction template for a small and efficient fusion reactor. One of our scientists looked over it and confirmed that it appears to be authentic... and does not require handwavium."
He stayed silent while the rest of the group stared at the document in his hand, trying to grasp the new facts they were confronted with.
"You all know that the situation is slowly getting worse. Most of our spies have been purged by the Fen, small operations in the asteroid belt are constantly harassed by patrols and cargo flights to Earth are becoming more difficult. We must not let this alien knowledge get into the hand of the Fenspace convention, otherwise we will face a decisive technological disadvantage... and most likely a fatal one too!"
The man in the Italian suit raised his hand, this time with a much more serious look on his face. "What do you propose to do?"
The speaker smiled.
"My group has been planning a raid against the moons of Jupiter for some time, both to gather supplies for our operations and to disrupt the food deliveries to the inner system more permanently. I propose we take the equipment to get into Ganymede's orbit without raising an alarm, gather our mobile forces and deal a blow to the Fen which they will never recover from. We bomb most of the spacecraft there while they are still on the ground, then land with a large reaver force supported by a few groups of Berserkers... grab the alien documents, take all the Fen we can get away with and wipe the floor rest of them by ramming a large freighter into the valley from orbit. If we do it right we can kill most of the
faction leaders and gain a solid and permanent technological advantage... not only over the Fen but over Earth too."
Someone in the back of the room were taking an audible deep breath.
"It is an 'all or nothing' operation... but if we continue like we do now, the Fen will shut down most of our operations within 24 months... maybe even faster with the new alien technology. We have only a few days until the convention begins, so there is not much time. It is to act now or to die soon..."
A man with an American suit right out of an Al Capone movie nodded.
"Let's call a vote about all of this..."
Serenity-Con
Deception
Like most Fenspace conventions before, SerenityCon was present in two different universes.
In the physical world a huge number of Fen of all kinds were running around, having a good time and discussion more or less important things.
The second part of SerenityCon was happening in cyberspace. Even network specialists from Earth would never have been able to comprehend the amount and complexity of communication between the hundreds and hundreds of AI equipped crafts, the ad-hoc networks, virtual servers and remote-controlled avatars. Some of it were running with the same speed as the physical world, other parts were running at an accelerated timeframe to keep the participants from being bored.
Cortana was enjoying her time and listening to the local traffic. On the right two groups of AIs were playing a large game of tower defense with some of the webservers of the convention, while others were discussing, categorizing and analyzing the most recent discussions of the other Fen. There was even a small gambling place where AIs were betting cpu power on things like important discussion results, number of biomods per minute on a certain cafeteria and harmonic resonance frequencies of large groups of Fen having a party.
It was the fifth day of the Convention and the proportion of work to partying was slowly sliding more and more to the parties. Not everyone was happy with the things happening in the last year, but at least most Fen were having a good time. Later this hour there was an announcement about a large scale core war hacking contest and Cortana was already looking forward to see it. Hacking was not really her area of interest, but it was always fun to watch.
Suddenly Cortana's virtual avatar blinked and looked around, she had the feeling something strange was going on.
Concentrating on the input from the Stargazers radios, Cortana finally found the source of her strange 'feeling.'
"Hey you little guy, what is wrong with you" she murmured and looked more closely to the weak signal of one of the sensor satellites of the Ganymede network.
"Perfect encoding, all checksums right, frequency as expected, nothing alarming on your data... but why do I think you are a little drunk today?" she whispered while accelerating her timeframe as much as she could.
All analyzer subroutines told her that the signal was perfect as ever, but Cortana was sure that her standard software was wrong this time. She began comparing it carefully with the data she recorded when getting into Ganymede orbit and frowned slightly.
The signal had gained some minor features it had not some days ago, and Cortana was pretty sure that changes like this were not just a matter of wear.
"I need some insight from someone with a different perspective" she thought and browsed through the attendance list of the convention.
"Ah, yes" she acknowledged, "you are perfect..." when she finally found the entry she was looking for. If there was one ship you could bet on that it was not parked on the ground, it was the Blackbird called Magnificent Midnight.
"Cortana of the Stargazer to Magnificent Midnight, I think we are in trouble and I need your help." With a few short sentences she described her the funny features of one of the sensor satellites of Ganymede. "Please do a passive scan on the frequency of the sensor network and send me all results you got in an encrypted reply... and please hurry, I have a bad feeling about this."
Cortana wrapped the message in a OGJ encryption code and send out a wide beam data package into the sky above Ganymede. The Midnight would be somewhere up there and would hopefully reply soon.
The next 30 seconds were the hardest waiting time Cortana had ever experienced.
"Midnight to Cortana... result of scan attached on message. Will do a quick flyby of the satellite. Expect another message in three minutes" said the response from the Blackbird.
"If in need for recon data, ask a spy plane" murmured Cortana with a smile and opened the attachment to correlate the two sets of data... and nearly froze in shock.
She stared on the data for nearly a second, then ran everything through her calculations a second time... and a third time, but the results stayed the same.
She could hear 15 sensor satellites above the Stargazer in the sky, happily sending small updates on the gathered data. But when she combined her data with the package from the Magnificent Midnight there were only five point sources in the sky, each of them sending the data of three sensor satellites... and each of them in a totally wrong position.
Cortana's 'view' focused back into the sky as she thought about the implications what she had discovered in the last minute.
"Either some joker managed to draw fifteen sensor satellites to different places, glued them together in groups of three and made sure neither he was seen by the satellites nor they noticed the change in position.... or someone has replaced these fifteen satellites. Which means someone can control what Ganymede orbital watch can see on its screens... or what it cannot see."
Which meant that anything could be up there... from a Professor-sponsored weapon of mass amusement to a fast asteroid-style kinetic weapon. For another second she thought about sending out a clear alarm message to anyone in range, but then decided otherwise. Starting a mass panic would be more counterproductive than anything else.
