Viktor made the call in under two minutes, which was ninety seconds longer than Aria wanted.
"Eight fighters, south tunnel, intercept before Millhaven. I lead," Aria said, already pulling her gear from the signal house wall.
"Take Doran," Marcus added. "He's fast and he hits hard. You'll need both."
Aria's jaw moved like she was chewing on a response she decided to swallow. "Fine. Doran and seven more. Give me your best runners."
Viktor pulled Sable's tunnel map from the stack and traced the south exit route. Two point one kilometers underground, exit through a ventilation shaft on the south slope of Hill 6. From there, overland terrain to the Millhaven road, maybe five kilometers through brush and farmland drainage ditches.
"The Harvester team has a thirty-minute head start on open ground," Torres said. "Tunnel route cuts your travel distance by half. If they're moving cautious through unfamiliar territory, you can close."
"If they're not moving cautious?"
"Then you're racing people who don't care about noise through countryside they've already scouted."
Aria slung her rifle. "I'll take those odds."
Viktor looked at her. Twelve hours ago they'd been planning a dawn strike. Now he was sending a third of his combat strength in the opposite direction.
"Rules of engagement," he said. "Stop them before Millhaven. If they've already reached the town, do not engage in populated areas. Observe and report."
"And if they're in the process of grabbing civilians?"
"Then use your judgment. But bring everyone back."
Aria held his stare for a beat longer than necessary. "That's the plan."
She was gone in four minutes with eight fighters, Doran among them, disappearing into the tunnel entrance with Sable's south route sketched on a card in waterproof marker.
---
Marcus started defense prep the moment Aria's team dropped below ground.
"If this is a draw play," he said, adjusting squad positions on the yard map, "the main Harvester body probes our perimeter while we're light. Classic maneuver. Oldest trick in the SNAFU handbook."
"You think the splinter team is bait?" Viktor asked.
"I think forty professional contractors don't accidentally let eight guys wander off toward a town without tactical purpose." Marcus assigned Priya's squad to the ravine approach, shifted two fighters to the north flank Aria's team had been covering, and put Wen on continuous scanner watch. "We hold with what we have. Nobody sleeps until Aria's back or the Harvester main body moves."
Viktor went to the signal house roof and pulsed Reality Frequency south, trying to track Aria's team through rock.
He got fragments. Faint movement signatures in the tunnel. Eight bodies heading south at pace. Then the rock swallowed them and his skill returned nothing but static.
Twelve percent capacity. Maybe less. He was trying to track friends through a mountain with a flashlight that was dying.
Torres joined him on the roof.
"Wen's got Harvester main camp on passive scan," Torres said. "No movement yet. If they're probing tonight, they're not positioning for it."
"Or they're good enough that we can't see the positioning."
"That too."
They stood on the roof in the dark, watching a perimeter they could barely cover, waiting for news from a team they couldn't reach.
---
Aria's team exited the south ventilation shaft at 19:48.
The shaft opened onto a hillside thick with dead brush and loose stone. The fighters came out one at a time, spreading into a low skirmish line while Aria scanned the terrain with borrowed optics.
Open farmland stretched south. Drainage ditches cut the fields in rough grids. A single road ran southwest toward Millhaven, visible as a pale thread between dark hedgerows.
No movement on the road.
"They could be off-road," Doran said beside her, scanning east.
"Harvesters with vehicles won't go off-road in farm country. Too much soft ground." Aria checked the map card. "Road bends at the old grain elevator, two clicks south. If we cut cross-country, we can set up at the bend before they reach it."
They ran.
Not a jog. A flat sprint through plowed earth that sucked at boots and tripped ankles. The fighters were tired from the tunnel and they ran anyway because three thousand people in Millhaven had never heard of skill extraction and didn't deserve to learn about it tonight.
At the grain elevator, Aria split her team. Four on the east side of the road in a drainage ditch. Four on the west behind the elevator's concrete foundation. Crossfire position. Clean kill zone for anyone coming up the road.
They waited eleven minutes.
At 20:14, headlights appeared from the northeast. Two vehicles, running dark except for parking lights. Moving steady, not fast.
Aria counted bodies through the optics as they approached. First vehicle: four visible. Second vehicle: three visible.
Seven.
The intercept said eight to ten.
She keyed her comm to the team. "Count is short. Missing at least one. Stay sharp."
The vehicles reached the kill zone.
Aria fired first.
The lead vehicle's front tire blew and the truck slewed sideways across the road. Crossfire opened from both ditches, concentrated on the vehicles before the Harvesters could dismount.
It lasted forty seconds of controlled violence.
Four Harvesters died in the vehicles. Two made it out and returned fire from behind the second truck. One broke north toward open field.
Doran went after the runner.
"Doran, hold position!" Aria shouted.
He was already gone. Fast, low, skill-enhanced speed carrying him across dark farmland after a fleeing target. The squad's west flank opened like a door someone forgot to close.
The two Harvesters behind the truck saw the gap. One of them shifted fire to the exposed western ditch where a fighter named Ros was suddenly catching rounds from an angle her position wasn't built to handle.
Ros tried to adjust. The ditch was too narrow. A round caught her in the throat above her vest plate.
The fighter beside her, a woman called Netta, killed both Harvesters with four shots in two seconds. Clean, precise, furious work.
But Ros was already gone.
Doran came back three minutes later, dragging the runner's body by its vest strap, breathing hard and grinning until he saw Netta kneeling beside Ros in the ditch.
The grin disappeared.
Aria walked up to him and hit him across the face with an open palm hard enough to snap his head sideways.
"She's dead because your sector was empty," Aria said. "You understand?"
Doran's hand went to his cheek. He looked at Ros. He looked at the Harvester he'd chased. He didn't say anything, which was the first smart decision he'd made all night.
