I might be a bit spotty for the next few weeks.
I have always been a Bethesda game fan, and it should be obvious that I am a Sci-Fi fan as well.
So... Starfield.
I can't promise that I will get to write all that much for the immediate future.
And of course, after that comes Phantom Liberty.
You could say that the test of Lachesis was an unmitigated success. Clotho… it was even less detectable.
While we were testing the Lachesis and the Clothos, a second, much larger batch was cooking. Well, another five Lachesis, as I thought that would be enough, but instead of 500 Clothos, I jumped to 5000.
Yes, I needed to squeeze another 11 server racks somewhere into my building, and it had become a chore, let me tell you, but I still had a bit of room left.
By then, I had converted most of the office space in the south wing of the building to server rooms, but I could tell that sooner or later I either had to find somewhere else to store my tech or reduce my collection.
The problem here was the super Grendel. It would not do to squeeze all too many of those heat-generating monsters into a room designed to be an office. The cooling was… insufficient. And I had 150 of those things in addition to the double-wide base unit.
Along with the more ‘moderate’ quad Grendel, which had another 4 racks full of cooling equipment, and the double-wide base unit.
Now I had the new rack for the Lachesis and Clothos that we were even now testing and the new 11 racks of the new ones.
And of course, the Fortress had three racks full of computer tech when I moved in, that I just updated, and the control units for my industrial fabricators were each a server rack full of equipment, and quite a few of my labs had some… You get the gist.
The problem here was that I could not see which of them I could do without.
Oh sure, the single rack for the test Lachesis and Clothos… that would be sent to Naveen to play with. That would help tremendously. I had only around 200 full-sized server racks to house.
But that was a matter for another time. A time not too far away, but another time nonetheless.
At that moment, it was time to work on Atropos.
The first thing I did after we were satisfied with the tests of Lachesis and Clotho was project what I had already brainstormed for the large drone.
All in all, it was rather simple. A 2m long cylinder with a 25cm radius and semi-spherical endcaps. I did not think it needed something complicated.
I was wrong.
Samuel walked around the hologram a few times and then shook his head.
“That won’t do. That won’t do at all.” Samantha just nodded to that, while I was confused.
“Why shouldn’t it work?”
“This thing is as aerodynamic as a brick. I mean, come on, you want Atropos to fly supersonic. This might be able to do that, but the efficiency would be for shit. And it will doesn’t help with being hidden either.”
I scowled.
“It is the easiest form to integrate the stealth system. Well, no, the easiest would be a sphere, but this is a close second.”
He sighed.
“That might be the case, but this is, or will be at least, a flying object, and those are always a series of compromises.
In this specific instance, stealth is important, yes, but not that much more important than aerodynamics. This thing will need to cut through the air, and that not only requires energy but also disturbs the air in question.
Those disturbances can be seen, with the naked eye. They are glaringly obvious for sensors. Unless we move that thing very slowly, the lack of aerodynamics will betray it. No, we have to make it so that it disturbs the air as little as possible.”
Okay, that made sense. And honestly, I had not thought about this from that point of view.
“So… what would you suggest?”
“No wings. We use grav coils, so wings only add drag. We should form it like a teardrop.”
That was what I had feared. It made designing the stealth properties that much harder.
“You are keeping in mind that for the stealth characteristics we need to be able to have patches that are exactly opposite? With a teardrop, we can relatively easily make it close to invisible along the longitudinal axis, but front to back, or back to front will be hard.”
Samantha rubbed the side of her nose.
“Will it be impossible to get right?”
I shook my head.
“It means way more overhead and lag. With the sphere, and even the tetrahedron, we can simply amplify what the Q-link on the other side receives and port it through.
With this, we have to collate what several Q-links are receiving and render what they need to display. That means a computer in the middle, and the whole process will take time. We will have to put a GPU somewhere in the system. The whole thing, well for the cylindrical system I had planned with something along 3.5 million… pixel is probably the best to call it.
Yes, that is only a bit more than 10% of what a typical 8k display has, but the display gets away with a 240hz refresh rate. It only has to trick the human eye. Modern security cameras are set up in a way that makes it necessary to go to a refresh rate of around 1200hz to keep it hidden.
And it has to be rendered in real-time, using the camera input from the Q-links on the other side. I… honestly, I am not sure if the Theia 90 can hack it. We might even have to go to a Chronos just to run the stealth.”
Samantha shrugged while Samuel shook his head.
“That is more your resort, but the problem here is that unless you plan to move it exceedingly slow, slower than a ground car, much less a skimmer, the air disturbations will be noticeable. Even with the teardrop form. Without it… I fear we have to avoid coming too close to any pressure sensors or people in that case.”
I scowled harder.
“But… this thing is not intended to come close to anything. I had planned to include a few high-resolution cameras for observation and keep it several hundred meters away from anything.
If it is close enough that the draft it produces is noticeable, the operator has messed up.”
Samuel frowned now as well. But he tapped on the table for a moment before he answered.
“But what if you have to get close?”
“Keep in mind that that thing will carry several Lachesis. Those are for close work.”
Samantha looked at the design as well and then sighed.
“So… it will never get close to anybody?”
“No, of course not. Why should it?”
“So… it is more of an observation drone than a surveillance one?”
“What is the difference? I thought that was mostly the same.”
“In general the distance. Surveillance drones try to get the audio as well as the video. They get relatively close. An observation drone on the other hand can be quite high. A couple of klicks in extreme cases. In that case, it needs very good optics. Maybe a laser mic.”
It seemed as if Samuel had finally gotten what I was trying to say.
“Exactly. However, I see its primary objective as transport for the Lachesis. Lachesis is the one who will do the spying. Atropos is only necessary when the target is far away and we have to bring the Lachesis there in a hurry or when we have to follow a target in a skimmer or grav ship.”
For a moment, both of them inspected the design again, and then Samuel turned back to me again.
“In that case, we should optimize it for supersonic flight.”
“Again, why?”
“Pressure. We should try to limit the sonic boom. And keep that thing stealthy as much as we can.”
It took me a moment to realize he was serious and then I could not stop a snort.
“Seriously, you think it makes a difference if we give it a more aerodynamic form for the stealth during supersonic flight? Sorry to say so, but there is no stealth when something flies supersonic. Even if the sonic boom would by some miracle completely eliminated, the skin of it will be several degrees hotter than the air around it. No, if that thing goes supersonic, it will be visible. That just can’t be helped.”
“But… isn’t that counterproductive? What if the target notices it?”
