I waved a hand and killed the collage. In frustration, I cancelled the room VR and activated my Deltan village VR. Marvin jerked in surprise, and Spike leaped up and fled. I felt a moment’s guilt for not warning him.
Marvin gave me the Spock eyebrow, and I answered with an apologetic grimace, then turned and started walking through the village. The recording was incredibly detailed, but still just a recording—no interaction was possible. I wished for the millionth time that I could interact with the Deltans through something a little more immediate than a floating mechanical football.
Finally, I turned back to Marvin, who had refused to give up his La-Z-Boy. He was reclining, drinking a coffee, right in the middle of a group of Deltans who were skinning a pigoid. I laughed and he grinned back.
“Okay, Marvin. Let’s get going on that search. Guppy?”
Guppy popped into existence. [You rang?]
Cute. I suspected that Marvin was feeding lines to Guppy just to bug me. “Printer schedule change, Guppy. Print up four more complete squads of exploration drones. Looks like we’re going snipe hunting.”
Guppy’s huge fish eyes blinked. [This will result in another delay to the armaments project. I remind you that you have assigned that project high priority]
“That’s fine. I think we’re ahead of the curve with the gorilloids. Attempted attacks are down to almost zero. We’ve got enough spare busters to bash their heads if they try any kind of large-scale attack.”
Guppy nodded and disappeared.
Marvin stood up and waved the chair away. “I’ll get started on the full survey as soon as they’re ready. Meanwhile, I’ll map out some search strategies.”
We gave each other a wave and he disappeared. I closed the village VR and brought back my library.
10. Genocide
Mario
November 2176
Zeta Tucanae
It took seven years plus change to get from Beta Hydri to Zeta Tucanae, although less than three years ship’s time. I spent almost the entire voyage going over the records from Beta Hydri 4. I didn’t want to believe that someone could have done that. I wanted so much for it to be a natural disaster of some kind.
But the evidence was, if not conclusive, at least pretty damned convincing. Someone had killed off an entire planet and collected all the bodies—literally all the animal life on the planet—then mined all the metals from the entire system. My mind kept playing all the movies where aliens came in and tried to strip the Earth. This was worse. They killed everything, and they left nothing. But how? And why?
I sighed and dismissed the theorizing for perhaps the thousandth time. I couldn’t know without more information. But I wasn’t going to wait. I needed to report this to Bill. The Bobs needed to be warned.
I couldn’t know in advance if Zeta Tucanae would be stripped of metal as well. If so, I would just skip to the next system, and keep doing so until I either found a good star system in which to build a space station or had traveled back close enough to simply transmit a message to Bill with shipboard comms.
I did the usual cautious approach into the star system, watching for Medeiros, aliens, other probes… it would be funny if I wasn’t so nervous.
I didn’t actually know if there were more Medeiros clones out in the galaxy, but since Brazil’s plan had been to keep producing them, it seemed a reasonable concern. Bob had prevailed against him in Epsilon Eridani, but that had been as much luck as anything.
It took a week or so to determine the system layout. The star was a little more luminous than Sol and a bit bigger, but slightly less massive. The metallicity of the system was lower, but not so low as to make things difficult for me—as long as the Others hadn’t already cleaned it out.
I found a single asteroid belt and several inner rocky planets. Actually, this system was similar enough to Earth’s to make me a little homesick. I headed for the asteroid belt, while I continued to scan for any activity.
I went about halfway around the belt before giving up. The Others had already cleaned up here as well. I decided I would get a quick look at the single planet in the habitable zone, then continue on to the next system on my list.
What I found was the worst possible outcome.
Exploring the planet through various drone cameras, I could see that something had caused massive destruction. Based on the ruined structures, entire cities had been taken apart. Concrete pylons indicated where bridges might once have spanned rivers. Huge washouts indicated where dams had been disassembled without regard for the downriver effects. And junk littered what looked like roadways, where presumably the contents of some kind of vehicles had simply been discarded when the metal and the passengers were collected.
“Guppy, I need a full scan of the planet. Set up the drones to do polar orbits, and get the whole surface.”
Guppy nodded without comment and went into command fugue. I sensed the blips as more drones launched. I settled back to wait.
*
If I’d been still living, I would have thrown up. As it was, I couldn’t watch for long.
The destruction was total, the devastation worldwide. These, whatever they were, these Others had callously killed billions of sentient beings the way a construction crew would clear the ground before starting to build. And I could think of only one reason for collecting the dead bodies.
When we met them, it would be war.
11. Mating Dance
Bob
November 2169
Delta Eridani
The Deltans were coming into their breeding season, and the tension in Camelot was climbing. In the past, stressors like the gorilloid threat had kept things low-key. It’s hard to get amorous when you’re looking over your shoulder every few seconds. But this year the Deltans were top dogs in their environment. The gorilloids had finally figured out the new pecking order. There hadn’t been an attack in almost a month.
A lot of that was due to the busters. Any gorilloid coming within a certain distance of Camelot was met head-on by a forty-pound ball of steel. The encounter was fatal to both, but I could produce more busters faster than the gorilloids could produce more gorilloids. The Deltans rarely even looked up any more at the occasional sonic boom.
I knew more or less what to expect from previous years. Male Deltans vied for the attentions of the females in any of a number of ways. Wrestling matches, mock battles, tests of skill, even good old fashioned bluff and bluster. It was great fun to watch, and generally no one got badly hurt.