We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) (30 page)
Read We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) Online
Authors: Dennis E. Taylor
I brought my two drones in close, and they did the most intense and high-precision close-in scans of which they were capable. That would produce almost a molecular-level map of the ants. I watched in fascination as the ants both powered up and produced little cutters from their front appendages. Fortunately they couldn’t move, so all they did was drill a couple of holes in the plastic. Good to know.
I detonated the roamer–can’t be too careful–and retired to my treehouse to ruminate.
***
I had completed my survey. There was no sign of a civilization on this planet, so the wreck was definitely alien. The aliens had come in, presumably killed all life with some kind of radiation weapon, mined the star system, collected the carcasses, then left. There were a lot of assumptions in there, but it fit the evidence.
The scan of the ants had shown some interesting technology. I was already setting up simulations to test some of it.
The scans of the hulk didn’t have any huge surprises. It appeared to be run by an A.I. or AMI of some kind. It had a fusion reactor. It had a SURGE drive. It had a SUDDAR transmitter. However, the SUDDAR unit seemed designed to transmit power to a tuned receiver as well as using the SUDDAR as radar. I’d taken detailed scans of that for further study.
Maybe the aliens had come and rescued the crew and left the hulk. I doubted that. There didn’t really seem to be any accommodation for anything biological. It was probable that the ship was completely A.I. Was this civilization biological at all? The fact that they’d collected all the carcasses hinted at an answer, and not one that I liked at all. I could only think of one reason to bother collecting all that protein.
And was this a one-time event? Or were they raiding systems on an ongoing basis? If so, which way were they heading? I certainly wouldn’t want this fate to befall the Solar System, even if there
weren’t
any humans left. The dolphins and chimps still deserved their chance.
I felt a pang of disappointment as visions of meeting Vulcans or Asgardians evaporated. This was more like an Alien scenario. As first contact situations went, this one sucked.
Like it or not, I had to bring the other Bobs into this. Which brought up another problem. At this distance, I couldn’t send a message back to Bill. I would need the space station for a transmission, and I would need the raw materials in order to build one. The ore contained in the hulk, even adding in the hulk itself, wasn’t enough.
I would have to leave.
The big day had arrived. The colony ships had been checked out end to end, they’d been inspected by the USE delegation, and they’d done a shakedown cruise to Jupiter and back. Now they were parked in low Earth orbit, waiting for their occupants.
Homer was doing a kind of war dance around my captain’s chair, and I was forcibly reminded of my lack of rhythm. The VR upgrades from Bill meant that we Bobs could interact physically instead of just talking to each other through video windows. It had its downsides.
I turned my attention back to the status vids, which showed people lining up for the ground-to-orbit shuttles. Each shuttle could handle five hundred people, packed in like rush-hour commuters.
I remembered my early days as a working stiff, taking the seabus across the harbor twice a day. Hard plastic benches, barely wider than one’s shoulders, arranged in back-to-back rows so you spent the entire trip eye to eye with a total stranger. And that irritating recorded lecture, every single trip, telling you how to use the life jackets. Fun times.
The shuttles carried more people, and the commute to the ship would take a little longer than fifteen minutes, but it would be the same prosaic, boring ride. At the end of it, the passengers would be hustled along to stasis pods, given a sedative, then hooked up and locked into a box the size of a coffin. Hopefully to wake up in less than four years ship’s time, at a new home.
That was the plan, anyway.
Ten shuttles made a total of forty trips to move the USE colonists to the ships. A percentage of the contents of the Svalbard Vaults were loaded onto each colony ship, and the shuttles were docked in the cargo holds.
Then came the inevitable ceremony. Everyone had to make a speech. You’d expect the USE bigwigs to make a speech, but why did the groups from the other side of the planet feel the need? By the time we were half-way through, I had turned off my proprioception emulation to avoid falling over, virtually asleep. I reanimated sandbox Bob to take over the video and try to look attentive.
Eventually, though, they were done. Howard, our newest Bob, was making the flight with them, acting as escort. And, just between Howard and me, to make sure that they behaved at the other end. I hoped that was just excessive paranoia on my part, but I’d loaded Howard’s cargo hold with a few of Bill’s recent inventions, just in case.
The colony ships had a maximum sustained acceleration of 1 g, so the trip would take slightly longer than it would have for a version 1 Bob. They would be on the road for a little over eighteen years. About six years would pass on-board, but no time at all for the colonists in their stasis pods.
The ships were crewed by a couple of Riker clones and a crap-ton of roamers. No need for humans to risk their DNA during the voyage. I had placed the replicant matrices in the ships as one of the final tasks, thereby giving no one time to pull anything underhanded. There had been no hacking attempts, so possibly whoever it was had given up.
