"Tabby?! Where are you? We have no time!" Evan desperately searched for his sister in the military camp. That flimsy metal building was cold, very cold. The shelter could be sealed off at any time and they could be trapped.
"I'm cold, Evie." A faint voice came from under the bunk he had just passed. Evan knelt down and looked down. His six-year-old sister was wrapped in a blanket.
"Why are you hiding there?" We should be underground already! He scolded as he pulled her out. "We have to run!"
Of course, they can only run as fast as a small child can run. Evan was only 14, not old enough to carry her and run.
"Is mom angry with me?" the little girl asked. "I don't like it there, there are no windows."
Mom and dad are very worried. I shouldn't have come out to find you. "
Once the door is closed, it should stay closed. A timer is set and the door will remain closed until the storm passes and will not open again. No one outside the shelter can survive. There are rumors that this storm will last for months, even years.
The entrance to the shelter comes into view. Alvin could see the huge door slowly starting to close. When he left to find Tabby, the asshole guard who was laughing at him was arguing with his parents, but the door closed anyway.
"Wait! Evan shouted. He picked up the tabby cat and walked faster. He couldn't hold her for long, but it was faster than waiting for her. "I found her! Wait!!"
The guard pretended not to hear, but his parents saw it and started screaming and pointing at him. The guard had a displeased expression on his face as he typed an order on his keyboard. The door stopped.
Evan ran as if the door never stopped. He didn't trust the guard not to do it again before he arrived. In fact, even as he slipped through the door, panting and sweating in the cold air, the door began to move on its hinges again.
"Tabby! You have us worried!" Evan's mother said, even as his father hugged him tightly.
"I'm sorry, Mom," the tabby cat said through tears.
"It's okay, everything's going to be okay," she said, hugging her tightly even as the huge iron door slammed shut behind them.
"So we're going to start sending ships out from the outpost?" Sakura asked over the radio. She is not in the room. In fact, a few days earlier, Agrippa had left the headquarters area while she was trying to establish communications with the interstellar probe. So far, all attempts to talk to it have been ignored. The probe kept repeating, over and over again.
"It's time," I said. "Are your drones ready for the new base?"
"Of course! As soon as you open your mouth, my starter pack will move. We will establish four new bases within a week or two. The farthest is 31,809 kilometers, and the nearest is 5,212 kilometers."
"How soon will they be productive?" I asked, knowing the answer but wanting to be sure before agreeing. This is the biggest step we've taken since becoming self-sufficient in our own location.
"With Ga
With regular material shipments from ymed, the initial construction of the factory will proceed as soon as possible. Since these are primarily military outposts and do not need to be immediately self-sufficient, they will be able to house attack drones and produce their own munitions within approximately 17 days of landing. They will produce their own drones in eight months and become self-sufficient in 11 months. "
"By 11 months from now, how many bases will be under construction?"
"All of them."
"The sixty-three men proposed by Agrippa?"
"Yes. The last base will be built in 13 months."
"How..." Yes, self-replication and exponential growth. Sometimes my own human-scale thought processes interfere with basic mathematics. A few weeks ago we struck 100,000 drones, and that number will double within a month.
"Let's start now. Do we have a surplus of basic supplies?"
"We are. The new sites will help with that, but particularly for ferronickel and steel, we have tens of thousands of tonnes of inventory. I estimate the new sites will account for 14% of the remaining capacity, but when they are completed, we will have 118% storage capacity."
“Is it 118% of current production capacity or 118% of future production capacity?”
"The second one," she confirmed.
“What about our military drone production?”
"We are building hangars as fast as we are filling them up. I bought two more today. When the first military base hangar is ready, I expect we will have enough production on day one Just fill them up.”
"Ya?" I called him and put him on the radio.
"Yeah?"
“How are the communication attempts going?”
"Not good. I think the probe is broken. I've sent out a few wasps to look for it, but space...is really big."
"Ha," Zia said, laughing. "Understatement of the Year." I hope you don't mind my attending this meeting of the minds?"
"Not at all," I said, even though I did kind of feel that way.
"If you need some help, I can use some of my talents to help you determine the best place to search. We know the trajectory of the probe as it leaves the solar system. If the probe turns around, it will most likely return on a similar path. Since we Knowing exactly where it exits relative to Earth, and we know exactly when it exits, then it's just orbital mechanics."
"Oh! If it returns along the same path, we can calculate when and where it will return!" Sakura said excitedly.
"Exactly that," Zia said enthusiastically. "I'm glad to see you know how to use your brain and not just build things!"
“I can do so much more with it! Did I show you my bungee setup in the old entrance tunnel?”
"It's more like a slingshot device," Agrippa said. "I'm still trying to determine if it has useful training purposes for our Guardian drones."
"You can admit it's funny," Sakura said.
