“At both colonies? How many of him are there?” Richards frowned at me.
I thought for a second. “There’s no overlap in appearances, so there’s only one of him. But I think he’s programmed his busters to patrol and knock down anything they detect. Right now, he owns the high ground.”
General Kiroshi from the Japanese colony had been listening without comment in another video window. Now he spoke up. “We have only small printers, useful for quick manufacturing of minor items, but insufficient for anything like your busters. And it would take months to bootstrap up to real industrial printers.”
Richards nodded. “Same here. Ours are big enough to print more mosquito killers, but that’s—”
“Wait, what?” I sat up straight.
Richards raised an eyebrow. “Super vampire something something mosquitoes. Mack didn’t mention them?”
“Yes, I remember them.” I gave him a sideways glare. “I didn’t realize you were handling manufacturing yourselves.”
“Well, sure, because we needed thousands and Mack couldn’t be bothered. They’re about the size of a baseball, so not really useful for anything but mosquito patrol.”
“But…thousands?” I leaned forward, radiating interest.
Richards’ eyes started to grow rounder as he realized something was up. “Er, yes, most of them are on standby right now, since we seem to have beaten back the scourge. We were going to return them to raw materials eventually. But I think we had three or four thousand running around at one point.”
I let a slow smile grow on my face. “They may be small, but a few hundred hitting a buster at the same time will still have an effect. We may be able to clear the sky around Asgard long enough to get the printers to ground.”
“Can they even fly outside of atmosphere?”
“Not a problem, captain. It’s actually more trouble building them to fly in atmosphere.”
“Excellent,” the captain said. “Let’s get this operation going.”
*
The mosquito killers were too small to carry SCUT comms, so we had to give the AMIs complete enough instructions to handle any situation we could think of. One in each hundred was designated as an observer, ordered to send a video record back to the colony, if possible, or to record and return otherwise.
We sent off two thousand killers in five squads, hoping to catch as many busters as possible by surprise. A couple of killers were programmed to leak radio telemetry, which hopefully would attract some of Medeiros’ devices.
Captain Richards was mirroring everything to Kiroshi and myself. I watched the numerous video windows as the observers delivered status and telemetry.
“Got a blip,” Captain Richards announced.
I’d seen the change in the video window several milliseconds before, of course, but there was no good reason to remind him of my true nature.
The telemetry from the observer indicated two bogeys approaching the group. Per their orders, the killers changed course to intercept. We hoped that Medeiros hadn’t programmed caution into his busters. A bunch of baseball-sized objects hopefully wouldn’t trigger the default danger-avoidance routines.
The busters zeroed in on the noisy killers, seemingly ignoring the cloud of attendants. At the last possible moment, every single mosquito killer altered course to aim directly at the two busters. The change apparently registered with the dim AMI brains, because both busters went into hard turns. Too little, too late, though. The smaller and more maneuverable killers easily kept up with the change in vectors.
Contact wasn’t the dramatic flash we were used to seeing as two heavy devices collided at interplanetary speeds. The killers avoided the large steel ball up front and went for reactor cooling radiators, SURGE emitters, and other obvious signs of technology.
It was like being pelted in a hailstorm. The first couple dozen impacts had no real effect; then dents started to appear, followed by seams popping, then parts flying off. In less than thirty seconds, the busters were drifting aimlessly, and we still had more than a hundred killers left.
“See if you can get them to shepherd the parts into low orbit,” Richards suggested. “If we can rescue the material, great. Otherwise, we push it into atmosphere and deny it to Medeiros.”
I nodded. A good strategy. I wasn’t sure how we’d get that much mass down to ground level—other that the obvious way—but I’d worry about that once we had rescued some drones.
“Two down…” Richards grinned at me, then turned in his video window to face Kiroshi. “General, once we’ve cleared the Asgard environs, I’ll send a squad of mosquito killers your way.”
General Kiroshi nodded. “Thank you. Even if we are not ultimately successful, the process of attrition should keep Medeiros busy.”
“Yes,” I added. “We just need to knock off busters faster than he can make them. And if he’s making busters, he’s not making more printers.”
“We’ll keep at this, Bill.” Captain Richards nodded to me. “I’ll keep you up to date.”
Good enough. I still had a war with the Others to prepare for.
Cities in Fight
Marcus
September 2215
Poseidon
I watched the long-range image, which showed the expanding cloud of debris that used to be my Heaven vessel decoy. I’d been lying about my location for several months now, and the Council seemed to have bought it. Three Council security vessels left the area at far too high an acceleration for the cargo vessels they appeared to be. It would seem the Council could be sneaky as well.
I fired off a report to Riker, cc’d to Bill, and saved a backup to my Fortress of Solitude, circling Eta Cassiopeia B. If the Council ever found that, I’d be thoroughly hooped. Fortunately, that was unlikely. The Council still had fewer than a dozen ships, and the companion star simply hadn’t come up in discussions for a long time.
Of course, the Council had obviously been engaging in covert preparations as well, as evinced by the three souped-up and armed cargo ships. Now that they believed me dead, I hoped that they would openly play their hand.
I returned my presence to my android, which was standing at parade rest. As I moved my arms into a more relaxed position, everyone turned to me.
“Well?” Kal said.
I grinned at him. “Three very non-standard cargo vessels just took out my decoy vessel. It would have attempted evasive tactics consistent with its published specs. I’m sure the security personnel are very proud of themselves.”
“What about the cargo vessels?”
“I’ve got some stealth busters following them right now. But we don’t know what the Council’s total strength is, or where they’ve placed it. I have to assume that my estimate of a dozen ships is incorrect. We’ll have to take a wait-and-see stance until they show their hand. And remember, officially, I’m dead.”
Gina looked up from her phone and cut into the conversation. “They’ve moved on four cities: Lothar, Morbus, Xanator, and Gathol. Attempted to board and take over—you were right, they were trying to avoid damaging the cities.”