Hyperion, however, was different.
Whereas the baseline CPS system delivered a high-explosive package, Hyperion was fitted with a very different payload. Nine miles from the assigned target area, drag fins deployed on the aft missile body, not unlike those on Mk 82 Snakeye bombs. Thisslowed the missile rapidly and gave stabilization. Once subsonic speeds were achieved, the reconnaissance/strike package deployed.
Here DARPA’s genius shone. Five hundred feet above Al-Jaghbub Airfield, Hyperion’s clamshell nose cone separated, and eighteen drones went flying into the night.
That was when the real party began.
63
The Maghreb
Al-Jaghbub Airfield
0136 Local Time
For six and a half seconds the drones tumbled through the sky like darts tossed into the air. Their flight-control software and propellers remained inactive. The delay in power-up was intentional, allowing for natural aerodynamic stabilization. Once slowed, and more or less righted, their quad-engine propulsion systems unfurled and kicked to life. Propellers spun and AI software took command.
Immediately the swarm began coordinating.
There were eighteen drones in two variants. The larger, six in all, were the “lookers” of the package. With high-resolution cameras and advanced processors, they served as coordinators of the strike—in essence, commanders of a tiny digital platoon.
The lookers oriented themselves over the target area, photos of which had been hastily uploaded into their onboard databases before launch, and then dispersed over the airfield. Coordinating on a frequency-hopping data link, they arranged themselves ina hexagon formation. This allowed the swarm to evaluate all potential targets from multiple angles. If any of the six drones were shot down or suffered a malfunction, the survivors would reposition to compensate.
Feeds from six low-light cameras were automatically relayed via satellite to a command bunker at Sixth Fleet headquarters in Italy. Operators there could intervene to make adjustments, but tonight none did so. At least, not yet.
The swarm was perfectly capable of making its own decisions.
A flood of imagery processing began. The lookers easily distinguished dozens of human forms across the airfield. Some lay motionless, implying they were out of the fight, although the algorithms kept an eye on them—soldiers playing dead was as old as warfare itself. Once all potential targets had been logged and prioritized, the assassins were dispatched.
The remaining twelve drones had hovered above the fray. These were the hunter-killers, the miniature kamikazes. They were roughly the size of a man’s hand, and a much simpler design than their brethren performing overwatch. Flight body, camera, processor, one projectile. Every component was an off-the-shelf acquisition—albeit a shelf in DARPA’s lethal black closet.
The twelve drones coordinated, dispersed, and descended, each beelining toward a different potential target. They approached to within three meters of the human forms, then transitioned to a hover at eye level and attempted to make an identification. Their rules of engagement were programmable, and tonight had been set, again prior to launch, to the least restrictive criteria. Any human within the eight-square-mile footprint of Al-Jaghbub Airfield whose facial profile was not confirmed as being one of ten friendlies—Task Force 99, two pilots, and Gunther Klaus—would be immediately engaged.
As the hunter-killers went about their deadly business, the operator in Naples made his first adjustment. He commanded two of the lookers to fly to the hangar and try to find a way inside. Penetrating buildings to conduct room-to-room surveillance was well within Hyperion’s skill set. The pair flew to the corrugated building and began circling its exterior like hunting dogs in search of a scent.
So far, Hyperion was working precisely as DARPA’s designers had envisioned: a technical marvel with lethal efficiency. A weapon as dispassionate as it was relentless.
To those on the ground, it was something else entirely.
—
For reasons he had never understood, and in spite of a lifetime of exposure to the extreme decibel levels of combat—gunfire, explosions, jet engines—Ding Chavez still had remarkably acute hearing. More than once it had saved his life. Which was why, as he lay on the warm dirt searching, sighting, and firing, he suddenly froze.
In modern warfare, there was no sound a soldier wanted to hear less than the one that caused Ding to go motionless. Stock-still behind his glass, he tuned out the crescendo around him and focused on one narrow frequency band. He heard no change in pitch to suggest acceleration. No Doppler shift to indicate relative motion. Only the high-pitched buzz of a drone hovering behind him.
Not good.
Ever so slowly, he turned and saw the source. Directly in front of him was a drone the size of a softball. Its whirring propellers seemed unusually quiet—engineers, he knew, were getting better at reducing acoustic signatures. Poised like a flying omen, one redLED light blinked near its cyclops camera lens. Beneath the lens was an even more terrible sight. A steel cylinder the size of a lipstick tube.
A projectile barrel.
It wasn’t lost on Ding that the drone had paused the perfect distance away. Far enough that he couldn’t club it with his rifle. Close enough that the operator couldn’t miss if he chose to take the shot.
If there even is an operator…
It took every bit of resolve, all the steel he had in him, to remain motionless. He recalled what Clark had said minutes earlier.No face coverings of any kind.
Was this why? Would the drone identify him as a friendly?
