Black painted model. The real thing was grayer, reflective ceramic. But they didn’t advertise the coating. Thirty crew aboard when, please God, they got past the initial trials, thirty crew, mostly techs, mostly working for the longscanner. Core crew was four. The essential stations. The command personnel. The ones whose interfaces were with the active ship controls and the ones they had to risk in the tests.
The carrier dropped into a star-system and launched the riders—trusting that real space ships, launched like missiles, with more firepower than ability to maneuver at v, could do their job and make a carrier’s presence-pattern a far, far more diffuse element for an enemy’s longscan computers.
And trusting the human mind could keep going for four hours on intermittent hyperfocus at that v with no shields, only a constantly changing VR HUD display and a fire-power adequate to take out what threatened it—if reactions were still hair-triggered after that length of time immersed in virtual space; if human beings still had consistent right reactions to a dopplered infostream of threat and non-threat and every missile launched and potentially launched. A longscan of a fractional c firefight looked like a plaid of intersecting probabilities, overlaid cones or tri-dee fans depending on your traveling viewpoint; and you overran conventional radar, even orders from your carrier all you had was calc, com, and emissions.
Put an Artificial Intelligence above the human in the decision loop? Use a trained pilot for no more than resource to his own Adaptive Assist systems, with no power to override? Like hell. Sir.
He took a seat next to Demas and Saito, he cast a look down the row at Mitch and Jamil, and let the comer of his mouth tighten, surreptitious acknowledgment of their effort at diplomacy.
The committee filed in. Over fifty, Saito had said, and all male. Not quite. But the balance of the genders was certainly tilted. There were a handful of anxious execs from the designers and military contractors, from Bauerkraftwerke, who had designed the rider frame and some of the hardware; Lendler Corp, simulator software; Intellitron, which produced the longscan for both carriers and riders; Terme Aerospatiale, which did the Hellburner engines; and Staatentek, responsible for integrative targeting systems, computers and insystem communications. All of which could be pertinent. Lendler and Intellitron and Terme Aerospatiale were all Earth Company, but God only knew what side they were on. They’d doubtless been talking up the military examiners since last night: there’d been a UDC briefing.
“That’s Bonner,” Saito whispered, indicating a white-haired shave-headed UDC officer. Gen. Patrick Bonner, Graff understood. Tanzer’s direct CO. Ultimate head over R&D, not a friend. And what was he saying to an HI! contractor, both of them smiling and laughing like old friends?
People got to their seats. Bonner gave a speech, long and winding, a tactic, Graff thought, designed to stultify the opposition. Or perhaps his own troops. Not here to fix blame, Bonner said. Here to determine what happened and what caused it.
Introductions. Graff found himself focusing on the walls, on the topographic details of Bonner’s receding hairline, the repeating pattern in the soundproofing, on the nervous fingers of the rep from Bauerkraftwerke, which tapped out a quiet rhythm on the table.
Statement of positions: Bauerkraftwerke insisted there was no structural flaw, that its engineers had reconstructed the accident and there was nothing to do with failure of the frame or the engines. Terme Aerospatiale agreed. Lendler said its simulation software wasn’t at fault. Staatentek, the patent holder of the local AI tetralogic, maintained that the random ordnance software, the communications, the targeting software, had not glitched. Nobody was at fault. Nothing was wrong.
But a redesign in favor of the tetralogic control couldn’t be ruled out.
Bangs and thumps again. “Ben?” Dekker called out. Ben had said he would be there. But he waked up in a corridor, on a gumey, with restraints he didn’t remember deserving. “Ben!”
A nurse patted his shoulder and said, “It’s all right, your friend’s just outside.”
He hated it when the illusions started agreeing with him.
He lay still then, listening to the rattle and clatter. Someone said, from over his head, “We’re going to take you in, now,” and he didn’t know where. He yelled, “Ben! Ben!”