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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: General/Updates
[UPDATE 23/01/07] The Path of Least Time: The Tallest Tower
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Crane
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Joined: 30 Apr 2005
Posts: 139
Location: England

 		[UPDATE 23/01/07] The Path of Least Time: The Tallest Tower
Kurt Wrote wrote:

The Tallest Tower
Tuesday, January 23 2007, 12:39 PM
6:10 PM Monday:

"Hey, everyone!" I hurried to the middle of the large room that serves as Helena's centre of operations, and waited until I had people's attention. The various analysts and detectives looked up warily but hopefully. "I've just received an email from Ben Forbes, one of my contacts on Earth. They've figured out the destination of the Third Power's messages!"

A ragged cheer broke out - everyone was working flat out, and it was good to see some progress. I tried to make myself heard over the noise. "It all checks out. This is where the server is!"

I pointed the nearest wall display and called up an image from my key. The tallest building in Perplex City, Ascendancy Point, loomed over us all. Some of her team visibly recoiled, and the cheering abruptly stopped. I looked around in confusion as Helena smoothly took over.

"Listen up! We all know it's a tough target. 50,000 occupants at any one time, 170 triple-height floors, millions of square meters of floor space. The good news is they've got an Eclipse Security system there, which means cameras and embedded sensors covering every inch of the place. If anyone so much thinks of hurting a fly in that building, we can see them." People nodded along and began pulling up building schematics and access protocols.

"The bad news - the really bad news - is that we have to assume the entire system has been compromised by the Third Power, so if you're trying to access Eclipse Security, you can stop right now. All the sensor feeds will be untrustworthy, and you can bet that they'll be watching for any unusual logins to the system." Everyone in the room was giving Helena their full attention now. She had the same presence as the best Academicians I'd ever seen.

"The Third Power have beaten us at every turn. Chances are, they've infiltrated the Council and the police. They have every right to be confident of success." She paused to let that sink in, to hurt people's pride. "But their confidence is their weakness. We know where they're working from, and though they have control over Ascendancy Point, we have the advantage of surprise."

"What's the plan?" asked Harrison, a SigInt guy. "Network superiority operation? We put in our own sensors, then take over theirs."

Some heavy-set guy who looked like he was from the military shook his head doubtfully. "That sort of thing only works in simulations. We're up against people with some of the best military-level hardware, and they know how to use it."

"So do we," said Helena, glancing at me. "We have the Academy's expert in crypto and networking on our side, and he's already tracked them down. Fitch," she said, looking at the military guy, "your team has more combat experience than anyone else in the police. You'll work on the attack plans. Harrison, Lang, your teams will work out how to get into the building and create our own independent sensor network, and how to overwhelm theirs when the time comes. I want an estimate from all of you of when we can move in, in two hours. It's time to win."

Helena walked away as the teams clustered together and began buzzing with their new tasks. I followed her into her office, and closed the door. For a detective, it was pretty good size, although I supposed she wasn't part of the normal hierarchy. In any case, the office hardly seemed to matter to her - she spent most of her time out in the ops room anyway, so she'd left her desk and furniture huddled in one corner. Maybe it was just were the movers had left them when she'd taken the office. I turned to face her.

"Helena, I might be the Academy's expert, but I can't do magic, and neither can your guys. Ascendancy Point is practically an entire city. The Third Power could be anywhere, and we don't have enough time to spread our own sensors and cameras around the place."

She went behind her desk and collapsed in her chair. "I know, I know. But we don't have any other options. We'll just have to get lucky or think of something else." She looked outside into the ops room, frustrated.

"Look, I have an idea." This had been bugging me during Helena's speech. Ascendancy Point seemed like an odd location to base your operations; it was big enough to hide in, but it was very high profile. It did have one unique feature though... "We might be able to narrow things down. We know that they're only using the Relaynet for receiving messages from Earth. We don't know how they're sending messages to Earth," I said.

"So?" she replied irritably.

"So they have to be sending them somehow, back to the CRR. They won't be using the normal data networks - they know we can monitor them and do traffic analysis - that's why they used Relaynet. No, they'll be using another custom method, something suited to their location again. Ascendancy Point's over a mile high, a transmitter there could reach anywhere in the city. I think we can pinpoint their floor by figuring how where they're transmitting to."

Helena stared at me for a few long seconds. I held her gaze.

"You think this will work? I don't have many resources to spare," she asked.

"It'll work."

