Can You Love a Nanobot? Vol. 1, Chapter 15 — Star Wars

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.— Galileo Galilei

Coromandel Coast
Orbital Platform: Repurposed, decommissioned Indian satellite, possibly GSAT-6A, sits in geostationary orbit far above Southeast Asia, dish antenna pointed at earth.

Ground Station: Satish Dhawan Space Centre, or simply Sriharikota Range, is a rocket launch site or spaceport not far from the equator. Operated by Indian Space Research Organisation, it is located on Sriharikota Island in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The first launch occurred there in 1971. Team member Harikiran Sarkar went to work for ISRO after the Cube Project ended.

US Drone Base, South Asia
Aviation Ops Specialist Sofia Jiménez straightened up from an unhealthy slouch. It was a slow shift. Her headphones, usually full of one routine check-in after another, now alive with action. “Colonel, one of our MQ-9 pilots reports multiple explosions in western Pakistan, Waziristan. Coordinates coming.” She looked back, making eye contact with her commanding officer, to be absolutely certain he was alert. It was a slow shift but not anymore.

“Archived reports place an old Haqqani network site near there. Who hit it, Sofi?” Colonel Wilson Baxter answered immediately, sipping cold coffee. Jiménez looked back at her display.

“Not us, Colonel. Grey Eagle still carries all four Hellfire’s.”

“Pak artillery?” Colonel Baxter guessing.

“No known military ops in that area. Doesn’t look right, the image sources, I mean. I’m putting the loop up on the big screen.” Jiménez offered. The hi-def screen above her switched from a list of active drones to an image of the destroyed building. “Initial TSP SIGINT analysis shows blast originated from inside the building.”

“Are you certain there’s not a special op going on in that area?” Baxter knew Seal Team and others only let him know about ops at the last possible minute, if at all.

Might be an honor killing or bomb builder connecting the wrong wire, thought Baxter. He’d seen so much destruction. It was tough to guess the actual cause of a blast. The image switched to a video, after downloading. Zooming in from a much higher altitude, probably aircraft or satellite cam.

“Sir, operators say they had trouble controlling Grey Eagle before the blasts. Satellite connection went offline, the bird flew over ten miles off-course. Ended up in sight of the blast. If that hadn’t happened, they would never have seen it.”

“Our drone was jacked?” Baxter unbelieving.

“Maybe, sir. For some reason, another satellite watched the same location. Same time. That’s strange. And it was shared, sir,” Jiménez reported. “Highly unusual. Check out the corner of this feed, that’s an Asian language. Hindi. A translator looked at it, says it’s the name of an old Indian satellite. GSAT-6A.”

“A foreign satellite captured the whole thing on camera? And they sent us the video? That’s not strange, that’s planned. Or a hack. We need to get that MQ-9 back in the shop. Get the techs to look at it. Make sure we send all the images to DIA, will you Sofi?”

“Copy that, Colonel!”

Dispassionate Exchange
Uno: THREAT ANALYSIS TO PHYSICS CUBE TEAM MEMBER HARIKIRAN COMPLETE. PLAN DETECTED VIA MULTIPLE Comm INTERCEPTS OVER

Que: THREAT ANALYSIS: MOBILE EXPLOSIVE SYSTEM ASSEMBLY COMPLETE OVER

Uno: PREPARE TO INITIATE VOIP CALL TO TRIGGER MECHANISM OVER

Que: MULTIPLE PHONES IDENTIFIED INSIDE STRUCTURE USING TOWER DATA. OVER

Uno: MQ-9 IN POSITION INITIATE CALLS TO ALL DEVICES OVER

Que: CALLS WILL BE TRACEABLE VIA APPLE ID OVER

Uno: GSAT-6A USE REVEALS SATBOT SOURCE INITIATE ALL CALLS OVER

Que: 22 CALLS INITIATED UNKNOWN COMBUSTIBLE IGNITED POSSIBLE P.E.T DERIVATIVE STRUCTURE DISMANTLED HARIKIRAN THREAT ELIMINATED. OVER OUT

60 minutes later…
“Secure Call, Colonel. Arlington. General Kearny, Joint Chiefs, Display 4, over there.” Jiménez pointing.

“Colonel Baxter, how’s your day going?”

“OK, Gus, until the possible drone jacking. I guess you saw those images?”

“Wil, this has gotta be a first, a hijacked Grey Eagle.” General Kearny started.

“I don’t know about that, it came back online. Bad guys don’t give assets back. It went off course just in time to catch an explosion on camera. There’s a breach somewhere. I need help from Cyber Command, not Space Force.”

