Mod Superhero (Book 6 STUBBING on Oct 27th)

Chapter 6.27 - Drone Warehouse

APPROXIMATELY +1.3.11 POST-INCIDENT 

MINOR TIMESTAMP ERRORS DETECTED

Mod, Arsenal, and Lock ran down the interstate. They were on the shoulder, and keeping pace with traffic.

Athena stayed behind. She had her own personal business in Belport and didn't elaborate. Mod didn't want to pry, but TINA knew, which meant Mod inadvertently found out. Athena was visiting her vampire friend Lucy.

Mod partitioned the information after that, that way he wasn't inadvertently spying on his friend. The process was roughly the same as partitioning a hard drive, but the information was still there and Mod could still access it in an emergency. If anything happened to Athena, he could find her and track her down.

The rest of Mod's group ran down the highway. TINA's cloaking hid them from everything—from human sight, biomechs, and drones, and hid their transmissions. Before they left, Athena had given them each minor wards; those would hide them from any random magic checkpoints along the way.

Mod wasn't sure what was weirder: Looking over and seeing the same cars beside them, or the fact that they could jog at eighty miles an hour for two days.

Well, not two days straight. They took breaks to eat, sleep, and relieve themselves, and also for their own sanity. Mod could probably manage the trek without stopping, but Clara needed breaks to recharge, and Lock got bored. Clara and Lock still needed to eat; even packing only high density calorie bars and Mod not needing to eat, their food took up the bulk of the supplies they brought. The group split everything between three backpacks.

But the main limitation on their speed was the nanite transmission cable. As they ran, Mod left a thin stream of nanites behind. The mix of nanites contained a mix of everything needed to self-replicate and then manufacture the cable itself. Both Mod and the nanites had made significant progress, but it still took time for Mod to make more nanites and for the nanite transmission cable to catch up to their highway speed. Taking period breaks wound up not just being good for their health, but necessary for the cable to construct and sink into the ground.

By the time they were done, the cable would stretch for miles, all the way from the backup lab to their target.

TINA could access some things wirelessly, but there were core parts of the warehouse that could only be accessed with a hardline. Besides, wireless transmission wasn't fast enough for what they needed to do. TINA needed direct access.

~

They reached their target that evening—a drone manufacturing warehouse right off of the highway.

The Binary Brotherhood had stepped up production. Their drones were now a cornerstone of national defense against enemies from outside and against enemies within. Over the last few months, the number of drones within the Allied States had ballooned from thousands to millions. No matter what city you lived in, you could look up and see drones overhead. Heavy drone manufacturing was a bit slower, but there was at least one heavy drone in every major city.

They had been monitoring communications within the Allied States for months and were now expanding servers to encompass the entire world.

Bastion, and by extension, the Brotherhood, were everywhere.

And Mod's group operated right under their noses.

Mod, Arsenal, and Lock crept through the woods that surrounded the warehouse. It was slow going; their cloaking was almost foolproof, but they still had to worry about traps and errant biomechs. Mod led them through the undergrowth, before cutting his way through a simple barbed wire fence.