Bill
June 2223
82 Eridani
I was going over so plans with Garfield when I received an ergency call from Captain Richards. I popped up the video window. “What’s up, captain?”
“Bill, we were doing so well with clearing the busters from orbit that I decided I could spare a dozen or so killers to reconnoiter the Lagrange points. To see what deiros is up to, you understand?”
I nodded, not liking the implication.
Richards popped up a grainy, long-distance image. “We picked this up.”
The fra rate and resolution were low, but I could make out that deiros was working around the tal ingots used as raw materials for the autofactories.
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
“We ran so image interpolations. It looks like he’s attaching busters to an ingot with cables.”
“Oh, hell.” A poor man’s asteroid mover. The ingots weren’t huge, but they were tal, and would survive re-entry almost unscathed. One of those could certainly create a new Barringer crater. More than enough to wipe out a colony, anyway.
“This advances our schedule. How are you doing with the printers?”
“We’ve got a half-dozen.” Richards grimaced. “One is working on a cradle for Mack, three are working on drones and roars, and two are producing small busters, per your plans.” He shook his head. “What’s with twenty-kilogram busters, anyway?”
I gave him a weak smile. “Sothing Bob has been using as anti-personnel weapons. But our experience with the mosquito killers shows that more small attackers can be as effective as a few large attackers—and more flexible. deiros will probably be putting more armor on his busters by now, so the killers are going to be less effective. So these will up the ante.”
“So do we switch to nothing but busters?”
“Not just yet, Captain. We can do without Mack for now, but we need drones and roars, for assembly if nothing else. I’ll run a min-max analysis to figure out what mix of construction will get us the best return. I’ll let you know.”
We nodded and disconnected at the sa ti. I turned to Garfield, who had been listening to the whole exchange.
“He’s planning on just smashing things, isn’t he?” Garfield looked gray with worry.
“It seems to be a the with the Brazilian probes, Gar. I don’t know if that’s a cultural thing, or military conditioning, or sothing that Brazilian scientists installed as imperatives when they were building the replicants.”
“Or they’re all insane.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, in the end. We have to react to the threat. And I don’t see any reason to change the no-quarter policy on deiros.”
Garfield’s only reply was a snort of agreent.
* * *
“He’s started moving the ingot.” Richards glared at out of the video window.
“How did he manage that?” I asked. “He was nowhere near having enough busters, just yesterday.”
Richards shrugged. “He still doesn’t, really. I think he’s starting before he’s really ready. The acceleration is vanishingly small.”
“But he can add more in-flight, as he makes them.”
Richards nodded. “Unfortunately, it’s too soon to tell which colony he’s aiming for. He may not even have decided yet. It’ll be another twenty-four hours before he has to commit.” ꞦАＮо𝔟Ěꞩ
“We have printers on both colonies, now, right?” I started to run my hand through my hair, then caught myself. “So there’s no advantage to him one way or the other. My money’s on Asgard, simply because he can get it there sooner.”
“We have to move on him now.” Richards set his jaw. “I’ll contact General Kiroshi, see what he can put in the air.”
“Do that, Captain. Call back.”
* * *
“It’s not enough,” Kiroshi said. “We are two busters short of a one-on-one matchup, and that’s without dealing with deiros himself. We can’t win this.”
“And that’s assuming we have eyes on all his devices. If he’s carrying a couple in his hold, it will put us even farther behind.”
“I don’t see it,” I replied, looking at Richards. “If he had more, they’d be pulling the ingot as well.”
“Do we have a choice?”
I sighed. “Not really, Captain. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to redirect the ingot. And by the ti it actually gets here, we’ll have built two more busters at the most.”
There were a few more comnts, but we all knew we really had no choice. These busters would have to be preprogramd, as we couldn’t afford the ti to add SCUT comms. We sent them out from both colonies, tid to arrive simultaneously.
I was about to disconnect, when I had a thought. “Gentlen, how many mosquito killers do we have left? And where are they?”
Kiroshi answered. “A little over two hundred. They’re all in orbit around Takama. We haven’t had any close-in encounters at either colony for a few days. Why?”
“Let’s throw them into the mix, General. I’ll do so calculations, and give you the tis and vectors.”
* * *
Our busters arrived at the expected ti and place. Because they were operating without SCUTs, we were getting the video play-by-play several minutes after the fact. Whatever was going to happen had already happened.
There could be no finesse on this operation. Each one of our busters could take out one of deiros’ busters. We would aim several busters at deiros himself, but he would use his busters to intercept. Barring a miracle and him missing one, we’d be left with deiros and two busters to deal with.
We watched as fourteen video images closed in on fourteen targets, then fourteen video images disappeared.
“Well, that was textbook,” Richards said.
I smiled tightly. “And right about now, deiros should be feeling pretty smug.”
