We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Do not engage an enemy more powerful than you. And if it is unavoidable and you do have to engage, then make sure you engage it on your terms, not on your enemy’s terms.

… Sun Tzu, Art of War

We slowed down to sub-relativistic speeds well short of 82 Eridani. We wanted plenty of time to scope out the situation, without alerting Medeiros to our presence.

Bill had made good on his promise to avenge Milo. Eight version-3 Bobs, including myself, were poised outside the system, just itching to give Medeiros a piece of our collective mind. But Medeiros had had thirty-five years now to establish himself. None of us thought we’d be able to simply waltz in and whup his butt like back at Epsilon Eridani or Alpha Centauri.

And because we have always been a cautious person, reconnaissance was going to be a major priority. We had two scout probes each, with heavily shielded reactors, three-light-hour-range SUDDARs, and SCUD communications. And booby traps. We didn’t want Medeiros getting hold of any of that tech.

And we had a new weapon in reserve, courtesy of Bill’s Skunk Works.

We deliberately came in from stellar north, at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic. While we didn’t expect Medeiros to be a “two-dimensional thinker”—he was after all, military—we did expect his assets to be mostly along the ecliptic. Our probes should be able to fall through that plane before he could react.

We launched the scouts across a broad front, to get the best overall scan of the system. With no radio emissions and a heavily shielded reactor, there was a good chance most of them would go right through undetected. However, there was no way we were going to get away clean. Our hope was that if Medeiros detected only one or two probes, he would conclude that there was only one Bob out here.

I sent out a meeting invitation to the rest of the squad. Within milliseconds, seven Bobs popped into my VR.