Targeting Pack -
“Contact. Human, singular. Sublevel 3, section Bravo-6. Bio-signature 82% match.” Kael’s heart, the real one in his chest, beat a slow, deliberate rhythm. He zoomed in. The figure wore a heavy coat, a respirator mask, and a hood. One hand tapped a keyboard. The other held a small, metallic case – the schematics.
Today, Peaseblossom was not alone. It flew as the lead element of a “targeting pack” – a five-drone hunting unit designed for one purpose: to find, fix, and finish a single high-value target. The pack consisted of Wasp-14 (Recon/Sniper), Hornet-7 (EWAR/Decoy), Firefly-3 (Demolitions), Cicada-9 (Cargo/Resupply), and the pack’s brutal heart, Scarab-2 (Kinetic Strike). They were a wolfpack made of carbon fiber and shaped explosives, tethered to Kael by a quantum-entangled comms link that not even the worst EM storms could sever.
The drone’s designation was Wasp-14, but its handler, a gaunt man named Kael, called it “Peaseblossom.” He was sentimental that way, a flaw the military-psych evaluators had flagged three times. He’d argued, successfully, that a spot of poetry helped him fly the machine better. The brass, needing every pilot, had let it slide. targeting pack
They fled back through the rusting corridors, a nightmare swarm of metal and purpose. Behind them, the Archivist’s substation crumbled into silence. Kael withdrew his consciousness from the pack, the familiar weight of his own body returning like a lead blanket. He sat up, gasping, sweat cold on his face.
But as the pack’s remote feeds went dark, Kael replayed the moment: the old man’s eyes, wide with terror behind the respirator mask, the way his hand had clawed for the gun. He hadn’t been a monster. He had been a tired, frightened archivist. “Contact
The mission was simple. The pack would penetrate the exclusion zone, locate the Archivist’s bio-signature, and eliminate him before he could sell the schematics to the Carthaginian Collective. A single 9mm round from Peaseblossom’s integral railgun would do it. Clean. Quiet. Deniable.
“Wasp, you have the point,” Kael murmured, the words forming as data packets. “Breathe on them.” Bio-signature 82% match
“Wasp to Nest. Target acquired. Requesting final authorization.”
