The Unknowing War (Optimum Project sequel)

Chapter 3

Jam it

I dodged the punch thrown by the sparing bot, ducking and rolling to the left. As it turned to follow I sprung up and shoved it backwards, causing it to lose its balance momentarily while the weights, motors and other various systems raced to correct the shift. I pressed my advantage, running forward I jumped up and wrapped my legs around its neck, using my momentum to throw the machine across the room, my musculoskeletal nanites assisting in the process. After the injections Pix had made me work out regularly, gradually increasing my strength to the point where I could punch someone and send them flying.

The ComBot as it was nicknamed sat up and tilted it's head, almost as if it were thinking. I smiled and brought my hand forward, making a bring-it-on gesture toward the bot. The bot did a reverse summersault and flipped up into a combat stance, a judo pose with its arms stretched in front and behind it, I gave a slight nod, signaling it to begin. Pix believed in a trial-by-fire type of training method, and so when I came down for training the bot would begin using new combat moves, causing me to evaluate and form counters and blocks. The teaching method was effective, if not painful.

The bot ran forward and jumped, executing a spinning kick that could have knocked my head off if I hadn't ducked in time. It rolled on its landing before springing back up and turning to face me again, this time instead of waiting for a signal it began attempting to pummel me with kicks, chops, and punches. I blocked most, but the bot still got a few solid hits in here and there, breathing was painful now. I was done today, I shoved the bot away again and ran forward, stomping on one of its knees as I hopped up and behind it, breaking the motor and making it impossible to stand. The bot attempted to turn around and face me, and I kicked it the chest again, causing it to land on its back. As the bot propped itself up on its arms I simply walked up and yanked the control cables out where it's throat was, Dead.

I sighed and kicked the shell of the ComBot over, pulling out its processing chip from the base of what could only be classified as it's skull before I set about fixing it. There wasn't much I could do about the motor in the bot's leg but I could still rewire the control cables for the poor guy who got to repair this thing every time I trash it. When I was done I just stood up and left, heading back towards my room.

"Hey bud, you seem quiet lately."
I got Tom's equivalent of a nod, "pix has me running analysis on your work during our first major fight with the drone net, he wants to use it as tactical lessons with other pilots."

I shot a quick response back, "lacking the footage where I use nanites, correct?"
"Obviously, " Tom responded in a way that made you feel like he was rolling his eyes at you, amazing how machines could emulate human speech patterns.

"I do it better than most, trust me." I sent back my own thought-based eye roll, I was getting good at thought communication with Tom.

I finally made it back to my room and checked the data I was getting from Pix's antenna, it was video footage of some documentary for the first space race, ancient stuff. I pulled up some software and retrieved the signal frequency. Now came the tricky part, I had no clue as to how I was supposed to jam a signal, only that the frequency was needed... I scrunched my eyes for a moment before grabbing my tablet and looking through the engineering database, where I found this:

"Intentional communications jamming is usually aimed at radio signals to disrupt control of a battle. A transmitter, tuned to the same frequency as the opponents' receiving equipment and with the same type of modulation, can, with enough power, override any signal at the receiver. Digital wireless jamming for signals such as Bluetooth and WiFi is possible with very low power." --- pulled from well attributed Wikipedia database, 2016

So now I knew the method, no matter how old the entry, and it still applied to this receiver. I got up and headed down to the engineering bay, grabbing a few parts before coming back up and building my own jamming transmitter. After an hour of fiddling I sent a message to pix. I was done.