She slowed herself down to realtime speed and connected to the local Operation Great Justice office, demanding a priority line to the head officer. If this one would decide that she abused her OGJ access codewords she and maybe Cathy would be in trouble... but better in trouble than being wrong about this.
"OGJ office, head officer. What can I do for you.... Cortana," a bored voice acknowledged her request.
'Ahh, the poor guy who has to stay in the office while the rest of Fenspace is partying' she thought.
"Here is Cortana from the Stargazer... I just discovered together with the Magnificent Midnight that someone seems to have replaced parts of the Ganymede sensor network with their own system. Someone else is controlling what we see or not see in the sky above the Convention."
On a subchannel she was sending some 3D pictures showing the results of measurements by Magnificent Midnight and herself and the resulting positions of the sensor sources... and their proposed positions.
"Oh..." she heard through her radio connection, but nothing else was coming out of it for a perceived eternity. After ten seconds she decided to grab the initiative again.
"Yes I know, maybe it's nothing, maybe we have hours of time until something happens... and maybe in this moment there is a kinetic-kill vehicle incoming on your office... and the first thing you will know about it is the knocking on your damned roof!"
Finally she heard some hectic action on the other side of the connection.
"I understand, we are raising an alarm... stay on this radio channel and inform us of any new readings... we will..."
The second radio began signaling an incoming burst transmission from the Magnificent Midnight.
"Midnight to Cortana... bad news attached... more data soon."
Cortana looked into the attached data and sighed. "OGJ office... I have more bad news for you from the Magnificent Midnight..."
"I don't know why I have to wear a three-piece suit for this," Noah complained.
Yayoi sighed. "If you don't make a good impression out there, nobody's going to take you seriously."
"They aren't here for me, they're here for the Catalog. Why can't I just wear my usual polo shirt, slacks, and kevlar-lined jacket?"
"That isn't sufficiently professional. You aren't Steve Jobs, after all."
Noah sighed. "Polo shirt, not turtleneck."
"Noah, you trusted me enough to give me Yoriko's position as Vice-President of Stellvia Corporation. Trust me on this."
The door opened. Noah smiled when he saw Leda - while she wasn't Yoriko, she was still a damn fine woman. What she had to say broke the mood. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but we just received a message from the Magnificent Midnight. Cortana and Midnight are picking up some odd signals from the Ganymede sensor network."
"Odd?" Noah raised an eyebrow. "In what way?"
"They aren't sure."
Noah started untying his tie. "I have a bad feeling about this ..."
"You do have a tendency to overreact, Noah. Are you overreacting again?"
"Consider what we're presenting here, and how much it would be worth if not everybody had a copy of it. I have to go out there and present the Catalog, so I'm wearing my body armor. I want the rest of you someplace relatively safe, and the safest place I can think of is inside the Epsilon Blade with its forcefield turned on. Prep for launch as soon as the three of you are aboard - I want you to, as the Warsies say, 'pick up your visual scanning.' Coordinate flight paths with Midnight."
Yayoi and Leda nodded. "Do you have any messages for Kohran?" asked the former.
"Yes," nodded Noah. "Kohran is to drop whatever she's doing and get back to the ship right now, and ..."
Leda waited for a moment. "Darling?"
"And ... tell Kohran she's to remove the weapons locks from the kaboomite warheads."
I was manning a 7-sided dice productions booth that day. It wasn't the kind of thing I liked doing, but as the only mobile person in the company, I was the only man for the job.
The day hadn't gone so badly, and the sales had been pretty good (especially for Destruction Dive and Fenbuilder) but right I was bored out of his mind.
':-] SERAVIEL ? OGL ALARM JUST WENT UP.' came up on my iPhone.
'I should have expected it...' I thought. Of course the place would have to be attacked on one of the very few days I was out. "Any idea of the reason ?"
''_' SENSOR NETWORK'S COMPROMIZED... BADLY AT THAT.'
"Any chance it might be accidental ?"
':-( NOT REALLY... IT'S MUCH TOO EXACT FOR THAT.'
That meant Boskonians. Either incoming or already here. "Patch me up to Spot, will you ?"
':-) WILL DO.'
"Spot ?"
'-Whirr ?-'
I can't believe I'm asking this. "I have a very important question for you. Are you able to take a hit ? There's a battle incoming and I need to know what you can do."
'-WHIRR-' That meant yes, I'd learned.
I thought for an instant. I wasn't in any position to command him, having very little to no tactical information. However, I didn't trust OGJ leadership one bit with something as important as that. A few instants of thoughts solved that issue. The man sure to be involved, especially with what he'd been about to show to the world.
I manually typed a number in my phone. 'Noah ? It's Seraviel. I have something for you...'
placeholder #01 - holding open for more pre-action scenes
Destruction
"And here we are... the missile ships will enter the orbit around Ganymede within less than 5 minutes, and no swarm of Fen fighters in sight. I would say Phase One was a full success, lets go to Phase Two as soon as possible. If we have smashed the crafts on the ground, we have all time in the universe to do the rest of the job."
The insertion of the radio platforms to fake the signals of the Ganymede sensor network had been as smooth as possible. With the help of the code from the Ganymede service engineer they had copied the current signals and began broadcasting them exactly the moment the kinetic flechette strikes had hit the real satellites and destroyed them. This and the sabotage of some of the key nodes of the rest of the network would give the fleet a nice and easy to use corridor to get directly over Serenity Valley without being detected. After this it would be the work of the drop ship crews.
"Is our special surprise package loaded and in place? If everything goes to hell we want to get most of the important Fen with the big bang on the ground." It had been a pleasant surprise that one faction had managed to intercept and capture one of these damned Blackbirds spy planes some time ago, but having a really fast and really stealthy ship to deliver a multi-ton bomb was a great bonus for an operation like this.
"Give the troop transports the signal that we are going forward with phase two. They should rush in after the two missile waves, keep them of balance and make sure they don't organize... as soon as the first missiles are away, activate the communication jammer, no need to give the Fen a chance to call home."
