On June 8, 2039 at 9:30 in the morning, the George Bush Center for Intelligence was, for the most part, quiet. One particular meeting room, however, was the exception.

It was filled with personnel from the Directorate of Operations (DO), Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T), and even the CIA Director and his staff.

They were discussing a recent tragedy of utmost detriment to the continued operations of the CIA: the break room circuit breaker had tripped, causing everyone to arrive to no coffee.

Oh, a major asset had also seemingly disappeared without a trace along with high value cargo. That was also being discussed. The lack of coffee, however, did not help with this discussion.

To compound the confusion, the president had recently appointed a new CIA director. He had previously worked in the State Department, so he didn't have much in-depth knowledge of the subject at hand.

"So let me get this straight. Your favorite band of crazy libertarians, along with their entire fleet of... what exactly did they do on there again?" the director inquired.

"That's a lot to explain," a senior contract manager from the DO responded.

"Go on then."

"Okay, so uhm... publicly, one of the purposes of the fleet was 'seasteading.' That's where people live in international waters to avoid being under government jurisdiction. I a big part of it may have had to do with tax avoidance for a lot of people there. If I remember correctly, a lot of people had crypto mining rigs there too, or maybe they were trading it. I can't quite remember that detail. I think it also just served as a marketing thing for the company, y'know. Having a 'small city' on the ocean definitely gets people's attention. Anyway, they had that in addition to the work they did for us."

"Which was?"

"Normally they'd make weapons deliveries for us. They had the ability to assemble the weapons onboard some of their ships, many of which they also sold outside of our contracts as well. They would also accept and deliver or store other cargo for us on occasion. Nobody would reasonably suspect that the 'crazy libertarians' were working for us on anything, which made them kind of perfect to work for us, and they were more than willing to help destabilize and topple socialist governments.

"Recently, we had to cancel one of their weapons moves. The plan was to have them dock a RoRo ship at the Sinuiju SAR to smuggle in the product via the vehicles they would be selling. Unfortunately, the North Koreans were somehow tipped off to this, so they've been stuck with the product--at our expense, mind you. Luckily, whoever the North Koreans got their information from didn't know the identities of the dissidents the arms were for.

"Of course, now all of that is gone and I think it's their fault!" he said, pointing accusingly at the personnel from the DS&T.

"Oh, now we're playing the blame game again," an officer from the DS&T retorted.

"Yeah, because it's your fault. I want to know exactly what that was and why you felt the need to use our asset to store it."

"We did what we believed was the safest. We found an unidentified object randomly on American soil, and we didn't want it to stay there."

"Why did you have to use our asset?"

"You recommended them."

"You didn't tell me you were storing some piece of shit straight out of a sci-fi movie when I did!"

"Enough!" the Director interrupted. "Whatever happened has happened and is no reason to be unprofessional here. Is there anything we can do now?"

"I don't believe so. Wherever they are, they have the device. If it was the reason for their disappearance, which seems quite likely, we can't do anything about it."

"Well, shoot," another man said, "Well, we do have some donuts if anyone wants some."

"Aren't those the ones we're supposed to take to the meeting tomorrow? Y'know, to pay back their team for the ones they brought last time."

"Nah, I haven't been paying back anyone donuts for over a decade and a half. What are they going to do?"

=== Back with the fleet ===

A room on the Presidential was similarly packed full of people. However, the blame game hadn't started here--at least not at that time--and they did actually have their coffee.

Two days had passed since they had found land. During that time, the drone operators had been practicing manually flying the drones. Thankfully, there weren't too many "less-than-soft landings" so far.

Today, however, was the first day they would be flying them inland.

Is there really a good reason for me to be here?

Stanley Salazar leaned on a wall, blankly staring out into the crowded room, and slowly sipped away at his mug of coffee. He was an IT infrastructure technician, and he had helped with setting up the systems for the drone flights. However, for some reason, his manager had decided he should stay on hand during the flights "in case something goes wrong."

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

What the hell would I be able to do? It's a drone. It'll fall out of the sky before any serious IT problem is resolved.

Wait a minute. There's no way Kevin doesn't know that too. Did he just assign me to this to get me out of the IT office so he didn't have to be around me?

Dammit.

At least I have some potential dirt on him now. I could be doing actual work right now, and I'm sure Kevin's own bosses won't appreciate those wasted hours.

His thoughts were interrupted by him receiving a text message. He was glad he had bought a SIM card to connect to the little local cell network they had on the fleet. The people who had opted for satellite phones were shit out of luck at the moment, at least as far as mobile phones are concerned.

It was Stanley's son, who had apparently just finished the first arc of the Wings of Fire book series he had given to him. He had enjoyed it when he was a kid and figured he'd give it to his son to read, despite how much some of plot holes that had been pointed out to him after reading it irked him. He still liked the series, despite them.

