Drone Commander

The winds blew gently across the Cliffside.

The sunlight was warm, and the breeze of the ocean smelled incredible. In the air, a flock of birds flew on out to ocean. A group of dolphins were leaping out an about in the bay, enjoying a new day. Crabs were walking along the beach looking for a bite to eat, while baby turtles were emerging out of the sands, and out into the ocean waters. In the center of the bay, a battleship sat in anchor, ready to defend this majestic place from anyone who dared try to defile it. On top of the Cliffside, Leonard sat upon his MCV, enjoying the view.

He wasn’t alone.

On one side, Andrew, Mateo, and Joshua were playing basketball, while on another side, Matthew, his younger brother Brendan, and Bryan were playing a game of cards. His parents, Miguel and Caryl, were sitting next to each other alongside their car a few meters away. His sister, Cassandra, along with her boyfriend AJ, were on the other side with their own car as well. And a few feet away, his mentor from the academy, Lauren, stood on top of a small rock, her white trench coat flowing gently with the ocean breeze.

This was his place of peace. A place where he could enjoy life without worry, and without stress.

It didn’t last.

For a few seconds, it seemed like the whole world had gone static. This did not go unnoticed by Leonard. He quickly began to look around to find the source of the disturbance. When he couldn’t find it, Leonard tried to go back to enjoying the view, only to see several static like rifts popping up across the bay. The other people with him saw it as well. They were just as confused as Leonard was. Standing up from where he was, Leonard walked into the MCV’s DOCS, and opened up the holomap. The rifts were not being picked up by the radar.

Leonard tried to bring up the keyboard, but something was wrong. Even though the holographic keyboard was up, the keys were not responding to his fingers. Leonard then pressed a button on the side, and the backup physical keyboard emerged from the holomap. Again, he was getting no response from the keys. Leonard resisted the urge to bang his fist onto the device, when he noticed that outside, everyone was looking up at the sky. Stepping up to the window, Leonard saw that the sky had changed.

It was now completely black, save for what seemed like two massive eyelashes. The eyelashes ‘opened’ up, and a pair of light blue eyes stared down at them.

In a flash, Leonard opened his eyes up to the real world. He was sweating somewhat, but nothing too serious. It almost felt as if something was trying to get into his mind. The young man then stood up from his bed, and made his way to one of the cabinets to his right. He pulled out a twenty ounce glass that was sitting on the shelf, then he reached into another cabinet and pulled out a packet of orange flavored drink mix. Leonard then made his way to the water dispenser on the other side of the room, placed the glass underneath it, and cold water came pouring out into the glass.

Once the glass was filled, Leonard picked it up, and placed it upon the holomap. He then ripped the packet of drink mix and poured into the glass. After disposing of the now empty drink mix packet, Leonard pulled a device from out of the holomap, and held it above the glass. The device was a mixer, but not just any mixer. It dispensed nanomachines into the glass, which would mix up the molecules of the drink mix into the water. Unlike regular stirring, which would delude the flavoring, this method enhanced the flavoring. It took a few seconds, but once it was done, the nanomachines returned to the device, and Leonard returned it to the holomap.

But right before he could take a sip, something in the corner of his eye caught Leonard’s attention.

Whatever it was, it was long gone before Leonard could spot it. Glass in hand, Leonard walked up to the window to look outside, but didn’t see anything. Even though the cloaking emitter was up and active, the nanofilm in the window allowed Leonard to see everything that he built. He wasn’t sure what it was that he saw, but it had looked like a pair of glowing eyes. The young man then walked up to the holomap, and pressed several buttons on the holokeyboard. After that, the radar’s log came up, but according to the log, the radar didn’t detect anything within the vicinity in between the time he went to bed, and the time he woke up, which was only 3 hours.

Still convinced that something was out there, Leonard walked up to get his coat and put it on over his bare torso. Next, Leonard stepped out of the MCV, and walked up to the top the vehicle, and tapped on the right side of his head to have the nanomachines in his eyes change his vision into night vision, and began scanning the desert.

For several agonizing minutes, Leonard continued to look back and forward across the desert, but couldn’t find anything. He knew that something was out there. But the question was, where? That’s when it hit him. Leonard decided, against his better judgement, to look upward. And lo and behold, there was something barely visible up there. Leonard focused on the unknown that was up there, tapping the left side of his head to have his vision zoom in to get a better look. But before he could make out the unknown’s figure and shape, it vanished in a blink of light.

Leonard tapped the left side again, which restored his vision to normal range, and looked on completely dumbfounded of what just happened. Several questions were swimming around in his mind. What was that thing? How did it slip pass the radar? How did it find him? How could it see him? What was it doing here?

Leonard shook his head. He decided to dismiss this whole thing as due to the lack of sleep. “I must be seeing things.” He said to himself.

Walking back into the DOCS, Leonard tapped the right side of his head to restore his vision back to normal, finished his drink, hang his coat back up, and slide back into bed.

-oOo-

Stretching his arms out, Leonard suppressed a yawn.

