The other seats in the mission control center were occupied by more junior pilots. Some were in training and others were ready to take on missions. Hail thought it was important that all the Nucleus mission pilots were in attendance. He wanted them to see and feel and experience what a mission was all about. Even though most of the pilots had firsthand experiences with death, it was important that they really understood what it meant. The finality of taking someone’s life. He wanted to watch his junior pilot’s reactions as their target fell. Hail had to know if there were any weak links in the chain and if his crew was sincere and dedicated. The youngest member of his crew was sixteen, but Hail knew that children as young as seven years old had served in the Revolutionary War. As many as twenty-percent of the Civil War soldiers were younger than eighteen. Of the more than 58,100 Americans who died in Vietnam, 11,465 KIAs were less than twenty years old. Hail understood that young people had been fighting and dying for the United States since the United States had become the United States, and Hail didn’t have a problem with it. If his young staff wanted to fight, at least he knew they would be safe on his ship.
Hail sat in his big command chair. Everything was in place. Thousands and thousands of hours of intelligence gathering, development, design, construction and planning, had all come down to this. Ten minutes from now, this mission would be over. Hail didn’t know how long all of the future missions would take to complete, but he really didn’t care. After the success of each mission, there would be one less terrorist in the world and that was just fine with him. A world with no terrorists sounded like a pretty good place to live.
The video feed from Styx was being sent to the large screen above Knox. It was more or less in the center of the room with Tran’s station to the right and Grant, Fox and Grayson’s stations to the left. That left five stations to Tran’s right that were being occupied by junior pilots and four more stations to Grayson’s left that sat four more junior pilots.
Hail watched the feed from Styx for a moment. The video being sent from the drone on the pole was a wide angle shot of the backyard of Chang’s compound. At the bottom of the frame, the pool had been bisected. Only half of the pool could be seen. That left room at the top of the frame that showed the patio and the porch.
One of Chang’s servant’s was outdoors and setting the breakfast table. Neither of Chang’s two girlfriends or Chang himself had exited the house this morning. Up to this point, the video that Eagles had recorded coincided with this morning’s schedule. If yesterday’s schedule matched today’s schedule, then Chang would emerge from the back sliding doors in about five minutes. His girlfriends would drift out of the home whenever they wanted. In the three days that Eagles had shot video, the girls had never emerged from the house before Chang. That was an important timing element for this mission. Chang was always the first one out, first to sit down at the table and first to start eating.
Typically, Hail would ask for a weather briefing from Mercier, but Hail could tell from Styx’s HD video feed that it was a beautiful morning in Kangdong. The sun was shining brightly and in the background the trees and bushes showed little sign of wind. The sensitive microphone on Styx picked up birds chirping, dishes at Chang’s table being set and somewhere in the distance a dog was barking.
“Is everyone good to go?” Hail asked his crew.
“Yes, Sir,” was heard all around.
“OK,” Hail said in an uplifting tone, “Here goes nothing.”
“What’s the status of the B-52s,” he asked.
Knox flipped through a few screens, read some data and said, “The B-52s are ready to strike.”
Hail nodded his head.
“Please open the hatch on Aerosmith,” Hail ordered.
Knox pressed an icon labeled Hatch Release and announced, “Hatch is open.”
“OK then. Launch the B-52s.” Hail told him.
“Lifting off now,” Knox reported.
From the top of the micro-drone called Aerosmith, a pico-drone called B-52s emerged.
The pico-hub was twelve millimeters long, or roughly half an inch. It was oblong in shape and seven millimeters wide. Two tiny rotors spun ferociously at its sides and made a sound like a bee. The craft even looked like a bee, hence its name B-52s. The tiny drone was light blue and off white. If it were viewed from the ground, the light blue would blend with the sky and if it was viewed against the pool bricks, then the white would help to mask its appearance.
“Communications?” Hail asked.
Shana Tran checked the signals and responded, “We are five by five.”
“Bring up the feed from B-52s on large screen number one,” Hail instructed.
Renner touched a few icons on his monitor and a bouncy video appeared above them.
“Wow,” Hail exclaimed. “Having a little trouble there, Alex?” Hail asked.
“Man, this bee drone is a bitch to fly. It’s too small to hold any auto-correcting electronics and even the slightest wind wants to blow it away.”
“And…” Hail asked.
“And there is no problem flying this little thing,” Knox told him. “It just takes a lot more flying skills than the other drones.”
“Good man,” Hail told him.
The crew watched the video as a clump of pine boughs drifted to the left of the screen and then disappeared from sight behind the drone.
“This is the hairy part,” Knox told them. “If I just touch one of these idy-bidy rotors to a single pine needle, then this thing is toast.”
Ahead were more bunches of pine needles. To the tiny drone, they were massive obstacles that had to be negotiated and avoided.
The video was not smooth or stable. The little drone seemed to jump and drift as Knox did his best to make his way out of the tree.
“Almost there,” Knox announced as he jammed his feet deep into his foot pedals.
Hail could see bright sunlight ahead and only a few of the green shafts of sharp needles were still in their way.
Knox bent both of his control sticks to the right and the video rocked and tilted violently to the right, before Knox corrected by angling both sticks back to the left.
Hail was getting dizzy watching the feed. He wondered if the others were as well.
“Clear,” Knox said, and the tiny pico-drone entered open sky for the first time in its short life.
Each of the B-52s prototypes were so small and delicate that after two flights, they were completely worn out. The heat created from the intense load on their rotors, burned through their bearings like they were made of butter instead of metal. This was the first flight for this particular unit, so the entire crew had high-hopes and kept their fingers crossed for luck.
A round of applause erupted and then quickly died away as B-52s darted out into the open.
“What’s the status of the target?” Hail asked.
Oliver Fox put four fingers on his screen and pinched them together, zooming Styx’s camera in closer to the breakfast table.
“At this exact moment, we are all clear,” Fox reported. “The table is set and no one is sitting at it. Drinks have been poured. No one is in the backyard.”
“Great,” Hail said. “Proceed with the bombing run,” he told Knox.
Renner said, “Good, because we are running out of flight time. B-52s has used up sixty-five percent of its battery.”
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Hail told Knox.
“Right, Skipper,” Knox replied, pushing both of his flight sticks forward.
The edge of green grass disappeared from view. Now all that was in front of them was a pool, the bricks that surrounded the pool and further ahead was the outdoor table.
“Commencing the bomb run,” Knox announced.
Knox was making less flight corrections as he had been while escaping from the tree, but the video was shakier than it had been with the micro-drone Aerosmith. Knox understood that the tiny flying drone was not very stable, but then it was only designed to last five minutes.