It was easy to tell that the PCA had not been having a good time lately.
Subject Guard patrols were stepping up, but not in the way that they should have been. What, before, had been an efficient and carefully crafted schedule to keep track of what was happening on Rubicon was now a scattershot of semi-random activities all over the continent. They were twitchy, and the squads weren't as big as they should have been.
There was some outside pressure being applied here, that much was for certain. Even so, the distribution patterns of these patrols revealed another truth; the PCA was looking for something, and they were looking as intently as they could.
Doubtlessly, they were looking for my Firekeepers.
They wouldn't be finding them any time soon, not with the loadouts of the squads they were sending. It was, for the most part, standard stuff, though I had noticed that a few of the squads had been equipped with heavy-duty, dedicated triple-multi spectrum camera units. It was an odd choice at first glance; cameras weren't that hard to make and with the sheer size of modern warmachines, let alone Subject Guard specials, taking extra dedicated external units seemed a pointless waste of time. They certainly wouldn't have helped in locating my bases or anything.
What they were good for, though, was defeating MDD technologies.
MDD -Monitor Display Deception- was a category of technologies all developed under a single idea; if you can't be seen, you can't be shot. This was, of course, very accurate, and it's an idea that Humanity has been pursuing over the course of its entire existence, from the ancient hunter hiding in a bush to the modern MT coated in a paint of light-deflecting nanoparticles.
MDD was old stuff. The methods varied over time, design, environment, and resources, but it has been around since before Humanity was a space-faring power, and it was not going away any time soon.
These days, the best MDD tech was a combination of the aforementioned light-deflecting nanoparticles, and also digital-electromagnetic interference. The former alone would make you invisible, but wouldn't be able to completely hide your outline and visual distortion. The latter alone would make it very difficult for sensors to see you, but left traces in recordings, increasing in severity the closer you became. Together, you could stand right next to someone and they wouldn't notice unless they went over recordings specifically to find the interference.
The thing is, no stealth is perfect, and MDD works best when nobody is expecting you. High-intensity scan pulses would pick MDD-cloaked mechs just fine, though that obviously had a much more limited range than raw sight.
The problem with that is that scan pulses like that are intermittent, so it's possible for things to slip through the gaps. If you wanted to be able to identify MDD-cloaked mechs at all times, the simplest way to do it was to strap a few different cameras together, set them to monitor different, but overlapping spectrums, possibly change the zoom and focus levels, and then attach a heavy-duty processor to monitor the visual feeds for interference. Chances were, the cameras would pick up at least some of the visual distortion from the cloak, and the processor would find the interference.
Aside from that? Nothing special about them.
It was actually pretty funny to me that they were using that equipment. It told me that they had no idea what was causing so many Doser groups to vanish with the Firestorms. I didn't use MDD; my mechs were not designed for it. The fact that they were considering that possibility was just amusing.
Heh. Maybe I should make one. Just to cause the PCA some problems.
Although, you never know. There's a lot of ways to use a stealthy mech...
Flatwell had been right.
The Corps had been piling a lot of pressure onto the PCA, and that pressure was steadily mounting. It wasn't just BAWS anymore; a lot of 'local' Megacorps were joining in, and while they all wanted different things, the ultimate result was the same.
The PCA was being forced to issue some licences to operate on Rubicon. If they didn't comply, they were going to be issued a full 'Independent Observation Effort', which would be devastating to the PCA's activities on Rubicon. It would mean that dozens, potentially hundreds of people would be allowed onto the world, and almost all of them would have the authority to run around everywhere they wanted to.
Obviously, the PCA was choosing the lesser of two pains, there. Licences would not be ideal, but it would be dramatically better than people who were doubtlessly going to be paid off by Megacorps, or worse, activists.
The licences, at least, would be mostly controlled by the PCA, and they'd choose people who would be a bit less inclined to rock the boat.
Licences would start being issued in early December, and there'd be, at most, two weeks before whoever received them would come to the planet. It was possible that some might arrive before that, if they could reschedule transportation, but we didn't expect the initial wave to be able to do that.
So, we had until late December, about six weeks away right this instant, before things become complicated by unknown factors.. That was not a lot of time, but... there was an opportunity in there.
A very important one.
The last Firestorm before the independents arrived was about three days before the best estimate. It was a dual-cell storm, a larger primary wave that would block communications for twenty two hours, followed by a secondary wave trailing about two hours behind that would block communications for approximately forty five minutes.
I've been looking into the PCA's assets, recently, as part of keeping track of their forces' wider movements. I've found out quite a bit of stuff, and I've had the opportunity to observe their habits.
