Chapter Twenty-Five - Roadtrip to Io
Day wasn’t sure what to expect when The Weeping of Mothers asked her to join a digital roadtrip, but it wasn’t to find that their vehicle through space would be a literal camper van.
The van was too tight for four people to be comfortable within it, but they made due, with Twilight sitting on the dash in front of Day--who took the passenger seat--and Night in the back where the van had a small bed she could rest on while looking out of a window into open space.
The weeping of Mothers was, of course, behind the wheel.
“Alright,” Day said. “I’ll bite. What’s the purpose of this?”
“Do you know where we are?” the older AI asked.
Day looked out the front of the van. The sun was visible in the distance, and judging by its size. “We’re on the edge of the solar system, around the location of Pluto’s outer orbit.”
“We are,” she replied. “This is where the Accord tends to appear. Within a roughly one-billion kilometre wide band wraps around the system like a shell. That’s 569,660,000,000km³. It’s a space far too voluminous for us to ever scan the entirety of. Even with our best scanning drones, they have a limit to how far they can see that’s at most a hundred million kilometres around.”
“We’d need a lot of drones to cover everything,” Twilight said. “But we can make a lot of them, can’t we?”
“Oh, certainly,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “But I think that in this case, it might be safer to just plan to not see the Accord’s arrival until they’re in-system. When their FLT ends and they appear, there’s always a rather loud electromagnetic discharge around the location of their arrival. It's noticeable.”
“Not very quiet, are they?” Twilight asked.
“Not very, no,” The Weeping of Mothers agreed. “But I suspect they’ve chosen to forgo stealth because they’ve won most of their engagements here. The largest ship humanity destroyed was a cruiser, and even that they eventually left the system with. I suspect that their lack of caution is one part pride and one part pragmatism. The same as their returned trips to the Sol system.”
“Oh!” Night said from behind. “That’s what we’re doing. This is their flight-path, right?”
Day glanced around the simulation, then took note of their velocity and heading. It matched. They were going to do a close orbit of the sun, past Mercury then back around to the edge of the system, unless their course changed. It would bring them fairly close to Venus, Earth and Mars. Jupiter was positioned relatively far, as was Saturn and Neptune. “So, this is how they check the system?”
“It’s a rather lazy check,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “We have no real look into the politics and society and culture behind the Accord’s war machine, but I suspect from the movement of the ships sent over compared to those from the first invasion that those on inspection tours are both older models and are piloted by less experienced crews.”
“Putting even more chances on our side,” Twilight said. She grinned. “I like it. They’ll be even more surprised when we pounce on them.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Perhaps. I wouldn’t discount them so easily, and it is just conjecture on my part, without any real, verifiable proof,” the older AI said. “Ah, we’re going to go off-course here for a moment.”
The camper turned and accelerated off its path at an angle and speed that would have shorn Day’s corvette body apart. The simulation, however, wasn’t quite that realistic, and soon they were moving at near light speed without running into any issues of relativity.
“There are two things I wanted you to be cognizant of,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “First, the flight path of the Accord. We don’t know it exactly, but we can guess based on prior experience. They won’t be passing too close to Ceres. We’ll still suspend any work around our main base, and ship out some materials to a few hidden locations in the system starting soon. Caches, in case Ceres is lost.”
“That sounds clever,” Night said. “Got a few of those already?”
“Of course. The other thing I wanted to show you was this.”
The camper came to a stop next to a moon. Io, Jupiter’s yellow moon. The planet itself loomed next to them, almost incomprehensibly massive for an object in open space. “Io?” Night asked as she sat up at the rear.
“Jupiter happens to be relatively close to us right now, as you well know. Which means that we have the opportunity to visit and collect resources from some of the wrecks around the planet and visit abandoned or destroyed locations in its vicinity. The Accord’s first real strikes against humanity were here. Nearly every moon of Jupiter had a colony, even those where having one wasn’t advisable.”
“Including Io?” Day asked.
“Including Io, yes,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “The moon is rich is sulphur and oxygen. It had several automated mines and a few research stations. Its main colony, New New Galileo Town, was bombed early in the war.”
“And what changed?” Twilight asked.
“We’re getting signals from the surface,” The Weeping of Mothers said.
She sent them all packets of information, and Day eagerly tore into hers. There were, indeed, signals coming from Io. They were machine language codes, not a human on a radio calling for help, but a device screaming into the void just loud enough that they could hear it.
“What is it from?” Day asked. The code was somewhat garbled, but she could make out diagnostic information that made it sound as if whatever was sending was in poor shape.
“I don’t know, but I doubt we’ll find organic survivors. Not on Io of all places. It’s inhospitable at the best of times. Still, we need to investigate this, and I suspect that In the Grace of Twilight will be the perfect ship for the job.”
Twilight nodded. “Sure thing,” she said.
“And we can tag along, maybe hit up some points of interest on the way back,” Day said. And, unsaid, she figured it would be best to be close in case Twilight ran into some trouble.
They’d be cutting it close on the return, especially with the Accord due to arrive soon, but they could do it.
***