Dadr'Ba (33 page)

It was a slow process; using their network of informants, the resistance gathered information and began analyzing the pattern of life of the Prz’Nr’s and guards. They studied the outside of the box that held the Prz’Nr’s and what went in and what came out, unable to penetrate inside the prison cells where only the Prz’Nr’s and the soldiers guarding them are allowed. Gradually and deliberately the resistance assembled and analyzed every detail, working up a hypothesis about what lay inside. There are five Prz’Nr’s; they’re kept in an isolated area of Zone One separate from ordinary Prz’Nr’s serving fixed sentences. These five Prz’Nr’s had been supposedly executed, but now make up a team forced to mine Dadr’Ba’s asteroids for “special” materials while under constant monitoring by the CASS.

The “special” materials mined by the Prz’Nr’s don’t appear to go into the regular production cycle for any of Dadr’Ba’s standard functions; they go to a secret D’En fabrication shop for processing from there it seems to disappear. All the resistance could determine was that when fab shop finished it work, the finished “special” material bypassed Dadr’Ba’s inventory of energy, food, infrastructure, or consumer products. The special material goes directly to a customer, without any accounting or documentation. The variety of special materials going into the Fab shop indicates a wide range of products must be being produced.

Based on information gathered from informants and P’Ko’s description of the break-in, they know the crew is made to wear surveillance equipment and kill-vests, and the CASS has discovered a way to block psychic communication.

After careful mapping, the resistance found a dedicated series of passageways and elevators blocked from all other traffic and monitored round the clock with cameras and motion sensors. Since there have been no reports of sightings, these must provide the passages between the confinement area and the worksite.

The blocked off areas change over time depending on which asteroid is being mined, which is determined by what special material is needed. Access to the blocked off passageways is through an entry control point guarded by a soldier.

The mining operation is all old-style. Acoustic and seismic monitoring of the area shows that no T’Bm’s are in use, only small blasts, picks, and shovels, undoubtedly to ensure that the special materials recovered are undamaged.

They need to be careful it’s taken months to get to this point, a mistake now would jeopardize everything and bring soldiers down into the mines and probably cost the lives of the forced mining labor crew being held, Prz’Nr.

P’Ko, Tn’Ya and Su’Zi have practiced for weeks the resistance’s newest weapon, they took an ordinary pocket sized inspection tool, and transformed it into an enhanced microbot, the pocket-sized robot that he and most other mechanics carry that enable them to send eyes and ears into a troublesome machine to discover what’s wrong before tearing the thing apart.

Working with the resistances’ engineers P’Ko and Tn’Ya had created something virtually undetectable. Equipping with translucent legs, with a layer of radar absorbing adaptive camouflage covering its body, low power systems utilizing a tiny shielded source of energy, that keeps electromagnetic emissions low during operation and virtually nonexistent at rest.

P’Ko’s tricked out pocket knife sized diagnostic tool was now stealth rover with enough power to run for hundreds of hours, but at a low power draw consequentially forcing draconian TTP’s (Tactics Techniques and Procedures) regarding power usage and levels. Never being able to do more than one thing at a time well, constantly prioritizing and scheduling all activities.

P’Ko, Su’Zi, and Tn’Ya learned to make the microbot a virtual extension of themselves, becoming nearly as comfortable with its controls and sensors as their bodies. Its sensors are not the most powerful or long range. They’re made to operate close up, almost touching the thing to be analyzed are designed to be sensitive and accurate. A jammer using technologically related to the reading lights sometimes used to cover covert activities. Simple, efficient and challenging to develop counter-countermeasures for topped off the microbot’s defensive suite.

Tn’Ya’s expertise, knowledge of the latest fabricating techniques, and a deft hand in using micromanipulators was instrumental in designing, miniaturizing, fabricating and integrating the new features into P’Ko’s pocket microtool transforming it into a stealthy remotely operated roving observation platform and science laboratory.