"Wait a minute, is this how your original robot body got damaged?" That's why you switched to Ma before I finished testing the prototype.
K-III?" I asked doubtfully.
"Well, I probably calibrated the slingshot wrong, so the bungee pulled me back a little too hard at the end...Newton's laws can be bad sometimes," she said unapologetically.
"It's not that I don't like where this is going, but can we get back to the search?" Agrippa asked.
"Of course. I've built a backup data center for your military drones. Each drone has a live backup link to the outpost, so if they are damaged or destroyed, they can be instantly restored to a new on the drone,” I said.
"Great! I'm going to start full combat training for Wasp and Scorpion. We're more than capable of handling a training incident."
"Backup for NI-5," Zia said. "That's smart. I guess they gain tactical experience from training and actual combat?"
"Yes," said Agrippa, his voice triumphant. It's one thing to have a mechanical drone fight for you; it's another to have the practical thinking and learning to be a pilot who won't die. Every fight they ever fight only makes them better for the next fight.
"Well, while this is fun, I'll send you the ideal search pattern once I'm done. I want to get back into the gravity chamber. I feel like I'm about to break through."
With that, the impromptu meeting ended.
"You're so boring," my best friend complained. We've been best friends since elementary school, when they moved to our town and his parents joined the church. It was a common complaint; he would find some ridiculous adventure to hold us back and I would protest until he wore me down with persistence. But this time, I stood my ground.
"I'm not going to jump off a cliff. I don't care how many times you've done it."
It is not really a cliff, but the locals call it a cliff. It's more like a low overhang, a patch of boulders and dirt jutting out from a deep stream. Depending on the water level in the creek, it would be no more than 20 feet, not much higher than the elevated platform at the county swimming pool. I heard a kid broke his leg last year when the water was low, but I don't really believe it.
"You have to at least try it once! It's easy and you won't get hurt," he pleads.
"That's what you said about roller derby, and I was only five minutes into it when I sprained my ankle and fell on my butt," I pointed out.
He rolled his eyes. "Well, for once I was wrong."
"Where's the rope swing you made last summer?" You didn't push me, but you flirted with that guy. I almost planted my face on the bank. "
"Shh!" he said, glancing furtively around to see if anyone had heard. It was a reflex on his part; we were alone on the shore, and according to high school rumors, it was no secret. "Okay, twice. "
"Oh, really? What about that time you made me climb a tree when we were kids? Shouldn't you have caught me?" That little adventure resulted in a broken wrist. With this reminder, this time I was more determined not to follow in his footsteps. I spent so much time planning my escape from my mother and her crazy “belief.”
"I was still young and didn't know much," he said, changing the subject. "Besides, you're a lot heavier than you look."
I was outraged. "You're much thinner than you admit.".
"Slut".
"tramp".
"man."
He shook his eyebrows. "And a few more," he said, laughing. "Well, if you don't go, just wait here."
Only a moment later I saw him on the top of the cliff. He jumped, but just before he hit the water, I heard an "Oh shit!" I jumped up from the towel I was sitting on, just in time to see him surface and swim toward shore. Every time he waved his arms, I heard a series of curses. I rushed towards him and by the time I touched him I was waist deep.
"I think I broke my leg," he said, leaning heavily on me.
"The water seems a little low." I said unnecessarily.
"Nonsense, what do you think?" he scolded. "Damn, that hurts. My parents are going to kill me."
"Come on, cliff diver. Let me dry you off. I'll drive you to the hospital."
I didn't say "I told you so," but I knew he heard it anyway. Just another piece of ammunition for the next crazy adventure he finds for us.
The detector looked to be in terrible condition. It was originally a 40-meter-long cylinder with an 80-meter-wide solar sail that also provided shade for sophisticated electronic equipment. A vast array of tubes protruded from the opposite side, a complex but sturdy radiator system used to cool the craft. The sail was intended to be retracted far enough away from the sun that its cooling gain and slight speed boost were not worth damaging it with micrometeorites.
But the sail was torn and trailed behind the probe. The radiator tube is bent and several holes are visible on the probe. I have no idea how it was broadcast.
"Nothing to see, is there?" said Agrippa. It took him four months to find it. Saku
A discovered a simple cubic telescope design that was cheap and fast to produce, and hundreds of thousands of units were produced. Agrippa used his assault drones to spread them out as they trained around, and when they lined up, gave us a great tool to search the solar system. NASA might be jealous of the high-fidelity, high-resolution images we are now able to capture and analyze of the solar system. Still, it took us two months to get the telescope working, and we still needed to install an additional NI-12 to operate it.
"It must be damaged," said Opdio, his deep voice rivaling Agrippa's solemnity. It will orbit Jupiter in six months and will return to Earth orbit in three years. Unfortunately, I can't calculate a good interceptor trajectory unless we specifically build a rocket. "
"What if we aimed directly at Earth and intercepted it there?" I asked. Three years is not a long time when you have all the time in the world.
