“You should go too,” Lincoln says, not taking his eyes off the wall monitor.
“Not while Blackbird’s in the air.”
Tamara doesn’t anticipate problems with the autonomous helicopter but she wants to observe its behavior and correct any perturbations that might show up. She also wants to review an event that took place in the courtyard.
The photovoltaic boxes were an unknown going in. Tamara guessed they housed the components of a defensive swarm. True had come to the same conclusion, so Blackbird was instructed to take them out before the QRF went over the wall. Only a single component survived long enough to launch. True saw it. It targeted her—and that gave her MARC a chance to capture it on video—a streak of motion moving too fast for details to be perceived.
Tamara hunts down that scrap of video, replays it on a desk monitor, slowing it down, studying each frame.
None of the frames are clear, but she makes out a flattened diamond-shaped fuselage, and tilt rotors on long swept-back wings.
The design stirs a sense of recognition. She runs an image search, trying to identify the model, but finds no matches. She tries a relational search, looking for UAVs that share a design heritage. That produces several results, all based on an early kamikaze developed more than five years ago by the Chinese defense contractor Kai Yun Strategic Technologies. Back when Tamara’s colleague, Li Guiying, still worked for Kai Yun. It was possible, even likely, that Guiying had contributed to the design.
Tamara hisses softly, troubled at the way ideas travel and how they evolve. The Kai Yun device had a larger fuselage, and shorter wings set on ball joints. Its reported top speed didn’t come close to the device in the video—but it’s been five years.
Tamara considers sending the video segment to Guiying. She might be curious to see how the design has advanced. Tamara hesitates only because Guiying is sure to ask about the origin of the recording: where and when it was captured, under what circumstances, how the device performed, and if it was successful…
It came close to being successful.
Tamara shivers, frightened by what might have been. In an alternate timeline, where the PV boxes were hidden, the swarm might have survived to launch an attack. Under that scenario, the QRF could not have reacted fast enough to successfully defend themselves. They would have been overwhelmed.
She holds off on sending the video to Li Guiying.
Better to wait until after news of the raid goes public.
Rogue Lightning
Lincoln watches Blackbird’s position shift north across the three-dimensional map, drawing closer to the wreckage of the downed Arkinson. With the wind behind it, the little Kobrin 900-s moves swiftly despite the drag caused by Juliet riding on the tether.
Displayed alongside the map is a feed from the helicopter’s infrared nose camera. It shows a desolate plain cluttered with grit and stone, a line of barren hills ahead, and at the foot of those hills, the white-hot signature of burning fuel.
The appearance of the three Arkinsons is a puzzle that needs to be solved. None of ReqOps’ pre-mission intelligence suggested Hussam controlled a sophisticated robotic air force. The absence argues for the existence of a third party, a hired gun with the resources and discipline to mount a serious response at a few minutes’ notice.
Know your enemy.
Lincoln hopes to find clues in the wreckage that will tell him who that hired gun is.
It’s a risk, of course. This side trip is going to chew into Blackbird’s fuel, and if the two surviving Arkinsons return, Juliet will make an easy target. But Lincoln still has high-altitude eyes on the region. That will buy some warning time—enough for the Hai-Lins to circle back and engage.
Juliet speaks over comms. “Coming up on the debris field.”
“Roger that.”
A Hai-Lin overflew the crash site earlier, mapping debris strewn over two hundred meters. Lincoln mutes his mic. “You watching, Hayden?” he asks his young data wrangler.
Hayden flashes him a thumbs-up without turning around, repeating Lincoln’s earlier instructions: “We’re looking for identifying numbers, stickers, stuff like that.”
“Exactly. But if you see anything you think is worth mentioning, mention it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m watching too,” Tamara says from her desk.
He glances at Renata. She’s still strapped into the recliner, using the mediums of her VR goggles and black-lace gloves to guide the Hai-Lins as they escort the contracted transport helicopter.
Juliet speaks again: “Looks like the tail section.”
Lincoln taps his mic back on, returns his attention to the monitor. Blackbird moves slowly, a hundred fifty feet above the desert. Its camera swivels, zooming in on a charred tail section embedded in a shallow trench plowed into the hardpan.
“Blackbird,” Juliet says, “circle it.”
Blackbird obeys, flying slowly around the object, recording it from all sides.
“Burned clean,” Tamara says. “I don’t see any identifiers.”
There’s no time to pull the wreck apart, look for serial numbers, so Lincoln says, “Juliet, move on. Let’s take a look at the rest of it.”
“Blackbird,” she says, “survey next target.”
Blackbird advances to circle a broken fuselage, crushed wings, and fire-blackened engines with low flames still flickering where fuel has soaked into the ground.
Hayden says, “I’ve got nothing, Lincoln. No numbers, no marks. If anything was there, it must have burned off. Wait—”
Lincoln sees it too: the edge of what might be a circular emblem. It’s on a torn section of fuselage facing away from the fire. “Juliet, have Blackbird circle that section again, try to get in closer. We’re looking at an emblem on the fuselage.”
She repeats the instructions for Blackbird. The helicopter descends. As it does, Juliet disappears in a cloud of dust stirred up by the rotor wash. “Pull up!” Lincoln snaps. “We cannot risk engine failure.”
Blackbird rises again as the wind carries the dust away.
“Blackbird,” Juliet says, “switch on your searchlight. Let’s see if that shows us anything.”
Lincoln almost aborts the command—operating under lights always feels wrong to him, going against years of training—but he catches himself. Juliet is alone out there. High-altitude surveillance shows no other activity.
The bright beam of Blackbird’s searchlight flashes on. It strikes the wreckage, finds the emblem. The curve of the fuselage hides most of it. Lincoln can see only the top of the design—twin lightning bolts intersecting a dark border—but that’s enough to make him feel like he’s just stepped off the map into unknown territory haunted by ghosts.
“I need to know what that is,” he says in a clipped voice.
“Roger that, boss,” Juliet answers. “I’m going to descend.”
Lincoln checks the fuel. “You’ve got a three-minute margin before you need to head north,” he warns her.
“Not a problem. Blackbird, put me on the ground.”
The helicopter maintains its elevation but unspools the tether, lowering Juliet until she can step off the troop carrier. Hayden adds a feed from her helmet cam to the command post display.
Juliet is careful not to block the searchlight’s beam as she crouches to look at the emblem. The wash of white light reveals all of its familiar details: a half-circle split into three sections by angled lightning bolts, spangled stars in the dark-blue outer fields, a bright orange sun in the center, and across the base, a name and a motto: Rogue Lightning – Anywhere, Anytime.
At the sight of it Lincoln shudders. Preternatural dread. His skin puckers, pulling unevenly at his scars, the pressure defining their shape, their presence, reminding him of things he’s tried to forget.