The encrypted string resolved on the laptop screen, a pale green cipher against a black background. The laptop itself was a grizzled veteran, its chassis scarred with a network of fine scratches and a deep gouge near the hinge from a piece of shrapnel in Kherson. Skiba traced the gouge with his thumb, a familiar ritual, as he absorbed the proposal on the screen in front of him.
Congo Basin. Separatist forces. Elimination of heavy weapons. He scrolled to the bottom line, a figure with enough zeroes to make a man forget what he was fighting for.
"Anything good?" Andrii’s voice came from across their makeshift headquarters, a room that smelled of pine floorboards and cold solder. He was stripping and cleaning a rifle with methodical, practiced movements.
"Depends on your definition." Skiba leaned back, the chair groaning. "A General Kugame wants to rent our FPV teams. High risk, higher reward."
Andrii paused, wiping a bolt carrier with an oily rag. "I’m not sure," he said. "It’s the jungle. Our thermals are optimized for a twenty degree delta between body heat and environment. There, the air itself is body temperature. We’ll be blind at night."
"We fly at dawn and dusk. We adapt." Skiba minimized the window, revealing a spreadsheet underneath. It was a list of names, his hundred men. Next to several names were notations for dependents, medical needs, debts.
He clicked ‘Accept.’
The air in the clearing did not move. It was a heavy, tangible presence that tasted of wet earth and cloying blossoms. It seeped into their fatigues, making the fabric feel like a second, clammy skin. The noise was a physical pressure, a wall of interlocking cicada chirps, unseen primate shrieks, and the guttural croak of birds. The Ukrainians, accustomed to the sharp, clear cold of Eastern Europe, moved with a deliberate slowness, their faces slick with a constant film of sweat.
Skiba stood beside General Kugame, watching Atrei work. The young pilot was assembling his quadcopter on a crate, his movements precise and unhurried despite the heat. Kugame was not what Skiba had expected. He was lean and watchful, his fatigues immaculate. He ignored Skiba for a moment, his attention fixed on Atrei’s hands.
"My last foreign consultants complained about the conditions," Kugame said, his voice a low rumble that barely rose above the insectile hum. "They found it difficult to maintain their equipment. And their morale."
It was a test. Skiba met his gaze. "My men’s morale is tied to their paycheck. As long as it keeps coming, they work."
Kugame’s eyes shifted to Atrei. "And will it work?"
Atrei didn’t look up from a circuit board he was spraying with a thin, clear aerosol. "The air is thirty percent water. It causes condensation on the flight controller. This conformal coating will insulate it." He clipped a battery into place, and the drone emitted a cheerful series of beeps. "It will work."
Kugame allowed himself a thin smile. "Good. Five kilometers northeast. A ZU-23-2. It has cost me two helicopters."
The feed on the monitor was stable, a drone’s-eye view skimming fifty meters above the endless green canopy. Atrei sat cross legged on the ground, goggles covering his eyes, his body swaying slightly as if he were flying himself. Skiba stood behind him, arms crossed, watching the screen alongside Kugame and Andrii.
The drone dipped, hugging the terrain as it entered a small valley. A cluster of tents appeared, almost invisible against the jungle floor. Beside them, the twin barrels of the anti aircraft gun pointed at the sky like skeletal fingers. A half dozen men lounged around it. One of them, young and wiry, tipped his head back to drink from a canteen. The gesture was so specific, so achingly familiar, that Skiba felt the breath catch in his chest. He saw not a Congolese rebel, but a boy named Levko from his old platoon, who always drank the same way before laughing. Levko, who had been vaporized by a Grad rocket outside Avdiivka.
For an instant, the jungle, the contract, the money, all dissolved into the memory of frozen mud and the smell of cordite. This was just a boy, drinking water in the heat.
"Target confirmed," Andrii said, his voice tinny in Skiba’s earpiece.
On screen, the world tilted and accelerated. The drone fell from the sky, a silent, four-propeller hawk diving for its prey. The lounging figures became pixels, then resolved again. The man who looked like Levko glanced up, his face a brief, pale question mark. The feed cut to static.
A moment later, a flat, percussive thump echoed through the valley.
Kugame nodded once, his expression unreadable.
Skiba stared at the screen’s white noise, the hiss of it loud in the sudden silence. He could feel the oppressive weight of the jungle pressing in, and knew, with a certainty that chilled him despite the heat, that he had secured a new customer.
Curious how much is AI? Read the prompts here.