Two new video windows popped up as the incoming mosquito killers zeroed in on deiros. We knew we would leave two of deiros’ busters, but we made sure those busters were tethered to the ingot and unavailable for defense.
deiros detected the incoming killers and turned tail, but he was far too late. Unlike the busters, which had decelerated to arrive at the battleground at a controllable velocity, the killers had continued to accelerate all the way from Takama. They arrived with a considerable montum; fewer than half struck the Brazilian ship, but a hundred small impacts were still sufficient to open up the side of his vessel. deiros lost his line and began to drift.
“He’s down,” Richards said. “Not sure if he’s dead, but propulsion is offline.”
“Do we have any more busters? Any more killers?” Kiroshi looked from one to the other of us.
I shook my head. “Busters are all expended. There are lots of killers, but they’re travelling away from deiros at high speed. They’ll take as long to decelerate as they took to accelerate to that velocity, then they have to accelerate back.”
“He might still be out by the ti they get back. We don’t know how many roars he has left after the space battle over Mack.”
That was true. It was certainly worth a shot, anyway. “Okay, General. I’m sending orders to the killers now. Light speed delay will add to the total turnaround ti. I think we’re looking at twenty-two hours before they get back.”
Richards frowned. “Hell, we could get a couple of drones there in less ti than that.”
“To do what? Even at full acceleration, they’re unlikely to do much damage.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of grabbing deiros himself.”
I stared at Richards. That hadn’t occurred to . Stick so roars in the drones’ holds, and they could enter the Brazilian ship and extract the replicant matrix. I felt a twinge of nausea at what we were not-quite planning. mories of Hor, of the five cubes back on Earth during Bob-1’s training, swirled with images from my imagination of Mack under deiros’ thumb. But we were dealing with soone who was about to drop a tal teor on a colony. Squeamishness was inappropriate.
* * *
The drones approached the Brazilian ship, which was still drifting. We’d decided this was important enough to sacrifice all of Asgard’s roars, save two for rebuilding. This would be almost like a beach assault. Anything short of one hundred percent casualties would be acceptable.
The two drones ca in as quickly as their drives could manage, braking with no leeway to arrive at rest just outside the rent in the enemy vessel. Cargo doors popped open and eight roars, including two of the big industrial-size units, stord across the gap. The squad headed straight for the location of the replicant matrix—we knew the layout from Bob-1’s first encounter with deiros, way back in Epsilon Eridani.
The roars encountered imdiate resistance, from the onboard roars. The battle was short and furious—deiros was fighting for his life, now. The standard roars worked to protect the big units, as those would be needed for moving the matrix. Plasma cutters flashed, and roar parts floated around the enclosed space.
The battle tilted in our direction once we realized that we could still use the big units. Any ti an enemy roar got too close, an industrial unit lashed out with a leg. If the impact didn’t disarticulate the victim outright, being bounced off a wall took it out of the fight for a few monts.
Soon, we were down to one or two defenders—depending on how you counted body parts. Then the last roar was dispatched, and—
“What the hell?” I exclaid as all video feeds disappeared.
Garfield poked at consoles. “The cargo drones are gone, too. They’ve—wait a mont, that’s not true. I’m still getting teletry from number 2. I’ll try to activate a cara.”
Richards jerked in surprise in his video window as the event registered at the human tiscale. “What happened?”
“Looks like deiros fell on his sword rather than be captured,” Garfield said. He popped up a video window. “This is what the second drone is showing. It’s damaged, by the way. Won’t be flying back on its own.”
The window showed the Brazilian vessel, or what was left of it. Pieces of spaceship spun and caught the sunlight as they receded. The ship was cut in two, and the two halves had been opened like flowers.
“He knew,” I said. “He knew he was finished. I don’t know if he thought he was taking the victory away from us, or thought we’d capture him and extract secrets.” I shook my head. “I will never understand deiros. I really hope this is the last ti I have to deal with him.”
“That’s a little worrying, though,” Garfield comnted. “I rember him being a bit on the pompous side, at the first eting with Bob-1. This ti around he never said a word. Not even an exit monologue. I wonder what secrets he might feel the need to take to the grave.”
An excellent question, and the expression on Richards’ and Kiroshi’s faces showed the sa concern that I felt.
* * *
“Never even saw him coming,” Mack said. He sat in my VR, holding a coffee, feet up on a footstool. “I rember talking to you about draining the swamps on Takama, and the next thing I know, I’m back in my default VR.”
“Yeah, he hit you square on.” I raised my coffee. “You can go over the videos at your leisure, but you missed so interesting tis.”
“Which aren’t over, I’m afraid.” Mack looked at his coffee, a frown forming. “We have to assu deiros is still out there, in one form or another. We’ll have to set up defenses, especially here and in Alpha Centauri.”
“That’s right, buddy. The colonies are okay with you diverting all printers to defensive items until you have a minimum level of ordnance.”
“Yep. Busters, then a new vessel, then so clones, then more printers... It’ll be a while before I’m able to support the colonies directly.”
“They’ll do what they can with groundside printers, Mack. Might be a good idea for them to have at least a small autofactory on each planet, just on principle.”
Mack nodded, staring into space. “Just when we think we’ve got things figured out, the universe throws another curve.”
I grinned at him. “Well, that’s life.”
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