Read Online Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows) by Christopher Nuttall - Free Book Online Page B

they would find nothing – there were no hints that any of the probes had suffered glitches – but it was the Captain’s prerogative. Besides, he approved of caution. There was no reason to hurry.
    Adam disagreed. “This is a waste of time,” he snapped. The team had gathered in the briefing compartment, where they were studying the live feed from a handful of the probes. “The comet was captured thousands of years ago and entered orbit around the primary star. It isn’t interesting .”
    “It is the exception to the rule in this star system,” the XO pointed out.
    Dacron rather liked her, although he wasn’t sure how much of it was his mentality and how much was his new body’s hormones. Controlling them was something that few humans managed to master, apparently, at least until they’d passed their first century. Some humans, particularly the Lords of Pleasure, never seemed to master them.
    “That alone makes it interesting,” she concluded.
    Dacron listened to the debate with half an ear as he studied the endless stream of data. Adam might well be right, he decided, after the survey team deployed nanoprobes to search the comet. There wasn’t anything particularly exceptional about it, apart from the fact that it appeared to have been native to the Darius System. A backtrack of its orbit revealed that it had held for several hundred thousand years at the very least, although Dacron knew that could be unreliable. It would be easy for anyone who could sweep an entire star system clean of space dust, and everything else, to put a comet in a stable orbit and just leave it to carry on forever.
    Absently, he projected the comet’s course forward – and felt his heartbeat start to race as he realised that it would strike Darius itself in roughly seven thousand years. Assuming that Darius didn’t master space travel, or the manipulation of quantum foam outside their own world, the comet would slam into the planet with terrific force. The resulting devastation, according to the worst-case projection, would exterminate all life on the planet.
    “That could be a coincidence,” the XO said, when Dacron brought it to their attention. “But if someone did stabilise the comet’s orbit, they should have been able to ensure that it would never pose a threat to the planet.”
    Dacron nodded, wishing – once again – for the instant access to datafiles he’d enjoyed as an AI. There had been hundreds of thousands of planets struck by space debris without alien intervention; indeed, given that planets warped the fabric of space and created gravity wells, it was very likely that asteroids would eventually be pulled in to where they could strike the planet. But if someone had the capability to travel through space, it should have been easy for them to render the comet harmless. The fact that they’d left it in a position to strike the planet had worrying implications.
    Or it could simply be a wild coincidence. Dacron tried to calculate the odds against it – and then gave up, deciding that it was futile. Even the AIs would have problems calculating the probability in a reasonable manner, without having to guess at some of the variables.
    “So that leaves us with another question,” Elyria said. “Do we alter the comet’s path ourselves and save Darius?”
    “Of course we should,” Gigot said. She glared around the room, daring anyone to challenge her. “We cannot leave them to die when the comet strikes their world.”
    “There are seven thousand years between now and when the comet will hit,” Dacron said, mildly. A full-fledged AI could have given a precise time, all the way down to the last nanosecond. “And a single blast from a fission cannon would obliterate the comet. There is no need for haste.”
    “But we should act now,” Gigot insisted. She turned to the Captain. “Captain, surely this ship can alter the comet’s course so it dives into the sun?”
    “It can, yes,” the Captain agreed,