A woman on one of the consoles of the bridge looked up. "Sir, one of our ships says they saw something out there... they are not sure what it was but the engineer says they were passed by some shadow. The optical records are not conclusive, could be a very small spy satellite."
The captain cursed loudly. Flying under the protection of a radar cloak was great, but it prevented the use of your own radar too. If they had been discovered this could cost the operation a lot, but they still had a chance to accomplish their goals.
"Damn them, all of them... five minutes more, is that too much to ask for? Get these missiles out as soon we are in range, the timetable just got shortened a lot! And activate the Interwave jammer NOW!"
The tech just looked at her screen, not comprehending what she was seeing for a moment. To the side of her, her manager was also blank with shock. Surely what was on the display could NOT be real. Then he dove for a row of buttons on the next console.
At some time in the past, some helpful soul had labeled the buttons for quick recognition. They were "PANIC!", "PANIC MOAR!", "AIIEEEE!!!!", "WTF?!?", and "Egon's gone Bye Bye!".
The manager's dive hit all of them at once.
It's said that information is the lifeblood of modern civilization. This is especially true for AIs and cyberspace.
The first warning most AIs on the parking field got about the arriving danger induced a shock in many of them. Within one moment several Avatars of AIs participating the convention remotely from distant space stations flickered and died in a wave of disorganized pixels.
For milliseconds most AIs could not believe someone would be able to do something that evil... someone had cut the Convention from the Interwave, all of the multiple redundant transmitter stations at once!
Whole virtual worlds toppled when some of the players who held the constructs together vanished and most activities on the virtual convention grid came to a stop, then a storm of electronic cries of anger rolled through the grid. Here and there the interconnection of the grid already began to crumble under conventional jamming attempts of the Boskonian fleet in orbit, others were clogged with calls to reach the Fen in the convention area.
But as fast as the confusion and chaos appeared, it was pushed aside again.
Quickly several groups of AIs began setting up a local network, analyzing the incoming jamming patterns and working around them. Instead of red-versus-blue tower defense, it became a three-team battle to set up the most jamming resistant network. Trading team members by bribing them with better local network access, stealing strategies of the other teams, even fighting some local wars about radio frequencies to be used. Slower AIs working on the overall distribution and routing while the faster were zipping around the options available for radio communication, probing for ways to get some more performance out of jammed parts of the spectrum.
'Damn, where is Trigon when you need him?' Cortana thought with a grim when the situation stabilized after a while. 'His local network would have most likely be able to shoot down enemy spacecrafts with lightning... 12 seconds of communication disruption is just too long for a convention... the Boskones will pay for this!'
And then the first enemy troops arrived at the area.
placeholder #02 - holding open for any "scramble for launch" scenes
placeholder #03 - holding open for a scene of the Boskos launching their first brace of missiles
It was stupid. It was insane. It was daft as a brush and madder than the Professor's Panel. It was desperation. It was the only chance. Missiles, bearing down on orbiting ships. Bearing down on defenseless orbiting ships. Max thought fast, thought like lightning.
"Intercept them! Knock them out of the sky!"
Jet thought he was insane at first. She wasn't the only one.
"Hit them just ahead of the tail, the warheads won't go off."
Max managed to project confidence, the certainty that he was right, the certainty that if they pulled it off correctly, there wouldn't be so much as a paint-scratch. Jet wasn't quite sure why she was going along with this plan, or why she wasn't making a beeline straight down to the ground, or off into the black.
Her target streaked forward, trailing condensing vapor and ice. Anti-shipping missile. It's target was getting closer. Some lumbering waved transport. Jet could see it's engines begin to glow, thrusters exhausting as it tried everything to move. The missile tracked unerringly. One hit and that ship would just disintegrate.
Jet could run. Jet could leave them to it.... Jet really wasn't sure if she could live with the guilt of it.
Or was it just a case of Max order, she follow? It wasn't insane heroism, she told herself. It wasn't stupidity. She was only following orders! Sure that was easier to believe. Jet just couldn't say 'No' to her trainer. She assumed that was it.
Ten meters out, she realised she was doing her best to just keep her mind from fully realising exactly how dangerous this was. A few milliseconds. Everything running full bore. Thinking like lightning on an adrenaline rush, mind trying to cram as much as it could into these last few moments. Well... at least she got to kiss Ford... really kiss. Real skin touching skin with the sort of tingle waved alloys just didn't have. Cold hand on one side of her face. Warm fingers on the other....
Adjust a little bit. Missile's moving slower than she guessed. Ease in. Hold your breath. Grit your teeth and wham!
Jet hit so hard, with such a strong kick running up through her leg, she could've sworn the missile went off right then and there. There was a flash of twisted metal and expending propellant burning momentarily in the vacuum before it boiled and froze at the same time...
And then. She was clear.
The missile's warhead spiraled uselessly into the black, finally detonating relatively harmlessly in open space, bursting into a cloud of sparkling debris. Above and behind her, a few of it's compatriots hit home, causing untold carnage. Jet would swear she saw someone blown out a shattering window... a humanoid figure trying to swim desperately back in, reaching for safety that was getting further away by the second... before going dreadfully still. He seemed to ask the question... why not my ship?
Max's voice crackled into her mind. "Come on! That's only the first wave. Next salvo's coming in. Get moving. Try get more than one this time."
There was no arguing with that, as much as Jet wanted to. Just keep going. Jet'd already picked her next target.
Midnight had no problems.
Midnight was in her element.
With her speed and acceleration, few things could touch her in the furball.
And with her advanced sensors, she could track every friendly and hostile in the area. She made sure that the friendlies were getting a clear tactical picture of what was going on.
In the mean time, she would follow her last directive from Black Rider - continue to support with a live tactical feed and take out any targets of opportunity.
And that was when she saw it. It was a shadow, at first. Just a ghost in the clutter. But it takes a ghost to know a ghost.
