The contact was not clean.
It never was.
Clean engagements belonged to theory—to drills run under controlled conditions, to war rooms with perfect maps and perfect information. They required time. Preparation. Certainty.
Things the field rarely offered.
And this?
This was first contact in Crawler-held terrain, with a platoon that had been assembled ten days ago and barely welded into something resembling cohesion. Unknown variables stacked on unknown variables.
Clean had never been an option.
What it was—
Was managed.
Voss opened the right flank with his force-multiplication at full output—not to deal damage, but to create noise.
The effect was immediate.
The Crawler signatures shifted left, just as Bright had predicted. The lesser clusters reacted first, drifting toward the perceived threat in loose, responsive patterns. But the larger signatures—the anchors—held their ground.
That was the tell.
That was the information Bright needed.
