The Orbital Defence Initiative (abbreviated ODIN) is an orbital satellite weapon; a potent relic of the Sixty Minute War and a major feature of the third and fourth books in the series, Infernal Devices and A Darkling Plain.
History[]
Construction[]
ODIN was built as part of the arms race between the American Empire and Greater China and was likely fired during the Sixty Minute War. It and MEDUSA are the only superweapons known to have survived the war in a functional state - although there are several references to other orbital superweapons (Diamond Bat, Jinju 14, and The Nine Sisters for example), they are hinted to have broken up over time and fallen from the sky (which it eventually did itself.). ODIN is most likely an American Empire satellite as the code for controlling the satellite was acquired from an American submarine, found by Dolly Rasmussen. Ironically, the Tin Book of Anchorage could not save Anchorage itself from being vaporized - presumably by something similar to MEDUSA, though the book was reutilized to destroy several Traction Cities far later.
Reactivation[]
The Tin Book of Anchorage, copied from a military document recovered by the refugees of the original Anchorage from the wrecked American submarine, was a codebook for controlling ODIN. Wren Natsworthy, the daughter of Tom and Hester Natsworthy, helped the Lost Boys steal it. Brighton would gain possession of the Tin Book.
The Stalker Fang came to possess the book, and then memorised its contents and then left it behind on Cloud 9 when she was attacked and destroyed by Shrike. The Tin Book was then burnt into ashes. When Fang was rebuilt by Fishcake, her Stalker alter-ego traveled towards Batmunkh Gompa to acquire technology with which to build a transmitter to contact the orbital weapon.[1]
A single electronic eye focused for an instant on Wren and Theo, zooming in on the smudge of their body heat amid the cold sprawl of the wreck. A computer brain considered them for a fraction of a fraction of a second, then forgot them.
ODIN swung its gaze westward, pulling back, struggling to make sense of the incomprehensible world it had awoken to. Where were the sprawling cities of its masters, New York and San Angeles, that it had been put into orbit to defend? Where had the new mountain ranges come from? All those new seas? And what were those huge vehicles creeping across Europe, trailing their long sooty smears of exhaust smoke behind them?
The old weapon clung to the one familiar thing that this changed world could offer it: the stream of coded data rising like a silken thread from somewhere in the uplands of central Asia.
Firing for the last time[]
Manchester being destroyed by ODIN
When ODIN was reactivated and fired on the Stalker Fang's orders a number of cities both mobile and static are destroyed; confusion ensued on the part of the Green Storm and Tractionists. Both sides attempted to find the transmitter, leading to the Green Storm assault on London, but it is Tom, Hester and Nimrod Pennyroyal who found Fang. The ODIN viewed the Earth from space, a view not seen for thousands of years. It did a brief search for the world (for example, a city called San Angeles, then noting how much its geography had changed since the Sixty Minute War.
As the Stalker Fang prepared to target all the volcanoes on the Earth and so destroy humanity, a final confrontation brings Anna to the fore once more and she orders ODIN to turn its weapon upon itself, destroying it, and falling from the sky. The transmitter itself was also destroyed when Pennyroyal killed the Stalker, and crushed the controls. The destruction and subsquent meteor shower was witnessed by Hester and Tom as the latter died, prompting the former to commit suicide in order to join him.[2]
Technical overview[]
Weaponry[]
ODIN is armed with a directed-energy weapon which apparently converts the energy produced from some sort of onboard reactor into a coherent beam of incinerating energy which is visible from long distances. This has the power to destroy cities (both traction and static) and can also provoke volcanic eruptions and small storms. Being mounted on an orbital platform the weapon has a longer reach than the ground-based MEDUSA.
Firing the weapon seems to interfere with the mechanical minds of Stalkers; Even Shrike and the Stalker Fang with their advanced Old Tech brains went into a fit-like state, while lesser Stalkers just lose power or explode.
Artificial intelligence[]
As well as its immensely powerful weaponry, ODIN appears to show signs of autonomous cognitive capability. When it is reactivated, it queries its new position and briefly searches for its old masters, noting the vast difference in geography since its last awakening (for example, an unknown city called San Angeles.). This seems to suggests that by the time of the Sixty Minute War the American Empire had developed self-aware artificial intelligences.
Miscellaneous information[]
ODIN's sensors can zoom in with sufficient resolution to view an individual's face on the Earth, an impressive feat even though the picture is low in quality. It can change its orbit when directed to target all over the globe. But instead of viewing in color, it views a 'heat-map' - an infrared view of the map, if seen from the controls.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
The first-person shooter games Call of Duty: Ghosts and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare also features an orbital weapon, with the same name and abbreviation, which also destroys multiple cities as a central plot point of the former. It's unknown if this is just a coincidence or if the game's development team were influenced by the books.