A Raw Snippet of Family Law#9 in progress

“Ma’am, we have a guest, Aristotle, who says he is expected,” Lee’s pad said.

“Yes, send him up, please,” Lee said

“I’ll go walk him in,” Tish said, jumping up.

“He might get lost,” Trix quipped after she as gone.

Tish came back walking hand in hand with Aristotle. Badgers like to do that, and Aristotle didn’t mind at all.

“Would you care to join us?” Lee waved at the place set with a pad instead of a chair and the oversized utensils.

“Breakfast was four hours ago for me, but this will do very nicely for lunch,” he agreed.

Lee sat opposite him, and Tish sat to bracket him with Badgers.

“This is for you,” Tish said and tapped the big dome with a fork.

“Sweet,” he said appreciatively. The cart was a long reach for him, and he leaned to put the cloche on the empty bottom shelf. He just pulled the platter of ham over in front of him. He made a stack with a slice of ham, a pancake, ham, pancake, repeated eight layers high, with syrup poured over the whole thing.

Everybody dug in silently while it was still hot.

“When he had the stack eaten and was fixing a plate of side dishes, Lee decided he could eat and talk both now.

“Tell us about these worrisome jump emissions,” Lee asked.

“You know, there are a lot of random reports of them here and there,” Aristotle said, waving his fork in an arch to include the expanse of the heavens.

“Yes,” Lee agreed. The Centralists assured me they weren’t shadowing our fleet, so it has to be an alien race with the same sort of drive that only we and Central have at present.”

“One or more alien races,” Trix interjected.

“A valid point,” Aristotle allowed, surprised. “They are mighty secretive, too. They jump out as soon as our entry wave front touches them. If they don’t want to be known, why don’t they just sit there silently and wait out our transition of the system?”

He looked at Trix, not Lee, since he’d thrust himself into the conversation.

“Their actions indicate they expect to be in danger if they don’t jump out immediately. They are probably correct because our tech and strategies are very close to the point of making that true,” Trix aid.

“We are?” Aristotle said, surprised.

“Yes. Lee just got the first four jump drones that have quantum radar. I’m working hard at creating strategies to utilize them. When I feel I’ve covered the obvious scenarios, the ones I can easily imagine, I’ll ask Lee and Gordon to nullify them.”

“Have you told Gordon about that?” Aristotle wondered.

“And give him a chance to think ahead three times as fast as me? No, thank you. Part of what I’ll learn is how fast he can overcome this new, novel challenge.”

Aristotle thought that was pretty amusing.

“I promise I won’t tell Gordon. How would you deal with a lurking ship that can jump out with no run to speed? Is that one of your scenarios?

“No, not yet, but off hand, we’d need to get in the system ahead of them and be the lurkers.”

Aristotle thought for a moment, hard enough to pause with eggs on his fork.

“Okay, we are at that point where the professor says, ‘Therefore, and slashes a big line on the whiteboard, skipping all the boring intermediate steps. What do you do once in the system ahead of them?”

“Set up your drones around your target volume with communications,” He illustrated with a fist and pointed out locations around it with a fingertip.” They could talk by laser, and the odds of interception would be very low. They need to triangulate the alien’s position once they jump in, and share it while syncing their clocks and agreeing to jump in close and paint the intruder with radar to get a detailed look at them, or destroy them if known to be hostile.”

“We don’t have those sorts of drones on the Silk Road,” Aristotle said. It seemed a question more than a statement, the way he looked at Lee.

“They’re something new Central supplied,” Lee said. “I imagine they haven’t replaced all their own older style drones, so I’m happy they sent me any at all. I sent them to Providence to be on the new sister ship that’s almost done. I expect it to visit more dangerous destinations than the Silk Road. Including some runs, the Silk Road won’t make any more.”

“Have you heard this idea of his already?” Aristotle asked Lee.

“How could she? I just now made it up,” Trix insisted. “Give me a few days, and maybe I’ll come up with better or at least refine it. It will take some time to figure out how to align the lasers to find the other drones without sweeping too wide a volume to find them.”

