0300 Book 3 - 3. Chapter 3: On the USF Charleston

Chapter 3: On the USF Charleston

2009-01-19 0900 USF Charleston, Intel Team Meeting

“If you don’t have a donut by now, you’re out of luck,” Kevin said, calling to order the meeting of the Flag Intel Team.

The boys seated at the table giggled. They averaged 12 years of age, so that was okay.

The men smiled. They averaged 30 years of age and 24 years in Fleet, but they had worked with the kids long enough to know how important was food to them.

I had added eight of the best and brightest intel officers recruited from throughout the task force to the eight GWGs that made up the Intel Team. At first, the veil had kept the older men from questioning the age of the kids—at seventeen, Kevin was the oldest, and the team included two eight-year-olds. After two weeks of interaction, however, I judged that the kids had earned the men’s respect, and re-introduced them while pushing the men to see the kids as they were.

I had been right. The older men had experience and an encyclopedic knowledge of the profession (the world’s second oldest, if stories were to be believed, and exceeding the world’s oldest profession only by the number of amateurs who participated). The kids brought a fresh perspective as well as the power of their meta abilities. The men and the boys quickly became paired in mentor-protégé relationships, creating a synergy that often surprised me. Keeping the boys’ abilities a secret? Keeping secrets was second nature to these intelligence professionals, and none of them had any reservations about the oath they were asked to take.

The imint team began this meeting with an oblique image of a massive complex of two- and three-story brick buildings nestled in the foothills of Virginia. Alex described the image.

“We have found the seat of government. We initially focused on Washington, DC, since it was the location of the government of the USA on our world; however, working from clues teased by the sigint team from the Reverends’ televisor broadcasts, we’ve identified the Scudder’s headquarters to be in Lynchburg, Virginia.

“Our observations of Washington, DC reveal a city of monuments and museums, deteriorating and with few inhabitants—and no visitors.

“We found what may be the headquarters of the Army in what corresponds to Fort Belvoir, Virginia in our world. We’ve not confirmed this and are still working.

“There is an Army post about 70 miles east-southeast of Lynchburg that corresponds to Fort Pickett on our world, and there is a contingent of Army troops in barracks adjacent to the Scudder’s headquarters. A rail line connects Ft. Pickett and Lynchburg, and there is frequent traffic on that line.”

“What do we know about the televisor signals?”

Marty took that question. “The signal comes from a central location, probably Lynchburg, and is transmitted throughout the North American Continent by microwave to towns where it is broadcast from tall antennas.”

“What’s the focus of your work?” I prompted.

“Army strength and disposition, technology, society,” Cam said.

There was nothing more to say, and the meeting broke up, quickly. I signaled Cam to stay behind, and brought him to my Ready Room.

“Cam? Do you remember what we said when we first met?” I knew the answer. Cam knew as well; like all the metas, he had nearly perfect eidetic memory.

“Sure,” he said, and he knew exactly what I was after . . . the important thing. “I said we weren’t related, and you said that all Stewarts were related.”

“Since Will started looking at metas’ DNA, I’ve done some checking. Your DNA and mine were close enough that I did a little more investigation.

“Cam? We are related. We are more than just cousin. We are first cousins once removed. Your father and my father were cousins.”

I felt Cam’s blood pressure drop, and caught him before he fell. He didn’t quite pass out, but it was a second or two before he was able to stand without my holding him. I felt that, as well, but didn’t release him.

I felt his emotions: sadness that he’d not known his own father or his family; sadness that I’d not known anything about my own family; and ineffable joy when he realized that a blood relative was holding him, hugging him.

He asked a critical question. “Do George and Danny—and Artie—know?”

“I’ve not told anyone,” I said. “It’s going to be hard to keep secret any longer, though.”

“Are they going to be okay with it? That we’re really related, and not just by adoption?”

Before I could answer, Cam said, “If this might make problems between you and George, Danny, and Artie, I don’t want it.”

“Do you know what you’re saying?” I asked, knowing as I spoke that it was not only a rhetorical question, but a stupid one, as well.

Cam caught both thoughts, and grinned before he said, “Sometimes, Paul, you’re really silly, but I love you, anyway.

“Cousin.”

George, Danny, and Artie were as happy with this news as were Cam and I—perhaps happier. Danny knew he had no living relatives; George’s father was dead and his mother had forgotten everything she’d ever known about him. Artie’s father was unknown and, given the circumstances, would always remain so. While we might, someday, locate his mother, it was highly unlikely. These three boys had each other, and me, and it was with happiness and enthusiasm that they welcomed Cam into our family.

