"It's not just a warlord," Adit chimed in, jogging up the winding gravel path from the lower terrace with an old hand-crank radio clutched tightly in his left hand and a pair of greasy field glasses dangling from his neck by a frayed strap. His chest heaved with ragged breaths as he skidded to a halt beside Rendi and Captain Hartono, his eyes wide behind scratched, fogged-up lenses. "I caught a scrambled frequency bouncing off the valley floor about twenty minutes ago. It wasn't military chatter, and it sure as hell wasn't some random survivalist group broadcasting on civilian bands. It's an automated repeater relaying telemetry data straight up from the agricultural commune at the base of the southern valley."Captain Hartono turned his sharp, weathered gaze away from the distant ridge and locked onto Adit, his expression darkening like a gathering storm cloud. "Telemetry data? Out here? In the middle of a regional infrastructure collapse, someone down there is running automated rela

"They don't just want to know why we're here, Captain," Sari said, her voice dropping into a sharp, icy register as she walked over from the garden beds, wiping a streak of dark soil from her cheek with the back of her wrist, "they want to make sure we're paying rent or bleeding out in the dirt before the sun goes down. I saw three more of their scouts creeping along the tree line near the lower pump station not ten minutes ago."Rendi turned his head sharply toward her, his boots crunching on the loose gravel of the path. "Did they see you?""Only if they're blind," Sari shot back, her chin tilting up in defiance as she crossed her arms over her chest, the loose fabric of her tunic pulling taut. "I was standing right by the main water barrel. One of them actually raised a pair of binoculars, stared right through me, and then signaled back down the valley toward the main road. They aren't hiding anymore, Rendi. The reconnaissance phase is over. They know every inch of our perimeter, a

"Adit, get down to the lower water cache and wake the reserves!" Captain Hartono’s voice cracked like a whip through the heavy pre-dawn mist, slicing right through the damp morning air. "If Kusuma’s vanguard is already moving up the lower trail, we don't have five minutes, let alone twenty! Move!"Adit dropped his hand-crank radio with a sharp clatter against the wooden crate, his face draining of what little color the highland fog had left him. "Wait, right now? In the dark? I thought we were going to hold a council meeting first!""There is no council!" Rendi barked, his boots already churning the loose gravel as he bolted past Adit toward the edge of the first tea terrace, his HUD flashing bright amber warnings of approaching biological heat signatures from the valley below. "The council adjourned the second their scouts spotted Sari by the pump station! Move your legs, Adit, or you're going to be fighting your first firefight with a radio antenna up your nose!""I don't want to fi

"Already on it!" Sari yelled over her shoulder, her boots pounding against the damp earth as she sprinted toward the timber-reinforced sniper nest they had spent the last week carving into the hillside. Her fingers were already fumbling with the heavy canvas pouch slung across her hip, dragging out a steel-tipped crossbow bolt and slamming it into the groove of her weapon with a sharp, metallic clack. "If they want our tea terraces, they're going to have to crawl through three hundred pounds of rusted nails and your delightful little tripwire traps first, Rendi!""Make sure they crawl through the nails before you waste ammunition on their kneecaps!" Rendi shouted back, his voice dropping an octave as his eyes darted from Sari's retreating form back down to the fog-choked valley floor.The amber dots on his HUD were no longer just scattered signatures; they were coalescing into a dense, aggressive wave of hostile heat profiles surging upward through the damp foliage. Kusuma’s men weren

"Stop narrating like you're broadcasting a football match and start pulling pins on those smoke canisters!" Captain Hartono barked, his boots sliding through the mud as he dropped beside Adit in the trench."I'm not narrating, I'm providing situational awareness!" Adit shrieked back, his fingers fumbling frantically with the ribbed metal ring of a military-grade smoke grenade they had salvaged from the port authority outpost weeks ago. "And my hands are shaking because someone decided to build a permanent home in the middle of a war zone!""Pull the pin, Adit, or I'll use your panic-induced sweat to water the tea plants," Rendi muttered without turning around, his attention completely riveted to the holographic interface overlaying his field of vision.The amber heat signatures down on the lower terrace were violently thrashing around like hooked fish. The crude tripwires Rendi had strung across the narrow footpaths had done their initial job, catching the leading edge of Kusuma’s van