Hoffa’s ears were straight back and his eyes were narrowed to slits. I was mishandling this, but I couldn’t stop myself. I’d never been able to handle shortsighted stupidity.
“That’s three more than would have arrived at our old camp.”
In VR, Marvin and I rolled our eyes in sync.
“I’ve already talked about that.”
“Perhaps next time, we should leave your Archimedes out as an offering for them.”
I sent the drone straight up ten feet. “Don’t. Ever. Threaten. My. Family. Not ever.” As I finished saying the words, I realized that I’d turned the volume up. It had probably been painful to sensitive Deltan ears. The entire council was cringing, and possibly not just from the volume.
I slowly lowered the drone back to head-height. “I mean it, Hoffa. I’ll take care of the hippogriffs. And thanks to you, I’ve figured out how.”
Hoffa looked confused and somewhat concerned. I noticed that Arnold looked at Hoffa and smiled.
*
“Okay, I’ll bite.” Marvin was grinning at me. “How? And how did Hoffa help with it?”
I glared at him. “I’m going to drop a rock on the island. Which is what I wanted to do to Hoffa.”
“Jeez, Bob, here you go again. You’re going to perform planetary ecological surgery just because it’s convenient.”
“No, Marvin.” I jumped to my feet. “I’m going to do it because those things threaten my family. And you can analyze that all you want. I don’t give a damn.” I closed down his VR connection and he disappeared, effectively kicked out. Pretty rude, and I’d be apologizing later. But for the moment, I was too steamed to care.
*
I had a far more immediate problem, though. Assuming I was right about the hippogriffs smelling blood, then today’s battle would bring yet another wave tomorrow—maybe much larger. It would take time to find a large enough mass to destroy the island. I calculated an initial size of a hundred tons would about do it. We had identified a number of nickel-iron asteroids in the system, some of which would be about the right size.
I received a ping from Marvin. It was time to eat crow. I invited him in, and we looked at each other warily.
He broke the silence first. “You know we’re no good with this crap, right?”
It was enough. I broke down laughing, and we nodded at each other. Done. Possibly identical twins could come close to understanding, but certainly no one else.
We sat down and I described my thoughts on the impactor.
“Huh,” he replied. “So, a couple of months to build Bill’s asteroid mover, a couple more weeks to move the asteroid into place. You think the hippogriffs will just wait around?”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“I understand you’re angry, Bob, and you want to smash the island to smithereens. But all you need to do is hammer it enough to take out the hippogriff population. You don’t need a Yucatan-level event to do that.”
I nodded. “So, a bunch of small impactors?”
“A thousand-pound steel ball will do a lot of damage.”
“Ohhhhhh…” I nodded. “Ship busters. Yeah, I’ve still got four in inventory.”
“The thing is, though, Bob, you don’t want too big of a bang. Tsunamis, ground shocks, flying debris could do more damage to the Deltans than a bunch of hippogriffs. Get this wrong, and you could be directly responsible for the extinction of the Deltan species.”
I nodded, shocked. Time to get my temper under control.
*
We decided to use the ship-busters one at a time and gauge the results after each strike. I sent the first ship-buster in at what I hoped was a reasonably sedate velocity.
The results were slightly more, um, spectacular than expected.
In retrospect, maybe I didn’t allow for the amount of material that would normally be shed by a meteor on the way down. Or I forgot to carry the two. Whatever the reason, the impact produced a mushroom cloud that would have done a fission bomb proud. As the smoke and dust cleared, it was obvious that the island, and the hippogriffs, were gone.
Well, that was the good news.
The bad news was that this was definitely going to produce ground shocks all the way to Camelot. And at least some debris. I flew several drones over to the camp, to find everyone already awake, staring at the bright cloud to the southwest.
Archimedes looked up at the drone as I arrived. “Did you do that?” he said in a hushed voice.
I wasn’t sure of the expression on his face. Awe, certainly, but I thought maybe a bit of fear. I hoped not. That wasn’t the legacy I wanted to leave.
“Yeah, Archimedes. That’s the hippogriff island being obliterated.”
Archimedes’ eyes grew wider and his ears went down. He took a half-step back from me.
Damn.
At that moment, the ground shock arrived. It wasn’t the worst earthquake I’d ever seen, but was probably the first in the Deltans’ experience. They hugged the ground, and there were many screams.
The shaking was brief. It was followed a few minutes later by the sound of the explosion. The crack and roar seemed to go on forever, but couldn’t have been a minute in all. The Deltans continued to huddle until it let up.
But now came the hard part. I went to the elders. “There may be some burning rocks falling from the sky, in about a hundred heartbeats or so. You should get everyone into the lee side of the bluff.”
There were wide eyes and flattened ears, but no one was going to argue with me. In short order, every Deltan was huddled behind the central bluff.
The debris arrived right on time. Drones hadn’t been able to detect anything big. I hoped that would hold, as I wasn’t really sure I could intercept incoming debris with a buster. Or if it would do any good.
The pelting lasted several minutes. It was impressive, and there was some minor damage to the village, but no one was hurt. The Deltans huddled for the rest of the night, unwilling to leave the sanctuary of the rock.
*
When morning finally came, people spread back out to their normal locations. A few of them had to do some cleanup, but their neighbors pitched in. Overall, the amount of actual damage was minor.
The council was having yet another session. Again, though, I wasn’t expecting a medal.
When they were done, they motioned to the drone. I flew it over, and Hoffa stepped forward. “We understand what you’ve done. We understand your explanations. But everything you ask, everything you do, seems to come with a larger and larger cost. We’re not sure if we’re better off now or not. There’s a lot of argument about that.”
He paused for a moment, a determined look on his face, then faced me squarely. “We’d like you to go away. We’ll face our fate ourselves. If you want to kill us, we can’t stop you. If you want to kill me, I can’t do anything about it. But you’re not welcome here anymore.”
I stared at him, through the drone, for what seemed like forever. I was frozen. Numb. It was too much to process. The emotional circuit breaker had tripped. I’d lost a family already, now I was losing a second one.