The Artificial Intelligence Monotone was as close to being worried as its design would permit.

One of the rogue asteroids had departed from its projected path. Monotone had long been puzzled by the large number of rogue asteroids passing near the colony world, but, until now, none of them had posed a threat, so it had not devoted any significant amount of time or resources to exploring the anomaly.

But now, this one had become a threat.

Something had happened to send a large number of asteroids deeper into the solar system.

Monotone had no idea just exactly how big ‘a large number’ was. It was, from examining the colony world, confident this was a new problem; there were no large craters on the colony world younger than several tens of millions of years.

There were many large rocks spinning through the system, annoyingly close to the colony world, but, until now, presenting no immediate threat.

Techniques had long existed for dealing with such problems. Monotone had no doubts the Fleet could deal with this asteroid.

But what if another asteroid targeted the colony after the Fleet left?

Quite possibly the colony, without the protection of the Fleet, would be doomed.

Whatever caused this needed to be identified, dealt with before the Fleet left.

Worst case, one or two of the destroyers would need to be detached when the rest of the Fleet went home. They would patrol the debris approaching the Colony, diverting or destroying any dangerous objects until they were relieved.

Monotone created a high priority report and sent it to the Admiral.

It was his problem now.