Logs for ShadowRN and Associated Mailing Lists

From:	Jeffrey Mach <mach@****.CALTECH.EDU>
Subject:	Ordinance Disposal
Date:	Thu, 9 Jan 1997 13:59:10 -0800

Message no. 1 *****INTERNAL: Ares Macrotechnology, Special Projects: Ordinance Division
>>>>>[To: Jared Cunningham

Jared, we've got of a problem here. Seems someone is planning on blowing
something big here in Seattle and I've been called in to consult. I
figure with the reputation of the bomber and what I've been able to make
of a possible weapon configuration, I'm not sure the LSS bomb squad has
the right "tools" for the job. On of my men is on the way to pick up
Widget6; he was on its development team, so yes, he's rated. Make sure
the little bugger is ready for travel and just pile the paperwork on my
desk. What a day....]<<<<<
-- Samuel O'Roarke <14:00:59/01-09-58>
Special Projects Division
Ares Macrotechnology

From:	Jeffrey Mach <mach@****.CALTECH.EDU>
Subject:	Ordinance Disposal
Date:	Sat, 11 Jan 1997 12:58:12 -0800

Message no. 2 *****PRIVATE: SAC D'Arkan
>>>>>[I figured'd you want to see a copy of what went on in there before I
dump the data to our storage.

+++++begin Widget6.sim
The view is initially dark with various system checkout data flashing in
the periphery and winking out of existence.

(Primary user): "Alright folks, we're online and recording for
posterity so lets make this a good one. O'Roarke, are you and Leiter on
piggyback?"

(The replys are ghost-like.)

O'Roarke: "We're getting the feed Mr. Clarke."
Leiter: "Affirmative."

Leiter: "All clear from the astral team. Matrix team has locked down any
eyes they found in the security system. Comm. says if there is an
interrogation or deadman being transmitted, they can't find it. We have
go ahead."

Clarke: "Damn, I wish we could be more confident on this.... Let's
roll."

Finally a light from above and behind the POV illuminates a wall of a
crate from the inside. The appendage of what appears to be an armored
maintenance droid raises into view and pushes the wall forward. The wall
slides open to form a ramp out of the crate, and the drone jumps out and
into the well lit hallway. Its austere appearance suggests a basement or
other maintenance area. Zipping around the corner it becomes obvious that
the droid is only a meter tall. Staring straight into the lock on a large
metal double door it comes to a halt. A second and third appendage come
into view, one is a manipulator while the other is what appears to be a
maglock passkey.

Clarke: "Switching to finger-cam."

The view blinks to that of what must be a fiber-optic sensor appendage.
Lowering itself to the floor, it slips under and looks around. It is a
large industrial looking room with what appears to be a building's main
breaker system and storage for maintenance implements. Over in the corner
of the room is a large box.

Clarke: "Well, there's the big one like they said...and about where I'd
place it, too. Note the indenting corner of the room, that's one of the
core support columns for the building."

Next, the POV looks around the seal of the door with high magnification.

Clarke: "Awefully nice of Thunda to not to booby-trap the door."

Leiter: "FBI reports the first six floors are evacuated, and everything
is going apace."

O'Roarke: (gruffly) "Can the chatter. Lets do this and go home."

Clarke: "Yes sir."

The POV switches back to the original position as the passkey does
its magic on the door lock. Letting itself in quietly the drone rolls
noislessly up to the box. The box can be estimated to be the height of a
tall man from the bot's perspective.

O'Roarke: "So far so good. I want the team in there caging them in as we
examine the outer box. I know that's not 'by the book,' but we may not
have much time."

A slender arm with a small flat square unfolding at its tip begins to pass
over the front of the box while an inset three-dimensional image labeled
"EM Resonance Array" forms in the periphery. In the inset, the wood
appears as a false color translucent ghost while the nails, hinges and
other metals are clearly delineated as well as what appears to be a large
object inside. The scanning process is markedly thorough while men in
heavy hard-shell ordinance disposal armor come in and rapidly establish a
reflective curtain around the bomb and its dissembler.

Clarke: "Well, no wires in the door. Only one other thing I can try."

The next appendage pair to scan the box brings up an inset marked
"Neutron/Ion Resonance Array." Again a similar schematic to the first is
created but in more detail as the data is correlated. What it totals to
is some cylindrical object filling an otherwise normal shipping crate.
Zooming in on the area around the front panel, a faint line is detected
criss-crossing the seal and elsewhere leading to a small box at an odd
angle and location with an unusual patch of material in the wood near it.

