tech, we would be royally hooped.
The decoy had been constructed with all the improvements suggested by Thor: two layers of depleted uranium alternating with two layers of electrostatic shielding. We’d added redundancies for every major control system, with automatic failovers. It also had multiple independent self-destruct mechanisms and the usual booby-traps.
My new body had some improvements as well. I’d sacrificed buster storage in favor of a larger reactor and SURGE drive. At 15 G capability I could now outrun the Others, assuming that I’d seen their “A” game last time out.
Today’s entertainment was in aid of testing our mods against the death asteroid. If Decoy-1 could survive a zapping, we were golden. If it couldn’t…
well, no one really wanted to ask that question.
I sent the activation order. Decoy-1 broke off from my vector and accelerated towards the inner system.
* * *
The SCUT connection gave me a video window into the chase. The decoy was carefully sticking to 10 G as it ran from the Others’ battle-group, or squad, or whatever they called their standard collection of ships. We hadn’t tried to be subtle with the sweep through the inner system, and the decoy had, predictably, picked up a tail. It looked as though we were less than an hour away from the big event.
I accepted a ping, and Mario popped into my VR. “I love car chases,” he said, grinning at me.
“Especially the ones with big crashes,” I replied.
I was forwarding the telemetry to Bill for the archives as well. I hadn’t heard from him, but I imagined he was monitoring as time permitted. Mario got comfortable, Jeeves brought coffees, and we sat back to watch the show.
Two minutes later the death asteroid zapped the decoy, just as the decoy had finished a SUDDAR scan of its pursuers. The decoy forwarded a complete set of readings to us, then blew itself up.
Mario and I looked at each other, our eyes wide. I spoke first. “That was, uh, a little early.”
“Yeah, looks like Garfield was a bit off on his estimates of the internal capabilities of the death asteroids. He’s going to have to rejigger his models.”
I checked the received telemetry. “Well, fortunately, we got a good scan just at the end. This should help.” I took a close look at the scan of the death asteroid. “Or not. Look at that.” I pointed to a section of the scan. “That looks like living area. Why the crap would they need that much living area?”
Mario thought for a moment. “Either they’re really really big, or the death asteroid requires a lot of personnel to run, or they really really like each other.
Like naked mole-rats or something.”
“Huh. Questions and more questions. Well, we’ve got this much done, anyway. The decoy took a few hit points, but by and large I’d say the shielding was a success.”
Mario nodded. “We’ll see what Thor and Garfield have to say at the next moot.” He raised his cup to me, finished his coffee in a gulp, and popped out.
I turned myself around, pointed the bow at GL 54, and headed home.
54. Stuff is Happening
Hal
October, 2197
En Route to GL 54
I was eighteen months into my journey when I got a message from Bill. At my current tau, any kind of real-time interaction was out of the question. I couldn’t frame-jack nearly high enough to overcome the time dilation. So communications tended to wait until the end of a trip, or they came as emails, as in this case.
I grabbed the sheet and read it.
Hal;
Well, the fecal matter seems to have struck the atmospheric propulsor. A squad of Others vessels was detected leaving GL 877, heading for GL 54. To be fair, scouting by other Bobs indicates that other, closer systems have already been stripped, so this isn’t necessarily anything more than a normal scavenging mission. Just the same, Mario has decided to hit the road, along with every piece of equipment he has.
We’re going to leave a couple of drones behind for observation, and use one to try communicating with the Others. If they react by pointing one of the death asteroids at us, we’ll blow up the drone.
Just thought you should know. It looks like we’re heading for a formal First Contact. You may want to re-route.
Bill
Oh, fudge. May you live in interesting times. Mm, hmm.
55. Contact
Bill
October 2204
GL 54
Mario was now in mid-trip, fleeing GL 54 for Zeta Tucanae, so it was up to me to handle the introductions when the Others arrived. I couldn’t help but feel a certain level of nervousness. These were the beings that had blown up Bashful and Hal. There were a lot of ways this could go down, but I didn’t think friendly was in the expected range.
Before he left, Mario did a little preparatory construction. He had four stealth drones set up for observation, and a non-stealth drone for making contact. With SCUT communications, I could easily control them from here in Epsilon Eridani.
The contact drone made me chuckle. The hull was shiny, the reactor leaked neutrons like a sieve, and in the radio spectrum the drone was as noisy as an unshielded electric motor. I thought he might have overdone the hee-yuk, but it was certainly a masterpiece. It also had an antenna dish for tight-beaming radio telemetry to a non-existent mother-ship, which I thought was a great touch. We wanted the Others to underestimate us, right up to the moment we would deliver the knock-out punch.
The Others’ convoy was impressive. Ten death asteroids, a couple hundred small attendants, and twenty huge cylindrical hulks that I assumed would be cargo ships. These last units were upwards of ten kilometers in length and a kilometer in diameter. I tried to estimate the tonnage of metals that they could transport and my mind boggled at the results.
Interestingly, though, based on a rough calculation, the total cargo capacity was within an order of magnitude of what they’d need to strip this system. Either they had previously scouted the system, or they had some way to get a good estimate of available resources beforehand. Or maybe they just lucked out. They might make multiple trips if a system had enough resources to justify it.
Well, that was something for the future. I activated the communications drone, placed it right in the path of the incoming armada, and squirted a radio signal at them. For a first attempt, it was the most basic of communications: the first ten prime numbers, represented as a series of blips. Then I waited for a response. I had listed a number of possibilities while waiting for them to arrive. It might be the next ten primes, or it might be my message relayed back to me in reverse, or it might be another mathematical series. Or it might be a blast of cosmic rays.
I was not expecting an audio message, in Mandarin.
Fortunately I had a translation routine on file, such things having been fairly standard issue in the twenty-second century.