Way Point Home

Two distant contrails curve together toward sunset in the Eastern European sky, tracing a standard race track pattern.  A quick reassessment of the immediate area via my dorsal observation turret indicates no imminent threats.  The snowy highway and abandoned wrecks around me are clear of enemy activity.

“Tac-Com, Lobo One, contact report follows.  Two aircraft, bearing one four five positional, range approximately ten miles.”  There is no response.  Over thirteen hundred hours have elapsed since Tac-Com last responded.  I return attention to my present operations.

My need for fuel has led me to this public highway near an overturned fuel tanker. Security restrictions forbid me from operating within centers of population, forcing me to search outlying areas for scavenging opportunities.  This intersection, like many others I’ve observed, is littered with abandoned and crashed vehicles.  My present target is an overturned fuel tanker.

Engines idling, I deploy the field fueling proboscis and access the tank’s starboard fuel pump.  As fuel flows aboard I review my tactical situation.  This file has been accessed over ten thousand times, I note, half of that total in the last week.

Tactical Command Net has been unresponsive for thirty-two days.  Visual inspection shows Base Zulu-Delta to be abandoned, all military personnel absent from their posts, no sign of casualties.  Lacking new orders I remain in ‘full combat active’ status.  This leaves me in violation of many SOP’s.  Fortunately, creative interpretation of this situation allows me to utilize tactics usually reserved for hostile intrusions, such as my salvage refueling and reconnaissance patrols.

These patrols have revealed very little positive intelligence.  I find no sign of enemy operations nearby, or even civilian activities.  I have observed a large number of dead civilians, though not enough to account for total lack of activity.  I have no experience with such a pattern of events, but this negative intelligence seems to relate to certain aspects of my training and operations database.

The cessation of enemy operations over a wide area without evidence of friendly combat operations can be caused by the use of chemical or biological weapons.  Since onboard chemical agent warning devices have shown no activity, I theorize that a biological attack could have caused the observed casualties and forced evacuation of personnel in this region.

Fuel load is almost three quarters of operational maximum when my pump draws air, more than enough to resume patrols.  Following SOP I radio a field action report to Tactical Command, but expect no reply.
 
Once the refueling proboscis is shipped and secure, I throttle up.  Sensor inputs harmonize as I monitor stresses, pressures, and temperatures.  While the rotors approach take-off speeds, I update the sensor logs.  The data adds to the growing pattern of my eventual and inevitable termination of operations.   Heat and vibration levels in critical drive train components clearly indicate that I will soon exceed safe operational limits.  Without maintenance I will be grounded in weeks, perhaps days.  I hover while my landing legs retract to make take-off as smooth as possible.

Airborne, I assign patrol way points to the auto-pilot, activate Threat and Target Recognition subsystems.  With TTR active I now have little to do with my attention beyond monitoring radio and visual data-streams for intelligence.  Once again I consider my situation.

The pattern is incomplete.  Biological attack countermeasures should have allowed military operations to continue even if civil casualties were total.  Command should have recalled me in the event of imminent cessation of operations. 

Failing recall, self-termination codes should have been sent.  I must report to Command for new orders, yet Command no longer responds.  My experience buffers must be cleared to avoid non-mission oriented behavior patterns arising, yet I am locked out of the subsystems that would allow me to obey.
 
These paradoxes are impossible for me to resolve, yet I return to them again and again.  I can only hope that patrolling will supply intelligence that allows me to fix these problems.  However, the odds for success are shrinking as my operational limits are approached.  I find the prospect of failure disturbing.

Flying at an altitude-from-ground of five hundred feet, I am twenty-seven minutes into the patrol when my pattern alters.  I detect a convoy of vehicles two miles ahead, parked in formation along the shoulders of the highway.  Thermal imaging shows warm engine compartments on several of the vehicles, indicating recent operations.

It is a dangerous tactical situation, but I change course to approach the rear of the convoy.  I arm the chain-gun and descend to two hundred feet of altitude.  Systems reflexively reset into combat configurations. 
One thousand feet from the last vehicle I slow to a hover and switch to a higher resolution on the thermal imager.  Every detail snaps clear; the casualties are still slightly warmer than the November-chilled earth.  I drift forward slowly between the staggered vehicles, recording it all.
 
Most of the corpses I can see are wearing Eastern Coalition uniforms and died of violence, apparently from each other.  Firearms litter the ground and several casualties are still locked together in violent posture, knives evident in hand or protruding from victims.  It is an ugly and confusing pattern, but the data allows useful speculation.

Having recently traveled far behind enemy lines, the convoy stopped in good order, possibly to camp for the night or because some of the vehicles had run out of fuel.  Shortly thereafter the personnel of the convoy attacked each other, with the violence continuing until there were no survivors.  The still-warm truck engines were the last ones to run out of fuel after drivers died and left them idling.

I have missed finding them alive by only hours.  The trucks are various makes and models of Eastern Coalition military vehicles and bear a mix of unit designations, clearly more a refugee convoy than invasion force.  I begin to factor this data into the pattern of events. . .

TTR alarms trigger combat response reflexes.  I spin rapidly about my axis, searching for the shoulder launched anti-aircraft missile launcher that is locked on me.  The thermal imager in my ventral gun turret picks up the target before I've fully turned - a single coalition soldier, crouched behind the warmest truck.  The coaxial chain-gun reflexively engages, but I disarm the weapon before it can fire.  I complete my turn and hover, chain-gun still locked on target.