"ALERT! Enemy forces are in possession of a Blackbird-class vessel! Moving to intercept! Cortana, take the tactical net - I need all my resources to take this girl down!"
Eddie let a sub-process run for a full half-second considering options now that the Midnight was engaged with a fellow Blackbird.
"Tinman to all points. White Stallion going to full power on sensors. Set filters."
At this point Eddie grabbed as much bandwidth as he could, ramped the Stallion's sensors to full power, and dumped oceans worth of data down the pipe.
The reason the White Stallion hadn't been at full power was simply how crowded it was out there. Even at a tenth of its normal power the cross-interference of the sensor signals from both fleets was bordering on the impenetrable. Hence the Fen A.I.'s had been running interferometric analyses on the sensor net, taking into account the multifarious sensor equipment and their interactions.
What Eddie had just done was pretty much burn through any interference with sheer power, and blow away the fog of the battlefield.
To the Magnificent Midnight it was like she'd been wearing dark sunglasses inside and someone had just pulled them off. The rogue Blackbird stood out like a mountain in a desert plain at noon.
"Gotcha."
Another blast. Another hard impact. Blazing fuel. Frozen blood. Another dropship smashed. Jet wasn't sure how many of them she'd taken out. Come in from the top, lead with the right foot at a decent speed, and let physics do the rest. The van-sized pods just tore apart or burst. Waved armour could take the hit.... almost.
Wreckage drifted by. It was silent. All was silent except for Jets heartbeat pounding deep inside her.
Jet saw two blackbirds chase each other through the sky., rolling, turning, diving, charging in again. The chaser might've been Midnight... Jet was almost certain it was. The leading Blackbird seemed to be limping, trailing smoke from one engine, but the pilot knew what he was doing. He was just about keeping his plane ahead.
Right up until the moment he seemed to run into a brick wall of static and started to shine like a radio lighthouse. It near flooded her radar it was so bright. It took her more than a few moments to figure out what had happened, filtering through the haze and noise on the radio. Someone was begging for help. there was something else she couldn't quite make out, lost in a static warble, followed by one word that made everything dreadfully. One word came through clear.
"...Tinman..."
Jet finally understood just why that Blackbird had suddenly seemed so confused. Jet finally realized exactly where she was leading her Gruppe. She knew just how lethal a blast of EM like that'd be....
"Engel Flight! Break Zero-Ninety!"
Straight up. Pray they got the message in the static. God willing, they'd see her break and have the sense to follow. Jet boosted her engines hard, a deep vibration from somewhere in her right foot warning of a bearing failure in the turbine, moments before the auto-systems caught it. Jet didn't throttle back...
She didn't see what happened to the blackbird, she focused herself on picking her way through the debris. The wreckage of what might've been a Peacemaker drifted passed in a haze of leaking fuel, followed by another dropship that'd been clean cut in two.
Jet wasn't even armed with anything heavier than a pistol. Her blades had snapped off long ago, leaving only buckled stubs. One of her wings had jammed shut.
"Engel Flight, status!"
The rational part of her mind was surprised she'd even spoken. She was half running on autopilot. Eight voices answered. Jet glanced back, seeing them picked out on her HUD. There was something so relieving about seeing them catch up. She wasn't alone at least. There were nine of them left.... nine small people, caught in a very big furball. Didn't anyone remember they were up there? There'd been some orders what seemed like an age ago... but since then, nothing. Whoever they were supposed to rendezvous with... hadn't been there.
"Now what?" Gant demanded of her, pulling alongside.
Jet could see one whole side of his leg ripped open, revealing the actuators underneath. Sparks spat out every few moments. There was only one thing she was certain of.
"We can't stay up here,"
Something exploded far above, punctuating that statement.
"No way I can make landing!"
Jet looked around, "I doubt any of us can," A Pause. "I think they've forgotten we're up here,"
"I don't think we're gonna be up here much longer!" Gant gave a nervous laugh.
"I'll call for a pickup, somebody's gotta hear it." Jet glanced around once more. They were all pretty battered. Still going far longer than any of them had any right too, but battered nonetheless. "This is Engel Flight hailing any vessel in range. We're stuck up here, we need a pickup,"
Nothing.
Another wave of dropships was coming in. Jet looked at them, then at the Gruppe, wondering if they'd go. Standing still left them a sitting duck. No real choice there....if they were going to be stuck up in space, they might aswell get stuck in. She had no idea what else they could do but keep fighting. Just be lucky they don't get shot down by their own side.
"Follow me!" she yelled, boosted her engines. Her right turbine finally blew, blowing sparks and shrapnel through the exhaust. She felt something ping off her armour, before biting deep inside her leg with a lot more pain than she'd expected. Swearing blind, Jet pitched over, compensating for the loss.
Well.... that's not going to be covered by the warranty, she thought, before she started laughing madly at the absurdity of it all. Next target. In from the top, lead with the right foot. It smashed as easily as all the others.
Jet tried once more, hoping for an answer.
"This is Engel Flight hailing any vessel in range. We're stuck up here. We've got damage and we need a pickup."
placeholder #04 - holding open for a space-action scene so Engel Flight isn't rescued immediately
The chipper voice came over the radio.
Two small ships approached the remaining members of Engel Flight. They were spider-like. They were Blue. Jet wasn't sure, but they seemed to be cheerful.
The lead Tachikoma continued.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
A Line in the Sand
written by the Fenspace Collective
Prologue - June 2013
Deliberation
A small group of men were sitting around a non-descript table.
One of the men stood up and looked into the faces of each of the attending persons.
"Gentlemen, some of our spies in several Fen factions have forwarded important information to us. It is time to reveal and use our combined strength for the first time."
A short guy with an Italian suit groaned. "Skip the rhetoric, we are here to earn money, leave craziness to the Mads. If you got something profitable for this committee, spit it out."
The men standing nodded and continued. "As you all know, the Fen plan another of their conventions soon. What we did not knew is that some Fen were visited by a group of alien travelers a few weeks ago. These travelers..."
