Battle Master
The CWS Altai, flagship of the 1st Sol Provisional Battle Force, was in hyperspace just seven days short of the Paraiso System. Its admiral, Alvaro Soong, lay propped on a pillow in his stateroom, hands cupped behind his head, reviewing. He was not a notable worrier. His usual style was to treat things matter-of-factly. But he'd made a decision-made and implemented it-that could wipe out whatever chance humanity had for survival. At least civilized survival.
His rationale was that the chance being risked was thin. And if his decision worked out, it could substantially improve.
If it worked out. He'd approached it on a gradient: "Just how good are you at battle games, Charley? Let me write a set of opening circumstances, and see what you can do with it."
Both men-the one who occupied 210 pounds of primate body, and the one who weighed only 58 pounds, most of it a "bottle" of metal and synthetics-both knew what lay in the back of the admiral's mind. Are you good enough to direct a real battle with real warships? Are you really? Because the odds are heavily against us. I may be better at directing a space battle than any other officer in this battle force. At the Academy, my cumulative battle game score set a record. But if you can beat me decisively enough…
Basically he was praying for a true genius in war gaming. And Charley had passed the test with ease, even flair. And a second, and a third…
Soong himself was the default choice, but after extensive testing, he'd chosen Charley. For a while the choice had been reversible. Now it wasn't. Not if they were to engage the armada in the Paraiso System. They'd programmed too many changes into the Altai's battlecomp, trying to take maximum advantage of Charley's talents.
Briefly the admiral turned his attention to his stateroom "window"-a large wall panel that in F-space usually gave a real-time view of the stars more clearly than an actual window could. But in hyperspace, the default view was of the F-space potentiality, as interpreted by the shipsmind, and it was neither esthetic nor ordinarily interesting. Usually it showed nothing at all. So he'd requested views of Terra. Terra, which he might never see again. Just now it showed the Swedish taiga-its trees sparse and stunted in the ever worsening climate. In the background was the great ice sheet of the Kjolen Range, intensely, painfully white in spring sunshine. It covered the fjelds as far north and south as the view permitted, and oozed slow white tongues of ice down the valleys toward the sea. A magnificent view, it also provided perspective. Many townsites and historical sites had been buried by the ice in this and many other valleys, leaving the region virtually abandoned. A few-a very few Sami had stayed, long since genetically more Swedish and Norwegian than Sami. They had relearned to herd reindeer, a valid lifestyle, given the climatic shift.
A thought surfaced: if the Wyzhnyny prevailed, would they undertake to root out such tiny, harmless enclaves? That was what some of the colonies had been-small harmless enclaves in planetary wilderness. And seemingly the Wyzhnyny had rooted them out. From the alien point of view, he supposed it made sense.
He pulled his attention away from the screen. In a week he'd emerge in the Paraiso System-the first inhabited system at which he could intercept the invader. How terrible, how overwhelming was that alien armada? How good were his Provos-his 1st Sol Provisional Battle Force? What chance did humanity have?
You'll be the first to know, Alvaro, he told himself.
He was not expected to win this battle, in the usual sense. Thank the Tao. He was to attack the enemy, cause as much damage as possible, then disappear into hyperspace before the invader could destroy him. And in the process learn as much as possible about enemy weaponry and tactics. Those were his orders. Engage, flee, and report.
The decisive part-the most dangerous moment-would be just before escape into strange-space. That moment after the shield generators had shut down, but before the shields had sufficiently decayed to allow generation of a carrier bubble.
War House deemed those waited-for reports so vital, they'd invested five of a seriously limited resource to make sure of them. In each battle group, the point battleship carried a savant communicator, and through that savant, a liaison officer was to give War House a running account of the fight. Then, when the fleet had escaped into hyperspace, the surviving commanders would debrief, again via savant.
Though War House didn't know it in advance, the Altai was the exception. Her savant would be far too busy directing battle actions to give a running account. And afterward he'd rest, as long as needed, before channeling Soong's debrief.
