Queen of Drones – Chapter 2 (Original chapter Chapter 174)

28th of February, 2011

Southern Docks Area, Brockton Bay

Shadow Stalker looked down at the insensate forms of the Empire thugs she'd been called in to deal with in a mix of frustration and confusion. She pressed her earbud communicator with one finger.

"Shadow Stalker to Console, I've arrived at the scene. All gang members were disabled before I arrived." she reported. "What the fuck is going on?"

"Console to Shadow Stalker, say again?" Clockblocker's disbelieving voice came back almost at once, making her growl.

"All of the Empire thugs trying to rob the store as reported are out cold." she said crossly. "All ten of them. No sign of drawn weapons or defensive wounds. It's like these guys didn't put up a fight."

"Roger that, Shadow Stalker. Kid Win should be with you, right?" the time stopper said distractedly. "Have him examine the scene from a distance before securing the perps. See if you can find out how they got knocked out."

"Roger that. Shadow Stalker, out." the former vigilante said, looking back at where the only Tinker of the Wards was approaching on his hoverboard. "Oi, hurry the fuck up!"

"I'm here already! Yeesh, you're the one who ran off ahead of me…" Kid grumbled as he pulled up. He looked at the unconscious thugs, noting their lack of injuries. "…huh. OK. Someone got to 'em before we got here. You contacted console?"

"Yeah. Use your visor to examine things from a distance before we both go in to secure 'em and try to find out what happened." Shadow Stalker answered gruffly.

"Gotcha." the Tinker nodded and started tapping at his visor, which had basic scanning abilities installed into it.

While he did that, Shadow Stalker grumbled softly and thought back to the start of January, when things had started to go so wrong. The prank that she and her two accomplices had spent most of the last day of school the previous year preparing for had gone to waste due to Hebert having a nervous breakdown before she even got to it!

Then it had been discovered by her fucking old man, who had dragged Emma's dad into suing Winslow! And that had made Miss Piggy crack down on her for 'not noticing bio-terrorism happening under her nose' or some crap. Fuck her!

"Welp, nothing dangerous." Kid Win said, interrupting Shadow Stalker's brooding. "And I even know why these guys were knocked out, or how anyway."

Leading her over to the nearest knocked out guy, he pointed at the guy's neck. "See. A dart. Probably loaded with a sedative of some kind. All of these guys were ambushed by someone with a dart gun of some sort. Dropped them like flies."

"Huh…" the former vigilante nodded, before a logical contradiction occurred to her. "Hold the phone. I can see some of these idiots being taken by surprise, but none of these skinheads had even drawn their guns or knives to defend themselves. How would they have not noticed getting picked off one at a time like this?"

"That's a really good point…" the Tinker said, sounding confused. "A Stranger, maybe?"

"Fuuuck, I don't want to have to deal with Master/Stranger Protocols today!" Shadow Stalker cursed.

"Either that or these guys were attacked nigh-simultaneously by multiple dart guns." Kid Win shrugged. "I suppose that's possible, one dart gun I heard of has a range of up to 250 feet, but that would need multiple people to shoot at them from different angles at the same time, and for them all to hit. Unless they're pros, then that's a pretty tall order."

As they talked, Shadow Stalker and Kid Win secured all of the KO'd Empire thugs with zip-ties, carefully removing the darts from them first and placing them in plastic evidence bags for analysis by Armsmaster.

"Fuck." the shadow-Breaker cursed as the last man was secured before triggering her earbud again. "Shadow Stalker to Console. All of the Empire 88 members were taken down by sedative-filled darts. Judging by the lack of preparedness among them, either they were all shot simultaneously by multiple people, or a Stranger got them."

"…roger that, Shadow Stalker, prepping Master/Stranger rooms for your return." Clockblocker said, actually sounding sympathetic. Any possibility of suffering under the effects of a Master or Stranger class Parahuman meant that you had to be isolated for a number of hours depending on how affected you were believed to have been affected. They were only peripherally involved here, so it would hopefully be just the standard hour. "Orders just came from the Director, you're to await the arrival of PRT Trooper Squads Charlie and Delta. Upon their arrival, Charlie Squad will take over securing the scene, while Delta Squad will escort both you and Kid Win back to the PRT Building for M/S Containment. Acknowledge."

"Acknowledged. Shadow Stalker, out." the former vigilante said, just barely resisting the urge to break her earbud. Last time she did that, she got put on console duty for a month, and today fucking sucked enough without adding to it.

