The Maintainer

By mid century, western cultures had been assaulted into a near police state by decades of increased terrorist activity on behalf of radicals, largely from the Middle East. The nations of the world were finally forced to shed the laws of armed conflict forged in the wars of the previous century that had tied their hands for too long.

Gone was the era of the human war fighter.

The Maintainer became the only human infantry soldier on the battlefield. A multinational initiative; these elite units made of two members, lead, repaired and reprogrammed their drone infantry squads while seeking to cut the head off the snake of terrorist funding operations and assassinating high profile radical leaders.

They trained to live in utter isolation for up to two years, functioning autonomously, while providing the UN's ultimate solution to insurgency warfare; a decades long protracted annihilation of the enemy on their own soil. The mission was dubbed Operation Spartan Thrust - with only three hundred squads deployed to hunt terrorist investors, training cells and masterminds. Just over four thousand infantry units supported by nearly twice as many unmanned delivery and close air support drones were deployed in the initial rotation.

Only six hundred Maintainers deployed.

For these maintainers however, the complete lack of contact with the rest of the world was the greatest challenge. Everything was automated; resupply, rearmament, even repatriation. Daily, they uploaded log entries and supply requests, but were only ever given mission critical data through text. The world went on without them, but the question that scratched at the back of their minds was; how far had it gone?

Artwork by Nivanh Chanthara @ https://www.artstation.com/nivanhchanthara