Dragonflies: Shadow of Drones by Andy Straka

Palmer,” Raina chided him.
    “I’m focused. I’m focused,” he whispered.
    The Zeta Phi house was perched on a corner lot at the end of an otherwise quiet street dotted with only a couple of other fraternities and sororities. The site was a couple of blocks from the center of campus, close enough to be part of the school but also standing independent, an entity unto itself.
    Preparations for the party seemed to be in full swing. Three or four guys kicked and tossed a football to one another on the lawn, testing out a makeshift set of goalposts consisting of a clothesline draped between a couple of trees, while a couple of others were attempting to “slack-line” or walk across the same flimsy rope in the latest college fad.
    Another group was busy setting up a ping-pong table, sawhorses with long tables holding steel kegs of beer, and huge stereo speakers draped with ghoulish decorations on the patio. From his online photo and what he’d seen in the video, Tye recognized Derek Kurn among the students next to the house. He approached the group.
    “Excuse me. Is this Zeta Phi?”
    “Yeah.” One of Kurn’s companions answered.
    “Heard you’re having a big Halloween party tonight.”
    “Yeah. Starts at ten.”
    “I’m a transfer student. Was hoping I could crash the party and maybe check out the fraternity.”
    “You a Zeta Phi?”
    “Not yet.”
    They stared at him for a moment.
    Derek Kurn,
el Presidente
himself, stepped forward. He was shorter than Tye but in better physical shape. Biceps bulged from the sleeves of his Polo shirt. “You look a little old for college.” Derek said. In person, he not only looked but sounded like a younger version of his father.
    Tye paused for a moment. “I was in the Army, Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.
    Derek nodded. His jaw jutted out to show he was impressed, as did those of several of the others who had stopped whatever they were doing to look. “Cool, man. C’mon ahead then later. We’ll show you around.”
    “Sounds good. Thank you.”
    “Sweet. See you later then.”
    The group went back to their preparations as Tye moved back down the walkway. Mission accomplished; he was no longer a stranger to them.
    “That was easy,” Raina said.
    Maybe too easy. Derek Kurn might check into his story about being a transfer student, but he was banking on the hope it wouldn’t happen right away. All the really desirable pledges, the new varsity jocks and guys who handled themselves with the right amount of moxie and lack of posing, were no doubt already on Derek’s and his fraternity brothers’ radar screens. What was one more potential pledge coming to a party? Plus, Derek seemed like he had a lot of other things on his mind at the moment. Whether that included another foray into date rape at tonight’s party remained to be seen.

16
    Inside the van more than a mile away, Raina stood up to adjust her headset and stretch her arms. One of her little watch birds was giving her trouble, the controls balky and sometimes seeming to skip a beat. She’d be lucky if she could keep the thing flying long enough to get it back to the small base camp they’d established on the roof of a utility shed in a wooded area near their apartments. One of the often unspoken realities of bigger UAVs was that they crashed a lot, compared to other aircraft–even the multi-million-dollar Predators and Reapers the Air Force was flying–and Raina had found her little hover angels and dragonflies to be no exception.
    She wondered if Murnell and all his high-tech wonders had made any progress in overcoming this issue, but the Homeland scientist had remained tight-lipped regarding any details about the type of crafts she’d been piloting. A part of her already missed what she’d experienced in the sphere. Manipulating her sometimes flighty, and by comparison archaic, joystick and controls in the back of the van soon became a frustrating experience; she had to work hard to focus on the