Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer

“Go left. Left! Between the trees.”
“Rule nineteen: do not follow a road.”
“Not the gap on the right. The gap on the left. Left!”
Tersi rests a hand on my shoulder and cuts into my comms.
“Check definition: road. Query application of rule. Go left.”
“Revision: indicated route is not in contravention.”
I watch the view shift until rows of trunks are hurtling past on either side. Muting the line, I pat their hand.
“I don’t know how you do it. Every day I hate the asshat who mandated A.I. for frontline ops.”
“I’m immune. Spend four years seconded from tactical to A.I. training and command clarification becomes second nature.”
“Must make it easier.”
They pat me on the head.
“Well, dealing with the A.I. is.”
“Set myself up for that.”
“True. Right, the swarm are approaching the first marker. What’s on the menu?”
I check my defensive breakdown.
“We’ve got Taranis engaging the top cover, so we’re up against gatling cannon, rapid-fire missile batteries, and net casters. Plus the usual hawks.”
They slap my head.
“Wired trees!”
“Altitude plus twenty.”
I see the view rise. The makeshift wall of cable-strung branches passes below.
“Mission default.”
The view drops again. My display lights with red and blue markers.
“Red Flight engage. Blue flight engage. Green flight engage.”
Tersi crouches down by me.
“Green flight already?”
“They’re looking to drive us down to the gatlings. Standard tactic is to accelerate under the hawks and missiles.”
“So green flight are a pre-emptive response. When the gatlings pop their hatches…”
“They’ll be ready.”
“What are you payload wings?”
“Yellow flight: double stack of Darts. Standard 20-kilo HE. One in four is split-load with incendiary. One in ten has special ordnance instead.”
“Which we’re not mentioning. Out of curiosity, though: razors or pellets?”
“Duriken.”
“They went ahead with those? All hell will break loose when warfare monitors find out.”
“There’s a Red Wolf flight in a holding pattern, ready for clear up.”
“How exactly do you ‘clear up’ depleted uranium using flyers?”
“Seeding strike on their munitions piles.”
“So it’s not our depleted uranium mines they’ll find. The enemy was planning a war crime. Lucky we stalled it, etcetera. Good headlines, pats on the back all round.”
“You got the whole thing in one. I had to explain it some.”
“Which is why you run them and not the other way round.”
I check the statuses.
“We’re through. Took down eight out of ten of theirs, lost half of ours. You want to add the rest to the delivery or loop them back?”
“That doubles the strike size. Add them.”
“All flights go yellow.”
An extra hundred lights turn yellow. I watch views shift as they join the strike formations.
“Looking good.”
All the views go dazzlingly bright, then blink out.
Tersi leans forward.
“Surely that’s too soon.”
They’re not wrong. I bring up the Red Wolf station scans: a collage built from views when each is pointing the right way.
Flames. A sea of flames. I call for statuses. Nothing.
Tersi flicks her comms to ‘all’.
“This is Home Flight. Op Abort. If you’ve got anything, bring it back.”
They glance at me.
“I’d heard about a low flying drone response based on a banned World War One weapon. A Livens Flame Projector. It was banned for being too horrific. Fired a hundred-metre cone of napalm.”
I watch the flames.
“Mounted in towers, two hundred metre range, pitched towards the right altitude. No humans to incinerate.”
I glance at Tersi.
“The atrocities restart here.”
She frowns.
“True. No way they’ll hold back.”