Gen. Bonner said, “Will you state your approximate actual age, for the record, lieutenant?”
Son of a bitch, Graff thought. “Actually, sir, I haven’t calculated it since I was fifteen. But I was born in 2286, Common Reckoning, and the first EC president in my memory was Padriac Melton.”
“Would you agree you’re approximately early twenties, lieutenant, in terms of actual years?”
“I’ve no access to those records, sir. And it’s not relevant to my experience.”
“What is your logged experience?”
“Since I was posted to Helm—ten years, six hours a Shift....”
“Logged hours, lieutenant.”
“—conservatively, 18000 hours, since posting. Not counting apprenticeship. Not counting working during dock, which is never logged.”
Bonner’s face was a study in red. “Logged records, lieutenant. Answer the question as asked or be held in contempt.”
“As far as I know, there are documents behind those hours, sir. The Polly d’Or is likely somewhere between Viking and Pell at the moment, and she maintains meticulous log records. Victoria’s whereabouts the Fleet commander could provide, if you’d care to query—”
“I doubt this committee has the patience, lieutenant. And let’s state for the committee that your logged hours on Sol Two records are substantially less. Can we at least agree that you’re not a senior officer, and you were in physical control of the carrier during the test run?”
“General.” Salto’s quiet voice from behind him, mild registered on the faces of the panel. “Una Saito, Com One, protocol officer on Victoria. —Lieutenant, as a matter of perspective, where were you born?”
Bonner said, “Ms. Saito, whatever your rank may be, you’re in contempt of this committee. Be seated before I have you ejected.”
Graff said, looking at all those frowning blue-sky faces, “Actually, sir, if it’s relevant, I was born on the sublighter Gloriana, on its last deep-space run.”
There was a murmur and a sudden quiet in the room. Graff sat there with his hands folded, not provoking a thing, no, and Bonner, give him credit, gave not a flicker.
“So you would maintain on that basis your experience is adequate to have managed the carrier on a critical test run.”
“I would maintain, sir, that I am qualified to take a starship through jump, an infinitely riskier operation.”
“You’re qualified. Have you done it?”
“Yes, sir. I have. Once on initiation, eighteen times on hand-off on system entry.”
“Yourself. Alone.”
“Helm on Victoria is backed by 49 working stations, counting only those reporting in chain of command to Helm.”
“I’ll reserve further questions. Senator Eriksson?”
“Thank you.” This from the Joint Legislative Committee rep. “Lt. Graff, Eriksson from the JLC technical division. Medical experts maintain that hyperfocus is not sustainable over the required hours of operation.”
“It’s routine for us. If—”
“Let me finish my statement, please. Medical experts have stated that the ERP Index indicates mental confusion— stress was taking its toll. As a starship pilot you have systems which defend against impacts. You have an AI-assisted system of hand-offs. You have a computer interlock on systems to prevent accidents. Based on those facts, do you not think that similar systems are necessary on these ships?”
“Senator, all of those interlocks you describe do exist on the rider, but let me say first that a starship’s autopilot override is at a 2-second pilot crisis query in combat conditions, the rider’s was set at 1 for the test, and that while the carrier does have effect shields, the size of the rider makes it possible to pass through fire zones in which the carrier’s huge size makes such passage far riskier. The armscomp override isn’t necessary, of course, because a rider’s available acceleration isn’t sufficient to overtake its own ordnance, but it does have a template of prohibited fire to prevent its ordnance hitting the carrier or passing through a habitation zone. The Al-driven autopilot did cut on when it detected a crisis condition in the pilot, which, as I said, was set at 1 second for this test. The AI queried the pilot—that’s a painful, attention-getting jolt. It waited a human response—long, in the AI’s terms, again, 1 second before it seized control. It was already tracking the situation on all its systems. It knew the moves that had caused the tumble. It knew the existence of the next target. It knew it was off course, but it had lost its navigation lock and was trying to reestablish that. The buoy’s existence was masked for the test, but the AI realized it couldn’t save the test: it entered another order to penetrate the virtual reality of the test to sample the real environment, accessed information concealed from the pilot and reckoned the position of the target buoy as potentially a concern, and correctly assigned it as a hazard of equal value but secondary imminence to the threat of the ship’s high-v tumble. It reasoned that elimination of the target required the arms function, while evasion of the target required the engines, and that the motion exceeded critical demands of the targeting system. A subfunction was, from the instant the AI had engaged, already firing engines to reduce the tumble, and tracking other firepaths. It was doing all (hat, and attempting to locate itself and its own potential ordnance tracks relative to interdicted fire vectors—realspace friendly targets. Fire against me target was not set for its first sufficient window: the condensed telemetry of its calculations is a massive printout. The AI was still waiting for the window when its position and the target’s became identical.”
Took a moment for the senator to Figure what that meant. Then an angry frown. “So you’re blaming an AI breakdown?”
“No, sir. Everything from the AI’s viewpoint was coming optimal. A human with a clear head couldn’t have outraced the AI in targeting calculations or in bringing the ship stable enough to get a window. A human might have skipped the math and discharged the chaff gun and the missiles in hope of destroying the object by sheer blind luck, but the AI had an absolute interdiction against certain vectors. It didn’t even consider that it could violate that— that range safety could have taken care of the problem if it arose. Somebody decided that option shouldn’t be in its memory, and this being a densely populated system maybe it shouldn’t have been. But that ship was effectively lost from the moment the pilot reacted to his crew’s apprehension. That communications problem was the direct cause of the accident—”
Bonner said, “Excuse me, senator. The lieutenant is speculating, now, far outside his expertise. May I remind him to confine himself to what he was in a position to witness or to obtain from records?”
He didn’t look at Bonner. “A communications problem set up by a last-minute substitution of pilots.”
The committee hadn’t heard that. No. Not all of them had, at least. And from Shepherds he knew were back there in the room, there was not a breath, not an outcry, just a general muttering, and he couldn’t turn his head to see expressions.
The senator said: “What substitution, lieutenant?”
“The crew trained as a team. The Fleet pilot was replaced at the last moment by a UDC backup pilot the colonel lifted out of his own crew and subbed in on Fleet personnel. The Fleet captain in command objected in an immediate memo to Col. Tanzer’s office—”
Bonner said, “Lieutenant, you’re out of line. Confine yourself to factual answers.”
“Sir. That is a fact upheld by ECS8 log records.”
Somebody yelled from the back, “Do they show the Fleet laid those targets and set that random ordnance interval?” Several voices seconded, and somebody else yelled, “You’re full of it, Jennings, you don’t break an ops team! You never sub personnel! Tanzer killed those guys sure as a shot to the head!”