After telling Kid Win about their immediate future (making the Tinker curse), Shadow Stalker stood and glowered at the knocked out skinheads, for a different reason than she usually did.

'Fucker who did this is gonna pay.' she swore. 'Pissing me off by pulling this shit and not sticking around to explain themselves, so we have no choice but to suspect it's a Stranger…Imma break my foot off in their asses, just you see if I don't!'

Later

Emily Piggot's Office, East-North-East Parahuman Response Team Building, Brockton Bay

"Chemical testing shows that the drug loaded into the darts was a Somnifacient, specifically an immediate onset type of Tinker-made drug using Melatonin as a basis." Armsmaster, head of the ENE Protectorate stated. "Melatonin is an endogenous hormone synthesized in the pineal gland in the brain involved in promoting sleep. It should not be capable of instantly dropping a fully grown man, yet it has obviously been altered to do precisely that."

Emily Piggot, Director of the beleaguered PRT assigned to the powder keg waiting to erupt that was Brockton Bay, frowned. "I see. And have the police passed on the statements of the Empire men apprehended at the scene?"

"Yes. To summarize, none of them saw any signs of anyone in the area aside from their fellows and ordinary civilians." the Tinker replied. "All except a former drug addict, who had a higher resistance to drugs as a result. Not enough to fully fight it off, but enough to see the probable attacker…a drone."

"A drone." Piggot said flatly.

"Yes." Armsmaster nodded. "In all likelihood, he merely saw one of many drones, each positioned to attack a separate member of the group. It would perfectly and rather neatly explain the defeat of the Empire members at almost the exact same moment."

The obese woman regarded Armsmaster tiredly. His first instinct in any situation involving possible parahuman activity was to attribute it to a Tinker. He did it all time time, even although he was proven wrong more times than not. Unfortunately, he was probably right that this was a Tinker incident, unless this was a powerful Shaker, Stranger or Master. Still, she wasn't going to let him know that.

"A drone is no sure indicator that a Tinker was involved, Armsmaster." she said neutrally. "There's no proof that it was anything more than a commercial drone being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"When I read this man's testimony, I investigated the Rig's records, and discovered an interesting factoid." the Tinker stated, a hint of pride in his voice. "The amount of radio waves used in the Bay has more than tripled since the start of February, which is far in excess of the usual increase explainable by the purchasing of new televisions and radios, and there hasn't been a corresponding drop in radio waves to signify the destruction of such appliances either."

"…why were you monitoring the radio traffic of Brockton Bay in the first place?" Emily asked in mild exasperation.

"For a situation just such as this." Armsmaster replied stolidly, and she couldn't really argue that it hadn't come in useful.

"Please refrain from monitoring the contents. Gauge the amount only." she said, a put-upon sigh escaping from her. "Can you track the sources? Figure out a focal point?"

"Had I noticed it at the time, perhaps, but while the traffic has increased, the actual source of the increased traffic is diffused, coming from multiple locations." Armsmaster explained. "Not to mention, whoever it is has obviously realized that they could be backtracked that way and has taken measures to diffuse the signals appropriately. Repeaters, signal bafflers, and a heavy level of encryption are what I'd expect of them now. Finding out anything about them through that path will be very difficult."

Piggot scowled. If drones were the specialty of this Tinker, then they would not be stupid enough to take to the field themselves. They would remain securely in their workshop and control their drones remotely. The option of the Tinker using repeater stations to make their signal that much harder to track was an annoyingly competent and paranoid possibility that made Piggot's scowl deepen.

"As of yet, there is no proof that this Tinker is anything villainous." she said after a moment, as much as it annoyed her to say. "As such, it isn't proper to attempt to track them down overtly. If you and Dragon could see your way to placing measures in place for the possible case that we might need to, that is agreeable. But, until and unless they perform a villainous act, they are to be treated no different than any other independent."

"As you wish, Director." Armsmaster nodded. "As for the Empire 88 members, they have been charged according to the law."

"Very good. Dismissed." the Director nodded sharply.

Later

With Taylor

Taylor's Room, Hebert Residence

"Looks good!" I said to myself as I finished checking my Math answers. I got almost all of them correct, so I could cross this off the list of my requirements for my GED. It was an annoyingly long list of tests to take to take the final exam, but without the usual teenager drama of school, even without the Bitch Trio turning the school against me, I was acing this stuff.

