RONAN The inside of the armored C2V felt tight and too warm. The air barely moved, even though I had one of the few small AC vents near my seat. Sweat still clung to my back. My body stayed folded forward over my console, wedged behind the driver and beneath the vehicle commander and gunner who sat higher up inside the turret. Their positions loomed over me, heavy with responsibility and firepower. A sharp metallic clink echoed again and again as the rail gun’s ammunition fed through the conveyor belt. Each dart was almost the size of a fist. The sound made my shoulders tense every time. Those darts rolled through the belt and slid into a ready position just outside the breach of the rapid fire rail gun. The belt hung only a couple of feet from my shoulder. That noise would become familiar soon. It had to. When the gun finally fired, it would be much worse. The noise cancelling headset they issued me was massive, and even that felt like a thin promise against what was coming. Victor sat directly behind me. On the other side of the moving belt was Major Davis. Behind Davis, the first lieutenant handling communications stayed busy, feeding orders and updates through the network without pause. Every screen in front of Victor and me, along with my virtual overlay, showed live video and data streams. Drones hovered above the city. The few National Reconnaissance Satellites still answering our calls added their distant eyes to the feed.Thermal images and wireless data painted a restless picture of Colonial Heights across the river. Heat signatures moved everywhere. Signals pulsed through the air. It was a nightmare for any soldier. The limited AI assigned to our unit helped tag and track many of the insurrectionists, but far too many heat blooms and active cellular and Wi Fi signals stayed unconfirmed. Friendly or hostile. There was no clean way to tell. This kind of battlefield forced restraint. Heavy weapons stayed silent unless there was no other option. Clearing an area meant boots on the ground. Doors kicked in. Faces searched. Bodies checked by hand for weapons and signs of allegiance. Every doorway carried risk. Every corner could kill. Every conversation might be the last. Everyone in this command understood that truth.The tension had been visible long before I climbed into the vehicle. Soldiers outside held their jaws tight. Eyes stayed hard and focused. Stress sat openly on their faces. No one spoke about it, but everyone felt it. This was exactly what the people behind the chaos wanted. They wanted the United States armed forces trapped in endless searches. They wanted constant close contact with hostile fighters hiding among civilians. They wanted soldiers worn down, injured, and killed by the very population they were ordered to protect. Mistakes would follow. Friends would die fast. Innocents would get hurt or worse. Trust between the military and civilians, already damaged by years of information warfare, would finally collapse. While that happened, the real enemy would strike government systems at every level, federal, state, and local. They would cripple coordination and slow any organized response. My head shook slightly as the pattern became clear again. We were moving exactly how they wanted us to move. There was no alternative. The job still had to be done. All we could do was perform it cleanly and hope other parts of the government broke the enemy’s script before it finished playing out. A secure wireless network from a residential building finally cracked under my tools. Files poured in. Photos. Short videos. Casual messages. After careful review, no threat surfaced. No weapons. No coordination. The system marked the structure as green. On the shared map Victor and I worked from, the house shifted color instantly. Three lots down, another building flashed red. A note icon appeared beside it. The file opened with a single tap. Three innies. Standard assault rifles. Possible prior military experience. That information was not locked to me alone. Lieutenants and platoon sergeants could pull it as needed. They could pass it down the chain.It would shape how units moved once they entered the area. Routes would change. Targets would be prioritized. Lives might be saved because of a few clean data points. Another stream came online. My limited AI assistant helped pry it open. People inside the building were posting and talking openly. The tone was hostile toward the army, but nothing crossed into direct action. No weapons appeared. No plans surfaced. The house received a tag and my notes. One detail stood out. They mentioned seeing armed men at another home a block away. Focus shifted immediately. Effort narrowed. Local networks in that area became the priority. Cracking signals took time. Army field equipment was capable, but it was not built for deep saturation. Back at The Fort, my full system would have crushed the entire neighborhood’s encryption in minutes.Here, only two or three signals could be worked at once. Each took just as long. Thousands of wireless signals filled even this modest city. Perfection was impossible. What we produced instead were educated guesses. In this fight, that was the best we could offer.