There can never be too many of us. There can only be not enough food.
At that moment, the stealth drone detected the outgoing zap. The Others’ spokesman hadn’t even bothered with a throwaway line or anything. I was absurdly irritated. You’d think I’d deserve at least “Hasta la vista.”
Per instructions, the stealth drone did a quick series of snapshot scans of the Others’ vessels.
Then the zap arrived, and the communications drone exploded on cue. I noted, from the point of view of the stealth drone, that a squad of Others immediately took off in the direction that the communication drone’s directional antenna had been transmitting. Served them right. Let ’em waste time casting around.
I sat back and stared into space. This was big. This was going to need a moot for sure.
56. Descendants
Bob
January 2183
Delta Eridani
Buster grunted as he released the arrow. It flew dead true and buried itself in the target. Archimedes whooped from the sidelines, and Buster’s little brother and sister yelled insults. Another universality, apparently.
Buster turned to his opponent, Arnold’s son, and waggled his ears. Donald looked distinctly uncomfortable, but wasn’t going to back down in front of the entire hexghi.
Donald released the arrow. It hit the edge of the target. Not a kill shot, but certainly crippling, if it had hit a live target. Arnold shrugged and yelled something supportive.
I took a moment to smile at the number of new faces that had grown up over the last few years. Child mortality had dropped significantly with the reduction in the gorilloid threat, and the Deltan population was up to over eleven hundred.
Archimedes’ family had grown as well. Three children, and a fourth on the way. I was finally beginning to get an idea of the lifespan of the Deltans. Moses had died a few years ago, at somewhere between sixty and seventy Earth-years old. About the same or maybe even a little better than humans, given the environment.
It was a bittersweet time for me. The council had never relented in their decision to banish me. Archimedes brought it up a couple of times, but was shut down hard. His position as the tribe’s premiere tool maker protected him to a certain extent, but I finally told him to drop it. I didn’t want any backlash against his family.
Stories of The Bawbe still abounded, but I noticed that they were now being embellished. In particular, my reputation seemed to be suffering. The tone sounded a little more like Loki or Lucifer, these days. Would I end up as the devil in some far-future religious myth?
I sighed. The risks of godhood, I guess.
I sent a quick text to ask Marvin if he’d be joining today’s scrub game, and got an affirmative.
57. Moot
Bill
October 2204
Epsilon Eridani
I held the air-horn over my head and pressed the button twice. And received the usual round of boos. Gotta love tradition.
The catcalls were short-lived, though, more of a formality. The word had gotten out, and the Bobs were all business today. Even the pre-meeting session had been quiet, with a growling undertone.
“First, before we get to the main event, I’d like to introduce our newest long-range champion…” I gestured to a nearby Bob. “Bruce is from Calvin and Goku’s first cohort. He is calling in from 11 Leonis Minoris, and holds the record at thirty-seven light years from Earth. Sorry, Mario.”
The crowd applauded Bruce, and several people came over to talk to him. When the chatter had died down, I held the air-horn up for a moment and waited for quiet.
“I guess you’ve all heard by now, but I’ll summarize just to make sure we haven’t missed anything. We have communicated with the Others. They appear to have captured the Chinese probe at some point, and stripped its data. The good news is that they speak Mandarin, so communications were pretty straightforward. The bad news is they know where Earth is. And thanks to my ham-handed broadcasts to every star system in sight, they know about Epsilon Eridani as well.”
I waved off the yelled comments. “No, they won’t get the SCUT plans. The broadcasts were encrypted, as is everything we do; and the Chinese probe wouldn’t know anything about the transmission or file formats, so they wouldn’t be able to separate out encrypted data from transport envelope.”
I waited for any objections, then continued, “The other piece of good news is they are sufficiently arrogant that they don’t feel the need to come over and squash us forthwith. Their attitude seems to be that they’ll get to us when they get to us.”
This produced low growls from the audience, and I grinned. “Now, we got some good scans of the armada, and we’re able to observe their operations as they strip GL 54. I’m going to call up Garfield to give us a rundown in a minute. But first I want to thank Hal for successfully testing the new Heaven design against the death asteroids. At least in that area, we are ahead of the game.”
There were cheers from the audience, and the usual first verse of “Bicycle Built for Two.” It never got old. Hal grinned to the crowd, waved, and took a bow.
Garfield walked up onto the podium and glared at me. I laughed, held up the horn, and gave a blast.
“Okay,” Garfield yelled over the boos, “I have a bit of egg on my face. My guesstimates of the power capabilities and weaponry of the death asteroid were a little off, because the Others are actually more inventive than I thought. I just hope they don’t have more surprises.”
Garfield waited for silence, and he got it. Every Bob in the room was now completely focused on his words.
“Power beaming via SUDDAR. It’s not just for running those little ant-things they use for harvesting. It’s also for charging death asteroids remotely. The death asteroids are capable of charging themselves without help, but it looks like it would take about a day on their own. So they have huge reactors in the cargo carriers which, in combination with the SUDDAR beaming, can run ants, drones, mining carriers, or charge up death asteroids.”
“Why?” yelled someone from the crowd. “Seems unnecessarily complicated.”
Garfield nodded in the general direction of the voice. “I think it’s dictated by their biology. It’s pretty obvious from Bill’s conversation with them that they’re a hive organism. A large portion of the interior of the death asteroids is living space. Far too much, in my opinion, to be justifiable just based on personnel requirements. Every vehicle they have is either automated or has the same large living space. I think they need to live in large groups. They may get some version of agoraphobia or something if there aren’t enough of their brethren around.”