Who knew, I might even be able to sit the final exam before the end of the year at this rate!

I was really having a good day today. Just this morning, I'd gone to my base and sent out some of my Soldier Drones on a patrol, discovering some Empire skinheads in the middle of robbing a shop. I'd waited for them to all come out, tagging each one to be attacked by a different drone, before pressing the button that triggered their firing sequences.

Seconds later, all of the skinheads were down for the count. My first victory as a heroine…and I couldn't properly secure them. This was a critical oversight for me. Beating them was all very well, but if I couldn't secure them afterwards, they might just get away.

Fortunately, I had a burner phone that I'd bought with some of the money that I'd found in the safe of the warehouse I'd taken as my base (There'd not been much, just $300, but it made a nice startup fund. I guess whoever had abandoned the warehouse had forgotten about the safe.) so I'd put in an anonymous call to the police about a robbery and then had my drones return to base.

I'd decided to come home after that, because I needed to work towards my GED some more, and also needed time to plan out my Capture Drones, as well as what was quite possibly the most important part of any Tinker's workshop: the defenses. Right now, there were just some brick and metal walls protecting the base, which very obviously was insufficient to requirements. Even the dozen Soldier Drones I had would be insufficient if they were at the base if it was attacked.

Fortunately, 'drone' was a very wide term that could be applied to a lot of things…such as turret-mounted weapon platforms. Designing them was almost trivially easy, but the questions was materials. I was still in the process of setting up my underground material gathering network with the combination of my Scout Drones and my newly designed Tunneling Drones.

The Tunneling Drones were, to be blunt, ugly little things. About the size of a pneumatic message tube container, it was actually more like a 'Tunneling and Solidification' Drone. The grinding drills at the front chewed through the dirt, rock, concrete and whatever else was in front of it, while at the rear, spray guns covered the tunnel in a quick-setting solution that would harden and prevent the tunnel that had just been dug from collapsing.

Another drone I'd come up with was one designed using the body of the Tunneling Drone as a basis, but with a very different purpose. Signals didn't carry underground very well, so this drone was designed to install signal repeaters every fifty meters or so in the tunnel to ensure that I didn't lose track of my drones. I would also have it install a small bomb near the exit of the tunnels to detonate if someone discovered one of my Collection Stations. It would be designed to collapse all of the tunnel back to fifty meters away from my base.

Extreme, yes, but there was no such thing as being too cautious, especially for a rear-line Tinker like I am.

Anyway, that wasn't all I was doing. One Tunneling Drone had been sent to drill a tunnel straight through to the Boat Graveyard. Specifically, underwater. The great weakness with my Harvester Drones was that they couldn't access materials underwater to harvest. The Boat Graveyard held a lot of materials under the waves, since people had started using it as a dumping ground for old appliances when the Cape Trainwreck had basically taken over the Trainyard. The materials I could gather from it would last me for years.

It was for that reason that I'd built a water tank in my base, one designed to withstand a lot of pressure. The docking station I'd built within it would be for my Submersible Harvester Drones once I'd made the appropriate modifications to the original Harvester Drones. I'd also have to make another tunnel leading to the Boat Graveyard so I could have an 'incoming' tunnel and an 'outgoing' tunnel for maximum efficiency.

Building the Underwater Harvesting Drones would still take up almost all of my remaining materials, so I'd have to be patient for a couple of days until the harvesting showed some results.

Be patient and build. That was probably as close to a catechism for a rear-line Tinker as you could get. I was used to being patient, used to enduring. I'd wait and build myself up. I'd be the hero that Brockton bay needed. My way.

7th of March, 2011

Hive Queen's Base, Docks District, Brockton Bay

I watched as the 3D Printer finished with the last item on its construction queue and then fell silent. Well, there went all of my materials gathered since the start of the month, but I was pleased with what I'd made with them.

Rather than turrets, which had been my initial thought, I'd made a pair of humanoid guardians. Standing seven feet tall, the Royal Guard Drones were heavily armored with a titanium-steel alloy, with endoskeletons made from coltan, of which there was a surprising amount of in electronics, especially cameras, phones and computers. A lot of the stuff that people chucked into the Boat Graveyard in fact.

