We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 3: Chapter 71: Victory

Book 3: Chapter 71: Victory

Herschel

April 2257

Sol

We had to wait several more full seconds for follow-up. Bill and Will were apparently very busy Bobs, for the moment.

Finally, Bill popped in, a huge grin on his face. And a patch over his eye, his arm in a sling, and several Band-Aids done in typical cartoon cross patterns on his body.

Neil burst into gales of laughter and fell off his chair. I just managed to keep a straight face, raised an eyebrow, and said, in my best frosty voice, “Really?”

Bill chuckled and vanished the special effects. “Well, inappropriate humor is our trademark, right?”

He invoked a bean-bag chair, fell backward into it, and went boneless. “I’m indebted to you, Neil, for reminding me how much we used to love these things.” After a pause, “So anyway, the carnage is just incredible. We lost 90% of our ships, and I don’t know if we have enough busters and bombs left at this point to hold off a Girl Scout troop. But we’ve knocked out every piece of Others’ hardware in the system. Except Bellerophon, of course. And we’ve got drones doing full reconnaissance, just in case. We’ve all seen the movies where everyone relaxes too soon. No thanks.”

We all sat, silently, for a few milliseconds. I called up a beer. Without saying anything, Bill and Neil did the same. We raised our glasses in a silent toast, and each took a drink.

But there was still that other nagging issue. “Bill, we still have the Others to deal with. We need some kind of definitive solution, otherwise the problem will just keep regrowing.”

Bill shook his head. “Problem taken care of. Sorry, we’ve been so busy that I didn’t get around to making an announcement, but I got the report from Daedalus and Icarus the other day. Their tau is up so high that it took almost a week for them to format the report and send it.” Bill grinned. “I launched a little experiment of my own, back in 2225. Never said much about it, because it was kind of a Hail Mary. I didn’t want to raise false hopes, and I wanted to ensure we continued planning for a frontal assault. Anyway, about ten days ago, GL 877 went nova. There is nothing left in that system now, right out to the Oort cloud. Confirmed by the monitor drones, just before they expired.”

Neil and I looked at each other in shock.

“We can do that? Dude!” Neil said.

I stared at Bill. “Someday, some species is going to observe that explosion and wonder what the hell is wrong with their stellar models.”

We let the silence stretch for a few milliseconds, content with the moment. Then Bill continued, “Mario will be sending out Bobs to do sweeps of the outskirts of GL 877 and surrounding stars. And we’ll implement patrols for a century or two in the stellar neighborhood. But barring any nests we might find, I think we’re done with the Others.”

I lost my smile. “So, we’ve just wiped out an entire species.”

“I hear you,” Bill said, looking at his shoes. “And philosophically, it’s a heavy thought. But given what the Others have done to us and to other species, I don’t regret it one bit.”

We nodded, once again silent.

“There’s something else…” I said, looking meaningfully at Bill.

He closed his eyes slowly. “Oh, God. How many? And how?”

“The zap that grazed the Earth. Cuba. About a hundred and fifty thousand people.” Bill opened his mouth to say something and I cut him off. “We checked.”

Bill nodded, silent. After a few milliseconds, he nodded to me. “My responsibility. I’ll tell Will. You worry about the people you have on board.”

“Speaking of which,” Neil looked at me. “Should we make an announcement to our passengers?”

“Oh, yeah, guess so. Time to go home.”

* * *

We unloaded the humans in reverse order, last-in-first-out. The first wave of transports had just left, and we faced a quandary.

“Is there any point in decanting the humans that are currently in stasis? We’d just be sending them back down to a planet that’s barely habitable these days.” I looked at Will and Bill, eyebrows raised. ??N????

Will’s eyes were haunted, and he was slow to respond when addressed. “I’ll check with the UN reps who are awake, but my feeling is, no, there’s no reason to. With them in stasis, existing supplies will stretch farther, and we can drop off our waking population in the best locations.”

“How long will they be in stasis?” Neil asked.

“You mean, before you leave, I presume,” Bill answered. “With all the debris from the battle, plus what you brought in the Bellerophon, Will no longer has a shortage of raw material to worry about. And all the autofactories that have been constructed for the defense effort can now be turned to producing nothing but stasis pods. We can produce the last six million in less than a year.”

“Well, hell,” I said. “Let’s do this.”