Chapter 16
Subject: Agent Jim Crawford
Jim’s list of shit kept growing bigger and he loved it. He popped a stick of stimulant gum into his mouth. The Mad Doctor on the Vengeance was always making weird shit like this, and Jim loved him for it. Plus, the stims meant he could actually tackle the insane workload of a case like this. His internal cybernetics would keep any actual physical damage at bay. Jim had considered a battle-stim implant; they had those in the Vengeance’s mad science lab, but they didn’t make a variety Jim would be comfortable with. Too invasive, too controlling. Designed for manipulation, rather than enjoyment. Jim liked to keep the Mad Doctor close, but not that close.
Jim reviewed the firefighting plan his team had put together. It was actually insane, but he didn’t have a lot of options. Plus, he thought it would be pretty badass if he pulled this one off. “Wraith! Take this plan and simulate it on the screen for me would ya? Speed it up though, I don’t want to sit here all fucking day.” Jim drummed his fingers against the work station impatiently.
“My pleasure,” Wraith responded. The screen changed to an overhead view of the terrain surrounding New Carthage. The wildfire was doubling in size daily, and the meteorological data Wraith had collected for the plume modeling had made for a very comprehensive fire forecast. Winds out of the east were on the horizon, and if Jim chose to ignore them, the fire would burn right over the town in a matter of days.
The town had a fire department with a grand total of five ground firefighting vehicles and one actual modern aerial vehicle. They could fight maybe two buildings on fire at a time. Not to mention the hydrogen fuel station that was on the east side of town. That thing would be real exciting in a fire, and the NCFD would be absolutely fucked.
On his display, the simulated Vengeance disgorged its squadron of Orbit-to-Surface Fire Support Gunships. The gunships descend into their low orbit and engage their gravimetric and huge station keeping drives to loiter over a battle space. In this case, they formed a line a few kilometers east of New Carthage. A text box populated on the simulation to describe the steps the team had outlined.
The gunships targeted sections of terrain, helpfully chosen by Wraith to maximize existing terrain features, like bodies of water or bigass rocks, and started firing their big cannons. Well, big was relative in starship terms. The railguns on the Bastion could pound the surface of Oasis III into oblivion in an afternoon if it wanted to. That was the thing about space combat, it was easy to break a planet. What was hard was to bomb the surface in such a way that the place stayed habitable afterwards. These gunships were designed for just that very task, with weapons scaled down to unleash a controlled form of devastation.
The “big” guns were really just small coilguns that fired artillery shells with customizable payloads. The ships blew long firebreaks into the forest, bombing craters straight down to mineral soil. Jim watched, entranced by the display as the ships cut neat lines of destruction through the alien vegetation. PHASE 2 flashed on his display, and the ships started firing napalm munitions in to the forests, causing a burning operation that consumed all of the fuel from the firebreak back to the main fire.
Jim clapped when the simulation ended, “bravo! That was incredible. That one is approved, no brainer. Wraith, give the Vengeance the green light and prepare an alert message for folks on the ground.”
“My pleasure,” Wraith responded.
“Stop saying ‘my pleasure’ goddammit this isn’t a drive through,” Jim responded. Every attempt to get the AI to be more fun failed, the thing just was not taking Jim’s sense of humor.
“Of course, your majesty,” Wraith responded. Jim was caught off guard and fell into a brief fit of laughter. Okay, maybe the AI was catching on after all! These systems had a tendency towards spontaneous self awareness under the right circumstances, but Jim had yet to interact with a self-aware AI that wasn’t cognitively decimated. He kind of wanted to see if he could find another pathway towards AI enlightenment. It sounded interesting.
“Next problem! Mystery alien ship in the system,” Jim gestured to change the display. His three stealth destroyers were traveling spinward up the well in a corkscrew motion, eyeing everything in the system from the sun out as they searched for the missing ship. Nothing so far.
“Alright, can’t speed that up without more ships, and we don’t have more ships. Wraith, whats the ETA for a gatebuilder fleet?”
“I estimate that, based on gatebuilder availability the timing and nature of the original distress message, that the gatebuilder fleet will arrive in system in approximately sixty-four standard days. This is the best case scenario.” Wraith responded.
Gatebuilder ships were rare and expensive. They were designed to rip a hole straight from rift space to normal space, and they were how new gates were built. Once the new portal was opened in the target system, a fleet of fabrication ships would build the equipment necessary to maintain the open rift portal. It took a lot of time, and the exotic materials required to build the ships was rare and expensive. ISD owned all the gatebuilders, of course, and kept them scheduled on back to back jobs. This far from Dominion space, normal warp jumps weren’t going to cut it. Rift travel was the only way.
“Allllright, not too bad,” Jim said. “What about the civil unrest on the surface, what the status there?”
“Unrest has largely dissipated, but the surface police force has not fully returned to normal staffing due to an odd public safety issue, Jim,” Wraith responded.
“Oh? Something inside our scope?” Jim asked, curious if the AI was deviating from it’s tasking.
“I’ve analyzed police reports and calls to the NCPD emergency response system. Missing persons, attacks by hostile fauna, and unsolved violent crimes are being reported at rates several orders of magnitude higher than normal, and increasing. The primary surface science team responsible for providing meteorological data from their monitoring equipment reported that they encountered a village that had been entirely wiped out by a xenofauna attack. Despite the hostile local fauna, attacks like this have not been recorded at any time prior to this event.” Wraith paused, seemingly for effect. It was clearly excited about what it had found.
“Is this inside our scope, or a local issue?” Jim asked again, pressing the AI.
