Pfft. Homer’s roamers. Jeez, I’m starting to sound like him. It occurred to me that I could now decorate my hull as Bob-1 had. Three for me, three for Homer. Better make that a priority.
I had several tasks on the go. While some roamers worked on Heaven-6, others investigated the asteroids to find out how the Brazilians guided them, and a third group collected flotsam from the area of the battle. Raw materials were free for the taking in asteroids, but already refined material was well worth the trouble of scavenging. The Brazilian hulks, in particular, would be good for a lot of salvageable material.
The second group of roamers began to report back, and I examined the scans as they came in. The asteroids, it turned out, were being chivvied by a low-intensity, wide-field SURGE drive. The design ensured that the entire asteroid could be accelerated as a unit, without tidal forces or field drop-off tearing the body apart. It was an ingenious system, and I took copious scans for transmission to Bill. If he hadn’t already started moving Kuiper bodies toward Ragnar?k, these designs would be very helpful.
Which was all very interesting, but the asteroids were still heading for Earth. If these bodies all struck the planet, even bacteria wouldn’t survive the results. The Brazilians had set up the trajectory near perfectly, and there was no chance of a miss. I had to hope that I could impart enough sideways thrust on the asteroids using their SURGE drives to change that.
But first, I had to get them to obey me, and I didn’t have the encryption keys that the Brazilians had been using to transmit commands to the asteroid drives. Well, easily fixed. I ordered the roamers to simply rip the drive controllers out and hot-wire the drive systems. No finesse or delicate electronics was required for a straight full-power sideways thrust. It remained to be seen if I was starting too late.
***
“Wake up, buddy. You okay?”
“Auntie Em! Auntie Em!” Homer’s VR came online, smiling. “I guess we got’em.”
I snorted with relief. “And their little dog, too.”
Homer steepled his fingers in a properly evil mastermindish pose. “All their base are belong to us.”
We laughed together, maybe the first time since Homer had been born that we’d been in sync like that. I had a sudden jolt of what might be described as fatherly pride. Okay, that’s weird. Snap out of it!
Homer waved a hand in a vague out there gesture. “So, what do we have?”
“I’m still evaluating. And by the way, in case you haven’t checked, your back is still broken. So don’t be trying to fly anywhere just yet. Guppy estimates three more days to get you shipshape.”
Homer bobbed his head, and I continued, “The signs of war are everywhere. Nukes were definitely used, both planetside and spaceside, and I mean a lot! It looks like everyone just went toe to toe and started throwing punches, until only one side was left standing. As far as I can tell, the only technological force left in the whole system was a small group of Brazilian probes that had been modified for war. I found the manufacturing area—it had broken down, and the Araújos couldn’t repair it because they hadn’t been loaded with the autofactory software or equipment. They couldn’t land and bring someone upstairs to fix it—not that I’m sure there’s anyone left to do it anyway—and they couldn’t build a lander or shuttle, because no autofactory. Classic catch-22.”
“So they were doing what? Running around smashing things instead?” Homer grimaced.
“Pretty much. Taking revenge on their enemies. The asteroids had all been timed to target China, so I’m guessing that’s who took out the Brazilian Empire.”
“Took out? How bad?”
“Pretty bad. It’s actually kind of hard to tell exactly how much damage there is because of all the cloud and dust cover. Asteroid strikes and nukes kicked up a lot of dust and it’s just trashed the weather patterns.”
“There were other asteroid strikes? These weren’t the first?”
“No, not by a long shot. But these were the biggest, I think. I’ve been able to make out dozens of impact sites, most around the size of the Barringer crater. These four would have been extinction-level. Yucatan crater size.”
“Four of them.”
“Yeah.” I shook my head in disbelief. “I can’t believe anyone would think that this was a reasonable response to anything. I feel no regret or guilt for ending those guys.”
“Is anyone left on Earth?”
I put a globe of the Earth up in the holotank, and sent a copy to Homer. “I haven’t been able to pick up any radio transmissions or reactor signatures. But then, you wouldn’t expect anyone to want to attract attention. I’m sure the Araújo gang dropped a rock on anyone they detected. By now everyone still alive has gone to ground.”
Homer rubbed his forehead, his eyes unfocused. “What’ll we do? I guess we could transmit an announcement, but some might just see that as a trick.” He idly poked a finger at his copy of the globe and spun it to show different views. He sat back after a few seconds, then put his hand to his chin and resumed staring into space.
I waited, content to let him work through whatever he was wrestling with.
Finally, he looked up. “We can use SUDDAR to a certain extent. But atmosphere and planetary mass will play hell with the resolution. What about the exploration scouts that Bill came up with?”
“Funny you should ask,” I responded with a smile. “I’m building some as fast as I can.” I stopped smiling and continued in a more serious tone. “We need to sweep for surviving groups as quickly as possible. Between the nukes that were used and the rocks that were dropped, Earth looks like it might be spiraling into a nuclear winter. Anyone still alive might starve to death over the next couple of years.”
“But what will we be able to do if we find survivors?”
“I don’t know, Homer.” I shook my head, reluctant to meet his gaze. “We’re going to have to take this one step at a time.”
***
We watched as the fourth and last asteroid slid past the Earth. Although we’d known for a while that they would miss, this was an emotional moment. The original drive controllers had been replaced with more cooperative hardware, which was now programmed to gradually push the asteroids into long-period orbits with a high inclination that wouldn’t intersect Earth’s orbit in the future.
“One less thing to worry about,” Homer said with a smile.
[We are being hailed]
We looked at each other in surprise. “What now?”
Bill – September 2151 – Epsilon Eridani
All that’s really missing is a good artificial intelligence to control the whole process. And that’s the trick, isn’t it? These types of blue-sky discussions always assume certain advances for a successful implementation. Unfortunately, A.I. is the bottleneck in this case. We’re close with the replication and manufacturing processes, and we could probably build sufficiently effective ion drives if we had the budget. But we lack a way to provide enough intelligence for the probe to handle all the situations that it could face.
… Eduard Guijpers, from the Convention panel Designing a Von Neumann Probe