I had no clue about what might determine the course of whatever beings had stripped the two other systems. If they travelled as a single unit, and they were travelling in a straight line, they might never meet up with any of us. My concern was that, if they were mining that much metal, they were probably building something. The obvious answer to that would be more of them. And that would be bad.
This was not a particularly interesting system. The primary was a small K, almost a red dwarf. It had a single lonely planet orbiting in close, and a bunch of space junk. Of course, space junk was what I needed. Although the overall metallicity of the system was low, most of it hadn’t aggregated into planets.
The manufacturing process was routine, even if I only had memories of having done it once as Bob-1 in Epsilon Eridani. It took a couple of months to build and deploy the space station. Once it was up, I squirted every bit of information I had on the Others back to Bill. The station had the added bonus that I would be able to transmit to it from any of the stars in the immediate area, and it would relay my messages to Epsilon Eridani.
I also decided that I didn’t want to be alone, so I started construction of four more Bobs. Bashful, Dopey, Sleepy, and Hungry all agreed to accompany me to deal with the potential threat. Yes, they named themselves after dwarves. And yes, it was pointed out at some length that there was no Hungry in the original crew. Hungry didn’t care. Apparently I can be very perverse. And stubborn. Anyway, there’s that joke about the fifty dwarves…
We sat around the desk in my treehouse, sipping tropical drinks with little umbrellas. Except Hungry, who refused to go along with the theme. He had a coffee. I suggested we rename him Surly and received a middle finger for my trouble.
Sleepy opened the discussion. “We have to figure out the vector and size of the invasion, or infestation, or whatever it is. Is it heading for Earth? Or away?”
“And what they’re doing with all that metal. If they’re building more ships, it must be a massive fleet. How would we not see them coming?” Dopey looked around at us, palms up. “And all the, uh, food…”
“Yeah…” I nodded slowly. “We have no information, really. We have to find them. And we have to get a report back without becoming part of their harvest. Their ants are surprisingly efficient. I’ve learned several things from them, which I’ve already squirted back Bill-ward.”
There was silence around the table as everyone digested this.
“So we each pick a system outward and head there,” Sleepy said. “We should keep a transmission channel open at all times, so we’ll have a record if one of us disappears.”
“Yes.” I nodded. “The open line should run all the way back to Bill. If necessary, stop and build a relay station. Keep up a constant stream of commentary and observations and send regular differential backups. Just in case…”
Sleepy took a sip of his drink before responding. “Sounds like a plan. Although I don’t like the implications. If I get taken down, the Bob that gets restored won’t really be me.”
“What, you’re positing a soul, now? For us?” Surly, I mean Hungry, rolled his eyes. “Every time the crew of Star Trek transported, they faced the same philosophical question.”
Sleepy rolled his eyes back at Hungry in exaggerated mockery. “Again with the fictional TV series. Is that where you get all your life lessons?”
Hungry frowned. “Well, you should know, shouldn’t you?”
“Children, children. Am I going to have to separate you?” I glared around the table. “Can we focus on the planet-destroying, rampaging alien whatzits for now?”
Sleepy and Hungry both looked embarrassed. After a moment of silence, I continued. “I would also suggest that we have some kind of self-destruct capability built in. Maybe a dead-man trigger. Personally, I don’t want to have to feel myself being slowly disassembled if I get caught, and I certainly don’t want it or them to learn anything from me.”
“Wow, this is getting morbid. I don’t feel quite so negative about the backups, now.”
I chuckled. “So let’s pick our destination systems, put together a working comms link, and get this show on the road.”
14. Sabotage
Riker
December 2170
Sol
The image on the video made me curl my lip in a sneer of both contempt and disgust. Half a herd of cattle lay dead in their paddock—fifty animals, poisoned by something in the food, according to the vet. On the other video window, Ms. Sharma, UN representative for the Maldives, waited silently. She was attempting to maintain a stone face, and failing.
The slaughter represented the third act of full-blown terrorism this month. VEHEMENT was ramping up from a nuisance to a full-blown threat. This was the first time they’d taken lives, though, even if livestock. I hadn’t come out and said it, but I considered this an act of war. If I caught up with this group, and it came down to an exchange of ordnance, I wouldn’t have any ethical issues with taking some of them down. I admitted to myself that I really didn’t know if I’d be able to pull the trigger. It was one thing to talk war, it was another entirely to actually take a human life.
But I would want to. That much, I was sure of.
Food supply continued to become more critical as Earth’s climate deteriorated. Over half of the thirty-five remaining enclaves around the planet were at least partly dependent on food subsidies from our orbital farms. The Maldives were still nominally self-supporting, but this assault on their food capacity would mean we’d have to kick in, at least in the short term.
Representative Sharma finally couldn’t hold it in any longer. “This is senseless. Senseless! Cattle? What have they proven? What have they accomplished? Cowards!”
I nodded at every word. For all the bickering in the UN, the various representatives were united in their hatred and contempt for VEHEMENT. After an event like this, I could probably push through any special measure I wanted to, with little debate or opposition.
Too bad I didn’t have anything in my queue.
“This is going to hurt, Ms. Sharma. Those cattle represent a lot of high-quality calories, not to mention the breeding capacity.” I took a moment to check the herd numbers. “It’s not life-threatening, but it is damaging. I think, if the handlers hadn’t noticed the animals getting sick, we could have lost this entire herd. And that would have been devastating.”
“I will move to set up a task force at the UN meeting tomorrow,” Ms. Sharma said. “I think there’s been a general feeling up to now that if we just ignored them and didn’t give them the attention they obviously crave, that they’d go away. No longer.”
I nodded without comment. I had the pronouncement from VEHEMENT up in another video window. These people were several screws short, but there was no doubt they were deadly serious. The essential message was that humanity had made a mess of the solar system, and it was time for them to bow out and let the universe recover. And because we might be reluctant to go along, VEHEMENT was going to help us towards that goal.