I was aware that I should wait for Sharpes‘ report, but it was not my thing to sit on my hands. Especially as I did not trust that a local detective bureau could outwit an intelligence operative.

Even one so blatant as Blumenthal seemed to be. He seriously projected only the barest, flimsiest veneer of being a fixer. That meant he did not care if somebody found him out. Which in turn made me want to find out what he was up to even harder.

The problem was that with my current toolset, I had no way to pierce his protections. So a new toolset was on the menu.

I already had a pretty good idea about what I wanted or needed. I just needed to make it happen.

And for that, I needed help. Oh, I was sure I could muddle through on my own if I absolutely needed it, but that would be way harder than necessary. And I would almost certainly make mistakes.

Luckily for me, I had a pretty good idea about where to get that help. And the special nice thing was that I would not even need to pay extra for it.

To that effect, I called Naveen. He was a bit surprised, but not badly so.

“Hey, Vivian, what can I do for you?”

“Hi Naveen. I need your help. The help of your department to be precise.”

He frowned a bit.

“Is there a problem that I am not aware of? Something your guard detail can’t handle?”

I chuckled. As if Thomson and Co. would let me leave the house unless it was really necessary.

“No, not a problem. I… just need to pick the brains of a surveillance specialist.”

He cocked his head, knitting his eyebrows in the process.

“What do you need a surveillance specialist for?”

“I… well it is a bit embarrassing, but ok. When Ben brought me to the New Year’s Eve Gala, there was this man, ostensibly a fixer, but I pegged him as an operative.

I… well, I am not proud about it, but I developed an instant dislike for him, and I have this need to uncover his secrets.”

I took a deep breath.

“Yes, I know it is not healthy, but unless I give in to this need, I will not be happy. The point here is that I need surveillance gear to, well put surveillance on him. And for that, I need to create surveillance gear.”

He rubbed his chin while he nodded.

“I see. Yeah, it is not healthy, but I don’t see any harm in it. But… why do you need a specialist? I can send you a list of what we use.”

I shook my head.

“I wanted to create our own line of gear anyway, and the opportunity is as good as any other.”

He frowned again.

“Why do you want to create our own line? We already use the best you can buy.”

I rolled my eyes.

“And that is of course the best gear that exists, right?”

He scoffed.

“No, of course not. The other corps don’t sell their best stuff, just what they already have replaced. But unless we go against, Dalgon, Xiao Ping, or Kawamoto, we are as good as any other.”

I smiled sweetly.

“But would it not be better if we had some… better stuff? Especially as I bet that not one of the gear we are already using incorporates Q-links. Am I right?”

He sighed heavily.

“Yeah, it would be better, but your time is way too valuable for something like that, and you are right about the Q-links.”

“My time is not too valuable for that because until I get this done I am not worth for anything. I need to get this done. And even designing some new gear might help me here.”

“Yeah, fine. And what is in it for us?”

I could understand the joke he was making, but I played along.

“How about new surveillance gear that nobody else even knows exists?”

“But we don’t need new surveillance gear. We don’t even use our old surveillance gear.”

“Well, then you don’t need your specialist for the moment, do you?”

He chuckled at that.

“Yeah, you are right. But seriously, why don’t you just use the off-the-shelf stuff? It is certainly good enough I think.”

I cocked my head and smiled again.

“First, I have nothing better to do right now, and some light mental exercise like that will be helpful, second, I want to try my hands on this stuff anyway, third, when we need that kind of stuff in the future we will have something nobody else can just buy and analyze, and fourth, we have no clue what this operative has in forms of counter-surveillance equipment, so anything nobody knows how to counter would help.”

“Light mental… you know what, I don’t care. If that is light mental exercise for you, so be it. It will certainly help my two specialists. Do I send them over to your house or will you meet with them here in the HQ?”

I thought about it for a moment before I answered:

“I think Lt. Thomson would be much happier if we did it here in the Fortress. Should I send a skimmer for them?”

“Nah, I send one with them. Have fun.”

With that done, I began to design the basic components that I needed to make my ideas work. They were, well basic. Not complicated at all. The first was an eminently simple amplifier circuit. The second was an at best moderately more complicated signal processor.

Both were easily adapted from standard of-the-rack designs. The rest of what I needed I already had.

Triple Q-links were not that often used yet but were in no way more complicated than the standard two-ended ones. Then I needed two different sizes of grav coils. Again, nothing too hard, as I had Warden calculate and essentially design them.

And the bodies of the two designs that I could mostly design by myself. Again, astonishingly basic forms without anything that could complicate them.

All in all, I was done way before 15 minutes after the call two people were ushered into my lab.

I stood up and offered them my hand in greeting.