“Either we have the time to let it cool while it flies the last bit subsonic, or the target has just a supersonic journey behind it.”
He still seemed skeptical but then shrugged.
“Well, if you think so.”
He did sound a bit sulky though.
“But what about efficiency? This layout will cost way more energy to push supersonic than something optimized for it.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Not that much more than the teardrop design you proposed for subsonic flight. Yes, it would be an advantage during long-range flight to optimize its fuselage for supersonic flight. But this advantage would be more than balanced by the increased complexity that the stealth system will require.
This comparatively simple form is relatively easy to hide. Anything more complex will make it harder.”
He sighed.
“Fine! You are right. I don’t like it but you are right. It is just… this thing is so boring.”
I tilted my head and raised an eyebrow.
“And making it good-looking is more important than making it work better? If you absolutely want a good-looking drone, then go ahead and design one. But don’t expect us to use too many of them. They might be useful as a diversion, and if you arm them, they might be useful for that. But for missions where the drone ideally won’t be seen at all, boring is good.
Heck, even an armed drone would probably be better if it was boring and stealthy than exciting and easy to notice.”
He sulked some more but answered:
“Yeah, I understand that. I just don’t like it.”
I nodded.
“Now, this early design iteration uses a radar-absorbing hull under the Q-link layer. Obviously, that won’t do at all if we want to include a radar. So, we need a compromise between a low radar signature and… what does Atropos need radar for anyway?”
Samuel looked at me with some exacerbation, then sighed and answered:
“In any congested airspace, we unfortunately can’t expect every other flying object to announce itself with a transponder. Or scream out its presence with radar. That means to avoid a collision, we need to include an active radar in anything we send up.”
It made my head hurt.
“Wait a minute, you are saying we need to include radar because some others don’t? So that our radar can detect them when a collision is possible?”
He nodded.
“And why is it our responsibility? Especially as it is… useless in many cases. Do you really believe we should activate the radar when we run Atropos under stealth? As you said it, scream out its presence?”
His face moved through an interesting series of emotions. It started with a flash of anger, followed by resignation, then he actually began thinking, demonstrated by his eyes widening, and lastly, he smiled sheepishly.
“Uh, no. I don’t think that we should do that. But what if we don’t run it stealthed? We can use the radar then?”
“Then it will have a transponder. But we also can use a hatch in the front to hide the radar behind. But when it is running under stealth, there will be no transponder and no radar, no lidar, or any other active emission. Heck, I am pondering how we can hide the cameras when it is stealthed. Though… if we go with 5 petapixel cameras the Q-links cover a square with around 3cm sidelength. That should let us get away with a 7cm diameter lens.
So, anyone farther away than 250m should not be able to see it with the naked eye.
At 500m it should be protected from most cameras as well. And those that can resolve anything that size at that distance will have a hard time finding it in the first place.”
If I was interpreting Samantha’s expression right, she was quite perplexed.
“What the fuck are you talking about? How do you decide that at 250m nobody should be able to see it?”
“The human eye has an angular resolution of 0.017 degrees. That means anything smaller than the cone created by that angle is not visible to us.
For a 7cm lens that happens at 236m. With a bit of a fudge factor, we get 250m. The cameras are a different matter, but they usually have a field of view between 25 and 60 degrees.
A standard 8k camera has 7680 pixels width. At a distance of 500m the 7cm lens covers between one and 2½ pixels. Even a dedicated expert system will require more than that to rule out an artifact.
So, unless they are using a tele-optic with a field of view smaller than 25 degrees, the chances of something identifying the lens of our cameras as such is impossible. And if they have such an optic, the limited FoV makes it very hard to notice something this small while moving the camera.
Again, even an expert system will have a hard time with it. Especially as we are talking about something that is roughly a fourth of the size of many bird species in our cities.”
Samuel’s mouth was hanging open, and Samantha had wide eyes when she exclaimed astonished:
“Wait, you just did the math in your head? Just like that?”
That honestly bewildered me a bit.
“Yes, of course. That is just math. Trigonometry. As long as you know the basic variables, like the angular resolution or the number of pixels width, the rest is just plugging in the numbers into the equations.”
That made both of them roll their eyes, and Samuel uttered:
“Fine. If you can do that just like that… no wonder you are the boss.”
I honestly could not understand that attitude. Get real, this was really just simple trigonometry. Everybody should be able to do that little piece of math in their head.
Yes, if I had used calculus in my head I could have understood their reaction, but for trig? Whatever.
“Well, then let’s get down to business, won’t we? Just to move along, are there any reasons to not use the basic cylindrical form?”
Samuel was still visibly not happy about it but kept silent, while Samantha just shook her head.
“So… the basic hull configuration is that then. Let’s get to the innards. I had planned to use a four-by-two-by-two configuration for the grav coils. Four coils along the length of the hull, and one in each orthogonal direction from that at each end to maximize leverage.”
Not all that surprisingly, both of them shrugged, with Samuel saying:
“Well, I can only speak for myself, but I have no clue about how to best do grav coils. You are the expert here, so I say we go with that.”
I projected the bones into the hologram.
“You wanted an equipment bay? Where do you think it would be best to place it?”
Samuel knitted his brows in deep thought for a moment and then shrugged again.
“I would say the best place would be directly behind the nose cap. We won’t have to split the power cells and we can open a hatch in the nose cone for some of the devices that might need that.”
I looked at it for a moment and saw what he was getting at.
“That makes it necessary to move the bow coils, but that is no big problem I think. How big should that bay be though?”
Samantha had meanwhile pulled out her com and had started to type furiously on it.
“If want to use a terrain mapping radar, we need at least 30cm. A LIDAR is way smaller, but a well-cooled IR camera takes roughly the same amount of space. Otherwise, if that is not enough then whoever wants it has to build their own drone.
This thing doesn’t have to be able to do everything.”
I shrugged.
“Fine for me. We should place the radar, a front-facing camera, and the transponder in the nose I think.”
A quick command to my Archimedes and Warden lengthened the hologram by 30cm and structurally reinforced the newly created hollow room.
I then created a double-sided sliding hatch that, at its maximum, opened half the equipment bay for access.
Unfortunately, a short stress analysis, automatically performed by Warden, showed that this would not work. Even after being reinforced, the equipment bay immediately turned red.
Samuel asked the obvious question:
“What does that red mean?”
“The nose as it is now can’t withstand supersonic flight. It would crumble.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“We could make the hatch smaller, or build in a central support strut… but that would limit the use of the bay.”
