The Kailne Front, Part 2: the next chapter of our military science fiction serial. It is the year 3025 on the planet Ostra. Kailne commandos Hops and Bear are still behind enemy lines after the Vilma push, and a fake Mama has just led them into a field of buried drones. New here? Start with Part 1 of The Kailne Front. The worlds and people are made up. However, the battery shortage is drawn from the tanker crisis in the news.
The Whisper in the Trees
"Hops. Don't move."
So I didn't. In fact, I barely breathed. Bear froze beside me, flat on his belly in the bushes at the top of the hill.
Below us, the field of cut wheat lay quiet in the dawn. Meanwhile, under the stubble, the buried drone nests waited in their neat rows.
"Cloaks on," the whisper said. "Slowly. Then crawl back to me. Feet first."
At once, I knew that voice. Still, after the radio, I didn't trust my ears anymore.
"Challenge," Bear breathed. "River."
"Forget River," the whisper said. "The Vilma have River. Bear, you snore like a tractor, and Hops cried at the bean soup on his birthday."
Then I almost laughed, because only one person was rude enough to say that.
It was Moth.
Moth was our drone pilot, the smallest soldier in the squad. She was nineteen, with short black hair and quick hands, and she talked to her drones like they were cats. During the push, I had seen her run into the smoke. After that, I thought she was dead.
Carefully, Bear and I pulled the silver heat cloaks over our backs. Then we slid backward into the trees, one elbow at a time. It took ten minutes to cross ten meters.
Finally, Moth grabbed my boot and pulled me down into a ditch behind a fallen oak.
"Welcome back," she said. "You were about to walk into the biggest drone trap on Ostra."
How the Nests Work
For a long moment, none of us spoke. Then Bear asked the only question that mattered.
"How long have you been here?"
"Three days," Moth said. "I've been watching that field since the push."
She held up a small black box with a cracked screen. It was a Vilma drone controller, the kind their pilots wear on the wrist.
"I took it off a pilot near the river," she said. "He didn't need it anymore. Since then, I've been listening to them."
According to Moth, each nest in the field held four small attack drones. As long as nothing moved, the nests stayed asleep. That way, they used almost no power, so our scanners could not see them.
However, two things woke them up. The first was movement in the open. The second was a short command tone, sent by radio.
"That's why the voice told you to leave your cloaks off," Moth said. "First, it wanted you warm and visible. Then, once you were in the middle, it would send the tone. After that, there would be nothing left to bury."
I felt sick. I had wanted so badly to believe it was Mama.
"It was a clone," I said. "Wasn't it?"
Moth nodded. "They call it the Choir. It eats our radio traffic and learns our voices. Also, it learns our challenge words from anyone they catch."
Bear looked at the ground. "Then they caught somebody."
"Yes," Moth said quietly. "They caught Mama."
What Moth Saw
Moth told us the rest while the sun climbed.
On the night of the Vilma push, she had been flying a scout drone over the north road. Because of that, she saw what we couldn't. The Vilma did not just roll over Substation Nine. Instead, they went around it, picking up anyone who ran.
"Mama stayed to get the wounded out," Moth said. "Of course she did. In the end, they took her alive."
"Where?" Bear asked.
"I don't know yet," Moth said. "But I know where they charge their drones."
She pointed east, past the old flour mill. Behind it, half hidden in a grove of birch trees, stood a thin gray mast about twenty meters tall. Around its base sat three trucks under camouflage nets.
"That's a charging mast," Moth said. "Every drone in this sector flies home to it. Then they plug in, fill up, and fly out again."
Bear studied it for a long time. As usual, he did the math slowly.
"How many guards?"
"Six in the day, four at night," Moth said. "Plus two dogs. However, the dogs are lazy."
"And batteries?"
Moth smiled for the first time. "Crates of them. More than I've ever seen in one place."
I looked down at my own battery meter. It read thirty-one percent. Bear's read twenty-eight. Altogether, we had two spares left between us. Moth had none.
"Then that's where we're going," Bear said.
The Strange Thing About Vilma Drones
We slept in shifts in the ditch until dark. Meanwhile, Moth watched the mast through a small brass scope.
During my watch, she sat beside me and whispered so Bear could sleep.
"Hops," she said, "can I tell you something weird?"
"Sure."
"The Vilma never run out of power," she said. "Not once, in three days."
I didn't understand at first. After all, the Vilma had bigger factories and more of everything.
