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Book 3: Chapter 42: Results Negative
Book 3: Chapter 42: Results Negative
Book 3: Chapter 42: Results Negative
Bill
February 2228
82 Eridani
I’d received a report from Mack, so I popped into his VR to discuss it.
“Hey, Bill. Pull up a rock.” Mack waved a hand at a very comfortable-looking overstuffed easy chair, and I took the invitation.
“I read your report, Mack. Not very encouraging.”
“You mean the Medeiros part. Yeah, we’ve scanned this entire system right out to the Oort. Nada. In fact, I did a second scan, staggered in relation to the first one, in case something was hiding in a weak scan zone or something. Still nada.”
“What are the chances that what we saw with Medeiros was all there was?” I doubted that, myself, but wanted confirmation that my thinking was reasonable.
“Can’t see it, Bill. Those busters, and those missiles, had to come from somewhere. You saw that I talked it over with Calvin, right? ‘No damned way’ were his exact words.”
“Nor could he have hauled all those busters, missiles, and roamers all the way from Alpha Centauri.” I stared into space, considering. “Mind you, he couldn’t have brought them in from a nearby system, either, at least not in one trip.”Mack nodded and rubbed his chin. “So, either he took two trips, or he had help, or he’s building them locally.”
“Maybe you need to go out farther on the scan.”
“Or… Bill, something I’ve been thinking about. We use the cloaking for busters and bombs, and that’s basically what Medeiros has been using it for. But what if he got the bright idea of cloaking an entire autofactory?”
I could feel my eyebrows going up. “Oh, that would be bad. Then he could be in this system, and we’d have to hit him with a focused pulse to even have a hope of detecting him.”
Mack sighed and sat back in his chair. He looked up at the ceiling, not speaking, for almost a half-second. “On the other hand, I could be invoking imaginary dangers, here. We are completely in the dark on this one.”
“You’re up to strength, now, right?”
“More or less.” Mack waved a hand dismissively. “We’ve got printers, we’ve got resources, I’m building a new cohort, I have busters to spare… But it looks like I’m going to have to mobilize a system-wide defense.”
“There’s a lot of that going around, these days, Mack. Look, once you have your cohort up and running, start on more surveillance drones. Give them both long-range and focused scanning capability. I know the chance of hitting something at random with a focused scan is low, but it’s not zero.”
Mack nodded. I stood, gave him a wave, and popped out.
Between the Others and Medeiros, life was just way too interesting.