Royal Jelly
Essense region – Peccanouette constellation
Arnon System – Planet IX – Moon 3
Sisters of EVE Bureau station
13 July YC 127
I smiled pleasantly, “Good day to you too, Sister.”
Alitura shook her head in a display of frustration, “We have an urgent situation here, and I’d appreciate if you took it seriously.”
“If it is that urgent, why didn’t you engage a local pilot rather than someone seven jumps away?”
“Because,” Alitura replied with a note of bitterness, “if you remember, my management decided that the only contractor I could work with on The Damsel case was you.”
“The Damsel case?” I asked eagerly. “Have you got any new leads?”
“In fact, I have. We have discovered a rogue drone swarm in a deadspace pocket, and I believe it was built by the drone that we suspect was at the scene of The Damsel incident.”
“How do you know it’s the same drone? Have you got samples of its progeny?”
“No, we didn’t have time to dispatch any enforcers and salvage the wrecks — it all happened very quickly. However, we have multi-spectrum recordings of the swarm and they behave as if they run the code from that strange datacore.”
“Hmm… I still don’t see why you are so sure. To establish a link between the code and the drone’s behaviour, you have to observe the drone, then kill it and obtain the code from its wreck. But you said you didn’t kill any drones.”
Alitura gave me a proud smile, “We didn’t have to. What we did, we synthesised the information gathered by CONCORD, CreoDron and Hyasyoda, and built a model of a drone which was running the code from that datacore. Having compared the behaviour of the model with the recordings of the swarm, we can say with a high degree of confidence that the swarm runs on that code.”
“But how did you model analogue inputs?” I asked curiously. “We do not possess that kind of technology.”
Alitura’s smile widened, “Of course we do not have processors which can work with analogue signals, but we did not have to implement their physical structure, we only needed to imitate the behaviour. So in the model, we inserted analogue-to-digital converters between analogue inputs and the processor units.”
I was impressed. In fairness, I should not have been. Sisters of Eve were not just another charity — they were a research powerhouse which produced such wonders as Astero and Stratios and came very close to putting a CovOps cloak on a battleship.
“Well done,” I gave the praise where the praise was due. “So what’s your plan? Do you want me to destroy the swarm?”
Alitura hesitated, “I’d really like you to kill those drones and bring back any loot you find in their wrecks…”
“But?”
She sighed, “But I can’t put it into your mission objective. You see, we are a charitable organisation and our priority is to save lives. That swarm threatens The Food Relief Corporation station in the deadspace pocket. We believe the drones are going to destroy or occupy it. The corporation evacuated the station but there are still 15 staff members remaining in the habitation module. The mission is to rescue them. Unfortunately, I will not be able to offer a reward for any drone kills.”
By that time, I was so much invested into The Damsel investigation that I would run the mission for free, complete with the drone elimination. However, I did not want to give Alitura such ideas, so I made a show of reluctant acquiescence.
Essense region – Peccanouette constellation
Arnon System – Mission location
“Wow!” was my first word when we arrived to the deadspace pocket.
For some reason, I expected to see a small outpost surrounded by warehouses. Instead, what I saw was a fully fledged space station which rivalled the structures belonging to commercial corporations.
“I didn’t know that food distribution for the poor was such a profitable undertaking,” I said sarcastically.
“You wouldn’t be so surprised if you knew that Food Relief was fully owned by Sisters of Eve,” noted Aura.
“Really? This means that they are not rescuing those poor souls out of the goodness of their hearts, they are simply protecting their assets.”
“Yep. And Alitura saw it as an opportunity to kill two birds with one mission reward, so to say. I doubt that any other capsuleer would agree to be underpaid.”
“Oh well,” I shrugged, “for that matter, I was ready to run the mission for free. So let’s say Alitura and I met in the middle.” Then I looked at the overview window and changed the subject, “I can see the habitation module but where is the swarm?”
There was no sign of drones anywhere which I found suspicious.