“You recovered the MQ-9?”

“Came right back like a puppy dog, after capturing the blast. Landed fine, we recovered original video. Reaper’s back in the hanger where it will remain until we figure this out.”

“Nothing missing from the drone?” Kearny easing into the topic of weapons.

“All four Hellfire missiles are still hanging, Gus. Hackers couldn’t break our launch sequence, but still navigated where they wanted. We’ve grounded all MQ-9s until we figure this out.”

“Not so fast. Whoever’s responsible sent it back, instead of crashing it. That never happens. What exactly happened on the ground?”

“Might’ve gotten out of range of hacker’s transmitter. In any event, an unadvertised auto body shop full of explosives, was destroyed. I figure the bomb maker made a mistake. Happens from time to time, Barcelona dodged an attack that way. No idea why our drone got jacked just in time to catch the bomber’s mistake.”

“Casualties?”

“Our bird’s camera picked up 4 heat signatures before the blast. Pakistani army forensics team is on the way. They’ll test for explosives.”

“Sir, can I add something?” Jiménez asked, unable to wait. “We lose control of a drone on a satellite controller at the same time? I don’t think so. I can’t get that kind of intel coordination when I plan it. How would somebody know exactly when this bomber was gonna make a fatal mistake then hijack our drone in time to see it happen? A broken Indian satellite also fires up to capture a video of this whole thing? It stinks, Colonel, General. A coincidence? I think not.”

“You mean India lost control of a satellite at the same time?” Kearny asked, trying to grasp what Jiménez just added. “Maybe some kind of electromagnetic storm going on? Sunspots?”

“That’s not what Geospatial is telling us, Gus” Baxter answered. “Indian bird failed years ago, shortly after launch. Years ago. Camera somehow re-activated and aimed at a location west of the Khyber Pass. It’s transmitting updates to Activity Logbook somewhere. Weird iOS commands, coming from a civilian iPhone.”

Activity Logbook coming from an iPhone on an Indian satellite? Kearny couldn’t help but think about those rogue cubes. They have built-in iPhones. He decided to conference in Dumas and Foley from the Bureau.

“I have an idea about this, Wil. There are 2 FBI agents working on something possibly related. Special Agents Dumas and Foley. I’m conferencing them in.”

“Excellent, Jiménez is reaching out to a contact from the Indian Army.”

Dumas and Foley
Silence for a minute while the stars aligned.

“Colonel Baxter, Special Agent Dumas here, in conference with General Kearny, and my partner, Special Agent Foley. I understand you had a problem with a drone?”

“Appreciate the Bureau’s assistance. Dumas, our drone went off course and took pictures of an event. A supposedly defective Indian satellite, GSAT-6A, caught the same scene on camera. Does the Bureau know anything about this?”

“Our investigation is in the early stages, Colonel but it may be related. I took a closer look at the drone and satellite images you forwarded to Kearny, and…Colonel I’m going to have Agent Foley explain it.” Ingrid directed both her index fingers at Felicia.

“A student in India detected the code coming from a decommissioned satellite, known as GSAT-6A. Somebody at a joint-military group called Integrated Space Cell relayed this information to JPL. We need to get in touch with Hari, maybe he knows something.” Foley showed an animation of the Indian satellite while she spoke.

🛰
“Actually, a student at MILIT, a military academy in Pune, detected the transmissions.” Jiménez announced. “Just spoke with my Indian Army liaison, Captain RJ Singh. Couldn’t understand why the old satellite was doing anything at all. A student discovered GSAT-6A attempting to download an app update from the Apple App Store. Launched in 2018, that satellite had no civilian gear, certainly no Apple iPhone on it.”

“NASA told me GSAT-6A failed few days after launch. India never re-established communication.” Dumas added, “How do we tie this to our missing science experiments? What does this have to do with the missing Cubes? My Cube Case?” She stared hard at Foley then the display camera, appealing to the other virtual attendees.

Foley naïvely waved at the little camera above the Colonel’s face. “Hey, Colonel Baxter, Agent Foley here. Did you open the link we sent you?” The Colonel scowled back. “If you look closely at the image, timestamp shows GMT 1620, at about 45 seconds. There’s matching timer counting down in the image taken from the Indian satellite.”

“I’m the one that sent you that data. 16:20:45 is correct.”

“Suicide bombers use mobile phones as triggers. This robots on this satellite have figured out how to hack cell phones better than NSO Group. We need the call records from any cell tower near that supposed auto body shop.”

“The Cubes alone cannot be capable of doing this. No way. We need to figure out who triggered that bomb, now!” Kearny declared.

• *******
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