“Hi. I am Vivian DuClare. Col. Upreti has sent you?”

The man, a large black person of around 40, smiled brilliantly as he answered:

“We know who you are. And yes, the boss sent us to help you, boss. My name is Samuel Badiaga. And that” he gestured towards the barely taller-than-me blonde woman of around 30, “is Samantha Hewitt. And yes, the Sam and Sam jokes write themselves.”

I could not stop a quick snort about that last.

“So, Sam and Sam? How did that happen?”

Samantha was the one who answered in a surprisingly deep voice:

“It just happened. Samuel is just good with the drones and all that stuff, while I have a knack for bugs, spy cameras, and the other covert surveillance stuff. We are still arguing about which of us has to change their name.”

Male Sam used that opportunity to shoot a salvo in that regard.

“I still think it should be you. I am the older one, and I had so much longer to get used to it.”

“Have you ever heard about ‘Ladies First’? Be a man, and take the lumps.”

I could only shake my head while the two of them argued like an old couple. After a couple of minutes of arguments going back and forth, I decided it was time to get to the point.

“While that is all quite entertaining, you are not here to entertain me, you know?”

Samantha turned red, and from his expression, the only reason why I did not see any blush on Samuel’s face was his exceptionally dark complexion.

He then stammered:

“Oh, yeah, sorry boss. We… well we fall into the habit.”

I shrugged.

“As long as it does not impact your work, who cares? That is the only reason why I stopped you right now.”

Samantha made a face.

“Yeah, not so good. But ok, let’s get to work. What exactly do you need us for? The boss wouldn’t say.”

I gestured towards the working table.

“It’s quite simple. I want to design a series of surveillance equipment.”

Samuel frowned at that.

“Uh, why? I mean, the stuff we use is pretty good already.”

I smiled at him.

“The usual reason. We have toys that others don’t have and want to exploit them.”

Samantha looked contemplating while she mused:

“But is that not just a matter of time? Sure, we won’t get the bleeding edge stuff, but not so far from it either.”

“I am pretty sure nobody has even thought about using some of what I intend to integrate into the designs. For one of them, I am absolutely sure. As far as I know, Warden, my VI, and I are the only ones who could design the parts. And we haven’t.”

It took Samantha a few moments before she opened her eyes wide in surprise.

“You mean the grav coils? Seriously, putting grav coils into surveillance gear?”

“I think you are forgetting that the prices for grav coils have fallen substantially. We are talking about coils in the single-digit range. Two to three Kepler. Depending on the configuration of the coils, and the number of them, we can get them made for 30 or 40 dollars.”

Samuel looked incredulous about the numbers, so I shrugged and continued:

“Seriously, the new grav coils are quite a bit cheaper, and we don’t need very powerful ones. Right now, we can make the ‘small’ 800 Kepler coils for $112, and falling. For this, we don’t need more than five Kepler per coil.

The cost is not completely linear to the strength of the coil, but close. It should not be more than $2 to $3 per coil.”

Samantha frowned again.

“But… we have nearly no experience with designing surveillance gear. I am sure if we give the coils to the big ones they make better stuff.”

I raised a single eyebrow.

“Will they? If I understand it right, you are pretty experienced in this stuff. Now… how would you integrate the Q-link into the equipment?”

That made her smile.

“Oh, that is easy. I would replace the radio control and signal system. That is the easiest way those things are discovered.”

I nodded smiling as well.

“Anything else?”

“Uh, no? I mean, sure, your new processors include Q-link if I understand it right, but the rest… there is no point I think.”

Yup, thought so.

“Do you think the big corporations will use Q-links for anything else?”

She shook her head, looking confused.

“No, of course not. What else is there to use Q-links for?”

“Later. How about this? How are those bugs and drones usually discovered?”

Samuel interjected:

“For the drones that’s easy. Either the signal is discovered, or somebody sees them.”

Samantha took a bit longer to answer.

“Well, the signals as well, but those are the first things that will be replaced by Q-links, so that falls flat. Then… the minimal thermal energy of the electronics, the electromagnetic emissions, if they are big enough they can be visually discovered, or if they are integrated into a line there will be distortions that can be discovered.”

I nodded again.

“So… in essence, they are either discovered visually, by the signals to and from them, or by their electronic emissions, thermal or EM.”

“Yes… why?”

I took a deep breath.

“To explain, I think Naveen, Col. Upreti, gave you the wrong impression. Mostly because I probably gave him the wrong impression. You are not necessarily here to help me design the new tech, but more to help me refine what I have designed and make it more practical.”

With that, I activated the holo-projector, and the first of the designs was projected over the table.

“I decided that we need three levels of equipment. This is the heart of it all, I call it Lachesis.”