I looked at the hologram and read the more detailed stress analysis. The central strut would help, but for the smaller hatch to show any significant effect, it would need to be way too small to be useful.
Samantha waited a few seconds before she mused:
“You know, we don’t need to have such a big hatch. The central strut would effectively halve the space we can use. So, I am for making the hatch smaller.”
Samuel on the other hand seemed to favor the strut.
“But if we do that, then we will have problems fitting stuff into the bay. That is no solution either.”
“But if we build it with the central strut, every piece of equipment will have to be designed to fit around the strut, and it will have to be in separatable parts.”
“So what? If we make the hatch too small then…”
I raised my hand.
“Let me think for a moment.”
I walked around the hologram, looking at it from several angles. There were two ideas I had.
“How big will the hatch have to be to use the equipment?”
Samantha took a moment and then shrugged.
“I would say around 30cm, if we use a square or circular radar dish.”
“So… 35 degrees. That should be possible.”
“But if we make the hatch that small then we will never…”
Again I raised my hand.
“I am aware that a hatch of that size will limit the equipment we can get into it.”
I made the changes to the design. First, I relocated the power lines to the nose to the top of the fuselage, opposite to the hatch, and replaced it with a flex cable. Then I placed a hinge mechanism on top of that so that the whole front of the fuselage could be pulled around 3mm forward and then pushed upward, opening the whole front of the equipment bay.
Then I reduced the hatch from opening 180 degrees to 35 degrees. A substantial reduction, but with the new design, it was just a window to use the equipment through, so that should be enough.
Finally, on top of that, I placed several retractable struts to take on much of the stress directly inside of the hatch.
They would retract into the rest of the drone's body when the hatch was open, as that was certainly not happening when it was going at supersonic speeds.
I then changed the projected plan to the new idea.
The new stress analysis showed that this design would work, up to Mach 8 it seemed. Not that Mach 8 was in the cards for that thing anyway. Anything significantly faster than Mach 4 and I could no longer rely on the integrity of the Q-links making up the stealth skin.
When the formerly red sections now briefly flashed green, Samuel furrowed his brows.
“But… how will we now get the equipment into the bay?”
“Watch and see!”
I started the animation sequence, and first, the struts retracted into the body, followed by the nose folding up.
“I assume that our technicians can easily put anything that fits into the bay through that opening.”
Samantha snorted.
“Well, if not we need new techs.”
Samuel then interjected:
“But it still needs a camera.”
I smiled at him. The camera itself was a straightforward thing. Just a 3-by-3cm chip of Q-links. All the processing was done in the home infrastructure.
For the optics, I went with an off-the-rack standard autofocus assembly. It was just 7cm in diameter and had a length of another 6cm.
Now we just had to put a few of them on the drone so that we had a good field of view.
That gave me an idea. Why not kill two birds with a single stone?
It only took a few seconds to create a 7.5cm wide indention on the drone, roughly 45cm behind the equipment bay. This indention was going completely around the drone and was 6.5cm deep.
I then placed a rail system in there and mounted a camera on it. The interesting thing was that I filled the rest of the rail system with cages for Lachesis. I made sure that the cages could move on the rail system independently from the camera. That gave me 38 of them in a single ring. Finally, I created a cover for the indention, with the obligatory Q-link stealth system, and two opening hatches. One for the camera, and one to let the Lachesis through. I made sure that they were distant enough from each other that the empty cages could fold up so every Lachesis could be released.
I projected the new assembly on the drone and had Warden do the stress analysis again.
Samuel looked at the changes a bit confused and then asked:
“Uh, what is that?”
“That is the camera. And the storage for the Lachesis. The camera can move 360 degrees around the Atropos. It can be lifted out of the storage position so that it can be pointed forward or rearward a bit. The rest of the ring is filled with…”
And again, we saw a spray of red on the drone, stopping me in my explanation.
“Ok, that is not so good.”
The description showed that at high speeds, airflow would lead to intolerable vibrations. Intolerable as in ripping the whole thing apart in a couple of hours.
I looked at the detailed simulation and realized that the connection between the hull and the cover of the ring was not smooth enough.
That made me feel a flash of relief. Not so bad in the end, as it was easy to fix. It did break up the simple lines of the drone a bit when I created an elevated windbreak, but not by much. Another problem solved.
“Where was I? Oh right. The ring is filled with 38 Lachesis. There is no need to have it run empty.”
Samantha looked at it for a moment and then commented:
“Do you think we could build in a couple more? It is always a problem if the drone has just one camera and there are multiple points of interest.”
I shrugged.
“Sure. Do you think three are enough? Together with a front-facing camera and a rear-facing one of course.”
She looked at Samuel.
“What do you say? This is more your specialty.”
Samuel just nodded.
“Sure, three should be enough. If it is something that needs more attention, then you need more drones anyway, as you need multiple perspectives.”
I quickly added the two new rings to the drone. I was sure the 114 Lachesis were overkill, but nothing said we had to fill an Atropos up any more than we would have to fill up a Lachesis with Clotho.
That left us with a 230cm long cylinder with a 50cm dome at each end. Simple and easy to hide.
The bones of it were the central strut that contained the primary grav coils, as well as radial ones in regular intervals, of which four contained the secondary grav coils.
The nose dome beyond the equipment bay was mostly empty, as it only contained a camera, the radar, and a FLIR, all hidden behind a hatch. The rear dome only contained a camera.
The rest of the drone, except for the camera rings, was still empty. Time to change that.
“Now we have to work on the power system. I have planned to use the rest of the volume for it. First, the struts will be coated with Q-links for power delivery.
If the math is right, we should use .49582773mm² Q-links, as they have the best power delivery ratio. They can each provide 0.26V at 0.6A, or 0.156W. If we coat the complete central strut with them, we get 152500 Q-links or 23.79kW.
If we use Lithium-Xenon-Nano-Substrate batteries, we get around 600kWh in battery power. That would mean that we can recharge the batteries from zero to 100% in a bit over 26 hours.”
Samuel frowned.
“LX-Nano? Those are pricey. That will make the costs explode.”
“No, not really. They cost so much because they had to be produced the same way as semiconductor chips. One layer at a time. And they had a rather low yield of 23% on average. We have NADAs. Not only do we have a yield of around 98%, but we can also make them in 3-dimensional structures. That will lower the cost to less than 3% of what they did cost before.”
“Ok… but do we really need 600kWh?”
“At full power to the grav coils, we get less than four hours of use out of 600kWh. If I am not wrong, that is not quite enough to make it move halfway around the planet.”
