Neether or Nyther?

[Ethan Neufeld 0]

Ethan didn’t move again or make a sound until he was sure all of the drones had moved far beyond hearing range. Though he could still see some drones in the distance, instinct told him to regroup and move to better cover the second he safely could. He pushed to his feet and grunted at the pain that rhythmically pounded in his head and spread through his core as he stood. He hated being stunned. Designers of less-lethal technologies had never learned the meaning of ‘soft touch’.

 

He was wet, caked in mud, cold and it was still raining. His poncho was gone, still caught on the drone that had dropped him when its hook slipped from his carrier and unwittingly carried off by its salvagers. There wasn't a spot on him that wasn't wet or muddy; seeping under his carrier, belt and worked into every exposed gap in his gear. His ego was bruised, head aching, body stiff and banged up a bit from the clumsy treatment he’d received. Not conditions he particularly liked, but things he’d grown used over the years and no real harm had been done. Nothing a bit of time in a dry, warm place and something to show for their troubles couldn’t fix at any rate.

 

Ready and waiting to rejoin to the others, he glanced at Pher as she rose from concealment nearby. Then, in a moment of recollection, he looked to the severed tentacle that was partially submerged at his feet. Rosetto had wanted to capture and study one of the drones. Brow furrowing, he crouched down and fished the tentacle from the mud. It wasn’t a drone, but it was part of one. Standing again, he began walking and then jogged the few dozen meters back to the building, the tentacle limply dangling in his hand.

 

He unceremoniously presented it to Sal at the entrance and then finally entered the building at Sal’s insistence. He wasn’t one to complain, but still welcomed the chance to get out of the rain. Murky puddles marked his trail from the door as he ventured in deeper and out of sight from the windows, seeking a more secure place to change. He found a chamber that was, he guessed, the Zoalus equivalent of a washroom. It didn’t seem to have running water. Pulling a plastic bag from his pack, he was soon dressed in dry clothing, though mud still coated his exposed skin, hair, boots and gear. He left the wet clothing and gear behind and rejoined the others, reassured to find that all were in better condition than he was. In the foyer, standing back from the windows, he then fully took in his situation for the first time since being stunned.

 

Some of the scene outside spoke for itself. From the looks of it, the modified drone and its unmodified companions had tried to take him somewhere after stunning him and in a direction relative to the port city. That explained why he’d ended up roughly fifty meters from his original position and why one of the drones had been hooked to his belt. But where the modified drone had disappeared, how the two unmodified drones had been damaged or why the five additional drones couldn’t carry on what the modified one started was a riddle.

 

Initially he’d thought his teammates had come to his rescue; said to hell with the risks and fought the drones into withdrawing. He soon learned, brow lifting in surprise as they recounted the incident, that it wasn’t nearly the whole story. Pher had risked firing on the modified drone once and had successfully hit it. But it’d been the drones who ultimately freed him by attacking their own kind.

 

“Really?” he’d remarked aloud in a falling tone and some disbelief.

 

The team had gone largely ignored by the group of five. Even after returning fire on the modified drone and briefly gaining their attention, the garden-variety drones had acted as though the team was invisible. But the team hadn’t been able to safely do much more for Ethan than what the drones had done themselves. It was the five salvaging drones that deserved his gratitude, however incidental his rescue had been to their apparent objective - attacking the group of three and collecting its two unmodified members.

 

Desiring to piece things together for himself, Ethan earnestly drew from the team as much information on what happened as he could. There were a few details on which everyone who witnessed the incident agreed; none of which coincided with Ethan's thoughts.

 

In Ethan's opinion there were at least two distinct groups of drones. The drones that tended gardens, maintained equipment, patrolled the landscape and repelled landing parties, used laser-based weapons and were physically identical from drone to drone. These drones could perceive and react to sounds, proximity or touch, unnatural electromagnetic emissions and weapons discharges. But their sensors were unable to compensate for Troy’s space hats or directly detect the wearers. These were the drones they first met on land. They were common and everywhere and were most likely connected to the fixed surface-to-air batteries. Others had split these drones into two groups: the 'gardeners' and 'security'. But Ethan hadn't seen the need. Whether one gardened or patrolled was secondary to their collective ROE and how they might respond to directives from the network. And he suspected a 'gardener' drone was just as capable of shooting them as 'security' drone.

