La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 12
23: Approach Phase: (Flaminia’s opinion)
Flaminia and I sit companionably in the lounge. I’ve just finished up with Tania - another of the endless simulations (she has vanished into her room) - and my gym slot is half an hour away.
I say, “It’s curious that as we get closer to the encounter, Mission Control is getting more and more taciturn. There are very few messages, even taking account of the delay," (which is now nearly a thirty minute round-trip).
"Even the messages from home have dried up.”
As usual, Flaminia is well-informed.
“They want you guys to be focused now. But on your larger point you should understand how lost Mission Control actually is. The Adversary is largely an unknown quality: they’ve dealt you a stack of cards and now it’s down to you to play them. Also, you should realise that there’s a large covert aspect to this operation which even Mission Control isn’t cleared for.”
She smiles, “And neither are we.”
“Tough being Mission Control,” I say, “So important - with nothing to say.”
“It gets worse,” says Flaminia, “In my opinion they’re pursuing this like the generals who always fight the last war, like something out of a military science-fiction novel. It’s all ray guns and kinetic kill missiles. That, by the way, is how they stocked our module. But it’s a very short-sighted view.”
Something I treasure about Flaminia: her creativity, the many-sided ways she engages with problems.
“Look,” she adds, “if the Adversary merely matches Earth's current technology level then conventional war-fighting is pointless from its point of view. Against the resources of Earth? It would be annihilated. On the other hand, if it has a considerable superiority of tech then there are many moves it could make, against which we’d be helpless.”
“Like?”
“A couple of biggish asteroids vectored on Earth-intercept - that’d be a massive extinction event and game over - nothing we could do about it. Or a tailored viral attack which would overwhelm us. I could go on.”
“This sounds very defeatist.”
“The truth is what it is,” says Flaminia, “Don’t get your hopes up.”
She gives me an air kiss.
I could never have had this conversation with Sylvia.
I debate whether to retrieve Sylvia from the cabinet where she has languished for the past two days.
But I don’t really feel like it.
24: Engagement: first reconnaissance
Our engagement plan is the one we have rehearsed the most. The module is now stationed at Mars-Phobos L3. The bulk of the planet lies between us and Mars’s larger moon. Our relay satellites are in the same orbit at the two midway points. We can see the satellites; they can see Phobos and the anomaly. We already launched three reconnaissance drones which by now have drifted down to the surface.
Our expectations could not be lower. Surely the Adversary detected our approach, knows in general terms what we’re about. For all we know, nearby space is crawling with blacked-out sensors.
Regardless, it’s time to start operations. Tania and I are in our combat couches, prepared for anything. The models are all stowed away. We won’t see the mother-ship again until this terminal mission phase completes - and only then if we survive, ready for the long ride home.
I’m seeing with the eyes of one of the recon satellites thirteen thousand kilometres away, looking through its telescope at the Adversary’s crater. The viewing angle is oblique. I see the crater’s edge, currently in slanting sunlight. Tania is riding the nearest drone, hopping in short glides a kilometre from the target.
You can’t see very much. To our best belief the crater has a kind of tarpaulin over it, like a circus marquee. But what I see is just indistinct blankness, presumably because the surface is camouflaged or just absorbent. Still, we have a way around that.
I instruct the recon satellite laser to fire.
This is just a sampling exercise. A tiny needle beam fires at the crater-covering and the reflection is analysed by the on-board spectrograph. The results come back within seconds, a jagged comb of spikes which matches a complex polymer.
I wonder briefly what Flaminia makes of it, ensconced in her dark space, avidly drinking in the data feeds. She’ll be getting much more primary data than me.
My thoughts are diverted to last night: we fought and coupled like animals.
I didn’t think the laser-probe would tell us much. Mission Control had illusions that it would act like lidar allowing us to see whatever was on the crater floor. They had ambitions for peppering the crater with laser pulses, getting an installation map in the first ten seconds. But of course that was never going to happen. The surface simply seems to have absorbed the pulse, ablating slightly: nothing got through.
I whisper ‘target overview’ and get a synthesised view - as if I were a few kilometres over the target. The three drones are shown as small blue icons, slowly converging towards the crater. In a rectangular offset window I get Tania’s take on things, the look-forwards camera on the nearest machine. It’s 800 metres out and the crater wall is getting larger in its pop-up glances.
Suddenly the drone’s screen flares to red - a brilliant flash - and then fades out: no signal. In my God’s-eye view the nearest icon flickers out. The two remaining machines drop amongst the pebbles and huddle (all of this is entirely automatic).
Tania says abstractedly, “First drone down: reviewing telemetry.”
The three of us rest in the lounge and consider events. Doctrine does not have us entombed for hours in the couches under low threat conditions - it would be like lying in bed all day. We were updated with the module’s evaluation within seconds. Now we need a chance to mull things over.
Tania says, “The telemetry showed a massive thermal pulse which fried the drone. Origins unknown but we can speculate: an infra-red or microwave laser. Or it could have been some kind of impulse mine.”
“What are we going to do with the other two?” I ask.
“It’s pointless to carry on. They’re no better equipped for survival. Best they stay where they are to give us some close-in observations.”
Flaminia says, apropos of not very much: “Don’t the drones have a self-destruct capability?”
Tania snorts, “Everything here can self-destruct- we’re not here for technology transfer. Not after it already grabbed the MRO.”
“We have no hard evidence it ever acquired the reconnaissance orbiter,” I say.
Tania looks at me scathingly: “What do you think? Orbiters don’t fall out of orbit by themselves.”
She turns to face Flaminia while continuing to lecture me.
Use the manual as weapon, why don’t you?
“The self-destruct sequence is in the read-only firmware kernel. It initiates only if there has been a terminal degradation of the drone’s capabilities or the device has determined that it has been irrevocably delivered into enemy hands. As you saw, neither of those conditions obtained, if that was what you had in mind.”
I think Tania is unwise to underestimate Flaminia - doesn’t she realise that Flaminia already knows all this stuff? But then, I’m the one who has engaged with her so completely in recent days.
Flaminia, not in the least discomposed, says, “But how does the buried-away firmware get to make these fine discriminations?”
Tania is saved from answering by a priory alert on the wall-screen. The flashing graphics tell us that the other two drones have just been terminated.
The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.
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