Eyes on the Prize
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Robson was getting his first good shot in on a Plashi conglomerate-manufactured drone in the hands of the Salvesh. Intelligence doubted that the Salvesh had much patience for or reason to pilot drones the way Humans did, but acknowledged the possibility that other races might well be willing to do so. That was perhaps done for political reasons by the Plashi to keep their mercenaries from being too dangerous to their overseers. 

But it was alien, unfamiliar tech. As he prepared to fire, he could feel the drizzle in the area, seconds after Park reported the contact, that heralded nanites being sprayed into the air. A couple of the drones melted as nanites hacked their way through their counterparts and fried some drones, but there were still some coming for them.

Simmons and Robson had worked out sectors ahead of time, and were able to communicate pretty well to call support to one another. Their light fifties were suppressed, which was a relative thing when it came to such large rounds, and they were covered in netting that would help disrupt their visual signatures and prevent detection by the drones. It wasn't perfect, nothing was. The point was to make it very hard for the enemy to figure out where the fire was coming from, to maintain concealment as long as possible and to keep them tied down to give other elements time to maneuver.

Also, their job was to neutralize the heavier stuff, which tended to be drone-mounted.

"Three eyes, six shooters left," Robson heard one of the others, Edwards, report.

"Roger that." [i]Go for the eyes, Boo![/i] was what Vogel, a total nerd, said in training and now it was a saying among them. 

Along with the surveillance drones were the gun drones, but the surveillance drones were the eyes, the sophisticated emissions/heat/sound/pattern detection machines that flitted through. They moved a lot more than their heavier counterparts and were very capable when it came to directing fire and otherwise coordinating the fire support.

It was like shooting the observer, officer and radioman all in one. Robson took a shot, then Simmons took a shot. It took a second to catch the last eye, as it started to dart around defensively, at the expense of doing any observation at all. If the drones had a limitation, it was that they were not particularly adept at doing two jobs at once, and forcing one into evasive maneuvers meant that it was going to be less effective as a controller unit. All the same, while Simmons went to work on a "shooter" drone, Robson took a couple seconds of compensating for the movement of the drone and took his shot.

First one missed, but a fast followup second shot got the bastard.

Fire support came in the form of a missile fired from a friendly drone that broke up like an old chemical warhead from the 1960's, dispersing a payload of nanites and their aerosol solution, creating the feeling of a misty morning rain over a rather wide area. The nanites managed to find their way past enemy nanite countermeasures, like a weakened immune system with the death of their "eyes", and added power surges and other disruptions to critical systems. It felt cool on Robson's cheek, but the same stuff caused more enemy drones to melt in midair as they crashed down.

He got one more survivor along the way. Simmons had the lead in total drones, but Robson got two eyes.

It was the start of their war.