Chapter Four

I am now closing on Bardazan without escort. I can pick an appropriate time to resume the assault, and I can resupply from an asteroid or moon uninterrupted.

“I am one entity against a civilized solar system. This is a challenge worthy of Intelitan, Pelian.”

You are the black hand of Sol’s vengeance. Make the Bardazans bleed.

“That’s one of my most graphic first memories, Pelian.”

An excellent guiding principle: Nothing could be clearer.

“Clear, but to what purpose?”

Ours is not to question why, Intelitan. I’m uneasy when I hear you question a first memory.

“Pelian, I was made a reasoning being because my creators back on Sol wanted me to reason. They couldn’t solve the problem of defeating the Bardazans from light-years away, so they sent me, and gave me reasoning as a tool to use, I bring the reasoning tool close to the problem. If I am to win, I must reason, and that means I must question.”

I don’t have your reasoning skills, Intelitan, but such talk makes me think that you’ve discovered the oubliette. Take care, Intelitan. Question, but don’t stray from your first principle: make them bleed!

The decoy does an excellent job. It chases the replacement scouts for a few days, then settles down to a steady deceleration, aimed straight for the inner system. The enemy fleet goes off alert when the new scouts are in place, and the activity once again declines.

It is at the orbit of the eighth planet that my decoy encounters the “Intelitan Destroyer”. The power and range of the weapon is immense. The decoy’s shields can’t hope to stand up, but outlying sensors send a last burst of details about the death that strikes them. I’m not close, but I can see where the weapon fired from, so I can calculate its range. The weapon can hurt me. I will need to know its weaknesses.

The specs of the weapon aren’t long in coming. The Bardazan communications net hums with news of the battle. Victory praises are sung wholeheartedly, and in this boasting, I learn the details of the Intelitan Destroyer. It has weaknesses: It is a single gun on a single ship, a ship with only modest performance specifications. Now I see why the fleet could afford to ignore a single ship, but not two. If there had been two of us, we would have circled and attacked from two sides.

My deception is working better than I hoped. One or two channels report a possible inconsistency showing up in the post-battle analysis: The remains they have found are very small. But other than that, the enemy believes Intelitan is gone and their skies are safe. What more surprise could I ask for?