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160. SPOTLIGHT ON: Sensor Fog

A complex instrument of interstellar espionage, employed by intelligence operatives within the Empire of the Queil. The sensor fog comprises a field of countless microscopic ‘reader’ units held loosely together within a localised area. Almost molecular in size, these readers have very little functionality but are designed to move with minute changes in the electromagnetic currents around them, thereby registering and recording the passing of data through space.

The observations made by the hundreds or even thousands of reader units are gathered by local transmitters, more advanced probes responsible for monitoring the sensor fog and transmitting its findings across the Queil Astronet. This more complex functionality means that the transmitter probe is the fog’s main point of failure; while the fog itself is intentionally completely undetectable, the transmitter bears a much closer resemblance to a conventional listening or transmission device and so it must be placed carefully.

As the sensor fog is deliberately imprecise in its area of detection, it is favoured by the Queil when pursuing hidden fugitives or reports of disturbances within a local area. Sensor fog casts a wide net across a star system, planetary orbit or section of starlane, registering any and all communications passing through that space. Those particulate components of the fog, designed to be highly sensitive to changes in digital current, will accumulate around local transmission suites over time and impede the function of both the transmitter and the fog; hopefully the relevant data has already been recorded by the time this occurs.


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