Helena Frye's case notes on the whole raid on Ascendancy Point, from planning through to completion (and getting herself shot).
++++ PERSONAL CASE NOTES - OPERATION BAYONET ++++
Lead investigator: Detective Helena Frye
Preliminary report: The physical attack of the Third Power in Ascendancy Point successfully took place at 7:00pm GMT on Tuesday 30th January, ending at approximately 9:15pm. Several significant issues arose during the operation but were resolved on site and on time, largely due to the assistance of Earth-based support. Information regarding other Third Power members in Perplex City was obtained and used to apprehend them early on Wednesday 31st January.
Casualties: Patrick Harrison and Petra Fishcook were both killed in the firefight. Three other operatives were seriously injured, including Detective Helena Frye. Four members of the Third Power were killed, including Academy member Roberto Solitano.
Objectives
- Objective 1: Neutralise and detain the Third Power - accomplished
- Objective 2: Rescue any civilians being held - accomplished
- Objective 3: Retrieve any information related to the Receda Cube's location
Current Status
- Preparing for the physical attack of the Third Power within Ascendancy Point
Operation Timeline
The entire operation is expected to take 2 hours.
- Rendezvous at Ascendancy Point subway station.
- Overload subway station platform; enter AP via subway service tunnels.
- Group A (McAllister, Fitch) to gain access to network service room - time limited.
- Group B (rest of team) to electrical station to plant explosive charges.
- Rendezvous at service lifts.
- Override safeties, head to L110.
- Raise L110 air duct temperature to 37C to mask body heat.
- Ignite electrical station charges - temporary power loss begins in 10 minutes.
- Access air ducts, release incapacitating agent through vents.
- On power loss, storm Third Power base.
Identifying and triangulating radio messages (completed)
The transmissions were triangulated to a source 1111m up Ascendancy Point; Level 110.
We now know that the Third Power are based in Ascendancy Point, the city's tallest building with over 170 triple-height floors and tens of thousands of occupants, but we do not have access to their surveillance systems. Instead, we must pinpoint their location with Ascendancy Point by other means.
While Third Power messages from Earth to Ascendancy Point are being sent via Relaynet, the opposite is not true. Rather, Police have intercepted encrypted radio transmissions coming from within the Tower, presumably to the Centre for Reality Research. This is what we know:
1. Four receivers stationed on top of skyscrapers near Ascendancy Point have intercepted the radio transmissions. This diagram shows the exact altitude of each receiver as well as the distance between any pair of the receivers (straight-line distance in 3D-space).
2. Furthermore, using advanced ranging technology, we have determined the distance between each receiver and the originating source of the encrypted transmissions:
- Receiver 1: 646.12m from source
- Receiver 2: 1548.28m
- Receiver 3: 1249.19m
- Receiver 4: 1267.62m
We need to discover where in Ascendancy Point the Third Power is transmitting from.
Relaynet Intercepts (completed)
22nd Jan: The destination of the intercepted messages to discovered to be Ascendancy Point.
Last week, Signals Intelligence members from the Perplex City Police confirmed that the Third Power was using Relaynet to send unauthorised messages to an unknown location. While much is still unclear, the following is known:
1. Third Power hackers were accessing computer servers located at the subway stations throughout the city. Exactly which servers were compromised is still unknown (each subway station houses one server, and is connected to other servers in a network similar to that of the subway system itself).
2. It is known that all of the messages were first entering the network at KEY SQUARE station (SigInt believes that the messages are being transmitted from the nearby Centre for Reality Research). From there, the hackers were carefully choosing which servers through which to route the messages (trying to use as many compromised machines as possible to minimise the chance of detection).
3. While we are still trying to discover WHERE the messages were being sent (i.e. which station/server was the final destination), with the aid of Academy CRT member Kurt McAllister, we recovered the following information about five of the messages transmitted: the times (in milliseconds) that the following five messages were bouncing around the network servers before reaching the final destination.
- Intercept 1: 60 ms
- Intercept 2: 48 ms
- Intercept 3: 57 ms
- Intercept 4: 46 ms
- Intercept 5: 59 ms
4. Police also have a network map (see image below) which lists the transmission times between servers on the network.
5. A complication is that messages can loop between servers in any fashion, possibly visiting servers more than once. However, as with normal routing, once a message reaches the destination server, it stops (i.e. it would not have bounced away from the destination server).
6. Knowing that all five messages originated from KEY SQUARE, and the above transmission times from KEY SQUARE to the destination, each message, individually, may have ended up at several possible stations. However, we believe that whichever station is reachable by the most of the five messages is the destination server to which the hackers were sending their messages.
7. Along with discovering the destination server of the messages, we also need to know which of the other servers were compromised and used to relay the messages to the destination server - this information may help us decrypt the messages we have intercepted. It is vitally important that we find the correct destination; guesses will not do, as we cannot afford to mount simultaneous assaults on multiple targets in Perplex City.
