He went on to say, “What I’m looking for is something like a radio, that I can set off with a remote signal.”
When he stated his need, he recalled just how far he would be from the city, and remembered how hard it could be to get a comm signal in a remote location.
“By the way, if I was a couple thousand kilometers out from the city, could I still pick up broadcast comm signals?” he asked.
“Most broadcasts have a lot of range, you should be able to get a signal anywhere within line of site from the space station, since that’s one of its functions. So as long as your in this hemisphere, you should have a good signal,” she replied.
“Good, so do you have any small, lightweight radios, that I can set off with a remote signal, that you could recommend?” Drake asked.
The sales woman took control of the holo-display catalog and quickly entered Drakes request, and sorted the list by the most popular items.
Since the list was still very long, Drake also asked that the radios be rugged, and each should have it’s own frequency to turn them on.
Once their search was complete, Drake ordered a couple radios, that the sales/technician said she would have made up and ready to go at the service counter when he was ready to leave.
That was one thing Drake noticed about the store, a lack of cash registers.
When he asked Zrinka about it, she said that most people who wanted more than one item would get a cart. The cart would read the ID of any item placed within and had a display that the customer could read as they shopped. Once the customer approached the front, all they had to do was pay for what they had in their cart and bag their purchases. Usually, it only took a few people at the front to handle the service counter and help the customer.
Drake had seen a lot of sales people on the floor helping customers. So it appeared to him, that people were still needed to help other people feel comfortable making a purchase, but repetitive tasks seemed to be eliminated in this store.
Drake continued to shop. He found an area that dealt with small recording and surveillance devices, wich he found a little surprising.
The sales person, this time, was a male Dwarf by the name of Zikmun. When Drake asked about how well the surveillance gear sold, he responded, “A lot of our sales are to mercenaries and private investigator types, but half our sales are to people who suspect their spouse of breaking their marriage contract. We actually don’t sell the volumes here on Hassan as a store on a more settled world would.”
“Why is that,”asked Drake.
The man shrugged, “Hassan is still a frontier world where people are living their dreams and trying to make something of a life for themselves. They have a lot to keep themselves busy. On more settled planets and larger cities, people get bored and look for other types of things to keep them excited, so more people cheat on their marriage contracts. For us on Hassan, this is a growing market, in time we’ll be busy, but for now, it’s mostly people like you who buy our gear.” The man said as he looked at Drakes armor indicating the type of business he was involved in.
Drake wondered if there was anything he could use from this section of the store.
He remembered wishing he had some sort of fiber optic camera he could slip in a crack of a closed door. He asked the sales person about this type of gear. He didn’t think he would need anything like that tonight, but it would be good to know where he could buy one.
Drake also asked about the little camera boxes, door bumpers and hack bots. Those kinds of items were not sold at this store, it turned out. They were generally considered military gear, and Hassan was still a Chartered Imperial Protectorate Planet. Hassan had to abide by the same laws as the core worlds of the Imperium, which were under direct control of the Imperial family.
Drake hadn’t looked into how the planets beyond Hassan ran yet, except for a few cases where he dealt with them in training. He thought that he should get Samantha to give him a civics listen when he had some time.
Drake didn’t purchase anything else, but made his way up to the service counter and picked up the two radios and their controllers. They were pretty cheap, and only 24 credits for the pair.
Drake placed the radios into his backpack, put on his weapons and left the store. Since he only purchased a few small lightweight radios, he decided to take a tube capsule back to the spaceport and return to the High Jinx.
Chapter 14 - A Night in the Woods
The capsule trip back to the spaceport was as quick as usual, but it gave Drake a chance to ask Samantha for an update.
“Samantha, I know it’s only been about two hours since I asked you to keep an eye out for the cargo van, but have you seen anything… it’s getting on toward sunset.”
“Yes, Drake, just a few minutes after you entered the electronics store the cargo van took off from one of the suspected locations. I’ve since focused the camera more tightly on that area… I’ve noticed something odd about the area, the canopy of trees seems to be covering something there, like a rock formation, or something that doesn’t allow the trees to grow straight up.” said Samantha.
“Hmm, maybe that’s their based then. Anything else to report?”
“I had a second camera follow the van, it headed north and landed in a small clearing about a kilometer from a settled area, there were some animals loaded in the van, and then it returned to the suspected base. It appears that there are teams of people along the edge of the settled areas, that collect what they need, and the prospector's van is being used to transport the people and animals,” said Samantha.
“Thanks, Samantha. Request an air-car rental, preferably something dark green, to meet us at the High Jinx. Make the rental for three days, which should be enough to complete the mission. Oh… could you let Fiona know that I’m going to be busy tomorrow, but she’s welcome to come in and finish her inventory of the ship?” Drake requested.
“I’m requesting the air-car, and calling Fiona now. I did find a dark green air-car, is the color to better blend in?” asked Samantha.
“Yes,” replied Drake.