"Think about it," she said. "The Harra Gate is closed. Every tanker that tries to cross gets shot at or blown up by mines. Our depots are empty. Even the capital has power cuts every night."
"Right," I said.
"But the Vilma get their fuel through the Gate too," Moth said. "They're just as stuck as we are. So where are they getting all these batteries?"
I thought about Mama on the radio, arguing with the supply officer. Forty batteries for twelve people. Do more with less.
"Maybe they have a secret route," I said.
"Maybe," Moth said. However, she didn't sound like she believed it.
Later, Bear woke up and ate a cold ration bar in three bites. Then he looked at the mast, and then at the moons coming up over the birch trees.
"Tonight," he said, "is the energy ceasefire."
"So?" I said.
"So the Vilma will be careful," Bear said. "If they shoot near a power site tonight, the Concord might see it. In other words, they'll think twice before they fire."
Moth grinned. "That makes two of us thinking."
The Plan
Bear drew the plan in the dirt with a stick. As always, it was simple.
First, Moth would wake one of the Vilma drones with her stolen controller. Then she would fly it in circles over the far end of the grove, as if it were broken. Since every guard would look up, they would not be looking at the trucks.
Second, Bear and I would crawl under our cloaks to the crate truck on the near side. We had six minutes. Any longer, and the cloaks would slip.
Third, we would each take one crate, about the weight of a bag of flour. After that, we would crawl back the same way.
"What if the dogs smell us?" I asked.
"Then you run," Bear said. "Fast."
"And what if the drones wake up?"
"Then you run faster."
Moth tapped the controller. "Their drones talk to each other with short tones, like birds. Because I've heard the tones for three days, I can fake a few of them. For instance, I can make one drone call the others to come home. Not for long, though. Maybe thirty seconds."
"Thirty seconds is a long time," Bear said, "if you use it well."
I swallowed. Then I checked my battery again. Twenty-six percent.
"Bear," I said, "what if this is another trap?"
He looked at me for a while. Then he answered honestly, the way he always did.
"Then at least this time," he said, "we picked it ourselves."
Rules of Drone Warfare
Before we left, Moth made us practice in the ditch. As a result, my knees were raw before midnight.
"In this future war," she said, "the drone is the hunter, and you are the rabbit. So think like a rabbit."
First, she said, never cross open ground when a drone is turning. When it turns, its camera sweeps wide. Then, once it is flying straight, it only looks ahead.
Second, never stand up near a mast. Because the mast sends power out in rings, a tall shape near it lights up on every screen in the sector.
Third, if a drone hovers over you, count to sixty before you move. Usually, the pilot gets bored by forty.
"Usually?" I asked.
"Usually," she said. "Of course, some pilots are patient."
Meanwhile, Bear packed our gear in silence. He tied the rifles flat, so they wouldn't clink. Then he wrapped the spare batteries in socks, so their lights wouldn't show.
Finally, he checked my cloak, the way Mama used to every morning at Substation Nine. He tugged each corner and pressed each seam. When he was done, he patted my shoulder twice.
"Remember," he said, "slow is quiet, and quiet is home."
"Is that a Bear rule?" I asked.
"No," he said. "That's a Mama rule. I just borrowed it."
For a second, nobody said anything. Then Moth turned away and checked her controller again, even though she had already checked it three times.
Above us, the two pale moons of Ostra climbed over the birch trees. Soon it would be dark enough.
Six Minutes Under the Mast
At midnight, we went.
The grass was wet, and the cloak was heavy on my back. Every time I lifted an elbow, the cooling threads hissed softly. Still, I kept crawling. One meter. Then another.
Above the far end of the grove, a Vilma drone rose with a whine. It wobbled, dipped, and spun in slow circles like a drunk bird.
Right away, the guards came out of the trucks. Somebody laughed. Somebody else shouted at a radio.
Meanwhile, Bear and I reached the near truck. Up close, the charging mast hummed like Substation Nine used to hum. Thick cables ran from its base into the back of the truck.
Inside, the crates were stacked to the roof, so many that I lost count.
Bear lifted the lid of the first one. Inside lay twenty batteries in neat foam slots, each one glowing a soft, full green. For a second, I just stared. I had not seen a full battery in a week.
Then I noticed the latch. It was a twist latch with a red safety tab, exactly like the ones on our crates back at the depot.
"Bear," I whispered. "The latch."
"I see it," he said. "Grab one. Go."
