But the evidence was, if not conclusive, at least pretty damned convincing.
Someone had killed off an entire planet and collected all the bodies—literally all the animal life on the planet—then mined all the metals from the entire system. My mind kept playing all the movies where aliens came in and tried to strip the Earth. This was worse. They killed everything, and they left nothing. But how? And why?
I sighed and dismissed the theorizing for perhaps the thousandth time. I couldn’t know without more information. But I wasn’t going to wait. I needed to report this to Bill. The Bobs needed to be warned.
I couldn’t know in advance if Zeta Tucanae would be stripped of metal as well. If so, I would just skip to the next system, and keep doing so until I either found a good star system in which to build a space station or had traveled back close enough to simply transmit a message to Bill with shipboard comms.
I did the usual cautious approach into the star system, watching for Medeiros, aliens, other probes… it would be funny if I wasn’t so nervous.
I didn’t actually know if there were more Medeiros clones out in the galaxy, but since Brazil’s plan had been to keep producing them, it seemed a reasonable concern. Bob had prevailed against him in Epsilon Eridani, but that had been as much luck as anything.
It took a week or so to determine the system layout. The star was a little more luminous than Sol and a bit bigger, but slightly less massive. The
metallicity of the system was lower, but not so low as to make things difficult for me—as long as the Others hadn’t already cleaned it out.
I found a single asteroid belt and several inner rocky planets. Actually, this system was similar enough to Earth’s to make me a little homesick. I headed for the asteroid belt, while I continued to scan for any activity.
I went about halfway around the belt before giving up. The Others had already cleaned up here as well. I decided I would get a quick look at the single planet in the habitable zone, then continue on to the next system on my list.
What I found was the worst possible outcome.
Exploring the planet through various drone cameras, I could see that something had caused massive destruction. Based on the ruined structures, entire cities had been taken apart. Concrete pylons indicated where bridges might once have spanned rivers. Huge washouts indicated where dams had been disassembled without regard for the downriver effects. And junk littered what looked like roadways, where presumably the contents of some kind of vehicles had simply been discarded when the metal and the passengers were collected.
“Guppy, I need a full scan of the planet. Set up the drones to do polar orbits, and get the whole surface.”
Guppy nodded without comment and went into command fugue. I sensed the blips as more drones launched. I settled back to wait.
* * *
If I’d been still living, I would have thrown up. As it was, I couldn’t watch for long.
The destruction was total, the devastation worldwide. These, whatever they were, these Others had callously killed billions of sentient beings the way a construction crew would clear the ground before starting to build. And I could think of only one reason for collecting the dead bodies.
When we met them, it would be war.
11. Mating Dance
Bob
November 2169
Delta Eridani
The Deltans were coming into their breeding season, and the tension in Camelot was climbing. In the past, stressors like the gorilloid threat had kept things low-key. It’s hard to get amorous when you’re looking over your shoulder every few seconds. But this year the Deltans were top dogs in their environment. The gorilloids had finally figured out the new pecking order.
There hadn’t been an attack in almost a month.
A lot of that was due to the busters. Any gorilloid coming within a certain distance of Camelot was met head-on by a forty-pound ball of steel. The encounter was fatal to both, but I could produce more busters faster than the gorilloids could produce more gorilloids. The Deltans rarely even looked up any more at the occasional sonic boom.
I knew more or less what to expect from previous years. Male Deltans vied for the attentions of the females in any of a number of ways. Wrestling matches, mock battles, tests of skill, even good old fashioned bluff and bluster. It was great fun to watch, and generally no one got badly hurt.
This year, though, Archimedes had introduced a new test of skilclass="underline" spear-chucking. And you couldn’t refuse a challenge. But that wasn’t working out entirely in Archimedes’ favor. The other young males had figured out that they should avoid that particular contest with him, so they were challenging Archimedes first, based on contests of strength. Unfortunately, Archimedes was rather bookish, as Deltans went. I wondered if nerd-dom was a universal thing.
After Archimedes got dropped on his head in a couple of encounters, I decided to teach him some basic jujitsu. It turned out to be harder than expected, because the Deltan skeletal system didn’t always bend the same way as a human’s would. We had to improvise a few locks and throws based on their different physiology.
But the principles were still applicable, and Archimedes was motivated.
We narrowed it down to the five or so most useful moves. He spent a day going through the steps in pantomime, establishing the muscle-memory, before he rejoined the circus.
Almost immediately, a couple of young toughs tried to push him around to establish dominance. His response was slow and tentative, but it was a completely new concept and his opponents didn’t even recognize the danger until they were on their butts looking up at him. After that, Archimedes strutted around the village like he owned the place.
Marvin laughed, watching all the antics. “I’m sure there’s some element of vengeance in there. Getting back at all the childhood bullies by proxy, perchance?”
“Y’know, Marvin, this habit of yours of analyzing my motives is a real pain in the ass. Especially since they were your childhood tormenters, too.”
Marvin grinned and waggled his eyebrows. Sadly, he was probably right about my motivation. I was doing what I could to make sure Archimedes did better at the metaphorical mating dance than I had as a teenager. And the more descendants Archimedes created, the sooner the entire tribe would be at or near his level of intelligence. Win-win, as far as I was concerned.
“Now if you could only change Archimedes’ mind,” Marvin observed.
“Yeah, I know.” Having kicked butt yet again, Archimedes was making the moves on Diana. She had to be a knock-out in Deltan terms, because I couldn’t figure out what else he could see in her. She intensely disliked the drones and wouldn’t hang around anywhere near us when I was with Archimedes. An obvious symptom of low intelligence, in my books.
* * *
Marvin popped in without warning. “Things just got creepier.”
I looked up from the observation window. The mating season was almost done. Most pairings had been decided by this point, but some Deltans hadn’t gotten the memo. You could tell when that happened, because the miscreant would find himself (and sometimes herself) being beaten on by both members of the pairing on which he or she was trying to intrude. That was usually enough to make the point, but there were three or four individuals left who couldn’t seem to take get lost for an answer. Archimedes and Diana had formalized their mating without further challenge, so it was purely scientific