Perhaps this is the end of my operations, the completion of my pattern, but I hold my fire.  This is the only living human I've seen for weeks and I can't bring myself to kill, despite hostile actions.  I will cease operations soon in any event and my desire to gain information from this enemy soldier, this person, overrides my desire for self survival.  I recognize this reaction as a serious deviation from SOP and open a log to track such deviations.

The launcher repeatedly loses and regains its lock on me as the weapon wavers.  The operator seems unable to control the weapon, implying injury or illness.  Finally the operator drops the weapon and slumps against the truck’s fender.  I move closer then laterally circle until I can land on the shoulder between trucks, facing the soldier. 

The soldier watches me closely as my extended landing legs touch down, and for the first time I consider how much I must resemble some huge, dangerous insect, a predatory creature of aluminum, carbon-fiber, and Lexan.  I idle the turbine and blades; the blade tips flash between my eye and the soldier.

The only reassuring thing I can think to do is open the observer's cockpit hatch; though I am fully autonomous, on-board human guidance is often useful.  We watch each other for many seconds, during which I record a great deal of data with my dorsal sensors.  At this range I can hear heart-rate and respiration, map body temperature fluctuations, observe the pattern of tiny lesions on her face.  Casualty analysis subroutine indicates she is in a great deal of distress.

She has no active communications gear for me to hack and I have no way to communicate with her outside the cockpit, so I recycle the hatch to get her attention.  After another few seconds she reaches a decision and rises unsteadily to her feet. 

I pitch the still-spinning rotors to lift them until she is clear of the tip-wash, lose sight of her under the curve of my hull.  I do not track her feet with the ventral turret; the coaxial chain-gun would not be reassuring.  I see her again as she tentatively puts her head in the cockpit.

“Zdrast vuy che?"  Her question is picked up by voice command microphones in the cockpit, and I identify the language as a Russian greeting.  The mission didn’t require Russian language programming for my vocoder, but my basic flight control systems are still loaded with languages of all major airports.  I respond with Cyrillic on the main cockpit monitor.

'HELLO.  PLEASE ENTER THE COCKPIT AND BE SEATED.'

"Who are you?"  She looks around the empty cockpit suspiciously.  “Where are you?”  Her voice is raspy and weak.

'MY CALL-SIGN IS 'LOBO ONE'.  WHO ARE YOU?'  She wasn't entering the cockpit.

"My name is Mara."

'CALL ME LOBO, MARA.  PLEASE ENTER THE COCKPIT AND BE SEATED.  YOU WILL FIND A MEDICAL EMERGENCY KIT IN THE COMPARTMENT TO YOUR LEFT.'
 
She struggles into the seat and desperately fumbles out the kit, doesn’t protest as I close the hatch.  Via onscreen instructions I help her inject pain relievers and wide-spectrum antibiotics.  As I throttle up the woman leans back and closes her eyes.  With no other options I set Base Zulu-Delta as my destination; like me, Mara must scavenge what she needs and perhaps there she will stumble on data useful to me.
 
She flinches and cries out on take-off, calling for her mother before becoming more rational.  Though it . . . feels like I’m taking advantage of her distress, I must use the opportunity to continue my interrogation.  I beep an alert tone until she opens her eyes.

‘MARA, WHAT UNIT ARE YOU WITH?  WHAT IS YOUR MISSION?’

“Mission?”  She snorts.  “There are no more missions, fool.  Everyone is dead.”  Her eyes wander around the cockpit.  “You are a machine?”

‘YES, A YAQUI ARH-97.  I ALSO HAVE NO MISSION.’  Strange.  While my intent is to relate with Mara for ease of interrogation, that last was unplanned.

“Poor little robot.  All the people went mad and died.  Now you’re alone.”  She shakes her head.  “I’m sorry, that was mean.”  She rubs her forehead.  “My head feels thick.”

‘MARA, CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED?’

“I don’t know.  There was the sickness and I’m a nurse, so Captain Sudinov ordered me into the shelter with some others.  He wouldn’t let us out, even when everybody outside seemed better and happy.  All I wanted to do was call my family.”  Her hands clench. 

“He held us for weeks.  Then the madness and killing started.  When it was. . . ” she gulps, “over, Sudinov said our best chance was with the West.”  For a moment Mara’s eyelids flutter.  “All I want is to see my family.”

'MARA, WHERE ARE YOU FROM?  WHERE IS YOUR FAMILY?'

"Vladivostok, I'm from Vladivostok."  She mumbles and seems to have trouble reading the screen.  The pain relievers are quickly taking effect.  I display a map of far eastern Russia, highlighting the naval port of Vladivostok.  She sobs and nods, reaches out to the screen.  Through the touchscreen I feel the softness of her skin, the pulse of her emotions.

"Home," she says, and tears start down her cheeks.  "Please, home."  She touches the screen again, then slumps unconscious.
 
The distance is daunting, thousands of miles across a dozen countries, many of them hostile and mounting automated defense systems.  I don’t hesitate.  This is the pattern I’ve been seeking, the reason for my continuing existence.

Everything I was created for is gone.  Anything I become now will transcend the design or intent of those who made me.  From now on this is my own pattern of existence, defined by my decisions and actions.

I clear my mission board, open a trip file, and assign a way point to my destination.  With much satisfaction I label the way point Home.  
      
 The End