We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 3: Chapter 60: Sneak Attack

Book 3: Chapter 60: Sneak Attack

Riker

April 2257

Sol

Bill had put up a number of display walls in the moot room. Two hundred Bobs filled the hall, and several hundred more attended remotely. For the first time since he’d built it, the moot VR was maxed out.

The display walls all showed the same image—a graphic of the Others’ projected course into the Solar System, terminating at Earth. At various angles to that approach, with tooltips attached, were our counteroffensive units. We would be taking the battle to them, hopefully before they realized we were aware of them.

“We have to take out as many of them as we can,” Bill was saying, “before they have time to react. They have the size and power advantage in a toe-to-toe. But hit-and-run attacks favor us.”

Thor stepped up and pointed to one group. “Cloaked fusion bombs are going in first. Three minutes. These babies have mechanical backups, so even if they zap them, the bombs will still go off at the preset time.” He looked around. “We hope.”

I looked up at the countdown timer. Less than three minutes to first engagement. The tension in the room was palpable.

Thor continued to point at items and describe the tactics. My mind wandered as I reviewed the last hundred years. A hundred years to the month since I’d stopped the Brazilians from destroying the Earth; a hundred years since I’d first spoken to Colonel Butterworth. I would never admit it publicly, but I’d missed him greatly since he had gone to Vulcan, and even more since his death. I was more grounded than most of the Bobs, since I was the primary contact with our family; but I could understand the feeling of alienation that many Bobs were starting to complain about.

I shook myself and brought my mind back to Thor’s presentation. He was just winding it up, and confirming assignments for various groups. I nodded when he referenced my task group, then went back to watching the other Bobs.

Original Bob had never been a warrior type. Even in D&D he had tended to stick to magic use. Now, we were the front line in a war that would decide the ultimate fate of the human race. Not really where I’d expected my life to go.

I sighed, annoyed with myself for my lack of focus, and popped out with the others when Thor was done.

* * *

The Others had apparently considered the possibility of a sneak attack. Our scouts picked up picket drones outside their group at two light-minutes. Of course, they detected us as well, but we had two minutes more warning thanks to SCUT and instantaneous communications. We blasted their scouts and immediately changed course to be outside the zap cone when the Others inevitably reacted.

“Ah, crap.” Bill waved at the status board, where half of our bombs had just gone dead. “It would appear that they are better at predicting our moves than we are at predicting theirs.”

I looked at the board. “So they predicted that we’d scatter, and zapped at random.”

Bill nodded, but Garfield, leaning in, said, “No. Not randomly.” He put up a set of vectors on the board. “Look. See a pattern in those proportions?”

“Huh,” I said. “They seem to be very much in love with the Golden Mean.”

“Or they think we are. Isn’t it important in feng shui?”

“Yeah, the Magic Ratio. But…oh.” Bill slapped his head. “The Chinese probe. It was probably everywhere.”

“So they’re expecting us to act in a manner biased toward that ratio…fascinating.” I rubbed my chin in my best overacting style.

“Yeah, hey, Earth to stupids.” Thor glared at us. “We’re still down half our bombs. Can we get with the program, please?”

We all grinned at him and bent to our tasks. SCUT-controlled fusion bombs moved into the Others’ armada and detonated. A whoop went up from everyone at the nicely timed explosions. ?Ã?????

It took several seconds for the area to clear enough to see the results. A couple of ultra-low-power wide-range SUDDAR pulses showed ten death asteroids destroyed or badly damaged, and twenty-two cargo carriers either missing entirely or drifting, offline.

Not a bad start at all.

Unfortunately, that took care of the element of surprise. Now the Others would go into—

And at that moment, the Others emitted the super-pulse that had so awed us in Delta Pavonis. With our greater understanding of the cargo vessels and the Casimir power generator, we were slightly less overwhelmed this time around. Just the same, the pulse lit up every significant mass within a couple of light hours, for a moment.

“Okay,” Bill said. “The sneak attack portion is over. Everyone move to main battle plan.”

The display walls changed graphics as we moved to phase II.