I sighed and grabbed the connection. “Bill here.”
“Hey, Bill, this is Bart. I’m from Calvin’s first cohort. Wow, this is really—”
I popped into Bart’s VR. It was a little rude, doing that without an invitation, but I always got a kick out of the surprised look on my face.
I liked Bart’s VR right away. He’d set up a rustic log cabin, with a cast iron wood-burning stove, a fireplace, heavy hand-made furniture, and lots of rugs and blankets. It reminded me of a place my father used to take us for vacations when I was a child.
Bart was sitting in the big old rocking chair in which dad used to spend most of his time relaxing. He had the look. I mentally added another notch to my SCUT cabinet.
“Holy—”
I laughed at his boggled expression. “Welcome to BobNet. Instant communications up to about 25 light-years. So, Bart, what happened to Calvin and Goku?”
Bart took a moment to examine the VR quality before answering. They all did that.
“The guys reconnoitered Alpha Centauri A and B exactly as set out in the mission profile. They found a Brazilian factory in full swing in A, and the wreckage of a USE probe and autofactory in B. I guess we can consider the USE probe accounted for.” Bart did a half-shrug. “They executed a sneak attack on the Brazilian installation—the modifications for the version-3 Heavens are really effective, by the way—and wiped it out.”
“Excellent. Any colonizable planets?”
“No.” Bart shook his head slowly. “The system is great for resources and such, but nothing livable. And not completely excellent, by the way. One of the Brazilian probes got away, although we don’t think it was completed yet. So it may be unarmed, and it may not have the autofactory equipment loaded in.”
“Mmm.” I thought for a second. “Not great news. Medeiros may try to highjack someone else’s installation. Or maybe skulk around for a while and then raid you guys.”
“We’ve set up early warning systems, not to worry. And we scanned the system pretty thoroughly. I think he’ll head elsewhere.”
I shrugged. It wasn’t worth dwelling on. We couldn’t track him at this point, so we’d just have to wait until he showed up somewhere else.
“Anyway,” Bart continued, “Calvin and Goku set up a Bob factory, then left as soon as one of us was ready to take over. I built the SCUT when I received your transmission, and that brings us up to date.”
I accepted the folder that Bart pushed toward me and took a moment to scan it. Nothing earth-shattering. I was impressed, and a little smug, at how well the version-3 improvements had worked. Medeiros would have to significantly up his game if he wanted to compete now.
“I’m glad to see a Bob factory in operation,” I said. “I’ve been a little remiss in that department since I sent out the last group. I can feel less guilty now.”
Bart smiled in return. We spent a few minutes getting caught up, and Bart promised to pop by occasionally for a game of Scrub baseball. With Bart and the two other Bobs currently being completed, we finally had enough to fill the positions all the way to the outfield.
Milo – August 2165 – 82 Eridani
I decelerated smoothly into the 82 Eridani system. According to all the astronomical info, this was a very good candidate for a habitable planet. The star, a G5V class, was smaller and less luminous than Sol, but still well within the characteristics of yellow suns that human beings would prefer.
I didn’t want to get cocky, but I was anticipating having two good finds in a row under my belt. I doubted I’d ever get a chance to stamp a Brazilian silhouette on the side of my hull like Bob-1, but maybe a couple of planets with green check-marks. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
I watched the survey results intently as the data slowly rolled in. Finally, Guppy announced paydirt. Not one but two planets inside the Comfort Zone, although one was at the inside edge and the other almost at the outside edge. Still, it was exciting stuff. And that would be four planets with check-marks, thank you kindly.
Impatient to pass on the good news, I aligned my comms array with Epsilon Eridani and began squirting telemetry back to Bill.
I set a course toward the outer of the two planets, since it was closer. The planet had a large moon farther out and a smaller moon closer in. Strangely, the larger moon showed a blue color. I suspected that it might actually have open water. The planet itself definitely had large bodies of water.
As I decelerated to place myself in a planetary orbit, proximity alarms sounded. It took me a moment to focus on the cause. Four missiles were coming around the curve of the moon, and they were accelerating aggressively.
Crap! I turned tail and accelerated away, but it was obvious that they had far better legs. I did the calculations, examined alternatives, but there was no out. I was hooped unless I took out all four missiles. I took a moment to give my busters extra instructions to seek out a ship matching the Brazilian profile after dealing with the missiles, then launched all eight busters in the usual pairing strategy.
As the busters headed toward the attacking missiles, my proximity alarms blared again. Four more missiles had appeared, coming around the opposite side of the moon. I was out of busters. With no chance of calling them back to me in time, I had to depend on my rail gun. I did a quick computation. I’d likely get two, possibly three, but there just wasn’t enough time to load the rail gun fast enough to take them all out.
Medeiros had outflanked me and done a good job of it.
As I fired at the approaching missiles, I made sure the communications array was still lined up and squirted off a description of my situation and a differential backup. A calm part of my mind calculated that I wouldn’t get it completed in time. Damn.
The last two missiles filled my view…
Riker – January 2166 – Sol
“They’re dying, colonel!”
The colonel wore his chin-out expression, a sure sign that I was in for a fight. In the last year, VEHEMENT had started attacking food production and supply facilities. Most of their attempts were no more than token efforts—statements, really. But the last three incidents had taken out supplies that the groups in question couldn’t spare. Now they were out of or about to be out of food, with half the winter still to go. Barring cannibalism, we were looking at hundreds of deaths before spring.
Unfortunately, the current political climate was short on empathy. A couple of failed groups, to most of the others, just meant slightly less competition for the emigration queue.