I gestured towards the ball with a 5cm diameter, or a bit smaller than a tennis ball.

“That is 1:1 by the way. It will be that size.”

Samantha frowned but moved closer to look at it.

“Ok, that is… a rather small drone. But a bit big for the surveillance equipment. Inside a building, it will be discovered by even a cursory inspection.”

I chuckled.

“No, it will not. The skin of it is covered in Q-links. I think what most people don’t get yet about Q-links is that they transfer energy, not information. We use the energy to transmit the information, but in the end, the energy is what is transferred.”

Samuel had moved closer to the projection and rubbed his chin.

“So… you plan to power those things remotely? Should reduce the energy signature, sure, but how will it prevent people from seeing those things?”

I sighed and rolled my eyes.

“Light is energy. The idea is that we use triple Q-links. Two terminals are on each side of the ball, and the third amplifies the energy that one of the two terminals receives so that the other emits it. In effect, it will emit whatever light hits the other side. It will not quite make it invisible, but close.”

They both looked shocked at the ball, then back at me and back at the ball.

Then Samuel croaked:

“Invisible?”

I rolled my eyes again.

“Not quite. Close though. There will be a parallax error, but all in all, unless you know exactly what you are looking for and where you have to look, it should be nearly impossible to see. Regardless of the spectrum.”

Samantha scratched her scalp.

“So… if this thing is silent, and it is remotely powered… then only the electronic signatures can give it away.”

“What electronic signatures?” I send the signal to project a cutaway beside the full system. To their credit, both immediately spotted what I was talking about.

“What the…” “Where is the rest of it?”

“There is no rest. It is the hull, which is made out of structural carbon, the skin, out of Q-links, this compartment here with some actuators to open it, and these 10 grav coils arranged in a tetrahedron. Six to form the edges of it, and four to go from the corners to the center.

Embedded in structural carbon as well. The coils are five Kepler each. There are no two of them that are parallel. That should give us insane maneuverability.”

Samantha gasped:

“But where is the spyware? The microphone? The camera?”

I snorted.

“The whole outer skin is covered in 4.58 times 10 to the power of 16 Q-links. Or 45.8 million billion. Each of them works as an admittedly not spectacular microphone, and each of them works as a pixel for a digital camera.

Yes, only half of them are receivers, but that still leaves 22.9 million billion pixels. Yes, only one-eighth of them are turned in a specific direction. That still leaves 2.86 million billion pixels in each direction.

Do you think a 2.86 petapixel sensor could maybe be enough?”

I knew full well that the best digital cameras of our time were measured in terra pixel. And only the absolute top of the field reached double digits.

It was, of course, not quite that easy. It never is. And Samuel figured out the fly in the ointment quite quickly.

“Uh, won’t the picture be distorted? I mean, it is more or less spherical, so while 2.86 petapixel are pointing in every direction, most of those will be not quite in the right direction.”

With Samantha adding:

“Yeah, and there are no lenses. And where is the electronics to convert all that incoming light into information?”

I answered Samuel first:

“We have computers for that. There is nothing that prevents us from putting a Chronos or two to the task for each Lachesis.”

Then I turned to Samantha:

“That is one of the reasons why I’ve gone with 10 grav coils instead of three. For mobility alone, three would have been enough. With 10, we can use grav fields to form air lenses. Or turn the omnidirectional microphone into a directional one. And the electronic sits in the home base. Again, triple Q-links.

The third terminal, the one in the home base, will send the incoming information directly to some signal processors to split the EM information and the pressure information, also known as sound, and then shunt all that into various CPUs for analysis. Yes, we will need a boatload of signal processors, but luckily, those can be distributed quite well.

And does not need to be lugged around, thanks to the Q-link. All in all, I think a normal four-unit device full of equipment should be enough to make a Lachesis work.

That includes the stealth, the remote control, the signal processing, and the analysis of the data. Oh, and powering the whole thing.”

They looked at the schematics for a bit, before Samuel sighed.

“So… if it is a tetrahedron for the grav coils, why a ball then? Wouldn’t a tetrahedron be a bit better? Smaller overall, and with admittedly triangular plains to use as cameras.”

I was somewhat impressed that he managed to switch gears that fast.

“Two reasons. First, it is significantly harder to get the stealth working without absolute opposite Q-links. Not impossible, but way harder. But the second is that a sphere is the best form to withstand external pressure. This thing is evacuated, so a near vacuum. It isolates the few heat-producing elements like the coils better.”

Both of them walked around the holo-projection and looked at it hard.

Then Samantha said:

“So… if all the electronics, the fuel cells, and all that are somewhere else… why this size then?”

I shrugged.

