Reyn Ondar watched the perimeter from the command tent. His team held position in the valley, waiting. The Zeo Empire pushed deeper into their homeland each day. Striking their forces directly hadn't worked. Now they needed something different. The radio crackled. A Zeo defector wanted to meet. He claimed he had supply route intel. Reyn chose the old warehouse for the handoff—an ancient structure of black stone hidden in overgrown forest north of the valley. It was remote enough to avoid patrols. He took two team members and left the others to watch their flank. They reached the warehouse at dusk. Deep tread marks scarred the ground near the entrance. Heavy tracks, spiked and wide. A cyber tank had been here recently, black armor probably still warm from the hunt. The defector's pursuers were close. Reyn signaled his team to spread out and cover the approaches. The defector stumbled from the tree line, bleeding from his side. He pressed a handheld device into Reyn's palm before collapsing. The screen lit up with blue light, projecting routes and depot locations across the air between them. Supply lines. Convoy schedules. Fuel caches. Everything Reyn needed to cut the Empire's advance at its root. He pocketed the device and lifted the defector. They had what they came for, and now they had to move.

Reyn crouched in the back of the transport as they moved through the forest. The defector lay beside him, breathing shallow. The handheld device sat cold in Reyn's pocket. He'd gotten what he needed, but now he had to get his team out alive. The driver called back a warning. Reyn looked up and saw it through the rear window—a black drone with red markings, keeping pace above the tree line. A crystal glowed at its center, casting a thin holographic beam that swept the ground below. It had locked onto them. Reyn pulled the device from his pocket and studied the projected map still flickering in the air. The drone's beam pulsed brighter. He realized the connection immediately. The device was transmitting. It had been feeding their position to the Empire since the moment the defector handed it over. Reyn crushed the device against the transport floor. The projection died. Above them, the drone circled once, then banked hard and streaked away toward Zeo lines. They'd lost the intel, but they'd bought themselves time to run. The transport lurched as the driver hit the accelerator. Reyn heard them before he saw them—mechanical footfalls hammering through the underbrush, closing fast from both flanks. Two pursuit hounds burst from the trees, black metal frames gleaming, red trim bright against the forest shadows. Spiked tails lashed as they ran. The cannons on their backs swiveled toward the transport. Reyn shouted for the driver to split off the main path. The first hound fired, blowing apart a tree trunk ahead of them. The second closed the gap, claws tearing into the dirt. Reyn leaned out and fired three rounds into its forward joint. The hound stumbled, sparks flying, but kept coming. His team would never make it back with these things on them. He grabbed the defector's jacket and pulled him upright. The man's eyes opened, unfocused. Reyn asked him one question: where did the Empire stage their hounds? The defector coughed and gave him coordinates—a staging ground two kilometers west, lightly guarded between convoy runs. Reyn made the call. They weren't running anymore. They were going to hit that staging ground tonight and take out every hound the Empire had in reserve. The drone had cost them the supply map, but it had also shown him a new target. He'd break down the problem until a solution emerged, same as always. They ditched the transport at a ravine and moved on foot. The defector could barely walk, so two of Reyn's team carried him between them. The coordinates led to a clearing where a stone mecha stood silent among the trees—ten feet tall, onyx black with crystals embedded in its armor. An ancient Ryden unit, forgotten and overgrown. Reyn recognized the design from old resistance records. His people had built these generations ago, before the Empire came. He circled it once, checking the joints and power core. The crystals still pulsed with faint light. It could work. They'd use it as their exit point after the raid. If the hounds came for them again, they'd have something that could match them. Reyn turned to his team and laid out the plan. They'd strike the staging ground, cripple the hound reserves, and fall back to the mecha. The Empire had tracked them with their own tech. Now Reyn would answer with something they'd forgotten existed. The equation had changed.