Gods Dogs, Book 3

We are not talking about waves or particles, what we are talking about is a quantum of action in a field. This thing we call a particle is a quantum of action that becomes more focused by a process we have not described and this thing we call a wave is the potential in the field. How can a wave be quantized? The wave is a precise ratio of potential.

Rick Delmonico

Raina’s science station was next to the communication center, down the passageway from the bridge of the ship. It wasn’t much compared to the one on the battlecruiser. Here she shared space with a chief petty officer, who knew the systems, the sensors, and the diagnostic programs that were the purview of a ship’s science needs.

They were not well designed for what Raina wanted to do – reverse engineer the A-group’s weapons, shields, and anything else she didn’t understand. CPO Phillips helped her rework the systems, but he was mostly apologetic that he couldn’t do more. He was a stocky black man with a PhD in physics, and his apology was sincere in that he knew what Raina was asking for.

Raina set to work with what she had. The battleship carried three offensive weapons: gauss cannon, maser cannon, and a particle beam cannon. Defensive weapons were lasers and rail guns. The ship also carried missiles but not torpedoes, nor did it carry fighters or bombers. She made a note that the use of bombers carrying a modified Casaba-Howitzer or nuclear explosive formed projectiles (NEFP) might be a strategic advantage. She’s passed that onto Solomon.

Working with Satya, she was eventually able to locate and download the battleship’s strategic and tactical doctrine. She passed that onto Captain John, as she wasn’t qualified to divine its meaning.

Later on, she and Satya found and downloaded schematics for the weapons from an unsecured maintenance file, and those she did know how to tear apart. She set to that task with a will.

In traditional Buddhist society, a tulku was like an abbot of a monastery. At home, on the science space station, that was her role. She ran a department that specialized in pushing for the next scientific breakthrough, and then operationalizing it into something useful. Not all of it, indeed only some of it, was of military use. Even so, one of her prime concerns was Quinn’s team. They rescued her when she was a teen, and she made sure they stayed as safe as she could manage.

The recent round of talks indicated that war was unavoidable, and she was committed to not only negating the technological advantage the A-group enjoyed, but also to discover the breakthroughs so she could surpass their technology. Peace would come as a function of superior firepower, sadly enough, and she would do what she could to make sure Congress was on the winning side of that equation.

A few days later, she dialed up Solomon on the quantum communication ansible. She had gone as far as she could with the tools she had, and she needed to pass it onto those who could take it to the next level. She was next door in the comm center. The rating set up the link and left as Solomon appeared as a holo-image.

“Raina,” he said with a slight bow. “I trust you are well and made progress with your self-assigned task.”

“I did. I’m downloading it now: their military doctrine, schematics for their weaponry, what I have inferred about their power plants and power usage, and other random observations.”

“Good. We’ll work on this, and I suspect your random observations will be the areas you will pursue.”

“We need a better power source.”

“Black holes, anti-matter, and such. I’ll compile the latest we have and send it to you.”

“Thanks. I’ll look at it, but I see gate technology and heat dispersal as something I can work with here with my limited resources.”

“Okay. On another note, the A-group delegation coming our way is a contrary bunch. How goes it with your talks?”

“According to Quinn, the androids and the Iracians aren’t interested in war. He thinks they can be turned into allies.”

“Does he now? I’ll need to talk to him about that. What is your take on their machine intelligence?”

“They took a different evolutionary track. The ASI phenomenon is something they achieve through a conclave. It’s used sparingly, from what I gather, but the major decisions come from the conclave.”

“So no more talk of you being an abomination.”

“No. They have apparently referred that question to a conclave with the recommendation that sentient A.I.s get to make their own decisions.”

“An enlightened approach. I look forward to meeting one of these androids when they arrive here.”

Raina grinned. “I’d like to be there for that meeting.”

“I’ll record it,” Solomon said unnecessarily with a laugh and signed off.

Raina returned to her workplace and dismissed CPO Phillips.

“You may go, chief. I will be in meditation for a while. There are things I need to make sense of.”

Phillips left and Raina settled down to meditate. Grace, her A.I., settled as well. Over the years, and as Grace grew, both physically through the branching tentacles in Raina’s brain, but also in her ability to manipulate her own consciousness, Grace could follow Raina as she meditated. She told the team A.I.s they would eventually be able to follow their Coyotes into non-ordinary states when they matured. They seemed frustrated by the fact that they could not.

In broad terms, as the shaman outlined, there were four levels, and humans preferred to identify them by the dominant brainwave frequencies: Beta for normal waking consciousness, Alpha for the personal or individual connection to the qi-field, Theta for a connection to the archetypal field, and Delta for a connection to the Void.

Grace could follow Raina as far as a Theta state, but she was only an observer to what Raina was doing there. The current meditation brought Raina to a meeting with Ascended Masters. They sat around a small campfire on the plateau of physically manifesting spirits. Three men and three women in comfortable robes, they were masters of science. Grace knew them from the many times Raina visited them. They helped Raina sort through her ideas until she could put them together into a working hypothesis.

The conversation ranged from weapons systems to defensive tactics to the problem of waste heat. Grace supplied Raina with details when necessary, and eventually the discussion wound down.

Raina was saying, “In space battles, their waste heat management is better than ours. That means more or bigger beam weapons. On the other hand, we employ fighters and bombers for close attack missiles and torpedoes.