“Why not? The five Kepler coils have a length of a bit less than 24mm. To get a tetrahedron that can use those coils from a vertex to the center, it needs a sidelength of not quite 39mm. The circumsphere of that tetrahedron is the same as the length from the vertex to the center.

Not quite 24mm.

With a bit over 1mm of structural carbon and the layer of Q-links, we get a sphere with a radius of 25mm.

Sure, we could make it 0.1 mm smaller, but that bit works nicely as a structural strut. To be honest, if you look closely, you see that a few additional struts are going out from the center.”

Somewhere in the explanation I seemed to have left them behind. After an awkward silence, Samuel tentatively asked:

“Uh… what is a circumsphere? Does that have something to do with circumspect?”

Wait, really? That was what they were not getting?

“The circumsphere of a regular polyhedron, and no it has nothing to do with circumspect, is the sphere that touches all the vertexes of the polyhedron. Obviously, it has the same center.”

That was when Samantha sighed.

“But do we need the five Kepler coils? Don’t get me wrong, if that thing works as you describe it, it will be the bomb, but… honestly, I would prefer something smaller.”

I shrugged at that.

“I think those coils give it a nice amount of mobility. And for something smaller, I have Clotho.”

She looked away from the holo and at me then.

“Clotho?”

“I told you that I have designed three levels. I have named them after the antique Greek fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Clotho is the youngest, Atropos is the oldest, and Lachesis is in the middle.

In this case, Clotho is the smallest, Atropos is the largest, and Lachesis is in the middle. I am just of the opinion that Lachesis is also the most useful of the three. Clotho and Atropos are there to cover the weak spots of it.”

Another order and another picture was displayed by the holo projector.

This time, it was just a tetrahedron. The hologram was around a third of the size of Lachesis.

“This is Clotho.”

Samantha frowned and looked a bit closer.

“Sorry, but that thing is still way too big for the small stuff.”

I chuckled softly.

“That is not 1:1. Let me show it to you in its real size.”

And the hologram shrunk down to be just a tiny spec of light.

“It has the smallest grav coils that math tells us are functional. They have a length of 0.012mm. Or around two-thirds of the thickness of a human hair. The side length is 0.019mm. Or a touch bigger than a human hair. It also has the Q-link stealth skin, though with ‘only’ 1.94 billion pairs.

Giving it four 485-megapixel cameras. Again, the single Q-link works not quite well as a microphone, but together they should give us some decent quality.”

Samantha looked at the hologram suspiciously before she sighed.

“So you are telling me that we can make something of a grain of sand, that is additionally also invisible?”

“More like the size of a speck of dust, but yes, basically. We… have to test it of course, but in theory, it should work.”

“What’s the catch? I mean, why do you need us here?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“You are here in case I missed something obvious that you can point out. And to test those things. Well, Lachesis and Clotho. Atropos is a bit more complicated and you can help design it.”

Samantha looked again at the hologram.

“Can you magnify Clotho again? And I can tell you one thing right away. Lachesis needs an OPB connector.”

I followed her request and the tetrahedron of Clotho was big again.

“That is where that compartment comes in.”

I highlighted the 5x5x5mm compartment in the ball of Lachesis.

“I envision this compartment filled with Clotho motes.”

“But… how will that give Lachesis an OPB connector?”

“Keep in mind that Clotho is covered in Q-links. Q-links which can transfer small electric charges, or light pulses, in either direction. Enough Clotho motes can connect to any OPB port and emulate a connector. They can even power on any passive device.”

Samuel meanwhile pulled out his com and operated it for a moment.

“You know what’s missing? A few sets of nano-wire. They can be used to pick a mechanical lock and manipulate macro elements that Clotho simply is too small to influence like cabinet doors or drawers.”

I looked at the hologram for a few seconds, before I nodded.

“You are right. That would be useful.” I connected to my Archimedes system and twinned the compartment for the motes on the other side, filling it with the exceptionally mobile tools.

“So, is that better?”

He looked over the schematics again and then nodded.

“Yeah. It is just… so often I had to use drones without anything to manipulate things and it always fucked up at some point in the mission. It is always such a shit show, and every single time I complain that the fucking drones lack that ability. And every single time I get told that is the best that is out there, and any drone with manipulators is unsuited for our uses.

Then why the fuck does nobody build the fucking things so that they are suited?”

I moved a bit back, lifting my hands in a warding motion.

“Woah, calm down! If you are so concerned about it we can include a tractor beam assembly. Together with the nanowires that should make it good enough for manipulation.”

Another short command to my Archimedes, and there was now a third compartment directly beside the one with the nanowire. Filled with a small tractor beam.

“So, unlike the stealth, camera, and microphones, this feature is directional, but that should be ok, I think.”

“Just like that?”

