2164

"Coming screaming out of the sky, orange contrails blazing behind, bottled up inside (irrelevant limbs and organs removed, lightweight payload - just brains and guts for processing information and food). “I see the target below as geometric lights in my eyes (massed telemetry piped through my truncated optic nerve). “I feel the wind like fingers on skin, feel the weight of my bombs inside me, my fuselage. “And then I release, and programmed to orgasm, I pull up and away, electric reward pulsing through edited nerves. “Two Hornets engage as I spiral up, but they are real-captained, human bodies squashed by G, unable to follow my inward spin as I evade, avoid and in turn engage. Two small flares erupt as my seekers find, and the Hornets are gone. But this is small pleasure, the taste of sugar snaps, in comparison." "That's very nice", says the autopilot, "you have a poetic way with words". "It's not me, it's out of the PR, got some poet to write it...," says the captain, "...didn't work for me, I just never got the feeling I was supposed to when I laid my eggs." The autopilot accesses data - [lay eggs: drone-soldier slang for carpet-bombing] "it was supposed be like coming, I just felt like I'd had a big shit." "A shit with a blast radius of several kilometres," says the autopilot. The captain smiles, "I can't tell whether you're making a joke or being prim." "Then you should upgrade my voice-box," replies the autopilot testily (although this is lost on the captain for the same reason).