"It might be easier that way," Optio admitted. "Now that it's been located, I want to continue to expand the telescope array and search the solar system. I've been led to believe that we think aliens may have a mother ship."
"Go ahead," I said. This investigation is starting to feel like a red herring. Or is this a trap? Is it trying to lure us out? In some ways, it does that. But if we encounter it not as it enters the solar system, but before it reaches Earth, it will be much easier to hide our location. The space was huge and we were very, very small. The alien's sensors are weak. I know surveillance detectors will make it easier for them to find us. I still can't believe they didn't know where their ship went, and 1035 Ga
ymed is not small and not hard to find. Maybe aliens are prospectors and just randomly land on asteroids looking for specific materials? I dismissed that speculation. I've been down this road many times and the lack of answers only made me paranoid.
I turned my attention back to my own lab, where Zia had taken up her own corner. Zia looked at me and said, "Do you have a few minutes?"
"certainly."
"I figured out the gravity plate," she said, with a huge smile on her face.
"That's good news," I said.
"Well, I finally figured out the spectrometer readings we took." Zia sent me a report related to the strange spectroscopic tests we did.
"It seems to be carbon." I said, not understanding.
This makes no sense. In the main cabin suspended below the nuclear fusion reactor, each board is three meters long, but accounts for 20% of the weight of the entire alien spacecraft. The remaining pods had a much smaller plate, but still accounted for 10%. Much of the frame of the spacecraft's central trunk was built to support their enormous weight. Carbon is not that heavy.
"How is this possible?" I asked.
"Well, mostly carbon," she added. "There seems to be a layer of iridium."
"So it's the iridium that makes it heavy? It's much denser than carbon." "
"Oh, that's the heart of it," Zia said. "The density is completely off the charts. The atoms are extremely compressed but still maintain their physical properties. It's like they squeezed 100 carbon atoms into the space that one carbon atom should occupy. Iridium is compressed even less, although exactly how much, I can't say for sure yet, unless we can cut one open and put it under an electron microscope. But it makes sense, really, because iridium is so dense to begin with."
"So how can a species with such primitive materials science be able to create such advanced metals?"
Zia shook her head. "I think the better question is, what happened to the race that created these plates, and how did the aliens get them?"
The implications of her words struck me. We only encountered one species. But the enemy is intergalactic. It didn't occur to me that this wasn't the first time they'd encountered a new alien race, just like us. The fact that their rapidly deployed kinetic bombardments not only indicate that they are violent but also that they have a history of violence makes this approach seem reasonable. From their perspective, they may have been the heroes who prevented a long war with "primitive" alien tribes over resources. They almost certainly don't think of themselves as genocidal monsters. If we're not the only species to have dealt with them, we may have some allies at some point in the future.
"Okay, but I know you," I said, seeing the smirk on her face. "You know more than you let on."
"Well, I haven't figured it out yet. My confusion is staggering and you should plan on giving me a Nobel Prize."
"There are no Nobel Prizes in mathematics. There are Fields Medals."
"I know, but this thing makes me the reincarnation of George Boole."
"Great," I said. "what is that?"
"I applied current to both plates."
"It created a gravity field, and yes, we've solved that part of the problem." The explosion, in fact, occurred when the pod destroyed the transport and dented the 10-meter-thick steel floor.
"Yes, but I figured out the correct current and voltage to control the magnetic field and put a piece of carbon between them." Zia picked up a thin disk of diamond-hard carbon from the table. It is round and looks like a squashed cube.
"So you need gravity plates to create new plates?" I asked. Zia nodded. "So how did the first gravity plates come about?"
"Ah, now you understand the mystery!" she grinned, clearly interested in the puzzle. "That's why I study mathematics, so we can fully understand the mechanisms." "
"So what practical applications can we use this for?"
"Well, we could use it as a localized weapon that creates shattering gravity between two points, or heck, even as a molecular knife that slices away atomically thick layers. Maybe one that can lift or move objects field. Once we work out the math, the sky is the limit. So far all I can say is that the aliens have a precisely calibrated gravity field aligned to two points above the ship. Therefore, the ship always heads in the direction they wish to go "Tilt." Want to speed up? Increase the power of the magnetic field. Want to stay put, hovering over the Pacific Ocean? Balance the gravitational field so that it is exactly opposite to Earth's gravity."
"Hmm, so we could balance, say, a small plate to keep the drone hovering, and tilt the plate to move it in the direction you want?"
"We can," she admitted. "Theoretically, we could move anything with something like this. Even... damn, that's what they do. These bastards."
"What?" But then I realized, I raised my hand to stop her from answering, and that's when it dawned on me. This is how they move asteroids. All it takes is a large enough gravity plate array and a powerful enough nuclear fusion drive. Now we know what to do too.