 

The other group was the modified drone; some dubbed it 'science'. It used stun rather than the clearly lethal weapons of the other drones. Its modified sensors were also clearly superior to the others and it was in the habit of taking live captives. It was an oddity among hundreds of drones that all looked and acted exactly alike. Some on the team saw this as an indication of an established social order between the drones, but Ethan wasn't convinced.

 

No one could explain why the drones had attacked each other. Why the modified drone was allowed to escape unchallenged by the others. If the modified drone was cooperating with the two unmodified drones or if it was controlling them and how. If the three were all part of the same group or if the modified drone had actually appropriated its unmodified companions and why it couldn’t similarly control the group of five. Why the modified drone stunned and took captives apart from basic curiosity. Or why it had taken an interest only in Ethan; some might not have agreed its interest was intentional, chalking it up to just a matter of place and time. Ethan didn't believe it.

 

Circumstances, as they’d played out, had reduced the chance that more unmodified drones would return with reinforcements and seek payback on the team for their losses. But Ethan had a feeling that he’d see the modified drone again. It wasn’t the first time the modified drone had taken more interest in him than everyone else. Yesterday, it was a longer scan, radio off, and while completely ignoring the remaining half the team after him. And then, today, visibly reacting to Pher when she appeared in the doorway of the building and after powering down her gear, but clearly targeting Ethan. The scans it’d occasionally directed at the building weren’t just curiosity; it was also watching its back, making sure Ethan’s teammates didn’t try to take it by surprise. Or maybe it was looking for someone that shared the same traits as Ethan. But he suspected it wanted something. Wanted something from him or wanted him for something - something that needed him alive. The question was what. And why him: was it his appearance, height or weight; something he was carrying; his smell? Briefly, it’d crossed his mind from a jaded bit of humor that he’d somehow pissed the drone off in another life.

 

More now than ever, he was convinced the modified drone could see past his space hat and not because it was malfunctioning. Whether ‘seeing’ was figurative or literal, he didn’t know. No one had managed to get a good look at its modifications, but there was a surplus of possibilities - anything from using different sensor frequencies, to video capture and processing, to enhanced environmental analyses.

 

Whatever the explanation, Ethan was sure of one thing: his radio wasn’t the culprit. Believing the modified drone presented a danger to his teammates, he’d turned it on without Pher’s permission. He couldn’t fully discount that the drone might have detected the radio - using it to attract the drone had been his intention in the first place. But the drone was already advancing relative to Ethan’s position before he turned the radio on and it gave no indication that it detected the change. The drone might have also ignored it, but the point of differentiating between detect or ignore was moot. The purpose of ignoring sensor contacts was prioritization: you might as well consider a contact undetected if consistently ignored.

 

The result was too definitive for what was intended as a brief decoy to suggest the radio played more than the smallest part. Even after turning the radio off, the modified drone hadn’t just blindly shot at him. It unshakably watched Ethan as it waited for its companions to arrive before taking action and the odds were against Ethan when it finally did. The shot itself had been fast, decisive; aimed and accurate down to the centimeter. It struck him solidly in the lower abdomen, a hairsbreadth below his carrier. It was the closest to a centered body shot the drone could make without striking and dissipating the energy across the armor carrier’s internal plates. If it was the radio the drone was following, it should have shot the radio on his shoulder or near it. But the drone clearly aimed away from the radio and intentionally missed his vest. The shot showed calculation; awareness of things that should have been hidden by the space hat even if it detected the radio; things the powered radio couldn’t have revealed to it.

 

Pher’s active tricorder scan to find Rosetto after he’d gone missing, however, was a different story. Once he learned of it, Ethan had to give the modified drone credit. It’d seized on and triangulated what was reportedly the briefest emission within seconds. That was impressive, considering it took a stronger weapon discharge from the modified drone to attract the attention of the rest. But it also corroborated Ethan’s theories on the modified drone’s sensor capabilities and objectives. If the drone only followed active signals, the drone should have homed in on where Pher’s ODRI had been and left Ethan alone. Or, if following his shielded radio, it shouldn’t have been able to distinguish between who was carrying which device; only that they were a several dozen meters apart. And yet, after reacting to Pher, it specifically zeroed in on him. It stunned him, not his radio, and then somehow directed two unmodified drones - they apparently couldn’t sense him on their own - to carry him off and left the rest of the team untouched. There had to be more to it than electrical signatures; had to be.

