Chapter Two Fifty-Three Emergency Session: July 24th, 065 SDE (Patreon)

Countryman settled within his seat at the temporary council chambers. With the Enterprise still in refit, they had to make do with a location on Salvation. Still it was serviceable. On the monitor, a recording of the first Sarelfi nuclear test was playing. That one had been recorded yesterday, and three more in the same area had occurred in the hours since. It was clear the Sarelfi had made a significant step forward in their technological development; they had successfully split the atom. Now the question became, should they intervene? The advent of nuclear technology marked a turning point in human history and was a key factor in the onset of the First Cold War. Not only that but unresolved conflicts of the First Cold War ultimately played into the emergence of the second and historians largely agree that those factors contributed to the tense political stage that led to the Third World War.

It was funny how often conflicts were rooted in previous wars. The Second World War was directly caused by the First, which in turn started from a number of regional conflicts. The question now became, do they intervene or do they allow events to take their natural course? That was the question they were here to answer.

Countryman surveyed the table, noting that all eight seats had convened. Richard Greyman took a breath and started the meeting, “As we have all seen with recent footage coming from Sarel’chu, one of the local powers, the League of Allied Nations, has just completed their version of the Manhattan Project. Late Yesterday evening, one of our probes in high orbit detected and recorded a 14.2 kiloton nuclear detonation in a remote island chain just north of the Southern Continent. Early this morning, two subsequent detonations were recorded two hours apart, measuring 13.9 kilotons and 14.4 kilotons respectively. Confirming that they have the ability to repeat their feat.”

Joseph Redfox frowned in his seat, “Do they even understand the danger of these weapons?”

Ruri replied, “Likely not, while some of our ancestors had an idea about radiation and its dangers in 1945, it was a concept not widely understood at the time. In fact there are strong arguments to indicate that the Americans had no idea how destructive the fallout of nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki really would be. Documentation of the period does seem to correlate with those arguments as well. It’s not the first time in human history that a project was pursued without full understanding nor was it the last; we saw the same thing later with our experiments into antimatter. Thankfully, our experiences with nuclear physics taught us to be more cautious with antimatter. Well mostly, Kentoth was a little more adventurous as we all know.”

Ashley Drakes interjected, “That tracks with what I learned in school. Still none of the really matters. What does is; what we should do about the development?”

“It’s of little military import to us, they are still centuries behind us in tech,” commented Reynolds, “a nuke of that size might as well be a peashooter.”

Greyman sighed, “Well naturally not, but that’s not why we are here. We are here to discuss if we should intervene or not.”

Reia of Clan Urko shifted in her seat, “I’d say you should. Not only does human history show what a dangerous time this is, but so does Valorian history. I’m afraid we were much more liberal with nuclear weapons when they were invented, and I suspect the Sarelfi will be using them in fairly large numbers.”’

Reynolds nodded, “Based on their historic bombing of the other superpower, the Confederacy? I suspect they’d launch them at Confederate industrial centers. Using that data, I went and constructed a likely timeline of targets and expected yields. I doubt they would use bombers given the successes of their rocket programs; they may very well employ nuclear missile systems instead. Regardless, I did models presuming both methods of delivery and had the computer project likely yield improvements over the next few months and factored in likely production speeds. We estimate in six weeks, they’d have the capacity to assemble half a dozen nukes around 15-20 kilotons nominal yield, assuming bomber delivery they’d be able to deploy them as far as five thousand kilometers away, but most bomber flights are between two to three thousand kilometers. With their latest rockets being orbit-capable, they can extend that range to virtually anywhere in the world. How accurate they will be is up for some debate, though.”

Reynolds presented a map on the table, showing possible targets and likely timelines of when they could be hit and with what level of bombing. Many of them were key industrial centers, but being industrial meant plenty of civilians were in the targetable area. If they did nothing, the death count would be in the hundreds of thousands, but those death rates weren’t all that different from what the Sarelfi had achieved already with incendiary devices. The difference was that right now their nuclear weapons were low-yield, and those yields would only go up and they came with nasty radiation effects on top of that.

Countryman sighed, “It’s a tricky question, alright. We’ve previously ignored their active world war, but now they have nukes. Small ones but it does change the equation. It seems we have one vote to interfere, but if we do, how would we go about it?”

Looks were exchanged before they launched into heated debate on the philosophical and moral implications. All the time aware that just one planet over, the Sarelfi were racing to complete nuclear weapons to use on each other.

Countryman stood up from his seat and sighed. The meeting had gone on for hours. The council remained divided on the issue. Yet no one had actually called for a full vote. They were still debating their course of action. Some council members were against entanglement. Others rightly pointed out that any involvement in this could leave them tied down for years.

Drakes had pointed out that even if they successfully mediated the conflict, it might result in a prolonged cold war, and if they didn’t do a good job of mediating it could result in something akin to the interwar period that had occurred on earth between the first and second world wars. A decades-long armistice might in fact be the more likely outcome, as they did not fully understand the driving forces behind the current conflicts. How could they properly mediate a war that has been raging for years without understanding the underlying causes of the conflict?

Ruri joined him by the door and the two of them left down the hall to a nearby side room. Walking in with her, he went for a sofa and sat down. Ruri went to the counter and poured herself a drink. “I prefer the lab over this kind of philosophical debate,” she remarked.

“So do I, but we aren’t in the lab. If we were, things would be much simpler.”

“I know in the lab it’s just a matter of working out the puzzle. Solutions are usually rather straightforward even if they are sometimes counterintuitive.”

“Right, speaking of the lab. How have the latest warp tests gone?” He inquired, figuring now might be a good time to catch up. He’d been a little busy with the growing Firebird fleet.

