Meanwhile, I was here, at Epsilon Indi—fourteen light years from Epsilon Eridani where Bill was set up, but only eleven light years from Earth. That made it a reasonable if not a prime target for probes. As a K-type star, it was cooler and smaller than Sol, and livable planets would be correspondingly closer to the star and more likely to be tidally locked.
Still, it’s not like there was a ton of choice in the stellar neighborhood. When I’d been a kid, watching Star Trek and Star Wars and Stargate and all the other science fiction shows, it seemed like every planet was M-class and every star was yellow. And everyone spoke English. Sadly, turns out old Sol is exceptional. Most of the stars in the sky are either smaller or stupid big. Which means pretty poor pickings for habitable planets.
I was cautious coming into the system. It was possible that one of the other nations had chosen this system as a destination. Medeiros was a known factor, but we had no idea what the others would be like. We could probably rule out friendly, but there was a lot of range between harsh words and firing missiles.
I coasted in, with a couple of scouts ahead of me to scope out the situation. While I waited, I continued to work on my VR. I had decided on domed, floating cities in the atmosphere of Saturn. The rings arched across the sky, and giant clouds bloomed up to incredible heights. Below, breaks in the cloud layers gave line-of-sight for hundreds of kilometers into the depths of the atmosphere. And the cloudscape disappeared gradually into a horizon almost infinitely far away.
I stood in my rooftop garden and looked over the city from my vantage point. Hey, my VR. I can be the rich guy with the penthouse.
[Structures detected]
I looked up. Guppy had appeared out of nowhere with that announcement. I don’t think he approved of my VR for some reason, because he always seemed to be breaking consistency.
“What have we got?”
Guppy pulled up a visual. It was at extreme range for our optical telescope, so all I could really tell was that it was artificial.
[One scout is approaching the structure for a closer investigation]
“Good. When he’s close enough to take a SUDDAR scan, send me the results. Meanwhile, let’s move cautiously.”
[Aye]
***
[We have received a voice transmission from the structure]
That was interesting. I think a message from Medeiros would have been more cylindrical and explodey in nature. “Play it back, please.”
Guppy pulled up the audio file.
“Piss off, mate.”
My eyes opened wide and I choked off a guffaw. “Well, Guppy, I think we’ve found the Australian probe. Which officially didn’t exist, if I remember right.”
I tried to get my grin under control. “Okay, let’s open a channel. Or whatever it is we do to talk.”
At Guppy’s nod, I addressed the structure. “Hi, I guess you are the Australian probe. Pretty sure that isn’t a Chinese accent, anyway. This is Linus Johansson of the FAITH ship Heaven-8. To whom am I speaking?”
“I said rack off!”
“Hmm, nope. I don’t seem to be moving. Want to try again?”
There was a short delay, then, “This is Emperor Mung of the Intergalactic Jalapeno Empire. You’re in sovereign space. Last chance, on ya bike and piss off.”
This guy was either not being serious or he was seriously nuts.
Visuals of the structure were coming in with a little more detail now. It appeared to be a haphazard collection of connected structures and geometrical shapes. Kind of a Salvador Dali on drugs version of NASA’s International Space Station. I wondered if he actually had colonists in there.
“Okay, your highness. Consider me an ambassador from the Bobbian Federation.”
This statement was met with dead silence. However, the conversation—if it could be called that—had given my scouts time to get close enough for a SUDDAR sweep. Guppy popped the scan results up in front of me. No life on board. Not even any on board on board, really. The interior was open to vacuum, and a lot of the structures were missing entire walls. There was no logical order to this thing.
He finally broke his silence. “Are you alone? I’m alone.”
Well, he was volunteering information, now. That was good. “I’m here with you, your highness. That’s not alone, right?”
“Who’s your highness? And who are you?”
Uh oh. Whack job. Definitely. Still, that’s better. At least he’s not an emperor any more. Maybe he’s going to become more lucid. “What’s your name?”
“Henry Roberts. I was selected to represent Australia in the race to populate the stars. I’ve been captured by the Jalapeno Empire, and I’m being tortured for our secrets.”
And we’re back to whack job. “Guppy, keep doing scans. I want to identify the working parts of the, uh, palace. See if the probe is in there somewhere.”
I turned my attention back to Henry. “Tell me about yourself, Henry. How were you selected?”
There was silence, then a sob. “I’m a sailor. I was a sailor. I used to do solo trips. The government offered me the opportunity because they figured I’d be perfect for the job. I don’t like being around people, you know.”
There was another sob. “I miss sailing. I miss people.”
[I have identified the major probe subsystems. Replicant core, fusion reactor, autofactory systems. The probe is partly disassembled and totally integrated into the structure]
“Thanks, Guppy. Load the rail gun, wouldja? Something appropriate for the reactor control system, if you can target that.”
Again, I addressed the other replicant. “How long have you been here, Henry?”
“Centuries. They’re fish. They won’t let me go. They keep torturing me. They demand attention. They make me build more rooms.”
I remembered back to discussions with Dr. Landers about replicants going psychotic. I wasn’t an expert on the field, being more of an engineering type, but this had a definite flavor of psycho. There certainly wasn’t any “they” around anywhere that I could see.
“Henry, are you able to sail? Do you have a body? Do you see yourself?”
“What? No. I’m a space probe. The government took that away. I can’t feel myself. I miss sailing…”
Wow. Sensory deprivation, for years and years. He probably didn’t have the technical know-how to build a VR. I remembered back to the beginning of the trip outbound from Sol, before I’d constructed the VR. Er, well, before Bob had constructed the VR, I guess. But there’d been that feeling of disconnectedness. Decades of that? No thanks.
“Henry, I could give you that back. There’s a way for you to sail again. You just need to let me help you to—”
“Piss off!”
Damn.
“You’re one of them. This is just another torture session. You’re trying to play with my mind! PISS OFF OR I WILL BLOW YOU TO HELL! RACK OFF RACK OFF RACK OFF RACK OFF RACK OFF RACK OFF RACK OFF—”
My shot took out the reactor control system. The reactor, as it had been designed to do, executed a graceful shutdown. And Henry, as the replicant hardware had been designed to do, went to sleep.
This wasn’t what I’d signed up for. But I wasn’t going to leave the guy like this.
***