NABC Book 2: Chapter 59: Another One
Book 2: Chapter 59: Another One
Book 2: Chapter 59: Another One
Bill
April 2205
Epsilon Eridani
I leaned back in my chair, looked straight up, and used some words that I normally don’t like to use.
Surveillance drones around GL 877 had reported that the Others had just launched another expedition. From the initial vector, it looked like they were heading for NN 4285. That wasn’t too bad—it was a small M star, too dim for any chance of usable planets.
No, I corrected myself: under no circumstances should this be considered acceptable. If the Others had stuck to uninhabited systems, well, it was a big galaxy. But that wasn’t their behavior. If they didn’t happen to kill off a planet, it was only because there was nothing to kill off, not because of some moral reluctance. Lack of opportunity isn’t the same as self-restraint. They were evil. End of story.
And if distance was an indicator, both Gamma and Delta Pavonis would probably be next, and they were good candidates. I checked the archives, just on the off chance. No such luck. No one had visited those systems yet, although a couple of Bobs were heading for them as part of Mario’s scouting.
I got up and started pacing around my office. Then I pinged Mario, and he popped over.
“What’s up?”
“Mario, the Others just moved again. This time heading for NN 4285.”
“Yeah, I saw that. Not a prime system.”
“Still, we have to figure out how to nip this in the bud. I’m concerned about the Pavonis candidates. Do you have an ETA for them?”
“Gamma and Delta? Claude and Jacques are heading for those. Claude will be at Gamma in about a month, and Jacques at Delta in twenty-two months or so.”
“Dammit. The closest significant presence we’ve got is Sol, and we can’t divert them from building colony ships.”
“Epsilon Indi?”
“No, Epsilon Indi is too far away as well, although closer than Sol. But resources are poor, and colonists to KKP will be too busy setting up to help.”
“Not as many as you’d think, and the assumptions are high probability.”
Claude sighed and resettled himself in his chair to face me squarely.
“Look, Bill. I get the whole thing about the Others, and they’re evil, blah blah. But why here, and why now? Why this particular line in the sand?”
“I’ll grant you there’s nothing unique about Gamma Pavonis to the limit of our current knowledge. But we have to start somewhere. Maybe we won’t be ready for them in time. Maybe they’ll swoop down on you in a decade and you’ll have to flee like Mario did. But at some point, we have to try. Why not here, and why not now?”
Claude gave me a wry smile. “Because here and now puts me in the crosshairs, thank you very much.”
I laughed. “Well, that’s why God invented backups.”
* * *
I popped back to my own VR, after extracting a promise from Claude that he’d get the system report on Gamma Pavonis to me on a priority basis. I checked Jacque’s tau, but he was still way up there. A conversation would take days, even if he frame-jacked.
I quickly went down my list of known manufacturing centers. There weren’t a lot. Most Bobs didn’t bother in most systems, other than building a space station. I remembered Bart, who was the last Bob that I’d talked to in Alpha Centauri.
I sent a quick ping to him, but it looked like he was between systems. Bart’s acknowledgement indicated a ridiculous tau. I’d be a few days even waiting for a response, never mind a conversation.
I queried the Alpha Centauri space station directly. The status report appeared in front of me in a window. Garfield came around and looked over my shoulder.
“No one there right now,” he said. “Looks like the last group left it uninhabited.”
“Well, we can’t force anyone to stay and play caretaker. It’s a free galaxy.” I ran a hand through my hair, then stopped and looked at my hand. That was Riker’s tic. I didn’t need to start that. “It looks like a full-power AMI, though. If I can get it to build a replicant matrix, I can load my backup and the new me can bootstrap up from there.”
“You’re going to load a backup across interstellar distances, with no Bob overseeing? Wow, dude.”
I shrugged. “No difference in principle. I’ll checksum the hell out of it before approving it for load.” I thought for another millisecond, then nodded. “I don’t have a choice, anyway. We can’t afford to ignore any potential source of Bobs. I’m afraid, like it or not, we’re going to war.”