She looked at me askance, then shook her head without asking. Apparently Mack already had a reputation.
“Look,” I continued, “If we can get one or more of the printers onto one of your worlds, and get enough raw elements down for it, and do all this without being intercepted by Medeiros, then we can maybe build busters or something.”
“That’s a lot of if’s,” Campbell replied.
“Well, it’ll depend on what Medeiros does next. I’m afraid we’re forced to react to his moves. Any attempt on our part to control the play will result in a missile down our throats.”
“How many missiles does he have?”
“Zero, we thought. So, unknown.”
Ito thought for a moment. “You have a number of mining drones, I understand. Can you use them to ram the Brazilian?”
It was a good try, and I nodded an acknowledgement. “Sorry, President Ito, but that would be like trying to ram a sports car with tractors. In principle, you could do damage, but first you have to catch him.”
Ito sighed and sat back. Again, there was a contemplative silence.
“Look,” I said, “If you think of anything, call, email, or text me. We’ll keep working on it from our end, and I’ll keep you updated.”
“Good enough.” Premier Campbell nodded and ended her connection. A moment later, Ito blinked out as well.
I sighed, sat back, and looked at the ceiling. Like the Others weren’t bad enough.
*
By the time Medeiros got to the nearest Lagrange autofactory location, we’d long since flung the printers and print heads well beyond his ability to detect them. The Bobs had also managed to hide, damage, or collect most of the autofactory automation, leaving nothing valuable except the actual metal ingots. We watched Medeiros from a non-SCUT drone, carefully disguised as flotsam, running on power cells so as not to show up on radiation detectors. It would run down soon, but if Medeiros didn’t pick up on it, we could collect it later. If he did, he would have gained only a regular mining drone, and one without a fusion reactor.
The Brazilian craft buzzed around, inspecting and searching, then settled on a single location and stopped moving. I half-expected some kind of raging and destroying things; but realistically, Medeiros was career military, and presumably well-disciplined. He wouldn’t waste missiles on petulance.
I hoped he would decide on a strategy before the drone gave out. We’d identified three possibilities: one, head for one of the colonies and set up a picket, on the presumption that we had sent at least one printer that way; two, head off and start scanning for printers and print heads on their lonely trajectories; or three, start looking for roamers and mining drones to either destroy or try to take over.
And finally, just when the drone was on its last few watts of stored power, Medeiros accelerated out of the area.
“Do we have an indication of where he’s going?”
I jerked in surprise. Too intent on watching Medeiros, I hadn’t realized that Will was visiting my VR. I turned to him. “I don’t think so. He’s just headed off in what appears to be some random direction. The power cells are about to give out, so we can’t track him by SUDDAR.”
Will muttered an expletive, a clear indication that the situation was getting to him. “We have to assume scenarios one or two, then, since they’re the worst cases. How many printers and heads have we rerouted to a colony?”
“Two of each going to each colony. Well spread out. Of course, he can spot them on approach with a SUDDAR sweep, but he’ll have to be close enough to physically intercept.”
“Then he’ll have to intercept without destroying them. Destruction is acceptable, from our point of view.”
I nodded. “This is going to be a long, drawn-out battle, Will.”
*
Garfield and I were sitting, drinking coffee, taking one of our increasingly rare breaks, when Guppy popped in.
[Printer convoy en route to Asgard has been hit with a SUDDAR sweep.]
Garfield and I looked at each other. “Crap”, he said. “That means he went for option one.”
“I guess it makes sense,” I replied. “For option two, he’d be scanning an increasingly large volume of space. This way, we are essentially coming to him.”
I turned to Guppy. “Were you able to triangulate?”
[Negative. Sweep was short range.]
“Smart,” Garfield said. “He doesn’t announce himself unless he makes contact, and if he does, he’s right on top of us.”
“Which means he’s right on top of us.” I smacked my forehead.
“Doesn’t matter, anyway. I checked, and this particular group has no SCUT. They’ll have to operate on standing orders.”
[Convoy has been disabled. Video feed cut off.]
Garfield and I exchanged a look. Had Medeiros simply blown up the convoy? Was his plan to deny us the printers?
Wordlessly, I called up the truncated video. Garfield watched the three-second sequence.
“Well, hell,” I said, when we were done. “It appears Medeiros can learn.”
“Mmm, hmm. He’s building busters. Or he built busters. Wait, when did he build busters?” Garfield frowned and continued, “If this is the Alpha Centauri Medeiros, then his first exposure to us was the day we razed their installation. He would have had to build busters after that. There was no indication that the Brazilians were building kinetic weapons before that point.”
I gave him a sickly grin. “Sorry, buddy, I guess you missed the conversation after the attack. We figure he has at least one printer of his own. So he learned from Alpha Centauri.”
“So why’s he doing what he’s doing?”
“Two-pronged strategy. Attempt to gather as many printers as he can, while denying them to us. Geometric progression means a small advantage up front can turn into an insurmountable lead, eventually.” I stared into space for a few milliseconds. “We have to take him out, now. If he gets ahead of us, the colonists are as good as dead.”
Garfield closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. “And we put them there.”
*
Captain Richards from the Asgard colony pressed his lips together and said nothing. He didn’t have to. On top of everything the colonists were dealing with, they now had Medeiros to worry about.
“Are you certain that he will attack the colony?”
“Not certain, captain. But he’s made it pretty clear on previous encounters that he is utterly loyal to Brazil, considers us to be at war, and isn’t interested in discussions. I’m also not entirely sure he’s sane at this point.” I looked over at Garfield, who rolled his eyes dramatically. “I’d hate to try communicating with him, only to find that we’d attracted his attention to the colonies.”
Richards nodded, and sat back with a huff. “And we have nothing.”
“Not that we’ve been able to find. We could ask Mack, if we could get him onto a cradle, but right now we can’t risk trying to fly his matrix in. We’re getting occasional glimpses of Medeiros, and he does his best to destroy anything he detects.”