“Oh, wow. I did not know the coils were that power-hungry. How can you power the coils in the smaller drones via Q-links then?”
“It is not that bad. We won’t even bother to use the coils in the Lachesis and Clotho close to their limit. It is at the higher end when the power draw gets so high.”
“So… this thing can fly to the other side of the world? And deliver our sneaky spy balls? Cool.”
Clearly, Samantha had fewer concerns about the power demands.
Finally, Samuel scratched his head.
“So… now what?”
“Well, if neither of you has anything to add anymore, I think we should send the plans to a NADA and have a prototype built.”
“Yeah, I think it can do that. And then?”
“Then we are done here. You might want to take the Lachesis to HQ and have your teammates try to find them. I will send the controller rack with you.”
“You won’t come?”
I sighed.
“I will use an Incarnate. That should be enough.”
“Ok, until then.”
They both left, taking the Lachesis in a bag, with an industrial bot bringing the server rack with them.
Yes, I could have just gone with them, but for what? The Incarnate seriously was good enough in this instance.
And I could use the 20 minutes for some meditation anyway. Clearing my head and all that.
When I connected to the Incarnate, I was not surprised to find Naveen with them, though Maynard was unexpected.
“Hey Vivian. So, you’re finished playing?”
I could not help but chuckle.
“You tell me. I think this will work great, but you are the expert. Hi Maynard.”
“Hey Vivian. I heard you have something new, so I just wanted to look it over.”
By now the bots had connected the control server to the power outlets, and Sam and Sam pulled a couple of Lachesis out of the bag.
Naveen moved a bit closer and inspected the two balls carefully.
“You know… I expected something… smaller.”
Samantha snorted.
“Those are inside. And those… You will be surprised, boss.”
With a bit of a flourish, she began typing on the holo-keyboard, and the two Lachesis began lifting up.
Naveen was not very impressed it seemed.
“So they can hover. Not all that surprising honestly. You have to do better Sam.”
With an evil grin, Samantha turned around.
“Is that so? Then how about… now?” With a last push of a button, she activated the stealth function, and both Lachesis simply vanished.
Naveen raised an eyebrow and looked at the seemingly empty air.
“Ok, that is new. So… you made invisible balls? I assume they can listen in?”
Samuel smiled broadly.
“Oh, not only that.”
He too moved to the virtual keyboard and typed for a bit, and a holoprojector showed two video feeds from somewhere in the room.
“Full video? That is more than I expected.”
Which, of course, was doubly repeated from the speakers.
“So, they are invisible, have microphones, and full video? What are the camera specs?”
I smiled at that.
“It has eight 2.86 petapixel cameras all over the skin.”
Maynard had moved closer as well.
“You managed that and still put in such an optical stealth system? Marvellous.”
“The optical stealth system is the cameras. The balls are completely covered in Q-links. 414 picometer Q-links. Half of them are receivers, the other half are emitters. They are paired, with a a third terminal connected to an amplifier. What the receiver… well sees, meaning what light hits the receiver, is directly amplified and then projected by the emitter.
There was no reason not to use the amplified information of the 2.86 quadrillion Q-links per sector and make it into a picture. The same with the sound. Each Q-link measures pressure variances, making it into a microphone.”
“Wait, Q-links can do that?”
“How do you think they transmit data to the optical parallel bus?”
“Oh… cool. I thought they transmitted electric impulses.”
“They can do that too.”
Naveen watched the video feeds and then snapped a finger.
“Bertram, how about you try and find those things?”
“Uh, sure boss, at once.”
One of the men, a middle-sized swarthy person with dark brown hair quickly moved over to one of the cabinets and pulled out several devices. They looked eerily similar to what Trooper Hagrid hat used.
While he was doing that, Naveen asked:
“For how long will the battery last?”
“There is no battery. Those things are powered via Q-link. So… the power lasts as long as you power them.”
“No battery?”
Naveen sounded contemplative, only moments before Maynard’s shocked:
“Powered via Q-links? They can do that as well?”
“Electric impulses, Maynard. It stands to reason that if they can transmit electricity, that electricity can be used for other things than transfer information.”
“That is… why did you not tell us about that earlier? That would make energy networks so much easier.”
“No, it won’t. Yes, it can transfer electricity, but not that much. All the Q-links on these Lachesis balls together can transfer around 560W. A proper superconductor is much more effective.”
Bertram had by now begun using the devices, and he had similar results to Trooper Hagrid.
“Sorry, boss, but I can’t seem to find them.”
Naveem looked at him briefly, before he turned to my Incarnate and smiled evilly.
“Don’t worry. Dr. DuClare is sneaky that way. But she is not the only sneaky one here.”
He walked to a table and opened the bag that I just now noticed on it, pulling out an improvised-looking device.
He manually opened up three folded antennae, and then pointed the device into the room, while addressing me:
“You didn’t seriously expect me to not think that you would use grav coils in those things, did you?”
When he activated the device, it let out a series of beeps and then he pointed it at first one spot.
“There is the first.”
Then another.
“And here is the second.”
Then he turned back to me.
“I had Maynard design a handheld Palanthír for just that reason.”
I chuckled and moved my Incarnate to the server.
“Honestly, I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t thought about it. But I am a bit surprised that Warden created the Palanthír for you. But… well sooner or later somebody else will get one, so I planned ahead.”
With a few button strokes, I switched the Lachesis into an alternative mode, and the device in Naveen’s hand stopped beeping.
He looked at it and then shrugged.
“So, you shut down the grav coils? But we still know where they are. What about it, do you want to catch it men?”
Just to belie his words, the video began moving, with the Palanthír still remaining silent.”
After a few seconds, Naveen snorted.
“Yeah, should have seen that coming. How did you do that though?”
“They are mostly hollow. And contain a vacuum. The carbon shell is light, so they weigh almost nothing, literally. A light draft is enough to keep them aloft.”
“So they are drifting?”
“Nope. The light draft can be air currents already happening, or they can use the Q-links on the skin to create electrostatic propulsion.”
“That is… well we now have to find ways to detect them.”
One of the women then exclaimed.
“I think I can see one. There, right there. There is a slight distortion, and the view is a bit murky.”
I sighed.
“That can’t be prevented. It is not perfect after all. Also, the amplifiers are biased towards the visible light spectrum. Yes, that includes IR, but if you go to other spectrums, you should be able to see them.”
“So… not perfect. But leaps and bounds beyond what anybody else has. If we just had a need for them…”
I might be a bit spotty for the next few weeks.
