Yesterdays war 07 unti.., p.1
Yesterday's War 07 - Untimely Allies, page 1
Untimely Allies
Book 7 in the Yesterdays War Series
By Gerald Hall
Dedicated to my wife who is known to all as ‘Rev Bev’. She’s the good Shepherd that this old ‘sheepdog’ has been working together in love with for twenty-eight years. She has been and continues to be my ‘walking, talking miracle’.
Copyright Pending 2023, Gerald Hall
Image credits: Cover Art by Gerald Hall
Edited by: Gerald Hall
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission by the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
Novels by Gerald Hall:
Yesterdays War Series:
Yesterdays War
Untimely Designs
Untimely Losses
Untimely Excursions
Untimely Rivals
Untimely Allies
Unwanted Gifts Series:
Unwanted Gifts
Hidden Gifts
Unexpected Gifts
Desperate Gifts
Parting Gifts
Eyes of Libertad Series:
Privateer’s Moon
Privateer’s Honor
Hard Case.
Prologue:
Cavill Industries Headquarters
Derby, Western Australia
January 19, 1980
James Cavill walked out of the Derby summer heat and finally into the office of his oldest sister, Judith Singer, while she was busy typing away at the keyboard of her office computer terminal.
“You know, you really should announce your presence when you come into my office, James. I could be working on something particularly sensitive here. I might have had to hit my kill switch on my computer that deletes everything on its hard drive immediately.” Judith said, while barely looking up from her computer screen.
“Big sister, you know that your executive assistant won’t let anyone into your office who didn’t belong. She not only got a panic switch that will bring security in here in less than a couple of minutes. She’s also got one of our little machine pistols hidden under the middle of her desk…and she knows how to use it.” James replied with a smile as he sat down on the small couch in Judith’s office.
“Erica has become quite the fixture here.”
“Of course, she is. We work hard to find and hire the best. Then we take care of them so that we earn their loyalty and their best efforts.”
“So what brings you so far away from your rockets at Kalumburu, James?” Judith asked.
“Well, it seems that our initial development of an international data communications network has spurred a considerable number of competitors to invest funds into expanding into it. There have been scores of submarine communications cables that have been laid in the past decade, not to mention all of the new microwave transmission towers and landlines that have been set up.
The demand for all of that additional bandwidth has been driven by all of the industrialized nations and major urban centers demanding to share in the data network that we created.”
“So you want an increase in your budget to build more communications satellites, don’t you?” Judith looked over her reading glasses as she asked.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. When we begin launching our next generation of communications satellites, we are going to take so much business away from our competitors. Our new communications satellites will vastly increase our ability to provide the bandwidth that so many people want access to.”
“Just remember what we learned from Father’s database about the even more explosive growth in what they called the Internet during the 1990s. We are beginning to reach that point nearly ten years early because of the advances that we have spearheaded in both computer and communications technology.”
“I am fully aware of that. In fact, we are going to have to jump our capacity ahead significantly to keep up with the demand for bandwidth. There was a billionaire who had been, at one time, the richest man in the world, who had created the leading space launch rocket company sometime in the early twenty-first century. By using innovative technology and almost completely reusable rockets, he dropped the price of space launch so much that it virtually put most of his competition out of business.”
“I remember reading about him too. He had started to build a truly massive fully reusable rocket system that he wanted to use to not only put up massive payloads but also to be able to send people to Mars and set up a permanent colony there. He invested practically his entire fortune into the project before a series of mysterious accidents essentially bankrupted him.”
“Yes, it did. But before the accidents happened, he also set up a massive system of inexpensive Low-Earth orbit communications satellites that created a network that practically anyone could access without any government being able to stop them. So many of the totalitarian states were horrified about the consequences of this too. He couldn’t have set up this network without the existence of the reusable rockets that he produced in his factories.” Judith explained.
“Our Sea Dragons are reusable too. Couldn’t we use them to do the same thing?”
“Only the first stage of the Sea Dragon is reusable. The upper stages are all expendable. Also, the technology for the Sea Dragons is very dated compared to what most of our competitors are now putting into service. It usually takes us at least a couple of months to refurbish a Sea Dragon booster after a launch before it can be ready to fly again because it lands in the ocean. The rocket technology that we are talking about now actually permits all of the rocket stages to land vertically under their power. That means that potentially a booster could be reused within hours if there are no problems found during an inspection.”
“So you want to essentially replicate the design of this billionaire’s rockets and build them ourselves to replace our Sea Dragons?”
