Liner Notes for Deep Noises
The liner notes for my story Deep Noises, part IX of TetraHedron.
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Welcome to the end sequence of TetraHedron as we accelerate towards the finale. Silence, the most technologically primitive of the four universes, is revealed to be aware of the dimensional gate and able to manipulate it despite the lack of energy sources and the hostile environment. More than that; the structure of the TetraHedron itself is not simply a convenient big dumb object to let the Patrol have adventures in four separate playgrounds, but it has a deep structure that can be manipulated and mysteries of its own. Where have the gliders vanished to?
Is where the right question? Sadly this is one mystery that will have to wait for later in the series.
Meeting and administration! This is what people reading my omni-competent space ranger having adventures in the setting designed for MAXIMUM SPACE OPERA have been waiting for. Okay maybe not. But even now I’m layering in details of how the Deep Patrol actually functions. Because of previous bad experiences with artificial intelligences who function too well and expert systems that are dumb as hell when confronted with out of context events they filter decision making authority and data analysis through humans at various points.
In other words we have a streamlined, super-teched up version of some 21st century information gathering and operational control organisation. Raw data comes in, is analysed, passed on to create reports which then inform the management to produce plans.
Here’s my guideline; I’ve always thought through the backstory and setting one step more than the story absolutely needs. This is useful for a serial when you return, as having a grasp of a deeper level of how something works enables you to keep things consistent while working through different variations and combinations. If I know how the Deep Patrol recruits and trains people I can introduce characters in a fashion that makes sense even if I never take the story through a basic training cycle.
So the Deep Patrol’s command decision making process derives from my time as a data analyst in a financial services company crossed with how I understand a combat information centre on a warship works. This make the tactical, operational and strategic processes both (para-)military and that of a far-sighted civilian organisation.
It would probably be a hideous mess. In fact canonically it is, Gunn has to work out how to make it work, decide where to put his limited numbers of experts and where warm bodies, where to trust to the machines. Ah, command and management.
Back to Jack. Have I over-powered Jack? Why yes, yes I have. Jack needs to be supremely capable because otherwise they will have no chance when they uncover what they’re facing at the end of TetraHedron. It’s not MAXIMUM SPACE OPERA unless there’s chaos and death and old night and dishonour coming down the spacelanes, and the least I can do is give Gunn a half-machine half-human wise-cracking sidekick able to think rings around the humans and hack the machines.
He’s obviously going to need some combat specialists as well. It’s probably good that Choler survives, because having incremented up the number of crew he has under his command it’s time for the people count to go down. More casualties, of various sorts from now on. In the Deep Patrol, the joke goes, death is not fatal but it is an inconvenience. For Beowulf it might be more than that, which is a pity as Gunn is going to need him very badly before the end.
Beowulf and Charm had to die. People are going to die from now on and I’m easing you in with a couple of minor characters. Things are going to get worse from now on so I guess if that’s a problem maybe don’t come back until the finale? Or until I shift gears for another set of stories? I don’t know, have to make up your own mind.
Enough foreshadowing. The Patrol is learning quickly about stealth in the harsh environment of Silence. They can use it and also abuse it, their technological superiority enabling them to light up areas to reveal opponents, while remaining concealed themselves. That’s the theory, it didn’t quite work but they’re getting better.
Hopefully Gunn learned a lesson or two in this adventure.