Free Rumors of Honor (System States Rebellion Book 2) by Dietmar Wehr Page A

housed the SSU’s version of Oracle, but it was only half an hour
to sunrise. Major Foster met him at the entrance to the lower level.
     
    “I
know I told you to wake me in the middle of the night if necessary, but I was
hoping to get the results by phone, Major.”
     
    Foster’s
expression was gratifyingly apologetic. “That would have been a long phone
call, Sir. Some of Oracle’s results can best be understood in a visual format.”
     
    Janicot
grunted his acknowledgement as he walked past her. She quickly caught up to him
as he spoke. “Can you at least tell me verbally if Oracle thinks we have a
chance of winning this war?”
     
    Foster
sighed. The Admiral wanted a yes or no, and the answer to his question was too
complicated for that.  “Do we have a chance of winning? Yes. Is the probability
of winning high? No.” To her surprise Janicot didn’t respond. When they got to
the conference room where the briefing would take place, he stopped and looked
at her.
     
    “Well,
at least we have a chance. I’m relieved to hear that. Okay, Major, you take as
much time as you need to fill me in.” He turned and entered the room without
waiting for her response. When he sat down at the oval table where the rest of
her staff were already seated, she activated the 3-D holographic projector and
called up the first image.
     
    “Thank
you for coming down here, Admiral. I’ll just quickly summarize what we asked
Oracle to analyze, and then I’ll get to the results of that analysis. As you
know, Oracle was tasked with projecting the most likely sequence of events and
the long range outlook based on an assumption that Operation Sledgehammer, and
specifically the Makassar component of that operation, failed completely. By
that I mean that none of our four Savannah-class heavy cruisers return and no
significant damage is done to the industrial infrastructure on Makassar. It’s
that last aspect that has the most impact on our future prospects. The graph in
front of you shows Oracle’s projection of warship tonnage in thousands of
metric tons. SSU tonnage is shown in blue. FPS tonnage in red. Because of our
efforts to widen our industrial capability to more member planets, our tonnage
capacity increases faster than the FEDs over the next 12-18 months, but when
Makassar starts to convert its capacity to shipbuilding instead of capacity
expansion, their resulting rate of increase in tonnage eventually exceeds ours
by several hundred percent.
     
    “I
should point out here that this represents the Base Case, which is defined as
the projection of the status quo. In other words, what you’re seeing there is
the outcome of decisions that have been taken so far, and this is only the
logistical side of the equations. It doesn’t take into consideration Strategy
and Grand Strategy. The SSU’s decentralized nature is both an advantage and a
disadvantage. It’s an advantage from the point of view that the loss of any
individual planet will not represent a significant portion of the Union’s total
economic and military strength. It’s a disadvantage from the point of view that
there will be many more planets that need to be defended. On the FED side,
there are only two planets that have strategic value and therefore need to be
defended, and they are Makassar and Hadley, both in the Franklin Tri-system.
     

“At
this point I have to address a major issue and that is the impact of having a
Majestic computer directing FED Strategy and Grand Strategy. How do you program
an Oracle device to anticipate the far more sophisticated thinking of a
Majestic device? My staff and I have been asking ourselves that question, and I
regret to say that so far we haven’t been able to come up with an answer. If
Oracle could anticipate the thinking of a Majestic computer then it would BE a
Majestic computer itself. Therefore, the SSU faces a very difficult challenge.
In order for our Oracle to come up with a strategy that has a decent chance