“Sure. The small tractor beam makes it a bit more expensive, but not that much. Maybe another $20.”

Samantha tapped the side of her nose while Samuel was grumping about a manipulator, and it was clear that she was thinking hard.

“About the cost… is that stealth stuff realistic? I mean you have what, 22 trillion pairs of Q-links? I heard that it costs us around one cent to create one. That would make one of those Lachesis cost around $220 billion to make.”

I have to confess it took me a moment to understand what she was talking about. Then it dawned on me, and I had to chuckle.

“You are… not completely wrong, but the conclusion is. First, this” I projected one of our standard OPB-Q-link adapter pairs, “is the Q-link we talk about when we say it costs less than one cent to make. To be exact, it costs us around .6 cents to make.

You might notice, that it is a tiny bit bigger than the 414pm x 414pm chips that cover Lachesis. It is also more than one Q-link if we are exact. It replicates an OPB cable, with 10 TB/s bandwidth. Each of the two adapters contains 6.2g of carbon. That is where 80% of the production costs come into play.

Second, you got the numbers wrong, it is 22 quadrillion triplets of Q-links. But those are what we call integrated Q-links. Combined, all the Q-links in the stealth/audio/video system of Lachesis have a mass of 5.7µg. Or 0.0000057g.

There is a reason why we sell the pack of 50k integrated Q-links for $4. And still make out like a bandit there. A single gram of carbon costs us .038 cents. To be honest, the structural shell of Lachesis with its nearly 24g of carbon is way more expensive than the Q-links covering it.

And that does not even cost a single cent. No, the real cost of this thing is in the grav coils. All in all the whole of Lachesis, without the nanowires and the tractor beam would cost us at current prices $48 to make.

With the nanowires and the tractor beam, it would go up to” I had my Archimedes calculate the cost real quick, and then continued, “$72 to make.”

That made Samantha shake her head.

“That can’t be right. A decent bug costs around $2500. A decent small drone around $500.”

I had to smile.

“You are forgetting that we are talking just about Lachesis. Not about the infrastructure we need to make it work. That will set us back another $2k. But unlike the bug, this infrastructure is reusable. When the individual Lachesis unit has done its task and can’t be recovered, we simply hook a new one into the system.”

I saw her relax quite a bit after that.

“Ah, ok, that is more like it. What about a Clotho? How much does that cost?”

“The carbon is negligible. We are talking about 10 nanograms or so. The other materials are coming in at around $.2 per unit. Paradoxically, here manufacturing costs are actually non-trivial at $.15.

All in all, we are talking about a hair above $.35 to make one. Again, just the Clotho unit itself. The infrastructure costs another $2 to make, without the analytical systems that are integrated into the Lachesis infrastructure. But it is reusable as well.”

Samantha nodded.

“And it can power up any OPB device? How?”

“Q-links can transfer electricity. Not much, mind you. Just around 20mV. That means we need 250 just to get the standard 5V to power up a standard OPB thumb drive, and then one for each of the 24 data lines, but the compartment in a Lachesis can carry more than a billion of them. Not that we will ever even be tempted to fill it up, but just carrying a few thousand of the motes should be enough.”

“Ok, yes, that should work. Why did you make the compartment so big though?”

“Again, why not? The additional cost is measured in thousands of a cent, it does not hurt, and maybe we can use it to smuggle other things to or from a location.”

The next point was Samuel then:

“So… if Lachesis can do essentially everything we need, except anything we use Clotho for, what do we need Atropos for?”

“I envision Atropos as more in line with a conventional military surveillance drone. Something around a meter, maybe two in length, 50cm in diameter.

The point here is that Lachesis has a combined gravity-bending field strength of 12 Kepler. Yes, it is small, so the 10 Kepler it can use to effectively accelerate are more like 60 Kepler, but that only makes it 1.6g acceleration. And thanks to air resistance it caps out at below the speed of sound.

An average skimmer has an acceleration of 7.5g. Lachesis simply can’t keep up.

I think we should use the standard 20cm 800 Kepler coils for Atropos. Four in the primary direction, and two each in the secondary directions.

That should give it an acceleration somewhere around 300g. The top speed will most likely limited by friction heating instead of overcoming air resistance.

The problem with that is that it is completely unfeasible to use Q-links to power those coils. At least not for any high acceleration. We can use it for loitering, but we need to include some power cells.

Fortunately, Q-links can charge them even while the drone is loitering.”

I frowned briefly.

“At least it should be possible. I have yet to try it.

It will also be unfeasible to use the 414pm Q-links for stealth here, as at 2m length and 50cm diameter, it would take 55 quintillion Q-link triples to cover it. That number is not that bad, but we would need an amplifier and a signal processor for each of them.