In reaction to my own habits, and as what I assume to be a part of their efforts to track down my Firekeepers, patrols would continue throughout the Firestorm, but they would do so according to a relatively strict schedule. No single patrol was permitted to be stranded from communications to a home base for more than two hours at a time. Bases would, in this time, switch to the groundside, Grid communication networks. Protocol restricted them from communicating essential or insecure information during this time, but they would update each other consistently with operational statuses.
If something decided to go poke a base or a Watchpoint, the PCA would know within fifteen minutes. Relief forces would be dispatched from nearby zones, and everywhere else would go on high alert until direct communication from the Enforcement System rescinded the status.
Why is this important?
According to some calculations I've been running, there are a concerningly large number of the PCA's Watchpoints that should have Coral colonies of sufficient size to form Coral Minds.
Well. That's a bit misleading. It's been nearly twenty six years since the Fires of Ibis. Any location that had successfully formed a Coral colony within the first seven would now be large enough to reach the minimum limit, presuming it hadn't been tapped and had grown at a steady rate. That time limit could extend to ten years if the colony was growing quickly, or if the original supply was larger than expected.
Now, I did not expect all of the Watchpoints to have formed successful colonies. To be completely honest, I'd be surprised if even twenty percent of them had done so. The violence of the Fires of Ibis was just that severe.
But even at that estimation, it could still leave up to fifteen Watchpoints that might have Coral Minds.
Watchpoint Delta did, of course. That's where Ayre was. Is. Will be. Not sure if Ayre is there right now, but she'll presumably be there later. Unless the circumstances have changed due to me, that is.
I digress.
Watchpoint Delta, presumably, had the Coral colony for Ayre. I couldn't confirm it, because Watchpoint Delta was also out in the northwestern bay area. It was a fair distance away from dry land, and the drillship couldn't easily approach it. Surrounding Grids were monitored by the PCA, so checking that way was a no go as well.
Not all Watchpoints were like that. The data I'd gathered had given me some good guesses as to which Watchpoints would be more likely to have formed colonies. The ones on land, I could check out, but there were caveats as to which ones would be safe to do so.
The Watchpoints had been built in order to monitor the underground flow of Coral, after all. Seismic sensors were a standard. Slow-going was a necessity in order to evade detection, but I was fortunate in that the range of my capacity to sense significantly sized masses of Coral did surpass the range at which a Watchpoint would unquestionably detect me.
With the drillship needed in multiple places, I had, thus far, only managed to confirm a single Watchpoint that had a colony.
Watchpoint Omicron. Northeastern Belius. That single Watchpoint was a bit of an isolated one, located in a mountain range that more closely resembled an impact crater than the geological grinding of continental plates. The trick was that it was actually both; it had been a normal mountain range before an impactor made a nice hole in it.
Approaching it on the ground was a long, time-consuming effort of navigating those ranges, and then a wide, open plains of dust. It used to be fairly muddy and wet, but the Grids had disturbed that rain system, so now it was just a mess. Consequently, most PCA forces there were either defensive units that didn't leave, or airborne units that didn't care about the mountains, and which could subsequently range further than normal on account of the natural defences of the terrain.
Watchpoint Omicron was therefore isolated and alone.
Which... meant that I had an opportunity coming up.
Going over it all; The last Firestorm before the independents arrived was, as mentioned, a double. A big one and a small one trailing it, slowly merging as time passed. As noted, the PCA was pretty on top of things when the Firestorms passed, keeping good communications.
They were a bit less careful during the second wave, though. At a mere forty five minutes of no satellite communication, that was understandable. Especially when there's a good two hours between the two waves to re-establish communications.
The PCA was active during the Firestorms, keeping an eye out. Of late, having seen my own apparent patterns, they were proactive in trying to find my Firekeepers. There were, as a matter of fact, more patrols out during a Firestorm than there were at any other time. They were casting a wide net.
But Subject Guard being deployed so widely did mean that their bases, and the Watchpoints, would be a bit understocked.
Since most of those bases were fortresses, the PCA probably didn't see much of a problem with that. Even if someone did attack, it wouldn't be very long at all before that place would be swimming in Subject Guard and Enforcement Squads.
With most of the PCA's assets and manufacturing being either orbital or elsewhere in the system, what would be the point in an attack to destroy the base? With the PCA so utterly massive and capable of deploying forces pretty much anywhere, what would be the point in trying to hold there long enough to get the Coral? With materials just... absolutely everywhere on Rubicon, what would be the point of hitting it for resources?
Why would anybody bother?
In most cases, it'd be very fucking stupid for no real benefit.
But, hey.
If one was mounting a rescue mission... Then wasn't that a different story?
And if 'rescue' in this case simply meant 'get close, then get out'...
Didn't it seem feasible?
One would of course have to consider the consequences of such an action. It would draw a very large amount of attention to the ones who did it, of course.
But if that too was part of the goal... Then why not?