I filed the data and hit Next again.
“Heaven-1, this is Dr. Doucette. Dr. Landers had asked me to keep you updated if he was unable to. Here’s the situation. We took the competition by surprise with our early launch, and even more so by your preemptive departure. The Chinese and USE ships are being rushed to completion and will launch within another week or two. The Brazilians have just launched two probes, and one of them is on the same course as you. Er, Dr. Landers wanted me to tell you we have good news and bad news. I’m assuming that’s a 21st century colloquialism of some kind. The bad news is that the Brazilian ship is definitely armed with missiles similar to the two you avoided. Full specs to follow. The good news is that they seem to be only capable of about 1.25 g acceleration, unless they’re deliberately underplaying their hand.”
Oh crap. “Guppy, how much lead time will we have when we get to Epsilon Eridani?”
[145 days, including our 3-week head start]
“How about if we kick it up to 2.5 g?”
[We will gain an additional 32 days. However, it is not recommended due to reactor loading]
I nodded. The SURGE drive generated a pseudo-gravitational field in front of the ship, but the strength of the field was limited by the size of the drive system and power supply. Two g was about the most that I could coax from Heaven-1 on an ongoing basis, given the capacity of my fusion reactor.
Okay, going to have to start thinking about what I can prepare in 145 days, including time required to search the star system for resources. Number one on the TO-DO.
[Noted]
“Really, what have I told you about reading my mind?”
[Sorry]
The next message contained the promised missile specs, along with some schematics for the Brazilian probe. Much of it was speculative and clearly labelled as such. However, as an engineer, I was aware that known specifications placed upper and lower constraints on unknown items. For instance, the information about the size of the probe, the number of missiles being carried, the size of the SURGE drive placed an upper limit on the size of the nuclear reactor.
Unless Brazil had cut corners somewhere else. The observed acceleration of the probe set a lower limit on the size of the SURGE drive and the nuclear reactor, which gave a fair indication of how much space was available to carry missiles. Again, absent cutting corners somewhere else. In the end, I would be able to estimate the minimum and maximum values for each parameter.
I filed the information for further review and calculations.
The next message was from Dr. Doucette again. “Heaven-1, I’m sorry to have to tell you that Dr. Landers is dead. He was at the Newhaven facility when it was bombed by Brazilian Empire forces. The confrontation over the attempt to shoot you down has escalated and is beginning to look like a full-blown war. Brazil is not backing down and is promising to take on the whole planet. Meanwhile, China attempted to sabotage the USE facility before they could launch, and the USE retaliated. None of the superpowers are on friendly enough terms to actually form alliances, but there’s a tacit alignment between the USE and FAITH on one side, and Brazil and China on the other. The Republic of Africa and Australia are warning everyone not to get them involved.”
I gritted my teeth in anger. Dr. Landers had been the closest thing to a friend that I’d had in this new world. Granted, I didn’t even know the man’s first name, but still… I didn’t like bullies. I’d had more than my fill of people who tried to get their way through violence and intimidation in school. This was just more of the same. If there’d been any thought of a civilized discussion with the Brazilian replicant, it was now out the window.
“Guppy, what’s the timestamp on that last message?”
[Message received 6.4 hours ago]
“I have a bad feeling. Can we get a visual of Earth?”
[Optical instruments can be deployed during flight. However, at this distance very little detail will be available]
“Please deploy them. I want to know if there’s anything that looks like a nuclear blast.”
[Radio surveillance would pick up an EMP]
“Um. Good point. Do that, too. And let me know the minute we get any more messages.”
[By your command]
I laughed out loud. That pretty much settled it. Guppy had grown a personality.
***
I sat back and rubbed my eyes. It brought a moment of amusement. Who am I performing for, anyway? One of the advantages of being a software emulation was that I never got tired, never needed rest, never needed to eat or go to the bathroom. My ability to concentrate on a problem had been legendary when I was alive. Now, I felt all but invincible. My only concession to my former humanity was to occasionally switch research topics just to keep fresh.
I had shelved the defensive plans for a while and was going over subspace theory. My math was a little rusty, but I was able to follow it. The theory had only been published a couple of years ago and hadn’t been fully explored yet. Once the possibility of the SURGE drive had been identified, almost all research had been focused in that direction. SUDDAR, the ability to use subspace pulses to detect and identify nearby concentrations of matter, was an almost trivial corollary.
I was pretty sure I could see other possibilities in the theory, one being faster than light communications. Previous attempts had failed because of the very odd way signal strength fell off in subspace, but I figured they just hadn’t stuck with it long enough.
I sighed and reluctantly closed the file. Like it or not, that just wasn’t a priority right now. And if I kept at it, I’d be down the rabbit hole for another couple of days that I couldn’t afford.
Opening the Defenses file, I reviewed the options that I’d evaluated so far.
Build equivalent missiles: Unlikely to be successful unless I lucked out in the Epsilon Eridani system and stumbled upon all the raw materials I would need in one place. And there would still be the problem of safely manufacturing the explosives. And the rocket fuel.
Rail gun: Quick, wouldn’t require a lot of unusual elements, and it would take very little effort to modify the ship design to accommodate one. The best part was that it could shoot just about anything for ammo, although the more massive, the better. But it wasn’t as good a weapon as a missile, since the ammo wouldn’t pursue the target. Might be useful to shoot down incoming missiles, though. Hmm, could I make some kind of smart ammo?
Lasers: Not a chance. Maybe I could put something military grade together eventually, but certainly not in the available time.
Nukes: that would require finding fissionables at the destination, then enriching them for use. Unlikely.
Build more Bobs: not in the amount of time available. Best estimate was up to six months per Bob, depending on the quantity of raw materials easily available.