Clarke: "Sonovabitch, one word, accent on the first syllable..... You
nailed it shut and sewed up the inside with a fiberoptic trip-line that
won't show up on metal detector, won't it. Bet you didn't figure I had
Widget, now did you? That crate's not tight enough to rate a pressure
sensor. And from what we've seen of the front door, he expected this room
to be used before blowing it, so sonics are out, photodetectors maybe,
best guess."

What follows is the nail-biting experience of watching the droid drill
minute holes into the unusual patch of wood, turning out to look like a
knot with something that makes less noise than a mouse chewing on paper.
All the while a decibel meter counts away in the corner of the view-field.
While the fiber-optic eye enters the shell through one hole, the others
are used for micro manipulators that prepare and execute a perfectly
syncronized fiber splice. Snaking around inside the box they finger-cam
gets a good look at the opposition using lowlight and infra-red: the
smooth, curved metallic wall bearing a small service panel and a side panel
filled with buttons and readouts. One of which at the moment reads
00:49:21 and is counting down. In the upper-right corner of the field of
view, the time left is replicated from the panel and set in motion.

Clarke: "Groovy.... Though I wouldn't trust it too tightly unless this
Thunda's a real cocky one, most of them set it far enough ahead so the
bomb squad think they have enough time to take a breather before the final
steps and BOOM! I can't see any other kind of sensor, so I'm gonna open
this baby up."

A large pair of manipulator arms help hold the door once the hinges are
removed and the nails pulled excruciatingly gently. The imaging arms
again pass over the surface of the target but produce nothing new.

Clarke: "Hope they can keep Thunda alive long enough for me to ask him
and collect on that twenty you owe me.... I still say he picked a missile
housing because he knew the shielding wouldn't let me use my "N-ray"
vision on it. Damn this guy pisses me off."

The EM imager picks up mild fields around both access panels and records
their intensity.

Clarke: "Now here's something.... You charge up the doors so if some
grounded podunk touches you, you blow. What do you take me for...? I got
past your damn fiber web, of course I'd electronically isolate my droid."
(Looking between the well lit panel and the service access and now
singsong) "Well Monty...what will it be...door number two or door number
three?"

O'Roarke: "You're starting to give me a headache...."

Clarke: "Sorry sir. Old rhyme my grandma used whenever I couldn't decide
on something. Well, we have a good idea what's behind door number two, so
lets take a look at three..." (the EM sensor arm hovers next to a course
manipulator over the panel for a moment) "matching potential...and
contact. We're grounded to the door so it can't feel us now. Using
Thunda-logic, the more strange the door appears, the more it makes me
think anything else is worse."

The drill arm comes forward again, but now has a large suction cup around
it.

Clarke: "I'm going in with the fine drill, Widget will try to equalize
any pressure change if I find one. We're through..." (the pressure
reading jumps a digit, then quickly increases to read 1045 torr,) "...well
that blows...literally. Let's get an eyeball in there."

Leiter: (interjecting) "Team is bringing a hood into position, pressure
will be equalized in five minutes."

Again it blinks to a fiber-optic eye inside of what is a respectively
large black hood. Slinking through the hole in the metal wall the
interior of the bomb is a tangle of wires, all red and a metal box in the
middle.

Clarke: "So, you're the backup.... I'm betting your not as fancy as your
brother above, but enough to make you annoying. While we wait let's look
around in here and find ourselves room for a doorway. Oooh, looks like
we found a regular cobweb in here."

The last comment referring to a mesh of fine threads all about the wall of
the missile. The maintenance hatch however, is not so webbed. The optic
fiber wiggles around trying to look at every angle, building a three
dimensional scematic within an inset view.

Leiter: "Thirty seconds to proper pressurization."

After counting down the proper time the view switches to the exterior,
which now looks like it is surrounded in a plastic bubble. The drill arm
comes up and widens the original hole so that another implement can reach
in. It soon becomes clear by a faint wisp of smoke an the cauterized line
in its path that the implement is a cutting laser. Soon all of the door
that didn't have something touching it was removed.

Clarke: "Alrighty...lets scan the spam can."

There is only enough room for one scanner at a time to examine the
detonator. They build a scematic that would be a bizarre jumble to anyone
but a demolitions expert.

Clarke: "Opinions?"

O'Roarke: "Best guess, the round thingie's a mercury switch and the
lightbulb's a trembler. Mmmm...lower left is the housing contact.
Housing's opposite polarity from the door just to make our lives less
easy."

Leiter: "Concur. No photodiodes. Let's be careful on the way in just
in case this idiot had enough optic fiber to knit himself a sweater. Of
course, that's probably exactly what he wants us to think."