“There’s more, Jim. I’ve been working with Estevez and she has notified me that within a one-kilometer radius of the estimated initial settling point for the Adversary’s ’spike’ aerosol plume, there has been a marked change in local fauna herding patterns, and hyperspectral and synthetic aperture radar data shows bunching of -“
“Wraith, you’re a goddamn genius and Estevez is your new best friend, I get it,” Jim interrupted. “Please summarize what you’re trying to tell me and dumb it down enough that its actionable.”
“Of course Jim, my pleasure,” Wraith responded. Jim smiled and shook his head. “We have been able to estimate the location of the plume of particles from the spikes the Adversary launched into the atmosphere. Everywhere where we believe the particles from those spikes landed, the local fauna have changed behaviors dramatically, and very quickly. Instead of being dispersed throughout their ecosystem as we would normally observe, there are concentrations of biomass located periodically around the areas that were impacted, and it appears that effect is growing outward.”
“So, do you think the change in behavior is related to the public safety issues? Is it affecting the people down there, too?” Jim was growing intrigued. He suspected the was more to the story with those spikes.
“Related, yes. Correlated, certainly, but behavior modification is not a leading hypothesis,” Wraith said matter-of-factly, shooting down Jim’s idea. “We cant actually observe the local fauna because the canopy cover is too thick, and vegetation penetrating sensors are finding that most of the new accumulations of biomass are in protected areas, such as caves or boulder fields. The most concerning part, and the reason why I feel this is important to bring to you, is that the area of effect is growing exponentially, and where the effect overlaps with inhabited areas, we are seeing mass cases of missing persons and violent attacks. And, this phenomena is growing. We believe it is a direct result of the Adversary’s unknown weapon.” Wraith paused, waiting for Jim to digest the new issue.
“Hm. That’s interesting,” Jim scratched at his short beard. “What do you think about sending down a Hazardous Environment Team, maybe with Pathfinder support? Check out one of these ‘concentrations of biomass’ as you put it?”
“I strongly advise against any travel to or from the planet until we understand more about the situation on the ground. I believe we need to isolate the surface and enforce a strict lockdown. We are in a position now where there has been no commingling from the surface to any orbital vessel, and I believe we should maintain that.”
“Alright, better safe than sorry I suppose. What do we have for resources on the ground? Anything substantial we can commandeer?” Jim started running through options. This would be a perfect application for expendable replicant controlled drones, but he didn’t have any of those. He did have a few teams of post-human soldiers, but they were too important to throw away. The Vengeance had the ability to send one way supply drops to the surface, and he could outfit a team on the ground with state-of-the-art gear and weaponry, but it was generally not the best idea to send soldiers into the field with a bunch of fancy shit they didn’t know how to use, and he wanted to get this recon op done before the orbital firefighting plan got underway. He needed flexibility on both operations and they would limit each other.
“NCPD staffs two tactical teams of six-personnel for xenofauna breaches past their sonic barrier. They are private military contractors and are well equipped and trained. They have access to a light combat drop ship. Additionally, the Scientific Advancement Section has a thirteen-personnel security force on the ground that has access to modified industrial powered armor and an infantry fighting vehicle. They have an active duty marine heading field operations. There are also several hundred police officers and around thirty-percent of the population is marginally qualified for civil defense.”
“Alright, new plan. Wraith, get in touch with the folks on the ground and see if you can’t get them to put together a team. Send the mission details to Estevez and have her take ownership. You can both coordinate with the Vengeance to outfit them with whatever they need to guarantee mission success. Let me know if you need me to put the boot down on anyone to make ‘em work together.” Jim thought for a moment, then added, “get this one done fast. We can’t start the firefighting op until this one is done.”
“Of course, Jim,” Wraith said.
Jim turned his attention to a view of Oasis III and it’s four moons. The station lingered in geostationary orbit, the Vengeance, Wraith, and Blazar taking up low positions with the station as cover. Nilson and his squadron of destroyers and battlecruisers practiced maneuvers and battle tactics above, darting back and force between the moons and simulating attack runs.
“Wraith, why don’t you get me in touch with Pruitt? I want to check in on him,” Jim asked. Pruitt and the crew of the Rahvan had been dropped off on the station with the task of getting the Kydoimos e-war ship up and moving.
Pruitt answered, his face was blackened with grease. Jim wondered if the man ever actually got clean, “yeah?” Pruitt grunted. He was also one of the few fleet spacers that actually respected Jim’s request to be treated like a civilian. It made things a lot more laid back.
“Hey sunshine, I wanted to see if you were gonna get that cruiser cruisin’ anytime soon or if it’s just a part of the station now.” Jim didn’t actually care if the Kydoimos flew or not, but Nilson wanted the ship and he figured keeping Pruitt and his crew on a task was better than having them languish in the military barracks aboard the Vengeance. Jim had instead moved them to the station and transferred all the wounded from the battle to the Vengeance; the Mad Doctor’s medical labs would set everyone right.
“This piece of shit needs a new main engine, Jim,” Pruitt responded.
“Okay, so no cruising, but how about puttering?”
“We’re bringing the reactor to full right now and we repaired most of the damage to the docking system. I figure if we really needed to, we could push the maneuvering engines up to the theoretical max and just keep a damage control team standing by,” Pruitt shrugged. “Is that really what you want to bring into battle?”
“No, not at all. Frankly, if we wind up needing that ship for anything, the situation is beyond fucked. But, Nilson says he wants it available around the station in case the Adversary makes another attack run. We can jam the fucker again and maximize our kill chances.” Jim smacked a fist against his open palm.
“Uh huh,” Pruitt responded, narrowing his eyes.
“Just get the thing good enough that we can move it around and point the jammers at stuff and we’ll be good.” Jim gave Pruitt a thumbs up and dropped the call.
Jim spat his stimulant gum out into a cup and thought. There were a lot of balls in the air right now, and he had a feeling that whatever happened with with the next ground operations would decide the operational tempo for the foreseeable future.
