“The outer surfaces of the fabricaria traditionally provide the semi-processed raw material initially,” Bettlescroy confirmed. “For longer-term sequential manufacturing there are shuttle-tugs ready to bring in further truly raw material from other parts of the system, though that would not be an issue here. The point of the exercise is to manufacture a fleet of ships very quickly for effectively instant deployment rather than to set up a sustainable production process.”
“How many ships are we talking about?” Veppers asked.
Bettlescroy made a whistling noise. “Potentially, anything up to approximately two hundred and thirty million.”
Veppers stared at the alien.
“How many?” It was hard not to show his astonishment. He’d thought only a few of the fabricaria would be able, or properly primed, to build ships. This implied that almost all of them would be able to produce a ship each.
“Approximately two hundred and thirty million,” the alien repeated. “At most. Fabricaria are capable of being brought together to create larger units themselves subsequently capable of constructing larger and/or more complicated vessels. Probably to a point where the numbers of individual craft involved would be reduced by a factor of thirty or forty. No one knows; these are guesstimates. Plus, it is not impossible that slightly greater numbers of the fabricaria than we are assuming have been corrupted or disabled by the pre-existing smatter infection, or by the measures taken to deal with the infection.”
“But, still, up to two hundred and thirty million?”
“Approximately.”
“And all ready at once?”
“Better than ninety-nine point five per cent would be; with numbers on that scale, especially as we are envisaging using such ancient facilities, there are bound to be delays, stragglers, failures and incompletes. Possibly even calamities; apparently fabricaria have been known to blow up or aggressively dismantle themselves. Or — occasionally, sometimes — each other.”
Veppers hadn’t meant to stare at the alien, but he found that even he couldn’t help it. “ billion ships?” he said. “I am hearing you right? That is what you said?”
Bettlescroy looked bashful, almost embarrassed, but nodded. “Assuredly.”
“I’m not missing something here, am I?” Veppers said. “That is a truly astounding, almost farcical number of ships, isn’t it?”
Bettlescroy blinked a few times. “It’s a lot of ships,” it agreed, cautiously.
“Couldn’t you take over the fucking galaxy with a fleet that size?”
The alien’s laughter tinkled. “Gracious, no. With a fleet of that nature you’d be restricted to civilisations no more sophisticated than your own, and, even then, more sophisticated civs would quickly step in to prevent such shenanigans.” The alien smiled, waving one hand at the image of the warship now frozen on the screen. “These are quite simple craft by Level Seven or Eight civilisational standards; we ourselves would need a substantial fleet to cope with the sheer numbers involved, but it would hardly trouble us. A single large Culture GSV could probably cope on its own even if they all came at it together. Standard tactics would be to slightly outpace them and turn them on each other with its Effectors; they’d destroy themselves without the GSV firing a single real shot. Even if they were all magically equipped with hyperspace engines and were capable of performing a surprise 4D shell-surround manoeuvre, you’d bet on a GSV breaking out through them; it’d just brush them aside.”
“But if they split up and went off destroying ships and habitats and attacking primitive planets…” Veppers said.
“Then they’d need to be dealt with one-by-one,” Bettlescroy conceded uncomfortably. “In effect they would be treated as a high-initial-force-status, low-escalation-threat, non-propagating Hegemonising Swarm outbreak. But, well, we ourselves have sub-sub-munitions in cluster missiles capable of successfully engaging craft like this. And such behaviour — unleashing such a pan-destructive force — would be beyond reprehensible; condemnation would be universal. Whoever was responsible for setting such actions in motion would be signing their own Perpetual Incarceration Order.” The little alien shivered convincingly at the very thought.
“So what the hell are we doing even discussing what we are discussing?”
“That is different.” Bettlescroy sounded confident. “Depending on the locations and distributions of the targets involved — processing substrates and cores, presumably remote from high concentration habitation — less than fifty million ships ought to be quite sufficient. They would overwhelm the defences round the substrate sites through sheer numbers, effectively on suicide missions. The action would be strictly precision targeted, mission end self-destruct-limited and any perceived wider threat would be over before anybody realised it had ever existed. Meanwhile, far from meeting with genuine condemnation, a lot of the galactic In-Play would be entirely happy that the war had been settled, if not in this manner then certainly with this result.” The alien paused, looked at Veppers, apparently worried. “Let us be clear: we are talking about aiding the anti-Hell side, are we not?”
“Yes, we are.”
Bettlescroy looked relieved. “Well then.”
Veppers sat back, staring at the image of the ship on the screen. He nodded at it. “How confident of that sim we just saw are you? Will it really all happen so flawlessly?”
“That was not a sim,” Bettlescroy said. “That was a recording. We built that ship a month ago. Then we set micro-drones crawling all through it to check it had been built properly before dismantling it, just to be sure, and then letting the fabricaria reduce it back to semi-processed raw material again, to cover our tracks. The ship was entirely as specified, fully working, and the Disk object which built it is indistinguishable from its quarter of a billion fellow fabricaria.”
“You could have beamed this to me in my own study,” Veppers said, nodding at the screen.
“A little risky,” Bettlescroy said with a smile. It waved one hand, and the ship disappeared to be replaced with what side-readouts by the screen claimed was the real view again, of the fabricary’s interior, webbed with criss-crossing filaments studded with what looked like giant pieces of clockwork. “Also, we rather assumed you’d arrive with analytical equipment to let you take a closer look at all this stuff.” The little alien looked at Veppers as though searching his clothing for signs of paraphernalia. “However, you appear to have come unencumbered by both tech and suspicions. Your trust is gratifying. We thank you.”
Veppers smiled thinly at the alien. “I decided to travel light.” He turned to look at the screen again. “Why did they build all these? Why so many? What was the point?”
“Insurance, possibly,” Bettlescroy said. “Defence. You build the means to build the fleets rather than build the fleets themselves, the means of production being inherently less threatening to one’s neighbours than the means of destruction. It still makes people think twice about tangling with you.” The little alien paused. “Though it has to be said that those inclined to the fuck-up theory of history maintain that the Disk has no such planned purpose and is essentially the result of something between a minor Monopathic Hegemonising Event and an instance of colossal military over-ordering.” It shrugged. “Who is to say?”
They both stared at the dark network of threat and promise arrayed before them.