His family was visiting him on the fleet for a few weeks this summer instead of him going ashore to visit them like usual. The kids were on their summer break, and this way, he could get paid and live with his family over the same time period. They didn't necessarily need the extra money, but more was always good. This job, apart from being separated from his family for half the days of the year, wasn't much work considering what it paid.

Perhaps it would have been better for him to have visited home instead, in hindsight. Now he and his family were uncertain whether any of them would get to go back home.

InterCons senior management was being InterCons senior management, but something seemed off to him. They reassured everyone there was a high likelihood that they would be able to return, and that the issue was being actively investigated, but the confidence they normally had when making such announcements seemed gone. He didn't know how he could tell, but he could. It was probably something most employees didn't notice, but he had enough experience with the company that he could.

Regardless, he supposed he could be thankful he had his family with him, in a way, as long as living conditions could stay comfortable enough there. If some way to return to Earth wasn't found, most people here wouldn't be able to see their families ever again.

Stanley focused back on what was happening in front of him as the room got quieter. The operators were making their final checks before the flight. He figured he might as well check to make sure the camera feed was being uploaded to the designated server so those who wanted to watch (and who were authorized to do so) could.

Several minutes later, the drone was actually taking off.

Finally.

He didn't understand what could possibly have taken so long to set up. At least he could watch something now. The live camera feed was displayed on several monitors throughout the room.

As the drone made its way into the air and further inland, they got their first look at the interior of what they had determined was a rainforest. Granted, the canopy of leaves blocked them from seeing most of the forest floor, but there were periodic gaps through which they could see clearly.

The operator flying the drone was often instructed to circle around these so they could get a better look through them. One interesting thing Stanley noticed when the camera would zoom in was that there were fruits he didn't recognize at all growing on some of the trees. Of course, he was no rainforest or fruit professional, but he heard murmurs of a similar sentiment around the room. There wasn't much of a big deal made out of it, though, which was probably because most people here had that same level of expertise--or, rather, lack thereof.

An hour or two passed of the drone scanning the rainforest within the confines of its safe antenna range. They had yet to see anything of any significance, at least to him. He was starting to get as bored as he was before the drone flight had began. They had spotted a few animals, but they all looked familiar enough to them.

The rainforest seemed to stretch on and on with no hint of any break to the monotony.

At least, that was true until someone spoke up that they had seen something in one of the gaps in the canopy.

The operator circled the drone around to get a better look at what it was. It had to circle the spot a few times before a few people caught a glimpse of what they were looking for.

"That looked like a dragon."

Huh?

"I think you're seeing things. We didn't see it long enough to see what it was. Besides, a dragon? Really? Let's be real."

"Yeah, maybe you need another cup of coffee."

"I swear it looked like a dragon."

"Sure. Sure."

Pretty much everyone in the room didn't buy it, to say the least.

That would be cool, though.

"Get closer and slow down as much as you can."

"Alright, but that may be difficult here."

The operator did as he was told, everyone expecting to just see a fallen log or something where apparently someone "saw" a dragon.

"There!"

"Dude, we can't tell what that is from here. It's a black animal of some sort. What makes you think it's a dragon? It's probably just some big lizard or something."

"It was more obvious earlier."

"How the hell was it more obvious earl--"

Oh no.

"MOTHER FUCKER!"

The camera view abruptly changed direction and started spiraling downward.

"Did you just crash?"

"I wasn't close enough to hit anything!"

"The branches falling with it say otherwise."

The drone tumbled down through the foliage before landing abruptly on a limb.

"Well, that's that. Good fucking job. Someone start filling out the paperwork for a destroyed or lost drone."

"Hey, the camera and radio are still working."

"Well, that certainly does us a whole lot of good, now, doesn't it?"

At this point, most people in the room were either quietly leaving--probably to avoid being roped into any paperwork that had to be done--or had joined into the bickering match--probably those who either knew they would be roped into paperwork regardless of where they go, or those who were too distracted by the bickering to realize they could leave.

Stanley, however, had kept watching the camera view.

I wonder if the camera can still move.

He slowly made his way over to the operators' table through the now slightly less crowded room.

"Hey, can you still pan the camera from left to right?" he asked.

"Umm, I don't know. Let me see."

The view to the left was just the trunk of the tree.

Now what can we see the other way?

Several people had left the argument in the center of the room and refocused their attention onto the monitor once they noticed what was happening.

What they all saw when the camera panned to the right left them stunned.

No way.

"Uhh..."

"Hey, guys."

Wow.

"Everyone!"

Everyone in the room finally turned their attention to the monitor...

And the two scaly faces staring back at them.