I never knew, or asked, who was first to take Cam into his bed. And who invited Maudi who was Cam’s boyfriend. And who invited Cam and Maudi. On the other hand, I knew when the boys felt that Cam and I should become more than kissin’ cousins.

Only Danny and George could have done what they did, because only they had unrestricted access to my quarters, only they and Cam could block me without my becoming suspicious, and that’s what it took for them to have Cam waiting for me.

They may have blocked me, but it didn’t take any effort for me to understand what was going on. “Cam?” I asked. “Is this truly what you want, and is it okay with Maudi? With George and Danny and Artie?”

Cam giggled before he answered. “You’re being silly, again, Cousin. It took all of them to get me here. You’d better believe it’s okay with them!”

2009-01-19 0900 USF Charleston, Ops Team Meeting

George was not only the most practical of my sons, but also the one who best understood the military mind. It was he who reminded me that I had certain responsibilities to the men under my command, and that they couldn’t just sit here, at L5 twiddling their thumbs.

I’d already dealt with the R&R concerns of the ships’ captains, but it took George to point out that there were other things I needed to address.

“Daddy? You have warriors—ships full of warriors—who need action!”

“But we’re not even close to knowing what kind of action, or if we will be given authority for that action,” I said.

Yes, there was a conflict in what I said. I knew, at least, I hoped, that someday we would be ordered to bring war to the Reverends’ universe. But I knew that we weren’t close to understanding what that would mean.

“No,” George said. “But you can’t do nothing.”

Hmmm. I thought about some of my lessons in leadership. “Not making a decision is making a decision,” came to mind. Before I could say anything, I felt George’s derision. I tossed that idea aside.

“What should I do?” I asked.

George grinned, and I knew (at least, I hoped) he was teasing me when he said, “I’m just a kid, Daddy, you have to decide.”

Scamp!

Since I wasn’t going to get any help from the metas, I invited Captain Moultrie to a meeting, and asked him what should be done about task force training.

Rather than immediately answer my question, the captain began to reminisce. “Did you know that Admiral Davis and I were six-year-old cadets together in Wales? We were roommates for a year. Less than an hour after we met, I knew he was destined for command.”

The man paused, chuckled, and then said, “Never saw him as Fleet Admiral, though.

“He called me only minutes after we received your orders to assemble, and said something I thought was a little strange. He told me that I would be working for a rather unusual officer. One who had advanced quickly and had not had time to mature in leadership. He said that you were smart enough to know when you needed help, and that I should be prepared to offer what he described as ‘the benefit of my experience.’ I’ve been waiting for that, and I’m glad you asked.

“You are correct, Commodore. You have more than 22,000 men at your command, and you’ve done a remarkable job of integrating many of them into the intelligence gathering and analysis. But that’s a small fraction of the total. The others need something to keep them busy other than standing watch.”

“What do you suggest?” I asked.

“War games,” he replied.

“If you approve, the Charleston’s Ops Team will plan war games, and will lead the Green Forces. We will ask Honolulu to command the Blue Forces. We will pull in officers and cadets from the other ships to join the planning and command teams. There will be a Blue Flag Team on Honolulu, and I’d like to use some of your people on both Flag Teams.

“We can be ready to begin in five days.”

Captain Moultrie asked if I wished to lead the Green Forces, but I declined. I think he was hoping that would be the case, and was pleasantly surprised when he put Captain Lowry, of the destroyer USF Buckley in my chair on the Flag Bridge. Lowry had asked about the rift during the first intel briefing, and had since then been pestering Dr. Adams with questions related to transiting the rift. He had written two staff summary papers suggesting tactics associated with rift warfare, and I saw that Captain Moultrie had incorporated some of Lowry’s thoughts into the exercise.

“You saw action at Jamnagar,” Moultrie said. “But that was a single-ship operation. You also commanded Independence. Did you . . . ”

I knew his question: had I participated in any task-force sized war games during that commands.

“The Independence had a baby-sitting assignment: we hung around the Venus terraforming fleet doing not much of anything. I was able to keep my crew busy with some gaming, but it was entirely computer simulation. Damn realistic, but still, simulation.”

“I think you’ll enjoy this show,” Captain Moultrie said. And then chuckled. “You’ll also get a realistic feel for how fast a battleship can maneuver!”