Helena nodded in satisfaction. "Then maybe you can do magic after all."

That was last night. Since then, we've requisitioned four extremely sensitive prototype radio antennas from the Academy and mounted them on top of tall buildings near Ascendancy Point; four will be enough to triangulate the location of the transmitter. That's the easy part.

The hard part comes earlier, and requires us to successfully search through the clamour of other radio signals and noise that bathes Perplex City to find the Third Power's messages. We've been tweaking the software radio associated with antennas and have commandeered a significant percentage of the entire computing power available in the city to match and discard all identifiable signals, but it's still hard to tell how long the search will take. It might be three hours, it might be three days. We'll see.

The work and the challenge keeps my mind occupied, away from Scarlett and what might be happening to her. The Third Power are a very smart, pragmatic organisation. I just hope that Scarlett is worth more to them alive and healthy than otherwise...

Violet doesn't have my advantage, and she just seems to lurk in the background here at the police HQ. I don't know what's going through her mind. The only good news is that Helena's teams have settled on the evening of Tuesday 30th as the time for the assault on Ascendancy Point; they think they'll need a week to set up their sensors and draw up their plans. You can keep track of what we're up to in the usual place on the Operation Bayonet page on the police intranet.

I want to thank all of you who emailed in with information about the Ascendancy Point location. Ben Forbes might have been the first, but the working supplied by others was invaluable, including Danielle Lockwood, Chris Warren, Xena, Glen Watts, Kristina Lopez, Neal Kelly, Aaron, Nathan Beardmore, Hugh O'Byrne, Peter Townsley, James Boyd and a whole host of others who helped them.

I'll let you know as soon as I have more information about the Third Power's transmissions. Chances are that we'll need your help again soon, and definitely on Tuesday 30th.


At last, after the hiatus things are hotting up again. There's no way out for them this time!
_________________
The Beginning of the Naked Kurt Jokes:
(18:19:40) Crane: *pictures Kurt getting changed*
(18:20:21) rjw76: Crane: bad :S now I'm thinking of the same thing Razz
(18:20:26) Crane: ^ ^

PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 9:46 am
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Macavity
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Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 883
Location: UNSC Comm Relay Station Alpha, West Shokan, NY

 		Indeed not! Twisted Evil

Also, I passed on a suggestion - if possible, Kurt might look into the idea of converting these prototype antennas (which appear to be omnidirectional) into semi-directional antennas - that way, they'd only pick up transmissions from a certain area in front of them, and any signals not picked up by all four antennas could be filtered out by the SigInt guys.

It would make their job a bit easier if they could do that, nicht wahr?
_________________
You are likely to be eaten by a grue. If this predicament seems particularly cruel,
Consider whose fault it could be, with no match or torch in your inventory...
NP: Erase The Truth

PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:04 am
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t7bros
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Joined: 18 Jan 2007
Posts: 39
Location: Philly, PA
Macavity wrote:
Indeed not! Twisted Evil

Also, I passed on a suggestion - if possible, Kurt might look into the idea of converting these prototype antennas (which appear to be omnidirectional) into semi-directional antennas - that way, they'd only pick up transmissions from a certain area in front of them, and any signals not picked up by all four antennas could be filtered out by the SigInt guys.

It would make their job a bit easier if they could do that, nicht wahr?


To expand on this idea, what if they mounted the antennas on buildings of varying height, overlapping floors of Ascendancy Point, but not enough to be redundant? Then they could monitor various sections both around the tower and up and down the tower.

PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 11:18 am
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Macavity
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Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 883
Location: UNSC Comm Relay Station Alpha, West Shokan, NY
t7bros wrote:
Macavity wrote:
Indeed not! Twisted Evil

Also, I passed on a suggestion - if possible, Kurt might look into the idea of converting these prototype antennas (which appear to be omnidirectional) into semi-directional antennas - that way, they'd only pick up transmissions from a certain area in front of them, and any signals not picked up by all four antennas could be filtered out by the SigInt guys.

It would make their job a bit easier if they could do that, nicht wahr?


To expand on this idea, what if they mounted the antennas on buildings of varying height, overlapping floors of Ascendancy Point, but not enough to be redundant? Then they could monitor various sections both around the tower and up and down the tower.


Excellent idea, t7! I'll pass it on!
_________________
You are likely to be eaten by a grue. If this predicament seems particularly cruel,
Consider whose fault it could be, with no match or torch in your inventory...
NP: Erase The Truth

PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 1:17 pm
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