Outside the city of McNair, Commitment
Four little flybots that had been thrown out hours earlier from a fast-moving Fed embassy people mover sat unmoving in a rock-littered field.
At last, with infinite care, one of the flybots, lying upside down against a large tree stump, got to work. First, a tiny wand barely a centimeter long emerged from a belly port, the tip a microvid camera no bigger than a pinhead. Moments later, a second wand appeared, this one tipped with a tiny radio frequency sensor. After a short pause, the two sensors began an excruciatingly careful scan of the area. Then, for good measure, they repeated the entire process one more time, the onboard AI programmed to make absolutely sure that nothing remotely man-made was watching. There was another short delay before the flybot, happy now that the coast was clear, began the painful process of getting itself right side up. Extending its rotor blades, it slowly levered itself first onto its side and then, with the tiniest of pushes, onto its belly, the two sensor wands snapping back below its skin as it did.
There was another long pause before two more wands emerged to carry out another painfully careful scan to make sure nothing had changed. Reassured, the flybot bent the tips of its lower rotors down until they touched the ground and, lifting itself up, crawled the meter or so it needed to be clear of the tree stump for takeoff.
A final check was followed by another pause as it signaled to its brothers that the coast was clear. Then, without warning, the rotors ran up to speed, and the flybot was up off the ground. Accelerating hard, its rotors bit deep into the late morning air, driving the bot low across the broken ground before it climbed steeply to track southeast at a steady 120 kph. Seconds later, it was followed by its three partners.
The little flybots had a rendezvous with the survivors from the Ishaq to make.