Page 123 of The Sterling Acquisition
They moved fast, abandoning stealth for speed as the drone search pattern expanded behind them. The night that had seemed so peaceful just minutes before now felt hostile, full of mechanical eyes and the distant whine of rotors searching for their exact location.
Twenty-two miles down, forty-three to go. And now they were being hunted by the combined resources of two major corporationswith unlimited budgets and no sense of humor about professional embarrassment. The corporate alliance itself was unprecedented—a tactical cooperation between rivals that would have been unthinkable before Dante’s defection. He’d seen intercompany task forces formed for major incidents, but never this level of resource sharing.
Orion moved with surprising confidence through the darkness, guiding them along game trails too narrow for Dante to have noticed. Their hands brushed occasionally as they navigated difficult terrain, brief moments of contact that somehow felt like reassurance.
“So much for our three percent survival rate,” Orion panted.
“I’m starting to think I was being optimistic,” Dante replied, pushing harder toward the creek bed and whatever cover it might provide.
Behind them, the search grid continued its methodical advance, turning the star-filled sky into a constellation of hunting drones. Their brief moment of peace was officially over.
Time to find out if they were as good at running as they were at burning bridges.
Chapter forty-five
Delusions of Efficiency
Dante
Thecreekbedhadseemed like a tactical masterpiece for four hours before it became a trap. Dante crouched in the muddy water, watching another drone pass overhead with the methodical precision of something designed to hunt rather than merely observe. The third one in twenty minutes, each flying a slightly different search pattern, each forcing them deeper into terrain that offered excellent concealment and no escape routes.
“We’re being herded,” he said, studying the drone configurations through the gaps in the canopy while trying not to get too distracted by the way Orion’s heat-flushed skin looked in the dappled sunlight. “I recognize the pattern—it’s straight from the Gensyn Regulatorplaybook. They’re not trying to spot us—they’re driving us toward something.”
Orion was pressed against the creek bank beside him, breathing hard from their latest sprint between cover points. The lingering heat that still rolled off him in waves wasn’t helping either of their tactical focus—Dante found himself distracted by the scent even through the mud and creek water.
“Toward what?” Orion asked, though his tone suggested he already knew the answer wouldn’t be encouraging.
Dante consulted the map, comparing their current position to the search patterns he’d observed, though he kept getting distracted by Orion’s scent cutting through the smell of creek water and wet earth. Each time he inhaled, his Alpha instincts urged him to find shelter, to barricade them somewhere defensible, to protect rather than advance—a biological imperative contradicting tactical necessity.
The drones were systematically eliminating every route that led toward the collective, leaving only one viable path—a narrow valley that offered excellent sight lines for anyone positioned on the surrounding ridges. The topography was textbook: steep limestone walls rising forty feet on either side, a bottleneck entry point that narrowed to just twelve feet at its tightest, and no cover across the half-mile stretch of exposed ground.
“A killbox,” he said, and felt something cold settle in his stomach as the tactical reality became clear. “They’re forcing us into a kill box. That valley is a perfect extraction point—SVI Rangers on the ridgelines for containment, Gensyn Regulators waiting at the choke point for capture.”
“How do you know?” Orion asked, wiping mud from his face with a hand that trembled from exhaustion.
“Because it’s what I would do,” Dante replied. “This is a coordinated operation between Regulator extraction teams and SVI Rangers. The pattern is unmistakable—Regulators design the trap, Rangers provide the local knowledge and containment.”
The smart play would be to double back, try to break through the search perimeter while it was still forming. Accept the probability of detection in exchange for maintaining mobility. Cut their losses and find another route to safety, even if it meant adding days to their journey. Standard Gensyn evasion protocol would be to separate, with each target moving in different directions to divide pursuit resources.
The problem was that Dante had stopped making smart plays the moment he’d decided that keeping Orion safe was more important than following corporate protocols. Everything since then had been driven by something that had no place in tactical decision-making—something that made him want to find cover and keep Orion close rather than think strategically about acceptable losses.
Love, he was discovering, was spectacularly inefficient.
“How long do we have?” Orion asked.
“Maybe an hour before the search pattern forces us into the valley. Less if they start using ground teams to flush us out of concealment.” Dante folded the map, the paper already damp from creek water and nervous sweat. “We could try to break through the perimeter now. Fight our way past the drones and circle back toward the collective.”
“Or?”
“Or we accept that we’re walking into a trap and try to make the best of it when corporate teams reveal themselves.”
Orion gave him a bewildered look, which was fair given that accepting obvious traps wasn’t typically considered a sound strategy. Then again, Orion’s heat left his lips slightly swollen, and Dante really wanted to kiss him.
“You’re thinking like someone who wants to survive this,” Orion said, settling back against the creek bank. “What would you do if you were thinking like a corporate operative?”
A corporate operative would recognize that Orion’s chances of survival were better if Dante led the pursuit away from him rather than toward whatever trap was waiting in the valley.
A corporate operative would abandon the asset to save himself.