The fiber eye activates to oversee the placement of a minute hole and then
follows the hole in to examine the contents. Meanwhile additional holes
are made in the casing at strategic points.

O'Roarke: "No bets, so no winners but the people in the building.
First things first...waste the trembler. Then the timing circuit input
gets bypassed, then the mercury. I want that detonator as far from the
explosives as soon as possible."

With pinpoint precision the hairlike members of the trembler switch are
cut with the laser and fall away from the core. Another syncronized move
bypasses the timing circuit inside and outside of the box and cutting it
free.

Clarke: "Alright, microvolt tolerance on the bypass. Remind me to take
the EE guys out for dinner my treat. Now, lets take care of that mean old
mercury switch...."

A frosted needle enters one of the other holes and begins dripping a
liquid that rapidly boils on the top of what has been recognized as a
mercury switch. Thermometric readings in red continue to fall, changing
to green once -40.0 Celsius is reached.

Leiter: "Pressure compensation is totally greenline..."

O'Roarke: "When it hits negative sixty, we can get the thing the hell
out. I want that mercury _very_ solid."

On the temperature cue, the detonator is cut free and lifted up and away
revealing the tangle leading to the blasting caps. Lining them up in a
row, they are all guillotined in an eyeblink. With the delicacy owed
something that could have caused the vaporization of a large portion of
building, the detonator is pulled from the bomb housing, and placed on the
floor.

O'Roarke: "Tell the FBI we're halfway done with this thing, and get an
update on the evac."

Leiter: "Yes sir.... Report is they are now up to level nine."

Clarke: "Thanks for the pressure guys."

A similar series of events as those earlier is needed to get a hole big
enough in the main panel so that the drone can work effectively inside the
device.

Clarke: "Looks like you owe that Alexandria fellow.... Resonance imaging
jives with the scematic he gave us. Targeting the pulses and preparing
the array...this will take a minute."

Audio pickups on the ordinance droid, which had only been picking up the
faint noises of its own mechanations and that of the team that has
occasionally assisted it, now pick up a new sound. That of a muffled
voice approaching the room.

O'Roarke: "Christ! Get whomever that asshole is out of there NOW!"

The drone turns its external sensors towards the door.

Reporter: (through the door) "...work News. We are here at City Hall on
the scene of what Lone Star Security is claiming to be a "simple"
evacuation because of a "minor" gas leak. I have had a source inform me
that all of this is actually because the anti-meta-human terrorist Thunda
has placed a bomb but LSS lacked the courage to bring us the truth!"

With this, he pulls open a panel the reflective outer shell and gets a bit
more than he bargained for. Blanching a bit as he looks at the drone then
up the size of the weapon. He gulps and swings back to face the camera.

Clarke: (with a slight echo so this is on external audio as well) "Shut
up and close the Faraday cage...he could be pressing the button any second
now...and your next bit of drivel may send a trembler into a terminal
fit."

The cameraman begins to back away towards the door after his partner
returns to interviewing the droid.

Reporter: (sotto voce) "Can you confirm with the recent sinking of a
reportedly 'scrapped' submarine last night that this is actually a nuclear
device?"

The men in ordinance disposal heavy armor are seen in the background
removing the cameraman while the droid remains silent.

Reporter: "The public has a right to knahhh."

The sentence is cut off with this hiss of a Narcojet round. One of the
officers grabs the reporter before he slumps to the ground and begins
sliding him out the door. The other quickly reforms the barrier.

Clarke: (back on the internal relay) "That was fun...."

O'Roarke: "So much for the PR angle."

Leiter: "They will be clear shortly as will floors up to eleven."

O'Roarke: "We have targeting solution.... Array is ready for full
power."

Nothing really happens other than the rapid pulse registered on a meter
watching the array's output. After a few seconds, the array does a
complete scan of the primary detonator.

Clarke: "Target circuitry fused. I'm going in for the rest of it. Tell
the Federal boys we are out of the deep end, but don't crack the bubbly
for about five minutes on us, and not until the last team logs in."

Leiter: "Roger that."

Clarke overestimates the time by three minutes before the detonator
clatters melodramatically to the floor.

O'Roarke: "I have a friend who would want that as a door stop."
+++++end include

Clean-up took a while longer, the paperwork has been interminable. Other
than that reporter and my sleep schedule, there were no casualties
directly related to the bombs. In case you need to utilize expert
opinions, feel free to call upon me or my associates in the future. For a
nominal consulting fee, of course.

I'm going to bed....]<<<<<

-- Samuel O'Roarke <13:01:32/01-11-58>
Special Projects Division
Ares Macrotechnology

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