Book 2: Chapter 57: Moot
Bill
October 2204
Epsilon Eridani
I held the air-horn over my head and pressed the button twice. And received the usual round of boos. Gotta love tradition.
The catcalls were short-lived, though, more of a formality. The word had gotten out, and the Bobs were all business today. Even the pre-meeting session had been quiet, with a growling undertone.
“First, before we get to the main event, I’d like to introduce our newest long-range champion…” I gestured to a nearby Bob. “Bruce is from Calvin and Goku’s first cohort. He is calling in from 11 Leonis Minoris, and holds the record at thirty-seven light years from Earth. Sorry, Mario.”
The crowd applauded Bruce, and several people came over to talk to him. When the chatter had died down, I held the air-horn up for a moment and waited for quiet.
“I guess you’ve all heard by now, but I’ll summarize just to make sure we haven’t missed anything. We have communicated with the Others. They appear to have captured the Chinese probe at some point, and stripped its data. The good news is that they speak Mandarin, so communications were pretty straightforward. The bad news is they know where Earth is. And thanks to my ham-handed broadcasts to every star system in sight, they know about Epsilon Eridani as well.”
I waved off the yelled comments. “No, they won’t get the SCUT plans. The broadcasts were encrypted, as is everything we do; and the Chinese probe wouldn’t know anything about the transmission or file formats, so they wouldn’t be able to separate out encrypted data from transport envelope.”