 

From the beginning, Ethan had known that active gear or scans would likely attract drone attention. But, to Ethan, there was a sizable difference between active gear and powered gear that wasn’t producing emissions or was, in other words, operating in passive mode. In his opinion, gear that was shielded could be powered up and go undetected as long as it remained passive - tricorders on passive scan, radios that weren’t transmitting, weapons in standby, binoculars and night vision in any mode. He wanted to test that theory; lift the ban on powered, shielded gear. They hadn't started out with clear objectives beyond a hazy idea of conducting recon and figuring out the drones. In his opinion, testing the drones' abilities fell within that broad scope of their current objective.

 

He needed to know and he didn't feel like they could safely wait until they returned to the Qob and for a lengthy review of the data they had. No radio schedule had been set with the Qob to his knowledge; no one was checking their radios on the hour. He wanted to be able to hear the Qob when and if they tried to contact the team; know what was happening in orbit, if anything had changed or if they should be expecting something they couldn't see from the ground. They could have also used their radios for signals intelligence; found a way to monitor the drones' movements via their communications. And giving Sal the chance to passively analyze the Zoalus language on his tricorder would benefit them all, maybe even give them a key to communicating with the drones sooner.

 

Above all, he wanted a live weapon in his hands. Their record wasn't great at the moment. They were running into the drones without trying very hard and often coming out behind. This time they'd been lucky; the modified hadn't been interested in a firefight. But their chances of winning a full engagement were slim and would grow slimmer the longer it lasted. Dodging fire in the next attack while waiting for their weapons to warm up would multiply that against them.

 

From a full retention holster with thumb-break, Ethan could draw a live weapon and fire three accurate rounds to a subject's center of mass in 1.8 seconds. He held the record as one of the fastest, accurate draws. It was likely that some would think he'd exaggerated or lied if he told them. Most would be blown away if he showed them. But, truthfully, it wasn't that impressive.

 

An aggressor could produce their weapon and fire a single, fatal round to the center of mass in a quarter of a second or less. That was seven times faster than Ethan's remarkable, holstered draw. Naturally, if pulling his rifle from just a low ready, Ethan could fire in the same amount of time. But it was the aggressor that always had the opening advantage in a firefight and that much was scientifically proven.

 

The aggressor's advantage lied in what the defender didn't know. The moment the weapon was fired, the aggressor had already gone through all the mental steps and made his decision to shoot. By that point, the defender was already seconds behind and would lose precious time in assessing the situation, taking cover if he hadn't and making his own 'shoot or don't shoot' decision. Add a cold weapon to the scenario - half a second for the additional step of turning the weapon on and 2 or more seconds for the weapon to warm up. Now you more than guaranteed the first shots to the aggressor and multiplied the defender's chance of taking a hit or being killed without returning fire.

 

The modified drone had been the aggressor and Ethan the defender. In that incident, the drone had lifted its tentacle, unhampered by holsters and slings, and shot Ethan before he could decide if the movement was even hostile. That was fast by his standards.

 

Would it have made a difference if his weapon had been live? Given he was carrying his rifle in a low ready at the time, there was a good chance he could have reacted soon enough. There was also a good chance that he still would have been shot. But Ethan was convinced that having a live weapon could only increase the odds in their favor for future encounters.

 

The problem lied in convincing the others that testing the drones' responses was a worthwhile risk. He couldn't fully explain why he felt so strongly about taking that course of action and that weakened his argument. And the team was naturally drawn to rally behind the Qob's Security Chief over a stranger like Ethan. They had unconditionally accepted Pher's theories that no device should be powered. That active was not the same as passive didn’t matter. Breaking through a barrier like that might be impossible.

 

It was a frustrating position under a stubborn someone who wasn’t shy of making unilateral decisions when it suited. Not that he was guiltless on that count - justification aside; he’d made plenty of unilateral decisions in his lifetime and was even insubordinate in turning on his radio. He knew the moment the team learned what he’d done, they'd automatically assume it was the reason the drone had targeted him. The evidence between them was the same, but everything rested on their vastly different viewpoints. If anything, revealing that he turned on his radio would reinforce other arguments and undermine his, making it hard to sell the finer details that might prove it wasn’t the cause.

 

There was only one way he felt sure that he could really change minds. He could conduct a test without approval and let the results speak for him. The problem was justifying something that insubordinate and he couldn’t. Short of his theories possibly being very wrong and endangering them, it could also irresponsibly fracture the team.

 

He had only the power of speech at his disposal. There was still a chance they might accept what he had to say. And if not? Well, there would be other opportunities to test things soon enough, he reminded himself.

 

“That drone’s different,” he observed casually and left it to take the conversation where it would.

Edited August 6, 2011 by Ethan Neufeld