“We won’t replace our Sea Dragons with these new rocket designs. Sea Dragon works too well for us with its ability to lift up to 500 tons to low earth orbit. In addition to that, we have invested too much into our Sea Dragon infrastructure. But we can have our people out at Kalumburu work on both the standard and large reusable rocket designs and not interfere at all with Sea Dragon operations including the production of new Sea Dragon first and upper stages. I saw that the original design of the larger rocket had a nine-meter diameter. I believe that once we verify the smaller rocket concept, we can then scale our version of the large rocket to a full ten meters in diameter. With that, I estimate that we could easily lift between 150 and 200 metric tons of payload to low earth orbit.”
“Will we really be able to land these new rocket designs vertically and then quickly prepare them for reuse?”
“Yes, we can, based on the information that we have on Father’s database and the developments by our people at Kalumburu. Our commercial computer and guidance systems technology now is already equivalent to what was available at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By the time we are ready to begin construction and operation of the ten-meter rocket, we will have introduced computer systems and other technology that will be two decades more advanced than that.
With the rapid reuse of these new rocket designs, we will be able to drive the cost to orbit to even lower levels than our Sea Dragons already attain. Once these designs enter service, we will still be able to dominate the commercial space market even with the Americans now using the Sea Dragon rockets that we currently fly. With that, we will be able to drive the rest towards our goals.
With so many reusable heavy-lift rockets operating between ourselves and the Americans, it will essentially be impossible for anyone to stop what we have started now. We are not only sending people out to the Moon and Mars, but we will soon be able to ensure that humanity will survive, regardless of what happens on Earth.”
“How long will it take for you to design and begin to produce these rockets?” Judith asked.
“If we start design work immediately and feed advanced information to our engineers to give them a head start, we should be able to begin testing the four-meter diameter space launch vehicle design in four years. We will be in operational status a year after that. We will start the design process for the large ten-meter almost immediately because we know that it will take longer to perfect it. But barring any major difficulties, the larger rocket will be operational no more than two years after the smaller design.”
“It sounds like you have things well in hand. Yes, you will get the funding that you need though I might have to do some creative accounting first.
Naturally, we are continuing to work on Earth to prevent a catastrophic failure from happening there. Until we can design and build a ship capable of taking us out into the stars, we would still want Earth to remain capable of safely supporting the vast majority of humanity.”
“I wonder how long it will take for the other powers that are developing their own space travel technology to approach where we are at currently?” James asked, as much to himself as to his sister.
“It depends on whether or not they choose to work together. International cooperation will not only improve their technological progress, but it will also make more of these nations partner with each other rather than be rivals. These partnerships will make going to war with each other a lot less likely.
“That’s fine, as long as they don’t try to bring their conflicts into space with them.”
“That is a lot harder to do than you imagine. But at the same time, it can also be a lot more devastating to the infrastructure and personnel out there.
“Getting back to our original discussion, you have read the news reports about the problems that all of this new communications technology also caused, haven’t you? Some people also used this technology to spread false information for a variety of reasons. This false information caused a lot of social and political problems in more than a few nations.” Judith commented.
“Yes, our InterWeb is disruptive for a lot of industries and organizations. But it also promotes an incredible amount of information sharing at the same time.” James explained.
“Just how many users are on the InterWeb currently?
“We have estimated that there are at least a million individual computers connected to the InterWeb. We think that half of the computers that are currently connected are either business or government-owned and operated systems. The rest of them are personal users. Of course, the latter is rapidly increasing as the cost of personal computers drop as the cost of producing them drops due to economies of scale. The technology of the personal computers themselves is also advancing rapidly in line with the improvement of business computers.”
“That is good, as long as we don’t begin to suffer attacks on our security or on the integrity of the InterWeb itself. That is one of the risks of having so many users logged in, even if most of them are still only able to access the InterWeb using an analog dial-up connection. Many businesses have been making significant investments in digital communications networks. It will be another decade or two before wide-band digital communications lines are available in most of the world’s populated areas.
There is also the issue of how so much of the industry had been connected via the InterWeb. There were malevolent actors out there who could choose to attack the computers of others with weaponized software, either to steal information or to damage the targeted computers and the information on them. That could be a very serious threat.”
“I remember seeing that information on the database, too. Thankfully, our computer technology has now matured enough that we have been finally able to copy all of the data from Father’s portable computer to several secure servers that are completely unconnected to the outside data network. This has finally made it so that we can research this futuristic database as much as we want without the fear of it being lost forever to a computer malfunction.
