The first bomb was a crude device.

It did not matter. A bomb only has to work once. This one did.

It blew the tanker it was attached to apart, and the gasoline from the tanker brought the desired destruction.

The second one will be better.

The bomber has learned a lot.

***

‘Look sharp, men!‘ Sargent Jones bellows. He is already on his feet, manning the door switch of the transport drone.

‘Let’s rid the world of this crazy motherfucker!’ he hits the switch with a closed fist, and the doors rotate open as the drone drops like a rock. ‘First man checks the ropes before rappelling! Safety first!’ This gets a few chuckles from his crew. Nothing they do is safe.

This craft is a pilotless, oversized electric drone, running a rudimentary AI whose only job is to fly to a predefined location, drop to 50 feet above deck, and then hover for exactly 60 seconds before releasing the ropes and returning to base. It will drop the ropes at the programmed time, whether there are still men clinging to it or not.

The 6-man crew has extensive experience, and they are all on the ground with 12 seconds to spare. After the mission is complete, a chopper with a human pilot will collect them and the ropes at the same spot.

The target, a small wooden cabin, is 3 clicks away, on the other side of the hill. An easy hike. Home to the crazed bomber who has been terrorizing the city for the past 8 months.

They have orders to eliminate anyone found at the location, then retreat to the drop zone. The chopper will drop off a couple of surveying spooks, then take them back to base.

***

Ben loves his cabin. He built it himself, with tools he fabricated for the task.

It is compact and snug, and it fits him perfectly.

There are only two rooms. Ben lives in one room, and the other is his workshop. The toilet is outside, detached from the cabin, and he uses a third hut for cooking.

It is a simple place, clean and neat. Water is fetched from the lake, and solar supplies all the electricity he needs.

He has lived here for ten years. Ten glorious, peaceful, and productive years.

Ben was not surprised when the proximity alarm softly chimed. Eventually, Someone always discovers him and wrecks his peace.

The chimes change tone as the visitors cover ground. They are approaching fast.

He stopped working on his latest creation and calmly put away his tools, then carefully covered his work with a cloth. He will finish it later.

Right now, he has to prepare for his guests.

They are almost here.

***

The six scouts covered the 3 kilometers in 6 minutes—their augmented bodies allowing them to move fast and silently in total darkness.

Their bodies are more machine than man, but there is no AI in here, no software that makes decisions for them. All their processing is meat-based, 100% bonafide human brainpower. No machine can read a hot zone like a human and make those last-minute, subtle adjustments needed to achieve your objective.

Still, they missed the tiny sensors that announced their approach. By the time they positioned themselves in a half-circle around Ben’s cabin, he was ready to receive them.

***

The scouts maintained their positions, assessing the situation and looking for the small details machines often overlook.

The cabin resembles something built by a frontiersman long ago and is constructed from rough-hewn logs, stacked to form a rectangle. The roof is actual sod. Their instruments indicated no electric current present. There are no windows, and strangely, considering the absence of electricity, no chimney either.

This part of the world endures harsh winters.

They were unable to detect any heat signature, indicating no bodies in the building. Two smaller structures were nearby, and the larger of the two showed up hot on their heads-up displays. Something in there produced a lot of heat. It also has no chimney, so the heat is not from a fire.

They advanced on the hot building, maneuvering their half-circle around the tidy yard, using a small overhead drone to navigate while keeping the main structure in sight.

Two scouts peeled off the far edges of their formation and approached the small building. They took position at the entrance, signaled their team, and then breached the wooden door.

***

Ben found this place at the lake by mistake.

He was on a fact-finding mission for the mining company he worked for at the time, and somehow got hopelessly lost. He ran out of fuel and became stranded in the wilderness.

He took to it immediately and decided to stay and make a new life here. A simple life, quiet and unrushed. Very much different from his old lifestyle.

He is very protective of what he built and has defended it many times before.

This bunch is different, though. They are not scavengers or roaming raiders.

They are military.

They were sent.

***

The small building was bright inside, flooded with light streaming from two industrial-sized freezers with glass doors.

A gleaming cooktop was set to the right, and utensils were neatly hanging above it—a well-used kitchen by the look of it.

The contents of the freezers were unexpected. Both contained human bodies, some complete, others partial, hanging on hooks.

A machine would have immediately sounded the alarm and changed tactics based on this new information, but these meat-based machine hybrids were momentarily stunned by what they saw.

They have seen human bodies in all sorts of conditions. This was new.

During these few precious seconds of shock, Ben uncloaked behind them and drove spikes into the back of their heads, severing their spinal cords.

‘Not much meat on them, Ben thought, ‘but many usable parts for future projects, and lots of energy-dense alloys.’

***

The scouts outside saw on their displays what their teammates recorded before they died. They, too, had trouble processing the images. People are not meant to be displayed on hooks, and what they saw froze them in place, their minds filled with shocked disbelief.

They did not notice when Ben, again fully cloaked and invisible, pushed open the broken door and walked straight towards them.

***

At the same time Ben was extracting information from Sergeant Jones, the bomber made a fatal mistake and destroyed a large portion of the abbey where he was a monk.

Ben was annoyed to learn that this team of assassins was sent here in error. His own analysis of the available intelligence on the man’s external drive points to the abbey on the other side of a nearby mountain range.

They made a mistake. Just like he did himself years ago. His mistake left him stranded on this planet, but it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to him. It gave him this simple, peaceful life.

A life that might now be over if he cannot correct it.

With the bodies of these men, he will have enough fuel to visit the Abbey. There, he can collect all the biomass the ship will require for his new mission.

He has to destroy the place these men came from.

But first, he will complete his latest project.

His last birdhouse is the most beautiful one so far.