The Combat Drone

Also called the Auto Defense Rocket. Its first job is an examination: the High Ranking Officer sets it on the newly converted squadron the day before they leave Earth, and they beat it. It is effective enough that beating it counts for something. It returns in a very different context when Hardware, on the wrong side of the Galactic Time Warp, uses a drone to occupy Flashback and Backlash while he gets on with changing history. The same machine bookending the team’s first test and an attempt to erase them is a nice piece of structure, whether or not anybody planned it.