We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 3: Chapter 49: Surveillance

Book 3: Chapter 49: Surveillance

Riker

November 2248

Sol

A ding announced the arrival of an email. I swiveled in my chair and pulled it up in the holotank.

From Mario. This could be interesting.

It had been eight years since Mario started on my suggested plan to investigate the Others’ home system. The lead time was inevitable, of course. The drones couldn’t fall through the system at interstellar speeds and go unnoticed. And falling in from the Oort was a slow process, otherwise.

Oh, Mario had given them a good push. But hopefully not enough to set off alarms.

I paged through the documents, scanning the headers, then reading interesting items. When I was done, I sent a video chat request to Mario. He popped up right away.

“Hi, Will. You looked through the stuff?”

Mario laughed. “Uh huh, started shooting down every piece of debris they could detect. Including a lot of just plain old rocks. Which is fine with me.”

“But the stuff you did get…”

“Right. Construction of the sphere proceeds apace.” Mario thought for a moment. “What was of more interest was the almost complete absence of death asteroids and cargo vessels.”

“I noticed that, Mario. In fact, the Delta Pavonis expedition would account for every unit we could see.”

“So either that’s all they’ve ever had…” Mario frowned into the video. “…or everything else is out somewhere.”

I nodded. “And you’ve got eyes on every system in the area.”

“Yup. Ain’t no harvesting going on, nohow.”

I sat back, staring into space. “Thanks, Mario. I think that settles it, at least for me. I’m going to re-check my detection array.”

Mario nodded and closed the video.

Yep. No question. Something wicked, et cetera. Bradbury had nothing on this.