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Chapter Five

“You do not understand, Sko’Belm Murphy. I am not saying we cannot fashion these devices in the numbers you require. Rather, it is the number of different objects that exceeds our capacity.”

Murphy might not have believed that assertion had it come from anyone but Anseker. The others at the table—his closest ally Primus Jedkom of Family Usrensekt, Medrost, and now Legate Orgunz in place of Korelon—were all nodding somberly. No, Murphy realized, none of them were holding back on this facet of their replication capacities; they were telling the truth. Which was sobering in two ways: firstly, their unanimous and grave admission meant they had put their pride and caution aside because they accepted that their survival was truly at stake; and secondly, they understood that this particular shortfall could be damning to the only plan that might save them.

He sighed. “Okay. But I need to understand why. I suspect that’s going to be a central data point as we rearrange our priorities to accommodate this new”—he was going to say “limitation,” but realized he’d better go with—“wrinkle in our production outline.”

Primus Jedkom leaned forward, folding his hands. He was the elder statesman of the group, older than Orgunz and far more composed; therefore, a more significant ally—or opponent. “From what you have told us of the factories of your homeworld, Sko’Belm Murphy, I would offer this analog: How many of the persons involved in the industries that create your goods are involved in the design of them versus the number that are involved in the fabrication of them?”

Murphy nodded, seeing where this was going. “I couldn’t tell you exactly, but there are far more fabricators than designers.”

“It is no different here.” Seeing Murphy’s dubious frown, Jedkom held up a hand. “I believe I foresee the nature of your misperception. You hear us refer to our machines being able to produce objects from merely scanning their blueprints. You understandably interpret that in terms of what that would mean in your world…but it means something very different in ours.

“Your people apparently possess a form of automation in which the great challenge is making the devices that fabricate individual parts and then assemble them into complete devices. For us, this is the simpler part of the process. The truly laborious part is creating the instructions that guide the machines in this process—which is apparently much easier for you.

“Our historic need has been to create many extremely reliable and accurate units of a finite number of designs. From smelting ore to parts production and then basic assembly, once an autofabricator is fully primed with instructions, it can maintain almost nonstop output with minimal human oversight. However, while it does scan and design the forms and molds for the new devices, they are usually large in scale and simple to assemble. This is why retooling to produce the guns and ammunition and tools you required was comparatively easy; they are comparatively relatively simple assemblies comprised of parts with comparatively forgiving tolerances. However, your helicopters—the Hueys?—were far more challenging.”

Murphy nodded. Early on, one of Primus Kormak’s liaisons had claimed that if the Hueys had not possessed such complicated wiring and electronics, they could have been assembled in a third the time. He’d always suspected that the scumbag in question, Bramath, had been exaggerating, and he probably had been. But now, Murphy wondered about his own eager readiness to dismiss the man’s assertions. Of course, Bramath had been ready—and certainly eager—to kill him on two separate occasions. Which, Murphy allowed, might have led him to be less than perfectly objective in the matter.

Jedkom, running a hand through his thinning mane of white hair, might have been reading Murphy’s mind. “I suspect many of you believed us to be exaggerating the time and difficulty of producing the Hueys, but we were not. As your own men—such as Major Bowden—shall soon learn, our spacecraft are designed to be simple, not only because it makes them easier to repair and modify, but because it makes them much easier to produce.” He shook his head. “I remember when one of our autofab techs brought me to look at your helicopter’s ‘transmission’ and its extraordinarily compact radio and avionics. We could not understand why anyone would create such intricate, fragile devices.

“However, as soon as our pilots began flying them, we understood. Whereas we need long-duration spaceships that are easy to operate and repair, you need machines that are light, compact, and strong in order to have the best possible performance—and so, survivability—in battle.”

Murphy nodded. “I can only imagine your reaction when you reviewed our latest requests for command, control, and computing systems.”

Usrensekt answered with a wry smile. “I wonder if you can imagine, actually. We will have to retool—not recalibrate, retool—any autofab tasked to produce them, due to the smallness and exacting tolerances of the parts.