But Atropos should keep sufficient distance anyway. We have to look into it, but I guess that 1mm² Q-links for the stealth should be enough.

I also think we should design it so that it can carry up to 32 Lachesis.”

I made another pause, thinking for a moment.

“I want to have enough power cell capacity to fly it between 15 and 20 thousand km before it has to be recharged. That should enable us to move it to nearly everywhere on the planet.”

Samuel rubbed his chin.

“That sounds… ambitious. But not unrealistic. But… while we are in the inception phase, would it be possible to create a Lachesis filled with dodeca-azide?”

I was only a step away from ripping him a new one, when Samantha was a tiny bit faster.

“Are you fucking insane? Why not use Aziorazide Azide instead? If we go for the boom at a gaze factor anyway?”

I was happy that I was not the only one who thought that using the only in advertisement material of Xiao Ping declared as stable high explosive a bit… unhinged.

The problem was that it took only tiny vibrations, a small temperature differential, some static electricity, or just time to set it off.

Sure, as soon as it exploded it was a magnificent explosion. Easily twice as powerful as the same amount of octogen. The problem was just keeping it from exploding until you really needed it to explode.

Heck, the well-known nitro-glycerine was stable compared to that stuff. Only the Azioroazide Azide that Samantha mentioned was even less stable. And more explosive. That stuff exploded no matter what.

“Sorry, but we could use them for sabotage, but not much more. Even if we use dodeca-azide, we only get the equivalent of 350g of TNT. Most of that will be spent breaking up the shell. You could destroy a car, or wreck a room, but that’s it I fear. And not even that if it is hardened.”

He slumped a bit and then nodded ruefully.

“Yeah, okay. Sorry, but it is the old thing about armed drones. They are just… too interesting.”

Then he perked back up a bit.

“But… what if we make it a bit bigger, and integrate a couple of missiles, maybe a Gauss gun?”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head.

“A Gauss will deplete the power cells too quickly. We could build a version with missiles, but why? At this time, our military is purely defensive. Anything happening here, or at Loui-5, and we have swarms of missiles at the ready.

We have kinetic, high explosive, EMP, small gravity pulse weapons, small nukes, and even disruptor warheads. There is absolutely no point in using a transcontinental delivery system, heck, an intra-planetary delivery system, Atropos can easily fly to the orbit, the moon, or the Lagrange points, to deploy weapons.

Especially as the missiles can reach the orbit from New York as well.”

Samantha looked at Samuel for a moment, before she rolled her eyes as well, followed by hitting him on the back of the head. Not hard, but not very playful either.

“Get a grip man. If you have such a hardon for an armed drone, we can try to convince the Colonel of it later. But this is the basics. Pure surveillance. Spycraft. Would it be cool if we could use Clotho to kill somebody? Sure. But let’s be real, that is not the objective of this.”

It seemed that there was an eye-rolling epidemic breaking out, as he followed doing it as well.

“Yes Mom. But back to business. We have to include a radar and an anti-collision system into the design of Atropos.”

That was news to me.

“Uh, why do you think that?”

It was Samantha who answered:

“If you want to fly it anywhere but the most empty airspace, you need it. Sure, a warship will not even notice if one of those crashes into them, even if it is so fast that it is glowing white hot from friction, but any civilian craft that runs into one of them is fucked.”

Yeah, that made sense.

“Okay. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem I think. Though, I planned to make the hull out of radar-absorbing material. We’ll have to look into how we get that done later. Anything else?”

Samuel grinned.

“Yeah, what about active sensors? I know it will have several million megapixels but we need radar, LIDAR, and whatever else.”

I chuckled.

“To be honest, we need cameras on that thing. The stealth system only has around four million pixels if we go with the 1mm² design.

But a 5-petapixel camera should be relatively easy to make. That is just a chip of Q-links with less than 3cm per side. Include a small tractor beam assembly to create air lenses, and we have a very good camera. We could build in four or more of those easily. But we can plan an equipment bay. Should be no big problem.”

“But you don’t plan to integrate the active sensors?”

“If we make the equipment bay modular we can mix and match as we want. And let’s be honest, most of those active sensors are pretty basic. Sure, we can make them better with Q-links and relocate most of the active components to the home base, but the basic idea is pretty simple.

We have enough engineers to make you enough modules to your liking.

But if you have nothing else to add, I would like to start the first couple of Lachesis and a few hundred Clothos.”

Samuel looked at the schematics and then nodded.

“No, I think at least for the first tests, what we have with the Lachesis and Clothos should do well.”

Samantha nodded.

“Yeah. If they only work half as well as those ideas propose, they are insane. Extremely powerful.”

That made me smile.

