IoT Noir: Digital Remediation
“We are not sneaking past this group,” whispers Ninan.
Kiko slips off her backpack and pulls out and slips on a pair of gecko gripper gloves and laces up the accompanying booties. She hands a set to Ninan. “The dragonflies cling to vertical and overhead surfaces with micro-scale structures imitating the fiber bundles of gecko feet. I ordered a bit more than I needed and printed out a cling-set pair for each of us. I’m going to do a spectacular parkour escape run with the camo turned off and the flock swarming. I’ll draw out the pursuit. You follow in camo and take out the pursuers as they reveal themselves. Agree?”
“I do not have my sonic weapons.”
“Yea, I couldn’t get into the weapons locker where they were safe. So it’s Pop! Bang! Pow! Time.” She gestures cartoon punches; then pauses, “But silent like. OK?”
“OK Cavalier Panikkar reporting.” He salutes and she chuckles.
“I’m going to start my run going up the side of this mountain of containers. It’s a natural jumble of ledges and balconies. I’m going to draw attention with showman flash moves and I’ll try to spread the pursuers out.”
“Take care. I’ll eliminate your pursuers from the rear forward.”
“On fleek[2]. I have a shield of dragonflies and they want to recapture me.” She pulls out her GoogglesTM and slips them on. “I just became visible to their communications monitors. I will leave a few meta-lens equipped drones with you. I will be able to follow your progress.” She taps her GoogglesTM. “Mine should be obvious. Recording started.” She slips on her pack and runs out to the alley. Kills her camo. Keys a bat flight program to the dragonflies and starts up the container pile with a jump, swing and flip to the 2nd level surrounded by a flock of mock bats and echo locator pings. On her enhanced reality display the container pile is a multi-story 3D set of vectors, heights and distances. Solid surfaces are bright, gaps are dark.
As she continues up the container stack, a pair of hover bikes pull from the street beyond and cover her with spot lights. Half the group of pursuers begin to scale the container pile. It is clear they also brought climbing gear. The rest follow along from below. Four dragonflies have linked to form a display for Ninan. It shows a feed from several stealth dragonflies she has put to following the pursuers. Let’s tackle the easy stuff first, he thinks. Ninan creeps around to the first ground pounder in line. Reaches up with his real hand and cups their mouth and nose. Uses the cyborg arm to elbow choke, lifting him off the ground and walking backwards around the corner. Time to let the Ninja out. He grins. And seeks out the next in line.
It’s a beautiful run to the top and she has covered half a kilometer to her destination. Unfortunately, the top was too obvious a destination. She sees two dual quad fan hover bikes have landed. The drivers are waiting. As she lands her last upward dismount to the top, two metal-storm driven stun guns fire triple taps of charged projectiles. Her swarm intercepts. Six dragonflies short out and fall. Kiko-Lyn raises her arm, circles it vertically and points at the further attacker. A swarm of dragonflies, swoop down and tangle him in an unbreakable mesh. Their drones are swarmed and downed.
The other attacker holsters his gun, pops out two stun rods and advances upon her. Kiko whistles out a familiar command as she lifts her newly-modified, double length, staff handle controller. Dragonflies flop down and link themselves to the staff, forming a double sided lightsaber staff with a nice turquoise glow and a good buzzing sound. Smile for the cameras. Later her viewers will see there is a new element in the lightstaff. Six raised vertical metal bars telescope up from the handle link to the dragonflies and run parallel down the shaft, set away from the dragonflies with insulators. Let’s calibrate the storage of the new capacitors.
She advances on the stun rods, keying another moiré pattern that makes the position of the staff impossible to follow. She uses a double overhead wand spin to deflect each stun rod. A very satisfying display of sparks. She quickly glances at the floating VR staff icon. The capacitor levels show a quarter full. So I can deflect eight swipes before discharging. She is pressed backwards deflecting a series of double strikes coming at her in a figure eight pattern. So simple, she thinks. Six, seven, eight, drop, lunge and thrust. Her staff deflects a ninth hit and she feels a distinct shock up her arms, but the staff head has already touched the attacker even as his wand is discharging. With eight plus shock discharges delivered at once, he drops to the ground convulsing.
Good, the limiter stopped discharge while he still lives. I declare this a successful field test of lightstaff 2.0. Kiko-Lin picks up her downed dragonflies, releases the chain configured dragonflies back to the flock and discharges the rest of the stored charge in the staff into the freed attacker before he can rise.
She continues her run toward the stash. Must remember I cannot make any great leaps without the exoskeleton. She detours around a big gap between two container piles. Meanwhile Ninan has run out of ground-based adversaries and is trotting to get ahead of her climbing pursuers.
Kiko-Lyn arrives at the storage cache and circles back to where her display shows the stealthed Ninan dispatching from ambush the last of the climbing pursuers. Only two hover bikes are left. Ninan has taken the time to arm himself from the downed attackers. She sees he is maneuvering to make a lunge off a container at the nearest flier.
She breaks radio silence. “Hold Ninan. We will do this like Dawn.” The flock leaves Kiko-Lyn and streaks toward the fliers. As she becomes clear of the obscuring flock, two sniper stun rifles snap toward her from the fliers. Two-gunning it, Ninan fires a rapid series of stun projectiles at the fliers. They successfully dodge his wild shots but their aim at Kiko-Lyn is successfully interrupted.
Meanwhile the bat-patterned dragonflies have reached the fliers and flock about their head, avoiding stun strikes like a fish school slip from the path of predators. Within a few breaths, the drivers slump in their saddles.
Watching via the cameras on the fliers, Jonathon swears. He calls up reserve reinforcements but they are still two hours away by fast cigarette boat from his facility. He can do nothing but watch as Kiko-Lyn walks to the side of the harbor and keys a message. With the flock milling about it is impossible for him to see just what is happening.