We also have access to some very sophisticated software that can defend our computers from any hostile actions. You know that we have already been using versions of this protective software, of course.”
“We will have to train experts on computer malware, both to defend against it and also to create it as a weapon for our use. Such a weapon may be a way to attack someone who threatens our goals without having to actually engage in kinetic warfare or reveal that we are the source of the attack.”
“Can our computer AI expert do that?”
“Perhaps, but we should also train people to do the same thing to give us more options. We need to learn to rely a lot less on our existing computer AI expert program to start with. Also, we are training a lot of very clever computer software engineers at our various companies throughout the Commonwealth. This is the talent that can allow us to do a lot more in the future. Soon, we will be able to write our own artificial intelligence software. Eventually, we could even exceed the sophistication of Father’s AI program.” Judith replied.
“Will we have to worry about our artificial intelligence programs getting too smart and turning against us? We’ve all seen science fiction stories that have this in the plotline.”
“We will have to take measures to prevent this. I think that perhaps we should hard-coded software that incorporates the Rules of Robotics as described in Issac Asimov’s novels. They make perfect sense as a safety measure. The rules will prevent the AI from attacking humans, even to protect itself.”
“Won’t that be a problem for military systems, especially if we have an artificially intelligent computer operating a weapon being used against other human beings?” James asked.
“That will be a challenge. But I think that we have a few years yet before we have to seriously worry about that possibility. Hopefully, humanity will have evolved to the point that we will no longer wage war upon each other.”
“Based on past history, I’m not so confident of that, I’m afraid.”
“That is why we have worked so hard to redirect their focus and resources towards space travel. This has taken away resources that would otherwise be used to build weapons of mass destruction.” Judith confidently stated.
“Space is going to help us with the security of our communications as well. Our latest generation of digital communications satellites will be able to provide us with enough bandwidth for all of our primary facilities to be able to use dedicated transceivers and rooftop dishes. We can dedicate one or two of the transceiver channels for Cavill corporate use.”
“That might be enough for now. But Father’s history shows that demand for high-speed digital communications capacity is going to skyrocket in the next few years. We can expect that demand will increase by more than an order of magnitude before the decade is out. The private consumer market will increase even faster as the cost of personal computers drops even more. They will demand not only more bandwidth but also lower latency. Our current and projected large communications satellites in geosynchronous and medium-earth orbits will only be able to handle part of the required bandwidth.
Moreover, satellites at higher orbits have significantly higher latency than those in low earth orbit, especially those in the lowest possible orbital paths. But we will need to be able to launch thousands of such satellites to be able to cover all of the populated areas where our potential customers might live.
Obviously, we already have the blueprint for all of this, don’t we?”
“Of course, Father’s African-American friend and the satellite constellation that he began to build before someone interfered and put an end to his plans.” Judith replied with a knowing smile on his face.
“We just have to make sure that the same thing doesn’t happen to us.”
Chapter One:
White House Oval Office
Washington, DC
April 4, 1980
“Mr President, I’m not a politician. I’m just a man of God.” Reverend King complained after Reagan’s surprise offer to be his Vice-Presidential running mate in the 1980 Presidential election. During the previous four years, Reagan had grown disenchanted with his Vice-President George Herbert Walker Bush and had finally decided to find a new running mate.
“I know, Doctor King. But what is much more important is that you are a leader. We have far too many politicians who have no real idea of what it is like to be a real leader. You and I also share something else as well. We both want a truly colorblind society where everyone is judged based on their character rather than by the color of their skin.”
“I know that, Mister President. But I have seen what you have had to deal with during the past three and a half years. You have done an astounding job dealing with the many national and international challenges. I have to be honest with myself. I don’t believe that I can do what you have done.”
“I respectfully disagree. But you know yourself, Martin. I don’t want anyone to think that I wanted someone else instead of you. I especially don’t want anyone to think that I discouraged you in any way, especially on the basis of race.” Reagan emphasized.
“I sincerely thank you for that and for the opportunity that you offering me.”
“Of course, we want the best people, regardless of color, to represent America as we spread out beyond this world to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Unfortunately, there are going to be some people left behind, no matter what we do. But if we are going to make America reach its full potential, we have to encourage everyone to strive to their abilities. A talented person, regardless of where that person grew up or what color their skin is, needs to be able to reach for the stars, so to speak.
