We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Chapter 61: Howard – September 2188 – Omicron2 Eridani

Chapter 61: Howard – September 2188 – Omicron2 Eridani

We’d arrived.

I can’t even begin to describe the feelings of joy and relief as I passed the Kuiper belt and officially entered the Omicron2 Eridani system. No Vulcan cruisers flew up to intercept us, so I added a few to my VR. Just because.

I did a quick scan of the system to confirm Milo’s survey results and verify our orientation to the ecliptic plane. The two colony ships, Bert and Ernie—yeah, they named themselves that, yes, voluntarily—came into the system at a much more sedate 1 g deceleration. They would arrive at Vulcan and Romulus a week or two behind me.

I’d been thinking off and on about what it would be like to be a colony ship. The guys would be essentially running a shuttle service for up to a couple of centuries. Fly to Earth, fly to Vulcan. Fly to Earth, fly somewhere else. Rinse, repeat. On the other hand, they were doing a very valuable service for humanity. Any Bob could appreciate that.

And with our arrival, humanity now officially no longer had all its eggs in one basket. Now perhaps we could start to think about breathing a little easier. But just a little.

I dropped into the L4 point between Vulcan and Romulus and dropped a beacon. We would set up there to do initial recon and to give Colonel Butterworth and his people a chance to make a decision. Since I had ten days or so to kill, I send some exploration drones to each planet to expand on Milo’s survey information. Then I settled back with a cup of coffee to relax.

Milo had left a couple of AMIs and a bunch of autofactory drones behind to continue mining the system. The drones put the refined metals into bundles of ingots and set beacons on them. With a couple of decades of peace and quiet, the automation had accumulated several hundred thousand tons of ready-to-use material, all in orbit inside the asteroid belt. Riker had started the AMI on building a farming donut a decade ago, to provide a backup food source. It would need only to be seeded from the stocks we’d brought with us. I hoped we wouldn’t need it. Of course, I didn’t hope that anything like as strongly as the colonists would. Kudzu was apparently not the food of the gods, although deities were often invoked when describing it.

I had quick conversations with Bill and Riker, just to let them know we’d made it. Full reports would follow. Riker gave me a list of colony ships that were already launched and on their way.

Hmm, but no pressure, right?

Exodus-1 and Exodus-2 settled into orbit without a hitch. We had a brief flurry of SCUT exchanges, then Bert and Ernie shut down the drives and went to station-keeping.

“Welcome to the home of Spock, boys.” I popped into the common VR and grinned at them. They were grinning back, of course. After all, Bob. Bert and Ernie had adopted Battlestar Galactica-style uniforms and command deck VRs. I was a little surprised by that, as it hadn’t been one of my favorite shows. Although the Cylons were definitely bad-ass.

“I was seriously considering putting up a couple of Vulcan cruisers to escort us in,” Ernie said.

I felt my face turn red, and Bert started laughing so hard he almost lost his seat.

We took a minute to enjoy the joke—belly laughs are one of the best things about being sentient, and you should never miss a chance for one. We wiped the tears from our eyes, and I pulled up a holo of the system, with Vulcan and Romulus showing in an inset window.

“We’ll want to push Butterworth to make a decision as quickly as possible. I want the colonists offloaded at the earliest possible date, and you guys on your way back to Earth.” I gestured toward the holo. “Butterworth already has Milo’s survey results, and I’ve been adding to the data. This isn’t going to be a negotiation. He picks A or B, and we move.”

Ernie nodded. “Guppy advises me that Butterworth has come out of stasis, and he’ll be ready to talk within an hour. I’ll package it up for him, let him have some quiet time to study it. Meeting in, say, three hours?”

Bert and I nodded, and we moved on to the next item.

***

“There really was never much doubt,” Colonel Butterworth said with a smile. The video showed him sitting in the Exodus-1’s common room. “Barring significant new information coming up at this end, Vulcan makes much more sense. We will need time to establish our own food production, so a robust ecosystem will bridge that gap for us.” He nodded to the camera. “Thank you for confirming biocompatibility of the local ecosystem. It settles a lot of uncertainties.” ?????Ë?

I smiled in acknowledgement. Colonel Butterworth had become much more relaxed now that his civilian population seemed to have a future.

He continued in a distracted voice, “We’ll hopefully be in a position to help out the Spits when they show up, until they have their food production set up.” He arched an eyebrow at me. “Farm-1 won’t be producing yet, right?”

“Not yet, Colonel. But since most of the colonists will stay in stasis until we’re ready for them, ships stores will be sufficient for the first month.”

Colonel Butterworth grunted. “Still tighter than I like.”

The Colonel stared, rapt, at the virtual bulletin board that Bert had provided. The board showed real-time status of all current, upcoming, and completed colony setup activities. Video windows showed a constant rotation of views.

Setup crews were awake and had begun shuttling printers down to Vulcan. On the surface, roamers were printing out modular residential units and assembling them. AMI-controlled bobcats and backhoes stayed just ahead of the construction, preparing the ground for the houses.

In two days, we would start waking the first wave of civilians and shuttling them down to their new homes. And the universe would have actual Vulcans.

Roddenberry would be proud.