"They're abandoning the transport vehicles," Arga called out, lowering his smoking rifle as the distant hum of corporate engines faded into the howling blizzard. "They left everything behind."Rafi pressed a gloved hand against his ribs, wincing as a sharp spike of pain radiated through his side. "Get over to the lead transport. Strip the comms arrays and the encrypted data drives before the battery dies.""On it," Dimas muttered, already jogging through the knee-deep snow toward the abandoned all-terrain scout vehicle idling awkwardly against an ice ridge.Tika wiped a smear of frozen grease from her forehead, her breath pluming in the freezing air as she inspected the vehicle's heavily armored chassis. "The kinetic plating is intact, and the fuel cells are sitting at eighty percent. This isn't just a transport; it's a mobile command unit.""Even better," Rafi said, stepping up beside her and leaning heavily against the frosted door handle. "Can you patch the long-range transmitter i

"Weeks won't be enough if Citra mobilizes the entire regional garrison," Maya warned, her voice crackling loudly through the vehicle's newly patched speaker system as she monitored the static-heavy regional frequencies. "I'm picking up scrambled chatter from three different corporate outposts south of here. They're deploying heavy patrols.""Let them come," Rafi said, stepping up to the open loading ramp of the transport and peering out into the biting wind. "We aren't running anymore.""Easy to say when you aren't the one bleeding onto the floorboards, Blackwell," Dimas muttered, tossing a heavy energy cell into the back of the truck with a metallic clatter. "What’s the actual play? Do we hit their supply lines or do we fortify this ridge?""We do both," Rafi replied, his tone hard as iron. "Tika, how's the comms array? Can Maya broadcast globally yet?""Give me ten more seconds before you start demanding miracles," Tika snapped from beneath the dashboard, yanking a sparking wire fre

"Status! Give me a status before we’re buried alive!" Rafi roared, his voice straining against the tectonic groan of the ridge."The northern perimeter is gone, Rafi! Vaporized!" Arga’s voice crackled through the comms, punctuated by the rhythmic thud of high-caliber rounds. "The Vanguard troopers are coming up the incline. They aren't stopping for the tremors!"Rafi slammed his back against a vibrating support beam, his eyes locked on Tika. She was hunched over the master terminal, her fingers moving in a blur of desperation. Blue sparks danced across her goggles."Tika! The drive! Is it wiped?""Eighty percent!" she screamed back, not looking up. "The recursive encryption is fighting the purge! Citra’s bastards hardwired a backup pulse!""I’ll buy you the time!" Dimas’s voice boomed from the doorway. He stood there, silhouetted by the orange glare of the burning outpost. He had a heavy kinetic shield in one hand and a scavenged rotary cannon in the other."Dimas, stay back! The ridg

 "Breathe shallow," Rafi hissed, his voice barely audible over the low, rhythmic hum of the drones circling the yellow fog above. "The filters are already clogging. If you hyperventilate, you’re dead." "Dead from the gas or dead from the drones?" Arga spat, wiping a thick, oily residue from his rifle’s thermal scope. "Because right now, the acid in this mud is eating through my boots, and I can hear those heat-seekers sniffing for us." "Keep your head down and your mouth shut, Arga," Dimas grunted. He was leaning heavily on a rusted girder that jutted out of the sludge like a broken rib. "The heat from your complaining is enough to light us up on their sensors." Rafi ignored the bickering. He adjusted his grip on his sidearm, his eyes scanning the horizon of the Sludge Flats. The chemical wasteland was a nightmare of neon-green pools and sulfurous steam. It was the only place Citra’s high-a

"My head is splitting," Rafi muttered, slamming his palm against the vibrating dash of the crawler."That’s the immortality settling in, Blackwell," Arga remarked from the turret seat, his eyes glued to the thermal scope. "Or maybe it’s just the altitude. We’re pushing ten thousand feet.""It’s not the altitude," Rafi snapped. His vision flickered—a ghosting overlay of architectural schematics and biometric data he hadn't memorized, but now knew by heart. "The Phase Zero data is... rewriting things. I’m seeing the mountain's structural weak points. I’m seeing the Board's old survey markers.""Can you see a heater that actually works?" Tika called out from the rear, her fingers buried in a pile of dismantled pulse rifles. "Because this rig is leaking cold air like a sieve, and my joints are locking up.""Focus, Tika," Maya said, her voice tight. She was huddled over the central comms hub, her face ghost-white in the glow of the monitors. "We’re entering the High Pass bottleneck. Vex, y