Soong hadn't told Kunming about his new battle master. War House might forbid following through on it. It seemed to him he would himself, if he were admiralty chief. Because War House hadn't personally tested Charley Gordon. And the battle would involve most of the battle-ready human warships and crews.
And if somehow Kunming found out before the fact, and forbade it? Probably he'd ignore them. He'd spent weeks as Charley's assistant, developing strategies and tactics, modifying and remodifying procedures. But in simulation tests, he'd been a spectator, while Charley interacted with the Altai and the rest of the battle force in ways no one had thought of before.
Early on, the admiral had been visited by anxiety, but the weeks of development and tests had left him quietly confident. Not of victory, but of Charley's genius and skills, and the wisdom of his own decision. The limitations of ships and weapons remained, along with the unknown abilities and resources of the Wyzhnyny.
And that two-edged sword known as Murphy's Law, which threatened both fleets. Soong wondered if the Wyzhnyny recognized Murphy's Law. It seemed to him they must. It was inaccurate, of course. Murphy's Law-"Whatever can go wrong will go wrong"-had been predicated as humor. It was irony, not science. But by changing one word, you expressed a truth: "Whatever can go wrong may go wrong."
In any case you did what you could, and Charley could outdo anyone.
In normal gaming, a battle master gives the battlecomp a general strategy and a set of candidate tactics, via brief code words or phrases, very explicit. The battlecomp takes it from there, until that instruction is overridden by a new code word or phrase. Some gamers sometimes give a single such order. The secret to whatever success they have lies in evaluating the initial situation, and selecting or creating an effective strategy. The exercise itself is run entirely by the battlecomp.
Charley, however, had come to the job with major advantages. His response time was faster than any other human gamer's, perhaps because his responses were mediated by a shorter, faster neural system.
Charley knew the entire catalog of standard command codes, and had added numerous others of his own to make use of his special talents. And no one, to Soong's knowledge, was nearly so nimble with them. Charley could rattle off a sequence of appropriate commands, for a number of units, almost at the speed of thought. "Appropriate" involving the necessary allowances for unit momenta, signal time, equipment response times, and of course his own delivery rate in a command sequence.
The battlecomp could, of course, handle the command function by default. But it could not know what Charley usually knows: the event vectors of the moment. His central genius.
Meanwhile, in simulation, every warship in the fleet was carrying out battle actions bizarre and unimagined, even by the centuries of tactical wizards who'd labored anonymously at War House desks, programming, testing and gaming.
Because creative and imaginative though they'd been, none of them had envisioned a resource like Charley Gordon.
Estimated conservatively, the Provos would arrive in the fringe of the system twelve days before the Wyzhnyny's projected date of arrival. With the short closing jump, and a force no larger than Soong's, hours would be enough to form opening battle formations. So far, Charley's fleet drills had been in the virtual reality of the Altai's shipsmind. The rest of the fleet didn't know there was a new battle master. In the Paraiso System, the entire fleet would participate, its ships coordinated under Charley Gordon's direction, mediated by the Altai's shipsmind.
Soong was on the bridge four hours before scheduled arrival. Already isogravs showed the system's primary, an F9 star without a name of its own, unless you consider catalog numbers. As soon as shipsmind had computed the optimum emergence solution, the admiral ordered an approach course and emergence tick, informing his battle force via that awkward set of phenomena called hyperspace radio.
When that order had been acknowledged, he sent another: all hands were to be out of stasis before emergence, and ready to receive a live, all-hands briefing from the admiral and his battle master. Because the battle plan, tactics and protocols had changed greatly. The fleet's officers and crews needed to be set up for that; informed of what had happened, and how, reassured, and given confidence in the new command situation.
On naval spacecraft, the signal for hyperspace emergence is a gong, mellow and golden, repeated over five seconds.
