We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.

… Sun Tzu, Art of War

Alpha Centauri B was more orange than Sol and less than half the luminosity, therefore less than ideal as a possible home for humanity. Goku had won rock-paper-scissors for choice, so he got A and I got the dud.

I coasted through the system in free-fall, nuclear reactor throttled down to an undetectable trickle, passive detection systems at full alert. I was down near my lowest frame rate. From this extremely slowed viewpoint, the star system seemed to flow by.

We had spent a lot of time planning the investigation of the Alpha Centauri system. This was the obvious first stop for a space probe, and it was likely that several of the other superpowers had chosen it as their first destination.

After much discussion, we had decided on a reconnaissance of Alpha Centauri A and B by running silent all the way through the systems.

Investigating the actual planetary layout was a secondary priority, but unless something dangerous showed up, I was free to use passive observation techniques to map orbiting bodies. So far, Alpha Centauri B was no big deal. I’d identified one planet and an asteroid belt, but I still wasn’t close enough to the inner system to resolve the Comfort Zone.

I ejected two scouts using the rail gun. They had orders to activate at staggered distances, with random vectors, so that an observer wouldn’t be able to backtrack their trajectory to my location. The scouts were equipped with a modified SUDDAR array, based on Bill’s early research back in Epsilon Eridani. The new system could adjust its range to up to three light hours, albeit with much reduced resolution.

***

The survey results were disappointing. The Comfort Zone contained a second asteroid belt, and there was a small Mercury-like planet in an inner orbit. It seemed there had been very little planetary formation, probably due to the close orbit of the two suns. A stable planetary orbit was unlikely outside of three A.U. or so.

More importantly from the point of view of the mission, there had been no attack and no in-system reactor activation. I allowed the scouts to range through the system, checking out the asteroid belt for anything interesting. If nothing else, I would set up an autofactory here, if the resources could be found.

***

[Found something interesting]

Finally. I was ready to go catatonic. “What have we got, Guppy?”

[Wreckage. Twenty light-minutes spinward, in the asteroid belt]

“Identity?”

[Scouts aren’t that smart. We have images though]

“Show me the pictures.”

Images popped up on the holotank. I swiped my way through them, until I came to one with part of a registration number.

“USE vessel. No question. I guess we can consider them accounted for.” I looked through some of the other images. “This isn’t all vessel fragments. There’s too much here. Can you identify the extra?”

[Autofactory equipment, and two to three vessels]

“Ah. The USE ship was building copies, and got attacked.” I reflexively checked my telemetry. “My money is on the Brazilian.”

I thought for a few moments. “How are we on the general survey?”

[Resources scan 50% complete. Minimum resources have already been catalogued. System meets requirements for an autofactory]

“Okay, so we can continue that when we have more time. Collect the scouts, and let’s head for the rendezvous.”

It would take a day or so for the scouts to return to the Heaven-9, and seven days for me to get to the midway point between Alpha Centauri A and B, where I would rendezvous with Heaven-10. ŗаŊо𝐛Ё§

***

I found Goku already waiting at the rendezvous. I had tried hard to get Bob-10 to take the handle Hobbes, but Goku’s response had been an unequivocal HELL NO, shading down from there as I continued to push. I’d finally given up, but I wasn’t about to let the twerp think that all was forgiven. I opened a channel. “Hey, Gherkin. Miss me?”

“Not from this range. Want to place a bet?” Goku’s tone was light, but I knew he was irritated. Because, well, I would have been.

“Bite me. Did you look over the pics I sent?”

“Yeah, interesting. Especially in light of what I found. Brazilian autofactory, in full swing. Two probes almost complete, two more about half done.”

“Crud.” I examined the long-range pictures that Goku had just sent. “So I guess this is it. The group decision was just to go in swinging. Still okay with that?”

Goku sighed audibly. “Yes. I know you, we, have ethical issues with that. But Medeiros has made his feelings on the subject very well known. As cliché as it sounds, the galaxy isn’t big enough for both of us.”

I closed my eyes and bowed my head for a moment. I’d always been a pacifist by choice, although I also accepted there was a point where you had to put up or shut up. The group consensus back in Epsilon Eridani was that, unless Medeiros made some kind of peace overture, war had essentially been declared.

I looked up at Goku’s image in the holotank and nodded. “Okay then. Let’s do this.”

We knew to within a million kilometers or so how far away Medeiros would be able to pick up our reactor signatures. We would head outward to 50 AU from Alpha Centauri A, then turn and accelerate inward at 10 g for as long as possible. We would then coast the rest of the way to the area of the Brazilian autofactory at close to 13% of the speed of light, separated by a few minutes to allow a staggered attack. At that speed, there would be no turning around for a second pass in any reasonable time.

