Day ??? of year 384 Post-Downfall
Sunstorm onset

[h3]The Lone Survivor[/h3]

	Kay looked at him and smiled. Hello-guy looked at him and appeared uncertain. Everyone else looked at Hello-guy and seemed to wait for a verdict.[i] “Get in the truck, I’ll fill you in on the move. Kay-Gee is right; you two need to see Gramps.”[/i] 
	"Acknowledged," he said. Standard response, produced without much thought. [i]Correct,[/i] he thought. Whatever the conventions here, asking for more details was, evidently, a safe enough option, though judging by the reactions of the people, it was perhaps not the expected one. But it was approved of, nevertheless, with the promise of more information to follow. 
	As long as he could continue operating as a soldier, it would be fine. He was used to having guns pointed at him. Used to the knowledge that a bullet might take his head off at any moment. It was the things that did not [b][i]fit [/i][/b]his world that he was worried about. Things that were entirely unfamiliar, and things that his instincts told him were [i]wrong.[/i] In the interim, he would just try to survive. And try to figure out a way how these rather unexpected acquaintances could survive, too. All ... how many of them, exactly? He did seem to recall Kay saying Eighfour was not a big place, consisting of just what he saw ahead, but it was nevertheless a lot to take in ... going from functionally one to, what, two thousand?  
	[i]He was not an officer. Planning things for others was not what he did. [b]He followed orders.[/b][/i] Glancing at Kay from behind his seemingly opaque visor, he finally moved. With habitual ease, he was up (apparently, his armor enabled quit the range of motion) and settled with his back to the side of the cargo bed. If need be, he could get his gun out, assume a middle brace position, and shoot over the edge easily enough. For now, he was resting, watching. [i]Thinking.[/i]
	[i]“I didn’t see the craft myself, but witnesses on the wall said that it was ‘small’ - whatever that means – and nimble enough to maneuver back and forth between the trees. It was fully VTOL capable and was seen accelerating quickly in any direction, even laterally, while using jet propulsion of some kind. They said it was triangular, sort of... like an arrowhead.”[/i] 
	Sounded more like a bloody fighter jet than a drone, albeit one piloted by an absolute madman ... or a machine mind. Especially given the weather. 
	"This small to twice that," he held out a hand with thumb and middle finger spread out, "- and we'd talking about a surveillance bug, but I doubt anyone would be impressed by one getting through the trees, or that it'd be noticed. A meter or two long, wingless or as broad as one of those large black birds in these forests - one like that would be of Trenian origin -, and it'll be a gun drone. Some of those are indeed equipped with rocket engines of some description. Bigger than that, and it probably was either not a drone, or it was a cargo drone. Not that I know anyone who'd be capable - or enough of a lunatic, even under threat of outright execution - of piloting a fighter through these trees. Not any [i]person [/i]alone, anyhow." Pause. "I could already pick up static when I woke this morning. I doubt there was enough connection stability to manually control a drone with considerable finesse under these conditions, unless the operator was within a couple of kilometers at most. AI involvement - either as control aide or as a full machine mind embedded in the craft - is extremely likely. Would explain the maneuverability, too."
	It didn't [i]quite [/i]sound like something he had seen, but he was not willing to bet on the credibility of the relayed witness account, either. It did not [i]sound[/i] like something Anderekian. Trenian, any of the unnamed abominations of the west or an entirely unknown faction were all equally likely until he heard more details. 
[i]	“Gramps doesn’t know where it’s from, so we don’t who we’re dealing with. We’ve tripled the number of people on the walls, powered up the flak turrets and were just headed out on patrol when we spotted you two. Everyone else is making sure everything is fueled and loading vehicles with as much as we can fit... I think Gramps wants to run.”[/i]
	If they did not have the fleet to go east, the air carriers to go east [i]or[/i] south, the northeast was Anderekian, the northwest was Trenian, and the west - and, he had though, this entire plate this side of the great lake and the bogs as an extension - was supposedly the domain of various cyborgs and machine minds, of which he had first assumed Kay to be part of, then... 
	"Where would you flee?" He could see the merits of fleeing - he had considered it multiple times himself, provided they could somehow take enough infrastructure with them to not die of thirst, starvation, toxicity, or radiation poisoning -, but all ways seemed to lead deeper into enemy territory. Felt a lot harder to hide an entire traveling circus than a lone dead soldier. 

73:47:27 LNT
(early evening)