Looking down at the holomap, Leonard could see that Zack was clearly busy during the night. He now had an additional 12 mass extractors that were all within five kilometers from his position. Each with a cloaking emitter to hide them. Those cloaking emitters each had four power generators feeding them energy. Zack had also saw fit to build point defenses around the most outer extractor sites, four 120mm Stationary Cannons facing outward, along with a 150mm Stationary Artillary. They even had some units protecting them. Each had 12 BATs mounted on Scout Bikes along with four HATS, also mounted on scout bikes, near them, along with six IFVs, two light tanks, one medium tank, two mortars, one howitzer, a mobile shield generator, and two light gunships on an airpad ready to defend them.

The Air Factory had been upgraded to its final stage just as Leonard had asked. The Land factory was also upgraded to its final stage. Zack had also built two additional land and air factories, with one still at its most basic, while the other was at tier two. This now gave Leonard access to the biggest units, the Omni-Directional Missile launcher, Heavy Artillary, Heavy Tanks, Tank Destroyer, Air Superiority Fighter, Heavy Gunship, Heavy Transport Craft, Heavy Bomber Craft, Stealth Reconnaissance Aircraft, and the Advanced Land and Aerial Constructor Drones. Zack had already build the Stealth Reconnaissance Aircraft as he requested, and it was now sitting and waiting on an Airpad.

Pressing the buttons on his wristband, Zack’s holograp materialized. “Good morning Commander. Do you like what I’ve done with the place?” He asked.

“Yeah, you’ve definitely have been busy Zack.” Leonard replied. “I’m amazed at how much you’ve built in the time that I’ve been asleep.”

“Thanks.” Zack said.

“Though there’s something that I need to ask you.” Leonard said. “Did you detect anything within the vicinity of our current area of operations?”

Zack ‘Blinked’ in response. “Not really. I didn’t detect anything within the area during the night. Why?” The AI asked.

“Well in the middle of the night, it felt like something was trying to get inside my head, and it woke me up.” Leonard answered. “And when I looked outside the window, for a split second, I saw what looked like a pair of eyes. After that, I went outside with a pair of thermal imagine binoculars, and saw nothing. Then I looked up above me, and saw what looked like a flying animal. But before I could make out what it looked like, it vanished.”

Zack ‘blinked’ again, and angled himself to make him look like he raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you saw something?” He asked. “Because the logs didn’t detect anything coming within the area during the night.”

Leonard let out a sigh. “I don’t know Zack.” He replied. “Even I think that it might have been a hallucination due to a lack of sleep.”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to build surveillance drones. Just in case.” Zack said.

Leonard had to resist the urge the smack himself for not thinking about that. Only the MCV could build surveillance drones, and they were quite small. Each one was about the size of a gnat, and they even looked like a gnat too. With that in mind, Leonard knew what he needed to do now. “Thank you for reminding me Zack. I think I’ve got it covered now.” He said.

“Good luck out there.” Zack said before dissipating.

Leonard walked up to the holomap, and brought up the queue for surveillance drones. He had the thing build over ten thousand of the little drones, each one taking a fraction of a second to build. In the instant the swarm was done, Leonard split them off into smaller swarms and sent them off to the extractor sites outside of the landing zone, while the larger swarm stayed within the landing zone. Unlike the rest of the drone army, the surveillance drones did not have a voice, and did not respond to voice commands, so Leonard had to use the MDCS (Manuel Directional Control System) to divide them up and move them across the map. It was like playing an RTS game with a touch screen.

Once the surveillance drones went their way, Leonard called up the Stealth Reconnaissance aircraft. “Stealth Reconnaissance reporting in.”

“Stealth Recon, you will designated as Phantom. There is a settlement 134.7 kilometers southeast from here. I want you to fly over there, and watch over it.” Leonard ordered.

“Phantom rogers. Flying over there now.”

The aircraft took off vertically from the airpad, as it left the safety of the cloaking emitter, it activated its own cloaking onboard it, and flew off towards the settlement. It took a couple of minutes to reach it, as the stealth needed to conserve its speed in order to maintain its cloak. Once it was there, the stealth connected its camera with the MCV, showing Leonard everything that it was seeing. The settlement didn’t look out of place in those Old Western movies. The inhabitants of the settlement were clearly equine, with most of them being just ordinary ponies. He did however, notice a few that had either wings or a horn. He also noticed what looked like buffalo along with the equines, and they looked like analogs to Native Americans.

The stealth then focused its camera on a podium that was located near what Leonard assumed was the town hall. On the podium, he noticed a large buffalo, clearly bigger than the others, speaking, or what Leonard assumed was speaking, with two of the equines, one ordinary, and the other which was purple colored and had both wings and a horn. One thing Leonard couldn’t help but notice, was how all of equines had a tattoo on their hind flanks. The ordinary equines mostly had tattoos that involved gardening, while the horned ones, unicorns if he remembered correctly, had more exotic tattoos on their flanks, and the winged ones, pegasus, had tattoos that mostly involved the weather.

