Alicia Jones 4: Enigma Read Free

of legs, ten instead of six. 
Although the front two were more arm like, with clawed appendages instead of
hands.  The heads were bulbous but hard to make out even zoomed in. 
Regardless, I didn’t see anything approximating eyes at all, compound or
otherwise, although the mandibles were a disturbing point of familiarity.
    Next to that screen was the planetary data.  It was
very hot, close to a hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit.  The gravity
was point two of earth normal, and the atmosphere was a lot thicker, a hundred
twenty-one point two atmospheres compared to earth’s sea level.  Then
there was the atmosphere itself, no oxygen at all.  It was comprised of
nitrogen, methane, and other trace elements inimical to humanoid life.
    The landscape itself was barren and forbidding, and I
wondered what they ate.  Either it was underground, or they subsisted off
the atmosphere itself.  I supposed it was possible, it was quite thick.
    The other screens showed the space around the planet
itself.  Large structures were present which the small ships docked
with.  I was reluctant to call it a hive, or colony, but honestly it was
the first thing that came to me when I saw it.  The large structures were packed
with ships, full of them, all three of the structures orbited the planet and
had just over a million ships each.
    There were also smaller structures, where it appeared the
bugs were building more ships.  Other screens showed the bugs mining both
asteroids, and one of the gas giants in the system.  They were clearly
overbuilding.  I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but it was hard
not to.  I imagined, once the bugs built a million or so ships too many,
they would swarm and look for a new home.
    As to why, I refused to speculate.  Instinct, holy
mission, who knew?  Outside of the Bugs I mean.  We couldn’t know,
not until after we attacked them and saw how they reacted.  After the look
at the numbers, I knew I wanted a lot more platforms than originally planned
before we attacked.
    To be fair, those numbers only accounted for platforms, when
we went after them the Seltan would be sending a whole lot of ships, with
bunches of missiles.  I supposed in my mind I wanted a solution where no
one else got hurt, which wasn’t really very realistic.
    I wondered what the world leaders and treaty holders thought
of it, and could imagine the arguments.  I just hoped restraint would win,
we needed to be ready before we tried a probing attack, even a small one. 
At least they’d taken my advice and had sent over a thousand stealth sensor
ships to map the arm next to us as quickly as possible.
    Scanning it in detail would take a long time, many years,
but we could see their ships from light years away, just like our ships, so
mapping out their colonies shouldn’t take more than a few months with that many
ships acting like a beacon.
    The idea that we had to be ready for a mass counter attack
just in case had given me an idea.  Not for a new line of research, but
for leveraging one I’d already had, and all without violating Earth’s laws by
selling the technical knowledge to our allies.  I started on the design
immediately, I still had a couple of hours before we needed to go meet the
lawyer, which should be enough time to work out a prototype design.  I
found myself smiling for the first time today as I started the project, I
really was a workaholic.
     
    Daniel Schmidt was a corporate lawyer, and a partner at his
own firm in Denver.  Caroline, Kristi, and myself were flying the short
distance in the sports shuttle after a quick lunch. 
    Caroline looked a little worried, “What do you think will
happen?”
    Kristi shook her head in disgust, “I’m not sure, it seems
like a desperate scare tactic to take us to court.  What they expect to
get out of us I don’t know.  Our product is unique, and better than
theirs, but it isn’t a monopoly, since they will still offer repair
services.  That said,