Then the Provos popped into F-space scattered over a significant period-more than a millisecond-to occupy a million-cubic-mile volume of F-space shaped like a watermelon seed. Against a scintillant backdrop of stars, cold in aspect but hot, hot. The brightest, most vivid, being the molten-yellow primary only four billion miles away.
The admiral gave his people thirty seconds to appreciate the sight. Then he began his all-hands address.
"Officers and crew of the First Provos. We are in the fringe of the Paraiso System, and in a few minutes we'll begin to form battle units. Not the formations we've formed before, but something new. Something better. Something that will enable us to truly raise hell with the enemy when he appears.
"Eight weeks ago I made a discovery. I discovered that one of us is a genius above all geniuses in battle gaming. As a graduating midshipman, I set the Academy's official all-time cumulative scoring record for space-battle games. So I tested and retested this newly discovered genius, then tested him some more. In every test he humbled me, and as a result I've made him battle master. Given him the duty I love best of all, because this will be no game. It will be for real, for the future of humankind."
He paused, letting them absorb it.
"He improves our odds of victory by a factor of ten. So I want to introduce this man to you, this supreme battle master. You need to know him and hear him. He is a gift from the Tao, and one of the finest human beings I have ever known."
Up to this point, the camera had given the viewers a close shot of their admiral, showing him from the waist up. Now the viewpoint backed off, showing him standing beside a wheeled, motorized stand.
"Our new battle master's name is Charley Gordon. Not Admiral Gordon. Not Captain Gordon or Commander Gordon. Charley Gordon, a civilian. He is also our flagship savant."
The admiral's calm features seemed to gaze through the screen at them, as they sat or stood, surprised or puzzled, in messroom, wardroom, engine room, bridge, on battleship, cruiser, corvette… He continued.
"A savant. `Savant' is short for `idiot savant,' because most of them aren't able to function mentally as we do. But all have talents that the rest of us do not.
"Charley Gordon is different. He has savant talents, and he reasons… superbly. He was born in the Brazilian Autonomy, in Rio de Janeiro. As a child he dwelt constantly at death's door, till at age twelve he was bottled, to save his life. Now… "
Their admiral waited again, then gestured at the cart, and the module on its top. "This is Charley Gordon," he said, then indicated the small sensor set that topped it. "He sees and hears his immediate surroundings with these. But through his connections with shipsmind, he sees much more. At will.
"And now I'll let him tell you more about what he does and how he does it."
Almost no one spoke, anywhere in the fleet. Inwardly Soong fidgeted. Because Charley had told him almost nothing about what he'd say. "One of my differences," he'd explained, "is that I function best when playing by ear."
Now Charley broke the silence, in a voice that was not in the least robotic. One might almost have called it merry. "I am Charley Gordon. I am thirty-three years old, and for most of those years I've been war gaming. It's as if I was born for it.
"My response to almost anything is an action. An action! Me, who lives in a box! I act electronically, via whatever mechanisms I'm connected with. Including my vocator, with which I'm speaking to you now, and by whatever artificial intelligence or other server I'm connected with. In this case shipsmind, especially its battlecomp function.
"As battle master I have certain innate and very important advantages. For example, I absorb books and other data sources like a sponge absorbs water. And none of it leaks out or evaporates. Instead it integrates, unifies, forms a coherent system. Where it harmonizes according to natural laws I can only sense, but use intuitively. Use in ways analogous to the ways I communicate with War House in real time, even though Kunming is hyperspace months away."
Soong had gotten used to talking with Charley Gordon; now he was listening to him with different ears, crew ears. Great Tao! he thought. He's charismatic! How did I miss that? He positively radiates intelligence and assurance! This will work better than I'd hoped.
"Some of what I tell you may sound strange," Charley went on. "But most of you have had technical training and games experience, so you will understand. If not at once, then when you've seen it in action.
