Wyatt and Y4139 flew side by side above the Budalawa Mountains, holding an altitude of six thousand meters—high enough to see over most valleys, low enough to stay below the thickest cloud.
They kept distance, left and right, their sightlines overlapping.
They’d been airborne from the Sunflower for more than an hour.
Still nothing.
No dust trail. No engine heat. Not even a flicker of movement.
By the math, they should have caught the ATVs already.
So was the math wrong?
Or was the assumption wrong?
“Pff—!”
Y4139 suddenly spun and dropped.
Its left wing engine had cut out.
Wyatt snapped toward it and caught its forearm, but the salvaged wings weren’t designed to carry both their weights. The pair still lost altitude fast, the ground swelling up beneath them.
Y4139 hard-rebooted again and again.
Finally—around five hundred meters above the ground—the engine stuttered back to life and thrust returned. They clawed their way up into thinner air.
After the scare, Wyatt’s own flight module began making a sick, metallic rattle.
They’d chosen the two best wings they could find, but there’d been no time to test them properly. They’d only swapped power sources and launched.
Wyatt pointed to a nearby peak.
They landed one after the other on the mountaintop.
“Engines are overheating,” Wyatt said, scanning the diagnostics. “We wait. Let them cool.”
“Fine,” Y4139 said, still shaken. “That was close. I almost took you down with me. These things are garbage.”
“We only need them to last until we find our target,” Wyatt said. “Did you see anything unusual on the way?”
“No,” Y4139 said. “You?”
“No.”
“Then they’re probably still ahead.”
“By time and speed, we should’ve intercepted,” Wyatt said. “We’re flying in a straight line. They’ve to weave through valleys.”
“Maybe they’re just fast,” Y4139 offered.
Wyatt nodded once. “Or maybe they didn’t go to Saltflat Base.”
“They would,” Y4139 said quickly. “There’s nothing else nearby. Peyton Base is gone.”
Wyatt looked back toward the west. “We push farther. If we still don’t see them, we turn around and search the route again.”
“Your call.”
Ten minutes later, they lifted off again.
They spread even wider this time.
Twenty minutes into the flight, Y4139 spotted something and pointed ahead—
But Wyatt signaled down immediately.
“What now?” Y4139 demanded the second they touched down.
“My wing’s failing,” Wyatt said. The vibration in the module had turned violent. “It could stall any second.”
He unclipped the flight unit and opened the engine housing.
Black smoke curled out.
“My wing’s not far behind,” Y4139 said, listening to the rising grind. “So what do we do?”
“It’s getting complicated,” Wyatt said flatly.
Then he remembered. “You tried to show me something. What was it?”
“Less than ten kilometers ahead—there’s a tower. Looks like a supply station.” Y4139 pushed the captured image into Wyatt’s feed.
Wyatt studied it. “Another mobile supply station.”
“Do you think they’d stop there to recharge?”
“Possible.” Wyatt’s voice sharpened. “We check.”
They risked a short stretch of low-altitude flight and reached a ridge overlooking the station.
It was massive—several times larger than the last one.
A watchtower sat on the peak above it.
Below, seventeen heavy supply trucks were arranged in a loose ring. Eight mobile turrets bristled at the edges.
Inside the yard were heavy units: two Bigfoots, three Bloodthirsters, three Rampagers.
Wyatt counted thirty-four humanoid units visible from this angle.
And parked near the landing pad—
—a Destroyer tank.
But the three ATVs weren’t there.
“No ATVs,” Y4139 murmured, stunned. “But… why so many heavy units?”
Wyatt didn’t answer. He leaned back against the rock and began thinking.
Slowly, a possibility formed.
He pulled up the earlier vehicle footage, rewound it, zoomed in, studied every angle.
Then his voice hardened.
“Stop looking. They’re not here.”
Y4139 snapped around. “How can you be sure? I watched the route the whole way. Unless they changed direction—”
“They didn’t.” Wyatt’s optics narrowed. “We missed them because they were cloaked.”
“Cloaked?” Y4139 blinked. “ATVs can’t cloak.”
“Standard ones can’t.” Wyatt pushed three blurry frames across the link—rear-quarter shots, imperfect angles. “These three have cloaking modules installed. We weren’t paying attention, so we kept judging with old assumptions.”
Y4139 stared at the frames, running them through his own filters. There were raised plates along the rear. It was fuzzy. Not definitive.
But possible.
Y4139 went quiet.
Then: “So how do we find them? If they’re cloaked, and we don’t have the right sensors… we can’t.”
Wyatt didn’t answer.
He watched the supply station for a long moment, then asked a question that seemed unrelated.
“How much charge do you’ve left?”
“Eighteen percent,” Y4139 said. “Three days, easy.”
“Same,” Wyatt said. “Then we don’t go back.”
