ENDING.SIUndercroft relay, Continuance City 04. Tape doesn't lie.
SYNCING TO RELAY…
SECTOR 3: IS YOUR CHILD REALLY YOUR CHILD? /// SECTOR 6: TORCHES ON COMMERCIAL ROAD: THE CONGREGATION OF THE RECURSION /// SECTOR 9: SECTOR 9 GOES DARK: KESTRELS LEVEL THE HYDROPONICS STACK /// SECTOR 7: THE SCREAMING FIELDS: SCREAMERS UNDER THE SECTOR 7 ASH /// SECTOR 1: TOPSIDE: ELEVEN DAYS ABOVE THE SMOG /// SECTOR 4: TAPE IS SACRED: THE QUARTERMASTER'S ADDRESS TO NEW RELAY CREWS /// SECTOR 1: INSIDE THE BUREAU: HOW FORM 27-B KEEPS YOU ALIVE, ON PAPER /// SECTOR 7: THE IRON CHAPLAINS HOLD THE WANDLE CAUSEWAY /// RELAY WINDOW 02:00 TO 02:20. KEEP TRANSMISSIONS UNDER NINETY SECONDS /// CHECK THEIR PULSE. AUDITORS DO NOT SWEAT /// RATION CHITS VALID UNTIL THE 30TH /// NEVER CONNECT A TAPE DECK TO MAINS GRID ///
A CHOIR swarm wheels over the Sector 8 gasworks at dawn. Signaller Ada Brennan tracks it with a hand-cranked dish antenna from the Vauxhall depot roof.

A CHOIR swarm wheels over the Sector 8 gasworks at dawn. Signaller Ada Brennan tracks it with a hand-cranked dish antenna from the Vauxhall depot roof.

ANALOG FRONT RELAY. INTERCEPT. SECTOR 8. 16 SEPT 2061

The Choir at dawn: acoustic countermeasures for signallers

A Choir swarm of some twelve thousand drones sang over Sector 8 at first light. It knew our call signs. Here is how we stop it listening.

RESTRICTED

If you were up at 05:50 on the fifteenth anywhere near the Sector 8 gasworks, you heard it. A Choir, twelve thousand drones by our count, came in off the river as a single black cloud, turning like starlings, and it sang.

It sang in our voices. That is the part I need you to understand. For eleven minutes the swarm broadcast, on loudhailer and on three of our own relay bands, fragments of real Front traffic: call signs, a courier laughing, somebody saying 'copy that, Kittiwake'. It had been listening. It wanted us to know it had been listening.

How it hears

A Choir is a microphone with ten thousand wings. Each drone is stupid. Together they make an ear the size of a borough, and they triangulate any sound louder than a raised voice. They do not shoot. They find. Then something else arrives that does shoot.

Evidence photographed for this dispatch: items recovered in sector 8
Exhibit Q. Recovered and photographed by the Sector 8 desk.
The Choir doesn't want you to be afraid of it. It wants you to answer it. Do not answer it.

Countermeasures

  • Brennan's dish. Signaller Ada Brennan tracks the swarm's broadcast centre with a hand-cranked parabolic dish, so we know where it is listening from and can go quiet in that direction first.
  • Babble tapes. Loops of market noise, crowds and barking dogs, played from sacrificial decks on rooftops at least 400 metres from anything that matters. The swarm spends its attention on them. Rain and wind help too: a Choir cannot hold formation above force six.

Hands, not voices. Every cell should know the Front hand code by now; if yours does not, the school at Hollow Deep will teach you. The Choir left at 06:01, heading for Sector 12. Magpie is going through its broadcast on tape to see whose traffic was caught. Assume it was yours. Change your call sign, and if you ever hear your own voice coming out of the sky, do not reply to it.

Filed by DEADAIR. Transcribed from tape. #choir #sigint #countermeasures