“We have a more secure method,” Alina stated, her tone leaving no room for argument. She plucked the card from the table. “Flora.”

  The Technical Officer took the card, producing a small, hardened case from a compartment on her thigh armor. She slotted it into a standalone reader, which she then connected via a single, fiber-optic filament to a port on her wrist. “Initiating air-gapped analysis. Running data through a partitioned virtual machine. No connection to the ‘Red Vulture’ or our neural nets.” A shallow stream of data, visible only to her, scrolled across her helmet’s internal display. “The file structure is clean. No executable code. It is a pure data packet.”

  A new, more detailed hologram bloomed above the table, replacing Rahish’s simple map. It was a stunningly precise schematic of Saint Aurora. Thermal signatures marked patrol routes in pulsing orange. Defensive emplacements were tagged with weapon calibers. Power grids and communication nodes glowed with soft white light. At the center of the town, a heavily fortified compound was highlighted in stark red.

  “It’s clean,” Flora reported. “And comprehensive.”

  Rahish allowed himself a thin, grim smile. “As promised. Your path is here.” A section of the map zoomed in, highlighting a dense, overgrown area southeast of the town. “A pre-corporate war subway project. Abandoned during the initial financial collapses, half-built. The jungle has reclaimed the surface entrance.” He traced a line from the jungle into a schematic of subterranean tunnels. “It’s unstable and uncharted, but wide enough for your vehicle. It emerges here,” he pointed to a location on the far eastern side of Saint Aurora, “in an unfinished station, bypassing the main defensive cordon entirely.”

  Chen Feng: “Tell me about this area.”

  Rahish: “The tunnel itself is of limited use. Smugglers used it to bypass checkpoints and avoid road taxation, but that was some time ago.

  However, someone has since sealed both ends with metal bars and flooded it with poison gas. I don’t know who was responsible, but they certainly knew what they were doing.”

  Flora: “Both our vehicle and our power armors are fitted with biochemical defense systems. This obstacle presents no significant challenge. Cutting through the barriers will incur minimal delay.”

  Chen Feng: “Doesn’t the warlord Teodulo want to collect road taxes? Wouldn’t he have cleared the tunnel to force traffic—and revenue—through his checkpoints?”

  Rahish: “No. Teodulo abolished tariffs on the trade routes around Saint Aurora. His business is human capital. Lower barriers mean more traffic, and more traffic means more… inventory, potential consumer visits, and advertisement exposure for the cartel lord.”

  It was a good plan. A viable one. Almost good.

  “Two more pieces of intelligence,” Rahish said, taking on a gossip’s lurid tone. “The warlord, Teodulo, is in residence. He’s personally overseeing a ‘liquidation auction’ of newly acquired… inventory. It begins in approximately forty-eight hours. The assets were recently procured from a residential district called Perseus India.”

  Rahish continued, “Perseus India was a corporate residential estate for a software developer. High-value employees and their families. The company was bankrupted by the market disruptions your ‘Liberation War’ caused. When the residents were at their most vulnerable—attempting to survive without corporate governance—Teodulo moved in and acquired the assets.

  It was a very good hostile takeover. The assets are highly skilled, globally sourced workers and their dependents. That grade of human capital is rare——even for him. The auction will be a significant event for his portfolio.”

  He let the information hang in the air, its corporate sterility making the horror worse. “And secondly, the man has a… a fascination with the past. His compound is less a fortress and more a museum. He collects antiques from the pre-corporate era. Technology, mostly.”

  The moment the words left his mouth, the atmosphere in the room shifted. Alina went very still. Chen Feng could feel the change in her posture through the subtle hum of his own armor.

  “He’s there,” Alina murmured, more to herself than to them. “The slaver lord himself. In the target zone.” Her voice gained a hard, eager edge. “We could decapitate the entire local command structure. A high-value target elimination.”

  “No,” Chen Feng’s rebuttal was immediate and absolute, cutting through the room like a mono-knife.

  Alina’s helmet swiveled to face him. “Obergefreiter? Explain.”

  “It’s a trap. Not one he set for us, but one we’d be walking into willingly,” Chen said, his words slow and precise. “Our mission is to reach the East-Delhi theater, not start a partisan war. Engaging a fortified target in a populated area, based on intel from a source we barely trust? That’s not a tactical strike; it’s a suicide pact.”

  “He is a cancer on this land,” Alina countered, her ideological fervor rising. “Removing him is our revolutionary duty! The , Chapter III…”

  “Risk is too high; effect is too low,” Chen cut her off. “Teodulo is one of many. We kill him, one of his competitors takes his business, filling his void, recaptures his prisoners, and the slavery continues elsewhere. One death doesn’t solve the systemic problem. And if we die, the Republic’s valuable intel dies with us.”

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  A nod of approval from Rahish. “Finally, someone who understands reason over rhetoric!”

  Alina: “Reactionary defeatist speech… did you learn nothing from us in the last two years? . To retreat from injustice is to connive with tyranny!”

