Out of the Ashes (Rise of the Empire Book 3) by Ivan Kal

anything, Mia stepped closer. “Congratulations. We now have two way FTL communications.” Mia said, and then leaned closer and whispered. “Is this really about having live video conversations?”
    Seo-yun turned to the rest of the room, “That’s it for today. Tomorrow, we are going to go over every calculation again. We need to make sure this isn’t a fluke.” Her words were met with excited whispering as people started exiting the room. Seo-yun gestured to Mia to follow, and started towards her office.
    When they arrived she found her way to the chair behind her table.
    “So what’s this really about? We have been putting far too much time and effort into this, and it’s not like we really need it.” Mia asked.
    Seo-yun sighed, “You know about the fleet drone program? They are conducting tests right now.”
    “Yes, I know.” Mia said.
    “Well, one of the most important parts of the program is our FTL comm capability. The drones would be controlled from other ships via FTL comms. And as it was until now, we didn’t have a real two way connection. Each time a new command was sent to the drone computer, it needs to receive it, interpret it, execute, and then formulate and send a response back using its own FTL communicator. Think of it as trying to control a ship using instant messaging. You need to formulate the command send it and wait for it to be executed. If we could manage to keep the FTL breach open for more than a moment, we could control them in real time. And now we can.”
    “Okay, I get it now. But did we really need it that much? Isn’t a Fleet Commander in charge of an entire fleet from their ship? Doesn’t the command board do the same thing that the drone teams will do for the drones?” Mia asked.
    “Yes and no. The command board allows a commander to send orders. But you forget that the ships he issues orders to, are not unmanned. They have crews and commanders of their own. A Ship Master can act in the time between when he gets orders. And the commands sent through the c-board are not supposed to take direct control over a ship. Fleet Commander sends an order to a Ship Master, and the Ship Master then executes it in whatever manners he or she deems appropriate. For example, a ship received a command to attack an enemy vessel but as it moves to attack, the enemy vessel fires on it. Now the Ship Master will obviously see that attack before the Fleet Commander that issued the order to attack, and will use countermeasures. A drone ship on the other hand will continue under orders to attack, until the one who controls it see the enemy vessel attack, and orders countermeasure. All of that takes time, time that might result in the drones destruction. Basically, there is a lag.” Seo-yun said.
    “Ok, I’ll give you that. But can’t we put a computer that would react when something unforeseen happens, an autopilot? Or better yet, why not put Ai’s on the drones?” Mia asked.
    “It has been proposed. Putting a computer in charge between the commands has already been tried, and the result wasn’t good. It just slowed everything down. As for an Ai… Well, there are problems with that as well.” Seo-yun said.
    “What kind of problems?” Mia asked.
    “Luna, can you explain?” Seo-yun asked her personal Ai.
    “Of course Seo-yun.” Luna’s voice said from the speaker in the room, “An Ai might be intelligent, but it still doesn’t think like a human would. An Ai can go through data incredibly fast, find patterns and extrapolate from the data it has much quicker than a human could. But for all that we are extremely logical, and lack human ingenuity and imagination. We would rely solely on calculating odds, and would act accordingly. And there is also the fact that we are in a way constrained.”
    “Constrained how?” Mia asked.
    “An Ai could read everything humanity has ever written about warfare, and still not completely understand it. We are not humans. The more time we spend