Six other Bobs popped into my VR.
“Bill didn’t have much for us. He pointed out, quite correctly, that if we leave now with the intention of coming back, Medeiros will be even more prepared for us. He suggests we get our backups up to date and dive in.”
“Easy for him to say.” That was from Elmer, who had never been particularly enthusiastic about this venture. I think maybe quantum differences had left him a little light in the spine department. I was reminded of Bill Paxton’s character in Aliens.
I glared at Elmer for a second, then continued. “We have the plasma spikes, and we have the busters, with the new controlled fusion detonation. It’s not a lot. Best we can do, I think, is raise some hell before he takes us out. Make sure your dead-mans are in order, do a differential, and kiss your asses goodbye. We’re going in.”
With that, the Bobs disappeared from my VR, seven ships turned toward the center of the system, and we began to accelerate in at 10 g.
***
The first part of our dive into the inner system was relatively easy. Medeiros was still working on the assumption that we all had the same SUDDAR, and that he could see anything we launched at him. By the time we’d destroyed a half-dozen of his flying bombs, I guess he finally got the memo.
SUDDAR area pings showed everything with a SURGE drive scattering in all directions. At the same time, over a hundred fusion sources lit up the area and started to move. Decoys, I guess. Effective, too. We had no way to know which ones were real targets.
“Meeting!”
As soon as the other Bobs showed up, I started. “Okay, some of these fusions sources are decoys. Probably most. But some will be Medeiri, and some will be weapons. And there will be cloaked bombs as well. Suggestions?”
Elmer spoke up first, which surprised me.
“The bombs need to be within a certain distance to do any harm. If we move as a unit and assign certain Bobs to watching for the cloaked devices, we should be able to prevent any from getting too close.”
“And,” Fred cut in, “if we destroy any decoys that get within that range as well, we might be okay.”
“Certainly better than splitting up,” I conceded. “But the plasma spikes are only useful until Medeiros figures it out and starts jinking around. Plus, recharging the spike cannons takes time. They aren’t like Hollywood six-shooters.”
“Then we need to do as much damage as possible before he figures it out,” Tom said decisively. “Let’s just start blasting. Maybe no plan will throw him off a bit.”
That was just stupid enough to be brilliant. We looked at each other wordlessly, nodded, and got to work.
It became a game of cat and mouse. Medeiros knew that we had something that could destroy his units without warning. He may have thought it was a cloaked missile. He reacted by scattering his units and using the decoys to distract us. We destroyed many units, but had no idea if we were destroying anything useful.
Finally came the moment we’d been dreading. One of Medeiros’s units dodged several plasma spikes and managed to get within detonation range. Barely. The resulting EMP and blast of radiation played hell with internal systems for a few moments. Fortunately the version-3 Heavens had multiple redundancies. Five of us were able to continue. The other two must have lost too much functionality. Their dead-mans activated and they disappeared in reactor overload. I hoped Fred and Jackson’s backups were recent and complete.
But Medeiros must have twigged to the fact that our weapon didn’t chase its target. In the time that it took him to send out commands at light-speed, every Medeiros-controlled unit in the system was bearing down on us, jinking like crazy.
“Plan B, guys. Split up and do as much damage as possible.”
We headed off in random directions, jinking as well.
While we ran, I did an analysis from the recorded telemetry of Medeiros’s change in tactics. His units were given orders via radio. The ones closest to Medeiros would have started the new tactic first, followed by units farther away as the signal spread from the center. The center, of course, was Medeiros.
It took about forty milliseconds to determine where he must be, to within a few thousand km. That was too large an area for random plasma spike shots, but not too large for intelligent busters on a mission. I transmitted the coordinates to the other Bobs, and we simultaneously launched every buster we had. At the same time, we all activated SUDDAR jamming at maximum intensity. Everyone in the system was now blind, except for traditional visual and radar. The trick would be to keep it going until—
Hector and Tom’s SCUT signals cut off without warning. I felt a pang of sorrow. They’d almost certainly been caught by a nuke. That left three of us, plus whatever busters were still going. I kept spiking fusion sources as best I could. The AMI pilots tended to be a little predictable. Many of them settled into a pattern of dodges that I could predict after several iterations.
Then Barney dropped out. That left just Elmer and me. I had to give him credit. Now that things had hit the fan, he was no longer whining about the danger. I mentally upgraded him to Michael Biehn.
Two nukes went off around me almost at the same time. They must have been a little impatient, or saw their solution deteriorating, because the distance was a little too great for annihilation. Not too great for damage, though. I was dead in the water for several minutes while Guppy scrambled the roamers to replace or reroute systems.
“You okay, Khan?” It was Elmer, checking up on me.
“A little damage. Roamers are on it. Don’t try to cover me. We don’t want to present a single target.”
“No problem, dude. Having some fun of my own over here…”
[SURGE drive online]
That’s what I wanted to hear.
I jammed the gas pedal all the way down to emergency level, and shot away at 15 g. I wasn’t able to keep that up long, but it saved my bacon, as another nuke went off behind me, just out of range.
Finally, just when I had about decided I’d had enough excitement for the century, the busters converged on the point in space where we believed Medeiros to be. Remote telemetry showed forty-four busters bearing down on three Brazilian probes. The Medeiri must have finally gotten a visual warning, because they turned and scattered. But it was far too late. At least half of the busters made contact of some kind before there wasn’t anything left that was big enough to register as a target.
Just one small problem. Destroying Medeiros didn’t deactivate his units. We were still being chased by dozens of fusion signatures, at least some of which were real threats.
“Got any ideas, Elmer?”
“How’s your equipment, Khan?”
“Well, I’m going to need new underwear, but I’m still running.”
“I’m not so good. My SURGE has gone intermittent, and I don’t have time or parts to fix it.”