This made Leonard wonder what exactly did having those tattoos on their flanks represent. Though now was not the time to be contemplating about it. For the pink equine that was the train the other day was also on the podium, and unlike most of the other equines, this one had what looked like balloons on its flank. As if that wasn’t enough, the same equine… was looking in Phantom’s direction, and seemingly following it.

Just what in the hell was going on? Did it have some exceptional eyesight or something? Phantom was invisible to the naked eye, so why was that pink equine looking in its direction? Leonard decided to run some tests, so he pressed some keys on the board, giving him complete manual control over Phantom.

The first thing he did was have Phantom come to a complete stop, hovering just several hundred feet above the ground. He had the drone remain there for all but thirty seconds, and the pink equine never once moved its eyes away from Phantom’s direction. The next thing he did, was have Phantom descend and ascend from its position, the equine’s eyes seemingly following the invisible drone. Next, Leonard had Phantom move horizontally, from left to right, to back and forward, again, the equine’s eyes followed the drone with near perfect accuracy.

Leonard narrowed his eyes. The next thing Leonard did, was something he was going to regret later on. He had Phantom fly over the settlement pulling off exotic maneuvers just to see if the equine would follow it, and follow Phantom it did. From having Phantom doing a cork screw maneuver, to rapidly moving from point A to point B, to hovering just a few feet above one of the buildings, to flying right behind the podium. Not once did the pink equine’s eyesight leave Phantom’s direction. Leonard snarled. Having had enough of the little shit, Leonard released Phantom from his control, and gave out an order. “Phantom. Return to base. I’ve had enough of that little troublemaker.”

“Understood sir, returning to base.”

Leonard drummed his fingers along the holomap. Something about that pink equine was not right. Why or how in the hell was it able to follow Phantom’s movements? When the cloak was developed, the researchers made absolutely sure that the object that was cloaked was completely invisible, with no outlines, no blurs, no shifting movements, no nothing. The idea that a pink primitive dimwitted equine could see it was beyond Cthulhu levels of incomprehensible. Once Phantom got back, he was going to run a diagnostic on it, because something was clearly not right here.

Looking back down on the holomap, Leonard watched as Phantom flew back to its airpad. Along the way, Phantom spotted an orchard of apple trees. How were the inhabitants able to plant such trees in the desert, he was going to have to wait until another day to find out. For right now he needed to do some checkups on Phantom in the hopes that there was nothing wrong with its cloak.

As Phantom flew nearer, Leonard had the MCV build one of his personal vehicles. There were nine manned vehicles that the MCV could build should the commander feel the need, three for land; a hover bike, a van, and a tank, three for air; a helicopter, an air car, and a jet fighter, and three for sea; a jet ski, a fishing boat, and a patrol boat. Only three of them had weapons on them, and Leonard was right now building the hover bike. In the time it took for the bike to build, Phantom had returned to its designated air pad. Tapping a few buttons on his wristband, Zack’s hologram popped up. “Back so soon?” Zack asked.

“I sent the stealth recon craft over to the settlement, just like I said.” Leonard replied.

“Alright. What did you find?” Zack asked again.

“See for yourself.” Leonard said, typing on the keyboard.

Once Leonard was done, Zack could see everything that Leonard had recorded. From the settlement’s design ascetic, to the equines and the buffalos walking and talking together. Including the pink equine who had somehow managed to follow all of the movements of Phantom. “What?” Zack asked.

“That’s what I said.” Leonard stated. “I don’t know what the hell was going on, but somehow, that pink little devil was able to follow Phantom’s movements with near perfect precision.”

“But the cloak should have made it completely invisible.” Zack said. “How was it able to follow Phantom’s movements?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.” Leonard said as he pulled out a tablet from a nearby cabinet. “I’m going to run a diagnostic on Phantom to see if anything’s wrong.”

Zack ‘blinked’ at that. “You sure you want to go out in this heat?” The robot asked.

Leonard snorted in response. “The nanotech in my clothes will keep me cool, Zack.” He said as he typed on the keyboard. “In the meantime, keep an eye on everything while I’m gone, and report to me on any updates.” Leonard finished as he walked to the exit.

“Right. Be careful out there.” Zack said as his hologram dissipated.

With that out of the way, Leonard tapped the side of his head, to allow him to see through the cloaking fields coming from the emitters. With the exception of the insides of buildings and vehicles, the cloaking fields from the emitters made everything within their ranges invisible. And that’s what happened to Leonard when he stepped out of the MCV. Had he not changed his vision, he wouldn’t have been able to see his hands in front of himself. Carefully stepping down the ladder, when Leonard reached the ground, the bike that he build had drove itself up to him. Alongside it were eight BATs mounted on Scout Bikes, along with two HATs, also mounted on Scout Bikes, two IFVs, a Light Tank, a light Gunship, and a swarm of Surveillance Drones that was hovering just above him. No doubt Zack’s idea. Once Leonard had mounted up on his bike, he looked toward his escorts. “Let’s ride.”