Someone else interrupted him: "Aliens ? You are crazy... there have been rumors of aliens since the Trekkies got up here. Don't waste our time with these rumors."
"... these travelers left after some days, but they left behind a small repository of advanced knowledge. From what my spies have told me it contains a lot of material about space science, advanced biotech and other things. Rumors suggest that these document will be released at the convention. I ignored these rumors until one of my spies on Hades Station forwarded me this paper."
He held up a small printout of maybe 20 pages.
"THIS, gentlemen, is a construction template for a small and efficient fusion reactor. One of our scientists looked over it and confirmed that it appears to be authentic... and does not require handwavium."
He stayed silent while the rest of the group stared at the document in his hand, trying to grasp the new facts they were confronted with.
"You all know that the situation is slowly getting worse. Most of our spies have been purged by the Fen, small operations in the asteroid belt are constantly harassed by patrols and cargo flights to Earth are becoming more difficult. We must not let this alien knowledge get into the hand of the Fenspace convention, otherwise we will face a decisive technological disadvantage... and most likely a fatal one too!"
The man in the Italian suit raised his hand, this time with a much more serious look on his face. "What do you propose to do?"
The speaker smiled.
"My group has been planning a raid against the moons of Jupiter for some time, both to gather supplies for our operations and to disrupt the food deliveries to the inner system more permanently. I propose we take the equipment to get into Ganymede's orbit without raising an alarm, gather our mobile forces and deal a blow to the Fen which they will never recover from. We bomb most of the spacecraft there while they are still on the ground, then land with a large reaver force supported by a few groups of Berserkers... grab the alien documents, take all the Fen we can get away with and wipe the floor rest of them by ramming a large freighter into the valley from orbit. If we do it right we can kill most of the
faction leaders and gain a solid and permanent technological advantage... not only over the Fen but over Earth too."
Someone in the back of the room were taking an audible deep breath.
"It is an 'all or nothing' operation... but if we continue like we do now, the Fen will shut down most of our operations within 24 months... maybe even faster with the new alien technology. We have only a few days until the convention begins, so there is not much time. It is to act now or to die soon..."
A man with an American suit right out of an Al Capone movie nodded.
"Let's call a vote about all of this..."
Serenity-Con
Deception
Like most Fenspace conventions before, SerenityCon was present in two different universes.
In the physical world a huge number of Fen of all kinds were running around, having a good time and discussion more or less important things.
The second part of SerenityCon was happening in cyberspace. Even network specialists from Earth would never have been able to comprehend the amount and complexity of communication between the hundreds and hundreds of AI equipped crafts, the ad-hoc networks, virtual servers and remote-controlled avatars. Some of it were running with the same speed as the physical world, other parts were running at an accelerated timeframe to keep the participants from being bored.
Cortana was enjoying her time and listening to the local traffic. On the right two groups of AIs were playing a large game of tower defense with some of the webservers of the convention, while others were discussing, categorizing and analyzing the most recent discussions of the other Fen. There was even a small gambling place where AIs were betting cpu power on things like important discussion results, number of biomods per minute on a certain cafeteria and harmonic resonance frequencies of large groups of Fen having a party.
It was the fifth day of the Convention and the proportion of work to partying was slowly sliding more and more to the parties. Not everyone was happy with the things happening in the last year, but at least most Fen were having a good time. Later this hour there was an announcement about a large scale core war hacking contest and Cortana was already looking forward to see it. Hacking was not really her area of interest, but it was always fun to watch.
Suddenly Cortana's virtual avatar blinked and looked around, she had the feeling something strange was going on.
Concentrating on the input from the Stargazers radios, Cortana finally found the source of her strange 'feeling.'
"Hey you little guy, what is wrong with you" she murmured and looked more closely to the weak signal of one of the sensor satellites of the Ganymede network.
"Perfect encoding, all checksums right, frequency as expected, nothing alarming on your data... but why do I think you are a little drunk today?" she whispered while accelerating her timeframe as much as she could.
All analyzer subroutines told her that the signal was perfect as ever, but Cortana was sure that her standard software was wrong this time. She began comparing it carefully with the data she recorded when getting into Ganymede orbit and frowned slightly.
The signal had gained some minor features it had not some days ago, and Cortana was pretty sure that changes like this were not just a matter of wear.
"I need some insight from someone with a different perspective" she thought and browsed through the attendance list of the convention.
"Ah, yes" she acknowledged, "you are perfect..." when she finally found the entry she was looking for. If there was one ship you could bet on that it was not parked on the ground, it was the Blackbird called Magnificent Midnight.
"Cortana of the Stargazer to Magnificent Midnight, I think we are in trouble and I need your help." With a few short sentences she described her the funny features of one of the sensor satellites of Ganymede. "Please do a passive scan on the frequency of the sensor network and send me all results you got in an encrypted reply... and please hurry, I have a bad feeling about this."
Cortana wrapped the message in a OGJ encryption code and send out a wide beam data package into the sky above Ganymede. The Midnight would be somewhere up there and would hopefully reply soon.
The next 30 seconds were the hardest waiting time Cortana had ever experienced.
"Midnight to Cortana... result of scan attached on message. Will do a quick flyby of the satellite. Expect another message in three minutes" said the response from the Blackbird.
"If in need for recon data, ask a spy plane" murmured Cortana with a smile and opened the attachment to correlate the two sets of data... and nearly froze in shock.
She stared on the data for nearly a second, then ran everything through her calculations a second time... and a third time, but the results stayed the same.
She could hear 15 sensor satellites above the Stargazer in the sky, happily sending small updates on the gathered data. But when she combined her data with the package from the Magnificent Midnight there were only five point sources in the sky, each of them sending the data of three sensor satellites... and each of them in a totally wrong position.
Cortana's 'view' focused back into the sky as she thought about the implications what she had discovered in the last minute.
