“OK, approaching the LZ.” Knox said, looking worried.
“Oh, damn, this is going to be harder than I thought; especially at night with nothing but this stupid green screen. Too bad I can’t light it up.”
“It is what it is,” Hail told his pilot. “You’re doing a great job. Just take it slow.”
Knox shook his head in disagreement.
“I can’t take it too slow, Skipper. Not if you want to get this drone back to Zeppelin tomorrow. I’ve already burned through twenty-five percent of my battery.”
Hail said nothing.
Aerosmith was quickly approaching a tall tree. Specifically, Mercier had told them during the planning meeting that the tree was a Pinus densiflora, also known as the Japanese Red Pine. In the winter it became yellowish, but in the summer it just happened to be the exact same shade of brown as Aerosmith.
“Alright, here goes nothing,” Knox said, tensing slightly on the controls as he made his final approach.
Not a single aspect of this mission had been left to chance. Eagles had scouted the landing zone and the exact spot where Aerosmith would land had been predetermined.
Knox maneuvered Aerosmith between two limbs of the enormous red pine. Similar to the other hub drones, the propellers on Aerosmith were internal to the machine. Hollow on the inside, the propellers twirled internally in a chamber that resembled a cylindrical chimney, creating lift by blowing air down and sucking air in from the top of the drone. All of the electronics were built into a ring that circled around the interior chimney. The lithium-ion battery was circular as well. There was not a centimeter of wasted space on Aerosmith. A microchip crammed in here, a servo motor stuffed in there; beautiful it was not. An amazing piece of flying technology, it was.
The camera rocked to one side, taking a hard, jarring hit from one of the branches.
“Damn,” Knox cursed. “Man, it’s tight between these tree limbs.”
No one said anything. Knox knew what he needed to do. He had performed this landing flawlessly in the simulator a number of times, but doing it in real life was different. Unlike the simulator, he was experiencing lighting issues. In the live setting, the different shades of green were more defused and indiscernible than they had been in the simulator. As he guided the drone between the branches, some of the smaller twigs were almost invisible on his monitor. And compounding his problems, there was a light breeze and small pine branches were fluttering in and out of his flight path. Right now, the design of the drone was saving him. Since the propellers were located on the inside of the aircraft, the small drone could be bumped around a little because there was no chance of the propellers coming into contact with the obstructions. Too much bumping, however, would scramble the internal computer. The chip made thousands of tiny flight adjustments per second, keeping Aerosmith at the proper height and angle of attack. Too many unanticipated disruptions would overwhelm the computer managing the drone’s flight characteristics. At that point the computer would reset. If that happened, then Aerosmith would drop to the ground like a log.
A few more damns came out of Knox as he closed in on the landing point.
“You are down to fifty-five percent battery life,” Gage Renner informed Knox.
“Almost there, just another foot,” Knox replied. “Almost there…”
The misshapen drone slowly lowered onto a thick limb of the red pine, centering itself over the widest part of the branch before gently touching down.
No one said anything.
Aerosmith joined the branch of the Japanese red pine ― literally.
Everyone held their breath until the green video being sent by Aerosmith froze in place. It reminded Hail of when he had watched the old video of the first lunar landing on the moon from 1969 with his dad. Seconds before touchdown, a whirl of activity could be seen on the footage; movement, dust and shapes coming into view before being cast aside for new shapes. And then, like someone had switched off a light, nothing but stillness. Tranquility Base. The Eagle had landed.
Hail let out a breath he wasn’t aware he had been holding.
Knox let go of his control handles, changed screens and pressed an icon labeled DOCK.
A second later, four brown fish hooks dropped down from the sides of the Aerosmith, hooked into the tree and then tightened, attaching the drone to the tree.
Aerosmith had been designed to look like a bump on a log. The drone was an illusion. Notched into its side was a shallow cavity that looked like a place where a small limb had broken off. That circular dark section was a camera port that could be shuttered open or closed, depending on when the drone was actively streaming video. Aerosmith’s surface was so meticulously modeled with bark, that from any angle on the ground, it was invisible sitting silently on its limb.
“Are we locked?” Hail asked.
“Yes, Sir,” Knox said, leaning back in his chair and taking in a deep breath and then letting it out slowly.
“OK,” Hail said, turning his chair toward Oliver Fox. “Let’s bring in the next mico-hub.”
The term mico-hub didn’t have much to do with the size of the drones. It was nomenclature Hail’s crew used to refer to a drone’s heritage. The main drone was Foghat, which dropped off the hub called Led Zeppelin or its mini-drone. The next group of hubs that were released by Led Zeppelin was referred to as mico-hubs. If those hubs parented more hubs, then those would be called nano-hubs and so on until pico had been used. Hail’s drone laboratories had never nested drones deeper than pico, so there was no need for any further extended classification. The inventors of the metric system in 18th century France, had little need for any terminology smaller than micro, because they didn’t have instruments fine enough to measure more minute increments. But in later years, pico, femto, atto, zepto and yocto metric increments had been established in case Hail’s team ever needed them.
Oliver Fox situated himself in his chair and placed his hands on his controllers and his feet on the pedals under his station.
Knox touched an icon that mirrored the green video being sent from Styx onto the big screen mounted directly over Fox’s control station. That way, the entire crew could see the video being sent by his drone.
“Liftoff,” Fox announced.
From the top of Led Zeppelin, an object that could only be described as a bird’s nest began to rise into the humid night. This micro-drone was a mass of plastic sticks woven haphazardly together to form a bird’s nest. The nest didn’t have an affiliation to any particular bird in the area. So unless one of Chang’s servants or girlfriends happened to be an expert in ornithology, then it should go unnoticed.
Hail thought that Styx appeared to handle a little better than Aerosmith. It certainly climbed much faster.
“I’m at a hundred feet and moving toward my LZ,” Fox told the crew.
The video looked just the same as when Aerosmith had passed over the electric fence; green, murky, and not much on the horizon to look at other than distant trees.
Having Fox fly a patch of sticks into a tree would have been a disaster. The sides of the drone would have certainly snagged on something. So the landing point that had been chosen for Styx was much easier to manage.
Fox smiled. “Alright,” he said. “I am over my touchdown point and the surface looks clear.”
Hail nodded and remained silent.
“Coming down, down, down…” Fox said as he nudged his foot pedals deeper into the floor.
The video streaming from Styx was not as shaky as it had been with Aerosmith; therefore the touchdown was not as dramatic. Inch by inch, Styx dropped down until it came to rest on top of a power pole that fed one-inch thick electrical cables into Chang’s property. The pole was about twenty meters behind the pool in the backyard. The landing zone for Styx was in a perfect line of sight to the pool and the patio area.