One Last System

War. War never changes.

Or so an ancient philosopher once said, unable to even imagine the technological developments that would ultimately prove his theory wrong.

Throughout the ages, war was all about two groups of people trying to either kill each other or force the other party to surrender.

With the advent of modern times, more and more technology would get involved, often reducing the role of humans within the conflict to just pushing the technology around while hoping their own tech would prevail over the tech of their enemies.

That was also the state of things before Daniel's order brought the modern era of communication to an abrupt end.

But now that he opted to introduce his own technology to the playing field, things changed. The ancient saying finally lost its meaning, no longer applicable to the future Daniel crafted by using his knowledge and blueprints from the civilizations lost to time.

The LDC unit stood for a light drone cloud unit. And contrary to what its name would suggest to all the militaries across the world, it had nothing to do with the drones as others knew them.

"Feel free to rain some hell on those fuckers!" Daniel gave out his order.

And after a few short seconds required by the operators to turn his words into code activating the procedure, a few things happened at the same time.

The automatic doors on the roof and on the sides of several of the vehicles within the caravan opened up, only to release a thick, black fog.

The fog instantly dispersed into the air, making use of even the tiniest gusts of wind to carry on its task.

"First cloud deployed!" the reports started to come in at Daniel's deck. "Second cloud deployed!", "Third cloud deployed!"

A set of small windows flared up on a handy screen to the left of Daniel's side, indicating the status of each of the deployed clouds.

"Tenth cloud deployed, the transition phase begins!"

Just like it was the case when Daniel's forces exchanged nuclear strikes with the forces behind the black rock mercenaries, the entire deck turned silent.

No one dared to disturb the tranquility brought upon the air of death that was rushing toward the battlefield.

"Two kilometers away!"

"One kilometer away!"

"Five hundred meters!"

"One hundred meters!"

"Strike zone achieved."

Everyone within the deck turned their heads toward the nearest screen they could find. And from a simple video feed provided by one of the few satellites still in orbit, they could see a thin, black fog covering the entire area where Daniel's rear guard kept on stalling the advance of their pursuers.

"Requesting the confirmation for the strike," the officer in charge of the LDC unit turned on his heel, pushing his breast out as he stood at attention while facing Daniel's side.

"Go on."

Daniel didn't waste his words on needless elaboration.

"Yes, sir!" the officer struck the heels of his shoes together before turning around to his private console and pressing the inconspicuous button on its side.

All the fighting within the strike zone died out in an instant. The armed forces pursuing Daniel's caravan suddenly found all of their weapons malfunctioning, refusing to operate.

On the other hand, Daniel's rear guard took a few moments to figure out what was going on… Before ceasing the hostilities and starting to pack up all their wounded and discarded or used technology.

The tranquility didn't last for long, though. The weapons of the enemy forces were just the first target on the list of the drone cloud, not its ultimate goal.

A single shout appeared on the scene, portrayed by a vector of sound on everyone's screens. Then, another shout followed.

And then, silence.

Daniel's rear guard couldn't bring themselves to utter a single word, save for the quick report that soon appeared on Daniel's screen. On the other hand, their enemies… were too damn dead to utter a single sound.

The light drone cloud. A simple idea brought to its limits by the necessary advances in technology. A swarm of close to a hundred million speck-sized drones formed a single cloud.

The size of each specific drone made it impossible to implement any sort of functional hardware that could run even the most rudimentary software on it. The scope of what a single drone within the cloud could do was so limited it was no different from a grain of dust.

The true magic of the swarm appeared only once someone stacked a few thousand of them. By combining their nano-sized brains, they would form a collective brain about as powerful as a middle-shelf smartphone. With a few hundred thousand of them, one had a supercomputer in their hands.

And with a ten million pieces strong cloud, the swarm turned the extremely stupid drones into an entity that could be said to have a soul on its own.

Upon the strike, each individual drone would fulfill only a single task before burning through all of its fuel and turning into a piece of metal scrap.

And so, when the strike began, around fifty thousand drones sacrificed their artificial lives to clog up the firing mechanisms of the weapons that could threaten Daniel's forces. Then, a million of them brought upon an apocalypse to any mechanism more complex than a waterwheel.

In a single instant, Daniel's pursuers lost their weapons, vehicles, communication, and any other type of technology that relied on electricity in any capacity.

Having the enemy force immobilized, the next step of the procedure was simple mercy. Being stuck in the middle of the desert without any realistic way of getting back to civilization was no different than a death sentence.

And so, Daniels' drones sacrificed around three more million pieces to clog up the bodily functions of the enemy troopers, silencing the entire battlefield in the span of roughly four more seconds.

Daniel's rearguard didn't die. With roughly five to six million drone pieces remaining, the swarm could easily differentiate between a hostile and a friendly soldier. As such, they weren't silenced by the attack.

No.

They didn't speak because they were near their enemies enough to catch a few glimpses of the annihilation that happened right under their noses.

And in the face of a mass and instant killing like that, no human could keep their mood up.

"Task completed," the officer responsible for the LDC announced in a weak voice. The burden of having pressed the button that brought so much death in a single instant clearly reflected upon his face. "The enemy forces are no more."

"Good," Daniel replied in a steady voice.

'I don't like this sort of situation either,' he thought, gritting his teeth as he forced all of his feelings aside. 'But right now, I don't have the luxury to think about how I feel!'

"The direct threat to our expedition is gone," Daniel announced, turning his face toward the front of the vehicle. "And since we are already so deep into this shit, let me explain to you the very purpose of our mission."

Daniel hung his head to the back and took a deep breath.

"What are we trying to recover is an extremely advanced device. A tool that goes above and beyond even the best technology that our company currently has its hands on," Daniel said as he no longer saw any point in keeping that piece of information under wraps. "I will save you the science gibberish and explain it in a way that everyone can understand."

Daniel made a short pause to take yet another deep breath.

"The device that we are looking for can prevent a nuclear annihilation of all the life on this planet."