“That is good. Then let’s do it. I would think for the first test I would use the Quad-Grendel here in the fortress for the computing power. It is mostly idle anyway. The rest of the tech I can replicate in around 30 minutes.”

That shocked both of them and Samantha croaked:

“That fast? You are talking about a couple of Lachesis and how many Clothos? Two hundred?”

“I thought about five Lachesis and 100 Clothos each. Keep in mind that I have four NADAs here. One of them is one of the big ones. 625m³. It can make all of the Lachesis including any infrastructure, except the racks and the cases, in one go. The Clothos with infrastructure are easy for the smaller ones to make.”

That made Samuel grin excitedly.

“Fuck yeah. Let’s test this shit.”

I had designed the control system for the Clotho to be a single chip with four 485 million amplifiers and the 1.94 billion signal processors it needed. All that, including cooling, mechanical hardening, and Q-links to the interface and the Clotho fit into a single chip of 1mm by 1mm. The Bia 10 I paired it with was almost 89 times the size.

The whole module, including the memory, was designed to be either put into a standalone system, complete with display, power, controls, charging port, and whatever else it needed to operate a single Clotho, or to be put into a big Clotho Control Unit, or CCU to be integrated into a full server rack.

Guess what I chose to do. One CCU was a standard two-unit 19’’ module that could accommodate 50 Clothos. Simple math told us that for the 500 Clothos I had made, I needed 10 CCUs. For 20 rack units.

Add in the five Lachesis control units, which had a single chip to connect with the Lachesis that included the amplifiers, which was a single square chip with a sidelength of 5cm. Thanks to me using a 3D design with five layers.

The signal processors on the other hand needed quite a bit more space. Unfortunately, I could not use five layers, because of heat concerns. I needed to leave it at two layers, which resulted in four chips with 28cm side length. Add in the Bia 30 as a control unit, the significantly bigger interface unit, and we had to use four rack units each. Resulting in another 20 units. That meant we almost completely filled a standard 42-unit 2m tall rack.

Without the analytical systems, naturally. Those would be another six to eight units if we were going with dual Chronos systems for it. In my case, though I already had decided to use the quad Grendel I had standing around. For all four Lachesis.

It took no more than 15 minutes after I had surfaced that the bots wheeled in the server rack, along with the Lachesis, which were already loaded with the Clothos.

I rubbed my hands.

“Now… let’s test those things.”

The next half hour we tested the audio quality of the Lachesis as well as the Clothos. The same with the video quality.

It took another 20 minutes for Calliope to create a program that could sufficiently clean up both, regardless of whether we deployed the air lenses, or not, though the lenses made the video quality even better, as well as allowing zoom.

To be fair, the resolution was ludicrous. We got a full 256k picture at 60 frames per second.

You ask why 256k resolution? Especially as even an enhanced human is hard-pressed to see the difference between 4k and 8k, much less 16k.

The answer is simple. You know of course those bad holo-crime dramas where the plucky investigator gets a grainy, barely identifiable picture and then uses a computer to ‘enhance’ the image until they can identify the barcode of the number plate in the distorted reflection of some window.

As almost everybody knows, that is utter bull excrement. Fact is, if the data is not there, the data is not there, and no amount of computer wizardry and furious typing can ever summon this information out of thin air.

Well, for Lachesis, the data is there. The 256k images make it actually possible to use digital zoom to the wazoo. Did we need it? Probably not very often. But it did cost us incredibly little, and if we needed it, we had it.

We then tested the manipulation capabilities of the Lachesis, followed by using the Clothos to access a thumb drive, as well as a computer via an unused OPB header on the main board.

Both were unadulterated successes. It was nice when things just worked. Then I had Sam and Sam test the stealth functions.

We were aware though that this was not a good test. They were just too close to the project here.

After some moments of thought, I turned to Svenja.

“Uh, Svenja, do you think I might bother one of your troopers to try to find one of those balls? And a few of the motes?”

Yes, I could have just ordered her. But come on, it did cost me nothing to be polite about it. And for sure, Svenja nodded and subvocalized something into her com.

From her expression, it was clear that she wanted to see the results as much as I did.

A few minutes later, first, one of the troopers, a big, red-haired man by the name of James Hagrid, followed by Lt. Thomson entered the room.

When Svenja looked surprised at Thomson’s arrival, he narrowed his eyes.

“Why does it surprise you, Corporal? You ask for somebody with the bug-finder tech to come to the room where our ward is right now. Of course, I come and look for myself.”

As an answer, Svenja let out a small laughter, before she caught herself and sobered up again.

“Sorry, sir. Dr. DuClare has just designed some new surveillance gear, and she wanted to test it. There is no reason to believe that somebody smuggled something in here.”

