I could imagine it, the yellow-lit, windowless world of a G.A.S. ship’s engineering section. The jarring crash of a foreign thing–the bulkhead before me split by a cone-tipped warhead. A half-moment of panic before the thing flashed…
-Endgame
In modern America (and, increasingly, the rest of the world) faith in technology is certainly something we are guilty of. If your iPhone goes on the fritz (or into a body of water) schedules and contact info are thrown into digital chaos. Most cars or trucks can be shut down by a software glitch. If our ballot-casting machines aren’t protected from cyber attack–which likely happened in the 2016 election–how do we weigh a tainted democratic process?
A Look at the Future
In Endgame, the Mitasterites commit an overwhelming force (five Global Assault Ships, around 150,000 soldiers) to the assault on P-75. They need their precious fuel (a rare crystal unique to the frozen world). Success depends on their sabotaging the opposing T.U.’s primary defense–the Cecelia rockets. (These 150-foot monsters carry enough explosives and metal fragments to eradicate most any threat–provided they can reach them.) Enter cyber warfare.
The technology of one computer transmitting code to hijack another computer is beyond me. (The closest I’ve come to grasping code was a class in JavaScript.) But, just as we have the weapon of cyber attack today, we can see the folly of it not working. The Mitasterites (a young, industrious empire) are cursed with arrogance and cockiness. Why wouldn’t their cyber sabotage work?
Clearly, that means not enough of the right people asked, ‘What happens if the cyber attack fails? Or if the system senses an error and reboots itself after seven hours? Won’t our ships be in danger?’
My heart jumped. Raising my own scope to the sky, I imagined a great flowery burst in space.
Could this be the Mitasterites’ Titanic moment? Will they learn? Unlikely.
Lessons Yet-to-be Learned
To heroine June Vereeth and the other T.U. soldiers, the Mitasterites squander grotesque amounts of men and materials on a gamble. They lose P-75–their first defeat brought by a cataclysmic no-win blast, the fuel dump detonated by the T.U. base chief. Losing two Global Assault Ships (and many thousands of crewmen) is a huge black eye in the aftermath. Failing to grasp the tactical error of a cyber assault, they try it again in Destruction. The Cecelia rockets are delayed, not defeated. Ships are put in peril. Men are squandered.
One can assume that only sorrow and stupidity would be on display when observing chunks of starship tumble through the atmosphere. Enlisted soldiers most often pay for their commanders’ decisions. One can hope the general populace learns something from this.
“We won’t get fooled again,” The Who famously sang.
Of course we won’t.
