We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 4: Chapter 28: United Federation of Sentients

Book 4: Chapter 28: United Federation of Sentients

Will

July 2334

Virt

I stared at the wall of small video windows, wondering for the umpteenth time why I was still doing this. Each window contained the image of a representative of a human colony. The old UN had been replaced by the United Federation of Sentients council, but it was mostly the same bag of rabid spiders, with new faces.

Unfortunately, Bobs as a rule had too much common sense to get stuck with the duty, and I had too much of a sense of duty to listen to my common sense. I couldn’t walk away and leave an empty seat representing the Bobiverse; so here I was, once again listening to a snarling, self-centered, self-absorbed, self-righteous herd of bozos.

Stupid humans.

The current debacle was about how to handle the Pav. There had always been an assumption that they would, in the fullness of time, join the UFS. We’d even made sure the name wasn’t human-centric, in order to avoid any issues of perceived bias.

Might as well not have bothered. The Pav had made it pretty clear that they weren’t interested. Also that they would come and go as they damned well pleased. The Newholme and Pangea colonies were stopping just short of threatening to shoot down any Pav vessel that passed within the Kuiper line of their systems.

At the moment, Ser Lambert of Pangea was just winding down. She glared at the council, or at their video windows at least, and sat down. Dozens of request lights immediately lit up. The Chair recognized the representative from Newfoundland on Asgard, Ser Wahl.

Ser Wahl looked into the video camera with a small smile. “Ser Lambert, while I grant your concerns about sovereign space are legitimate, perhaps you are overreacting just a tad? The Pav fleet consists of two small exploration vessels based on the Heaven-1 design. Despite their attitude, their military growth is still mostly theoretical.”

Representative Wahl’s statement was a model of calm and moderation. Also, in my opinion, naïve. While I didn’t want to be at odds with the Pav, I was fairly certain that their fleet was growing slowly only because they were putting most of their current production capacity into creating more autofactories. A lot of effort spent bootstrapping early on would pay handsomely down the road. And the Pav, unlike humans, were disciplined enough to take the long view about such things.

But I’d already pointed this out, and been soundly ignored. So screw it.

I sighed and took a moment to check the status of my projects back on Valhalla. Everything was in the groove. Construction had already started on several cities that would be alfresco, with no domes or individually pressurized buildings. Things were looking good.

The floor had been handed to the representative from Vulcan. I felt a sense of foreboding as I listened to his closing comments. “… If the Pav are not going to respect our boundaries, and assuming we don’t intend to go to war with them, the next best step would be to claim all habitable planets in the area. We have surveys from the Bobs, yes? Let us launch colony vessels, sufficient to tie up all real estate. Leave them no reason to launch in the first place.”

Seriously, had that ever worked on Earth? Did he actually expect that the Pav would take that state of affairs philosophically?

Sooner or later, we would be going to war.