The war game was to be based on a threat from the rift, although we wouldn’t actually maneuver through or around the rift between us and the Fundamentalist Universe. The “exercise rift” was a set of coordinates close enough to the rift that we could continue our real defensive mission. Standard Operating Procedures called for hospital ships and troop transports to stand back during engagements of warships, so Captain Moultrie was able to assign the Hope as comm relay between the real rift and the intel staff so that we’d not lose any data. On the evening before the exercise was to begin, he presented the plan to me, privately.

“It looks like you’ve covered everything,” I said. “I see that every ship will have a continuously updated vector that will take them back to their normal station and through the rift should something break. That’s impressive.”

“One of Captain Lowry’s thoughts,” Captain Moultrie said. “Another is that the Flagships’ computers will have the coordinates of the imaginary rift as well as the locations of all ships, and will hide ships that are on opposite sides of the rift from one another.”

“I read his staff summaries, but to see it in operation is going to be impressive,” I said. How might that best be recognized and rewarded?” I asked.

Moultrie grinned. “I think that being a task force commander for the exercise will be a good start on that recognition,” he said. “And his peers are smart enough to understand and acknowledge his work. A note from you for his file would put icing on that cake.”

Before the scheduled start of the exercise, I asked Corey and Artie to a private meeting.

“Guys, you know we’re about to start a war game that will pit half of the task force against the other half. The exercise scenario will assume a threat from a rift like the one that separates—or connects, rather—us with Artie’s world, and like the rift that we will create between us and Corey’s world to take him and his people home.

“I don’t want either of you to think that we’re practicing to bring war to your people. Artie, we are your allies. Corey, we are your friends and will be your allies.

“Now that I’ve said that, I want to make it formal and official.”

Our discussions led to a simple treaty, a declaration of amity between and among the three of us and, by extension, all our subordinates.

“We swear from this moment forward, eternal amity among ourselves and among all those beholden to us or under our protection.”

I probably exceeded my authority when I signed it and announced it to the entire task force plus “Artie’s Army” plus Corey’s Clan, but Admiral Davis apparently thought it was a good idea—he got the Fleet Council to ratify a treaty among us and a rag-tag army of boys in exile and a world that we couldn’t reach and which was represented by a bunch of teenagers in shuttlecraft.

The Chief Flag Mess Steward shook his head, but he was smiling. My Conference Room was full of boys, and would stay that way for the 36 hours of the exercise. The GWGs who were not on the Flag Bridges of either the Charleston or the Honolulu were there. So were Casey and some of his boys. Artie and the boys he was gathering to be his staff were there in the sharp, new uniforms we’d gotten for them.

The war games were a great success, and no one was more pleased with the outcome than Captain Lowry, whose forces won, although narrowly. It was tradition that the losing force host the winning force to banquets. Since the task force was on station at the “real” rift, that tradition could not completely be observed; however, the Honolulu hosted a party for the Ships’ Senior Chiefs and I hosted a party for the Captains at which Captain Lowry was the guest of honor.

2009-01-28 USF Charleston Intel Briefing

The next morning, it was business as usual, and within a week or so, we had enough new information to conduct a video conference for the Task Force. The briefers assembled in my Conference Room. Tobor controlled the conference cameras and would keep them off the GWGs.

Lt. Anderson, who was Bobby’s mentor, began the briefing. He and Bobby had created the computer model that teased the information from imint and sigint, so it was their privilege to announce it.

“Six days ago, it appeared that the Scudder had departed Lynchburg by train accompanied by Reverends and Army troops. We saw them assembling on the platform at the train depot; we saw them dispersing upon their return. The trip lasted six days during which the train stopped at a dozen towns and communities for about 90 minutes each time. In about half the locations, people assembled near the train; in about half, the Scudder was driven by motorcar to an assembly hall.

“This may not be important, but the Scudder’s train appears to be oil-fired.”

“What does that mean?” One of Captain Moultrie’s staff asked. I brought them into intel briefings both because of the Charleston’s role as Flag Ship of Task Force Rift and because they had operational experience my boys lacked.

“The locomotives’ smoke is clean, unlike the common coal-fired trains. And, the trains include what appear to be tank cars carrying the oil. Why this is the case we can only speculate.”

“How does the Scudder communicate when he is on this train?” The Charleston’s senior intel guy asked. That was perhaps a more important question.

“Perhaps not when on the train, but when it stops,” Senior Chief Anderson, Alex’s mentor, answered for Imint.