At this point, the capsule came to a complete stop at the terminal in the spaceport.
Drake made a jog to his ship to get ready for scouting the base of this group of brainwashers. It seemed a strange way do get people to do something, why go through all the trouble and risk?
“Samantha, do we have one of those underground hide bags, like I used on that last training mission?” Drake asked.
“No we have nothing like that in the ships stores we inventoried so far.” said Samantha.
Drake thought, ‘Well one last thing to pack in.’
Drake took out the new radios and paired them together each with it’s remote. Then he put a small piece of duct tape on one of the controllers and it’s paired radio so he could tell them apart in the dark if needed. After matching the radios and controllers, Drake had Samantha give him the comm code of a comm broadcast station, that focused on political discussion, counseling and weather. With the station locked in, and the radios checked out, he turned them off and placed them back in his backpack. The pack was almost full with all that it carried.
Drake loaded his backpack and carbine into the green air-car.
It was now about 8 pm, and he wanted to start scouting the base in the middle of the night when people tend to be the least alert.
Drake got into the air-car and programmed the route. The vehicle had fifteen hundred kilometers to cross since Drake wanted to approach his target indirectly and land in a small clearing about 10 kilometers off. He had the air-car fly the route low, and slow as it approached the target. The trip would take a couple hours.
Drake climbed into the car and did his best to relax and try to catch a nap while in route since he expected to have a long night.
***
“Drake, we’re almost at the landing point you selected,” said Samantha’s voice, bringing him out of a fitful, restless sleep. With possible action nearing Drake had found it
difficult to sleep, even his training in meditation didn’t overcome the underlying tension.
So Drake was fully alert and ready to go as the air-car descended into the dark forest.
Drake put on his helmet to be able to use the built-in optics to see out into the night darkened forest. As the car reached the bottom of its descent, Drake directed the car, through Samantha, to move to one side where there was some overhanging vegetation.
Once the car was half covered in the bushes, Drake exited the vehicle and ordered it to shut down. The air-car’s, landing gear extended and it settled onto the ground, then it went silent.
The forest became a place of silence and darkness until Drake started to notice the natural sounds of the area’s nightlife.
Drake finished concealing the car by cutting some of the surrounding bushes to cover the exposed front half of the vehicle.
With the car hidden, Drake slung his carbine and backpack, then set off into the forest in the direction of the suspected base.
This trip was much easier on Drake then the last time he was in the same forest, due to his armor. The helmet’s interior doubled as a display that Samantha could control, and she used it to illuminate his path.
As Drake traversed the forest, he saw some of the areas nightlife, but no people. The software he added helped Samantha isolate many of the local forms of wildlife that Drake would have otherwise missed, and this helped him avoid any confrontations that might have caused noise. Silence and stealth would be his allies for tonight's work, so he didn’t want to get tangled up with the near-cat with her litter, out for their night's play.
Even trying to move quickly, Drake couldn’t manage to close the distance to the presumed base in less than two hours. He could have made the trip in half that time except that he was trying to remain quiet in the dense forest, where the trees and bushes limited his vision and gave him many chances of making noise.
As Drake closed the final distance to the camp, he first noticed the firelight. Drake thought that this was odd since it would be something the optics on the space station could see, against this otherwise dark part of the planet. But it would help his attempt at staying hidden since any people near the fire would be night blind. Samantha would help keep Drake from getting blinded by the light, by selectively dimming the helmet visor for him.
Drake looked into the clearing, this is when he first spotted the wrecked ship.
“Samantha, can you tell what type of ship that was before it wrecked?” Drake asked.
“It’s hard to tell, with so much of the craft damaged and buried… But, do you see those oversized engines? I believe this ship was a Trient-Sellnor Class Transport, it’s a type of freighter that hasn’t been in service for more than 1500 years. That engine type was an old class that was too loud, inefficient and caused too much environmental damage, so it was banned on most planets after a better type of engine was developed.”
Drake looked out on the scene. What he saw looked like someone had been excavating the ship, there was one whole side exposed. There was even an area under the wreck that had been cleared away.
No one was digging around the ship, but neither were they sleeping. Drake figured the time to be near midnight, and all the people he could see were lined up near the edge of the area that had been excavated. They were all down on their knees and seemed to be bowing in the direction of the area under the ship.
Drake tried to slip around the edge of the clearing to get a better look at what was going on.
Just as he found a spot where he could look down into the area excavated under the ship, he saw something being lowered out of a hatch on the ship's underside.
The object was kind of bulky and about a meter and a half square in shape. As Drake watched the object moved out of his sight and behind the rear of the cargo van where he suspected it was being loaded.
“Drake, you know that slight possibility I mentioned?” Samantha asked. “The one about the chances of there being an illegal A.I., well I’ve good news and bad news for you.”
“Let me guess what the bad news is. That’s an A.I. there in the middle of that crowd? What can be good about this?” he asked.