"Either some joker managed to draw fifteen sensor satellites to different places, glued them together in groups of three and made sure neither he was seen by the satellites nor they noticed the change in position.... or someone has replaced these fifteen satellites. Which means someone can control what Ganymede orbital watch can see on its screens... or what it cannot see."
Which meant that anything could be up there... from a Professor-sponsored weapon of mass amusement to a fast asteroid-style kinetic weapon. For another second she thought about sending out a clear alarm message to anyone in range, but then decided otherwise. Starting a mass panic would be more counterproductive than anything else.
She slowed herself down to realtime speed and connected to the local Operation Great Justice office, demanding a priority line to the head officer. If this one would decide that she abused her OGJ access codewords she and maybe Cathy would be in trouble... but better in trouble than being wrong about this.
"OGJ office, head officer. What can I do for you.... Cortana," a bored voice acknowledged her request.
'Ahh, the poor guy who has to stay in the office while the rest of Fenspace is partying' she thought.
"Here is Cortana from the Stargazer... I just discovered together with the Magnificent Midnight that someone seems to have replaced parts of the Ganymede sensor network with their own system. Someone else is controlling what we see or not see in the sky above the Convention."
On a subchannel she was sending some 3D pictures showing the results of measurements by Magnificent Midnight and herself and the resulting positions of the sensor sources... and their proposed positions.
"Oh..." she heard through her radio connection, but nothing else was coming out of it for a perceived eternity. After ten seconds she decided to grab the initiative again.
"Yes I know, maybe it's nothing, maybe we have hours of time until something happens... and maybe in this moment there is a kinetic-kill vehicle incoming on your office... and the first thing you will know about it is the knocking on your damned roof!"
Finally she heard some hectic action on the other side of the connection.
"I understand, we are raising an alarm... stay on this radio channel and inform us of any new readings... we will..."
The second radio began signaling an incoming burst transmission from the Magnificent Midnight.
"Midnight to Cortana... bad news attached... more data soon."
Cortana looked into the attached data and sighed. "OGJ office... I have more bad news for you from the Magnificent Midnight..."
"I don't know why I have to wear a three-piece suit for this," Noah complained.
Yayoi sighed. "If you don't make a good impression out there, nobody's going to take you seriously."
"They aren't here for me, they're here for the Catalog. Why can't I just wear my usual polo shirt, slacks, and kevlar-lined jacket?"
"That isn't sufficiently professional. You aren't Steve Jobs, after all."
Noah sighed. "Polo shirt, not turtleneck."
"Noah, you trusted me enough to give me Yoriko's position as Vice-President of Stellvia Corporation. Trust me on this."
The door opened. Noah smiled when he saw Leda - while she wasn't Yoriko, she was still a damn fine woman. What she had to say broke the mood. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but we just received a message from the Magnificent Midnight. Cortana and Midnight are picking up some odd signals from the Ganymede sensor network."
"Odd?" Noah raised an eyebrow. "In what way?"
"They aren't sure."
Noah started untying his tie. "I have a bad feeling about this ..."
"You do have a tendency to overreact, Noah. Are you overreacting again?"
"Consider what we're presenting here, and how much it would be worth if not everybody had a copy of it. I have to go out there and present the Catalog, so I'm wearing my body armor. I want the rest of you someplace relatively safe, and the safest place I can think of is inside the Epsilon Blade with its forcefield turned on. Prep for launch as soon as the three of you are aboard - I want you to, as the Warsies say, 'pick up your visual scanning.' Coordinate flight paths with Midnight."
Yayoi and Leda nodded. "Do you have any messages for Kohran?" asked the former.
"Yes," nodded Noah. "Kohran is to drop whatever she's doing and get back to the ship right now, and ..."
Leda waited for a moment. "Darling?"
"And ... tell Kohran she's to remove the weapons locks from the kaboomite warheads."
I was manning a 7-sided dice productions booth that day. It wasn't the kind of thing I liked doing, but as the only mobile person in the company, I was the only man for the job.
The day hadn't gone so badly, and the sales had been pretty good (especially for Destruction Dive and Fenbuilder) but right I was bored out of his mind.
':-] SERAVIEL ? OGL ALARM JUST WENT UP.' came up on my iPhone.
'I should have expected it...' I thought. Of course the place would have to be attacked on one of the very few days I was out. "Any idea of the reason ?"
''_' SENSOR NETWORK'S COMPROMIZED... BADLY AT THAT.'
"Any chance it might be accidental ?"
':-( NOT REALLY... IT'S MUCH TOO EXACT FOR THAT.'
That meant Boskonians. Either incoming or already here. "Patch me up to Spot, will you ?"
':-) WILL DO.'
"Spot ?"
'-Whirr ?-'
I can't believe I'm asking this. "I have a very important question for you. Are you able to take a hit ? There's a battle incoming and I need to know what you can do."
'-WHIRR-' That meant yes, I'd learned.
I thought for an instant. I wasn't in any position to command him, having very little to no tactical information. However, I didn't trust OGJ leadership one bit with something as important as that. A few instants of thoughts solved that issue. The man sure to be involved, especially with what he'd been about to show to the world.
I manually typed a number in my phone. 'Noah ? It's Seraviel. I have something for you...'
placeholder #01 - holding open for more pre-action scenes
Destruction
"And here we are... the missile ships will enter the orbit around Ganymede within less than 5 minutes, and no swarm of Fen fighters in sight. I would say Phase One was a full success, lets go to Phase Two as soon as possible. If we have smashed the crafts on the ground, we have all time in the universe to do the rest of the job."
The insertion of the radio platforms to fake the signals of the Ganymede sensor network had been as smooth as possible. With the help of the code from the Ganymede service engineer they had copied the current signals and began broadcasting them exactly the moment the kinetic flechette strikes had hit the real satellites and destroyed them. This and the sabotage of some of the key nodes of the rest of the network would give the fleet a nice and easy to use corridor to get directly over Serenity Valley without being detected. After this it would be the work of the drop ship crews.