Lt. Commander Goodson, Marty’s mentor, took over the briefing. “We have detected no radio signals in the Reverends’ territory. However, there are wires on poles along the tracks. Our electrical engineers have examined the wires, looking especially at the impedance matching equipment and boosters we can see. Their opinion is that this would not support voice telephony, but would support telegraphy . . . they may be using old-fashioned Morse code.”

“Wonder if it’s the same as ours,” Kevin asked from off-camera. “Can you get a sample of the code? And can you find an amateur radio operator or two among the crew?”

Marty, also off-camera, nodded. “We’re working on it,” he said.

Lt. Commander Goodson then continued his briefing. “There are also telegraph lines between towns and what appear to be labor camps. The lines in the southwestern USA and in Canada run through some pretty isolated areas. It shouldn’t be hard to get someone on the ground and up a pole. An induction coil around the wires, a processor chip, a little flash memory, and a burst transmitter, powered by a couple of solar cells, should be small enough to escape detection.”

Casey was head of the operations team, and liaison between it and the intel team. “We can do that without being detected, I think,” he said.

“And an auto-destruct,” the liaison from opsec said. George was responsible for opsec in addition to a lot of other things, but George was learning to delegate.

One of the men from the Charleston—a Senior Chief—spoke. “Our electronics shop can make something like that, I think. If not, we can requisition from Fleet, and they’ll manufacture them at Cardiff.” He looked at Marty. “Can we meet after?”

Marty nodded. My team was also learning that not everything needed to be brought up, torn apart, and resolved in a meeting of the entire team.

“We also can start looking for places to tap the lines along the train routes, but they’re more populated. Trains are the only long-distance transportation we’ve seen,” Lt. Commander Goodson added.

Kevin turned to me. “Commodore? Do you approve?”

I hesitated only a moment. “Thanks for asking, Lt. Cathcart, but . . .” I scanned the room, making eye contact with each person. “This is your show. As long as we are undetected, as long as we do not reveal ourselves or our capabilities to the people of this world, both the Intel and the Ops Teams may do what you think necessary and proper to collect intelligence. Just keep me informed—and let me know if there are problems you cannot solve. I don’t expect there to be many of those.”

“Yes, sir,” Kevin said, and turned back to the sigint people.

“If the Scudder is traveling, though, what about the nightly televisor messages?” the Charleston’s intel chief asked.

“They likely are recorded in advance,” Cam said. He and Commander Fitzgerald, his mentor, were the senior analysts and were expected to come up with answers to why and what if questions. When Cam said, likely he meant for sure, except for quantum fluctuations and events with a probability of less than 1.000.

Cam continued. “The recording is probably done in Lynchburg. There may be studio facilities elsewhere. They may be able to inject into the microwave network, which often follows the train tracks, and there could be a recording studio on the train.”

“What may be an important question is, why the travel,” Commander Fitzgerald said.

“Because the Reverends’ hold on the populace is tenuous? Because the Scudder gets off on making public appearances? We can only speculate,” Cam said. When Cam said speculate he meant, We need more information.

And everyone knew what that meant: we needed someone on the ground, we needed humint. Everyone knew it, but we all were afraid to say it.

Humint?

Artie asked for a meeting. The request came through channels—meaning from Artie to George—so I knew it was official, and not family. Artie was trying very hard to be a proper soldier, and was succeeding. He had difficulty balancing official and family, but I knew that would come.

“Commodore, I have a soldier who wants to undertake a humint mission.”

“What’s the story, Colonel?” I asked. As long as he was being formal, I thought I should, as well.

“One of my privates, a twelve-year-old, has lived on a work farm, in Las Vegas, and in California. He’s sharp, he’s small and doesn’t look dangerous, and he thinks he can move around in Lynchburg without being questioned.”

A child! I thought. I’m so dependent upon children. At twelve, I had been a bridge officer, a lieutenant, on the USF Emilie du Chatelet. But this was different. No matter how sharp this kid, he wasn’t a meta.

“Colonel, please tell your man that his offer is appreciated and honored, but I am not yet prepared to insert humint resources at this time. Please make sure he understands that this is not a reflection on him, but because of the much greater danger to the entire task force should he be captured and forced to tell of us—that he and more than 600 others from California were on a space ship from another world. That would expose all of us to danger whether now or later when we return to your world. I’m sorry.”

Artie saluted and left. And left me with a conundrum. We needed humint, but how to get it?