Mario gave me a rueful smile. “Yep. Fail.”
“So how is the harvest going?”
He rolled his eyes and pulled up some images. “Thankfully there was nothing in GL 54 to get attached to, so this is nothing more than a strategic retreat to me.” Pointing to one image. “The carriers go down where presumably they’ve detected metal. They disgorge ants, who dig down to the ore and bring it up. It’s hard to tell from a distance, but based on activity, I think they use the ore to build more ants which they use to get more ore, which they use to build more ants… Eventually they reach a break-even point of some kind where the ants just haul material up. Then they harvest the excess ants and take off.”
“They’d have printers specialized for making ants, then.” I stroked my chin in thought. “It would have to be a cheap, quick process.”
“At the current rate, I estimate they’ll have the system cleaned out in a
year. It’s exponential behavior. They never stop, never rest.” Mario rubbed his eyes. “And those cargo ships are so big, I don’t think we could even make them notice us, let alone damage them significantly. It would be like mosquitos trying to take on tanks.”
“Well, we have to come up with something before they decide Earth is next.”
Mario shook his head. “There are a lot of systems closer to them than Earth. We have lots of time.”
“You’re assuming that they always do things that way. You’re assuming that they won’t suddenly decide to drive a little extra distance for some ready-made refined material.” I glared at him, willing him to get the point. “I think we have to assume we don’t have a lot of time. If we’re ready early, no biggie. If we’re ready late, biggie.”
“Damn.”
58. News
Howard
July 2198
Interstellar Space
I was less than a third of the way to my destination when I received an email from Dexter. In a moment of weakness, I’d asked him to let me know any news about the Brodeurs.
Dexter included a bunch of other stuff in the email as well. Maybe he wanted to distract me; maybe he wanted to it to seem like the message wasn’t all about Bridget. Don’t know, but I appreciated the effort.
In any case, it looked like things were going well, in general. Butterworth had retired—well-deserved, in my opinion. The population of the system was up around a hundred thousand people now. Human-crewed spaceships were becoming commonplace, and the donuts made up an increasingly minor part of the food supply chain. Dexter apparently now had some of that formerly mythical free time, and was putting together some of Bill’s asteroid movers.
New Jerusalem was now a full-fledged democracy. Seemed some incriminating videos had gotten out and Cranston had to step down. In the resulting mess, the citizenry had decided to separate Church and State once again.
I laughed as I read the details. No doubt Cranston had his suspicions, but there was no way to trace anything back to Will or myself. Speaking of, I fired off an email to Will, in case he had more juicy info.
Things were going well. If it weren’t for the Others, humanity would be in a good place.
And that was it for the delaying tactics. With a sigh, I went on to the part about the Brodeurs.
Okay, not terrible. They had a son. They’d named him Howard.
I smiled, as the message became suddenly blurry. I would have to send a short thank-you note.
59. Another One
Bill
April 2205
Epsilon Eridani
I leaned back in my chair, looked straight up, and used some words that I normally don’t like to use.
Surveillance drones around GL 877 had reported that the Others had just launched another expedition. From the initial vector, it looked like they were heading for NN 4285. That wasn’t too bad—it was a small M star, too dim for any chance of usable planets.
No, I corrected myself: under no circumstances should this be considered acceptable. If the Others had stuck to uninhabited systems, well, it was a big galaxy. But that wasn’t their behavior. If they didn’t happen to kill off a planet, it was only because there was nothing to kill off, not because of some moral reluctance. Lack of opportunity isn’t the same as self-restraint. They were evil. End of story.
And if distance was an indicator, both Gamma and Delta Pavonis would probably be next, and they were good candidates. I checked the archives, just on the off chance. No such luck. No one had visited those systems yet, although a couple of Bobs were heading for them as part of Mario’s scouting.
I got up and started pacing around my office. Then I pinged Mario, and he popped over.
“What’s up?”
“Mario, the Others just moved again. This time heading for NN 4285.”
“Yeah, I saw that. Not a prime system.”
“Still, we have to figure out how to nip this in the bud. I’m concerned about the Pavonis candidates. Do you have an ETA for them?”
“Gamma and Delta? Claude and Jacques are heading for those. Claude will be at Gamma in about a month, and Jacques at Delta in twenty-two months or so.”
“Dammit. The closest significant presence we’ve got is Sol, and we can’t
divert them from building colony ships.”
“Epsilon Indi?”
“No, Epsilon Indi is too far away as well, although closer than Sol. But resources are poor, and colonists to KKP will be too busy setting up to help.”
Mario nodded. He looked down at his toes for a few milliseconds, then turned and glared at me. “What is it with the Pavonis systems that’s giving you a pickle up your butt, anyway?”
I sighed and stopped pacing. I favored Mario with a self-conscious smile.
“Call it a premonition. Call it superstition. Call it utter faith in the power of Murphy. Based strictly on distance, those two are among the next likely targets. Based on the stars’ types, they’re good habitable-planet candidates.
Based on our experience so far, most good systems with a planet in the right place have life. Not intelligence, necessarily, but life.” I shrugged, letting Mario make the connection.
He was silent for a few moments, thinking. “On the other hand, they’ve just sent out an expedition to NN 4285, and the GL 54 expedition hasn’t made it back to their home system. How many armadas to you suppose they have?”
“Fair point. They don’t seem to have any real sense of urgency. I wonder how long a Prime lives.”
“So look, Bill, why don’t you build a group here and send it to the area?”
I shook my head. “Too far. I’ll do it if there’s no other way. We need to get an inventory of what Bobs are in what systems, so we can figure out what response is possible.”
Mario gave me a nod and popped out.
I pinged Claude. His return indicated he was down to a low tau, about 0.03. That wouldn’t affect communications at all, and was hardly worth adjusting frame rates for. He was open for company, so I popped in.
“Hey, Bill.”
“Claude.” I looked around at his VR. Not particularly anything. Tropical beach, cabana, deck chair. Could be Mexico, Hawaii, or some made-up location. I didn’t have any memories of a vacation like this, so I assumed the last option.
Claude was looking at me with slightly wide eyes. He was a generation removed from me, and it was funny how the Bobiverse was becoming hierarchical like that.