The colonel and I discussed a few miscellaneous items, but nothing really pressing. The council, as expected, had caved without a fight on the subject of bronto burgers. Let’s face it, one of the damned things would keep the entire colony in steaks for a couple of weeks. We wouldn’t need to kill many. And the alternative was still kudzu.
I said goodbye to the colonel and popped out. On a whim, I activated one of the surveillance drones. I took it up a couple of kilometers and did a slow pan. The sun was going down in the west, and it was a magnificent sight.
From the surface of Vulcan, Omicron2 Eridani appeared almost a third bigger than Earth’s sun. As a K-type star, it had a slightly more orange cast, although you stopped noticing it after a day or so. But the additional output in the red end of the spectrum meant that even the most run-of-the-mill sunsets were spectacular by Earth standards. And today wasn’t run-of-the-mill. Scattered clouds were all that were left of the recent thunderstorms, but those clouds glowed in the sky like individual wildfires.
The forest-slash-jungle stretched horizon to horizon, hugging the hills and only reluctantly leaving the occasional rocky crag uncovered. Something like birds swooped and twirled in flocks that wouldn’t have been seen on Earth since the days of the passenger pigeon. If you could ignore all the things with big shark teeth, and the other things that could accidentally squish you between their toes, it was a kind of paradise. Oh, yeah, and the things that laid eggs in you. Eww.
30. Found Something
Bashful
November 2187
Gliese 877
We’d all taken off in different directions, per Mario’s orders. I picked GL-877, a nondescript star in a forgettable patch of sky. For all we knew, these Others might not be planet-based, or even system-based. But we had to start somewhere. At minimum, we’d be mapping their path of destruction.
[We have radio traffic]
Guppy pushed a window toward me. As I examined the readings, my eyebrows climbed up my forehead. The radio noise coming from this system was clearly artificial. One way or the other, something intelligent lived here. Something noisy.
“Every possible caution, Guppy. Let’s take it slow. I don’t want to attract attention.”
[Understood]
“And prep the stealth probes.”
I’d have been cautious anyway, but given the possibility that this was the Others, I was going to give paranoia a brand-new level of definition. I had spent my time during transit building a couple of stealth probes. I’d had to sacrifice some busters and some roamers, but the result was a couple of probes that would be almost undetectable unless they cranked up to full power. I had constructed them out of carbon-fiber-matrix ceramic and non-ferrous metal wherever possible. The Others would have to be specifically looking for one of these in order to detect it. I’d already squirted the plans back to Mario as part of my continuous reporting.
I was still going about 5% of light speed, so I lined up just below the ecliptic and released one probe. I altered my line slightly, then released the other. It would take just under two weeks for the probes to free-fall through the system. Meanwhile, I would take a powered flight path, which would take me to the rendezvous point on the other side without my going anywhere near the inner system. Unless the residents had far better detection systems than we did, they’d never know I was here.
I had carefully laid out parameters in which the probes would run for it and conditions in which they’d self-destruct. There would be no chances taken. In either case, once discovered, a probe would abandon attempts at stealth and squirt all telemetry to my calculated position.
With my powered flight plan, I arrived at the rendezvous several days before the probes, on a vector straight outward from the system. The probes hit the brakes and activated their beacons as they came within range.
I downloaded their data and transmitted the whole bundle in Mario’s direction before beginning my own analysis. It took about two days to build a coherent picture of the inner system. There were two lonely inner rocky planets and a single small Jovian farther out. The inner of the two rocky planets appeared to have an atmosphere. The other had been too far away from either probe to get details, but it appeared to have a surprisingly high albedo.
The system seemed to be particularly free of debris, except in an orbit about 80% of the orbital radius of the inner planet. At that distance from the sun, there was a truly spectacular amount of mass—and activity—spread right around the orbit. That whole area was, in fact, responsible for most of the electromagnetic activity in the system.
I turned to Guppy and pointed at the mass concentration. “What the crap is that?”
[Insufficient information. But we can rule out a natural satellite]
“Not a planet?”
[Correct. The mass is too diffuse]
I wished I had someone besides Guppy to discuss this with. The plan had been to build a second wave of Bobs back at Gliese 54 and send them to catch up with the first wave. So within perhaps six months, I could be getting company. Hopefully the new Bob had been picking up my transmissions and had a good idea of how to approach.
I was sitting more than six billion kilometers from the local sun, in some of the emptiest space I could imagine, so it was a shock when the proximity alarms started sounding.
I frame-jacked up to maximum and started to evaluate the readings. Something was approaching at high speed. And the something apparently had a very well shielded reactor, because it was SUDDAR that had picked it up. A quick set of calculations showed that I wouldn’t be able to win a straight foot-race—it or they were approaching too fast. It was time for our tried-and-true doubling-back tactic. I had no idea what their maneuverability was like, so I calculated a conservative option and began accelerating at a thirty-five degree angle to their approach vector.
The other ships reacted almost immediately, which told me they had SUDDAR detection capability. Light-speed limitations would have meant almost an hour’s delay before they could respond to my movement.
The tableau developed slowly over the next several hours. Like a game of chess, everything was on the table. There would be no surprise tactics. The laws of physics would decide if I got past them. However, it was already obvious that closest approach would be, well, pretty close.
It took almost a day to reach that point. I spent the time scanning them with everything at my disposal. SUDDAR and visuals confirmed six vessels: five very similar to the wrecked cargo ship and one that honestly reminded me of a miniature Death Star. “Miniature” being a relative term—the thing was almost a half-kilometer in diameter. Instead of an inset dish like the Star Wars prop, it had a flat section with what looked like a grid. I hoped the purpose wasn’t similar.
Finally the laws of physics and reality made themselves clear, and I realized that I was going to sail past them, less than ten kilometers away. That was cutting it a little fine, but I’d take it.