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“Thanks for letting me take Doc flying.” Colt was the training officer for the Diamondbacks’ sister squadron, the Maces of Strike Fighter Squadron Twenty-Seven, but he was allowed to fly with the other air wing’s squadrons by letter of agreement. The arrangement was put in place to facilitate training, but Colt hadn’t hesitated using it to take one of his friends flying.

Flap chuckled. “Bet she got more than she bargained for.”

Before he could respond, the petty officer called out to him. “Sir, I think I might have something here.”

Colt turned back to the computer monitor and leaned in close. Even though the ATFLIR was a significant improvement over the older AN/AAS-38 Nite Hawk pod, it was a far cry from what he had grown accustomed to while flying the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter.

“What am I looking at here?” Colt asked.

The petty officer tapped on a few keys, then spun a jog wheel to rewind the video several frames. In the middle of the screen, the targeting pod’s crosshairs were centered on the stern of a fishing trawler. In the upper right corner of the screen, Colt noticed a black speck appear from out of frame. “Now, watch this spot here as I advance the video.”

The sailor gripped the jog wheel and rotated it clockwise. A counter in the lower right corner of the screen displayed the number of frames, but Colt’s eyes were glued to the dark speck that grew larger and floated from right to left. The sailor continued to spin the wheel and advance the video at an agonizingly slow pace. At almost thirty frames per second, it took several complete rotations before he reached the last frame with the object visible.

“What does that look like to you?” Flap asked.

Colt cocked his head to the side as if trying to decipher a pictogram. He placed his finger against the screen and traced what looked like a lopsided X. “Could be a quadcopter,” he said.

“That’s what I thought too,” the sailor replied. He opened a control window and adjusted the brightness and contrast, then ran it through several filters to crisp up the image. But no matter what he did, it was still too grainy to make out any significant features.

“At least we can be certain it’s not a UAP,” Flap said.

Colt turned and looked at the commander. He could tell by the look on his face he wasn’t making a dig at the rumors that had circulated following Colt’s encounter with the swirling orbs over the USS Mobile Bay, but it still made him uneasy.

Why do these things always happen to me?

Colt shook his head. “I still don’t know why they would be flying drones out in the middle of the ocean.”

“Maybe to spot fish,” Flap suggested.

Colt had considered the same thing, but something about it didn’t ring true to him. His eyes shifted from the blurred image of the drone to the fishing trawler in the background. “I don’t think so, sir.”

“Why not?”

Colt pointed at the ship on the screen. “Because they’re not trawling.”

“How can you tell?”

“See this here?” He traced his finger along the tall steel structure at the stern of the ship. “This is the gallows and is used for operating the trawl, but you can see that they don’t have any rigging out.”

“It’s still the most logical answer,” the commander said. “What else could it be?”

That was a question Colt didn’t have an answer to. It was the most logical answer if the ship was really a fishing trawler. But if it was part of China’s maritime militia or a collection vessel for the Ministry of State Security, there was no telling what they were using the drone for.

The sailor saved Colt from having to answer. “I’m going to send this video to Pacific Fleet. Maybe they can figure it out.”

Flap didn’t seem interested, and he slapped Colt on the back. “Glad you made it back.”

Colt nodded, but he was lost in thought.

* * *

He left CVIC a few minutes later and headed for the cross-passageway where most of the CAG staff had their offices. Though Doc spent most of her time bouncing from squadron to squadron — usually to cajole the scheduling officers into adding her onto the flight schedule — she spent the remainder in CAG’s spaces when the senior medical officer didn’t force her to run sick call.

Colt rounded the corner and walked through the open door where several officers were gathered around her as if she were a celebrity.

“…and WHAM! Out of nowhere, this thing slams into us.” Doc punched her open palm for dramatic effect.

“Telling sea stories, Doc?”

The flight surgeon turned and gave Colt a sheepish grin. “I was just telling them how you handled that like a boss.”

Colt shook his head. “Like a boss?”

“Yeah, like losing an engine was no big deal.”

A few of the others saw the amused look on Colt’s face and dispersed to return to their routine tasks that kept the air wing operational while on deployment. He suspected the CAGMO — the air wing’s maintenance officer — would be especially busy ensuring the Diamondbacks had everything they needed to replace the damaged engine and get 100 back into the air.