The CASS uses surveillance bots too; CASS minibots are general purpose, a mobile version of their fixed site video surveillance network. Elaborate stealth is necessary for these bots since the CASS uses them as a deterrent, for real stealth they use other methods like the nanobot blood implants.

Minibots are huge in comparison to the resistance microbot and hundreds of times heavier; they are equipped with EO (Electro-Optical), IR (Infrared), low light and radar capabilities. It lacks the hyper-spectral, x-ray diffraction and neutron sensor; the resistance managed to build into its microbot. The minibots size and power draw forces it to use a more traditional robot power supply rather than the trickle feed antimatter power supply utilized in the resistances microbot.

The minibot’s stealth capability is limited to its relatively small size, its mobility and its ability to change surface color to match their background which has no effect on radar. Using radar, the CASS minibot stands out like a beacon. The resistance microbot counters radar detection with a radar absorbent coating, but it has frequency and exposure limitations. Fortunately, the resistances intelligence has determined that the CASS minibot’s radar mode is rarely used unless in near total darkness, preferring the more natural and aesthetically pleasing images from its EO/IR sensors.

CASS minibots do have a significant advantage that P’Ko and Tn’Ya’s bot entirely lack. They have offensive capabilities: a laser system capable of dazzling a potential enemy, or with sustained exposure, burn through many materials; a claw capable of crushing or even severing a limb. And spiked legs that can easily puncture skin and light ballistics fiber; its legs are connected to a stun capability powerful enough to paralyze and kill, through the disruption of heart and brain function.

The CASS minibots are deadly.

Despite the many advantages, the CASS minibot has over the resistances microbot, the resistances choice to use a QECS (Quantum Entanglement Communications System), gives it an edge. It provides secure, instantaneous, un-jam-able communications that impact all of the microbot’s functions. A capability and expense that the CASS, to the best of the resistances knowledge, have been unwilling to commit. The CASS’s considers their minibots to be expendable and carry a self-destruct charge programmed to explode in the event of compromise or loss.

The willingness of the resistance to turn over a QECS to P’Ko and Tn’Ya spoke volumes about how important this mission is to them. A QECS pair is worth millions of credits; even the CASS restricts their use to only the most critical systems, rare, even among the soldiers. Especially now with the numbers of soldiers multiplying, only the lead soldier within a squad or sometimes a whole company gets a QECS.

The vast majority of soldiers is chained to the QECS possessing leader or rely on relatively easy to intercept or jammable conventional communication systems, using autonomous programming to fill in the gaps.

The resistance, after watching the entrance to the passageways leading to the prison cells and charting out and studying the closed passageways, had a pretty good idea where the special mining area lay and knew when the soldiers guarding the Prz’Nr’s rotated and the paths taken.

P’Ko, disguised, walked past the surveillance system monitored guard station just as the soldiers were entering through the entry control point door. The microbot that he and Tn’Ya customized clung to P’Ko’s pant leg, just as the door opened the microbot launched. With Su’Zi at the controls and Tn’Ya monitoring power levels and watching for hazards, the microbot scampered through the door, at an angle calculated, so P’Ko and the soldiers blocked the view of the cameras. The soldier’s three hundred sixty-degree vision was blocked by its body as the microbot ran perilously under its feet.

Even with all non-essential sensors, and systems powered down, except for camouflage and EO Su’Zi was just barely able to keep up with the soldiers coming on duty as they made their way towards the prison cell. The soldiers entered a doorway which led into a staging area just outside the Prz’Nr’s cell. Su’Zi raced the microbot in just as the door shut and Su’Zi and Tn’Ya put the microbot in protect mode.

The microbot lay huddled in a corner with its active camouflage turned on and its transparent legs folded up underneath it as its severely depleted systems recovered.

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The next day the team was ready, they knew precisely when the mining team would be returning to their cells and were prepared. They were relatively safe in what appeared to be an airlock like vestibule used for kill-vest donning and doffing.

