abcnovels
Book 2: Chapter 53: Testing
Book 2: Chapter 53: Testing
Book 2: Chapter 53: Testing
Hal
April 2196
GL 877
I wasn’t really what you’d call “happy” to be back. Last time I was here, I had died. Hopefully things would go better this time.
I did a quick status check on my cloud of attendants. I was surrounded by just under a hundred drones and one AMI-driven Heaven decoy vessel.
The decoy obediently matched my actions as I decelerated. The drones scattered to preassigned positions around the periphery of the star system. They would serve as an early-warning system for any comings and goings by the Others. They were designed to give as little evidence of their presence as possible. Low profile, no albedo to speak of, total radio silence, and heavily shielded reactors meant they showed very little footprint to the universe at large. And booby-trapped, of course. If the Others ever got hold of SCUT tech, we would be royally hooped.
The decoy had been constructed with all the improvements suggested by Thor: two layers of depleted uranium alternating with two layers of electrostatic shielding. We’d added redundancies for every major control system, with automatic failovers. It also had multiple independent self-destruct mechanisms and the usual booby-traps.
My new body had some improvements as well. I’d sacrificed buster storage in favor of a larger reactor and SURGE drive. At 15 G capability I could now outrun the Others, assuming that I’d seen their “A” game last time out.
Today’s entertainment was in aid of testing our mods against the death asteroid. If Decoy-1 could survive a zapping, we were golden. If it couldn’t… well, no one really wanted to ask that question.
I sent the activation order. Decoy-1 broke off from my vector and accelerated towards the inner system.* * *
The SCUT connection gave me a video window into the chase. The decoy was carefully sticking to 10 G as it ran from the Others’ battle-group, or squad, or whatever they called their standard collection of ships. We hadn’t tried to be subtle with the sweep through the inner system, and the decoy had, predictably, picked up a tail. It looked as though we were less than an hour away from the big event.
I accepted a ping, and Mario popped into my VR. “I love car chases,” he said, grinning at me.
“Especially the ones with big crashes,” I replied.
I was forwarding the telemetry to Bill for the archives as well. I hadn’t heard from him, but I imagined he was monitoring as time permitted. Mario got comfortable, Jeeves brought coffees, and we sat back to watch the show.
Two minutes later the death asteroid zapped the decoy, just as the decoy had finished a SUDDAR scan of its pursuers. The decoy forwarded a complete set of readings to us, then blew itself up.
Mario and I looked at each other, our eyes wide. I spoke first. “That was, uh, a little early.”
“Yeah, looks like Garfield was a bit off on his estimates of the internal capabilities of the death asteroids. He’s going to have to rejigger his models.”
I checked the received telemetry. “Well, fortunately, we got a good scan just at the end. This should help.” I took a close look at the scan of the death asteroid. “Or not. Look at that.” I pointed to a section of the scan. “That looks like living area. Why the crap would they need that much living area?”
Mario thought for a moment. “Either they’re really really big, or the death asteroid requires a lot of personnel to run, or they really really like each other. Like naked mole-rats or something.”
“Huh. Questions and more questions. Well, we’ve got this much done, anyway. The decoy took a few hit points, but by and large I’d say the shielding was a success.”
Mario nodded. “We’ll see what Thor and Garfield have to say at the next moot.” He raised his cup to me, finished his coffee in a gulp, and popped out.
I turned myself around, pointed the bow at GL 54, and headed home.