I sighed when she used my title and last name. I had asked her so often to call me simply Vivian, but she never did.

Thomson on the other hand was quite happy about what she said.

“So… new tech? Do you mind if I watch, ma’am?”

I scowled at that. Why the heck would I mind that?

“Of course not. I assume you will get to play with this stuff in a short time anyway.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

I shook my head but by now I was getting used to their deference so I addressed Hagrid.

“If we can begin, Trooper Hagrid, do you see the three balls on the table?”

He managed to answer without making any disbelieving grimaces.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“There are another two of those hiding in this room. I want you to try to find them.”

That brought a visual response.

He frowned when he looked over my lab, with hundreds of small drawers, cabinets, crates, and other places where a 5cm-ball could be easily hidden.

“Somewhere in the room, ma’am? There are many hiding places here. It might take a while.”

I had to chuckle at that.

“Oh no, they are not in any of the hidden places. They are active surveillance units and are in a place where they can film us, and listen to us.”

I activated the holo-projector again, displaying what both active Lachesis were recording. Well, an eight of what each Lachesis was recording at least. One was filming from close under the ceiling, while the other was at around 1m in height.

“As you can see, they can see us quite easily.”

He visibly relaxed at that and then opened the case he had carried inside, taking out some handheld equipment.

He activated it, waving it around, and then frowned when he moved it several times in the direction that the upper Lachesis had to be, according to the picture.

He then fiddled with the controls and tried it again. And again. And again. His frown deepening with each try.

After a few minutes, he began slapping the device in his hand a few times, followed by cursing softly.

He then growled, and placed the device back into the case, only to take out another device. Again, he tried for a few minutes to find the two Lachesis, unsuccessful.

I could see that he became more and more frustrated.

Finally, he pulled out a third device, this one I could identify as a FLIR, and tried again. It took him several minutes before he finally gave up.

“Sorry, ma’am, but I seem to be unable to find it. I know it has to be there. It was filming us the whole time, and I could see that, but nothing I could do can find it.”

He was dejected when he said that, so I tried to perk him up a bit.

“Don’t worry, Trooper. This was a success. We have just designed new surveillance gear, and you just proved to us that standard equipment cannot find it.”

He sighed deeply.

“But that means that we can no longer protect you from bugs, ma’am.”

Well, he was not wrong. At least not fully. Still, I could calm him down somewhat.

“That is no problem, Trooper. At this moment, virtually nobody else can make those things. For the moment we are safe from them.”

Thomson nodded slightly but then disagreed with me.

“I am sure that is true. For the moment as you say. But we have to plan for the future as well. And if none of our bug scanners work on it, we have a problem.”

I shrugged.

“If they use grav coils… which they admittedly can’t because we don’t sell the small ones, then we have something that can detect them. Otherwise… well, you are right. I doubt that anybody has thought that far with it. I would expect that at least for a few years, all we will see are bugs where the signal device has been replaced by a Q-link. Your equipment should still see those.

After that… I think I have to look into it. But I can’t promise anything.”

He nodded again.

“Yes, I get that. Next question, will you allow us to use them?”

That made me rip my eyes wide open.

“Uh, why?”

He half snorted.

“Reconnesaince. Whenever you leave this building and are not going to a place that we can trust is secure, like the Enki HQ, or Mr. Walker’s home, we seed that location with surveillance gear as soon as we learn about your intention.

Or we try at least. For your excursion on New Year’s Eve, we had a couple of hundred bugs and cameras placed all over the ballroom.

That is, naturally, always a risk. Those devices will aid us quite a bit with that.”

I looked at him wide-eyed, and could only say.

“Oh. Okay. I have no problem with that. The only problem is that I am slowly running out of space where I can put the server racks.”

“I don’t think we will need all that many. And I am sure that Warden will build several of them to keep watch over you. We can work with her in this matter.”

“Okay, go ahead. I am sure that Warden has more than enough room for the racks.”

“That brings me to the last point. Would you be willing to sell them to Vandermeer?”

That, honestly, had me confused.

“Uh, why?”

“For the same reason we want them. They can help protect your grandfather and to a lesser extent your mother.”

I shook my head.

“Yes, that is obvious. My point is that Vandermeer is the only other corporation that can build those things. They have no reason to buy them, so we should not need to sell them to them. And I am sure that Vandermeer will be using them only to protect the family.”

He had the grace to turn red.

“Oh, I did not know that. I agree, that changes things. And… well, if the tool exists and the corporate security has access to it, we both know they will use it.”

I shrugged.

“Honestly, I don’t care. Vandermeer is the only other corporation that I do not fear in the slightest.”

That made Svenja crack up.

“I have no idea why you don’t… absolutely no idea.”