The third ship, designated for the Spits and the FAITH enclave, would be leaving in four months. They would establish the first settlement on whichever planet the USE contingent didn’t pick. The first settlement’s job would be to establish sufficient infrastructure for future groups to be able to settle in without undue hardship. It was the price of being first.
Valter was philosophical about that. “Even second prize is still a magnificent gift,” he said in his speech.
Three more vessels were already under construction. Between new builds and returning colony ships, we hoped to maintain a steady stream of exodus from Terra, as long as there were people who wanted to leave. Meanwhile, the resources left behind and the kudzu production would continue to feed an ever-shrinking populace for a long time to come.
I just hoped we’d find more colonizable worlds before people started shooting at each other again.
***
I found myself tearing up just a little as I watched the image in the holotank, which showed the colony ships passing the orbit of Mars. After more than a decade of work, of butting heads with, ahem, a bunch of buttheads, we had actually launched. It was an emotional moment. Even Homer was silent.
Finally, with a groan, I stood up and stretched. “Back to the salt mines.”
Homer grinned at me and pulled up a list. “Stuff for today…”
I held an air-horn over my head and pressed the button. A loud
blaaaat
filled the room. All conversation ceased, as every head turned towards me.
“Hey, everyone. Welcome to the first Bob-moot. I’ve built a matrix here at the Skunk Works that is more than big enough to handle everyone in the bobiverse in VR.”
“Bobiverse? Really?” Garfield gave me the stink-eye.
I laughed. “Just thought of it. I think it’s pretty good, actually.”
“Bobiverse. BobNet. This galaxy may not be big enough for our ego.” Garfield tried his best to look disapproving, but it’s hard to fool yourselves.
I looked around at my audience. Not a huge crowd at this point. I had Riker, Homer, and the other clones from Sol; Bart and his clones in Alpha Centauri; and the Bobs on the way to Omicron
2
Eridani with the colonists. That last group would be out of touch in another month or so, when their tau got too high for VR interfacing. Hopefully by then, a few other Bobs would have picked up the SCUT plans and linked in.
Homer cupped his hands around his mouth and gave me a loud
boo
.
I looked around the group. “Okay, guys. I’m hoping we can make this a regular thing. It helps to keep everyone up to date.”
“Plus it’ll give you an excuse to inflict baseball on us!” Bart yelled.
“I plead the fifth.” I smiled at everyone. “Meanwhile, we have beer. And coffee. And a pub to sit in. Shall we?”
We all popped over to the pub VR and settled into chairs. Time to celebrate.
Do not engage an enemy more powerful than you. And if it is unavoidable and you do have to engage, then make sure you engage it on your terms, not on your enemy’s terms.
… Sun Tzu,
Art of War
We slowed down to sub-relativistic speeds well short of 82 Eridani. We wanted plenty of time to scope out the situation, without alerting Medeiros to our presence.
Bill had made good on his promise to avenge Milo. Eight version-3 Bobs, including myself, were poised outside the system, just itching to give Medeiros a piece of our collective mind. But Medeiros had had thirty-five years now to establish himself. None of us thought we’d be able to simply waltz in and whup his butt like back at Epsilon Eridani or Alpha Centauri.
And because we have always been a cautious person, reconnaissance was going to be a major priority. We had two scout probes each, with heavily shielded reactors, three-light-hour-range SUDDARs, and SCUD communications. And booby traps. We didn’t want Medeiros getting hold of any of that tech.
And we had a new weapon in reserve, courtesy of Bill’s Skunk Works.
We deliberately came in from stellar north, at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic. While we didn’t expect Medeiros to be a “two-dimensional thinker”—he was after all, military—we did expect his assets to be mostly along the ecliptic. Our probes should be able to fall through that plane before he could react.
We launched the scouts across a broad front, to get the best overall scan of the system. With no radio emissions and a heavily shielded reactor, there was a good chance most of them would go right through undetected. However, there was no way we were going to get away clean. Our hope was that if Medeiros detected only one or two probes, he would conclude that there was only one Bob out here.
I sent out a meeting invitation to the rest of the squad. Within milliseconds, seven Bobs popped into my VR.
I looked around the table. “Strategy session, boys.”
Hannibal accepted a coffee from Jeeves as he popped up a system schematic. “We will watch for anything hiding behind moons or planets. Not falling for that trick twice. We’ve got a good idea of where things are, thanks to Milo’s preliminary report. We’ll—”
Abruptly, Hannibal disappeared from the VR. We looked at each other in shock, then as one we abandoned our VRs and went into frame-jack.
