Kael looked at his own hands. They were the hands of a poet who had learned to fly a wolfpack. He wondered if there was any poetry left in the world, or if the targeting pack had finally devoured it all. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were clear. Cold. Like a drone’s lens.
Then he saw it. The floor. It was old ferrocrete, cracked and waterlogged. The Archivist’s console was bolted down, but the panel at his feet was a maintenance hatch, held by four rusted screws. targeting pack
“Pack, form on Wasp. Arrowhead. Low emissions.” Hornet-7, a flattened disc, peeled off to circle above, painting a bubble of electronic silence around them. Cicada-9, a bloated hexapod, scuttled along the floor, its cargo bay holding a spare power cell and a single, compact-shaped charge. Firefly-3, a stubby cylinder, clung to the ceiling like a metal limpet, its demo-tipped limbs ready to breach any door. Scarab-2 brought up the rear, a brutalist cube of armor and a 20mm cannon that could punch through a bank vault. Kael looked at his own hands
“Scarab. Suppression. Non-lethal area.” Scarab-2’s 20mm cannon didn’t fire a shell. It fired a sonic projectile—a focused, concussive blast of air designed to incapacitate. The round hit the floor two meters from the Archivist. The shockwave lifted him off his feet and slammed him against the far wall. He slid down, unconscious but breathing. He closed his eyes
“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.