The engine was a silent electric hum—new cells, good for 600 miles flat terrain. But this wasn’t flat. The route snaked through the Shattered Corridor, a no-man’s-land of burnt-out convoys, artillery craters, and sky filled with drone swarms the size of crows.

Mile 320. That’s when the sky lit up. A drone swarm—twenty, maybe thirty—dropped from cloud cover. Not recon. Loitering munitions . Each one carried a shaped charge.

Point-defense lasers on the M1120’s corners flickered. Three drones fell in the first second. Then five. But more kept coming. The AI’s voice grew clipped, urgent. “Thirteen remaining. Nine. Four.”

“Jammer neutralized,” the AI admitted, almost respectfully.

She popped the rear hatch. Inside, stacked in shock-resistant cradles, were forty-seven encrypted data cores—the last uncorrupted navigation maps for the entire theater.