Deathtrap by Craig Alanson

Author:Craig Alanson [Alanson, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2019-05-09T16:00:00+00:00

“Shit!” Irene let go of her seat and her hands flew over the flat-panel flight controls. “Missile warning red!” The controls she engaged made many things happen at once. The stealth field snapped on fully, its generators drawing a surge of emergency power from a bank of capacitors. The aircraft’s defense shield energized to protect against shrapnel and directed-energy weapons, and the point-defense maser cannon turrets were given authority to fire automatically at any approaching threat. Long, thin whip-like antennas extended beyond the stealth field to provide sensor data to the flight controls and defense systems. The engines went into stealth mode, their inlets expanding to gulp in far more air than they needed for thrust. The increased airflow cooled the exhaust and smoothed out the turbulent air behind the engines. Because the air blasting out of the turbines was still hot compared to the ambient temperature, chillers inside the rear of the turbines activated, dumping super cold air into the thrust. That cold could only be maintained for a short time as the heat had to go somewhere, and it was absorbed by heatsinks in the wings that were glowing cherry red.

Because regulations required the pilots to make sure they were not firing on friendly forces even though nothing friendly was anywhere near the Buzzard, and because the Missile Threat Identification and Evaluation System activated automatically before Irene could shut the stupid thing off, a tiny drone was ejected to fall behind and below the aircraft. It waited until it was clear of the stealth field then its nosecone discarded itself and the needle-like interrogator was launched by silent electromagnets in the general direction of the incoming missile. The rest of the drone exploded into hot dust, creating an infrared bright spot to confuse the incoming missile.

The interrogator package did two things. It sent an active sensor pulse at the rapidly-accelerating missile, and it sent a query for the missile’s identification codes. The sensor pulse returned first, showing a distinctive 3D image of an obsolete but still commonly-used Kristang portable AA missile. Right behind the returning sensor pulse was a garbled reply from the missile, stating that it was a friendly Ruhar-made sensor drone and not dangerous in any way. Within the transmission were fragments of authentic Ruhar authentication codes, embedded to confuse the interrogator package and make it hesitate.

The interrogator had a brain the size of a sesame seed and it had a limited set of instructions to optimize speed rather than complexity of analysis. Compared to most computational devices in the high-tech galaxy, it was not smart.

It also was not that stupid. It knew the reply had been deliberately garbled because the enemy only had fragments of legit ID codes, it knew the approaching object sure looked like a Kristang missile, and it knew there were no friendly forces reported to be in the area.

The interrogator made a snap decision and broadcast a message to its mother aircraft: missile threat confirmed.

The brain of the Buzzard received the message and thought something like ‘Well duh.

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