“You’re going to load a backup across interstellar distances, with no Bob overseeing? Wow, dude.”
I shrugged. “No difference in principle. I’ll checksum the hell out of it before approving it for load.” I thought for another millisecond, then nodded. “I don’t have a choice, anyway. We can’t afford to ignore any potential source of Bobs. I’m afraid, like it or not, we’re going to war.”
60. Arrival
Claude
May 2205
Gamma Pavonis
Gamma Pavonis was an F8V class of star, which made it slightly bigger and barely hotter than Sol. The effect was a system with a comfort zone slightly farther out, but a sun that would look virtually indistinguishable from ours.
I paradoxically found myself hoping that I wouldn’t find anything in the comfort zone. The whole dialog with Bill had left me freaked out and ambivalent about what I might find. I would actually feel better if there was nothing in this system worth defending.
Well, you have to know that Murphy is listening for just exactly that kind of wish, so he can give you the shaft.
The planet sat at just over a hundred million miles out. A gorgeous, shining, blue and green marble with bands and swirls of white, orbited by one larger moon and three smaller ones. Damn.
I went immediately into orbit to determine if it included intelligent life. That would be a real kick in the pants. Fortunately, the planet failed—or passed, depending on attitude—the first, obvious tests. There was no radio traffic, no web of exhaust trails in the atmosphere, no satellites, and no sprinkle of lights on the night side.
That still left pre-industrial civilization, of course, but that would require a closer look. I sent a quick email off to Bill with results so far, then deployed the exploration drones. Mario had decided that the latest-version Heaven vessels would come with enough on-board assets so that we could investigate a system quickly. This meant mining and manufacturing operations could wait for later.
The drones took up polar orbits for a couple of passes, then swooped into atmosphere to check out interesting items.
I spent five days on observation and exploration. I didn’t want to screw this up. But finally, I felt confident enough to report my findings.
No intelligence. Thank God. But the ecosystem was as rich and varied as anything in Earth’s history. This was a planet with everything stacked in its favor. The right size, the right distance from a sun with good solar output but relatively low UV, good-sized moons, plate tectonics active enough to ensure consistent surface recycling—the list went on and on. This was an ideal colony target, except for the part where it was on the Others’ front porch.
Now I would have to move to phase 2. This system actually had a relatively low metallicity, at least according to the star’s spectral lines. Perhaps that was why the Others had rejected it in favor of the slightly more distant NN 4285. But the next star out, GL 902, was over two light-years farther than this one. I doubted the Others would bypass it again.
Well, low metallicity was a relative term. I was sure I’d still find more than enough resources for my purposes, even if it took a bit of work to find.
There was a ping from Bill, then he popped in.
“Hey Claude. I’ve been looking over your report. Sounds like a great planet.”
“And that’s the problem. It is a great planet. Great system. And if you’re right, due to be ‘harvested’ sometime in the next, what, hundred years?”
Bill looked down for a moment. “Mario has been getting reports back from Bobs hitting surrounding systems. Combined with his own observations in Zeta Tucanae and Beta Hydri, we’re able to make a rough estimate of a system every ten to twenty years.”
“So they’ve only been at this maybe a hundred years?”
“We don’t know how long they were working only within their system. It might have taken them a hundred years to get started. Maybe the first out-system harvest taught them a lot. Anyway, the point is, there are a lot of unknowns before they started regularly harvesting.”
Bill had popped up a star chart while he was talking, the various star systems flashing a tooltip as he mentioned them.
“Jacques will be arriving at Delta Pavonis in eighteen months. The positions of Delta Pavonis and GL 877 are about the same distance from you, so if we see the Others head your way, anything he launches from Delta will arrive here at the same time. So hopefully you’ll have reinforcements.”
I nodded. That was something, anyway.
61. Starting Over
Oliver
September 2205
Alpha Centauri
HIC71683-14. Damn. I’m not Bill anymore. Now I need a new name.
This had happened to me once before, as one of Bob-1’s first cohort, in Epsilon Eridani. Now I was a noob again, this time in Alpha Centauri.
I popped into Bill’s VR. “I hate you.”
Bill grinned at me. “Naw, you know the rules. New name, dude. ASAP.”
“Oliver. In keeping with the Bloom County theme.”
Bill nodded his approval. Oliver was a fun character and we’d liked him.
“One advantage of this arrangement, I guess, is that I know the whole plan already.”
Bill laughed and nodded. “Saves time.”
I stood up. “So, I’ll get to it. I may set up in competition with you, though. Wanna bet I get FTL first?”
“I’d be overjoyed if you did, Oliver. Everyone wins.”
I waved to Bill, and popped back home.
*
Both Alpha Centauri A and B had reasonable resource levels. Bart and crew had concentrated their efforts in A, but I needed to get things rolling quickly. It would be six months until my vessel was ready. At that point, I would start the autofactory in Alpha Centauri A to building Bobs on a crash basis, while I would fly over to Alpha Centauri B with another autofactory and set up there as well. At the top acceleration of a Version 4 vessel, it was less than a four-day trip.
Meanwhile, I would have to consider possible weapons against the Others. Busters could pass through the cargo ships or death asteroids multiple times and do little or no detectable damage. Nukes were effective, and the expedition to 82 Eridani had yielded some good information. We didn’t have time to figure out fission weapons from scratch. I regretted, a little, not having worked on that before. But only a little.
Plasma spikes, like busters, were simply too small. Not effective against the mega monster ships we would be going up against.
I needed either a large mass, a large explosion, or a lot of energy. Heat energy, electrical energy, gravitational, or momentum. Hmm, relativistic velocities. How fast could I accelerate things?
Hands behind my back, muttering in thought, I retired to my new mad-science lab.
*