“Who’s physically closest to Hannibal?” I posed the question in reflex, although I was already checking our deployment diagram. Hannibal was at the end of the line of Bobs, with Tom next to him. “Tom, got a SUDDAR reading?”
Tom’s reponse came back after a millisecond. “I have a very diffuse SUDDAR reading, but no Hannibal. Hold on—”
We waited for an eternal four milliseconds for Tom to continue. “—The diffuse area is spreading and thinning. I’m guessing an explosion of some kind. Everyone might want to do a full sweep, and hang the surprise factor.”
I decided that was a good idea, and I cranked my SUDDAR up to full power, going for a three-light-hour full-spherical ping. The response was negative, except for a vagueness—like a shadow seen out of the corner of your eye—in the direction of the system. I refocused and sent a tight-beam ping in that direction.
Paydirt. “
Something
is headed our way, guys, at very high speed. And it’s cloaked, or shielded, or something, to the point that I could only see it when I was pinging straight at it.”
Grunts from a few of the others acknowledged the information.
“I’ve got one, too,” Barney reported.
“Same,” from Tom.
It took a few milliseconds to compare notes, and we realized that three unidentified objects were heading our way, and still accelerating. We launched three of our regular probes directly at them, to try to get a visual.
“They’re dodging,” Fred said. “I think they’re expecting the probe to try to ram.”
“Well, not a bad idea if we can manage it,” I responded, “but first we want telemetry.”
It took a little over fifteen minutes, at the combined velocities of the probes and the approaching objects, for them to pass each other. The incoming bogey was still dodging back and forth. The probes were only able to get a frame or two of poor images as they passed by, but they managed full SUDDAR scans.
As the results popped up over our desks, courtesy of SCUT instantaneous communications, there were gasps.
“Nuclear freaking bombs. He’s built fission weapons.”
“With shielded reactors and very, very large SURGE drives,” Fred added.
“That jibes with the readings I’ve been getting. I think Hannibal is just a radioactive cloud, now,” Tom said. “We are screwed.”
“My ass,” I retorted. “How long do we have until they’re close enough to be able to take us out? Tom, do you have a feel for the megatonnage?”
There was a moment of silence, before Tom popped up a sensor readout in our VRs. Because we were still in frame-jack, it wasn’t even paper—just a raw window with a data listing. “Here’s the minmax analysis. We’ve got four minutes—an eternity. No chance to dodge, given their speed and spread. We don’t have time to get outside the blast radii.”
“So,” Kyle said. “Medeiros seems to have set this up well. He probably thinks he’s outflanked us, but good.”
I smiled at Kyle’s dry delivery. “Mmm-hmm. Okay, let’s melt them down. Two Bobs per bomb, and I’ll add a follow-up shot if needed. Everyone acknowledge when charged.”
We were about to roll out
our
secret weapon. Bill had taken the light-saber tech, which was essentially a high-temperature ionized plasma in a magnetic bottle, and used it to build something new. He found a way to project the plasma, and the magnetic field with it, like a torpedo. The result was a million-degree, highly-charged spear that splashed against whatever it ran into and generally melted right through it, while delivering a very localized EMP. The weapon had been tested extensively at Epsilon Eridani, but this would be the first real-world use.
When everyone indicated a full charge, I said, “Fire.”
Six plasma spikes shot out at close to light-speed. One of the biggest advantages to this weapon was that it was invisible to SUDDAR, since there was very little actual mass involved. And any other form of detection was limited by light-speed. The plasma spikes couldn’t follow a dodging target, but the target wouldn’t know they were coming until they arrived.
It took only moments for the spikes to cross the distance, and all three shadows disappeared. Full-on SUDDAR pings, at the narrowest and most intense setting, detected nothing but small fragmentary blips.
Ned spoke for all of us. “Well, that was unsettling.”
Fred added, “We were barely able to detect those things at all, and even that only because of Bill’s SUDDAR improvements. Did Medeiros invent some kind of SUDDAR cloaking?”
“I doubt it,” I answered. “He never struck us as anything but career military. I think it’s more likely that the Brazilian Empire had this tech developed back on Earth. They may have uploaded
all
their top-secret military tech to him before sending him out. That would explain the nukes, too.”
“So this might not be the last surprise.”
A round of curses and grunts answered that statement.
There was silence for a few moments before Ned spoke up again. “I guess we need to have another strategy session.”
***
“Cloaking?” Bill’s face was a study in surprised interest.
“Yup. That’s the only explanation we can come up with.” I replayed the entire sequence for him in a window, including popups of the sensor readings of the bombs.
