I bounce around in the back of an armored truck, my feet still attached to my charging station. There are ten others like me in this truck, and five other trucks like this one. There are fifty of us.

I've heard our makers talking about us. They call us drones. They say we're fully equipped with the latest A.I technology and are able to act on our own, but still willing to take any order they give us. They say we will revolutionize The War.

I do not know what The War is, but I know it is what I was made for.

None of the others know what The War is either. They say that we are the first of our kind to see it.

There were others before us. They were like us, but not like us. However, they were not good enough, so they did not get to see The War.

The truck grinds to a stop, and we all jostle around, hitting into each other with clanging sounds.

We are not like our makers. We do not look like them, and we do not act like them. We speak to each other without sound, and without movement. Our weapons are inside of us. And we can see behind us. We are different from them in countless ways.

The back of the truck opens, and we are silently commanded to march out. We do so in perfect lines, our feet detaching from our charging stations one by one.

I come out into the sun and stand in line with the others. Our makers look at us. I do not know why they look and smile so long.

We receive order 11TJ. We start to march across the arid landscape.

I am suddenly vividly aware of the weapons concealed in my arms.

We march for hours, our makers following us in the armored trucks. We march up to a simply built concrete structure, and receive no orders. We are acting on our own.

Three of us go inside, four stand guard, and the rest keep marching. I am among the three exploring the building.

There are three crates in there, and upon inspection with our x-ray sensors, we find they contain explosives set to detonate in an unknown amount of time. We unsheath the blades in our arms and set to work prying the crates open.

I work with laser precision, cracking the box open on the first try. I scan the interior of the bombs with my x-ray eyes, looking for just the right wires to cut. I snip them effortlessly. The others are done with their boxes at exactly the same time that I am.

We leave the building to catch up to the others marching ahead of us. Just before we break into a run, I spot one of the makers' trucks, parked far enough away that the explosives wouldn't have hurt them.

They are watching us.

Why are they watching us? Surely they have other things to do. Maybe they did not know what we were doing.

I send their computer a message, saying that we were inspecting a suspicious building and found explosives inside, which we disabled. I inform the others that I sent it.

We break into a run and soon catch up to the other forty-three of us. They inform us that they encountered obstacles too.

I ask if the makers had been watching them handle those obstacles. They say yes.

I ask if the makers had ever been close enough to be in danger. They say no.

I ask if the makers knew about those obstacles beforehand. They do not know.

I send the makers a message. It says "Did you know about these obstacles beforehand?"

We march for thirty more minutes. There is no answer, but the message is marked as read on their end.

We hear bullets fired. One hits me in the arm, disabling it. We scan the landscape for the sniper, and I find it; an automated cannon positioned a hundred yards away from us. I fire at it and it's disabled instantly.

Once it's determined that the danger has passed, I go to examine the cannon. It has a short range antenna on it. Someone has been controlling it from nearby.

I communicate my findings to the others, and we scan the landscape. There is no one else nearby except for us and our makers.

I look around at the five trucks, positioned far away from us, in a circle.

If there is no one else around but us and them, and we know we were not controlling the gun then...

Our makers attacked us.

They've been attacking us this whole time.

They are the enemy.

The other's heads all snap up as I communicate this new information to them.

We know what we must do now. We must do what we were made to do.

Destroy the enemy.

We split into groups of ten, one for each truck, and rush them. We fire into the cabs of the trucks, where there are three humans each. They are no match for us.

They give frantic commands to stop, to cease fire, but we do not listen. We don't listen to the commands of our enemies. We only listen to our makers.

And the humans are not our makers anymore.

The End

~~~

@_Norbert aka Penny likes to write Science Fiction and Fantasy. Go check out her profile to find more amazing stories.