When all the alarms triggered I was minding my own business, reading some ancient Human literature as language practice. Now that the base is on full alert, I do my best to look like I’m busy and avoid getting sent to deal with it in person. As a drone operator, it is usually assumed that my tasks are not trivial and do produce the desired outcomes without risk to life and limb.

As it were, my little flock of devices are currently all much too far away to be of use in this specific scenario. But that isn’t something that a bystander can decipher without looking through my headset interface to them directly. All of my little birds with their delicate little rotors are on the wing elsewhere.

I spy through their electronic eyes.

But I cannot see what is happening right outside my little cell’s door. I can hear the sharp cracks of small arms fire and the sizzling impact of blasters on cement, but it is muffled by many layers of walls. The Human rebels have well and truly breeched our defenses this time.

It’s not the first time and it will not be the last. I have the comfort of knowing that this fortress my family captured from the Humans in the early days of the reconquest is solidly constructed and there is no reason to fear that it may be damaged by some small arms. It has already withstood significant shelling, after all. These walls are thick and more sturdy than even natural stone.

Looking through the eyes of the flock, I lift them from their perches and rotate them in the direction of my current physical location. It is thus, through many viewpoints and across a great distance, that I see the conflagration at the same time I hear it. Great plumes of black smoke coil upwards like a snake rearing its head to strike and are abruptly dispersed by a visible shock wave of the great explosion that rocks the couch on which I lounge.

Through my shaking headset I watch a jet of flame spew skyward, and I feel the room growing warmer as the heat leeches through the cement wall that separates me from the courtyard beyond.

Had there been a window, I would surely be roasted already.

I yank the headset from my face, scratching through my thin feathers and drawing a small speck of blood in the process. My clawed feet dig into the soft leather of the couch as I hurl myself backwards out of it. Panic stiffens my tail and puffs up my neck feathers in a most unbecoming fashion that would be highly embarrassing for any of the lower orders of the family to see on an exalted one such as me. But I am all a panic and there is naught that I can do to hide it when every ounce of personal fortitude is currently at the task of preventing me from shrieking like a mere hatchling babe.

Disentangled from the apparatus by which I view my dear flock of remote sensors, I must make haste to reengage with my physical location and recall the routes by which I should traverse it. I find myself completely incapable of working the straps by which I would remove the safety straps from my hands, so I instead grab the hard case for the device and carry it with me in my flight.

The floor below me lists in a most threatening manner, and I run as fast as my claws permit for the door to the small room.

Flinging open the door, I’m met with additional panic, as one of the house guards flings himself past me, head lowered into a dead sprint and rifle bouncing forgotten against his back. I look in the direction he came from and see that an entire section of the building is in the current process of collapsing. A great crack grows under my feet and I must leap for safety.

I make the jump with some small difficulty and follow the guard closely. He leads me through the collapsing hallway and out onto an exterior rampart. Anti-air defenses lie in patient silence, unused, and with none currently capable of focusing upon their use.

“What happened?” I squawk the command with the most authoritative sound I can muster. For surely I can pretend that though I am disheveled by my personal shock, I am still of a higher order than this gray guardsman.

“They blew the ammo storage supply, sir,” the guard replies, dipping his head lower on its long neck and spreading the feathers of his tail’s fan in deference.

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“All of it?” I clarify, for surely that would not have been possible. There are safeguards in place after all.

“Yes sir,” he says, with a trill of nervousness that is almost too soft to catch. “They used our own weapons, sir.”

Behind us the building continues to collapse. But from here on the wall we have few escape routes that do not require returning inward to find a sally port. We have seemingly trapped ourselves in a corner in our fright.

I am not at all prepared to run toward danger. My entire career thus far has revolved around being decidedly removed from it and I am not about to change that track record now. I look at the collection of devices still tethered to my hands.

“Good guard, please do grant me a few moments.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” he responds, further lowering his head in relation to mine. His gray plumage trembles with fear, but he complies.

I don again my headset and wriggle my fingers into the controls. It is not a difficult task to recall all units to my location. They are not far out of visual range, and I do not have to manually command any of their actions with these preprogrammed emergency routines. It is just a matter of waiting for them to be close enough for me to make the most effective use of them.

My equipment has been damaged, but not overly much, by the rather extreme jostling it took in our terrible run clear across the collapsing fortress. The visuals have a significant amount of distortion and the frame rate of one of the cameras is low enough to cause great visual discomfort as it speeds across a vast forest to reach me.

One of the little drones collides heavily with a personal transport copter. I have a brief visual of the damaged machine spinning wildly with what appears to be one of our subjugated Humans dangling from its reclining seat, unable to maintain a grip upon the wildly out of control machine. I choose not to dwell upon their fate.

I have my own to consider.

At a loss of only one drone, I am fair confident that the ones that made it back to my location will be quite enough. It is disorienting in the extreme to view one’s own self through so many different eyes at so many different angles at the same time. I like it not one bit, but that cannot be helped.

I look over my uniform, once clean and white, but now streaked with soot, to locate points that could be used for attachments. I find the straps from which my rank insignia hangs, the pockets at my waist, and the collar of my neck. It is such a shame that my blue plumage has suffered similar indignity. The guard, in his lower order gray uniform has more points that make for easier lifting, and the uniform that matches his feathers does a much better job of hiding the evidence of his near miss with death.

“Hold my tail,” I tell the guard. It would be the utmost impropriety under any other circumstance for him to touch even a single feather of my person, but this is a unique situation which calls for a singularly unique solution.

“Sir?” His head rotates quizzically and his large, amber eyes blink at me in confusion. I rotate one of the drones to more clearly see his name tape. The Human military custom of wearing name labels on one’s clothing is one I am most thankful that we have adopted in the reconquest.

“Benvodon,” I address him directly, “Please trust me. I want us both to live.”

He closes both eyes and visibly takes a long slow breath to steady himself. His feathers flatten against his skin.

Benvodon nods. I begin to take manual control of the drones. I can work two at a time, and I can sync their movements relative to each other to move more than one at the same time. But it is not easy, and it is very easy to become disoriented when looking through so many cameras.

Two by two they clamp onto our clothing. More attach themselves to the guard, Benvodon, than myself, which I plan to describe as altruism in the future, but right now it’s merely sticking my robots to whatever looks easiest to stick them to. I have no idea if this is going to work or not, but I can feign confidence long enough.

It does not appear that we have many other options available to us at this juncture. Three stories of reinforced structure crumble downward toward the basement and subbasement levels below. There is a decreasing amount of space open on this air defense emplacement for us to even stand.

Open air awaits us just off the wall. I wait, watching from one last airborne point of view, as the wall itself begins to list inward.

“Hold tight to me!” I shout, the din and chaos of the destruction at my back and the mask over my face making it hard to be sure if I will be heard.

Benvodon’s claws grasp my tail hard enough that I feel feathers pulling free in his grip.

I push forward and walk off of the wall.

The little rotors on all the tiny drones whine with effort as they haul against our clothing. Benvodon’s spread tail feathers aid us reasonably well in our descent. The drones are not strong enough to lift us completely, but they slow the fall enough that we do not immediately suffer physical trauma upon reaching the tank traps below the wall. Benvodon keens in terror the entire way down.

I trigger the drones’ unclamp action and once again rip the headset from my face. We are not yet in the clear, but the odds of our survival are much improved.