"Equally important… " He paused. "Let me put it this way. Things happen in sequences. A cause results in an effect, which causes another effect. Et cetera. The causes may include a human decision, a weather incident, an argument, leaky plumbing… almost anything. Such cause/effect sequences I call vectors, and vectors often intersect, and interact.
"For example: Some geophysical incident-say a tidal wave resulting from a volcanic eruption-destroys a village in the Sulu Archipelago. As one result, a surviving villager migrates to Zamboanga, where he meets a stranger at a mosque. They talk, and decide to become robbers together. Ambushing a well-dressed man, they steal a message plaque he'd carried in a body wallet. The message is in a Tamil dialect which neither knows, but… " He paused. "One thing leads to another, and before long, one robber is dead at the hands of Han smugglers, and our ex-villager is hiding among pilgrims en route to Mecca."
His listeners could hear the calm and smiling competence in Charley's voice. "A vector in progress, you see. Now we Provos are on a vector which will soon intersect the vector of the Wyzhnyny armada. And when those vectors intersect, they will result in a spray of new vectors.
"My greatest advantage as battle master is, I am able to sense the relevant vectors-and their probabilistic futures. Some vectors remain fixed over long periods of time: a planet in its orbit, a comet in its orbit. Eventually they may intersect, but very probably they will not. It would be useful to know in advance.
"Many other vectors are very erratic, like a spoiled child unrestrained in a toy store. Even those I can often foresee with some confidence. And while I do these things intuitively, I know them consciously."
The admiral listened intently. Charley had never brought up these things to him, though by hindsight they'd been apparent in his gaming.
"Mostly," Charley continued, "I can't project them very far. Many intersect with too many other effective vectors. Human and alien choices, and of course chaos functions, can cause vectors to change, and give rise to new vectors. But I am generally a few steps ahead of events, and that is a very important advantage.
"Beyond that, I coordinate factors and data very very well. Not as precisely as a shipsmind, but on a higher level. For what is termed `intuition' in an artificial intelligence is simply the use of stochastic processes to extrapolate beyond or around areas of weak or ambiguous data. Human intuition can go well beyond that."
Soong listened while Charley wrapped up his talk. Among other things, the savant knew when to stop. When he was done, the admiral added a few closing comments, then ended the session. It seemed to him they'd pulled it off. Or Charley had. Over the next day or so he'd know absolutely, one way or the other, by fleet performance.
Meanwhile Altai's shipsmind had uploaded the contents of its upgraded battlecomp to the rest of the fleet. And when the all-hands session was over, the admiral called for a command conference on the closed command frequency. A few hours later, the force was ready to begin simulation drills.
The simdrills went so well that three days later the force began "steel drills." In these the battle groups moved physically in space while Altai's battlecomp threw sequences of enemy responses at them. From his battle command station on the bridge, Charley rattled off rapid shorthand instructions to shipsmind, instructions forwarded by radio to the rest of the force, which fought as separate but coordinated battle groups.
In F-space, maneuvers were as limited as ever; one thing Charley couldn't do was cancel inertia. But by anticipating "enemy responses," he permitted individual battle groups to transit from F-space to warpspace with minimal losses. And his control and coordination of beam fire and torpedo attacks against enemy movements was deadly.
It was all pretend, of course, but the Provo crews had gained a large degree of optimism, and an enthusiasm that made the whole venture exciting. Even the "losses" of Provo warships did not greatly cool them. They were, they told each other, going to teach the Wyzhnyny the cost of bringing war to human space.
Alvaro Soong was not as optimistic. The drills had been as realistic as possible, short of shooting at each other. But it was still a limited reality, because Wyzhnyny weaponry, tactics, nerve-even the number of their warships-was unknown.
Which was, he reminded himself, the main reason he'd been sent there, he and his Provos. At the least, he needed to maintain engagement long enough to forward a definitive picture of Wyzhnyny battle capacities to War House. To inflict substantive damage would be a bonus.