John turned to Nyx and said, “Continue. What’re you trying to say?”
[I’m saying we should keep the shield in its passive mode and allow the Carrington event to happen,] she said in her trademark disinterested tone.
“Why should we do that?” Dr. Aminu said, a look of shock still lingering on his face. Was he on the ground floor of an AI apocalypse? A bead of cold sweat dripped down from his temple as he fruitlessly tried to rein in his emotions.
[A few reasons, actually,] Nyx said. She paused and looked around the room before continuing, [Other than the people in this room and His Imperial Majesty, no one knows that the planetary defense shield even exists in the first place. It’s always been in its passive mode, making it invisible to everyone. Bringing it to full strength will reveal it, making its existence a matter of public record.
[That wouldn’t be a problem, but there’s no need to reveal our trump card like that. After all, a trump card our enemies know about isn’t very useful, now is it?]
Before Nyx could continue providing her other reasons for not using it, she was interrupted by Dr. Aminu. “That isn’t a good enough reason for bringing humanity back to pre-industrial levels! Especially since we don’t even know for sure what the visitors’ intentions are. For all we know, they could just be interstellar traders, or maybe they’re a branch of humanity that left for the stars long ago. The only thing we can be sure of is that we know absolutely nothing about them.
“And let’s say, for the sake of argument, that they are in fact hostile. By letting a Carrington event of this magnitude just impact Earth and drive us back to where we were in the 1800s, wouldn’t that just make us easier pickings for them?” Dr. Aminu was so worked up that he even forgot his earlier insistence on using the new imperial calendar.
The other humans in the room, minus a few, nodded in agreement with Dr. Aminu’s sentiment.
[You interrupted me too soon,] Nyx began. [As I said, there are multiple reasons to allow the CME to hit Earth unimpeded, but you stopped me when I’d only mentioned the first of them.] Though she was speaking in a chiding tone, she understood the interruption was done with the best of intentions.
[So let me dispel your worries first. Helios Energy considered the possibility of a massive electromagnetic pulse when they first designed the power grid and other infrastructure upgrades to the empire. Over the past year, they’ve been upgrading the utility infrastructure across the globe, at least in areas that have accepted imperial rule. So far, over 95% of the upgrades have been completed and the rest can be rushed to completion over the next few days.
[Since the upgrades include hardening against an EMP attack, we’ll survive it just fine without interruption. The same can’t be said for areas that rejected imperial rule, though. They’ll still be devastated. But who cares? It seems you’ve all forgotten Operation Boiling Frog.]
When Nyx mentioned Operation Boiling Frog, looks of realization flashed across the faces of the ministers in the room. Dr. Aminu and his subordinates, on the other hand, still looked lost and clueless.
Dr. Yao raised his hand and began, “What’s Operation Boiling—”
“It’s classified, Dr. Yao,” Minister Rogers interrupted. “So forget you ever heard it.”
Dr. Yao lowered his arm and clasped his hands together, looking down at them. He, just like everyone else in the room, understood the need for classification and compartmentalized information. He didn’t particularly LIKE it, but he understood it.
Nyx didn’t care about the reaction of the imperial space agency’s researchers and continued, [Since all of the imperial infrastructure and the empire’s newly introduced technologies can withstand the EMP without any problems, it means only those that still use legacy tech will be impacted. Nearly all of their technology will be rendered useless through force majeure, so the empire can’t be blamed for the failure of their critical infrastructure.
[Besides, even in its passive mode, the planetary defense shield will still block a lot of the CME. By my calculation, the EMP that results from the remainder of the ejection that actually impacts the planet’s magnetic field should be just enough to cripple non-imperial infrastructure and last-generation imperial products. It’s the perfect deniability for the empire, since we’ll be hit as well. It’s just that the hit we take will be in the non-
essential category.
[We can even warn the remnant governments of the upcoming Carrington event, making us the ‘good guys’ in this situation, especially after we offer outreach that mitigates the loss of life the event causes even to noncitizens. At the same time, we can stress that imperial tech should hold up just fine, but to be safe, all imperial gadgets should be powered down when the event hits,] Nyx finished, her tone as calm as if she had just been reading the dictionary aloud and not talking about a potential civilization-ending event.
A shocked silence descended on the conference room after Nyx finished explaining her reasoning. The imperial space agency staffers in the room figured out quite a bit about Operation Boiling Frog from the explanation; they were far from stupid, and the petite AI’s suggestion gave them enough to tease out a general idea of what the operation was for.
To them, it was completely new information. But despite that, they understood the reasoning behind the possibility of the empire simply allowing the CME to proceed without any active attempt to stop it, even though they were more than capable of doing so. After all, despite the semblance of peace that had recently returned to Earth, there was a very limited time frame in which to turn that facade into lasting reality before they had potentially hostile aliens showing up on humanity’s doorstep with a broken society that would be easy to exploit should they be so inclined.
That said, not everyone in the meeting was in agreement with Nyx’s suggestion. And with the emperor’s absence, they couldn’t come to a decision even if any suggestion was unanimously approved. So before the situation could devolve, Gaia appeared and took charge of the meeting.
[Let’s end it here for today, ladies and gentlemen. I’ll deliver all of your points to the emperor when he’s available, and let you know what his decision is once he comes up with one.] Though her tone was diplomatic, she still shot Nyx a loaded look; the feisty mistress of intelligence had let classified information slip, purposefully or not.
But with Gaia’s involvement and her position, she had the authority and the duty to act as Aron’s plenipotentiary whenever he wasn’t available. As such, the meeting was dismissed and everyone disappeared from the virtual conference room, followed by the room itself vanishing into the aether.
It would be a waste of resources for it to remain in existence when not in use, and efficiency was everything to the Terran Empire.