Aura narrowed her eyes and said, “You know, Cap, I think I have cognitive dissonance.”
I glanced at her with concern, “Meaning?”
“Look at those gas clouds.”
Aura zoomed in on one of two off-white clouds which drifted near the station.
“When you watch them,” she explained, “you see that it’s just gas. But what the gravimetric sensor tells me is that they are so heavy that they must be solid.”
“How is it possible?”
Aura shrugged her shoulder, “I don’t know. But I am pretty sure that the sensors are unable to discern any object within or beyond those clouds.”
“Let’s take a closer look,” I suggested and sent a couple of camera drones to the cloud.
The gas looked opaque from the distance but as the camera drones came closer we started seeing vague shapes moving in the cloud. I directed one of the drones toward the nearest shape and for a brief moment I could clearly see the outlines of a spacecraft which was classified as Moth Apis — a type of a rogue drone. Then the Apis emitted a flash and the connection was lost.
“They are shooting at our camera drones,” Aura warned me. “Don’t get too close to them.”
“At least, now we know where that vermin is hiding,” I said pulling back the remaining camera drone. “But how can we fight them if our sensors can’t pick their signatures?”
“Can you target the rogue drones by sight?” asked Aura.
I shook my head, “No. The railguns require a target lock to determine the direction of fire. When a target is locked, the targeting system sends a constant stream of coordinates and velocity vectors to the guns. My wetware is not capable of calculating them.”
“Hmm…” Aura froze for a few seconds, then said, “If you don’t mind risking your camera drones, I think I can jury-rig a simple optical targeting system and feed the data to the rails.”
“Can you? How?”
“The same way global positioning systems work on planets. We will use camera drones instead of satellites, and optical signals instead of electromagnetic waves.”
“Aura, you are a genius!” I exclaimed in genuine amazement.
Aura perked up, “Am I?”
“You are,” I replied with conviction. “How many camera drones do we need?”
“At least three, but given we can’t get too close to the rogue drones, I would recommend doubling the number. The extra inputs will allow us to compensate for any optical distortions caused by the gas.”
“What about the CPU? Will we have enough computing power?”
Aura snorted, “It’s a simple triangulation. Even your datapad should be able to do it with enough speed.”
I liked Aura’s idea but there was something that bothered me that I couldn’t put my finger on. When I was a software developer I used to keep the overall solution design in my head and examine it for internal inconsistencies. I tried to do the same with Aura’s proposal. Walking through the algorithm, I found the gap at its very end.
“Aura, the camera drones will allow us to calculate the coordinates of rogue drones relative to themselves. How shall we know the absolute coordinates?”
“We don’t need absolute coordinates,” Aura replied confidently. “All we need to know is where a rogue drone is located relative to our current position.”
“And how shall we know that?”
“Easy, by combining rogue drone coordinates relative to camera drones with camera drone coordinates relative to us.”
That’s when I lifted my finger, figuratively speaking, and put it on the problem.
“And how shall we know the relative coordinates of camera drones, if we can neither see, nor target them in that cloud?”
Aura opened her mouth… and froze.
Full five minutes later she finished whatever calculations she was doing and asked me weakly, “I suppose the camera drones don’t have an inertial navigation system?”
I saw what she was driving at — an INS would have built-in accelerometers and gyroscopes which could measure the change in motion. The changes accumulated from the last known position could be used to calculate the current position. Unfortunately, we had no such luck.
I shook my head, “Alas, they are rather primitive devices which are directly controlled by me. Any other ideas?”
Aura sighed, “Just one. If there is no INS which could tell us the actual motion changes, we can use expected changes based on the commands you send the drones. This approach is not precise and the calculation error will accumulate with time but that’s the best I can offer.”
As there was no other choice, I accepted Aura’s suggestion and we got to work. Aura quickly coded the required calculations and rerouted the target lock data stream so that it originated from the CPU instead of sensors. Then I deployed camera drones and we practiced targeting a piece of space junk. Aura made a few corrections to account for the lag between my commands to the drones and their responses, and 10 minutes later declared that the new targeting system was ready.