I have always been a Bethesda game fan, and it should be obvious that I am a Sci-Fi fan as well.
So... Starfield.
I can't promise that I will get to write all that much for the immediate future.
And of course, after that comes Phantom Liberty.
You could say that the test of Lachesis was an unmitigated success. Clotho… it was even less detectable.
While we were testing the Lachesis and the Clothos, a second, much larger batch was cooking. Well, another five Lachesis, as I thought that would be enough, but instead of 500 Clothos, I jumped to 5000.
Yes, I needed to squeeze another 11 server racks somewhere into my building, and it had become a chore, let me tell you, but I still had a bit of room left.
By then, I had converted most of the office space in the south wing of the building to server rooms, but I could tell that sooner or later I either had to find somewhere else to store my tech or reduce my collection.
The problem here was the super Grendel. It would not do to squeeze all too many of those heat-generating monsters into a room designed to be an office. The cooling was… insufficient. And I had 150 of those things in addition to the double-wide base unit.
Along with the more ‘moderate’ quad Grendel, which had another 4 racks full of cooling equipment, and the double-wide base unit.
Now I had the new rack for the Lachesis and Clothos that we were even now testing and the new 11 racks of the new ones.
And of course, the Fortress had three racks full of computer tech when I moved in, that I just updated, and the control units for my industrial fabricators were each a server rack full of equipment, and quite a few of my labs had some… You get the gist.
The problem here was that I could not see which of them I could do without.
Oh sure, the single rack for the test Lachesis and Clothos… that would be sent to Naveen to play with. That would help tremendously. I had only around 200 full-sized server racks to house.
But that was a matter for another time. A time not too far away, but another time nonetheless.
At that moment, it was time to work on Atropos.
The first thing I did after we were satisfied with the tests of Lachesis and Clotho was project what I had already brainstormed for the large drone.
All in all, it was rather simple. A 2m long cylinder with a 25cm radius and semi-spherical endcaps. I did not think it needed something complicated.
I was wrong.
Samuel walked around the hologram a few times and then shook his head.
“That won’t do. That won’t do at all.” Samantha just nodded to that, while I was confused.
“Why shouldn’t it work?”
“This thing is as aerodynamic as a brick. I mean, come on, you want Atropos to fly supersonic. This might be able to do that, but the efficiency would be for shit. And it will doesn’t help with being hidden either.”
I scowled.
“It is the easiest form to integrate the stealth system. Well, no, the easiest would be a sphere, but this is a close second.”
He sighed.
“That might be the case, but this is, or will be at least, a flying object, and those are always a series of compromises.
In this specific instance, stealth is important, yes, but not that much more important than aerodynamics. This thing will need to cut through the air, and that not only requires energy but also disturbs the air in question.
Those disturbances can be seen, with the naked eye. They are glaringly obvious for sensors. Unless we move that thing very slowly, the lack of aerodynamics will betray it. No, we have to make it so that it disturbs the air as little as possible.”
Okay, that made sense. And honestly, I had not thought about this from that point of view.
“So… what would you suggest?”
“No wings. We use grav coils, so wings only add drag. We should form it like a teardrop.”
That was what I had feared. It made designing the stealth properties that much harder.
“You are keeping in mind that for the stealth characteristics we need to be able to have patches that are exactly opposite? With a teardrop, we can relatively easily make it close to invisible along the longitudinal axis, but front to back, or back to front will be hard.”
Samantha rubbed the side of her nose.
“Will it be impossible to get right?”
I shook my head.
“It means way more overhead and lag. With the sphere, and even the tetrahedron, we can simply amplify what the Q-link on the other side receives and port it through.
With this, we have to collate what several Q-links are receiving and render what they need to display. That means a computer in the middle, and the whole process will take time. We will have to put a GPU somewhere in the system. The whole thing, well for the cylindrical system I had planned with something along 3.5 million… pixel is probably the best to call it.
Yes, that is only a bit more than 10% of what a typical 8k display has, but the display gets away with a 240hz refresh rate. It only has to trick the human eye. Modern security cameras are set up in a way that makes it necessary to go to a refresh rate of around 1200hz to keep it hidden.
And it has to be rendered in real-time, using the camera input from the Q-links on the other side. I… honestly, I am not sure if the Theia 90 can hack it. We might even have to go to a Chronos just to run the stealth.”
Samantha shrugged while Samuel shook his head.
“That is more your resort, but the problem here is that unless you plan to move it exceedingly slow, slower than a ground car, much less a skimmer, the air disturbations will be noticeable. Even with the teardrop form. Without it… I fear we have to avoid coming too close to any pressure sensors or people in that case.”
I scowled harder.
“But… this thing is not intended to come close to anything. I had planned to include a few high-resolution cameras for observation and keep it several hundred meters away from anything.
If it is close enough that the draft it produces is noticeable, the operator has messed up.”
Samuel frowned now as well. But he tapped on the table for a moment before he answered.
“But what if you have to get close?”
“Keep in mind that that thing will carry several Lachesis. Those are for close work.”
Samantha looked at the design as well and then sighed.
“So… it will never get close to anybody?”
“No, of course not. Why should it?”
“So… it is more of an observation drone than a surveillance one?”
“What is the difference? I thought that was mostly the same.”
“In general the distance. Surveillance drones try to get the audio as well as the video. They get relatively close. An observation drone on the other hand can be quite high. A couple of klicks in extreme cases. In that case, it needs very good optics. Maybe a laser mic.”
It seemed as if Samuel had finally gotten what I was trying to say.
“Exactly. However, I see its primary objective as transport for the Lachesis. Lachesis is the one who will do the spying. Atropos is only necessary when the target is far away and we have to bring the Lachesis there in a hurry or when we have to follow a target in a skimmer or grav ship.”
For a moment, both of them inspected the design again, and then Samuel turned back to me again.
“In that case, we should optimize it for supersonic flight.”
“Again, why?”
“Pressure. We should try to limit the sonic boom. And keep that thing stealthy as much as we can.”
It took me a moment to realize he was serious and then I could not stop a snort.
“Seriously, you think it makes a difference if we give it a more aerodynamic form for the stealth during supersonic flight? Sorry to say so, but there is no stealth when something flies supersonic. Even if the sonic boom would by some miracle completely eliminated, the skin of it will be several degrees hotter than the air around it. No, if that thing goes supersonic, it will be visible. That just can’t be helped.”
“But… isn’t that counterproductive? What if the target notices it?”
