Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Laika Drone

The Laika Drone is a type of drone used by the Socialist Union of Voshkod. Planned to be voiced by.

History
"Beep... Beep... Beep... Bloop."

-Laika Drone

Even after the unfortunate failure of the third Sputnik probe in 1955 V.C., the Voshkod never lost track of their mission to spread communism to the stars. Scaling back on their ambitious plans for the Sputnik probes as miniature space stations hovering in orbit and beyond, they instead began to work on other projects including the Soyuz rockets, the Mir space station, and more recently the Vostok II spaceships. But while these projects may have been responsible for ending the Sputnik probe's reign of future Voshkod space advances, they did not kill off its usefulness. From 1953 V.C. to 1960 V.C., Sputnik-class satellites were launched into orbit en masse, first by specialized ground-to-space launch missions and then eventually scattered out at large by Eorzean cosmonauts. They served in a multitude of roles for the ever-cautious Eorzeans - detection and signal transmitting, monitoring of space and nearby terrestrial and solar bodies, figurative treasure chests filled with materials usable by cosmonauts when working on other orbital projects and stations, even on a few occasions emergency 'rescue capsules' capable of holding a cosmonaut with sufficiently prepared food and water supplies in case of an accident, along with a monitor to signal location. While the space around Gaiaterra grew crowded with Aquilan, Voshkod, Hawke, Andoran, Lurensian, Syndicate and ADI space stations and orbital docks, hundreds of Sputniks soon filled the night skies, and the sight of satellites passing by overhead soon became a nightly occurrence for night-time viewers. They were crude and serviceable... But, for over five years, they did their job.

By 1970 V.C, however, the Sputnik satellites were starting to show their age. Many of them had strayed out of position or were irretrievably lost over the years, and many of those that had remained in position had through collisions with other objects, fellow Sputniks, or simple negligence were in poor condition. While the Voshkods were capable of simply collecting such 'space junk' in their myriad space stations, the question came of what to do about future satellites. They could not simply keep launching new Sputniks into orbit - with the advances in space technology, they were already showing their age. Though a variety of alternate suggestions were put forth, the one that ultimately was seen as most promising came from the Experimental Ministry of Science - why not simply update the Sputnik's design with new materials, implant basic drone technology, and then use handler cosmonauts on the space stations to guide them? The go-ahead was given, and soon the Laika Drone, named after the first War Bear put into orbit, was being produced from the halls of (insert Eorzean Location). Needing less technical work than the Terror Drone or other variations due to its relatively simple tasks, such drones were first tested in late 1981 V.C., and given to the crew of the Mir station.

The programming of the Laika Drones is deceptively simple - most are little more than eager puppies in terms of 'personality', being driven to follow orders from their 'masters' and more or less patiently waiting at ordered locations. Instead, most of their technical magnificence comes in their visual, auditory, chemical, and assorted other sensors placed into the drone. When linked up via a monitoring 'collar' to a control booth set up in a space station, the Laika will constantly broadcast all it sees, hears, and senses, allowing human cosmonauts to feed that information back to Ground Control or further relay orders to the Laikas. Though this limits Laika Drones to more or less operating only within a certain radius of Voshkod spacecraft, the Voshkods are only too happy to attest to the fact that they are everywhere in space anyways, or at least everywhere important.

However, the Laika Drone would never find itself involved in any kind of combat action until 2001, when by accident three Laika Drones were shot down in an Orbital Drop in Silvermoon instead of old space junk. Never designed for actual battling, much less heated combat on the ground or anything besides surveillance, the Laika drones used their survival mechanisms as well as their propulsion engines to prevent them from crashing into the ground and returned to the nearest known Voshkod presence - the base that had ordered the orbital dump in the first place. At first surprised by the sudden appearance of the Laikas, the Voshkod commander in charge of the base made the best of the situation - and coaxed the drones into accepting the base as its new 'master', reconfiguring the drones to send data to the computers that made up the basement and first floor of the Conyard. This would result in a surprising discovery - while they were useless when confronted by an enemy, the Laika Drones could be used to keep watch on the battlefield, their superior sensors being able to detect the heat signatures of Stealth Tanks, the incoming whir of Brotherhood AH-64As, and even the poisons of a Acolyte that was operating inside the Voshkod camp. And with their engines, the Voshkod commander could even order one into the air, letting it fly high into the sky to report on Allied movements with near-perfect black and white LOMO filming equipment, its small size and height allowing it to remain unseen while it dutifully reported back everything it saw.

This situation would cause a shift after the war in the way Laika Drones were used. While still very much a staple of the cosmonauts, their potential for ground-based combat detection and reconnaissance was seen as having great potential for the revisioned military under Premier Lunafreya, especially with the advances in sudden warfare perfected by the Guardians. Finally, in 2003 V.C., a year before the invasion, Voshkod Commanders were approved to carry Laika Drones (in special harnesses, of course) with them wherever Drone Kennels were built.