  “I’m not conniving with anyone. I’m focusing on the primary objective. We are a reconnaissance element, not an assassination squad. We get Saint Aurora; we don’t liberate it. Not today.” Chen pointed at the holographic map, highlighting the compound. “According to this intel, Teodulo’s men have been entrenching here for at least eight months. Their fortifications would be formidable. To breach a stronghold like this—”

  Flora Rosenkrantz: “According to ‘PLA Urban Tactical Handbook, 2471 Ed.’, a successful assault on this type of semi-permanent fortification requires one ‘Mars’ armor platoon, backed by three squads of mechanized Urban Jaegers or one battalion of IKAs, plus Close Air Support flyers. Alternatively, request indirect fire removal.”

  As Flora recited the handbook, Chen’s mind automatically cross-referenced the sterile terms with the knowledge he’d crammed during his indoctrination.

  he recalled the guttural Terran Gothics acronym from a tactics manual, The disparity between the textbook solution and their reality was laughably vast.

  Chen shrugged: “We have one mechanized ranger squad.”

  Alina demanded, her voice tight, “… Then when do we kill him?”

  Chen: “Absolutely not now. We relay the intel to Legion command. Let them decide if they can spare a squad of ‘Rote K?mpfer’ for the town.”

  Alina: “And we just wait, while tyranny reigns?”

  The room descended into a tense silence.

  It was Flora who broke the deadlock.

  “Analysis: Chen Feng’s assessment is tactically sound. The probability of mission failure increases by an estimated 412% if we engage the warlord’s central compound. The decapitation strike, while ideologically pure, is a strategic diversion.”

  Alina let out a long, slow breath that hissed through her vox-grille. The tension drained from her shoulders. Flora’s cold calculus had doused the flames of her revolutionary zeal. “Acknowledged,” she said, the word tight. “We stick to the primary objective. We use the tunnel. We bypass the town.” She turned back to Rahish. “The intel is appreciated.”

  As Alina and Flora moved ahead, their armored forms silhouetted against the cavern's dim light, Chen Feng hung back. He turned, his gaze settling on Rahish, who was watching the New Terrans depart with an unreadable expression.

  "You fight with the partisans," Chen began, his voice low enough not to carry. "We all have every reason to hate the corporations. But a man with your... skills, and a background I think you have doesn't end up in a hole like this without a powerful reason. Why are you really here?"

  Rahish's eyes, shadowed and weary, met Chen's. The constant cynicism faded for a moment, replaced by something older and heavier.

  "A promise," he said, the words cryptic and soft. "One I made a long time ago. To someone who believed this world could be better than it is I have delayed fulfilling it for too long."

  Rahish then looked away, toward the huddled civilians, his thoughts clearly somewhere else entirely.

  "Some debts are not paid with money."

  Chen studied him for a long moment, saying nothing. The answer was evasive, but the raw, unguarded truth in the man's tone was more revealing than any detailed lie could have been. He gave a curt nod and turned to catch up with his squad.

  He found them just outside the hideout's main chamber. The scene that greeted him was a study in contrasts. Alina stood apart, leaning against a rusted bulkhead with her arms crossed, the rigid line of her shoulders broadcasting a silent storm of frustration. She was brooding, pure and simple.

  A few meters away, Flora was kneeling. Her formidable A-3 ‘Saturnus’ armor looked absurdly out of place as some small, grimy children tentatively grouped around her. One of them reached out to touch a glowing panel on her gauntlet. In her armored hand, she carefully held out a few foil-wrapped squares. Chen saw a few more children also having them.

  As Chen approached, he saw what they were: Republic-issue nutritional supplements, masquerading as chocolate. The foil was stamped with the faces of Marx and Engels. But the art style wasn't the stern, monumental portraiture he expected; it was a cartoonish, almost chibi-like rendition, with the two philosophers given comically large, earnest eyes.

  It was so ludicrous, so utterly out of place in this grim reality, that a choked laugh escaped him before he could stop it. He quickly covered it with a cough, the sound echoing faintly in the cavern.

  Back inside, the moment the door locks engaged, Rahish’s exhausted posture straightened. The simmering resentment and weariness were gone, replaced by the cold, focused calm of a man——the Rahish who once executing a business decision which will doom millions and prosper thousands. He moved to a console, hidden behind a stack of repurposed supply crates. His fingers danced across the interface with a practiced ease that no struggling partisan should possess.

  There was a secured channel—encrypted, like all the others. Rahish remembered the skills required to establish and use one of them, taught back in corporate child-school. He had been one of their products, too. A failed one. He’d always scored high in loyalty classes..

  Yet, from his batch of corporate younglings, he had been the first to derelict his role. The reason he had fled was lost to him now.

  When a man reached a certain point in his career, he no longer remembered why he had chosen the path—he just knew that he had.

  “It was nothing personal. It is every person for themselves, New Terrans,” He mutters.

  This link connected Rahish to an information broker—a data-hub in what used to be Florence, Italy, known for its relative "neutrality" and for giving or demanding exorbitant payment, depending on the value of the information.

  The message was simple, anonymous, and it soon posted onto the intel board.

  He sent the message. If Teodulo retained half the intellect Rahish believed he had, the warlord would purchase the exclusive intelligence rights within minutes. He won’t let his competitors to seize the "asset.”

  Rahish leaned back, the console’s glow illuminating the hollows of his eyes. He hadn’t lied to the New Terrans. The tunnel was real. The intel was good. But all good business was about managing risk and redirecting liability. Let Teodulo’s hounds chase the Republic’s wolves. It would draw patrols away from his hideout, create chaos, and give his people a few more days. It was, from his perspective, the most profitable play.