“The modifications to the warp drive design are working out, the last test ship just completed a sustained warp four test without issue. The next step will be to attempt warp five, but we aren’t anticipating any issues. If the design works out we can begin construction of the drives next year.”

Countryman blinked, “That soon? Any idea of what month?”

“Sometime around March, I’d say.”

That wasn’t a bad date, March of 066 meant the refit of the Enterprise would be complete as they were currently expecting completion in late November of this year. That would free up a massive amount of industrial labor for other ships. Around that time, they’d start work on the Sabre development program, as for the Battlehawks, they weren’t expecting to start work on any hulls until January of 067. By then they’d have their full industrial engine as well, so construction should be completed fairly rapidly, they expected to have the full fleet constructed by mid-068 SDE based on current construction schedules. As the new hulls were completed, they’d begin shakedown and combat trials to find any flaws in the design for correction. Not to mention they’d need time to train the crews. During this time they also had the LPC program to consider. If the drive they needed was completed in 066, that means they could begin work on another line of starship development in that time frame. Being fairly light ships, he also didn’t think they’d have a major impact on the construction schedule.

“I guess the engineering department will be getting busy around then.”

Ruri fished a pad out of her pocket and placed it on the table. “I don’t see why we can’t start now. There isn’t much reason to expect the design of the drive to change much. I’ve already worked out the major issues and every simulation seems to confirm that.”

Countryman took the diagram and studied it. She had made a couple of changes since he’d helped her redesign the drive. The core design remained the same, but she’d increased the size of the coils, updated the power plant to a VRK-15 antimatter reactor, added a tertiary field stabilizer node and beefed up the cooling system. Along with a few other minor modifications the account for the larger more powerful design. “So the original design was underpowered or something?”

“It performed well, but failed to meet the specifications wanted for the LPC program. I was able to get a cruising speed of warp 3.8 in most tests and a maximum speed of warp 4.2. More than enough for our shuttles, but the scoutships would need a more powerful drive. Since you were busy, and Richards was actually free for once, I consulted with her for an upscale of the design. This is what we are testing now.”

“It would be hard to fit the larger drive on an X-1205 without compromising ability.”

Ruri nodded, “Right, speaking of, we are working on a new configuration line based on the smaller drive configuration for mainline use among the fleet. Currently, we are thinking of designating them X-1205-B, which is in line with the designation we are working with now.”

Countryman nodded along, the X-1205 had entered its mainline current configuration during their time in the storm. AGS-1205 Aquila or as it was more commonly referred to: the X-1205-A, was a highly successful platform of versatile combat shuttles. They’d used it as a gun ship, mobile fighter base, combat landing and boarding shuttle, and even a light bomber, but the design was starting to show its age. “What did you have in mind?”

Ruri tapped the screen and brought up a new layout. “The inclusion of a warp drive gave us an improved powerplant to work with. That let us make a number of combat improvements, an extra ten centimeters of armor, and improved turret layout among them. We moved two of her side turrets to the wings,” she gestured at the enlarged wing structure of the shuttle. “With the extra mass of the new wings, they have the structure to support a pair of medium turrets with better firing arcs when compared to the old layout.  The other pair of side turrets remain in the old slots, but we did find room for a second dorsal turret.”

He nodded, this was a good start. “I see and if I’m reading right, you’ve increased the number of torpedo tubes from one to two.”

“We did, using the new hybrid launcher type. Giving the shuttle the option to fire up to ten photons in a burst, or a similar number of pulsars. We also managed to fit a light pulsar launcher in the two side turrets, and a sustained beam cannon in each wing turret. All without removing the standard dual particle cannons in those turrets. The new dorsal aft turret will feature two particle cannons and a light pulsar launcher. Meanwhile the forward dorsal will feature a pair of heavy pulsar launchers.”

Countryman looked it over for a moment before replying, “I’d heard we were playing around with multi weapon turrets. How well do they work?”

She highlighted the wing turrets, “Well, quite well, the turrets here are able to draw power directly from the warp reactors, so they can use a sustained beam weapon. Right now we are testing a variable emitter configuration. In standard configuration, it's a twin pulsed particle turret with a heavier bolt, but comparable recharge rate to the old twin cannons we were using in the old design, but it has a secondary sustained beam mode. In that mode recharge is slower but the beam does more damage to a target per shot.”

“Hmm, well, keep me apprised of the projects.”

“Will do, Jac!”

Just then there was a knock on the door just before Greyman came in. “Just letting you two know that we are about to reconvene.”

“Well we were just discussing the warp program, and our next generation shuttles.”

“AH yes, the warp-capable shuttles. Any progress on that front?”

Ruri nodded, “We are very near a final design, and have started work on the X-1205-B.”

“Ah wonderful, any idea when they will be ready? And how many fighters can they carry at warp?”

“Three, we can easily reuse the ventral mount and we did some tests using the port and starboard airlocks as docking ports. We found that adding extendable support struts was needed for stability, but it should work for deployment. The struts will be armored and protected by triphasic shielding to make sure they don’t fail during a warp transit,” said Ruri, “in fact, it held up well in the tests we did last week.”

Greyman smiled, “Now that sounds promising.”

Countryman had to agree as they made their way back to the council room. Where the others were already waiting.  Samantha, Greyman’s wife, greeted them, then began. “I’ve had time to reflect and am ready for a vote.”

Joseph Redfox interjected, “I’m also ready to vote.”

Greyman blinked, “Does that mean we have a course of action in mind?”

“We do. We won’t interfere with their war, but we can’t ignore the use of nuclear devices either, to that end we are thinking...”