Archiver Manhunt

Reconnaissance

A trio of dark plated aerial drones glide into the airspace over the colony, from the outer atmosphere.

The leading aircraft bares the marking "01" in a dark crimson, stencil font. The following drones to the left and right are marked with "02", and "03" respectively.

Though these unmanned machines hold a distance of several kilometers apart, they maintain an accurate arrowhead formation.

Dipping just under the clouds, the aerial drones reach a flight path in which only a few, scattered clouds could obstruct their view.

Orienting the underbelly camera lense the unmanned aircraft set their respective boundaries for observation.

The camera apparatus toggles rotation between the multiple lenses, focusing view on the terrain below.

The camera feed activates with a moment of static before properly transmitting the visuals of their designated areas.

As the visuals come to clarity revealing a cluster of brightly lit cities, the drones sync their feeds together to create a seamless video stream encompassing the range of the three aerial vehicles.

Continuing their flight path, the drones spot a city engulfed in flames off to the distance.

The leftmost drone breaks off from their flight pattern to investigate the anomaly, while the remaining two rearrange their diagonal positioning from each other to fly parallel in relation to one another.

Further down their path, the drone marked "03" picks up unusual electrical activity near another city.

Recognizing this as worth investigation, the aerial vehicle departs from its remaining partner to advance towards the area.

Maintaining the predetermined flight path, the original leading drone uncovers activity in a neighboring city, of the engulfed settlement.

Flashes of light disperse from the countless armed human inhabitants below, as they fire upon an even greater number of rabid humanoid foxes beings.

Continued surveillance unveils a number of armed vehicles arriving from behind the human front lines, contributing to the rain of projectiles being hurled at the oncoming attackers.

Not long after its initiation to spectate the conflict, the former leading drone loses its visual feed, before ceasing to respond to communications entirely, between the other unmanned aerial vehicles.

Recognizing "01"'s disconnection, the leftmost drone, "02", diverts from its current observation to investigate the status on the initial leading aircraft.

Positioning its camera upwards to scan the horizon of the flight path the unmanned craft begins its search for the non-responding drone.

"02"'s video feed spots a group of four faint lights blinking in and out of sight, before losing connection to the remaining drone.

Completing its surveillance of the abnormal electrical activity, "03", comes to the realization that it is now the sole surviving aircraft of the patrol group after noticing "02"'s failure to maintain connection.

Based on the shared footage from it's recently downed partner the drone concludes the loss to be the result of hostile aircraft, through a series of pre-written scripts and programing.

Realizing it had little time to continue its observation, before inevitable destruction comes to pass, the drone proceeds to its final waypoint.

Passing a vast forest, the aerial vehicle spots a sizeable field, of which is mostly level with few interruptions to the smooth grassy terrain.

Having the found a potential landing zone for insertion personnel, the unmanned craft, makes this location with his GPS interface.

After completing its final objective the drone proceeds to prime the accumulated surveillance footage for long range transmission.

The aerial vehicle establishes connection with an external source, with a clear digital connection.

Uploading the footage and geographical data to the external device, "03" begins to dispense it's flares in anticipation of an iminate heat seaking missile.

Such action proves in vain as no projectiles are fired during the duration the drone spent discharging flares.

To compensate for it now vulnerable state the unmanned craft begins to turn randomly and violated through the skies.

Though the drone continues to anticipate the imminent attack, no projectiles converge onto it.

Nearing completion of the upload, "03" takes a non recorded scan of the airspace around itself.

Finding the surrounding area to be clear, the drone ceases its evasive maneuvers.

The data transfer completes, just before a bolt of bright grey energy is fired onto the relaxed drone.

The craft explodes into a ball of flame, sending what remained of its metallic body down to the ground as shrapnel sized pieces.

A warm colored fire covers the remnants of the drone, while smoke chimneys upwards into the skies above.

From outer orbit of the planetary colony, a dark plated satellite maintains geographical lock with the area containing the fallen drones.

Concluding its download of their collective video feeds and additional data, the space faring machine compiles the received information into a compact digital file, before sending it off to yet another source.

A passing comet illuminates the satellite revealing the decal of a ram in crimson ink, on the side of the machine, only for the darkness of space to conceal the marking soon after.