“But that is not the greatest impediment. As I said, our system is automated but on a very simple level. It can assess the parts of a hand-built device, measure its components, and then turn raw materials into that finished product. However, even if it could scan your crowded blueprints, it would not be able to determine the most efficient sequence of molding, polishing, and combining the dozens of small components into a completed subassembly.”

Murphy smiled. “Oh, is that all?”

“Actually, it is not.” Either Usrensekt chose not to take the bait for a bit of sardonic banter or did not notice it. “Most of these new designs you have put before us—while marvels of sophistication—have subassemblies with hundreds of separate parts that should be handled by tweezers. For each of them, a separate autofab process has to be designed and optimized for mass production. This requires a human designer—who is also an experienced mechanic—to create and refine an entirely novel production line that produces each subassembly with at least reasonable efficiency.” He leaned back. “And, of course, most of your devices depend not on one, simple integration of subassembly, but on large subassemblies that are built up from smaller subassemblies, which are in turn built up from even smaller ones.”

Perhaps emboldened by Murphy’s patient nodding, Orgunz leaned forward aggressively. “Then there is the matter of your electronics and computers,” he added, making a warding sign as he uttered the last word. “Building a craft or other large construct which contains many such assemblies requires humans to install, test, and troubleshoot them. And the more there are in a given construct, the longer this process takes.”

“So you see,” Anseker said in a surprisingly reasonable tone, “when we produce especially complex machines, each one requires a specially-designed production process and significant amounts of manual retooling for the autofabs. For the vehicles you hope to create now, the challenge is exponentially greater. Whereas combining all our autofab resources barely increases our capacity by a single order of magnitude.”

Murphy acceded with a nod. “I understand.” And he did, but Jedkom was right; he’d failed to grasp how far beyond the SpinDogs’ sophistication many of the new requirements would be. Murphy and his cadre had noticed the peculiar paucity of advanced logic elements from the outset and had even mentioned it to their hosts. The SpinDogs had haughtily explained that such devices were avoided because of ancient warnings, not lack of understanding.

And it had seemed an entirely reasonable explanation on the face of it, particularly given their obvious superiority in engineering. Propulsion systems, solar power, fuel cells, thermal recapture, composite materials, environmental processing: Murphy and his senior staff had been dazzled by the achievements—and so, accepted the SpinDog explanation for the lack of equally advanced IT—without ever realizing that they had done so.

And now, in between nods, Murphy realized how it had happened. It wasn’t because he and the others had been stupid or unobservant; it was because they’d all been trained to expect and navigate cultural differences. They were confident they knew what to look for, what to expect. But that confidence had been their undoing, because neither their training nor experience had prepared them for the subtle yet bizarre interplay of social variables and equally bizarre social forms that were the norm in 55 Tauri.

Back in the Mog, they’d all learned—firsthand—the dangers of cultural projection in the often grim and puzzling communities of that region. Even when you encountered what seemed like parallels in behavior and values, you learned not to trust that—because the cost of being wrong might not just be your own life, but those of your whole team.

But that hadn’t prepared them for being equally alert when dealing with a culture that appeared to be technologically superior. After all, they were living among space-farers who cruised the star-strewn deep on a daily basis, lived in spinning asteroid habitats a mile long, blithely relied on environmental recirculation systems, and were able to replicate a wide variety of machines with ease. It was like living in the kind of society shown in science fiction movies—and the optimistic ones, no less.

So it had been all too easy to believe that, if it was really needed, the SpinDogs would be able to understand and churn out the information tech that Murphy’s cadre took for granted and now desperately needed: comm hardware that could drive sophisticated encryption and decryption programs; electronic warfare suites that performed hundreds of tasks per second; algorithm-driven smart systems to support every shipboard role; and computer-generated projections of everything from bogey vector predictions to fuel-optimizing navigation plots. And that was the short list.

But the reality was that, just as the SpinDogs’ twenty-first-century technology was slaved to 1960s control systems, their minds were, too. The techs who produced and worked on their rudimentary systems were certainly bright and glad for the sudden attention. They were becoming de facto engineers fairly quickly according to early reports, but it remained to be seen if that transition would occur quickly enough for what had to be done.

