Zephyr: “Are you sure?”
Gestler: “If these plans are correct, yes, I am sure. The automated turrets could be taken down with orbital bombardment, the patrol drones can be dealt with via EMP grenades. We then drop our own turrets to kill any humans around, and delay reinforcements, while my team does an orbital drop wearing IR markers to avoid friendly fire from the turrets. Meanwhile you drop an unmanned shuttle, commence a series of hit and run attacks on government installations via the FTL drive, and we skyhook up and away during the confusion. Moment we clear the atmosphere, you snatch us in your hangar, and then FTL away as quickly as is safe. That’s the basic plan.”
Susana: “How many people would die in this plan?”
Gestler: “Ideally nobody, but things always go wrong in practice.”
Zephyr: “Alex, I think she’s including people who are not part of the crew.”
Gestler: “Hundreds? Maybe a few thousand? It depends on their damage control, really. You shoot an orbital station, and the casualties differ between they put out the fires and repair the station, or whether outgassing de-orbits them, and they all fall and die. Or how many ground troops they send against the automated turrets.”
Zephyr: “Is it possible to extract Myjer without human casualties?”
Gestler: “Probably not. The less violent means we use, the higher chance that we die. Besides, the plan I just outlined is a bad plan anyway.”
Zephyr: “Say again?”
Gestler: “The plan I just outlined is a bad plan anyway. Assuming the schematics we were provided with are correct, it would work. But one generally does not put hidden defenses on building plans. What if there is nuclear mine underneath the internment camp? Or hidden turrets? The turrets visible here are all externally visible models, but that doesn’t keep them from having burrowed turrets like the kind we use. In fact, I find the lack of hidden defense conspicuous in general. And, of course, these plans are several weeks old.”
Zephyr: “So you would not recommend attacking the camp.”
Gestler: “Not until we can do high quality scans on the camp. Once we know more, though it may be entirely feasible. Probably not without killing a large number of humans, though.”
Zephyr: “So: Other plans.”
Zheng Hui: “Diplomacy.”
Susana: “Threatening them, trading with them, convincing them, or bribing individuals. Or any combination of those options. Am I missing any?”
Zephyr: “Should I call the social scientists?”
Susana: “Maybe.”
Gestler: “We can threaten them. Particularly if we are the only FTL capable ship. I’ve done the simulations, we should be able to defeat any non-FTL society in the long-run. They can run the same calculations. They probably have, if they intend on conquering the rest of the Linked Systems.”
Zheng Hui: “Zephyr, remember your conversation with the Linked Systems envoy. We don’t need to threaten to attack the system itself, we just need to threaten to create a small Gateway for the Linked System Peacekeepers to deploy through. They deploy, build a larger one, and overwhelm Telivoni and their wayward leaders by numbers.”
Zephyr: “That does give a motive, in case they don’t consider us sufficiently immoral to wreak wide-spread devastation on a planet. Production Chief Moreau, could we actually build a Gateway with the manufactory?”
Dominique Moreau: “Yes, given time and resources. We would build it in chunks, and then assemble the pieces into a gate. But it would take quite a while. It might even be faster to fly back to Tien Terra, jump through a gate to an industrial world, and simply carry a gate back here.”
Zephyr: “I could carry a gate?”
Moreau: “Folded up? Yes, you could carry a gate. It would take most of the hangar and cargo bay, but we if we moved the supplies in the cargo bay to a different part of the ship, it would all fit.”
Zephyr: “And what kind of… restraints? Support devices? If we carried one over, what would be left in the hold after deployment?”
Moreau: “Well, we could simply dump those afterwards, if that is a concern. Just basic sorts of… is something the matter? Why is everyone looking at me that way?”
Zephyr: “I think some of the crew is catching on. Here’s the next question: How hard would it be to manufacture these restraints, and place them on the ship in the positions they would have been left in after deploying a Gateway?”
No comments :
Post a Comment