“Send me the entire package,” Pete said, not knowing when he would have a chance to analyze it in the depth required.
He looked at the admiral and shrugged. “That’s why they call this a test,” he said. “And that’s why we’re building so many. We have a built-in failure rate of about one percent.”
Some of the still-airborne drones flew over to the splash zone of the errant drone and swooped low, as if to investigate their fallen comrade.
“Are they… curious?” said the admiral.
Hamlin laughed. “No — when it crashed, the other drones registered the object with their own sensors; now they’re seeking it out.”
“To kill it?”
“They might, if it wasn’t inside the five-mile safe zone of the island. Now they’re just checking it out.”
One of the drones that swooped closest to the water took off, flew back toward them and the island. It soared straight away from them in an odd zigzagging pattern, then returned to its original position in a figure eight maneuver. Above the others, it tipped its wings and dipped dramatically.
“What’s it doing?”
“Telling the other drones what it saw — that’s why none of them are following. It’s telling them there’s no target to pursue.”
“With those movements?”
“Yes. There’s no radio communication between the drones, which means there’s nothing for the enemy to intercept, nothing to jam. We emulated the ways honeybees communicate, the ‘waggle dance’ they do to communicate locations of nectar to each other with really remarkable precision. Bees use the bearing of the sun as a reference angle. We use true north. The drones ‘waggle’ on an angle from straight vertical; the magnitude of that angle indicates how far from true north the target is.”
“And the length of the waggle indicates the distance?”
“Almost,” said Pete. “It actually indicates the amount of energy needed to get to the target, so it takes into account headwinds, the strength of the sunlight, all those factors. So each drone can calculate whether or not it can make it, given the state of its energy reserves.”
“Fascinating,” said the admiral.
A petty officer entered the control tower. “Sir, two hundred drones are now in the air, ready to commence the test.”
“Very well,” said Hamlin. “Reducing the safety radius to one mile,” he said.
Warning lights came alive inside the control room. Pete once again used his key to complete the procedure.
“We’re temporarily reducing the safety radius for this test,” said Hamlin.
“I thought you said there was no communicating with the drones?”
“This is the one exception: the safety radius signal. But the drones can tell, by distance and bearing, that the signal has to emanate from this island. From a transponder at the very top of this tower, actually. It would be impossible for the enemy to jam, or duplicate, without actually sitting in this tower.” He turned a small knob, and a bright green circle on his display shrunk inward.
“Release the target,” said Hamlin, excitement in his voice.
“Aye, sir,” said a petty officer at the corner of the room, who spoke into a microphone.
Outside, a small cutter suddenly sped directly away from the island. It startled the admiral; it looked for all the world like someone was trying desperately to escape Eris Island. But no one reacted inside the tower, and he quickly discerned that it was part of the test. It was a beautiful white cutter, seemingly brand new. He guessed it was thirty-six feet long, a rigid-hull inflatable powered by water jets. Broad black crosses had been painted on its sides and deck, and the admiral knew these were markings to aid telemetry and observation; he’d seen similar markings on missiles during ICBM test shots years before. Huge rooster tails flew out behind the cutter; he estimated it was going at least 30 knots. While he knew suddenly it was a target, as a lifelong mariner, he found himself pulling for the boat.
Hamlin had binoculars to his eyes but was smiling broadly. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s unmanned.”
“Drones hunting drones,” said the admiral. No one reacted.
“Target is one hundred yards from shore,” said a petty officer at a radar screen.
“Very well,” said Hamlin.
Already the drones in the sky were reacting. They veered off, the whining of their engines increasing in pitch and volume. It wasn’t the roar of a military jet but the buzzing of a stinging insect. In seconds, six of them were zooming down the wake of the cutter, accelerating urgently. Soon they were directly over it, about twenty feet above its deck, in a V formation.
“Two hundred yards,” said the petty officer, counting down the distance as the ship raced away. “Fourteen hundred yards… sixteen… eighteen…”
With perfect timing, at the exact moment the petty officer would have said “two thousand yards,” the lead drone dropped its bomb. It exploded with a flash, and the crack of high explosive reached the tower a millisecond later. The front drone immediately veered upward, and the two behind it dropped their payloads on the ship even as it was exploding into pieces and sinking. The final drones dropped their bombs on what tiny pieces of floating wreckage still remained. It was over in seconds.
The drones, even faster and more nimble now without the weight of their bombs, immediately flew back toward the tower, to the cloud of drones that whined above them. The lead drone went through an elaborate dance: swoops, twitches, and rolls. The swarm of drones beneath it reacted to whatever news it was communicating, the urgency of the engines and their movements increasing in what, to the admiral, looked for all the world like a celebration. Their shadows crisscrossed the carpeted floor of the control tower as they flew overhead.
A few of the drones peeled off from the cloud and went back to the site of the explosion, but nothing remained, not a single shard of wreckage. The attacking drones, their message communicated, flew to an unseen part of the island. To reload, the admiral realized.
Hamlin put the binoculars down, and looked at the admiral with an ecstatic smile on his face.
“You’ve just seen the future of warfare,” said Hamlin, pointing straight up to the swarm of drones above them.
“Maybe so,” said the admiral, pointing out to sea. “But in the meantime, you’ve driven us all underwater.”
Eight miles away, an enemy submarine watched. Commander Jennifer Carlson was on the periscope.
“Something happening?” asked Banach, her second-in-command. He didn’t yet have her patience — a hunter’s patience.
“Yes,” she said. “Something.”
“Shall we get closer?” asked Banach.
She wanted to, badly. She could barely see the island from this distance, even with the scope in high power and raised as high as she dared. The electronic sensors in her boat were so crude as to be almost useless. But she needed to see what was going on. The island was ringed by jagged shoals, but she’d studied the charts, thought there were breaks she might slip through at periscope depth, get her right up to the beach. From there, she could snap some pictures, take some video, chart the locations of underground cables. It was sorely tempting. All submariners were born snoops. Next to shooting at things, it was the most fun you could have on a submarine, looking through the keyhole and seeing things you weren’t supposed to see.
And there was definitely something forbidden there, no matter how many times her clueless commanders dismissed her concerns. According to the few charts they had of it, the island was a medical research station, and had been for decades. They even had a few ancient satellite photos of it, showing two small buildings at the south end with animal pens and a small dock flying the yellow flag for quarantine. Old italicized warnings on the chart told vessels to stay away because of the presence of contagious diseases. While it seemed like dated information, this, more than the shoals, worried Carlson. Like Banach, she’d grown up in an area that was regularly ravaged by disease, and had an almost superstitious fear of infections and viruses. Her crew, who once a week cleaned everything to a sanitized gleam, would attest to it. She preferred targets she could shoot torpedoes at. Was the Alliance creating something smaller and more sinister?