“I can have you relieved of duty.”
“You don’t have the individual authority to do that. You need to present a reason for a dismissal. But if you’re saying that the SAF isn’t performing up to snuff, that also calls your own command competence into question.”
General Laitume’s face flushed bright red and it looked as if he were about to explode with rage. But he didn’t. If we were in a regular conference with others in attendance, he probably would have struck an enraged pose in order to save some face, and General Cooley probably took that into account as well, Major Booker thought.
After glaring at Cooley for a moment, the general picked up the file in front of him and said, “You sly fox… No, forgive me. Calling you that would only convince you that you’ve scored some sort of great success here. I run the FAF’s main force. The SAF gets to carry out major operations only because it serves under me. I’ve put my neck on the line to protect you from the slanders of the other divisions and the high command because I appreciate what you people can do. There is no need to interrupt the current operation, so carry on with what you’re doing. If you have a problem with your equipment, then tell me. I’ll see what I can do. But the situation is severe all around. Once we’re through this, despite my reservations, I’ll do everything in my power to realize the SAF’s selfish desire. This is my idea. Don’t forget that, General Cooley. That is all. Dismissed.”
“I appreciate it,” General Cooley said, rising. As she looked at the general, she added, “Sir, I strongly suggest you give Major Booker’s report a thorough reading. It may already be too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“You can still go back to Earth alive. Once you read that, you’ll understand. If you’ll excuse me, sir.”
A genuinely complicated look came to Gibril Laitume’s face. The change in expression didn’t go unnoticed by Major Booker. He could imagine how he felt.
The SAF had achieved a major victory, one that might as well have been his own, one that had worked out well—and then came General Cooley’s words to crush that sense of satisfaction. She’d basically called him a coward who should run home while he still could. That had probably made him sick with rage, but he was nervous also because she’d said that if he read Booker’s materials, he’d see that there was no longer any safe place in the FAF. He wondered who his enemy was, reconsidered why he was here, then understood the reason for General Cooley’s arrogant attitude. She was saying that she had no intention of running back home, but was instead ready to die in battle. He respected her resolve as a fellow soldier.
No, Gibril, General Cooley isn’t thinking about dying. She’s a tougher woman than you realize. A woman willing to use you to survive this war. You don’t operate on the same plane as she does. Naturally, the major kept these thoughts to himself and simply followed General Cooley out of the conference room.
Now there was no need to worry about General Cooley’s position. The responsibility was now entirely General Laitume’s to bear. Since he’d said that they were free to do what they wanted, Major Booker could now consider moving their strategic reconnaissance operation aimed at direct contact with the JAM to phase three.
So, how could he relay to the JAM that the SAF were preparing to make noncombat contact with them? The JAM probably understood human language, so he could just transmit a message, but the last thing he wanted was any humans in the other units to read it. It would be treason.
General Laitume would never be able to cover for them. Maybe they could load the message into a recon pod and then let the JAM recover and decipher it. He could just put the message in directly, but when he considered the slight possibility that another FAF unit would recover the pod, Booker disregarded that plan as well. It would have to be encrypted. But then how would he be able to transmit a decryption key so that only the JAM could decrypt it? For that, he’d need the wisdom of both the SAF’s tactical and strategic computers—they operated on a level closer to the JAM than any human did.
Think of a way to declare our intentions to the JAM which they could understand while being indecipherable to other FAF units. When Major Booker fed that question to the SAF tactical computer, it responded with an answer so bold and audacious that he never would have thought of it. Immediately, almost too quickly.
Select a landing spot the JAM are known to be monitoring, then use human speech, which can only be deciphered after noise removal. Any other FAF planes flying by won’t have any means to reliably pick up the voice aboard their aircraft. A plane equipped with passive airspace radar might feasibly do it under the same conditions, but the likelihood is very small that the tiny pressure changes caused by human speech could be detected by FAF planes. For best certainty, if an FAF plane comes into the vicinity, shoot it down. That is all.
How interesting, thought Major Booker, smiling unconsciously. I was set on finding an electronic way of doing it, but now that you mention it, people have mouths to talk with. Then Booker inputted, However, the question is if the JAM will be listening. And understanding human language isn’t the same as understanding human speech. Having said that, the tactical computer told Booker to disregard it.
I anticipate that the JAM possess the means to interpret information from the human body. If not, their human duplicates would be unable to carry out information gathering activities. It may not even be necessary for the messenger you send to express your message in spoken words.
Does that mean that the JAM would search the memories in the messenger’s brain directly? Booker typed.
That possibility cannot be entirely ruled out, but in that case the high-information-content message you need to send would become ambiguous. The next most secure method of delivery after spoken language would be a written message. We expect that the JAM would understand that.
The combat intelligence had come back with a reply more thoroughly pragmatic than Major Booker had expected.
It was as if the CI is saying that the JAM won’t accept the message unless we communicate it by means of our own flesh and blood bodies, Major Booker thought. And even as he decided to follow its recommendation to make the JAM understand that humans were the main actors in this conflict, he reflected on how he’d still unconsciously sought computer or electronic means to communicate with the JAM in the first place, although he didn’t pursue the thought very far.
However, had Major Booker simply asked, “Have you made contact with the JAM?” the tactical computer would likely have answered, “Yes.”
The SAF’s combat intelligences had detected what they took to be a message from the JAM while analyzing data gathered during Captain Foss’s combat mission with Yukikaze. The JAM had aimed a pulsed laser at Yukikaze during the air battle and sent the following message: We desire an exchange of intentions by means of language with an SAF human, especially the one known as Second Lieutenant Rei Fukai, in a way that no other being aside from the SAF would know about.
Major Booker had never even considered that Yukikaze and the SAF’s machine intelligences—in short, their computers—had already made contact with the JAM in this way. That was why he didn’t ask the question, and because he didn’t ask, the tactical computer did not tell him. Even Rei didn’t know until he had met the whole of JAM existence. Not a single human had realized it. Not until it had actually happened.
2
CAPTAIN FUKAI IS the only one capable of communication with the JAM, Major Booker thought. And he’d have to do it as soon as he was ready to. But he wasn’t prepared yet. First of all, there was the critical issue of selecting a reliable contact point. That would mostly determine the success or failure of this endeavor.