***
I was going through my daily round of calls, and naturally, one was Cranston. Outstanding. On the other hand, I did have this hacking thing to talk to him about. I rubbed my eyes, got myself a coffee, then activated the connection.
“Good afternoon, minister. Anything in particular you wanted to talk to me about?”
“In fact, there is, Mr. Riker. Today’s session, specifically. While we are not the richest enclave on the planet, we do have some surplus.” He nodded an acknowledgement. “As you’ve taken great pains to point out, on several occasions.”
“And you’ve refused to give any of it up. Has something changed?”
“In a manner of speaking. Since you have this kudzu idea, it seems that giving up some of our surplus would now be a temporary setback rather than a permanent crippling action…”
I sat up straighter. Very likely there was a but in there somewhere, but the minister was at least sounding reasonable.
“…Of course some quid pro quo would be in order as well. Since you’ve already decided to put the Spits in ship three, and the remaining space is just about right for our enclave—and without our surplus we’d be part of the have-nots—it seems to me that we would be a reasonable choice for the balance of the ship’s allocation.”
The minister looked at me expectantly. I bristled at the implied request for favoritism, then had second thoughts. Everything he said was true. And while the FAITH enclave wasn’t a shoe-in to be next in line, they weren’t an unreasonable choice either. Especially with any surplus gone. And rewarding such an overt display of cooperation would send the right message.
I stared into space for a few milliseconds. Interesting. I would actually be displaying a negative bias by dismissing his proposal out of hand.
“Minister, that’s a surprisingly reasonable proposal. I’ll have to discuss it with my team, but it sounds like it’ll fly.”
Minister Cranston managed to not look too smug. With a nod, he reached for the off switch.
“One moment, minister. There’s a small matter that I need to discuss with you.” I filled him in on the hack attempt, leaving out any details of why it failed. “Any thoughts on this?”
He was silent for several seconds—an eternity to me. When he spoke, he sounded uncharacteristically embarrassed. “I’m assuming, Mr. Riker, that the geographical source of the attempt is the only reason that you are asking instead of accusing.” He gave a small smile. “As it turns out, New Zealand makes sense. The fact is that our probe technology may not have been, ehm, entirely original FAITH research. Australia was working on the probe concept, and one of our agents may have, ehm, borrowed some ideas.”
“Espionage? You stole their plans?”
“Call it what you will, it’s very likely that the Australian Federation has, or had, some very good insights into your original design. And New Zealand is where most of the survivors would have ended up once Brazil started dropping rocks on Australia.” He looked at me with his head cocked, the implication clear.
“Very interesting. And thank you for being frank about that, Minister Cranston.”
We said our goodbyes, and I sent a quick IM to Charles and Homer.
Charles’ response came back within moments. “I agree on the FAITH proposal. That also saves our relatives. I know you don’t want to make that part of the equation, but I’m less worried about being impartial.”
And from Homer: “Agreed. And the Australian explanation sounds reasonable. Cranston very rarely sounds reasonable. I hope he didn’t sprain something.”
I chuckled at that. Okay, looked like we had a deal.
Bob – June 2166 – Delta Eridani
In retrospect, I guess we should have expected it. There had to be a reason why the Deltans had abandoned this side of the divide, despite the better locations and resources. And there was, in the form of gorilloids.
The Deltan migration was large, noisy, and spread out. Like a travelling smorgasbord, they proved an irresistible attractant.
The gorilloid raid struck early in the morning, after first light, when the drone IR sensors had become useless. Of course, the gorilloids neither knew nor cared about that. They simply moved when they had enough light to see.
The Deltans were half asleep, half organized, and totally unprepared. The number of attackers totally overwhelmed any defenses and even took Marvin and me by surprise.
They attacked on several fronts at once in classic pack hunting style. They cut off individuals from the main group, while keeping the defenders busy with feints. A dozen Deltans, females and juveniles, had already been grabbed.
Fortunately, we had the busters on standby as a matter of policy. It took less than ten seconds to bring them in. A dozen gorilloids disintegrated in claps of thunder. We had to select targets that weren’t too close to Deltans, so this did nothing to save the abductees. That posed a separate problem.
“Guppy! Put a drone on each Deltan abductee. Stay with them, no matter what.”
[Aye]
The buster attack froze the gorilloids and rallied the Deltans. With the flint-tipped spears, the defenders had the upper hand in close-quarters fighting.
“There are too many. We just don’t have enough busters.” Marvin looked to me with panic on his face.
I turned to Guppy. “The busters at the autofactory…”
[Are on their way. However, transit time will be almost a day at maximum acceleration]
We had started with twenty-five busters. We’d used up half of them in the first rally, and almost fifty gorilloids remained. I found myself frozen for several milliseconds.
Marvin snapped his fingers. “Let’s not use them all destructively. Hit the gorilloids at the speed of a thrown rock. A forty-pound steel ball will still slow them down, then the Deltans can finish the job.”
“Do it.”
We began hitting the gorilloids at low speed. Gorilloids were amazingly tough—a strike from a buster at that speed would kill a human outright, but the gorilloids were only stunned for a moment. In several cases I found myself bludgeoning the same gorilloids multiple times.
We were still losing busters. A unit could handle up to a dozen strikes before something malfunctioned. I made a mental note that we would have to figure out a way to collect the busters for repair. And quickly.
“Guppy, start the autofactory on building more busters, top priority. And send a couple of transport drones to the migration location.”
[Aye]
Eventually, the Deltans’ defense gained the upper hand. The females and juveniles had packed into a dense mass in the middle, and the gorilloids couldn’t get close enough to break off any stragglers. The defenders moved in organized groups, and covered each other’s backs. We were down to six busters and had to be very careful about conserving them.