“Well, crap. See if you can grab a sample or something. Meanwhile, I’ll work on it from this end. I guess the element of surprise is gone, though.” Bill gave me an informal salute and disappeared.
Great. Eight of us—no, seven, now—against an unknown number and disposition of Medeiri. I did
not
like the odds.
“Meeting!” I called out.
Six other Bobs popped into my VR.
“Bill didn’t have much for us. He pointed out, quite correctly, that if we leave now with the intention of coming back, Medeiros will be even
more
prepared for us. He suggests we get our backups up to date and dive in.”
“Easy for him to say.” That was from Elmer, who had never been particularly enthusiastic about this venture. I think maybe quantum differences had left him a little light in the spine department. I was reminded of Bill Paxton’s character in
Aliens.
I glared at Elmer for a second, then continued. “We have the plasma spikes, and we have the busters, with the new controlled fusion detonation. It’s not a lot. Best we can do, I think, is raise some hell before he takes us out. Make sure your dead-mans are in order, do a differential, and kiss your asses goodbye. We’re going in.”
With that, the Bobs disappeared from my VR, seven ships turned toward the center of the system, and we began to accelerate in at 10 g.
***
The first part of our dive into the inner system was relatively easy. Medeiros was still working on the assumption that we all had the same SUDDAR, and that he could see anything we launched at him. By the time we’d destroyed a half-dozen of his flying bombs, I guess he finally got the memo.
SUDDAR area pings showed everything with a SURGE drive scattering in all directions. At the same time, over a hundred fusion sources lit up the area and started to move. Decoys, I guess. Effective, too. We had no way to know which ones were real targets.
“Meeting!”
As soon as the other Bobs showed up, I started. “Okay, some of these fusions sources are decoys. Probably most. But some will be Medeiri, and some will be weapons. And there will be cloaked bombs as well. Suggestions?”
Elmer spoke up first, which surprised me.
“The bombs need to be within a certain distance to do any harm. If we move as a unit and assign certain Bobs to watching for the cloaked devices, we should be able to prevent any from getting too close.”
“And,” Fred cut in, “if we destroy any decoys that get within that range as well, we might be okay.”
“Certainly better than splitting up,” I conceded. “But the plasma spikes are only useful until Medeiros figures it out and starts jinking around. Plus, recharging the spike cannons takes time. They aren’t like Hollywood six-shooters.”
“Then we need to do as much damage as possible before he figures it out,” Tom said decisively. “Let’s just start blasting. Maybe
no
plan will throw him off a bit.”
That was just stupid enough to be brilliant. We looked at each other wordlessly, nodded, and got to work.
It became a game of cat and mouse. Medeiros knew that we had something that could destroy his units without warning. He may have thought it was a cloaked missile. He reacted by scattering his units and using the decoys to distract us. We destroyed many units, but had no idea if we were destroying anything useful.
Finally came the moment we’d been dreading. One of Medeiros’s units dodged several plasma spikes and managed to get within detonation range. Barely. The resulting EMP and blast of radiation played hell with internal systems for a few moments. Fortunately the version-3 Heavens had multiple redundancies. Five of us were able to continue. The other two must have lost too much functionality. Their dead-mans activated and they disappeared in reactor overload. I hoped Fred and Jackson’s backups were recent and complete.
But Medeiros must have twigged to the fact that our weapon didn’t chase its target. In the time that it took him to send out commands at light-speed, every Medeiros-controlled unit in the system was bearing down on us, jinking like crazy.
“Plan B, guys. Split up and do as much damage as possible.”
We headed off in random directions, jinking as well.
While we ran, I did an analysis from the recorded telemetry of Medeiros’s change in tactics. His units were given orders via radio. The ones closest to Medeiros would have started the new tactic first, followed by units farther away as the signal spread from the center. The center, of course, was Medeiros.
It took about forty milliseconds to determine where he must be, to within a few thousand km. That was too large an area for random plasma spike shots, but not too large for intelligent busters on a mission. I transmitted the coordinates to the other Bobs, and we simultaneously launched every buster we had. At the same time, we all activated SUDDAR jamming at maximum intensity. Everyone in the system was now blind, except for traditional visual and radar. The trick would be to keep it going until—
Hector and Tom’s SCUT signals cut off without warning. I felt a pang of sorrow. They’d almost certainly been caught by a nuke. That left three of us, plus whatever busters were still going. I kept spiking fusion sources as best I could. The AMI pilots tended to be a little predictable. Many of them settled into a pattern of dodges that I could predict after several iterations.
Then Barney dropped out. That left just Elmer and me. I had to give him credit. Now that things had hit the fan, he was no longer whining about the danger. I mentally upgraded him to Michael Biehn.
