She held out her hand, and the pack on her back extended its robotic arm, disgorging the equipment she requested—five tiny surveillance drones.

She enchanted them, just a little, attaching them to a set of five homing arrows, designed to dissolve and disappear before reaching their targets, to lower the risk of being noticed as anything unusual. It was a trick she had only recently acquired, along with the homing arrows themselves. Said arrows took a lot of time to prep—but she wasn't in active combat, after all.

Then, as the other three stayed on guard, she elevated her crossbow arm and fired in the vague direction of where most of the interposing forces were.

It would have been a bit much to review five fast‐paced video feeds at once on her own, but her TacComp easily picked up any slack there might have been.

Two alien stationary laser batteries, as expected. Two infantry troopers, easily more than a match for any Human infantryman. Three of those pernicious "Hydra" flying missile launchers on patrol, looking for an opening in Singh's defenses to fire. And… one of her arrows seemed headed for empty space, high up in the branches of one of the trees.

A sniper, probably, her TacComp thought. Or something else cloaked.

(To The Stars, Chapter 18)