General Tarik of the Sunstone Jaguars was a man carved from granite and suspicion. He received the anonymous message in his private war room, a holographic map of the contested territories glowing before him.
His first instinct was to dismiss it as a crude Onyx Serpent trick. A trap.
A diversion.
"It's a ghost signal," his intelligence officer reported.
"No origin point. It's designed to look like a leak, but it's too clean."
"A weak point," Tarik growled, his eyes narrowed on the coordinates.
They pointed to a desolate canyon on the edge of his territory, a place where his patrols were thin.
"They want us to move our forces, to chase a phantom, leaving another area vulnerable."
He was about to order the message deleted when his aide spoke up.
"Sir, with respect... the information is specific. A time, a location. It's a low-risk, high-reward verification. We could send a single stealth drone. If it's a trap, we lose nothing. If it's real..."
Tarik hated it.
It felt like a move being dictated to him. But the aide was right.
The possibility, however remote, that he was being played by a third party, was a thorn of paranoia he couldn't ignore.
The Vanguard's name on the ledger—a name he had seen with his own eyes after the data was leaked to him—was a ghost he couldn't shake.
"Send the drone," he commanded.
"No comms. Total stealth. I want to see for myself."
From their safehouse, Ryu, Kiera, and Joric watched the public sec-feeds, their nerves stretched to the breaking point.
They could see nothing, but they knew that somewhere, in a desolate canyon, their gambit was playing out.
Ryu, his senses extended, tried to feel for the energy of the event, but it was too far, the distance too great.
All he could feel was Kiera's anxiety, a low, thrumming hum through their link.
He reached out, not with words, but with a feeling of calm, the 'center' she had taught him.
She glanced at him, a flicker of surprise and gratitude in her eyes.
The shared burden was, for a moment, a shared comfort.
Hours later, in General Tarik's war room, the stealth drone's footage played on the main screen.
It showed a clearing in the canyon. A sleek, black Vanguard transport, unmarked and silent, descended.
Men in advanced combat gear, bearing the black diamond insignia, unloaded crates of high-grade plasma rifles.
They met with a group of supposed 'insurgents,' who then began to load the weapons.
Tarik watched in stony silence.
His intelligence officer was pale.
"Those are not Onyx Serpent weapons," the officer whispered.
"That technology... it's beyond theirs. It's... Core-grade."
"It's Vanguard," Tarik said, the name tasting like poison.
The anonymous message had been true. He had been a pawn.
His rivalry, his hatred for the Onyx Serpents, his entire strategic posture—it had all been a carefully orchestrated manipulation.
His paranoia had been a weapon used against him. The anger that rose in him was cold and terrible.
He opened a secure channel.
Not to his fleet, but back to the ghost signal's point of origin.
"You have my attention," he sent.
"State your terms for a meeting. And pray you are not wasting my time." In the comms tower safehouse, the message appeared.
Phase one was complete.
They had the jaguar's ear.
Now, they had to avoid its teeth.