"Is our special surprise package loaded and in place? If everything goes to hell we want to get most of the important Fen with the big bang on the ground." It had been a pleasant surprise that one faction had managed to intercept and capture one of these damned Blackbirds spy planes some time ago, but having a really fast and really stealthy ship to deliver a multi-ton bomb was a great bonus for an operation like this.
"Give the troop transports the signal that we are going forward with phase two. They should rush in after the two missile waves, keep them of balance and make sure they don't organize... as soon as the first missiles are away, activate the communication jammer, no need to give the Fen a chance to call home."
A woman on one of the consoles of the bridge looked up. "Sir, one of our ships says they saw something out there... they are not sure what it was but the engineer says they were passed by some shadow. The optical records are not conclusive, could be a very small spy satellite."
The captain cursed loudly. Flying under the protection of a radar cloak was great, but it prevented the use of your own radar too. If they had been discovered this could cost the operation a lot, but they still had a chance to accomplish their goals.
"Damn them, all of them... five minutes more, is that too much to ask for? Get these missiles out as soon we are in range, the timetable just got shortened a lot! And activate the Interwave jammer NOW!"
The tech just looked at her screen, not comprehending what she was seeing for a moment. To the side of her, her manager was also blank with shock. Surely what was on the display could NOT be real. Then he dove for a row of buttons on the next console.
At some time in the past, some helpful soul had labeled the buttons for quick recognition. They were "PANIC!", "PANIC MOAR!", "AIIEEEE!!!!", "WTF?!?", and "Egon's gone Bye Bye!".
The manager's dive hit all of them at once.
It's said that information is the lifeblood of modern civilization. This is especially true for AIs and cyberspace.
The first warning most AIs on the parking field got about the arriving danger induced a shock in many of them. Within one moment several Avatars of AIs participating the convention remotely from distant space stations flickered and died in a wave of disorganized pixels.
For milliseconds most AIs could not believe someone would be able to do something that evil... someone had cut the Convention from the Interwave, all of the multiple redundant transmitter stations at once!
Whole virtual worlds toppled when some of the players who held the constructs together vanished and most activities on the virtual convention grid came to a stop, then a storm of electronic cries of anger rolled through the grid. Here and there the interconnection of the grid already began to crumble under conventional jamming attempts of the Boskonian fleet in orbit, others were clogged with calls to reach the Fen in the convention area.
But as fast as the confusion and chaos appeared, it was pushed aside again.
Quickly several groups of AIs began setting up a local network, analyzing the incoming jamming patterns and working around them. Instead of red-versus-blue tower defense, it became a three-team battle to set up the most jamming resistant network. Trading team members by bribing them with better local network access, stealing strategies of the other teams, even fighting some local wars about radio frequencies to be used. Slower AIs working on the overall distribution and routing while the faster were zipping around the options available for radio communication, probing for ways to get some more performance out of jammed parts of the spectrum.
'Damn, where is Trigon when you need him?' Cortana thought with a grim when the situation stabilized after a while. 'His local network would have most likely be able to shoot down enemy spacecrafts with lightning... 12 seconds of communication disruption is just too long for a convention... the Boskones will pay for this!'
And then the first enemy troops arrived at the area.
placeholder #02 - holding open for any "scramble for launch" scenes
placeholder #03 - holding open for a scene of the Boskos launching their first brace of missiles
It was stupid. It was insane. It was daft as a brush and madder than the Professor's Panel. It was desperation. It was the only chance. Missiles, bearing down on orbiting ships. Bearing down on defenseless orbiting ships. Max thought fast, thought like lightning.
"Intercept them! Knock them out of the sky!"
Jet thought he was insane at first. She wasn't the only one.
"Hit them just ahead of the tail, the warheads won't go off."
Max managed to project confidence, the certainty that he was right, the certainty that if they pulled it off correctly, there wouldn't be so much as a paint-scratch. Jet wasn't quite sure why she was going along with this plan, or why she wasn't making a beeline straight down to the ground, or off into the black.
Her target streaked forward, trailing condensing vapor and ice. Anti-shipping missile. It's target was getting closer. Some lumbering waved transport. Jet could see it's engines begin to glow, thrusters exhausting as it tried everything to move. The missile tracked unerringly. One hit and that ship would just disintegrate.
Jet could run. Jet could leave them to it.... Jet really wasn't sure if she could live with the guilt of it.
Or was it just a case of Max order, she follow? It wasn't insane heroism, she told herself. It wasn't stupidity. She was only following orders! Sure that was easier to believe. Jet just couldn't say 'No' to her trainer. She assumed that was it.
Ten meters out, she realised she was doing her best to just keep her mind from fully realising exactly how dangerous this was. A few milliseconds. Everything running full bore. Thinking like lightning on an adrenaline rush, mind trying to cram as much as it could into these last few moments. Well... at least she got to kiss Ford... really kiss. Real skin touching skin with the sort of tingle waved alloys just didn't have. Cold hand on one side of her face. Warm fingers on the other....
Adjust a little bit. Missile's moving slower than she guessed. Ease in. Hold your breath. Grit your teeth and wham!
Jet hit so hard, with such a strong kick running up through her leg, she could've sworn the missile went off right then and there. There was a flash of twisted metal and expending propellant burning momentarily in the vacuum before it boiled and froze at the same time...
And then. She was clear.
The missile's warhead spiraled uselessly into the black, finally detonating relatively harmlessly in open space, bursting into a cloud of sparkling debris. Above and behind her, a few of it's compatriots hit home, causing untold carnage. Jet would swear she saw someone blown out a shattering window... a humanoid figure trying to swim desperately back in, reaching for safety that was getting further away by the second... before going dreadfully still. He seemed to ask the question... why not my ship?
Max's voice crackled into her mind. "Come on! That's only the first wave. Next salvo's coming in. Get moving. Try get more than one this time."
