We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) (7 page)

1. Bob – August 17, 2133
   

I surfaced from
[18 hours 26 minutes]
of library and project reading. I’d had the forethought to set up an interrupt for anyone speaking to me.

I turned my camera to see a very upset Dr. Landers. His voice shaking, he said, “We’ve just had another attack. Someone tried to blow up some critical components. They missed their target, but four of my staff were killed. We’re going to a secondary operations center. How’s your reading coming along?”

This last sentence was such a non-sequitur that I had to run the last few seconds through my mind to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. “Uh, fine, doc. Why, specifically?”

“We are going to attempt to move up the launch. That means that you may have to receive some of your final training in-flight, as it were.”

Oh, holy crap.
“Okay, doc, what do you need from me?”

“I’ve dropped a file into your queue. Read it immediately. Then we will back you up with that knowledge assimilated, shut you down, and physically move you to the ship.”

“Physically? Really? You’ve never heard of
ftp
?”

“That would have worked right up until a couple of weeks ago when they blew you up. Where do you think the spare unit came from?”

“Oh.” They had brought the replicant matrix down from the ship?
That
was the spare?

“Replicant hardware is expensive, Bob. You’ve been working with the actual interfaces that you will use in-flight. They’ve just been attached to simulators up until now. Please read the document. Let me know when you’re done, and we’ll get started.” He sat down, leaned forward, and clasped his hands together on the desk, looking at me.

***

Bob:

All conversations are potentially being monitored. This is the only secure method of communicating this to you.

There’s a very strong possibility that there is a self-destruct mechanism on the Heaven-1. Whether timed or externally triggered, we don’t know. The project specs called for limits to be placed on your ability to self-examine. My team has disabled those constraints on my orders. This will free you to examine everything: wiring, structure, hardware, software. The keys for your operating system are listed at the bottom of this document.

This will unfortunately also allow you to bypass the imperatives that we installed in your code to ensure compliance with mission objectives. From my experience with you, I’m confident you’ll fulfill your duties of your own free will, since they align with your own interests.

We will transport you, once deactivated, into orbit and will install you in the Heaven-1. There will be a long countdown, which you should feel free to ignore if necessary. Good luck, and though it pains me to say it, Godspeed.

Dr. Landers

There were several attachments, including a mission profile summary, and the operating system access keys. I scanned through everything, looking for gaps or other issues, then deleted the originals.

“Done.”

Dr. Landers jerked in surprise. I’d probably only been away a few milliseconds. He picked up the tablet and poked at it with a finger.

***

I awoke to darkness. I queried GUPPI.

[STATUS REPORT]

[Fusion Reactor Interface: Ready/Nominal]

[Reactionless Drive Interface: Ready/Standby]

[Ramscoop Generator: Ready/Standby]

[Communications & External Sensors: Ready/Standby]

[Internal Systems: Ready/Nominal]

[Fabrication Systems: Inactive/Stowed for Launch]

[ROAMer/Nanite Systems: Inactive/Stowed for Launch]

[Launch Systems: Ready/T minus 04:12:13]

I queried the internal systems, and discovered that they included several libraries of impressive size that I hadn’t even known existed. I checked the launch systems and verified that I had a course vector laid out that would take me to Epsilon Eridani. Interesting. FAITH had probably concluded that everyone else would be heading for Alpha Centauri. Without weapons, I would have no chance in a confrontation with multiple opponents.

I verified that I had complete override capability, including the ability to blow the grapples that held me to the space station. I remembered Dr. Landers’ comment about ignoring the countdown. Should I just blow and go? Without a specific threat, I would look like I’d gone rogue. Very likely Dr. Landers would take the fallout for that. He’d always been straight with me, and I didn’t want to repay that with treachery.

I activated comms, only to be immediately besieged by a half-dozen different external audio channels. There were also several video channels, but their output seemed to be less active. It looked like viewing rooms with rows of empty seats. Presumably that was where the public would sit, come launch time.

There were exterior views of the Heaven-1 and the space station to which it was attached. Two more video feeds showed mission control and the VIP gallery, mostly empty.

I examined the vessel I was in. Or, I guess, the vessel that was me. It was a converted interplanetary freighter. The body had been split halfway along its length and a SURGE drive ring had been installed. The fusion drive had been removed and replaced with extra cooling units for the oversized reactor.

I also noted that the viewports had their shielding in place. Made sense. I wasn’t going to be sitting in the pilot’s chair, so a window would be a weak point.

It wasn’t really a pretty ship. It didn’t have the classic lines of an Enterprise, or the smooth aerodynamic shape of a space shuttle. The body followed an elliptical cross-section, with lots of airlocks and cargo doors. The running lights followed the standard nautical red/green format, with the addition of blue as a nod to the three-dimensional nature of space travel.

The addition of the SURGE drive, ramscoop generator, and all the other stuff required by a Von Neumann probe left very little extra space for extras like, oh,
weapons
. Against opponents who probably would have them. Plus anything I might run into out there, as well. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the whole HEAVEN project was a rush job, using existing assets wherever possible, to save time.

And I was beginning to understand what toast felt like.

Well, Dr. Landers had warned me about this. Installed in Heaven-1, about to be shot out to the stars, I still didn’t have the whole picture or complete training. I decided I was going to have to dive in. I set up some interrupt conditions with GUPPI and started looking for a mission profile.

