The Long Dark by B.J. Farmer (reading women .TXT) 📕

One of the few conversations Aadesh and I had during that time dealt with the drone. He explained that he had to take the camera apart to place a filter inside.  He also said that he had found some other useful stuff in the maintenance room, a few doors down from where we were staying, including a bank of IR LEDs, which I had no clue what was, and was in no state to ask too many questions, but he said it might increase the ability to see in the dark.

When he was finished, it looked like it had a tumor hanging from the bottom, the camera had several turns of what looked like electric tape holding it together. I doubted it would ever get off the ground. I was wrong. We had to wait a day or so for the wind to die down before taking it on its maiden journey, but the damn thing worked. And it worked better than I ever expected.

***

Aadesh and I took the drone to the roof. We wouldn’t have to be out there during the actual flight, which surprised me. In fact, Aadesh piloted the drone from the warm confines of the ER. He did, however, take the first flight with the drone he hadn’t done all the work on to make sure the electrical noise from the various pieces of equipment wouldn’t interfere with the controls. Once he deemed it safe for flight, he switched out drones.

It was quickly decided that the bank of extra IR LEDs wasn’t needed because of the amount of lighting around the base. That was good because running the LEDs, Aadesh estimated, would use several minutes of flight time. Without the modifications, the drone could stay in the air for roughly thirty minutes. The first time out, Aadesh plotted a preset course for the drone to fly, mainly because he was too nervous about flying it himself.

Aadesh pressed a button. I began to worry something was wrong, as there was no image coming through on the laptop. He flicked a switch on the controller, and a picture of the hospital and the surrounding area began to materialize into a bright green hue. Aadesh grunted something as he tabbed through the user interface on the laptop. He mumbled something about a Fstop. Within a couple seconds, the image began to darken slightly to the point where there was enough contrast in the feed that a discernable, albeit grainy, image of a large H for hospital appeared on the screen.

“I hope dis works,” Aadesh said, not taking his eyes off the laptop. With one push of a button, the drone began to move. After maybe a minute of flight time, it settled over a sizeable hanger-type building. The surrounding area slowly resolved, Aadesh, again, expertly changed the camera settings. He also increased the elevation of the drone so we could see more ground real estate beneath it. The runway, and the blinking lights associated with it, slowly came into view, along with several other buildings.

“Are you seeing whad I am seeing?”

Aadesh had warned me that I was to be sober during the first flight. I mostly accommodated his wishes. I was coherent. Still fucked up, but coherent. “Shit. How could I not see it?”

Hundreds if not thousands of bodies littered the two large runways. There were what appeared to be large craters pocking the ground. I assumed that the area had been shelled by mortar or by some other means. It was hard to put words to what I was seeing, but warzone seemed apt.

What looked like a roughly straight line of flashing Christmas lights facing the opposite side of the drone’s location and extended the entire length of the runways, ended up being gun emplacements. Looking closer, or as close as possible, given the altitude of the drone, there seemed to have been a fence erected around the perimeter of the base. Dotting that perimeter were the gun emplacements. They were hard to see, but I counted ten in all, that we could see, anyway.

The thing is, I couldn’t see what our guys were shooting at. There didn’t seem to be anything moving below. “Can you move the drone, here?” I asked, pointing to a point on the screen. Only three of the ten gun emplacements seemed to be firing. The center and the left side of the line.

“I am delling you. I am nod ready to fly dis ding yed.”

“Dude, there’s like ten more of these back at Walmart. It ain’t a big deal.”

“Dere are more drones, yes, bud dere are no more of de lenses I need. Dis is being de only one.”

“So the damn things is just going to hover and we won’t be able to see what we need to see. Real big help.”

“I would dell you do fly id, bud I see you did nod lisden do me. Your eyes are delling de sdory.”

“Stop being a pussy.”

He cursed me in Hindi. I’m pretty sure, anyway. He listened, though, but before doing so, he switched to English, “If I crash de bidch, id is on you.”

“You won’t.”

Aadesh took the controller in his hands and began actuating the thumbsticks, or whatever they’re called. The drone spun around quickly and seemed to dip hard to one side. “You are being a bidch, Jack.”

I suppressed a laugh. His hands were shaking. I guess if I had been totally sober, I might’ve felt differently, but I wasn’t, so there was that.

After the drone spun and dipped a couple more times, it leveled out. Aadesh gave me an annoyed look. I had managed to suppress the laugh, but the smile had remained. That smile faded as the drone seemed to race to the earth and then along the ground until it was close to where I had wanted him to go. I looked away from the screen and saw a shit-eating grin nestled on Aadesh’s bearded face.

“Fuck,” Aadesh hissed. The controller