Scour
True to Laranta’s word, Nora didn’t wind up seeing the inside of a cell.
She mostly killed time in a conference room being babysat by Tiv. She didn’t learn just what had almost happened until the next morning when she got back to our apartment and had it all laid out.
She had plenty of questions over the next few hours, but we were staying busy so there was only so much time to chat.
“[You got to talk to these Ase?]” she asked.
“[Yeah, Nai and I yelled at them,]” I said, flipping through the stack of papers the Ase s had…well, not ‘given’… Nai and I had acquired the reports, and the officers hadn’t objected.
But calling them ‘reports’ was generous, because they were wholly speculation from start to finish.
“[I can’t get over what about this convinced Laranta,]” I said. “[It’s all quantity over quality. They just throw out guesses a dozen at a time. Here, look. Ase ‘Thethul’ has the theory that someone on Earth made the abduction ships and is using them to shuttle human abductees into warzones to destabilize regions, undermine intelligence reliability, and do advance scouting.]”
“[Seriously?]” Nora snorted.
“[I mean it sounds ridiculous—and it is—but that was actually our first guess when we woke up on our ship.]”
“Are you speaking ill of the Admiral right in front of her?” Shinshay asked.
Nora and I spared a glance toward Laranta and Serralinitus. Nai—the only other person present who could understand us—gave a snicker.
The six of us were tucked into yet another R&D room that Shinshay had taken over. Their and Nora’s creation sat in the middle of the room, ready to display the data we were about to collect.
“…Every boot reserves the right to complain about superiors,” I replied.
“But you aren’t one of her soldiers,” Shinshay frowned.
“Not technically,” I agreed. “But I still reserve the right by default.”
“Is this chatter necessary?” the Admiral asked. “Because if you aren’t ready the very moment the broadcasting hubs shut down…”
I tapped my forehead. “All the action is psionic right now,” I said. “If you want to track our progress that badly, Serral can give you a copy of the intro-module.”
The admiral wore a sour expression at that. None of us were going to force psionics in her, but I wasn’t above giving her grief at being a holdout.
“[Our?]” Nora continued the previous conversation. “[You and Daniel?]”
I nodded. I’d been cagey about the details of what happened to Daniel with her. She hadn’t pressed the topic. I was grateful for that.
“[Our first guess was the CIA, KGB, North Korea…something like that,]” I said. “[Then we looked out the window. But still…]”
“[Earth doesn’t have the tech,]” Nora pointed out. “[The only way to get from there to here, is with Beacons. Those need Adeptry to manufacture. Last time I checked Adeptry wasn’t really an Earth thing…]”
“[Yeah, all of these reports are like that,]” I said. “[All equally ridiculous, only to us, because we’ve seen firsthand why they would be ridiculous.]”
“[Yeah, but the Admiral’s staff can’t take me at my word,]” she huffed, eying Laranta. “[I get it. It sucks, and it’s stupid. But I at least understand why they’re being stupid.]”
“[I’m surprised you’re not more pissed,]” I said.
“[Oh, I’m fucking livid,]” Nora assured me. “[It’s just nothing I wasn’t expecting.]”
“[I wasn’t,]” I admitted. “[I still don’t get why they would be so suspicious of you and not me.]”
“[You already proved yourself,]” she shrugged. “[More importantly, you proved yourself in ways they can verify. But what do they know about what I’ve done with the Vorak? These soldiers’ imaginations evoke more sinister possibilities than reality ever could.]”
“[Awfully understanding of you,]” I said.
“[Understanding? Sure,]” she nodded. “[Agreeing? Conceding? Forgiving? Hell no.]”
“[Well…I’m glad Laranta saw reason. I don’t want to make an enemy of her. And I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual.]”
“[I know you’re happy we avoided something worse, but I’m still hung up on how close I was to being a prisoner. After everything the Vorak did to you, I’m appalled anyone would be so eager to repeat the mistake.]”
“[So I maybe shouldn’t talk about Laranta not wanting to be an enemy?]” I asked.
“[Probably wise for now,]” Nora agreed.
Fair enough.
I checked our psionic countdown. A rahi had been given direct orders to spill something at a certain moment. And in a bit more than two minutes all Coalition radio traffic would cease for five minutes.
she said.