“I might be able to help with that,” Lee said.

They all just looked at her expectantly, and she blushed.

“We have an alternative communications system using neutrinos that we’ve never released to general use. It’s no faster than radio or laser and not much use in the Earth-Moon neighborhood since the North Americans can intercept it.” We do have it installed on the ships that Heather and her peers use. But we’ve never seen anyone using it away from Earth. Not even where we saw those ships that worry you,” she told Aristotle.

“How can it be installed and the people flying the ship not know?” Trix asked.

“It doesn’t need antennas or anything like a radio. The ship around it is just transparent. It’s just a box tucked away and looks like a part of… other systems. So, if you don’t know the code to enter on your control screen, you’d never know it exists.”

Aristotle looked very unhappy.

“It may shock you to know I don’t like secret systems embedded in my command.”

“It’s not the only one, and I can’t apologize for that. What you don’t know you can’t divulge under a cap or from reading a veracity program list to you. It hasn’t been all that useful until now. The only real advantage is that if you have two ships with it, they can talk to each other through a planet instead of needing a relay satellite. It has lousy bandwidth, too.”

“Freaky, and I’m surprised the North Americans could develop that. Unless they stole it from you?” Aristotle asked.

“No, we stole it from them. We ripped it out of one of their submarines.”

Aristotle had to blink twice at that.

“Submarine?”

“We’d still rather you not talk it about, but Trix had a need to know, and now you might very well be called upon to deploy a trap such as he described.”

“I’m informed. It’s a secret,” Aristotle allowed.

“We don’t have many,” Lee said. “One thing I learned from the Three is that you can tell people just about any secret, and if they aren’t ready to believe it, they’ll tell you to your face they aren’t stupid enough to believe it. But you still haven’t said what is new about these sightings that alarms you. We would expect to see them more often on the voyage of the Little Fleet, because we lingered in each system longer. You move along much quicker now if you aren’t making a large change of course.”

“Oh. We saw one jump out on the trip before last, near the Brown Dwarf system, where we were getting monetary metals for you. Then this trip, we saw one jump out from the third system back from Derfhome. I’m concerned they are narrowing down our moves to see where we are from and where we go.”

“That would fit if they are mapping us,” Lee said.

“It’s not clearly hostile,” Aristotle said, echoing the word Trix used. “But I don’t consider it friendly to snoop on us while making every effort to hide from us.”

“I hope you aren’t looking to loosen our rules of engagement and shoot first,” Lee said.

“Tempting,” Aristotle said. “But no.”

“Did you have any proposal in mind when you came to talk to me?” Lee asked.

“No, I just saw a danger and hoped you would see some solutions. But the young Badger’s way to set a trap with these new drones sounds promising. “I’d position it in Survey System 2723. That’s still the best route from Derfhome to Faraway. “We might at least get a close, high-definition radar print of them. If four drones jump in close to paint them and away, quickly, I doubt you’ll lose all of them.” Aristotle suggested.

“You could have your drone emit a single radar pulse,” Trix suggested. “Then jump in close and read the reflected signal from a different position than where it originated. You could read it and be gone before their radar propagated both ways to you and back. It’s a shame the quantum radar can only be entangled to its own signal. You can’t emit from one and receive at another.”

“We can leave the conventional radar on the drones too, if you like,” Lee offered. They can do that trick, and using both will probably confuse them.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Trix said. “Do you want me to write some command sub-routines so you can get them positioned at the ready?”

“I agree, but I need to consult with Heather and her partners. I don’t want them upset with me if I lose their generous gift of these advanced drones without any gain at all. But I’ll emphasize we need to get this trap positioned before the aliens work their way any closer.”

“Of course,” Aristotle agreed. “Perhaps they’ll have some suggestions. After all, these aliens could be a threat to them, too.”

“Suggestions?” Trix said. “Maybe they can kick in another dozen drones!”