I was about halfway around when Guppy made my day. “Scouts have found something.”
“Cool what do they have?”
“Something.”
That black box test was going to be done with no anesthetic and soon. “Give me the report.”
A window popped up in front of me, replete with all kinds of statistics and measurements. The most important item though was an image of a shredded section of a version-2 Heaven vessel.
Bender.
4. Collection Run
Herschel
October 2332
New Pav
I watched on the monitor as the drones chivvied the ingots into the hold. As each massive block of metal arrived, roamers wrapped it in cable netting and carefully winched it up against the wall then tied it down. We’d have raw materials for just about any project we’d care to take on for a long time. The deal Jacques had struck was certainly efficient, because Neil and I had been running around from system to system for the last 50 years or so, we had not had much opportunity to stop anywhere and stock up. And in any case, the residents of those systems would not have been happy with us poaching their natural resources.
We’d contacted the Pav on the way in. The kindest description I could give for their attitude would be… curt. I guess Jacques was right about them. The thought made me sad, overall. We hadn't been having a lot of luck with alien species. Between the Others, the Pav, and the Deltans, I was starting to wonder if it was outright impossible for mutually alien intelligences to get along. And if the local area was at all representative, there must be a LOT of intelligences out there. Eventually we'd run into another star faring species with a technological advantage. That made war, and possibly the extermination of humanity, statistically inevitable.
I shared my thoughts with Neil who was, as usual, draped over his chair sideways.
“Geeze, Hersh, that's gloomy even for you. You need a new hobby. Or a hobby at all.”
“Hardy har. But what's wrong with my logic, Neil?”
He sighed, and was silent for a few mils. “Nothing. I guess. So what you want to do about it? We’re still pond scum.”
“Nah. We haven’t been that for almost 80 years. We own and operate the biggest damned cargo ship in human space. We are personally responsible for setting up at least five colonies. I think we have some street cred.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” he replied. “And please don't take that as permission to do a Picard impersonation. I don’t think I can take it anymore.”
“You got it. So what can we do with all that cred?”
Neil pursed his lips and stared into space. “To be honest, my first thought when we got word about this windfall was to double our mover plate count and accelerate to beat hell for somewhere interesting.”
“Like Phineas. Or Ick and Day.”
“And at least a dozen others. A lot of Bobs are just taking off, Hersh. Seems kind of, I don't know, self-absorbed.”
“I was thinking more like trying to place a human colony well outside of human space. … in case you turn out to be right.”
I gave him an apologetic shrug. “We still have all the stasis pods from the great Exodus. There’s simply never been any reason offload them anywhere. And that's the thing - there's no more reason for the pods, or for the Bellerophon, really - we’re obsolete.”
“So, to make ourselves relevant again, we try for another colony. And if we use the ore to add another 32 plates, we’d be able to push some really stupid g’s,” Neil said, warming to the subject.
“So, a human colony out in say, the Perseus arm…”
“… would ensure continuity even if the rest of humanity ran into a bigger badder Others.”
I nodded. “Now we have to do is figure out how to locate some volunteers.”
5. Investigation
Bob
November 2332
Outskirts, Eta Leporos
A cloud of wreckage slowly revolved around a common center of mass. Some of it was recognizable, most was not. I was a little surprised that there was much of anything. I wouldn't have expected a laser to leave much more than slag. Of course, I was assuming that whatever attacked Bender used the same techniques as the drones that attacked my scouts. I would know more once I arrived.
It didn’t make sense to have the drones try to collect all the detritus and bring it to me, that would take too long and carried too much danger of losing or further damaging something. Instead, I'd fly in with my complement of roamers into a close-up inspection. But first I set the exploration drones to watch for any approaching Boogens, even though it seemed unlikely that they’d take a sudden interest after letting the wreckage drift unmolested for so long. The fact that the wreckage was drifting away from the system was probably relevant, but if I'd triggered any alerts with all the activity, they might change their mind.
I fully admit that across the distance a lot more quickly than I should have. Caution, for the moment, was taking a back seat. Fortunately, I didn't run into Boogen pickets. Even more fortunately, I didn't run into an asteroid. I set the roamers loose to examine the wreckage it quickly became obvious that what I'd suspected was true. An internal explosion had ripped Bender ship apart. Most likely the laser had taken out the nuclear reactor control system in such a way as to make the reactor fail catastrophically.
I remembered my first encounter with Medeiros in Epsilon Eridani so many years ago. He'd suffered that very fate. In addition, the meltdown of taken out his matrix. I had to hope that Bender hadn't come to a similar end. It was an entirely different ship design, of course - Medeiros was riding a military ship designed by the Brazilian Empire. They considered even their human soldiers expendable, never mind a replicated intelligence. Bender was riding a ship that I’d redesigned, with