I wanted to argue that point, but my nose was still sore from how many times it had bled yesterday.
All our minions’ antenna relayed the information to me with Nai helping regulate overflow, then it would go to Nora and Shinshay’s machine to be plotted in real time.
Admiral Laranta was going to get to see exactly where any drones were on base as soon as we found one.
Fewer hands this time, though not by much. Forty-four ‘ready’ signals came back.
The timer ticked down, and Shinshay watched a broad-spectrum radio suddenly cut out to static.
Once again the data started pouring into my head, but with Nai close at hand it was easier to handle this time.
The truly odd part of handling psionic information was that it didn’t feel like I was doing anything. Which, considering psionics were functionally machines, was appropriate.
But not intuitive.
It cost me energy and focus—bandwidth. There was tangible effort and concentration going into steadying the process, but all the doing came from machines connected to me. It was like using a power tool that drew it’s power from my body instead of a battery.
Five minutes later, we had our data, and my headache was only splitting this time. Leaning more on Nai helped, but she was paying for shouldering more load.
Shinshay gathered the data while Nai and I cascaded the lab, just to be sure there weren’t any drones listening in on what we were about to discuss.
Nora didn’t need to make a physical bug. She could psionically record anything said. But that wasn’t a distinction the Coalition would find salient for another few months while their nascent psionics program took off.
“So,” Shinshay said, bringing a computer display to life, “we got eight minutes of data collection yesterday, and this is our heatmap.”
A glowing series of dots flickered to life on the monitor, overlaying a bird’s eye view of High Harbor base. Our beautiful data showed almost every transmission on base. Somewhere in this mess—hopefully—was a drone.
“Most of this transmission traffic is too intense to be what we’re looking for,” they said. “Notice these hotspots.”
With a pointer stick, they indicated the two radio hubs on base. Both of them glowed white-hot on the heat map. Their signals had been stationary and intense for the whole data collection period.
“Smaller local signals can be quickly eliminated here, here, and here too,” Shinshay continued. “Based on the transmissions Miss Nai observed during Caleb’s trip to the conservatory, we’re specifically looking for burst transmissions ,which means they’ll probably have to remain motionless while transmitting. The upside of this means it should be very easy to detect a drone if it’s transmitting. The downside means they’re likely not transmitting all the time, so unless we catch one while it’s doing so, we’ll completely miss it.”
“Did we find one or not?” Laranta asked.
“Please, bear with me,” Shinshay said.
“On the first day, we detected nothing definitive. Several hotspots could have been what we’re looking for, but our equipment wasn’t precise enough to account for the interference. That said, look at these locations.”
Shinshay pointed out the Farnata apartment building and the office building we’d found the first drone in. Both of them had glowing hotspots. That, but itself was unsurprising. Both buildings had radio setups for a multitude of purposes.
But…
“They look…oblong,” Serral noted.
“Just barely,” I agreed. “Does that mean there were two broadcasting points?”
Shinshay smiled. “There are other explanations, but I don’t find them particularly likely given the context. If these buildings’ comm rigs were the only thing transmitting, we would expect their register on our heatmap to be more regular, yes.”
They clicked onward to the next heatmap.
“Which brings us to the data we collected today. I could explain it, but I think letting it play gets the point across.”
Shinshay pressed a button on the display, and the heatmap began shifting. Triangulated transmission sources cropping up in little sparks, and cutting out, playing in real time.
Then the two largest hotspots blinked out—the base comm traffic being suspended. The radio hubs on base blinked out on the heatmap with dozens of smaller hotspots winking out a second or two later.
Of the remaining transmissions we detected, three stood out.
Every single one of us leaned closer to the display.
On the building that housed our investigation, two fuzzy dots flickered rapidly. Another blinked on my and Nai’s apartment building.
Five seconds after the base blackout, these three signals followed suit, winking out.
Shinshay stopped the playback.
“They stopped,” Serral observed. “Did they know they would be detected?”
“Could be a security feature,” Nai agreed. “I doubt that would be enough to have them dematerialize. They probably just suspended broadcasting.”
“Is that definitive enough for you?” I asked Laranta.
“…Not until we have our hands on one of the drones,” she said. “But it’s a start.”