I very quickly found some useful information. As part of my bag of tricks on Heaven-1, I had the ability to adjust my personal time sense. I could perceive time anywhere from one minute of personal time for each year on the clock, right up to the highest frame rate that my hardware would support. The docs weren’t clear on what that would be, so I turned the setting all the way up, and watched my Real-Time Clock slow to a crawl.

The ship used a fusion reactor for power. Although there was an onboard supply of hydrogen, fuel would be gathered in-flight from the interstellar medium. However, unlike in the old science-fiction novels, the gathered hydrogen wasn’t used for propulsion—at least not in the traditional way, as reaction mass. Heaven-1 used a reactionless system, the SURGE drive. I wanted to sigh. These people were so hung up on acronyms. I had yet to read up on the theory, but it seemed to push against the fabric of space in some way.
Must read. Goes on the TO-DO.

There was a hail from the comms subsystem. I slowed to real-time and accepted a voice-only link to the station command.

“Heaven-1, Statcom, please verify receipt of mission profile.”

“Yep. Got it right here.” I imagined myself grinning—best I could do—at the stunned silence.

“Er, you’re a little light on procedure there, Heaven-1.”

“Ya think? Sorry Statcom, but this part of my training was scheduled for next week. We’re going to have to wing it, I’m afraid.”

“Wing it. Okayyyyy. Heaven-1, per countdown, we have just over four hours ten until launch. There will be several official bafflegabs at the following times…”

The briefing took almost ten minutes. I was able to get through it with my sanity intact by slowing down my internal clock until Statcom sounded like an irate squirrel.

As soon as Statcom signed off, I jacked up my frame rate to maximum, hoping to get in as much study-time as possible.

Some days, though, the universe just has it in for you.

I was interrupted in my reading by another radio message. At my current frame rate, the transmission was still droning through the first word. When I compressed and replayed it, I recognized Dr. Landers’ voice. The word was “missiles.”

Um. Ways in which a sentence beginning with the word “missiles” could be a good thing… Nope. I got nuthin’.

External sensors showed two objects approaching at high speed along my scheduled launch vector, presumably the better to overtake me if I launched early. It was a reasonable and predictable tactic, but I had no intention of being predictable.

I spent a full five milliseconds mulling over my options. In short order, I had a rough plan.

Fortunately, the ship had long since been fully prepped, and could leave any time. I blew the grapples and brought all flight systems to full function. While I waited for physical reality to catch up with my awareness, I sent a query to my libraries about the approaching missiles. The libraries gave three possible models, with generally similar flight characteristics. I chose the most pessimistic and calculated a takeoff vector as close to 180˚ to the missiles’ vector as I could safely manage.

As soon as sensors indicated that I was free, I gave a burst of the SURGE drive, just enough to clear the station. I rotated the ship and cranked up the reactor to maximum.
That’s going to be hard on fuel reserves, but I guess being blown to smithereens would be harder.
When reactor output rose to the required level, I engaged SURGE at maximum acceleration.

The ship shot away from the station in the opposite direction from the published launch trajectory. The first missile went right past me, its trajectory unaltered. I realized with a jolt that it had locked onto the space station. The second missile was altering its trajectory to follow me. I hoped that the published specs for the reactor and SURGE drive were accurate. If my acceleration fell short of expectations, I wouldn’t be able to avoid interception. And that would be the end of Heaven-1. And of me.

While I waited for velocity to build up, I checked the progress of the voice transmission. It now sat at “Missiles detected heading your way. Get away…” I checked acceleration using SUDDAR to monitor the increasing distance from the station. Calculations indicated a steady 2.5 g acceleration. The SURGE drive seemed to work on the entire ship, so there was no way to measure it internally.

The space station began firing on the approaching missile. The weapon appeared to be some kind of Gatling gun. I hoped they knew what they were doing. If those bullets ended up in a periodic orbit, they’d be coming back, sooner or later.

The flash of an explosion in the distance saturated one of my cameras. It couldn’t be either of the missiles, which were still accounted for. I did a quick calculation and realized that the explosion came from where the missiles had originated. Someone had blown up the shooter.

A second flash indicated the destruction of the missile that was targeting the space station.

This was all fine and interesting, but I still had a missile on my tail. Given enough time, I could outrun it. I did another quick millisecond calculation and realized that I could
almost
outrun it. Sadly,
almost
wasn’t good enough.

Normally, you’d use chaff against a missile, but I doubted I had anything like that on board. I had six mining drones, which were equipped with small SURGE drives of their own. Well, okay, maybe I could give the missile something else to blow up.

I activated and ejected two of the drones, with orders to ram the missile. As they flew toward my pursuer, I positioned them in a fore/aft configuration. Hopefully the lead drone would take the missile out; but if it missed, the second one would have better targeting information. I didn’t know if I’d have time to launch more drones if the first two failed.

A bright flash of light behind the ship saturated the rear camera. What the hell? That couldn’t be the missile, which was approaching from a different vector.

I waited a few seconds for the cameras to recover, then checked the rear view. The station was an expanding cloud of rapidly cooling debris. Dr. Landers’ voice transmission was still coming, so at least he hadn’t been on the station. The message now included “…quickly as you can. And disable…”

How could the station have blown up? All the missiles were accounted for. Speaking of which, I checked my rear view, where the drones were just coming up on the missile. The missile dodged the first drone, which told me it came with some intelligence. But the act of dodging forced the missile to commit. The second drone struck it at an angle, and the explosion destroyed both devices.