We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1)

by Dennis E. Taylor

  A schematic popped up in the holotank. “All right! Multiples. Have the drones set up as close as they can while remaining hidden. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Deployment took about half an hour. The drones needed to be careful not to attract attention by rattling the vegetation or banging into things. They needed to find a good place of concealment using night vision, which was notoriously sub-par for detail work.

  Eventually, though, the units were in position. Surveillance from several different vantage points showed groups of animals gathered around fires. No, not animals. Beings. Some of the beings were tending the fires, while others seemed to be handling small objects in purposeful ways. While it was far too soon to form any detailed conclusions, I was pretty certain that these were at minimum fire-users.

  Well… That’s it for this planet as a colonization target, I guess. I held my fists in the air in triumph. I’d just discovered intelligent non-human life. Not technological yet, but so what? This was huge! I wondered if I had first first contact dibs. I would have to send a message off to Bill soonest.

  The natives were not pretty from a human-centric perspective. I decided that the best description would be a bat/pig mashup. Limbs were longer than seemed reasonable, giving them a spiderish appearance. They had a light coat of fur, which varied in color from a light brownish-gray to an orangey tan. The faces and heads had varied color patterns, topped by a pair of very mobile and expressive ears. The rest of the body tended to be monochromatic.

  I kept up a running stream of commentary for my reports to Bill. I smiled to myself as I pictured him as a spider, sitting in the center of his web, listening to the vibrations on the various strands.

  “I can see a couple of infants nursing at an adult’s, uh, breast. I don’t want to make assumptions, but I guess if it’s for nursing, it’s a breast. I can’t assume it’s milk, either, although it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s for nourishment. I also can’t assume that the adult is a female or that it’s the child’s parent. I’m tentatively assigning tags to each individual, based on their fur patterns.”

  I looked over at Guppy, who stood at the ready. While I wasn’t an expert on reading fish expressions, I thought I detected occasional interest in my observations. I hoped so. For all the joy of having the universe as my playground, I had to admit that it was lonely.

  I took a deep breath and resumed my verbal annotations. “There are six groups, each of which maintains its own fire. They seem friendly, and there is frequent interaction between individual members, but the groups seem to remain distinct. I’ve instructed one of the drones to get in close enough to pick up sounds. I’m pretty sure they’re talking to each other.”

  I turned to Guppy. “Any problem with sending roamers down?”

  [ROAMers are not intended as exploration units]

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  Guppy rolled his eyes. Guppy actually rolled his eyes! Rolling eyes on a giant fish head were truly epic.

  [ROAMers are not designed for exploration on planetary surfaces. Although they have the capability, they would not be maximally efficient. Cameras are small aperture and designed for close-in work. Auditory sensitivity is rudimentary. There is no infrared capability. They have no flight capability and would not be able to camouflage themselves]

  Damn… Good answer. “Okay, Guppy. Thanks.”

  [I exist to serve]

  I laughed out loud. No one was going to convince me that wasn’t sarcasm. Great poker face, though.

  Calvin – November 2163 – Alpha Centauri

  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.

  ***

  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 t
hat 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.”

  Riker – September 2157 – Sol

  Negotiations were moving slowly. Colonel Butterworth necessarily had the welfare of his refugees as his top priority. But some of his demands did not sit well with me—such as his insistence that we not waste time searching for other pockets of humanity. Today’s discussion had, once again, devolved into an argument about priorities.

  “If there are other refuges out there, they will communicate with you, just as we did.” The colonel had his chin thrust out in what I’d come to recognize as his ‘not gonna move’ expression. His British accent was becoming more clipped as the argument dragged on. “Why should we put effort into digging them out if they don’t want to be dug out? It’ll just slow us down.”

  “Except t
hat they may not have the equipment you do, or the familiarity with the HEAVEN design, or they may not even be aware that we’re here. I have a problem with just writing them off sight unseen, colonel.” I thrust my own chin out in response, hoping he’d get the unspoken message. No such luck.

  “It seems to me that your priorities should be clear, Riker. We are the proverbial bird in the hand. It does not make sense to risk our safety for the sake of some putative group that you don’t yet even know exists.”

  I sighed. And with that comment, we’d come full circle. Time to pull the plug. “Colonel, nothing has changed since last week when we had this same argument. Before I can build your colony ships, I have to build the shipyard. Before I can build the shipyard, I have to find the resources. Unfortunately, humans have mostly stripped the solar system bare, so there’s going to be a lot of scavenging involved. That means I need more Bobs. So that’s the first thing I’m going to do.”

  The colonel started to pace. I decided to do the same. “Once the new Bobs have helped with the setup, they will have some spare time to scan for other survivor groups. Yes, that will mean building some drones, but seriously, on the scale we’re talking, that’s chicken feed.”

  I stopped pacing and turned to face the screen squarely. “With all due respect, colonel, at one point, I did Project Management for a living. There’s a critical path that gets us from here to completed colony ships, and the things you are so concerned about are not on the critical path. Looking for other survivors will not impact overall project duration.”

  The colonel sighed heavily. “And as usual, I concede that I am hat in hand in this situation, Riker. But I will continue to advocate for my people.” And with a final nod, he cut the connection.

  “Well, that was fun.” Homer’s grin had a little sympathy showing around the edges.

  I looked at his video image and gave him a weak smile in return. “Any time you want to take over negotiations…”