“Come on,” I complained. “How much more do you need?”
“I think my Ase would prefer to find out that these drones are in places that aren’t regularly frequented by Miss Clarke.”
“If they’re that hung up on it, don’t let them forget I too am regularly in both places,” I huffed.
“[Drop it, Caleb,]” Nora asked. “[It’s the best we’re going to get right now.]”
“No kidding. ‘Getting our hands on one’ is going to be impossible. They’re Adept-made,” I pointed out. “The second we get one, it’s just going to dissolve again.”
“Makes me wonder how they’re made,” Serral mused.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“They had to get here somehow. They had to be created somewhere. How did they go from there to here? And if they were created here, where’s the Adept?”
“They’re autonomous,” Nai pointed out. “The creator could have made them off-base, and just flown them in. The one Nora found was certainly small enough to sneak its way here.”
“Yeah, but that drone couldn’t have been broadcasting that far,” I pointed out. “So…does that mean it had to be created by an Adept here in High Harbor?”
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“Or they could have been delivered on base,” Laranta said. “Caleb’s hypothetical Adept makes the drones, and ships them on base. We screen packages, but not that closely. If it were labeled as ordnance…”
“Admiral, that would require…” Serral began.
“I know,” she said grimly. “We can exhaust the possibility a better time.”
“Knowing more about the dematerialization mechanism could help more with that,” Shinshay said. “Because it’s technically unclear if these drones were actually Adept made.”
“It dissolved in my hand,” I frowned. “That’s pretty definitive.”
“That merely proves it was Adept ly made,” Shinshay corrected. “Not Adept made.”
“…There’s a difference?” I asked.
“They mean the difference between Adept-machinery and an Adept-person,” Nai said. “Technology like our air barriers creates an amount of exotic matter as part of its function. But these drones have to have an Adept behind them; they’re too intricate.”
“Before meeting Caleb, I would have agreed with you,” Shinshay said. “Conventional technology isn’t capable of materializing a drone of this detail, but I think it’s possible to achieve a similar result if we operate under Caleb’s assumption.”
“The computer Adept?” I asked.
Shinshay nodded.
“What’s this?” Laranta asked.
“My leading theory on our abductor—and these drones, if I’m right,” I said. “I think some Adept learned how to make complex computers like on Earth to operate a personal army of ships and drones to abduct us.”
“If Caleb is correct, then the same principle could be applied to manufacturing and raw materials,” Shinshay said. “They could be using Adept-machinery to create raw materials. Then, using robotics, manufacturing those raw materials into the drones, and then sending them wherever they want.”
“That’s honestly how a lot of industrial Adeptry is done,” Serral admitted.
“That bypasses the machine intricacy problem,” I said. “You don’t need to Adept the drone into existence whole and functioning. You can create all the pieces and just put them together manually.”
“And our abductor could still dissolve the drone at the press of a button,” Nai said. “This tracks, well.”
“How well can Adept-manufacturing predetermine the lifespan of a creation?” I asked.
“How reliable are the settings on your air filter?” Nai asked.
Oh. That was a good point.
“Then just what’s getting moved around?” I asked. “If the raw materials can be made with Adept-machinery, those could be how they’re moved. The drones could be built nearby, and it could be the Adept ly -made materials getting shipped in.”
“You’re all [jumping the gun,]” Nora spoke up. “You’re being…hasty. The next question to answer is how we learn more about the drones without being discovered. Assuming our heatmap data is what we think it is—”
“Which we can’t know for sure,” Larnata pointed out.
“—then we have three confirmed drones that we can look at,” Nora finished.
“First things first will be locating them precisely,” Nai said. “And I have an idea how.”
She turned to me with a smile.
“You managed to link to the radar without pulling it out of my head. We were both benefiting from it via the superconnection. Could we do something similar with our cascades? Best of both of ours?”
A cascade with Nai’s reach and my detail? That sounded like a lot…
But so had tracking the locations of more than forty antenna in real time.
“Oh I’m so glad we cracked open this superconnector,” I grinned. I shot Laranta a dirty glare for Nora’s sake too. “Plus when we detect a drone by cascade, it should prove Nora actually did find the first one the same way.”