“In ground fighting, or shipboard fighting, there’s no real weapon disparity. They employ conscripted troops. We have volunteers. So, in both cases – ground and space – it’s going to boil down to strategy and tactics.”

[And logistics,] Grace added.

“And logistics,” Raina amended. “Without stargates between the galaxies, the travel time, and the fact that a ship’s shields lights it up like a beacon, means there won’t be any sneak attacks.”

One of the beings at the campfire asked, “What technological innovation would be the most beneficial?”

Raina thought for a moment before answering, “Better waste heat management and portable stargates.”

“What about cyber warfare?” was the next question.

“Yeah. That’s a possibility. Their overall development in cyber-war is hampered by the Machine Autocracy’s policies. I’ll wait for Solomon’s take on that. I need to put some thought into waste heat and stargates.”

“You will go to the Void with that intention.”

“I will. Thank you for helping me,” Raina said and stood to bow to them. Then she deepened her meditation to slow her brain down to a Delta state, and dropped into the Void.

Grace couldn’t follow Raina to the Void. It was as if Raina entered a different room. Grace could ‘see’ her but couldn’t follow.

Raina floated now in the place of pure potential, the uncreated pleroma from which everything derived. It was here that thoughts became things. In a metaphysical sense, this was the Creator’s unconscious mind.

She focused first on stargates, formally known as Einstein-Rosen bridges. The physics went through a long process of development: the Jacobian matrix, the Calabi-Yau manifold, Anti-de Sitter space, Raychandhuri’s theorem, and so on.

The idea was to build a bridge between two points in the space-time continuum. The ones in operation in Congress space were fixed structures located in very stable space. The Congress scientists determined the finicky physics for producing a traversable wormhole required a level of quiet, predictable space for the structure’s entrance, or it wouldn’t work. Then came the problem of linking one end to the other, which required tangled quantum communication between the two ends. This proved a more difficult problem than they expected, because the wormhole endpoints and the aiming or locating quantum particles were incompatible – they wouldn’t work with each other. Anchoring each side of the wormhole took decades to figure out. They did so by finding an elementary particle to entangle that was compatible with the exotic energy at each exit point of the bridge.

It was here Raina focused her inquiry. What other ways, she wondered, could the end points of the bridge be anchored? Could they, for example, anchor it within a ship? If so, the logistical problem could be solved. The technical problems would be power, shielding, and confining the distortions within the wormhole within some kind of ship.

She left the problem of waste heat for some other day.

“The royal guardsmen have asked to train with us,” Quinn announced as the team sat down for lunch.

“Why are they royal?” Moss wondered.

“They’ve got queens for each clan,” River answered. “And this time, you guys deal with the physical challenges.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Moss allowed. “You could be our cheerleader.”

“When and where?” Pax asked.

“After lunch. They have a training room a couple of levels up.”

One of the royal guardsmen led them to the training room. It was a familiar-looking layout – an empty mat in the center, and various exercise equipment around the edges. About a dozen of the bullet-shaped humanoids, dressed down to shorts and sleeveless shirts, were working out.

That stopped when the team entered. One of the guardsmen hurried forward to greet them.

“I am Sergeant Pharm,” he said. “You will watch how we fight. We will watch how you fight. Is that okay?”

Quinn nodded. “Yes.”

The sergeant motioned for two others to workout. They bowed to one another and began.

“Grapplers,” Moss muttered. “Why is it humanoid males everywhere are all about strength?”

“That was a good punch,” Pax observed. “I wonder if their liver is there.”

“He reacted like it might be,” River said, “but he used the momentum to set up a leg sweep.”

“That didn’t work,” Moss observed. “They do have a good sense about maintaining the tripod of grounded, centered, and balanced.”

“Their bodies give them a low center of gravity,” River observed.

The match concluded when one of the combatants upended the other.

Sgt. Pharm motioned to the Coyotes, and Quinn spoke with a voice loud enough for all to hear, “We train in a non-competitive way. The person who attacks allows the other person to practice a technique.”

Moss and Pax moved onto the mat, saluted one another, and began. They engaged in fairly simple combinations of blocks, kicks, strikes, and takedowns – nothing flashy or acrobatic. Instead, they emphasized how to generate power through the controlled use of their body weight.

They finished, saluted one another, and Moss asked, “What now, sergeant?”

The sergeant squirmed a bit before answering, “You fight without honor.”

“We fight without rules,” Moss corrected him. “We find honor in ending any threat to those we protect.”

“There must be rules in warfare,” the sergeant countered.

“Agreed. In actual combat, though, the only rule we know is to stay alive and kill as many enemy combatants as we can.”

“You don’t target non-combatants?”

“No. That would not only be dishonorable but criminal as well. It is illegal for us to do so.”

“I see. In fighting us, what would you do?”

Pax answered, “Not let you grab us. We would box you – kicking knees, palming the face, until we find a killing vulnerability and hit it, probably the base of the skull.”

“I see,” the sergeant reiterated. “It would be hard for us to train together.”

“Yes, it would,” Quinn said. “We appreciate your offer, Sergeant Pharm.”

Then the team turned to leave. Their escort hurried to catch up with them.

“Nice job, you guys,” River murmured. “I didn’t even have to cheerlead.”

Moss chuckled and asked Quinn, “Do you think they got the message?”

“Loud and clear,” Pax answered.