There was no arguing with that, as much as Jet wanted to. Just keep going. Jet'd already picked her next target.
Midnight had no problems.
Midnight was in her element.
With her speed and acceleration, few things could touch her in the furball.
And with her advanced sensors, she could track every friendly and hostile in the area. She made sure that the friendlies were getting a clear tactical picture of what was going on.
In the mean time, she would follow her last directive from Black Rider - continue to support with a live tactical feed and take out any targets of opportunity.
And that was when she saw it. It was a shadow, at first. Just a ghost in the clutter. But it takes a ghost to know a ghost.
"ALERT! Enemy forces are in possession of a Blackbird-class vessel! Moving to intercept! Cortana, take the tactical net - I need all my resources to take this girl down!"
Eddie let a sub-process run for a full half-second considering options now that the Midnight was engaged with a fellow Blackbird.
"Tinman to all points. White Stallion going to full power on sensors. Set filters."
At this point Eddie grabbed as much bandwidth as he could, ramped the Stallion's sensors to full power, and dumped oceans worth of data down the pipe.
The reason the White Stallion hadn't been at full power was simply how crowded it was out there. Even at a tenth of its normal power the cross-interference of the sensor signals from both fleets was bordering on the impenetrable. Hence the Fen A.I.'s had been running interferometric analyses on the sensor net, taking into account the multifarious sensor equipment and their interactions.
What Eddie had just done was pretty much burn through any interference with sheer power, and blow away the fog of the battlefield.
To the Magnificent Midnight it was like she'd been wearing dark sunglasses inside and someone had just pulled them off. The rogue Blackbird stood out like a mountain in a desert plain at noon.
"Gotcha."
Another blast. Another hard impact. Blazing fuel. Frozen blood. Another dropship smashed. Jet wasn't sure how many of them she'd taken out. Come in from the top, lead with the right foot at a decent speed, and let physics do the rest. The van-sized pods just tore apart or burst. Waved armour could take the hit.... almost.
Wreckage drifted by. It was silent. All was silent except for Jets heartbeat pounding deep inside her.
Jet saw two blackbirds chase each other through the sky., rolling, turning, diving, charging in again. The chaser might've been Midnight... Jet was almost certain it was. The leading Blackbird seemed to be limping, trailing smoke from one engine, but the pilot knew what he was doing. He was just about keeping his plane ahead.
Right up until the moment he seemed to run into a brick wall of static and started to shine like a radio lighthouse. It near flooded her radar it was so bright. It took her more than a few moments to figure out what had happened, filtering through the haze and noise on the radio. Someone was begging for help. there was something else she couldn't quite make out, lost in a static warble, followed by one word that made everything dreadfully. One word came through clear.
"...Tinman..."
Jet finally understood just why that Blackbird had suddenly seemed so confused. Jet finally realized exactly where she was leading her Gruppe. She knew just how lethal a blast of EM like that'd be....
"Engel Flight! Break Zero-Ninety!"
Straight up. Pray they got the message in the static. God willing, they'd see her break and have the sense to follow. Jet boosted her engines hard, a deep vibration from somewhere in her right foot warning of a bearing failure in the turbine, moments before the auto-systems caught it. Jet didn't throttle back...
She didn't see what happened to the blackbird, she focused herself on picking her way through the debris. The wreckage of what might've been a Peacemaker drifted passed in a haze of leaking fuel, followed by another dropship that'd been clean cut in two.
Jet wasn't even armed with anything heavier than a pistol. Her blades had snapped off long ago, leaving only buckled stubs. One of her wings had jammed shut.
"Engel Flight, status!"
The rational part of her mind was surprised she'd even spoken. She was half running on autopilot. Eight voices answered. Jet glanced back, seeing them picked out on her HUD. There was something so relieving about seeing them catch up. She wasn't alone at least. There were nine of them left.... nine small people, caught in a very big furball. Didn't anyone remember they were up there? There'd been some orders what seemed like an age ago... but since then, nothing. Whoever they were supposed to rendezvous with... hadn't been there.
"Now what?" Gant demanded of her, pulling alongside.
Jet could see one whole side of his leg ripped open, revealing the actuators underneath. Sparks spat out every few moments. There was only one thing she was certain of.
"We can't stay up here,"
Something exploded far above, punctuating that statement.
"No way I can make landing!"
Jet looked around, "I doubt any of us can," A Pause. "I think they've forgotten we're up here,"
"I don't think we're gonna be up here much longer!" Gant gave a nervous laugh.
"I'll call for a pickup, somebody's gotta hear it." Jet glanced around once more. They were all pretty battered. Still going far longer than any of them had any right too, but battered nonetheless. "This is Engel Flight hailing any vessel in range. We're stuck up here, we need a pickup,"
Nothing.
Another wave of dropships was coming in. Jet looked at them, then at the Gruppe, wondering if they'd go. Standing still left them a sitting duck. No real choice there....if they were going to be stuck up in space, they might aswell get stuck in. She had no idea what else they could do but keep fighting. Just be lucky they don't get shot down by their own side.
"Follow me!" she yelled, boosted her engines. Her right turbine finally blew, blowing sparks and shrapnel through the exhaust. She felt something ping off her armour, before biting deep inside her leg with a lot more pain than she'd expected. Swearing blind, Jet pitched over, compensating for the loss.
Well.... that's not going to be covered by the warranty, she thought, before she started laughing madly at the absurdity of it all. Next target. In from the top, lead with the right foot. It smashed as easily as all the others.
Jet tried once more, hoping for an answer.
"This is Engel Flight hailing any vessel in range. We're stuck up here. We've got damage and we need a pickup."
placeholder #04 - holding open for a space-action scene so Engel Flight isn't rescued immediately
The chipper voice came over the radio.
Two small ships approached the remaining members of Engel Flight. They were spider-like. They were Blue. Jet wasn't sure, but they seemed to be cheerful.
The lead Tachikoma continued.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012