I gently willed the camera drones inside the gas cloud until I saw a moving dark spot. Fearing that I would lose sight of it, I commanded the drones to approach the object… and lost another camera drone when it came too close to the rogue drone whose silhouette I was trying to chase. Reflexively, I pulled the remaining camera drones back and the rogue drone disappeared in the cloud. On my next attempt, I was more careful and simply tried to keep a stable distance from the rogue drone. When I felt that I got a hang of keeping up with the target, I started changing the formation of the camera drones so that they were located at the vertices of an octahedron centred on the rogue drone. When the last camera drone moved into its designated position, Aura exclaimed, “Bingo!” and a target icon appeared on my HUD. I wasted no time and fired a volley from all seven railguns. A second later, the rogue drone disappeared in a ball of fire.
“Woohoo!” Aura cheered and said, “Let’s do it again!”
As much as I was pleased with the result, I did not share her enthusiasm. The business of flying six camera drones in a formation taxed my mental capacity to the limit. If it wasn’t for pod goo, I would probably have swum in my own sweat by that time.
“Sorry, I need a break,” I said wearily. “Let’s pull our camera drones out of the cloud and recalibrate their position in the meantime.”
“How many rogue drones are there?” asked Aura.
I remembered what Alitura told me about the swarm and shuddered, “Two dozen or so.”
“Hmm… If we continue at this pace then you can forget about the time bonus. We’ll probably spend the rest of the day tracking the remaining rogue drones.”
I opened my mouth to reply when suddenly a rogue drone icon appeared on the overview and yellow-boxed me. Before I could form any conscious thought, my brain gave Kaukokärki a command to target the drone. Nothing happened.
“Aura!” I cried in panic. “Why can’t I target the bloody drone?”
“Oh, damn. That’s because I reroute the targeting from gravimetric sensors to camera drones,” Aura explained.
“Then reroute it back!”
Five seconds later Aura completed the task and I started targeting the rogue drone. While I was at it, more drones emerged from the gas clouds and accelerated towards us.
“What’s going on?” Aura asked in amazement. “Why did they suddenly decide to leave the cover and attack us?”
“Have you ever tried to poke a hornet nest?”
“Hmm…” Aura pursed her lips. “Not having a physical body, I could not avail myself of such an exciting opportunity, but I know what you mean.”
I, in the meantime, did not fail to avail myself of the opportunity to target the rogue drones with gravimetric sensors. Soon, my railguns were hurling Spike charges at the approaching machines. The frantic charge of rogue drones was pure suicide — without the cover of the gas cloud and flying in the straight line, they were an easy target for Kaukokärki’s one-fifties. When the overview showed only wrecks, I sent a couple of my camera drones to check the clouds for any stragglers — there were none.
“Phew! That was easier than I thought,” I said with relief.
Aura shook her head, “Stupid drones. They could have bought more time for themselves and potential reinforcements, if they just stayed in the cloud.” Then her eyes glistened, “Talking about time, we should be eligible for the time bonus! Let’s fly back to the Bureau and claim it.”
I raised an eyebrow, “Don’t you forget something?”
“What?”
“To get the mission reward, to say nothing about the bonus, we first have to rescue the corp staff members.”
“Oh, that. Right,” Aura looked embarrassed and said somewhat defensively, “But now that we’ve got rid of the drones, they can simply stay at the station.”
“Aura, you know the agents — if there is an opportunity to skimp on payment, they’ll jump at it. We can kill all rogue drones in New Eden, but Alitura will just shake her head and point a finger at the line in the contract which says ’15 x FR Personnel’. Besides, as you said yourself, there is a distinct risk of reinforcements. So, we better evacuate the good people of The Food Relief Corporation.”
“…whether they want it or not,” Aura added darkly.
And so we did.