It took a week to get out to 50 AU, but only five days of straight acceleration to get into the Alpha Centauri A system. At a predetermined point, I ejected two scouts forward using the rail gun. They would coast past the construction yard, a few thousand KM north of the ecliptic, gathering intelligence and beaming it back to us via laser link. As soon as the scouts were off, we cut off our drives, turned off our main reactors, and began to coast through the system toward the location of the Brazilian autofactory.

I was in the lead position. At about two minutes before arrival, I felt that I had a good enough bead on the construction yard from telescopic survey and from the intelligence received from the scout. I activated my reactor and began peppering the area with cannonballs, using my rail gun. When I had run through most of my ammo, I ejected four busters, with orders to go for the Brazilian probes.

Then I went into a hard turn to northward. Medeiros had missiles, he might have rail guns, and he might even have some equivalent of busters. Medeiros was not an engineer, but he was almost certainly career military. He’d have spent his life thinking of ways to destroy things, and the Brazilian military certainly would have supplied plans.

As I accelerated at 10 g into a new vector, I sent a short-range high amplitude SUDDAR ping toward the yard. By this point, they almost certainly knew I was here, so the small possibility that I’d just alerted them wasn’t worth considering.

Sure enough, the yard was a beehive of frantic activity as the Brazilian equipment tried to move the new probes out of the way. One of the probes appeared to be moving under its own power. And four of something had just been launched in my direction. Presence of a reactor signature made it pretty clear that they were SURGE-powered, possibly buster/missile hybrids.

I activated the SURGE jammer. Medeiros would be focused on me. Hopefully he would assume that the jamming was a defensive tactic, and thus wouldn’t notice Goku bringing up the rear until it was too late.

The cannonballs that I had launched went through the construction yard like a shotgun blast. Visuals showed that three of the four probes were destroyed outright, along with most of the manufacturing equipment.

And now came the surprise. Goku had kept his reactor off until the very last possible moment. He had also been able to piggy-back off of my pings to get an accurate and up-to-the-second picture of the situation. As Goku barreled through just north and east of the yard, he sent cannonballs toward the fourth Brazilian vessel and the four missiles. I turned off the jamming in order to track the results.

Goku took out three of the four missiles and trashed most of the rest of the construction yard, but the fourth Brazillian vessel was still under power. As I watched, it turned and made off in the opposite direction.

Seeing that one missile was still in play, I launched two busters to rearward. Travelling as a pair, one behind the other, they engaged the missile. The Brazilian weapon managed to just dodge the first buster, only to meet the second head-on. There was a flash, and it was over.

Goku and I applied the brakes at full power. It took fifteen days to decelerate and then fly back to the location of the construction yard, while collecting the ejected scouts and surviving busters.

We moved slowly through the yard, looking for anything useful, anything still operational, and mostly, any possible booby-traps.

After a thorough investigation at both short range and long range, we compared notes.

“One got away. No sign of it, and no way to tell from this mess how complete it was.”

Goku nodded and brought up a schematic of the system. “I’ve got drones doing sweeps, looking for reactor signatures or refined metal concentrations. Nothing so far. My bet is he’ll leave the system. Too much chance of us catching him if he hangs around. If he has any sense, he’ll be coasting on some random vector until he’s too far away for us to detect him.”

I considered that for a few moments. “Pretty sure he wasn’t completed, otherwise he’d have been more active before we showed up. So he may not have been stocked up with armaments or manufacturing equipment. If that’s the case, he’s essentially helpless.”

After a moment of silence, I changed the subject. “What I don’t get, is that four probes were being built. That means that the probe that set this all up has already left.” I frowned, trying to work through the implications. “It also means that Medeiros left a disembodied copy of himself to run things, with no protection.”

“Disembodied?” Goku raised an eyebrow.

“You know what I mean. Naked computer system, no ship. If we’d arrived a little sooner, it would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Seems kind of cold-blooded to just leave them to fend for themselves.”

“Military mind. To Medeiros, everyone is expendable, even other hims.”

“Damn.” I shuddered. “Anyway, we own the system now. It doesn’t look like the Brazilian plan includes a separate space station, or maybe that just comes later. How do you want to do this?”

Goku put schematics of the A and B systems up on the holotank. “B is good for manufacturing, and not much else. A has a planet in the comfort zone, but I didn’t get close enough to resolve it on my first pass. I guess we need to check that out, then report back to Bill.”

“Should we build some clones?” Between A and B, there were more than enough resources for any number of Bobs.

“I think we have to,” Goku replied. “We can’t assume Medeiros won’t be back. I doubt he’ll take the loss well.”

“Do we build standard Version-2 HEAVENs or combat class?”

“Huh.” Goku paused to think about that. “Granted, our battleships take a lot more resources to build, but I’m inclined to go with combat class.”

“I agree,” I replied. “Let’s send this all back to Bill. We might also want to consider doing everything in pairs from now on, not just reconnaissance of suspect systems.”

“Uh huh. Maybe you can make yourself a Hobbes.”

“And maybe you can make yourself a Dill-bert.”

“Twerp.”

“Dweeb.”