"Why did it choose this route instead of a shorter one?" Director Kai, who usually kept to himself, spoke up first.
"Because it's the optimal route," Nick replied with a grin.
Kai frowned. "Optimal?"
Nick nodded, gesturing toward the main display. "Look, the system plotted six different flight paths, ranging from the most direct to the most circuitous. The swarm bypassed the two shortest options in favor of a route with significantly more turns.
If you cross-reference this with the topo map, you'll see those 'short' routes run through a narrow gorge. It's great for radar evasion, sure, but there are several consecutive hairpins in there—turns tighter than 90 degrees.
Sending a massive swarm through a bottleneck like that at speed is a recipe for a mid-air pileup. For safety reasons, the hive mind scrapped the shortcuts. As for the longest route, it was just too inefficient."
The room studied the screen and nodded in agreement. Compared to the alternatives, the path the swarm had selected was clearly the most logical.
"Wait a second—why are we seeing so many bird strikes?" Amidst the discussion, Denzel suddenly cried out.
The mood shifted instantly. On the monitor, the trajectory lines were bleeding red dots—indicating drones were dropping from the sky. As they flickered from red to black, it meant the units had crashed and gone dark, leaving only a final GPS ping behind.
Bill's brow furrowed. "Do we have anything from the high-altitude recon feed?"
"Negative, no visible threats or anomalies detected," a tech reported.
Nick leaned in, eyes narrowing. "Pull up the nose-cam feeds from the leaders. Let me see what 021 and 078 are seeing."
Two live FPV feeds popped up on the big screen. Everyone stared at the monitors, searching for a culprit, but the footage looked clear.
"What about the ground observers?" Bill pressed.
"Report: the swarm entered a blind spot in the valley, moving out of range for most of our perimeter teams. The few who can still see them are too far away to spot any specifics. They aren't reporting anything unusual."
"Losses are climbing—we've passed a hundred downed units," David reported, his voice tight with anxiety.
"Nicholas, is there a bug in the autonomous pilot?" Denzel asked, looking over with concern.
Nick felt a pit in his stomach. He looked back at Terry and the guys on the terminals. Terry gave a slight shake of his head—the code was running clean. No internal errors.
So where was the hit coming from? Nick stared at the video feed, lost in thought. He'd never seen a mass-attrition event like this without a clear cause.
"Bill, if we're losing the fleet, let's pull the plug," Denzel suggested. "We've already proven the core concept works. There's no point in trashing the rest of the hardware."
The room looked at Bill. Even Director Kai chimed in. "I'm with Denzel. Let's scrub and recover. We can troubleshoot the data and fly again tomorrow. We aren't in a rush."
Bill hesitated. He turned to Nick, who was still practically vibrating with focus. "Nicholas, what do you think?"
Nick didn't answer. He was miles away.
"Nicholas?"
"Huh?" Nick blinked, snapping back to the room. "Sorry, what?"
"What's your take? Should we scrub?" Bill asked.
Nick felt the weight of the room's gaze. He let out a slow breath and shook his head. "I think I figured it out."
Bill's eyes lit up. "Talk to me. What is it?"
"Did you guys notice how thick the vegetation is in that valley?" Nick asked.
"You mean...?" Bill's eyes widened as he caught the drift.
Nick nodded. "This isn't a software bug or a hardware failure. It's a data gap. Our topographical maps are based on geological surveys—they map the rocks, not the canopy. They don't account for old-growth trees or dense forest.
Our drones are trying to fly a low-altitude profile based on the 'ground,' but in that valley, the 'ground' is covered in eighty-foot oaks. They aren't crashing into the mountain; they're slamming into the trees."
"That's it," Denzel said, his excitement returning. "The database is static. It doesn't know if a tree has grown, if a new power line was strung, or if there was a recent landslide. The map and reality don't match."
Kai looked a bit deflated. "So, the tech still isn't ready for 'the real world' yet?"
Nick offered a reassuring smile. "It's not as bad as it looks. This only happened because we're pushing extreme low-altitude limits in unmapped terrain. There are two easy fixes. One: we just feed the system more recent, high-res LIDAR or topo data. Two—the better way—we upgrade the hardware. We add localized obstacle-avoidance sensors, like mini-radars or ultrasonic sensors, to each unit."
"With those," Nick continued, "the swarm can 'see' obstacles in real-time. It wouldn't just avoid trees; it could navigate through a dense forest or a shifting urban environment without needing a map at all."
Bill smiled, the tension leaving his shoulders. "Nicholas is right. We're missing the 'eyes' on these units. That's why they're blind in the woods."
"I'm all for option two," Denzel added, looking at Nick with a grin. "That turns this swarm from a mapping tool into a truly autonomous force that can operate anywhere, anytime. That's where the real power is."