I pantomimed silent laughter at him.
Archimedes and I had talked about many things over the decades. I think he now understood that I wasn’t some kind of supernatural being, just someone with more knowledge than him. In a society where very little changed from generation to generation, it was easy to think of The Way Things Are as some kind of natural state. But Archimedes had seen enough new knowledge in his lifetime to understand that when you went from not knowing something to knowing something, it changed the way you lived.
With the loss of that awe had come a much deeper friendship, and a better understanding between us. Archimedes thought a lot of the things humans took for granted were hilarious. Like the idea of rules for everything. Deltans simply wouldn’t stand for such regimentation of their lives.
I found myself coming around to his point of view, more and more.
In short order we arrived at Camelot. With an effort of will, I suppressed the Monty Python skit from my mind.
As we walked across the land bridge, I looked ahead at the village proper. It was a sea of Deltans, in groups around the central fires, and smaller groups around individual firepits. I could see Archimedes’ point. No one would be able to keep track of this many people. Really, based on the old definition of a village where everyone knew everyone else, this could be thought of as an unhealthy development. Caerleon wasn’t much better. I wondered if the Deltans had a higher tolerance for crowding, or if they had developed a reluctance to split off villages because of the gorilloid and hippogriff threats. I resolved to bring it up with Archimedes when time permitted.
We moved toward Archimedes’ hexghi. There I saw Diana, Buster, Belinda, and a couple of generations of children around the fire. Buster’s siblings had long since moved on to their own firepits, but Buster had stayed close with his father. I was glad of that.
So, Diana. I was unreasonably nervous. Really, how could she associate me with The Bawbe? I appeared to be some random Deltan. Just the same, I couldn’t shake it.
We sat down at the fire, and Archimedes introduced me to the adults using a common Deltan name, which I instructed the translation routine to render as Robert. I performed the proper ear-waggle greeting to each. Diana didn’t even twitch, and I relaxed.
I noted that Diana was looking old and frail. It confirmed my feeling that Archimedes was aging more slowly than average. Probably the same gene responsible for his increased intelligence was affecting his lifespan. I felt a moment of relief that she might be gone soon, then a spike of shame at the thought. I might not like her, but she was Archimedes’ life mate, and he was my friend.
The kids—I realized with a shock that these were Buster’s grandchildren—had started a game of tag while the adults talked, and one of them barreled into me. There was a moment of tense silence, then I laughed and poked the child with a finger. The tension dissolved and Diana passed around some jerky.
Just family.
72. Battle
Bill
February 2217
Delta Pavonis
All warfare is based on deception.
-- Sun Tzu, Art of War
The defensive crews were less than a week away from Delta Pavonis, and their tau was now down to the point where it was worthwhile having a conversation. Rather than asking them to jack up to our time rate, we would be slowing down to theirs. Because of the numbers, I was hosting the meeting in the moot VR.
“First and most significant,” I said, “is that we’ve cracked the cloaking tech. It took a lot longer than I expected, so Jacques has only been able to retrofit about half of his nukes. There’s no time for you to do anything, so all the non-stealthed hardware—including Bobs—is going to be considered decoys.”
I looked around the room at a sea of somber faces. We’d all gone into this with the attitude that it was probably a suicide mission. With remote backups, suicide missions weren’t as final as they used to be, but still… the person restored from a backup was not the person who created the backup. It was some comfort to know that your memories would go on, but it didn’t feel that it would be personal in some way.
I glanced at the status window that I had put up. It showed the Others’ armada only two days farther out. We had very little time to deploy a defense.
“How are we doing this, then?” asked Andrew, one of the squad leaders.
I nodded to him, acknowledging the question. “I’ve discussed strategy with Butterworth. Unfortunately, most space battle strategy is theoretical, since there’s only been one space war. But I discussed options extensively with him, and the colonel did have some suggestions about deployment. He can’t be personally involved, of course, since he operates on biological time. For what it’s worth, I’ll be acting as his proxy.”
There were silent nods around the circle. I added arrows and icons to the status window. “Your group is coming in from this side, and Jacques’ group will be coming in from here and here. We’ll hit in three waves, staggered so we’re not taking each other out. Hopefully the Others can’t redeploy defenses quickly enough and will have to split their assets into three groups instead.” The animation in the window played out a visual of my description.
“While the Others are fending us off, the stealth bombs will come straight in. We hope that they will be able to get in close and do some significant damage.”
I sat back, chin in hand, and studied the graphic. There was no subtlety at all. On the other hand, it was nice and simple, with few unknowns.
*
The first attack group was five minutes out when the Others registered their presence. The group’s trajectory brought them in at thirty degrees off of their approach line. I could see in the SUDDAR window that the Others were deploying drones to act as a first wave of defenders. There wasn’t enough detail at that distance to be able to tell, but we assumed they were rotating the death asteroids to target us as well.
There was very little conversation as we approached. Each Bob presumably took the time to make peace with his own thoughts. Or update his backup. Either or.
At about three minutes distance, there was a whoop from one of the dreadnaughts. “Just took a hit from a death ray,” he announced. “I got sparks, but no significant damage.”
I smiled but didn’t comment. At this distance, even a version-3 Heaven vessel would have survived. We had to assume they were either massively overconfident, or that had been just a probe of some kind. At least one death asteroid was now discharged. It was unlikely it would be able to recharge in time to participate further in this battle.
At one minute, I activated the general channel. “Time to rock, boys. Deploy all busters and nukes. Let’s light up the sky!”