900 kilometers south-east of Lograin, 09H30, 19th of May, 2771
The ScoutEagle MA-17 Reconnaissance Drone persisted at its set altitude of twelve thousand meters, the unmanned craft’s systems retransmitting the acquired data along a string of relay drones that stretched to the north-west like pearls on a necklace. Five such pearl-strings advanced parallel along a south-easterly course, the edges of their twenty kilometer-wide target-terrain overlapping so mission analysts could later compile a detailed map of the Mining Quadrant.
The drone constituted the lead element of the center-most pearl-string, its directional tail-antennae pointing back towards the nearest data-relay drone more than a hundred kilometers away. The trailing element’s only answer to the torrent of raw data came in the form of an occasional ping, allowing the lead know its antenna’s aim was true.
Operation Widescan 3 differed from its predecessors in two important ways. The previous operation’s drones had merely made use of passive detection equipment, while the current leading drones were freshly equipped with active ground-mapping radar. It was also the first mission tasked to cross the 45º radial line, beyond which several million hectares of exclusively plantation land was to be found.
The Ground-Mapping Radar system possessed one significant advantage and one compromising handicap over earlier sensors. Unlike its predecessors, which could only passively detect the UVB and long infra-red components of the electromagnetic spectrum, the GMR produced a high-gain radar beam in the microwave frequency that not only detected all surface structures, including those hidden beneath the more sophisticated camouflage nets, but also most subsurface excavations of military value. The beam streaked across the terrain over fifty times per second in ten meter-wide swaths, the raw return signal being immediately redirected to Lograin Air Base’s operational headquarters for analysis.
The system’s weak point, however, was that a sufficiently advanced passive radar system could possibly detect operating GMRs, the diffracting effect as its beam passed through certain airborne obstacles acting as a possible source of detection, not to mention the signal-scattering effect that occurred whenever the beam came into contact with rockier soils.
So far, the center lead drone had advanced unmolested, and apparently undetected, over the course of more than seven thousand kilometers, and was nearing the end of its outward leg, where it would, along with its flanking companions, execute a carefully choreographed about-face and head for home.
Shortly after it passed the seventy one hundred mark, however, the autonomous aircraft’s fate was abruptly sealed. The drone’s forward ocular, existing only for flight navigation and obstacle avoidance, barely had time to register an abrupt change in the incident luminosity before the entire front portion of the craft disintegrated.
As the leading craft’s flaming remains initiated their plummeting journey back to earth, its two nearest brothers placidly maintained their heading. Had they been piloted aircraft, their pilots would have experienced an “oh shit!” moment and bugged out in time to give warning of the attack, with the additional bonus of preserving their lives and equipment. Instead both continued on their courses until, as if on cue, both were obliterated.
Moments later, someone at Lograin Air Base suddenly stopped drinking his coffee and experienced his own personal “oh shit!” moment, and then he ordered the five pearl-string’s trailing elements to update their status and bug out.
The most advanced trailing elements’ CPUs reclassified themselves as the new leading elements, transmitted the video data of their former leaders’ abrupt demise, and initiated a lazy turn for home.