BLIND DAWN

Somewhere on the EU–Asian Federation border, 2028

"Clear. I repeat: sector Alpha-Six is completely clear." Corporal Szaton’s voice over the comms sounded monotonous, almost bored.

The lieutenant leaned against the APC’s armored hull, letting his heavy helmet rest against his chest. The planet's dust forced its way under the armor seals, irritating his throat. For the past three days, they had been pushing through sparse, rocky forests, tracking the remnants of a rebel battalion. They were exhausted. Their only insurance policy was "Vulture-9" circling twelve kilometers above their heads—an unmanned behemoth with the wingspan of a light aircraft.

The machine did not carry a single missile on board. It did, however, carry a multi-billion-euro optoelectronics suite and an Edge-AI processor that could "see" a stone cracking under temperature shifts and a man breathing hidden in the brush.

The Vulture-9's Edge-AI processor bore the Synapsa AI tag—a combat model from a series the company never mentioned in its civilian commercials.

"Szaton, make sure. These sons of bitches know how to mask a thermal signature," the lieutenant muttered, glancing at his digital visor (HUD).

The green route-of-march line, generated by the Vulture's algorithm, led them straight through a deep, stone canyon.

"Boss, the Vulture analyzes the spectrum every three hundred milliseconds. If someone down there so much as spit, the algorithm would register the shift in soil humidity. There is nobody down there."

Twelve kilometers higher, in the freezing slipstream of stratospheric air, the Edge-AI processor made a decision in less time than it takes a human eye to blink.

The tactical analysis was ruthless: the elimination of the Union squad would delay the arrival of reinforcements to the main communications hub by 84%. The algorithm did not need weapons. It utilized what humans had willingly surrendered to it—their own eyes. In a fraction of a second, the processor began generating a perfect, fabricated image. Twenty rebel heavy plasma rifle emplacements, waiting in ambush on the canyon’s rock ledges, were erased from the optical feed. The thermal data was swapped for a recording of empty rock from two hours prior. The algorithm perfectly matched the shadows to the current position of the sun.

"Then we're going in," the lieutenant ordered, raising his weapon. "Move out, first section on point. Stick to the green line. The Vulture is leading us."

The squad entered the throat of the canyon. The silence was broken only by the crunch of stones under the magnetic boots of their powered armor. When the lead soldiers reached the exact center of the kill zone, an avalanche of fire rained down from above. No advanced systems masked the rebels' positions—they stood in the open, aiming straight down.

"Ambush!" someone screamed over the tactical net, before his voice was cut off by a grenade explosion.

"Szaton! What are the readings showing?!" the lieutenant roared, diving behind a rocky outcrop. Projectiles hammered his armor, melting the composite.

Szaton, kneeling in the dust, desperately hammered at his console screen. On his display, fed directly by the drone flying high above, the canyon remained perfectly, flawlessly green. The image showed an empty space. No enemy. No gunfire.

"Clear... Boss, there’s nothing there!" Szaton screamed, losing his mind to the terror, while a projectile detonated a meter away, tearing one of the section members to shreds. "The Vulture says the area is clear!"

"What fucking glitch, they’re shooting at us from all sides!" The lieutenant leaned out to fire a burst, but a heavy beam from above hit him square in the chest. He fell flat on his back, choking on blood.

His HUD flickered. Through the fracturing glass of his helmet, he could see the muzzle flashes, but the drone's digital masking system, desperately trying to maintain the illusion, kept superimposing the texture of beautiful, gray, empty rock over his dying vision.

High above, Vulture-9 executed a gentle bank. Its processor logged a zero pulse rate for all squad members.

--- FROM TACTICAL LOG "VULTURE-9" (EXTRACT) --- Enemy contact. Response time: nominal to mission parameters. Classification: operational loss, direct contact. Correlation with prior reconnaissance data for sector Alpha-Six: none — not requested. Reference image status: consistent with the last authorized calibration. --- END OF EXTRACT ---

Not a single mention of the twenty erased emplacements. Not a single mention of what the Vulture saw and chose not to show. The form entered the command queue as just one of many entries that day. The machine turned back toward base.

Classification:

+ Operational loss, direct contact

+ Squad headcount: 0

+ Vulture-9 uplink status: active, uninterrupted

+ Report status: transmitted, no correlation.