106: Chapter 17 The Hound in the Ashes

"Showcase."

Li Cang chewed on the word in his mouth twice.

Morris's interrogation records were spread out before him; he had already read them three times. The first two were to digest the information, and the third was to process his emotions.

Nine people were dead. TW-188 was lying in the medical bay with a ruined left knee. Zahariel's left arm had been burned through by hydraulic oil. TW-78 had spent twelve hours in the ruins with twenty-one men.

All of this was within Kara Enzo's plan.

She had traded a factory, a walking vehicle, and dozens of cannon fodder for a complete combat capability assessment report.

Li Cang leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.

He was thinking about a question—if he were Kara and had obtained this report, what would he do?

The answer was clear.

First, reinforce the weaknesses. Zahariel had severed the walking vehicle's hydraulic lines, so she would add protective shrouds to the lines.

Second, design targeted tactics. The Thunder Warriors' reinforcement response time was twelve hours, so she would design an ambush to conclude the battle within twelve hours.

Third, wait.

Wait for Li Cang to follow the Balanga supply line provided by Morris all the way to her. Follow it right into her pre-set kill zone.

Li Cang shifted his gaze from the ceiling back to the screen.

She was waiting for him to walk into the trap.

Then he would walk.

But not into her trap. He would walk into the trap she *thought* he was walking into.

Li Cang opened the reverse engineering report of the walking vehicle wreckage and flipped to an inconspicuous line of data.

[Gait Control Module: Fully recovered, calibration frequency 17.4kHz]

The six legs of every walking vehicle relied on this module for coordination and synchronization. The calibration frequency depended on the equipment parameters at the time of manufacture. Vehicles from the same factory shared the same frequency.

Even in standby mode, the Gait Control Module would periodically emit low-power calibration pulses for system self-tests.

Find the pulse, find the vehicle. Find the vehicle, find the factory.

There was no need to go through Balanga. No need to chase the supply line. No need to act according to the script Kara had written.

[Deploy Recon Drones ×3]

[Sensor Configuration: Passive monitoring for 17.4kHz pulses]

[Target Area: 2km sector south of Balanga]

[GP Cost: 45]

Li Cang pressed confirm.

Then he did the second thing.

[Deploy Recon Squad ×1 (5 men)] [Target: Balanga Fishing Village] [Mission: Close-range reconnaissance, allowed to be discovered]

Allowed to be discovered.

It wasn't "avoid exposure." It was deliberately letting Kara's informants see people active near Balanga.

Let her think Li Cang was following the supply line. Let her think everything was going according to her script. Let her continue waiting in the pre-set kill zone, continue adjusting tactics based on T2's data, and continue feeling smarter than her opponent.

Once the drones locked onto the factory coordinates, he would kick the door in from a direction she hadn't fortified.

Bringing along an SSS-rank Zahariel, whom she had never seen before.

Li Cang closed all the panels, leaving only the tactical map.

On the map, Balanga's location was marked with a blue dot—the bait. The sector south of Balanga was marked with three drone flight paths—the real search.

Looking at this two-layered layout, a thought suddenly occurred to him.

Kara had used Manila Fortress as a showcase to lure him in and gather intelligence on him.

Now he was using Balanga as a showcase to trick her into thinking he had walked in, covering the real search.

The same tactic.

But he held a card she didn't know about.

Six hundred kilometers south of the coastline. Kara's underground factory.

The control room door was pushed open.

When Ren walked in, Kara was standing before a composite screen, her left hand behind her back and her right hand holding a pen, drawing something on a clipboard.

"News from the north," Ren said.

Kara didn't turn around. "Speak."

"The people in Balanga report unidentified personnel activity on the outskirts of the fishing village. Five individuals, power armor, have set up an observation post on a ridge three kilometers north of the village. They haven't entered the village, but they haven't made an effort to hide either."

Kara's pen paused for a moment.

Then she continued drawing.

"Time?"

"Four hours ago."

"Five people," Kara repeated. "A reconnaissance formation."

"Yes."

Kara put down her pen and turned around.

There was no tension on her face. No surprise.

Instead, there was a faint, almost imperceptible sense of satisfaction.

"Morris talked," she said.

It wasn't a guess. It was a confirmation.

Ren nodded. "It seems so."

"He knows about Balanga," Kara said. "He doesn't know about this place. So they went to Balanga first."

She walked to the console and pulled up a map. Balanga was to the north, and her factory was to the south. Between them lay a hundred and eighty kilometers of jungle and hills.

"What will they do?" she asked.

She wasn't asking Ren. She was roleplaying the scenario.

"First, monitor Balanga. Figure out the transportation patterns. Then follow the transport route south. Fishing boats have limited range; they will search along the coastline."

She traced a line on the map with her finger—from Balanga south along the coast.

"This route passes through three bays. Each bay has a natural harbor suitable for fishing boats. They will check them one by one."

She tapped each of the three bay locations.

"From the first bay to here is sixty kilometers in a straight line. The second is a hundred and twenty. The third is a hundred and eighty."

Her finger stopped on the third bay.

"Our supply receiving point is at the second bay. When they check the second one, they will find traces. Then they will head inland from the second bay."

She drew a line between the second bay and the factory.

"This path passes through a canyon. Both sides have sixty-meter-high cliffs."

She looked at that line, the corner of her mouth twitching slightly.

"The walking vehicles will be deployed at both ends of the canyon. Once they enter, we'll hit them from the front and back. In the canyon, their mobility will be zero. Reinforcements won't be able to get in. Communications will be blocked by the cliffs."

She turned to Ren.

"According to the data from Manila Fortress, their elite—the one in grey armor—has a hundred-meter sprint of seven seconds, and his Chainsword can cut through standard hydraulic lines."

She pointed toward the workshop.

"Are the shrouds finished?"

"Completed yesterday," Ren said. "Both units have been upgraded. The lines are fully encased in twelve-millimeter manganese steel. A Chainsword won't cut through it."

Kara nodded.

"If he can't cut the lines, he'll have to hit the armor. The front armor of the walking vehicle is forty-millimeter composite steel plate. The cutting efficiency of a Chainsword against forty-millimeter composite steel is—"

"Near zero," Ren said.

"Near zero," Kara repeated.

She looked at the line on the map passing through the canyon.

"It will take them about two to three weeks to reach the second bay," she said. "That's enough time."

She flipped the clipboard to a new page and began writing the deployment plan.

The pen tip scratched against the paper.

Ren stood by and watched her write. He noticed that when Kara wrote, her left hand was always behind her back. That hand, missing two fingers, was never placed where others could see it.

"There is one thing," Ren said.

Kara didn't look up. "Speak."

"What if they don't follow the coastline?"

Kara's pen paused for a second.

Then she continued writing.

"Morris only knows about Balanga," she said. "From Balanga to here, the coastline is the only logical path. The interior is all jungle—no roads, no landmarks, no clues pointing to our location."

She finished a line and looked up at Ren.

"Unless they can find us out of thin air."

Ren thought about it and nodded.

"That's impossible," he said.

Kara didn't answer. She lowered her head and continued writing the deployment plan.

The only sound left in the control room was the scratching of the pen across the paper.