[OC] Of Chips and Munitions (PRVerse B2 C6.6)

First Book2 (Prev) wiki (Next)

Julia thought, for a moment, that she'd heard wrong. They irradiate their targets? After a few moments Kessler finally spoke. “Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of piracy in the first place? If you render any cargo radioactive, what use is it? You certainly wouldn’t be able to fence anything.” 

Julia felt her eyes go wide. “Wait, no, that is the wrong question. No, sorry Kessler, let me rephrase: that isn’t the most pertinent question. The bigger question is:  where did they get such munitions? I can’t imagine anyone – not even the bloody-minded Tigesh – even dreaming up such a weapon, much less using it! Ok, the old Xaltan leaders might have, but…”

Katja stared at the rotating holo and spoke. “The Old Leaders – the ones put in place as part of the kenfistration against Earth – might have thought up such a thing as well. You are right, though. Not only would no nation within the League use such a weapon; they’d be all over anyone who tried to manufacture such an obscenity. On top of that, they are… a losing proposition. 

Kessler nodded, concern on his face. “This means that we are dealing with a population, a society, of some sort, not a single pirate ship: One with the manufacturing capability to produce these things, the engineering to design them, but lacking the wisdom to use something else.” 

Julia had a sinking feeling. “That requires an awful lot of people. Even with an excellent base of automation, just the design of something like this – the intricate electronics for guidance, the explosives, the programming – would take a number of people with very specialized talents… and the support to keep those people working, and…” Julia shook her head. “Then you have the ability to set up the manufacturing base. If we have only recovered one of these things, with the number of them that it must have taken to do that kind of damage, then they are manufacturing these things wholesale, and they all worked.” 

Kessler shook his head. “There is another possible reason why we didn’t recover more unexploded munitions: it is possible that whoever did this cleaned up behind themselves.” 

Julia nodded, but Katja answered. “That is the high-order consensus at the moment, but I’m not sure which possibility disturbs me more.” 

Julia shrugged in response. “Either is quite disturbing. So, we have some sort of civilization of at least several hundred – possibly several thousand – people who have basically declared war on the League, or at least League shipping, and we have no idea who they are, what they want, or even if they are an unknown alien nation, that is about right?” 

Katja nodded, and then Kessler responded. “Ok, that is a problem, and don’t get me wrong here, it is very much a problem. Still, why are we being read into the situation?” 

Julia gave a half-smile that she hoped matched the one Kessler wore so often. “Because no one knows who did this. We either have a rogue element of one of our nations out there that has set itself up as a pirate civilization, or a new species which is inherently hostile.” She manipulated the controls, and started surveying the damage. “Judging by the level of damage done by these weapons, I’m leaning towards the ‘rogue element’ hypothesis: If there was another race out there capable of something like this, we’d expect to have at least seen some evidence of them by now. 

“At least, unless they were very far away – as in at least a few months of travel far away – and that seems unlikely given what we are finding out from the apparent ‘clustering’ of civilizations seen by the Phoenix ships.” 

Kessler grimaced. “So, this information is being given to all of the Ambassadors of the League, by the Prime Minister, vis-a-vis the League Fleet, for us to take the information back to our respective governments and try to track down who it could be?” 

Katja laid a finger on the side of her nose. “You got it in one. We are fortunate to have you here, since your job is to interface with Academia anyway. They are giving us more than data, though. There are pieces of the wreckage enough to go around, and Fleet Investigations is done with them. We have a full manifest of what Fleet found and website for investigators to request either direct access to the samples or even to have samples sent to their own labs.” 

Julia’s eyebrows went up. “That is a bold move to make. Normally Fleet Investigations is a bit more cagy than that, not wanting to cause a panic and such. 

Katja nodded and manipulated the controls again. Several of the red spots winked out. Some changed color to yellow or blue. “I think at this point the Fleet is not terribly concerned about causing a panic. Hell, they might even hope to cause a little bit of one: Nothing else will get these wild-caters in this fringe to listen! 

“Also, there is still a lot of guesswork and conjecture about just how many of the ships that have been lost in this area are due to our mystery attackers. This view eliminates those of known non-piracy causes. The blue are considered low-order probability, but still possible. The yellow are higher probability, and the red are the ones that fleet feels at least 85% confident about blaming our new enemy. 

“We need information, folks. I have forwarded both of you the detailed information, as well as lists for you to contact. Usually our job here is to get agenda items from the Confederation and do what we can to push those agendas here, but right now it seems most of the work we are doing is going the other way.” 

Julia nodded. “It is certainly not what I expected when I came here: to spend most of my time talking to Confederation officials, but those are the eggs we have been handed.” 

Kessler poke, his eyes on his datapad. “I assume… ah, yes. You provided us with the lists for one another as well, which means you want suggestions if we come up with someone not on the list.” 

Katja gave him a sardonic smile. “I only want suggestions if you think one of us would be better to contact anyone you come up with. Otherwise, you are free – and expected – to take the initiative and talk to them yourselves.

Julia looked through the data and, on a hunch, pulled up the report on the missile. "So, this munition that they recovered... it uses a binary computer, silicon chips, the code language is.... no apparent upper-level coding language? That is slim, indeed. Metallurgy shows obvious 0g manufacture.

"What about layout of the chips themselves? I seem to remember something about being able to tell which species any given computer chip came from, because each species developed their own base-patterns for how certain things get laid out, and..." She shook her head. "The whole thing was technical and beyond me, but the implication was that one could generally tell what species a general processing-unit chip comes from?"

Kessler nodded, then pulled up another section of the report. "This thing is not laid out well, someone is obviously trying to hurry. Looks like... hmmm.... Ok, this is odd: They say there is evidence pointing to Human design, and some lesser evidence of a few other species... all of them class 8 and above, I will note. But, not enough for a conclusive finding, as well as evidence of a totally alien, never before seen set of base-patterns? I'd say that points to the rogue-element pirates: I remember reading something somewhere about crossover on chips specifically within weapons design. Still, those 'new' patterns... reading between the lines they had the researchers concerned."

Katja nodded, and Julia noticed her bookmarking the relevant passages for review. "Good catch, both of you. I hadn't heard the bit about computer chips having finger prints. And, yes, before you ask Julia, I definitely want you to take this to Jake first thing. There is no security on this one, folks. Fleet wants answers, and they want them yesterday. Let’s go see if Humanity has any.”

End Chapter 6

First Book2 (Prev) wiki (Next)

A little short for Chapter End.