“I haven’t regretted either decision yet,” the Admiral said coolly. “But this affair isn’t over yet.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I shrugged. “This was still a productive [at-bat] and we’ve got no [outs] yet.”
“[She’s not going to understand a baseball metaphor,]” Nora sighed. “Why would you even bother?”
“Context clues,” I shrugged. “[Besides, I like baseball. I won’t apologize for that.]”
She smiled. “[I am going to keep ridiculing your silly, mind-numbing game. But, it’s good that you know what you like.]”
“[Own your tastes,]” I agreed. “Nai, how quickly do you think we can try cascading our building.”
“I’m still relieved of duty,” she said. “We can do it right now.”
“Any objections, Admiral?” I said, putting as much sarcasm into the title as I could.
“Nai’s a big girl,” Laranta said. “I don’t tell her what to do while she’s not on mission.”
“Funny that,” I said. “Nai’s had psionics for months, and you’re only now benching her for it? It’s almost like you wanted her to have more time than she knows what to do with.”
Laranta didn’t answer.
“Hurry up and find this thing,” she huffed. “Decisions made in the next week are going to hinge on what you can find.”
“You don’t have a problem with me going along?” Nora asked.
“Depends on what you mean by problem,” Laranta said. “Because I do have one: it’s risky, at least it is for me. But that exchange has already played out. So go, help us get some answers. Prove the suspicions wrong.”
“…I’m not sure you should have answers,” Nora admitted. “I don’t know what you might do with them.”
Laranta barked a harsh laugh.
“Oh, you’re fun. I’m going to be very upset if you’re wrong, Caleb,” she said.
Nora and I both frowned at that. But she was right; there was no time to dwell on that.
·····
An hour later, Nai was trying to punch my face.
I had to save myself with a hasty block, stumbling backward to gain some distance. This wasn’t too serious, but I couldn’t be sure our parallel activities would be enough to occupy her. If she was taking this spar seriously, she’d trounce me if she got even the slightest bit of momentum.
Off to the side, Nora was watching.
“[I’m just saying,]” she said. “[I think it’s kinda fucked up that the Coalition has you working for them like this.]”
“[It was a trade,]” I puffed, fending off Nai. “[We both get something from it. That’s how cooperation works.]”
“[Laranta is catching flies with honey,]” Nora said.
“[I’m a fly in this case?]”
“[And her honey is honesty,]” Nora agreed.
We’d taken over the gymnasium in our apartment building under the pretense of sparring. Nai was idly teaching me about hand-to-hand fighting, and I was doing my best to look like I was learning. Carrying a conversation while getting thrashed would have stretched my attention thin anyway, but psionic experimentation on top of it?
As we sparred, both our cascades stretched out through the floor.
I reached out with the superconnector, trying to link my tactile cascade with hers. The two of us were already cascading the whole gym in tandem, but only Nai was benefiting from the awareness though. My perception of the combined cascade was confined to my much smaller contribution to it. I was only aware of tiny grains of my cascade evenly distributed through Nai’s cascade’s colossal reach.
We needed to refine exactly how the cascades combined, and account for the interference Nai was finding.
I made the adjustment, seeing my cascade thin even more as it was spread over a far wider area than I could cover normally. It was tricky, and one hasty move might see the linked cascade collapse again.
Even if Laranta had been impatient, we had no other pressing engagements. So we were taking our time and keeping up appearances.
“[You’d rather be lied to?]” I asked, trying to kick Nai’s head.
“[No, but I think just because Laranta is honest with you about exploiting you, doesn’t make it right.]”
Nai pushed our combined cascade a bit further and more details lit up for me. The synchronicity was improving…we still needed to account for the change in stability as the cascade grew though…
“[…Well…you actually catch the most flies with vinegar,]” I said, unwilling to let the conversation lapse. I was invested.
“[That fits,]” Nora said. “[She’s giving a sour taste of reality that no one else has, and you’re acting like that makes the Coalition trustworthy.]”
“[Does it bother you to be called untrustworthy, Nai?]” I asked.
“No?” Nai snorted. “She didn’t say I was. The Coalition might be trustworthy, but Nora is right in the sense that Laranta’s harsh honesty doesn’t make it that.”