P’Ko sat in the pilot’s seat, Tn’Ya filled the role of systems engineer, monitoring power levels and the sensors, while Su’Zi was in charge of the defense team. She had people watching the soldiers, the Prz’Nr’s and the environment for any hint of danger. Part of her team monitored CASS’s communications. Although most of CASS’s communications were encrypted, the resistance had studied and analyzed CASS’s communications for long enough that they knew what types of signals and on what channels meant something was wrong.

As the Prz’Nr’s accompanied by the soldiers entered the vestibule, P’Ko gave the command to begin overcharging the maneuvering systems needed for the massive jump to access the kill-vest.

Not far from a soldier, P’Ko looked up; it was like standing near and looking up at a hundred story building that was moving. P’Ko got dizzy; and though sitting he felt like he was going to fall. He had never experienced vertigo like this before. Not even while standing on ledges near the top of the stadium. The area he was looking up at was so big and flat it invited the senses to presume that it’s a new floor, and upset his equilibrium. Some of the others experienced it too. He felt himself teetering back; it was a little like the first time he experienced weightlessness. P’Ko reached back into his memories of weightlessness and the compensation techniques he used then, and he soon recovered.

The perspective was very strange, and it took a long while for P’Ko recognize the Mi’Nr that invaded his quarters. Not knowing his name P’Ko decided just to call him Number One, appropriate since he also seemed to be the one in charge. There were four others in this group; all their work uniforms still showed impacted dirt but dust free. The Prz’Nr’s must have gone through an air shower and blown clean of loose material. There will still be plenty of microscopic material embedded in the kill-vest for data to be collected and analyzed. They should be able to determine where they’re working by matching the dirt to known mining locations in the Mi’Nr’s database.

As the microbots power levels gradually crept up, the Prz’Nr’s took off their work overalls. The kill-vests were clearly visible, a glistening vest a few millimeters thick, looking almost like flexible metal, but when zoomed in was composed of a very tightly woven fabric of metallic and optical filaments. It will be a challenge to hop onto it and cling to it as the soldiers place it the locker. P’Ko ordered the programmed application of the special adhesive to the microbot’s legs as it makes its jump. The adhesive, having been prepositioned on the underbelly of the microbot, in anticipation of this need.

The team watched as the kill-vests, sealed in place by what looks like a zipper up the back of the kill-vest, were unzipped, the zipper was activated by a soldier pressing a sensor near the center of the back of the kill-vest a few centimeters to one side.

By the time the third Prz’Nr had doffed his kill-vest the microbots power levels were ready, they could only stay overcharged for seconds before damage to the circuits occurred, the team prepared for the jump/grab ride onto the kill-vest as it was placed into the storage locker/charging station.

P’Ko had to get the microbot into just the right position at just the right time, all non-essential systems were powered off, the energy capacitors of the microbot’s systems were redlined, and the system temps were redlined when P’Ko initiated the jump-grab sequence. It was over in less than a second, and they rode the kill-vest into its storage/charging cabinet.

Once safely inside the locked kill-vest cabinet Tn’Ya ran her system checks and began a battery of tests, including the use of insect-sized beetlebot probes to explore the kill-vests harder to access recesses. She focused on collecting the data, the analysis would take longer. She collected data first on the kill-vest, its destructive power, its control mechanism and the locking system that holds it in place.

There was one close call during the kill-vest analysis mission, as safe as it sounded inside the locked storage cabinet did have a close call. A doffed kill-vest passive tamper detect system, tied directly into the destruct circuit was discovered almost at the point of tripping the destruct sequence. It was found that the kill-vests internal communication channels ran a continuously running self-diagnostic hashing sequence. Tn’Ya had to call in programmers and engineers to help with the data collection to ensure their sensor probes didn’t affect the self-diagnostic hashing system and set off an instant destruct sequence.