The Heavenly Host

This included sentinels in the Command Center, which was currently seventy or so percent functional, as well as guards at the entrances. After one of their first meetings, Tom had ordered increased security and monitoring of all entrances, such as the one he and his friends had used. His hope was to eventually have wards on all gates to alert the control center and then just use patrols; but for now, guards and locked portcullises would be the order of the day.

All of his commanders had just signaled they had no other details to discuss when a loud cheer came from the adjoining Tech Command Center. Tom and a few other commanders, particularly the tech-based ones, headed into the Tech Command Center.

“What you DIB’s yammerin about?” Arg-nargoloth growled as he entered beside Tom. Tom had learned that DIB stood for D’Orc in Back. It had been adopted from GIB, or Grunt in Back, because on medium-sized starships the scanning and radar operators often sat behind the pilots. Years ago, they had continued it here since the Tech Command Center was sort of a back room off the main Command Center.

“We’ve got the phased array radar antennas online and working again!” said Horken, one of the senior DIBs.

“Or we will have; I’ve got one more array I’m tweaking the SNR on,” said Varn Starsplitter, the D’Orc Tom had met in the armory.

“SNR?” Tom asked.

“Signal to Noise Ratio. It’s an adjustment we do to distinguish background topology from active targets,” Varn explained.

“The other twelve arrays are tuned correctly and we are able to discern standard known landmarks.” Horken pointed to what Tom realized was a translucent computer screen. “We have a database of what the base topology should look like; the computer then filters it to show us only what shouldn’t be there. See all this?” He pointed to numerous orange objects on the screen, along with numerous white items.

“Yes?” Tom asked hesitantly.

“The white stuff is missing landmarks that used to be there; the orange stuff is new stuff that’s there now. We have to go through and confirm that previously fixed objects have moved.”

“What is moving?” Tom asked.

Horken chuckled. “In the normal course of things, it would be targets. However, after four thousand years, the landscape is bound to shift a little bit. Particularly after Doom shut down and then restarted. The first would have caused settling of geological features; the second would have meant some minor quakes which could dislodge stuff.”

“Got the SNR on thirteen!” Varn shouted excitedly.

“Excellent; next up is twofold,” Horken explained to the commanders who had entered with Tom, Zelda included. “We have to update the geographic database as I just mentioned, and then we need to start fine tuning the aperture synthesis algorithms.”

“The aperture what?” Zelda asked.

“Aperture synthesis. It’s a post-processing algorithm that we used to track moving objects with a phased array. We then supplement it from our secondary Doppler radar antennas. The phased array units that use PDP — sorry, pulse Doppler processing — also need to be calibrated; however, full calibration of that requires the sweep antennas to be active, and those will take more time since they have a lot of moving parts.”

“So, in short, a lot of sophisticated electronic equipment is coming back online without a lot of issues after four thousand years?” Tom sounded a bit incredulous.

Horken chuckled. “Oh, there are issues, but we had quite a bit of redundancy. And most of the systems are heavy duty, built for deep space military craft and bases. The Abyss around here is not that much worse. At least, it isn’t when Doom is dormant.”

Tom looked at him, puzzled.

“Metal equipment does not like water,” Horken explained. “That is one of the biggest issues. In space, the problem is ice crystals that can melt. In the Abyss, when there are no storm clouds, it is very dry, so rust is not a problem. Dust can be a problem, but again, almost no wind if Doom is sleeping. You may have noticed the only place in the Abyss that actually has weather is Mount Doom.”

“And we have not had any of that in a very long time!” Varn added.

Several other DIBs laughed at this. One whom Tom did not recognize added, “We started cleaning the arrays and equipment shortly after Your Lordship’s return. We had been hoping to get these babies back up.”

“This is excellent!” Tom was very pleased.

Horken and the others nodded in acknowledgement of the praise. “There are some more advanced detection systems we will eventually bring up. But we cannot calibrate those until we have the simpler systems fully calibrated and functional,” Horken said.

“How long before you will be able to detect invaders or trespassers?” Darg-Krallnom asked from behind Tom.