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.
The call sign was “Coffin Nail.” Not because the vehicle was dangerous, but because once you climbed into the M1120’s driver’s capsule, you weren’t coming out until the job was done.
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.” m1120 driver
“Manual mode,” she said.
Eva let out a breath she’d been holding since mile 112. She looked at the dashboard—at the small, scratched photo of her daughter taped above the battery gauge. Mile 320
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.
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. Not recon
At mile 438, the forward operating base’s beacon appeared on the passive sensor array. Eva could see the Hesco barriers, the faint glow of chem-lights along the perimeter. She killed the engine two klicks out and coasted—silent, dark, cold.
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.
The call sign was “Coffin Nail.” Not because the vehicle was dangerous, but because once you climbed into the M1120’s driver’s capsule, you weren’t coming out until the job was done.
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.”
“Manual mode,” she said.
Eva let out a breath she’d been holding since mile 112. She looked at the dashboard—at the small, scratched photo of her daughter taped above the battery gauge.
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.
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.
At mile 438, the forward operating base’s beacon appeared on the passive sensor array. Eva could see the Hesco barriers, the faint glow of chem-lights along the perimeter. She killed the engine two klicks out and coasted—silent, dark, cold.