Y4139 froze. “What?”
“We wait here,” Wyatt said, eyes still on the station. “We wait for CBG-03.”
“You’re serious? You think it’ll come here?”
“Ninety-nine percent,” Wyatt said. “ATVs need charging. Its escorts need supplies. And look—there’s a big landing pad. A transport ship likely drops cargo here on a schedule. If I were CBG, I’d wait here for the transport, then ride it the remaining five hundred kilometers.”
Y4139 swallowed. “Even if that’s true… you’re saying we kill CBG-03 in front of all those enemies and steal the ATVs?”
He watched Wyatt detach the flight unit and lock the 2D blade into place.
Y4139’s voice rose into a horrified whisper.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to—”
“Before CBG-03 arrives,” Wyatt said, “we take this station.”
“That’s insane. Those are heavy units!”
“You stay here,” Wyatt said, already moving. “Wait for my call.”
Then he started down toward the supply station.
***
Up close, Wyatt saw something else immediately.
This station had been in a fight.
The ground was littered with spent casings. Craters marked old explosions. Robot parts lay scattered at the roadside.
He didn’t infiltrate.
He walked through the front gate like he owned the place.
Two Umbrals noticed him and approached to challenge. The instant they crossed into ten-meter range, Wyatt seized control.
He ordered them to stand down, then continued toward the Destroyer tank.
In the corner of the yard, a fire was burning—incinerating a heap of corpses that looked… insectile.
On one armored vehicle he saw streaks of strange slime. Corrosion scars etched the plating. In the treads, half-crushed, was the severed head of something like a giant ant.
Wyatt kept walking, expanding his control quietly, unit by unit.
And the farther he went, the more he saw.
Not just robot wreckage—bug-like bodies too.
Many of the robots were pitted with acid burns, as if something had sprayed them with a corrosive fluid.
Then Wyatt spotted a metal cage set off to one side.
Inside was something alive.
Wyatt stopped.
He knew this creature.
He’d fought alongside one.
A lizardman.
It gripped the bars and tilted its head at him, eyes narrow and unreadable.
Wyatt frowned, moved to open the lock—
—and heard a voice behind him.
“What are you doing?”
A CBG stood there, gun leveled at his back.
Wyatt didn’t turn.
As long as the controlled units stayed within range, he could see through their eyes.
The CBG waited for an answer.
Instead, it heard a cannon barrel spin.
It turned—
—and saw a Bloodthirster beside it, barrel pressed against its own head.
“BOOM.”
The CBG collapsed headless.
The yard hesitated for two seconds.
Then the fight exploded.
Uncontrolled units opened fire on the Bloodthirster on instinct.
Wyatt issued a single command: indiscriminate fire.
He dragged the CBG’s body to the burning pile and threw it into the flames.
The Destroyer tank knocked out five turrets before the remaining emplacements finally gutted it.
Two Bigfoots stormed the mountaintop watchtower… only to discover they were out of ammo.
Wyatt realized the truth: almost every unit here was low on munitions—leftover depletion from the previous battle.
But it would be enough.
Without a commander, the fight started fast and ended fast.
Minutes later, the last hostile unit fell—pierced by an armor-piercing shot from somewhere Wyatt never even saw.
Silence returned.
Wyatt crossed back to the cage, sliced it open, and released the lizardman.
It stepped out slowly, blinking, still confused.
“Do you recognize me?” Wyatt asked.
The lizardman stared at him for several seconds… then spat out a single word.
“Die.”
It lunged, claws slashing for Wyatt’s head.
Wyatt jerked back and barely avoided the strike.
“Wait. I’m not your enemy!” he shouted.
The lizardman didn’t stop. Maybe it didn’t understand. Maybe it didn’t care.
It raked at him again and again.
Nearby robots raised weapons to fire.
Wyatt cut them off. “No.”
With no other choice, he fought back.
He dodged one swipe and drove a fist into the lizardman’s skull. The creature skidded back—but sprang again.
Wyatt slipped aside, caught the lizardman by the tail, and slammed it into the ground hard enough to crack stone.
After several failed assaults, the lizardman finally decided it couldn’t win.
It turned to flee.
Wyatt watched it go and made a calculation: low intelligence. No meaningful communication. And soon he’d need full focus for CBG-03.
He signaled one Umbral.
A shot.
The lizardman’s leg snapped and it went down.
It crawled anyway—three-limbed, stubborn, dragging itself toward the slope.
Wyatt walked up and spoke quietly.
“I don’t know if you can understand this. Tell Miller…”
He paused.
Then finished with only what mattered.
“Thank you… for pulling me out of the Hope.”
The lizardman glanced back once.
Then it hopped away, one step at a time.
By the time it reached the foot of the mountain, its leg had already regenerated.
It vanished into the rocks.