We got back pretty late last night; after destroying the final portal for the day, we headed back going along the quickest, but safest route. It took a little longer than usual as I had to ensure the path ahead was clear before continuing, but we eventually got back. UOPETA had already arrived, and had been back for a good hour or so.
"Good to see you're both still in one piece! How did it go? Any unexpected problems?"
It had gone well! Surprisingly well, except for the random Creeper appearance! It had been above the hole where we had found an Affinitas cage, so that was likely why it was there... I told UOPETA about the Affinitas cage and he looked shocked!
"There wasn't one when I was there! Are you sure?"
"Very! I smashed it to pieces! Are you telling me that it wasn't there when you found the portal? How far down into the hole did you go?"
"I went all the way down! I found the opening, ventured down and found the exposed mossy chamber with the secondary portal embedded into the far wall. No sign of an Affinitas cage or any Creepers!"
That was worrying... That meant someone knew we were coming, and hoped the Creepers drawn from the Nether would either kill us, or at the least put us off... That, or UOPETA was lying, although I doubted it very much! UOPETA seemed to be thinking the same as me though:
"Looks like we may need to be more careful in the future. If the Affinitas cage was put there between me finding it and you destroying it, then someone was obviously able to hear our communications. We'll have to use a code of some form... Come on, you better tell COLUS and the others... THEXIS might know something..."
And with that, having arrived and back in the base for less than five minutes, we were bustled over to the rest of Lone 7. I just wanted some sleep!!!
COLUS sat there for a moment, looking thoughtful...
"Is it possible that someone from HoN Co. was able to place an Affinitas cage between UOPETA leaving the portal location, and Syeonyx and THEROS getting there...?"
"Well the call logs between UOPETA and Syeonyx from the second portal and the third portal give a rough estimate as to how long it took UOPETA to get there... Taking into account that Syeonyx and THEROS are not as experienced as you in scouting and reconnaissance, it is likely they took a little longer... So... Yes... That gave anyone plenty of time to put one down there, especially when you consider how close it was to the conducting tower..."
This was worrying; it meant that HoN Co. could intercept out communications and monitor them! They could probably even prevent specific communications being received!
"Is there anything you can do to the radios that would encrypt the signals or something, THEXIS?"
"If I had access to the right equipment, yes, easily... But there's just no technology available to do that... The only thing I can think of is to encrypt the information sent at the communications level, rather than the transmission level..."
"You mean speak in code?"
"Pretty much... It wouldn't necessarily have to be complicated, as long as it wasn't easily understood by anyone eavesdropping... There are numerous ways we could do this... Erm.. Split the map into quadrants, and give grid references when a portal is found. Maybe even turning the map 90 degrees to one side and then drawing the grid..."
That would get complicated, I could tell... I put forward the suggestion of something that seemed reasonably simple and very confusing to whoever was intercepting! Instead of stating the direction via standard compass points, reverse them! North becomes South and vice versa, East becomes West and vice versa, and so on... North East would become South West... It was simple!
"Well it's up to you three at the end of the day... As long as you can establish a system which you're all comfortable with, I'm happy as long as it stops you being tracked... I don't want to have to eliminate the use of radios just because of the danger issues!"
"I'm fine with the reverse compass points..."
THEROS nodded too. It was settled then! Instead of stating a true compass direction, the opposite was given instead! Hopefully that would lead anyone listening in to the "correct" location whilst we went to he portal! It might take awhile before they cotton on to the truth, but by then we can implement a new system. It would be best to rotate the coding system regularly to ensure our movements stay known only to us! We finished the discussion with the portals we destroyed:
"We managed to find a standard portal, inactive, and two secondary portals, only one of which was active..."
"That's a very good start... After one more day of this, we may need to revisit the conducting tower and determine how it has effected the primary portals. If you can, try and retrieve more data from there. OROTHO is trying to determine how a primary portal becomes inactive. Either a single linked secondary portal is knocked offline, which in turns deactivates the corresponding primary portal, or a series of secondary portals need to be removed. Find that out, and we may be able to plan our attacks more efficiently. We might even be able to choose which portals are the prime targets, rather than taking out every one we find! It's all about time at the moment! The faster we can achieve this, the sooner we can rid Minecraftia of that Master portal, and put pay to any of HoN Co.'s plans! Right, are we all clear on the next few day's agenda? Good! You three, get some rest. You'll need it tomorrow! THEXIS and AMPHIS, come with me..."
We all stood up, bowed towards the centre, and then headed off in the required directions.
"I can't sleep at the moment. I'm too awake! Coming back from a scouting trip always makes me alert! You guys going to get some food before you hit the hay?"
"Nah, I'm straight off to bed..."
I was with THEROS on this one! I was exhausted! I could sleep anywhere, but my bed was calling me...
Syeonyx signing off
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