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

Commander.”
     
    Before
Drake could say anything, the Project Head interjected. “No, the laboratories
should come first.”
     
    “Do
you agree with that?” asked Drake. The CA nodded.
     
    “Good!
Now if both of you will excuse me. There’s a battle coming up that we can’t
afford to lose, and I don’t want to get there late.” With a nod to the Project
Head, Drake turned around and sprinted up Jutland’s boarding ramp.
     
     
    Chapter Eight:
     
    Day
243/2545
    When
Jutland emerged from hyper-space near Sparta, Drake was surprised to learn that
the Task Force hadn’t left yet, due to the inevitable delays that always seemed
to occur when military operations were being prepared. With his status report sent,
Drake sat back and waited for a reply. He knew it was the middle of the night
at the Capital and therefore wasn’t expecting a quick answer to his query
whether Jutland should land immediately to replenish her consumables to the
level needed for participation in Operation Sorcerer. But to his surprise, he
got one. The text message scrolled across his viewscreen.
     
    Permission
to land denied. Shuttles with consumables will rendezvous with you shortly.
Sorcerer will commence in 8.5 hours. It is imperative that you be ready to join
the Task Force by then. All further communications should be directed to Task
Force Leader Lee. Good Hunting! End of message.
     
    Eight
point five hours was not a lot of time to unload half a dozen cargo shuttles
and stow all those supplies. He expected that Lee would want to talk with him
in person before the Task Force left orbit. As things turned out, he was right
on both counts. His crew was still stowing the last of the supplies when
Jutland accelerated out of orbit in formation with the other 15 ships of the
Task Force. The meeting with Lee wasn’t all that pleasant either. Newly
promoted Vice-Admiral Lee had displayed what could only be described as a bad
mood and was annoyed at everything Drake said, no matter how polite and co-operative
he was. After all this time, Drake still didn’t know what bug Lee had up his
ass when it came to Roland Drake. Lee left no doubt in Drake’s mind that if it
had been left up to him, Jutland would not be part of the Task Force. At least
Drake wouldn’t have to talk with Lee during the 13 week trip through
hyper-space.
     
    Day
255/2545
    Foster
sighed as she entered the groundcar and sat beside her husband, Bret Murphy. He
had already programmed the auto-pilot to take them home after another long day
of work. As he looked at her face, he realized that she wasn’t just tired, she
was also looking despondent.
     
    “Bad
day?” he asked.
     
    She
took in and then let out a long, slow breath before answering. “I’m tired of
banging my head against the wall. My staff are tired too. We’re chasing our
tails trying to figure out how Oracle can outthink a machine that’s designed to
be at least ten times as smart. This hunt for planets to place Site X and the
shipbuilding center is going nowhere. All the planets that Oracle for perfectly
good reasons comes up with as candidates, are also places where Majestic will
urge the FEDs to look, for exactly the same reasons.”
     
    Murphy
said nothing for a bit. As one of the Instructors at the Naval Academy, he
technically wasn’t part of the Oracle Planning Group, but his wife sometimes
used him as a sounding board for ideas, so he thought about her problem. Even
with the Phase II expansion to Oracle, the SSU version still wasn’t as capable
as Majestic’s estimated ability. Murphy wondered if the OPG was over-estimating
Majestic’s capabilities, but then decided that under-estimating them would be a
far greater mistake. An idea occurred to him.
     
    “Let
me ask you something. Do these super-computers have intuition?”
     
    “Intuition?
No. Why?”
     
    “They
use logical reasoning exclusively, right?”
     
    “Yes.
You’re leading up to something. I can tell. What is