Weapons of choice

"Of course." Pope nodded. "Everyone else feel the same?" he asked, raising his voice so that it projected into the room beyond Murayama. The space was surprisingly small for such a momentous undertaking, no bigger than a suburban living room really. Large glowing monitors shared the area with half a dozen senior Project researchers, each staffing a workstation.

His question caught them off-guard. Their boss enjoyed a hard-won reputation as a thoroughly unpleasant little prick with an amazingly rigid pole up his ass. A couple of them exchanged quick glances, but nobody said anything for a few moments until Barnes, their magnetic ram technician, ventured a reply.

"Well, it's not our fault we fell behind. But you can bet we'll get blamed if we don't hustle to catch up."

"Exactly!" Pope replied. "Let's prepare for a test run at point-zero-one efficiency. That should be enough to confirm a stabilized effect with the new figures. Are we all agreed?"

They were.

HMAS MORETON BAY, 1049 HOURS, 15 JANUARY 2021

Lieutenant Rachel Nguyen had slept six hours out of the last forty-eight. As the defensive systems operator of the troop cat Moreton Bay, she felt herself directly responsible for the lives of four hundred soldiers and thirty-two crewmembers. The Moreton Bay was a fat, soft, high-value target; so much more tempting for would-be martyrs or renegade Indonesian forces than the Clinton, or the Kandahar, or any of the escort vessels. The software for the catamaran's Metal Storm CIWS-Close-In Weapons System-had been twitching and freezing up ever since they'd loaded the update patches during the last refit in Sydney. Nguyen, at the tail end of a marathon hacking session, had just come to the conclusion she'd be better off trashing the updates and reverting to the old program.

She rubbed her eyes and swiveled her chair around to face Captain Sheehan. The ancient mariner seemed to read her mind.

"You want to dump the new system, Lieutenant?" he asked, even before she had a chance to speak.

Damn, she thought. How does he do that?

"I don't really want to, sir, but it's buggy as hell. The pods are just as likely to target us as any incoming."

Sheehan rubbed at his chin beneath the thick beard he had sported for as long as Nguyen had known him. "Okay," he agreed after a moment's thought. "Tell the Clinton we're going to take them offline for-how long to reload the old software?"

Nguyen shrugged. "A few minutes to deep-six the garbage code, five and a half to reload the classic. Say ten to be sure."

"Okay. Tell the Clinton we're taking the pods offline for fifteen minutes to change over the programming, so we'll need them to assign us extra cover through CBL. The Trident's closest, she'll do nicely."

"Thank you, sir," said Rachel, genuinely grateful to be released from the burden of hacking the software on her own.

Sheehan watched her closely for a moment longer, then turned to peer out through the tinted blast windows of the cat's bridge. The sea surface was nearly mirror still.

Nguyen worried that he might order her to stand down for a few hours. After all, they wouldn't be deploying for another two weeks, and they'd be in port as of this evening. But she'd never be able to sleep until she was sure the problem had been solved.

"How's your thesis going, Lieutenant?" he asked as she shut down the windows on the screen in front of her.

"I haven't really had time to work on it since we left Darwin, sir," she confessed. "But it's not due for three months. I should be right to finish it."

"Still comparing Haig and Westmoreland?"

"With reference to Phillip the Second," she added, "you know, sent the Armada, started the Eighty Years War, wrecked the Castilian Empire."

"No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence," quoted Sheehan.

"You've read Tuchman?" she said.

"Many years ago, for my own dissertation," he nodded. "What was it she called Phillip?"

"The surpassing woodenhead of all sovereigns," said Nguyen.

Sheehan smiled in remembrance. "That's right, she did… Anyway, reload the software, then get some sleep." She started to protest, but the look on his face stopped her. "I don't want to see you back here for at least six hours."

JRV NAGOYA, 1156 HOURS, 15 JANUARY 2021

Morley and Dunne were hunkered down in front of the snack machine, trying for a casual look, but everything about them screamed conspiracy. They were fixated on a jumbo Snickers bar that had been half dislodged and was threatening to fall into the dispensing bin for free.

"You can rock the machine five degrees off the perpendicular," said Morley, who was overweight, out of shape, and physically incapable of doing any such thing. This wasn't the first jumbo candy bar he had encountered.

"Or we could just buy another Snickers," protested Dunne. "Then we'd get two for the price of one."