*
The drones approached the Brazilian ship, which was still drifting. We’d decided this was important enough to sacrifice all of Asgard’s roamers, save two for rebuilding. This would be almost like a beach assault. Anything short of one hundred percent casualties would be acceptable.
The two drones came in as quickly as their drives could manage, braking with no leeway to arrive at rest just outside the rent in the enemy vessel. Cargo doors popped open and eight roamers, including two of the big industrial-size units, stormed across the gap. The squad headed straight for the location of the replicant matrix—we knew the layout from Bob-1’s first encounter with Medeiros, way back in Epsilon Eridani.
The roamers encountered immediate resistance, from the onboard roamers. The battle was short and furious—Medeiros was fighting for his life, now. The standard roamers worked to protect the big units, as those would be needed for moving the matrix. Plasma cutters flashed, and roamer parts floated around the enclosed space.
The battle tilted in our direction once we realized that we could still use the big units. Any time an enemy roamer got too close, an industrial unit lashed out with a leg. If the impact didn’t disarticulate the victim outright, being bounced off a wall took it out of the fight for a few moments.
Soon, we were down to one or two defenders—depending on how you counted body parts. Then the last roamer was dispatched, and—
“What the hell?” I exclaimed as all video feeds disappeared.
Garfield poked at consoles. “The cargo drones are gone, too. They’ve—wait a moment, that’s not true. I’m still getting telemetry from number 2. I’ll try to activate a camera.”
Richards jerked in surprise in his video window as the event registered at the human timescale. “What happened?”
“Looks like Medeiros fell on his sword rather than be captured,” Garfield said. He popped up a video window. “This is what the second drone is showing. It’s damaged, by the way. Won’t be flying back on its own.”
The window showed the Brazilian vessel, or what was left of it. Pieces of spaceship spun and caught the sunlight as they receded. The ship was cut in two, and the two halves had been opened like flowers.
“He knew,” I said. “He knew he was finished. I don’t know if he thought he was taking the victory away from us, or thought we’d capture him and extract secrets.” I shook my head. “I will never understand Medeiros. I really hope this is the last time I have to deal with him.”
“That’s a little worrying, though,” Garfield commented. “I remember him being a bit on the pompous side, at the first meeting with Bob-1. This time around he never said a word. Not even an exit monologue. I wonder what secrets he might feel the need to take to the grave.”
An excellent question, and the expression on Richards’ and Kiroshi’s faces showed the same concern that I felt.
*
“Never even saw him coming,” Mack said. He sat in my VR, holding a coffee, feet up on a footstool. “I remember talking to you about draining the swamps on Takama, and the next thing I know, I’m back in my default VR.”
“Yeah, he hit you square on.” I raised my coffee. “You can go over the videos at your leisure, but you missed some interesting times.”
“Which aren’t over, I’m afraid.” Mack looked at his coffee, a frown forming. “We have to assume Medeiros is still out there, in one form or another. We’ll have to set up defenses, especially here and in Alpha Centauri.”
“That’s right, buddy. The colonies are okay with you diverting all printers to defensive items until you have a minimum level of ordnance.”
“Yep. Busters, then a new vessel, then some clones, then more printers... It’ll be a while before I’m able to support the colonies directly.”
“They’ll do what they can with groundside printers, Mack. Might be a good idea for them to have at least a small autofactory on each planet, just on principle.”
Mack nodded, staring into space. “Just when we think we’ve got things figured out, the universe throws another curve.”
I grinned at him. “Well, that’s life.”
Cleanup
Marcus
September 2215
Poseidon
The loss of their main fleet was a blow to the Council, but not a fatal one, as it turned out. Maybe I’d been underestimating the Council, or maybe they had someone who was a terrific strategist. Whatever the reason, the Council kept coming up with surprises.
The first surprise, although I’d suspected as much, was that they didn’t have just the dozen cargo ships. Our first inkling of that came the day after our takeover of strategic ‘ground’ assets.
“We’ve got several cities under attack!” Gina announced, sitting up abruptly.
Kal opened one eye—he was lying on a blanket, getting some sun—and said, “With what?”
“See for yourselves.” Gina held her tablet up. On it was shown a grainy, obviously blown-up image of a vessel. It appeared to my eye to be a variation on a version-3 Heaven vessel.
“Interesting. Looks like they’ve been reading BobNet,” I said. “I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me. I wouldn’t normally think of it as strategic information.”
“And yet the improvements the Bobs have been making in the Heaven design have been primarily for military purposes,” Kal responded.
“Plus,” Denu added, “if they’ve been perusing BobNet, wouldn’t they have found out about the cloaking?”
I raised an eyebrow at Denu, then exited the android and frame-jacked. A quick scan of recent BobNet blogs reassured me on that front.
Returning to normal time, and to the android, I responded, “There’s nothing but general descriptions, Denu. With all the crap happening, Bill’s just been transmitting plans directly to other Bobs. A bit of serendipity, there.” I didn’t add that I’d just sent off a description of this situation to Bill. Hopefully, he would scan the blogs for any other potentially damaging information and remove it. Great. We’d just re-invented military secrecy.
Gina, who had continued monitoring the situation, announced, “Aanthor, Kaol, and Ptarth are fending off missiles. It looks like whoever is still fighting has decided to go for a scorched earth policy. They’re not even trying to board, just trying to knock the cities out of the sky.” She looked over at me.
I nodded. Reluctant as I was to get directly involved, in this case, hundreds of lives were at stake. I ordered several squads of busters down from their hiding place on Pelias, the inner moon.
“It’ll take a few minutes for them to get there,” I said to Gina. “Can you tell the cities that help is coming?”
Gina nodded and typed furiously for a few moments. “Done.”