Chapter 15 - Six Directions

Lieutentant Stuart Traquair looked around and he couldn't see anything. Black. He calmed himself as best he could and remembered - look for bubbles. He looked and saw, and after a moment his mind absorbed the information and he was able to picture his orientation. He was upside down. Righting himself, he looked around trying to see any sign of Kat. They had been assigned as "buddy pairs" for this first disorientation and reorientation training. He knew he was cheating using the bubbles - in orbit there would be no bubbles to indicate orientation, but then again, he wasn't convinced that this sea-based training would really prepare him or anyone else for the orbital gravity and isolation environment.

He felt a hand touch his shoulder from behind. He turned and saw that it was Kat. Lucky. She had found him.

He had no idea where she had disappeared to or how, but she seemed to have a habit of doing this kind of thing. She pointed up, and they rose started to head towards the surface and back onto the training ship via the miniature marina deck built into its transom. They were the only dubby pair doing scuba training today, the others were either working on engineering skills or practicing in the remote drone simulator.

"Good dive today." Kat said pulling off her mask and starting to peel off her suit.

"Nah, I got disoriented again. I lost you at the end for a good 4 minutes."

"You were upside down and i was directly above your feet. Well, from your point of view, below your feet."

"Hmmm, this three dimensional positioning strategy is really hard to get used to. Underneath me huh? I always forget to look under my feet."

"I wouldn't over think it - it is just a habit. Maybe having a mental checklist might help? Or maybe you'll suddenly get the knack of it after a few more sessions."

The paired "hide and seek" sessions seemed nonsensical at first. How can anyone hide in an empty cube of ocean? The weren't near any structures or the seabed there was little in the say of sealife. There was literally nothing to obscure the vision of the person who was "it". Or "het" as Kat called it, in her strange mix of West Scottish and Kanto accents.

"I've been thinking of it like this" Kat always came up with little theories - the weirder the training, the harder it was to see the purpose of it, but she tried to map her experiences onto some kind of logical framework. "When we are in orbit, the large distances, fast speeds and small sizes of most satellites mean that we cannot use structures as cover. Concealment, in the traditional sense just isn't an option. So, what does that leave? I'm thinking we have to be in places where the enemy cannot or will not look."

"But how can you know where someone else cannot or will not look? Surely, minimising your own signature presence by camouflaguing yourself or be hiding in an information shadow of an existing structure is going to be a more successful approach." Stuart argued.

"Well, as you learned today, sometimes there are no other structures to mimic or to hide behind." Kat said, looking up as the water-tight door slide open, the tactical simulation training planner, Colour Sergeant Hedges walking through.

"How was the session, Lieutenants?" C.S. Hedges smiled and pulled up a folding chair. The training staff were noticeably more pleasant not that they were officers, Kat had noted, but they were still very much focused on constant assessment.

"Interesting one today, Sergeant. Kat was able to sneak up on me by using my down-blindspot. She's even developing her own theory of tactics for empty battle spaces." Stuart raised his eyebrows and smirked at Kat, knowing she would now have to explain her thoughts to the experienced and uneasily impressed Sergeant. Hedges had formerly been in a ground infantry role, rumour had it that he had managed to spend time all 4 of the military services, all in combat roles. It made sense given his depth of understanding that he demonstrated in his seminars, but it did seem a little unbelievable.

"Oh? A new theory Lt. Suzuki? Very good. Let's have it then." The Sergeant knew well the spot Stuart had put Kat in, but thought he may as well play the role of inquisitor. Hopefully it would be amusing, if not necessarily enlightening.

"Well, in orbit, just like in the DTV (Designated Training Volume) today, we won't be able to camouflage ourserves as something else - there isn't anything to mimic. And there are no structures to use as concealment. It is like you are facing the enemy across a perfectly empty field on a clear, well lit day. Except in all six directions. So how do we close with the enemy? Well, instead of being where he is looking but camouflaged or hidden, we instead have to be where he is not looking."

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"And how do you know where he is looking?" The Sergeant asked.

"Well, there are two ways I've been trying to use against Stu here - technological and psychological. Tech-wise I have been trying to find a way to blind him, to direct his sensors or to control them, but I've only had partial success breaking into his equipment."

"Hey! You've been hacking my gear?! That's a damned dirty trick! There was me thinking you were sneaking around in the ocean depth like some kind of Olympic deep water swimmer, playing a positional game!"