Murphy completed his third nod. “It seems we have some hard choices before us.”

“I would say so,” Medrost grumbled. He hadn’t forgiven Murphy for interrupting him at their prior meeting. Probably never would, knowing SpinDogs in general and Primae in particular. At that moment, he would have given a lot to have the calming influence of the Otlethes’ Breedmistress Shumrir at the table, but these meetings had been restricted to the senior leaders of each group.

“Where shall we begin trimming your list, Sko’Belm Murphy?” Orgunz asked, not exactly pleased with the tasks before them, but clearly happy that even the commander of the Lost Soldiers would leave the conference table nursing disappointments.

But Murphy had come prepared to cut items; in his experience, no wish list or budget ever survived first contact with reality. “The new personal weapons—we can do without those.”

The others at the table were surprised at the speed with which he made the decision, and there was no small amount of relief among them.

While they were still happily stunned, Murphy seized the initiative to both end on that high note and buy himself more time to consider the sharply revised—and depressing—calculus of the local autofabbing resources. “I’ll need a little time to rebalance our requests to ensure they remain focused on the prime operational requirements. You’ll have those revisions within twenty-four hours.”

That produced unanimous nods, but opened the door for a new topic—which Jedkom put forth as soon as his head was still. “You have often stressed that the operations in question have as many fundamental intelligence requirements as technical. What is the status of that half of the equation?”

Murphy shrugged. “Pending. We have found no new persons of interest since we took Imsurmik. Frankly, we didn’t expect to. The few coursers that are still alive have either gone into deep hiding or are dead. So, until the surveyors arrive, we won’t have any new intel sources on the Kulsians’ plans or forces.”

“And what of the Kulsian wa’hrektop you captured in Imsurmik? He is named Yukannak, I think? Has he continued to share useful information?”

“He has, but we remain uncertain of his reliability. Until we have a second, comparably authoritative source that we can debrief separately, we have nothing against which to check what Yukannak has told us. And so, it is impossible to tease out any half- or un-truths that he may have blended into what he’s shared thus far.”

“But you feel confident in presuming that the balance of what he tells you is, in fact, reliable?”

“I do.”

“That seems very optimistic.”

“With respect, Primus Usrensekt, I feel it is the most likely situation. Naturally, we cannot expect him to be fully truthful and forthcoming. He is our enemy and no doubt still hopes to find a way to ingratiate himself with the Harvesters when they arrive.

“But he is also a professional, one of the few that were put in place to keep the coursers moving in the right direction. And, as a professional, he knows that our first priority will be to get a second source as a means of verifying the information he’s given us. Which will naturally dictate how much his further cooperation is—or isn’t—worth to us.”

“And even if his information is all confirmed, still I would not trust him!” Orgunz exclaimed in a fast, harsh rush of words.

Murphy smiled. “I completely agree, Legate. You will note that I never said I’d trust him. My concern—for now—is determining how much we may rely upon the information we get from him.”

Orgunz folded his arms, settled back. “Very well, Sko’Belm, but so long as he lives, we are carrying a poisoned knife against our chest.”

“I agree.” Murphy looked around the table. “Anything else that needs discussion? Legate? Primae?” He’d used the formal plural, which drew a squint of appreciation from leather-faced Usrensekt.

He was about to rise and bid them farewell when Medrost leaned forward. “Not a matter of discussion. Merely a final bit of business, Sko’Belm Murphy. It has been decided that Major Tapper may only bring one person up to the spins. Please communicate that to him with all haste.” Medrost didn’t quite smile. “From your updates, it seems he has little time to make his choice.”

Makarov, who had been silently taking notes throughout the meeting, glanced at Murphy, who read the subtle cues of alarm in his eyes.

Murphy stood and nodded as the others rose to go, but kept his eyes on Medrost. “Thank you for that information, Primus Erfrenzh.”

You petty son of a bitch.


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