"Jack?" Meadow's soft voice cut through his frantic, looping thoughts. "Can I ask you a question?"

  He looked up, pulled from the terrifying certainty of his simulation back into the suffocating reality of the tunnel. Before he could answer, another figure approached, stepping out of the shadows. He was an older man, his uniform torn and filthy but still worn with an unshakable dignity. It was Colonel Sterling, the highest-ranking officer among the rescued prisoners. Though he had failed to lead his men to freedom from the camp, his unwavering care for them had earned him their absolute loyalty.

  "Of course, Colonel. Please," Jack said, gesturing to a nearby supply crate.

  "Thank you, Lieutenant. Forgive the intrusion," Sterling said, his voice calm and measured. He knew his place here. He was a rescued man, not a commander, and since their liberation, he had impeccably helped manage the survivors without once overstepping his authority.

  Jack was glad to talk to him. With the mood in the tunnel turning sour with fear and suspicion, he needed an ally like Sterling to keep the peace.

  "You're the commander of this... ad-hoc unit, Lieutenant," Sterling began, his words chosen with a diplomat's care. "I only wish to know if we've encountered a new problem. Perhaps I can be of some assistance."

  Jack didn't hesitate. He laid it all out—the battle report, the loss analysis, and the horrifying conclusion of his own cognitive simulation. He handed the data slate to the Colonel.

  Sterling's expression was initially one of mild surprise. A special forces lieutenant, running a massive strategic simulation on a battered mech's computer in a dirt hole? It was unorthodox, to say the least. But as he studied the data, running the numbers himself, his face grew grim. He was silent for a long time.

  "Lieutenant," he finally said, his voice heavy. "I won't pretend to understand the... psychological methodology you used to reach this conclusion. However, upon examining the raw data, the force dispositions... the probability of this scenario is terrifyingly high. You are the most unconventional special forces officer I have ever met. Perhaps High Command's greatest mistake was not putting you in a strategic planning role."

  Jack gave a bitter laugh. "I appreciate the sentiment, Colonel. But right now, the only thing that matters is getting this intel to High Command. If this trap is real and we do nothing, the Commonwealth is facing a disaster. And we'll be spending the rest of our short, miserable service-lives under this mountain." He grimaced. "And also... can we maybe drop the formal titles, sir?"

  Sterling actually chuckled, a dry, cracking sound. "Very well, Jack. And you will call me Sterling." He stood up. "I have two excellent staff officers with me, both majors. I believe they should see this. Whatever decision is made, the burden should not be yours to bear alone."

  The words hit Jack with a surprising warmth. He was glad this old, gentlemanly warrior was on his side.

  The two majors were another story. Their opinions were not just different; they were violently opposed.

  "It's impossible," Major Pearce, the skeptic, declared, his voice sharp with doctrinal rigidity. He was a man who believed in the pure, linear logic of military doctrine. "A single airborne drop to take both the Cadian Gorge airfield and the mountain fortress on its flank? Absurd. The area is within the sensor grid of multiple airbases. Our fleet still maintains orbital superiority. A carrier group can provide support at a moment's notice. The Draconians couldn't take those two fortified positions with an entire division, let alone a single special forces legion."

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  Major Caleb, the other staff officer, immediately countered. "Pearce, you're thinking in terms of a conventional assault. The Lieutenant's model isn't about that. It's a severance strike. The Tartarus Legion doesn't need to hold the gorge for a week. They just need to hold it for twenty-four hours. Long enough to sever the supply lines and let the main Imperial army close the trap. It's a classic infiltration doctrine, scaled up to a terrifying degree."

  The argument quickly escalated, drawing in the other soldiers. The tunnel, which had been a haven of quiet desperation, was suddenly transformed into a chaotic clash of console-strategists.

  But on one point, they all agreed: the Imperial forces had withdrawn too easily, their losses were not severe enough, and they were more than capable of consolidating for a massive counter-attack. The Commonwealth's triumphant advance was, at best, temporary. Getting to friendly lines on foot was no longer a viable option.

  Stay or go? And what about the intel?

  The dilemma was a perfect closed kill-box. To transmit the data would be to fire a signal flare for execution, bringing the full might of the Imperial search-and-destroy teams down on their heads. To stay silent would be to condemn thirty-one divisions, hundreds of thousands of their comrades, to annihilation.

  "Enough talk!" a lieutenant from an armored division shouted, his voice echoing in the sudden silence. "Send the fucking data! Let High Command worry about whether to believe it or not. We're all running on emergency reserves anyway. I'm not afraid to burn out again."

  The defiant words hung in the air, but the reality of the choice settled heavily on everyone.

  Sterling looked at Jack, who had remained silent throughout the debate. "Lieutenant. You and your people saved our lives. Now, we are placing them in your hands again. Tell us the truth. If we try to make a run for it on our own, what are our chances?"

  Jack didn't hesitate. "Zero," he said, his voice flat. "It's four hundred kilometers to the nearest confirmed friendly position. Unless every single one of us is in a mech, we'll be hunted down and killed long before we get halfway there."

  A collective sigh of despair went through the crowd.

  "However," Jack said, and all eyes snapped back to him. He knew his next words were insane. He knew it was a plan cooked up by a coward who had never led a single man in his life. But it was the only path left. "We can attack... here."

  He brought up a map on his data-slate, pointing to a single coordinate.

  "Isn't that the logistics base Captain Rashid's unit just hit?" one of the Recon soldiers asked, confused.

  "Exactly," Jack said, a thin grin spreading across his face—too sharp to be courage, too desperate to be anything else. "It's the last place they'll expect an attack. The Imperials need to resupply their consolidating forces. That base is too strategically important to abandon. They will either rebuild it or use it as a major transit hub. Either way, it will be flooded with supplies. And those supplies will include mechs, or at least the parts to build them."

  He took a deep breath, letting the full insanity of his plan sink in. "We send the data to High Command. At the same time, we give them our new objective and tell them to send air support. Not transports. Gunships. We hit the base, we steal what we need, and we fight our way out, using the same route Rashid took. The Tartarus Legion has pushed the other Commonwealth spec-ops teams back. This route, our route, is the only one they won't be expecting."

  The tunnel erupted in another furious debate. Finally, Sterling raised his hand, silencing the crowd. He looked at Jack, his old, tired eyes burning with a new, fierce light.

  "I believe in your simulation, Jack," he said. "Tell us. What are the odds of success?"

  Jack looked at the faces staring at him—the terrified, the hopeful, the broken. He gave them the only thing he had left: the cold, hard, ugly truth.

  "Thirty percent," he said.

  A wave of despair washed over the prisoners. But Colonel Sterling just nodded, his face set like stone.

  "That's good enough," he said, his voice ringing with a final, absolute authority. "Form your cohorts. Strip the crates. We move with the dark."

  As the command struck like iron into water, sending ripples of movement through the captives, Meadow's voice found Jack in the noise.

  "Are we running away right now, or are we attacking?"

  Jack kept his eyes on the dark ahead, as if another battlefield waited there. He was silent for a long moment before answering quietly:

  "No one can tell the difference. But as long as we keep moving, keep living—that's the attack."