Recon (Cumberland Saga)

Sean North pulled the drone out of the back of the small, Ford SUV. He visually checked the rotors and the charge of the battery.

He had pulled off the road at a small, country cemetery. He was only interested in checking out the property to the east. The satelite imagery he had pulled off the internet showed that the road was too densely populated to the west for his purposes. It was hard to tell if the property to the east would meet his needs, the images on the internet were too old and did not have the perspectives he needed.

Looking around, he could see the area was deserted. To any vehicle that would be passing by, he was just another mourner or somebody collecting geneology data.

He stood in front of a tall, thin marble-slab headstone. He marveled that it had not been vandalized.

He launched the drone and piloted it with his game-controller. He did not watch the drone but his eyes were glued to the small screen on the controller.

The drone itself was a very high-end unit. Lightning had given it to him in exchange for certain favors. They had a relationship.

Sean was Lighting’s “techy-dude” and Lightning supplied Sean with girls and toys.

It was a very satisfactory arrangement for Sean. He did not care how Lightning had gotten the toys, although Lightning’s ego seemed to require that he brag about how he had done it.

Lightning had sweet-talked a cute waitress at one of the up-scale steak-houses in Chatt to do a little bit of meth. Got her hooked. Had her point out an elderly couple who were regular customers, always purchased a VERY expensive bottle of wine with their meal and were excellent tippers.

Lightning followed the couple home and staged a home-invasion….He simply followed them right through the door. He ordered the hardware Sean specified from deNile Prime using the old man’s phone and credit card and they were delivered the next morning. The charred corpses of the old couple were found atop a set of bed-springs in the ashes of the cellar by the fire-fighters the next morning.

Easy-peasy.

Sean figured Lightning told him the story so he would not think about going free-agent or use “the product”. Lightning was very firm about not letting “skill players” use meth. Lightning could replace strong backs but brains were much harder to come-by and much more damaged by the product.

Sean had no desire to try the meth. He saw what it did to people. He saw it up-close-and-personal. Nope. Not for him. He liked the toys but he loved the women. More specifically, he got-off on the absolute power he had over the women Lightning got hooked on meth.

Sean had not been popular in high school. He thought it was due to the morbid case of acne he had until he overheard some of the older girls gossiping about him. They said he was “creepy” and “probably got thrills by pulling the wings off of flies”. Pulling wings off of flies was grade-school stuff. If they could only see what he was doing now…

The drone had sensors and Sean had it in hybrid mode. While traveling to the site of interest, Sean had it flying at 1880 feet elevation or no-less-than 100 feet above ground. Sean wanted to conserve batteries by keeping it in level flight but even more important, he didn’t want it to crash.

The pre-programmed portion of the flight had it vector by GPS to the initial point of the search.

Sean took over in manual mode. Sean had it do a quick spiral with the bottom flared out so the cameras could get a good look around. The tallest structure was a two-story house with a 12-12 roof. Sean over-rode the programmed elevation with 45’-above-surface as the new bogey.

The drone dropped down in elevation.

He vectored over to the tallest structure and leisurely circled it, tipping the drone to take a high-resolution photo from several perspectives. He was streaming thumbnails to his controller but the hi-res images were written to an onboard micro-SD card on the drone.

He methodically flew over the out-buildings and then motored over to the next major structure...and then the next.

The strident whining-whir of the four high RPM rotors got the attention of the students getting ready to enter Sarah’s house for their Thursday algebra class.

The drone circled them, briefly pausing to here-and-there, and then circled some more. Finally, it rapidly shot up in elevation and then sped off to the west.

The students were chattering about the event as they entered the house.

Sean’s hands were shaking with excitement as he tossed the drone into the back of the SUV. He had found the f*cking mother-lode!!!

Lightning had been berating him because the last location Sean identified as a good target only had an older couple people living there. Meth was brutally hard on blood vessels and the old man had died within minutes of being whacked with the first dose of meth. The old lady had only lasted until the second dose. Lightning needed young people who could cook and could go to town and steal and hook and could get the product out there and sell it.

Sean tried to explain that most of the suitable locations he scouted out were occupied by old people but Lightning didn't want to hear his excuses.

Sean was beside himself with joy. OH THE GIRLS!!! So young and so innocent looking!!!

Walking back to collect the controller, Sean kicked the marble headstone and snapped it off. F*cking old rich people! They all needed to die and leave their money to people like Sean.