“Well, there is actually a lot bad about going up against an A.I., but the one good bit of news is, there is traditionally a sizable Imperial Reward for eliminating any rogue A.I.s.” said Samantha.
Drake moved around the edge of the clearing to see if he could find and angle to get a shot off at the box he saw a few seconds ago.
As he was moving through the woods, he heard the sound of the van lifting. By the time he regained sight, it was vanishing beyond the top of the trees.
“Samantha, can you track that van using the space station’s optics?” Drake asked.
“Yes, for now. But we need to get after it fast. That van was heading in the direction of the city, and if it gets there, who knows how long it will be before it starts taking over the city services.”
Drake turned and started heading back to his air-car, and a faster pace, with much less concern for stealth then he displayed on the way in.
He asked, “What do you mean? What do you think it will do if it reaches Vastal?”
“One of two things, either head for the space station in an attempt to flee the planet, or it will go to ground somewhere and start trying to defend itself. If it does the second, it will take over services and shut down those that it isn’t using, like cars, the tube way and shuttles. It will take over the power grid and data-net, and do anything else it can think of to delay a response while it tries to take control of the planet.”
“Great, so if I’m in the air-car, it will crash me into the ground?” asked Drake.
“No, the air-car has built-in firmware to prevent it from crashing. But if the vehicle is hacked, it could shut it down, forcing it to make an emergency stop where ever it is.” Said Samantha.
“We should also consider that, if it determines we’re a threat, the A.I. will try to find ways to target us more directly. So when the A.I. gets near the city, I’m going to send the Governor a warning to close the spaceport, and raise an alarm. But shortly after giving the alert, I’ll have to start looking for any signs of hacking. If there is any attempt I’ll have to turn off my comm access, to avoid any attempt by the A.I. to hack into me and take over.” said Samantha.
“Shit, so you can’t help me with this one?” asked Drake.
“I’ll do what I can, but after a point, it will all have to be internal to the suit alone.” She replied.
The trip back to the air-car took about an hour, Drake just couldn’t run all out in such a dense forest.
After the car was in the air and headed back toward the City, he asked, “So how far behind are we?”
“The cargo van is blockier than this air-car and will take a little longer to make the trip. So once we get to the city, we’ll be about thirty minutes behind the van. We just have to hope the cities protections against hacking slow the A.I. down, giving us a chance to close the distance.” replied Samantha.
Chapter 15 – The Benefits of Diplomacy
This time, as Drake headed back to Vastal, there was no way he could sleep, so he just did his best to relax into a meditative trance while the air-car ran at its top speed to close the distance.
There were no speed governors outside Vastal city limits to slow his trip down, and Drake had already had Samantha set the car to ignore the limits inside Vastal, based on his marshal's warrant. He was pretty sure that the van wouldn’t slow down either, so the speed limits wouldn’t be any help.
About 30 minutes out of Vastal, Drake heard Samantha say, “I’ve informed the Governor that we’re dealing with a rogue A.I., and shortly afterward everything that was capable of space flight launched for the space station. This will delay the A.I., meaning that for now it’s trapped on the planet since all space ships and services went dark shortly after broadcasting a general warning.”
“Since it’s the middle of the night, I doubt m
any will have heard any warnings.” replied Drake.
“Based on the last video I’d received before the space station went dark the cargo van appeared to have turned, to head in toward the middle of the city.” said Samantha.
“So where do you think it’s heading now?” he asked.
“Its last course is just out of line for some of the likely targets, but lines up directly with the Sarasina Memorial Hospital. That’s Vastal’s main hospital and the place where they took the Dwarf we captured a few days ago. I give the likely hood of that being its new target at close to an 86% chance.” replied Samantha. “Fortunately for us, this change in course closes our angle of approach and buys us about 3 minutes,” said Samantha.
“Why would it head to a hospital?” asked Drake.
“A hospital or clinic would have a lot of medical pods that the A.I. could use for conditioning more followers. But a hospital also has more people, access controls, and cameras. The A.I. will be able to find more systems it can take control of for self-protection, at the target hospital.” said Samantha.
“It's unfortunate that the Governor didn’t prepare ahead of time enough to close off the data-net.” She continued, “I’m going off the net now, I hope that we haven’t yet been identified yet by the A.I.”
“Provided that the A.I. still hasn’t shut down this air-car, should we land on the hospital roof? Do you by any chance have the layout of the place?” asked Drake.
“Yes, I did get the standard map of the hospital, that’s posted online. I was also able to use your Marshal’s access to get the building schematics from the City Records Office,” said Samantha.
“As for where to land, I think the A.I. will want to gain access to the hospital's medical pods as soon as possible. The cargo van couldn’t have fit many people. I estimate that it only had room for six to eight individuals in the van with it, and that many only because it would care nothing for their comfort. So it may attempt to immediately add more people to its service by putting them through conditioning quickly.” Samantha replied. “So the emergency entrance is the most likely place for them to have started.”
Making the Grade (Omnia Online Series Book 2) Page 15