"Mr. Traquair, let Miss Suzuki continue."

"Well, the problem is that tech warfare, even basic false electronic signal, it needs a lot of preparation, and insider knowledge and realistically, I'm not likely to have the time or assets to hand if we have to conduct an operation against the Chinese, the Polish or Brazilians. Even less if we finally make some kind of move towards or against The Object. Besides, if I have had time to hack them, they will have had time to hack me, so it might all be false positives and double bluffs anyway."

"So?" The Sergeant prompted her to continue.

"So, the real strategic advantage is psychological. Today I didn't hack Stu's kit. Instead, I figured out where Stu would look, and why, and used that to simply be where he wasn't looking."

"Pffft, sure, this sounds like psychic powers. Maybe you came up too fast today and you're starting to imagine things."

"No, Lieutenant Traquair, Lieutenant Suzuki is right. Technology can be copied, reproduced, reverse engineering, it has never been a lasting form of strategic advantage. True strategic advantage has always come from psychological factors. Consider the case study we looked at in last week's seminar - the former USSR managed to reduce the operational capacity of British and allied militaried by 50% in the period 2000 to 2030, and our technology was stronger the whole time. How did they do it? They figured out what the particular strategic advantage of the British Way of War was and undermined it. Why are our regiments able to fight harder, last longer, and tolerate more hardship while still maintaining battlefield effectiveness? The individual attitudes of each and every soldier. In some it is the "stiff upper lip", more commonly it is the ability to see the funny side of genuinely awful situations. We very nearly had a non-functioning military and were nearly conquered without the Russians firing a shot - because they had subverted our thoughts. Instead of maintaining face throughout adversity, our officer corps, like the rest of our culture praised victims as heroes, complaining as strength, asking for special treatment as normal. Our soldiers and specialists were demoted, sometimes fired for telling the kind of dirty or deliberately offensive jokes that have been an underappreciated aspect of the mind's way of building friendship, teamwork and effectiveness while under stress and hardship. That's the power of understanding your enemy's psychology."

Stuart was even less happy now than when he had heard he had been hacked. "So, Kat somehow manipulated me into not seeing her?"

"It isn't personal, Stu, I'll show you" and she pulled up a holo projection of the DTV and spun the time back to when they entered.

The three soldiers watched; Kat was ready first and over the comms signal called to Stu as she always did "going in, do hurry up Stu!" and jumped in. Instead of swimming sinking down as usual, she immediately clung to the edge of the marina platform and swung herself underneath, holding herself flat to the hull. Then Stu jumped in, facing forwards as he always did, and sank down. Kat then was already in his upper behind blind spot as he entered the water, and was able to observe him as checked all six directions.

"Hey you said you didn't use concealment!" Stu protested

"I didn't, I was perfectly visible against the ship if you had looked properly."

She shut the holoprojector off and continued. "So I knew you had a blind spot I could surveill you from if I went in first, and I knew if I stayed there and wasn't detected you'd get bored or disorientated (having no frame of reference so deep) that all I had to do was wait for 20 minutes and as your attention and focused dropped and fatigue started to cloud your judgement, I could just swim to you using which ever blindspot you presented, this time I was to your relative down and behind by the time you had stopped trying to keepwatch on all 6 directions. Psychology."

The Sergeant nodded, "Very good, Miss Suzuki, but he knows now, will it work a second time?"

"That depends on how tired or distracted he is."

"Good. So, this psychological approach is what you advocate for use in orbit too?" The Sergeant asked.

Stu answered "Well, it does seem to work, I'll definitely try it next time."

"I'm not sure the same technique will work, but the mindset has got to be better than the traditional conceal and camoflague approach." Kat argued, pleased she had seemed ot impress the veteran sergeant.

Colour Sergeant Hedges nodded to himself. "Very good, you've learned a lot today. Mainly that technology changes the battlefield, but psychology wins the day. However," he continued "how will psychology help us approach The Object?"

They were silent for a moment.

"Well, if we can understand who made it, what it is, why it is, we can infer what kind of minds we are up against." Stu said carefully.

"And what if the Conspiracy Theorists are right? What if The Object is of alien origin?" asked the sergeant soberly. "How do you outpsychologise a species we've never met, Lieutenant Suzuki?"

Sergeant Hedges and Lieutenant Traquair both looked at her.

"We provoke them."