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 mat. 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!”
The gavel came down.
Somebody shouted, over the banging, “The Fleet set up the course. Check the records! The Fleet had orders to set the targets closer together to screw the test!”
And from nearer the front, as the MP’s and Fleet
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 mat. 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!”
The gavel came down.
Somebody shouted, over the banging, “The Fleet set up the course. Check the records! The Fleet had orders to set the targets closer together to screw the test!”
And from nearer the front, as the MP’s and Fleet
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