“Either we have the time to let it cool while it flies the last bit subsonic, or the target has just a supersonic journey behind it.”
He still seemed skeptical but then shrugged.
“Well, if you think so.”
He did sound a bit sulky though.
“But what about efficiency? This layout will cost way more energy to push supersonic than something optimized for it.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Not that much more than the teardrop design you proposed for subsonic flight. Yes, it would be an advantage during long-range flight to optimize its fuselage for supersonic flight. But this advantage would be more than balanced by the increased complexity that the stealth system will require.
This comparatively simple form is relatively easy to hide. Anything more complex will make it harder.”
He sighed.
“Fine! You are right. I don’t like it but you are right. It is just… this thing is so boring.”
I tilted my head and raised an eyebrow.
“And making it good-looking is more important than making it work better? If you absolutely want a good-looking drone, then go ahead and design one. But don’t expect us to use too many of them. They might be useful as a diversion, and if you arm them, they might be useful for that. But for missions where the drone ideally won’t be seen at all, boring is good.
Heck, even an armed drone would probably be better if it was boring and stealthy than exciting and easy to notice.”
He sulked some more but answered:
“Yeah, I understand that. I just don’t like it.”
I nodded.
“Now, this early design iteration uses a radar-absorbing hull under the Q-link layer. Obviously, that won’t do at all if we want to include a radar. So, we need a compromise between a low radar signature and… what does Atropos need radar for anyway?”
Samuel looked at me with some exacerbation, then sighed and answered:
“In any congested airspace, we unfortunately can’t expect every other flying object to announce itself with a transponder. Or scream out its presence with radar. That means to avoid a collision, we need to include an active radar in anything we send up.”
It made my head hurt.
“Wait a minute, you are saying we need to include radar because some others don’t? So that our radar can detect them when a collision is possible?”
He nodded.
“And why is it our responsibility? Especially as it is… useless in many cases. Do you really believe we should activate the radar when we run Atropos under stealth? As you said it, scream out its presence?”
His face moved through an interesting series of emotions. It started with a flash of anger, followed by resignation, then he actually began thinking, demonstrated by his eyes widening, and lastly, he smiled sheepishly.
“Uh, no. I don’t think that we should do that. But what if we don’t run it stealthed? We can use the radar then?”
“Then it will have a transponder. But we also can use a hatch in the front to hide the radar behind. But when it is running under stealth, there will be no transponder and no radar, no lidar, or any other active emission. Heck, I am pondering how we can hide the cameras when it is stealthed. Though… if we go with 5 petapixel cameras the Q-links cover a square with around 3cm sidelength. That should let us get away with a 7cm diameter lens.
So, anyone farther away than 250m should not be able to see it with the naked eye.
At 500m it should be protected from most cameras as well. And those that can resolve anything that size at that distance will have a hard time finding it in the first place.”
If I was interpreting Samantha’s expression right, she was quite perplexed.
“What the fuck are you talking about? How do you decide that at 250m nobody should be able to see it?”
“The human eye has an angular resolution of 0.017 degrees. That means anything smaller than the cone created by that angle is not visible to us.
For a 7cm lens that happens at 236m. With a bit of a fudge factor, we get 250m. The cameras are a different matter, but they usually have a field of view between 25 and 60 degrees.
A standard 8k camera has 7680 pixels width. At a distance of 500m the 7cm lens covers between one and 2½ pixels. Even a dedicated expert system will require more than that to rule out an artifact.
So, unless they are using a tele-optic with a field of view smaller than 25 degrees, the chances of something identifying the lens of our cameras as such is impossible. And if they have such an optic, the limited FoV makes it very hard to notice something this small while moving the camera.
Again, even an expert system will have a hard time with it. Especially as we are talking about something that is roughly a fourth of the size of many bird species in our cities.”
Samuel’s mouth was hanging open, and Samantha had wide eyes when she exclaimed astonished:
“Wait, you just did the math in your head? Just like that?”
That honestly bewildered me a bit.
“Yes, of course. That is just math. Trigonometry. As long as you know the basic variables, like the angular resolution or the number of pixels width, the rest is just plugging in the numbers into the equations.”
That made both of them roll their eyes, and Samuel uttered:
“Fine. If you can do that just like that… no wonder you are the boss.”
I honestly could not understand that attitude. Get real, this was really just simple trigonometry. Everybody should be able to do that little piece of math in their head.
Yes, if I had used calculus in my head I could have understood their reaction, but for trig? Whatever.
“Well, then let’s get down to business, won’t we? Just to move along, are there any reasons to not use the basic cylindrical form?”
Samuel was still visibly not happy about it but kept silent, while Samantha just shook her head.
“So… the basic hull configuration is that then. Let’s get to the innards. I had planned to use a four-by-two-by-two configuration for the grav coils. Four coils along the length of the hull, and one in each orthogonal direction from that at each end to maximize leverage.”
Not all that surprisingly, both of them shrugged, with Samuel saying:
“Well, I can only speak for myself, but I have no clue about how to best do grav coils. You are the expert here, so I say we go with that.”
I projected the bones into the hologram.
“You wanted an equipment bay? Where do you think it would be best to place it?”
Samuel knitted his brows in deep thought for a moment and then shrugged again.
“I would say the best place would be directly behind the nose cap. We won’t have to split the power cells and we can open a hatch in the nose cone for some of the devices that might need that.”
I looked at it for a moment and saw what he was getting at.
“That makes it necessary to move the bow coils, but that is no big problem I think. How big should that bay be though?”
Samantha had meanwhile pulled out her com and had started to type furiously on it.
“If want to use a terrain mapping radar, we need at least 30cm. A LIDAR is way smaller, but a well-cooled IR camera takes roughly the same amount of space. Otherwise, if that is not enough then whoever wants it has to build their own drone.
This thing doesn’t have to be able to do everything.”
I shrugged.
“Fine for me. We should place the radar, a front-facing camera, and the transponder in the nose I think.”
A quick command to my Archimedes and Warden lengthened the hologram by 30cm and structurally reinforced the newly created hollow room.
I then created a double-sided sliding hatch that, at its maximum, opened half the equipment bay for access.
Unfortunately, a short stress analysis, automatically performed by Warden, showed that this would not work. Even after being reinforced, the equipment bay immediately turned red.
Samuel asked the obvious question:
“What does that red mean?”
“The nose as it is now can’t withstand supersonic flight. It would crumble.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“We could make the hatch smaller, or build in a central support strut… but that would limit the use of the bay.”