So I grabbed a crate. Bear grabbed two, because he was Bear.
Then, above the grove, Moth's drone stopped circling. Somebody had found the fault. Now it was flying straight at the trucks.
Thirty Seconds
"Down!" Bear hissed.
We dropped flat under our cloaks beside the truck wheels. The drone passed overhead, low enough to blow my hair flat. Then it stopped and hovered right above us.
I held my breath. Under a cloak, you are invisible only while you stay perfectly still. Unfortunately, my hands were shaking.
In the trees, one of the dogs started to bark.
Then I heard it, very faint, from far up the hill. It was a quick, high chirp, three notes, like a bird.
That was Moth's tone.
At once, the drone above us turned. Then it rose straight up and flew north. Two more drones lifted off the mast and followed it, chirping back.
"Now," Bear said.
So we crawled. Thirty seconds felt like a whole night. Somewhere behind us, the guards were shouting about the drones. Even so, nobody looked at the grass.
When we finally reached the trees, Moth was waiting. Her face was white.
"That's all I've got," she whispered. "They'll change the tones by morning."
Then Bear set his crates down. Then, for the first time since the push, he smiled.
"Sixty batteries," he said. "That's a week home. Maybe two."
However, Moth was not looking at the batteries. She was looking at something in Bear's hand.
"What's that?" she asked.
It was a small Vilma tablet. Bear had grabbed it off the seat of the truck on the way out.
The Code on the Crates
We hid in the roots of the fallen oak and opened the first crate under a cloak, so no light would leak out.
Then Bear turned the crate over. On the bottom, there was a stamp in faded white paint. It was a depot code, letters and numbers, the kind we saw every day on supply boxes.
At first, I read it twice. Then I read it again.
KDR-4R-09.
"That's ours," I said. My voice cracked. "That's our code. 4th Recon. Depot nine."
For a while, nobody spoke.
Those were the batteries Mama had begged for over the radio. They were the forty that should have been four hundred. In other words, they were our batteries, the ones the depot said it didn't have.
"The Harra Gate," Moth said slowly. "That's how they're getting them. Not from their own tankers. From ours."
Bear nodded. His face was gray in the green glow of the battery lights.
"Somebody on our side is selling them," he said. "Out through the Gate to smugglers. Then the smugglers sell them to the Vilma."
"So while we froze," I said, "their drones charged on our power."
"And burned Substation Nine with it," Moth said.
Suddenly, the energy ceasefire, the Concord, and every speech about doing more with less felt like a joke. All along, we had been rationing for the enemy.
The Order on the Tablet
Bear wiped the Vilma tablet on his sleeve. The screen was still unlocked, because the guard had left it running.
Unfortunately, most of it was in Vilma script. Fortunately, Moth could read a little of it. She had studied it for her pilot course.
She scrolled through charging logs, drone counts, and supply lists. Then she stopped.
"Bear," she said. "Look."
On the screen was a short order with a picture beside it. The picture was a woman's face, bruised and tired, with a deep line between her eyes.
Of course, it was Mama.
Moth read the order out loud, one word at a time.
"Prisoner. Call sign Nest. Move to Dravo yard at dawn, day after tomorrow. Purpose: voice harvest, final. Then transfer off-world. Route: Harra Gate."
I didn't know what voice harvest meant. Then again, I didn't need to. The Choir had already stolen Mama's voice once. Now they wanted the rest of it, every word and every laugh, before they shipped her away for good.
"Dravo is north," I said. "It's eighty kilometers into Vilma country."
"Eighty-four," Bear said, without looking at the map.
Our lines were south. Home was south. With sixty batteries, we could walk there easily, and we could tell the whole army about the code on the crates.
Bear stood up slowly. He put two batteries in my hand and two in Moth's.
Then he looked south for a long moment, toward home.
After that, he turned around and faced north.
About The Kailne Front
The Kailne Front is a sci-fi war story series on nowwn.com, published as monthly serial fiction. In the year 3025, Kailne commandos Hops, Bear and Moth survive behind enemy lines on the planet Ostra after the Vilma push past Substation Nine and the city of Lenka goes dark. Meanwhile, the Concord's paper energy ceasefire, the mined Harra Gate and the Vilma voice-clone system called the Choir drive every battery, drone and choice in this military science fiction tale.
Part 3 of The Kailne Front releases Friday, December 11, 2026 at 9:00 AM ET. Subscribe if you want new releases.
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