We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Chapter 26: Riker – April 2157 – Sol

Chapter 26: Riker – April 2157 – Sol

The signal was audio only, and very weak. “Unknown ship, do you copy?”

I looked at Homer and raised one eyebrow. He shrugged. “As good a place to start as any.”

Activating my transmitter, I responded, “This is the starship Heaven-2 of the United Federation of Planets. Commander Riker speaking.”

There were several seconds of silence. “Uh-huh. Listen, I don’t know who you are, but you’ve just apparently averted a global catastrophe, so I guess I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Our telemetry is not up to military snuff, but our systems tentatively identify you as similar to the Heaven-series interstellar probe that FAITH launched a couple or three decades back.”

“Guilty as charged. And to whom am I speaking?”

“I am Colonel George Butterworth of the United States of Eurasia Army Corps. Rest assured, commander, that our true position is obfuscated. If you attempt to destroy the source of this transmission, you will achieve nothing.”

The colonel’s accent was definitely British, and far too close to the cliché’d pronunciation portrayed in many American TV shows. I would have to be careful not to let Homer talk to him. I doubted Homer would be able to resist the urge toward mimicry. “Colonel, let’s not get off on the wrong foot, okay? We have no intention of blowing anyone up. We had a little disagreement with what appears to have been the last of the Brazilian Empire space navy. Now, I think it’s time to start fixing things.”

***

We had been in discussions with the USE military for three weeks now. I was faithfully forwarding recordings of everything to Bill. Negotiations were slow and cautious, mostly on the part of Colonel Butterworth. He had been very slow to accept the idea that Homer and I weren’t dyed-in-the-wool FAITH theologues. It took a very frank discussion in which I explained in detail the reasons for my atheism before the colonel really began to believe me.

The USE refugee camp that Colonel Butterworth had under his care consisted of about twenty thousand people, mostly civilians, who had been collected into an underground military installation when the space bombardments had started. The colonel guessed the global human population at less than twenty million at this point, although he admitted the uncertainty on that estimate was huge.

The colonel had reached the end of his spiel, and was concentrating on the glass of Jameson.

“So what can we do, colonel? Help rebuild? Relocate people?”

“I think that ship has sailed, Commander. The Earth will recover eventually. It’s tough that way. But not in time for humanity. My tame scientists say it will be minimum five to ten thousand years before things recover to any degree. We won’t last that long.” ʀåΝổbÈs

Colonel Butterworth touched a control, and a schematic popped up in the video link. “This is the colony ship we designed and started to build in hopes that our probes would report back with something worth shipping out to. One of the first casualties of the war, I’m afraid. You have on-board autofactories that can bootstrap up to a full shipyard. With your help, we’d like to build a couple of these and leave the solar system.”

“And go where, specifically?”

The colonel sighed. “I’m actually hoping you’ll suggest a destination. It’s not like FAITH is going to be sending any ships. And you gave me to believe that you have no particular loyalty there.”

“And that’s true, colonel. I’m just making sure we’re all on the same wavelength.” I popped up a star chart of everything within twenty light-years of Earth. “You can see the stars rated for likelihood of a habitable planet. Unfortunately, Epsilon Eridani was a failure, unless you want to live under a dome. By now, Bill may have received reports back from a couple of our ships, but we won’t find out for a few more years. Can you last that long?”

“We have to. It’ll take most of a decade to go from a standing start to two colony ships.”

I nodded. “Okay, then, let’s get this show on the road.”