“[You remember what Rende Braskin said?]” Nora asked. “[They might be friends with Red Sails, but that was a long time ago, and the real world is messy. And I think what’s best for the Coalition isn’t necessarily best for us abductees.]”
“[The real world is messy,]” I agreed. “[So when I have the chance to claw myself some leverage and resources on an alien world a trillion miles from home, I’m going to take it.]”
“[Nai,]” Nora huffed, “[if Caleb’s course of action was good for the Coalition but bad for Caleb and us humans, would you tell him?]”
“Yes,” Nai said.
“[Would you be tempted not to?]”
“Yes,” she admitted. “A few months ago, my answer would be different. But back then I wasn’t so appreciative that you’d saved mine and Tasser’s lives.”
“[What about Laranta?]” Nora asked. “[Would she?]”
“I’d like to think so,” Nai said, easing off the attack. “But…it would depend on the specifics. I think there are circumstances where she would put Caleb’s interests first. But I also think she lives in the messy real world too. There are limits.”
“[I’m doing my best,]” I frowned. “[I get that what I’m doing has some downsides…but come on. Look at where we are. I get Laranta’s pragmatism, even if it can come at my—and…even your—expense. I don’t like it when Laranta does it, and I’m sure she’d be upset if I did it. But I’m prepared to do the same thing if I have to. Pretty sure Nai might even help.]”
Nai nodded. “Tasser would in a heartbeat. No hesitation. I really hope you get to meet him soon, Nora.”
“[You’d part ways with the Coalition?]” Nora asked.
“[…For the right reason? Yeah.]”
“[…Okay,]” Nora nodded. “[Just wanted to make sure you were keeping your head screwed on tight.]”
<[How’re we doing on the important part?]> she added.
We walked out of the gymnasium carrying out a side-conversation out loud, probing the walls of our building for anything we couldn’t recognize.
I was surprised how little I had to lean on Nai to recognize things like power cables or water pipes. The interior of walls was more or less similar everywhere. It actually wasn’t hard to start picking out the recurring elements. Insulation, wiring, even the connecting brackets would all be recurring in the building’s construction.
It made our prize stand out all the more. As soon as we found a material or component that didn’t occur anywhere else in the building, we would have our drone.
Still, we weren’t in a hurry. The combined cascade was far from perfect. Patches of it would intermittently lose clarity and detail. Other people lived in the building and neither of us were keen to try cascading where they lived, especially when the drone probably wasn’t in any of the apartments themselves.
So our search was confined to the interior of the floors and walls. And especially the ventilation system.
Nerin came home that evening, and we appraised her of our little hunt, and Nerin was keenly interested, wondering what cascading solids was like. So while Nai and I hunted for the drone, Nora and Nerin wondered about a hypothetical way to link non-Adepts into Adept senses.
It was an interesting conversation to chime in on, and it would hopefully put our abductor at ease if they were overhearing it.
Sustaining the combined cascade was taxing work. I was learning that energy consumption was another of the many limitations on the superconnector. Other psionics used virtually zero energy, and all the exhaustion that came from using them was the metabolic cost of using my brain so dedicatedly.
Without knowing more about psionics’ relationship with physical energy, I couldn’t speak to anything specific. But using the superconnector was more taxing than ordinary psionics by a few orders of magnitude.
Our search was only effective with the combined cascade, which was only possible with the superconnector, which I couldn’t use continuously without taking breaks.
The day dragged on while the four of us appeared to enjoy a lazy afternoon, chatting Adept theory and even playing Nai’s favorite ‘walls’ board game.
But progress was steady.
And by dinner time, Nai and I had cascaded more than two-thirds of the building, and we finally found something.
It was a filament in one of the air ducts. Easy to miss because it was barely thicker than a human hair and carefully nestled into the corner of the duct.
We followed the filament back the other direction. Through our apartment vents, up through the central duct, toward the top of the building. It finally led to a boxy module too complex to cascade in detail from this distance. But we had the location.
On the top floor, inside one of the only empty units in the whole building. I double checked the microphone end of the filament to make sure it didn’t have some kind of camera. It didn’t.
So I materialized one of our detecting antenna, and waved it around, monitoring the feedback. Sure enough, accounting for signals coming from other directions revealed that there was some kind of broadcast coming from the top floor of our building.
We had it.