I looked at the hologram and read the more detailed stress analysis. The central strut would help, but for the smaller hatch to show any significant effect, it would need to be way too small to be useful.
Samantha waited a few seconds before she mused:
“You know, we don’t need to have such a big hatch. The central strut would effectively halve the space we can use. So, I am for making the hatch smaller.”
Samuel on the other hand seemed to favor the strut.
“But if we do that, then we will have problems fitting stuff into the bay. That is no solution either.”
“But if we build it with the central strut, every piece of equipment will have to be designed to fit around the strut, and it will have to be in separatable parts.”
“So what? If we make the hatch too small then…”
I raised my hand.
“Let me think for a moment.”
I walked around the hologram, looking at it from several angles. There were two ideas I had.
“How big will the hatch have to be to use the equipment?”
Samantha took a moment and then shrugged.
“I would say around 30cm, if we use a square or circular radar dish.”
“So… 35 degrees. That should be possible.”
“But if we make the hatch that small then we will never…”
Again I raised my hand.
“I am aware that a hatch of that size will limit the equipment we can get into it.”
I made the changes to the design. First, I relocated the power lines to the nose to the top of the fuselage, opposite to the hatch, and replaced it with a flex cable. Then I placed a hinge mechanism on top of that so that the whole front of the fuselage could be pulled around 3mm forward and then pushed upward, opening the whole front of the equipment bay.
Then I reduced the hatch from opening 180 degrees to 35 degrees. A substantial reduction, but with the new design, it was just a window to use the equipment through, so that should be enough.
Finally, on top of that, I placed several retractable struts to take on much of the stress directly inside of the hatch.
They would retract into the rest of the drone's body when the hatch was open, as that was certainly not happening when it was going at supersonic speeds.
I then changed the projected plan to the new idea.
The new stress analysis showed that this design would work, up to Mach 8 it seemed. Not that Mach 8 was in the cards for that thing anyway. Anything significantly faster than Mach 4 and I could no longer rely on the integrity of the Q-links making up the stealth skin.
When the formerly red sections now briefly flashed green, Samuel furrowed his brows.
“But… how will we now get the equipment into the bay?”
“Watch and see!”
I started the animation sequence, and first, the struts retracted into the body, followed by the nose folding up.
“I assume that our technicians can easily put anything that fits into the bay through that opening.”
Samantha snorted.
“Well, if not we need new techs.”
Samuel then interjected:
“But it still needs a camera.”
I smiled at him. The camera itself was a straightforward thing. Just a 3-by-3cm chip of Q-links. All the processing was done in the home infrastructure.
For the optics, I went with an off-the-rack standard autofocus assembly. It was just 7cm in diameter and had a length of another 6cm.
Now we just had to put a few of them on the drone so that we had a good field of view.
That gave me an idea. Why not kill two birds with a single stone?
It only took a few seconds to create a 7.5cm wide indention on the drone, roughly 45cm behind the equipment bay. This indention was going completely around the drone and was 6.5cm deep.
I then placed a rail system in there and mounted a camera on it. The interesting thing was that I filled the rest of the rail system with cages for Lachesis. I made sure that the cages could move on the rail system independently from the camera. That gave me 38 of them in a single ring. Finally, I created a cover for the indention, with the obligatory Q-link stealth system, and two opening hatches. One for the camera, and one to let the Lachesis through. I made sure that they were distant enough from each other that the empty cages could fold up so every Lachesis could be released.
I projected the new assembly on the drone and had Warden do the stress analysis again.
Samuel looked at the changes a bit confused and then asked:
“Uh, what is that?”
“That is the camera. And the storage for the Lachesis. The camera can move 360 degrees around the Atropos. It can be lifted out of the storage position so that it can be pointed forward or rearward a bit. The rest of the ring is filled with…”
And again, we saw a spray of red on the drone, stopping me in my explanation.
“Ok, that is not so good.”
The description showed that at high speeds, airflow would lead to intolerable vibrations. Intolerable as in ripping the whole thing apart in a couple of hours.
I looked at the detailed simulation and realized that the connection between the hull and the cover of the ring was not smooth enough.
That made me feel a flash of relief. Not so bad in the end, as it was easy to fix. It did break up the simple lines of the drone a bit when I created an elevated windbreak, but not by much. Another problem solved.
“Where was I? Oh right. The ring is filled with 38 Lachesis. There is no need to have it run empty.”
Samantha looked at it for a moment and then commented:
“Do you think we could build in a couple more? It is always a problem if the drone has just one camera and there are multiple points of interest.”
I shrugged.
“Sure. Do you think three are enough? Together with a front-facing camera and a rear-facing one of course.”
She looked at Samuel.
“What do you say? This is more your specialty.”
Samuel just nodded.
“Sure, three should be enough. If it is something that needs more attention, then you need more drones anyway, as you need multiple perspectives.”
I quickly added the two new rings to the drone. I was sure the 114 Lachesis were overkill, but nothing said we had to fill an Atropos up any more than we would have to fill up a Lachesis with Clotho.
That left us with a 230cm long cylinder with a 50cm dome at each end. Simple and easy to hide.
The bones of it were the central strut that contained the primary grav coils, as well as radial ones in regular intervals, of which four contained the secondary grav coils.
The nose dome beyond the equipment bay was mostly empty, as it only contained a camera, the radar, and a FLIR, all hidden behind a hatch. The rear dome only contained a camera.
The rest of the drone, except for the camera rings, was still empty. Time to change that.
“Now we have to work on the power system. I have planned to use the rest of the volume for it. First, the struts will be coated with Q-links for power delivery.
If the math is right, we should use .49582773mm² Q-links, as they have the best power delivery ratio. They can each provide 0.26V at 0.6A, or 0.156W. If we coat the complete central strut with them, we get 152500 Q-links or 23.79kW.
If we use Lithium-Xenon-Nano-Substrate batteries, we get around 600kWh in battery power. That would mean that we can recharge the batteries from zero to 100% in a bit over 26 hours.”
Samuel frowned.
“LX-Nano? Those are pricey. That will make the costs explode.”
“No, not really. They cost so much because they had to be produced the same way as semiconductor chips. One layer at a time. And they had a rather low yield of 23% on average. We have NADAs. Not only do we have a yield of around 98%, but we can also make them in 3-dimensional structures. That will lower the cost to less than 3% of what they did cost before.”
“Ok… but do we really need 600kWh?”
“At full power to the grav coils, we get less than four hours of use out of 600kWh. If I am not wrong, that is not quite enough to make it move halfway around the planet.”