The appearance of my Royal Guard were akin to knights wearing full-plate armor. Of course, their armament wasn't medieval. Mounted in their heads, behind the visors, were a pair of stun lasers which would be the primary deterrent against people who stumbled into my base uninvited. For more serious interlopers, they had a backpack loaded with missiles, with the launchers mounted inside of their pauldrons behind shuttered protectors.

Of course, the arms also had lasers mounted inside them, far more powerful ones than the head-mounted lasers. These ones could cut through steel like a hot knife through butter. For close combat, the Royal Guard could also pick up and use a heavy shield and halberd…or they would once I had manufactured them.

"I have got to find a way to program them once they're built that doesn't involve me climbing a ladder to jack in to them." I grumbled a few minutes later as I finished connecting the two drones to my computer via wires. Wireless was completely out of the question due to the possibility (no matter how remote) that L33t could stumble across this place. Leaving such a large vulnerability in the main guardians of my base was not only stupid, it was self-defeating.

Setting that thought to one side, I ran a diagnostics program on the two drones, quickly finding absolutely zero problems with the hardware. As I'd expected there. I then installed their OS, one I'd written on my laptop while the two drones had been being built, and made them run their own diagnostics. Again, all clear.

"OK, let's see now…" I muttered, typing away in a frenzy. Thank you Gladys Knott for teaching me a few tricks with touch-typing at Winslow. It really sped up my typing speed.

What I was writing was a program for walking. Amazingly enough, it wasn't a common program, so I couldn't just copy it from elsewhere. No, this would require time and finesse to get right. Not to mention trial and error.

Hopefully this would be resolved quickly…

Several Days Later…

"Aha, got you at last, you little bastard!" I declared almost maniacally as I finally discovered the last bug in my humanoid drones' ambulatory program. It had been almost mocking me for the last week or so, and I had only just tracked it down.

I'll admit, it wasn't even a serious bug, just one that made the smooth motions of the steps go awry once every 333 steps, but still!

Carefully, I scanned the program's code with an eagle eye for detail, just daring the damned thing to develop one more problem. Either there were no bugs left, or the program rather wisely decided that it had pushed its luck too far, because I spotted none.

Satisfied, I rolled out the update to my two Royal Guard Drones before disconnecting the two connectors and ordering them to walk to their charging stations. With smooth, almost organic, steps, my my guardians walked over to their charging stations against the wall, turned around and went silent as the charger connected. Good thing I'd built those while I'd taken a break from debugging.

I hadn't been solely focused on my debugging over the last week. The last of my tunnels had been dug to each of the sites chosen for my Drone Hubs, all of which were going to receive every stealth package I could cram into them, along with some solar panels to keep their batteries charged.

In addition, I'd built plenty of Mobile Turret Drones and stationed them around the room. I hadn't made them obvious though; they were designed to blend into the new paneling that I'd placed on the walls, floor and ceiling. It looked vaguely technological, with glowing geometric lines and stuff, but that was mostly just for decoration and ambiance. Emergency lighting too.

What the paneling actually did was prevent various forms of scanning technology from getting a read on my base. It basically spoofed radar, lidar, sonar, heat vision, night vision and other forms of detection software into seeing what I wanted them to see; a completely ordinary warehouse.

I'd taken scans of another abandoned warehouse nearby, one untouched by myself or the drones, so I would have something to copy, although I'd tweaked the settings slightly so it wouldn't return an exact replica of that warehouse.

Sinking back into the embrace of my chair, which was hands down my best invention ever, I thought long and hard before concluding that I had to update the standard Harvesters to include stealth technology, as I had way too much of them to be accounted for by whatever rich brat had begged his parents for one that week.

Plus, I'd been trawling PHO (Parahumans Online), and it was apparently common knowledge that Dragon, the world's foremost Tinker, worked with Armsmaster a lot, and actually had a combat suit stationed on the Rig. I'd almost salivated at the thought of the kind of remote-operated drone that Dragon used when I'd read that part.

In fact, I was drawing up the design for my own remote operated drone to act as my mouthpiece, and a focal unit of my combat drones. The Hive Queen Drone wouldn't be a heavy hitter, but it would be a fast and quick hitter, along with the little 'hive' it would bring along with it. Hehehe. I was kinda looking forward to giving it a test run once it was built.

For now, however, I would finish making my workshop into an impenetrable bastion, as well as refitting that other warehouse I'd chosen as my backup base into a good fallback position.

You could never have enough options to fall back on, after all…