Aria turned to the rest of the team.
"Search the vehicles. Fast count. I need to know how many we're missing."
The search took four minutes. Seven Harvester dead. Equipment in the trucks included restraint kits, sedation supplies, and two collection harnesses.
Seven dead.
The intercept said eight to ten.
"Where are the rest?" Netta asked.
Aria stared south down the road toward Millhaven, where distant lights dotted the valley like scattered coins.
Her comm crackled. Wen's voice, relayed through the tunnel repeater.
"Aria, we're picking up a broadcast on civilian emergency frequency. Originating from Millhaven. Patching through."
Static. Then a voice, male, calm, rehearsed.
"This message is for Viktor Ashford and his network. We are currently guests at the Millhaven community center with the Hardin family. Three adults, two children. They are unharmed. They will remain unharmed for twenty-four hours. After that, we will demonstrate our extraction capabilities on the youngest family member as proof of intent. Mr. Ashford can prevent this by presenting himself at the Millhaven north bridge within the deadline. This message will repeat."
The broadcast looped.
Aria stood on a dark road between seven dead men and a town she'd been too late to save, and the arithmetic was the kind that didn't balance no matter how you rearranged it.
She keyed her comm to Viktor.
"Intercept partial success. Seven down. At least two reached Millhaven ahead of us. They have hostages." She paused. "They have kids, Viktor."
---
Back at the signal house, Viktor listened to the broadcast three times.
The third time, he tried to note the background sounds, the acoustic signature of the room, anything useful. His mind kept snagging on the phrase *youngest family member* and he had to force it past like a thorn in a gear.
Torres marked the timeline on the wall. "Twenty-four hours from broadcast is 20:14 tomorrow. The Surgeon's ETA is approximately thirty-six hours from now. The hostage deadline hits before the Surgeon arrives."
"They're forcing our hand before their own reinforcement gets here," Marcus said. "Smart. Means we can't wait for a better position."
Viktor looked at the map. Millhaven was twelve kilometers south. The Harvester main camp was two kilometers east. The settlement sat between them with too few fighters and too many wounded.
"Options," he said.
Torres went first. "Negotiate. Buy time. Promise a handoff we don't intend to make."
"They'll see that coming," Marcus said. "These are professionals with suicide protocols. They don't bluff and they don't wait."
"Option two," Torres continued. "Ignore the hostages. Focus on settlement defense and the Surgeon. Accept civilian casualties as outside our control."
The room went quiet. Nobody argued for it. Nobody needed to say why.
Marcus spoke. "Option three. Small team to Millhaven. Hostage extraction. Simultaneous with strike team hitting the main camp's supply line."
"Two operations at once with twenty fighters total," Torres said. "We're now splitting an already split force three ways. Settlement defense, hostage rescue, and camp strike."
Viktor opened his mouth to answer and the words stalled.
He was looking at the tunnel map, trying to reference the south exit route Sable had designated, and the designation was gone. He'd used it two hours ago to brief Aria. He could see the map, see the line drawn in blue marker, see the exit point. The code Sable had assigned was a blank space where a word should be.
Five minutes ago Torres had said it during timeline planning. Viktor had heard it, processed it, used it in a sentence.
Now it was gone, like someone had taken an eraser to one specific word in his vocabulary.
He stared at the map too long.
Marcus noticed.
"Viktor."
"S-7," Viktor said, pulling the designation back from wherever it had slipped. Or guessing. He wasn't sure which.
Marcus watched him for an extra beat, then let it go.
"Two operations is a stretch," Viktor said, voice steady despite the cold feeling in his chest. "Three is impossible with our numbers. We run the hostage extraction and defend the settlement. The camp strike waits."
"That means the Surgeon arrives with equipment intact," Torres said.
"One problem at a time."
Torres wrote the new timeline on the wall and circled the hostage deadline in red.
---
Kira came to the signal house at 21:30.
She'd been with Crane for the last hour, running another interrogation session, and she had that look again. The one that said Crane had offered something she couldn't dismiss and didn't want to trust.
"He heard the broadcast," Kira said. "He wants to talk to you."
"About what?"
"He says he can contact the Surgeon directly. Claims they worked together on the original extraction technology before she went private. He says a message from him could delay her arrival, maybe redirect her."
"In exchange for what?"
"Untied hands and access to Sable's comm array. He says the message needs to go through a specific encrypted relay and he's the only one who knows the routing."
Viktor looked at Marcus.
Marcus shrugged one shoulder. "Crane helps us when it helps him. The Surgeon arriving is bad for Crane too. Doesn't mean his method of helping is safe."
"If he contacts the Surgeon, he could just as easily tell her our position, our numbers, our weaknesses," Torres said.
"We could monitor the transmission," Wen offered from the scanner station. "If I'm on the array when he sends, I can capture the full packet. Won't be able to read it if it's encrypted, but I can verify length and destination."
Viktor thought about twenty-four hours and a child in Millhaven and a Surgeon thirty-six hours out and a settlement he couldn't protect from all directions at once.
He thought about trusting Crane, who had never once in their entire history given information without calculating exactly how it would serve his own survival.
He thought about the word he'd lost five minutes ago and the face he'd lost yesterday and the laugh he'd lost the day before that.
"Bring him to the comm array," Viktor said. "Hands untied, Wen monitoring, two guards. He gets one transmission."
Kira nodded and left.
Marcus leaned close.
"You sure about this?"
"No," Viktor said. "But I'm not sure about anything right now, and at least Crane's motives are predictable."
Through the signal house window, the Harvester broadcast kept looping on the emergency frequency, a calm voice counting down a clock that Viktor was already losing.