“Oh, wow. I did not know the coils were that power-hungry. How can you power the coils in the smaller drones via Q-links then?”
“It is not that bad. We won’t even bother to use the coils in the Lachesis and Clotho close to their limit. It is at the higher end when the power draw gets so high.”
“So… this thing can fly to the other side of the world? And deliver our sneaky spy balls? Cool.”
Clearly, Samantha had fewer concerns about the power demands.
Finally, Samuel scratched his head.
“So… now what?”
“Well, if neither of you has anything to add anymore, I think we should send the plans to a NADA and have a prototype built.”
“Yeah, I think it can do that. And then?”
“Then we are done here. You might want to take the Lachesis to HQ and have your teammates try to find them. I will send the controller rack with you.”
“You won’t come?”
I sighed.
“I will use an Incarnate. That should be enough.”
“Ok, until then.”
They both left, taking the Lachesis in a bag, with an industrial bot bringing the server rack with them.
Yes, I could have just gone with them, but for what? The Incarnate seriously was good enough in this instance.
And I could use the 20 minutes for some meditation anyway. Clearing my head and all that.
When I connected to the Incarnate, I was not surprised to find Naveen with them, though Maynard was unexpected.
“Hey Vivian. So, you’re finished playing?”
I could not help but chuckle.
“You tell me. I think this will work great, but you are the expert. Hi Maynard.”
“Hey Vivian. I heard you have something new, so I just wanted to look it over.”
By now the bots had connected the control server to the power outlets, and Sam and Sam pulled a couple of Lachesis out of the bag.
Naveen moved a bit closer and inspected the two balls carefully.
“You know… I expected something… smaller.”
Samantha snorted.
“Those are inside. And those… You will be surprised, boss.”
With a bit of a flourish, she began typing on the holo-keyboard, and the two Lachesis began lifting up.
Naveen was not very impressed it seemed.
“So they can hover. Not all that surprising honestly. You have to do better Sam.”
With an evil grin, Samantha turned around.
“Is that so? Then how about… now?” With a last push of a button, she activated the stealth function, and both Lachesis simply vanished.
Naveen raised an eyebrow and looked at the seemingly empty air.
“Ok, that is new. So… you made invisible balls? I assume they can listen in?”
Samuel smiled broadly.
“Oh, not only that.”
He too moved to the virtual keyboard and typed for a bit, and a holoprojector showed two video feeds from somewhere in the room.
“Full video? That is more than I expected.”
Which, of course, was doubly repeated from the speakers.
“So, they are invisible, have microphones, and full video? What are the camera specs?”
I smiled at that.
“It has eight 2.86 petapixel cameras all over the skin.”
Maynard had moved closer as well.
“You managed that and still put in such an optical stealth system? Marvellous.”
“The optical stealth system is the cameras. The balls are completely covered in Q-links. 414 picometer Q-links. Half of them are receivers, the other half are emitters. They are paired, with a a third terminal connected to an amplifier. What the receiver… well sees, meaning what light hits the receiver, is directly amplified and then projected by the emitter.
There was no reason not to use the amplified information of the 2.86 quadrillion Q-links per sector and make it into a picture. The same with the sound. Each Q-link measures pressure variances, making it into a microphone.”
“Wait, Q-links can do that?”
“How do you think they transmit data to the optical parallel bus?”
“Oh… cool. I thought they transmitted electric impulses.”
“They can do that too.”
Naveen watched the video feeds and then snapped a finger.
“Bertram, how about you try and find those things?”
“Uh, sure boss, at once.”
One of the men, a middle-sized swarthy person with dark brown hair quickly moved over to one of the cabinets and pulled out several devices. They looked eerily similar to what Trooper Hagrid hat used.
While he was doing that, Naveen asked:
“For how long will the battery last?”
“There is no battery. Those things are powered via Q-link. So… the power lasts as long as you power them.”
“No battery?”
Naveen sounded contemplative, only moments before Maynard’s shocked:
“Powered via Q-links? They can do that as well?”
“Electric impulses, Maynard. It stands to reason that if they can transmit electricity, that electricity can be used for other things than transfer information.”
“That is… why did you not tell us about that earlier? That would make energy networks so much easier.”
“No, it won’t. Yes, it can transfer electricity, but not that much. All the Q-links on these Lachesis balls together can transfer around 560W. A proper superconductor is much more effective.”
Bertram had by now begun using the devices, and he had similar results to Trooper Hagrid.
“Sorry, boss, but I can’t seem to find them.”
Naveem looked at him briefly, before he turned to my Incarnate and smiled evilly.
“Don’t worry. Dr. DuClare is sneaky that way. But she is not the only sneaky one here.”
He walked to a table and opened the bag that I just now noticed on it, pulling out an improvised-looking device.
He manually opened up three folded antennae, and then pointed the device into the room, while addressing me:
“You didn’t seriously expect me to not think that you would use grav coils in those things, did you?”
When he activated the device, it let out a series of beeps and then he pointed it at first one spot.
“There is the first.”
Then another.
“And here is the second.”
Then he turned back to me.
“I had Maynard design a handheld Palanthír for just that reason.”
I chuckled and moved my Incarnate to the server.
“Honestly, I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t thought about it. But I am a bit surprised that Warden created the Palanthír for you. But… well sooner or later somebody else will get one, so I planned ahead.”
With a few button strokes, I switched the Lachesis into an alternative mode, and the device in Naveen’s hand stopped beeping.
He looked at it and then shrugged.
“So, you shut down the grav coils? But we still know where they are. What about it, do you want to catch it men?”
Just to belie his words, the video began moving, with the Palanthír still remaining silent.”
After a few seconds, Naveen snorted.
“Yeah, should have seen that coming. How did you do that though?”
“They are mostly hollow. And contain a vacuum. The carbon shell is light, so they weigh almost nothing, literally. A light draft is enough to keep them aloft.”
“So they are drifting?”
“Nope. The light draft can be air currents already happening, or they can use the Q-links on the skin to create electrostatic propulsion.”
“That is… well we now have to find ways to detect them.”
One of the women then exclaimed.
“I think I can see one. There, right there. There is a slight distortion, and the view is a bit murky.”
I sighed.
“That can’t be prevented. It is not perfect after all. Also, the amplifiers are biased towards the visible light spectrum. Yes, that includes IR, but if you go to other spectrums, you should be able to see them.”
“So… not perfect. But leaps and bounds beyond what anybody else has. If we just had a need for them…”
