Page 45 of Warrior’s Mate

"I know what it means."

"Do you? Because the military response will want to defend buildings and intersections. We need to erase concentrations of people. Empty shelters before the Sargans reach them. Break registries if they can access them. Get civilians into places their scanners don't predict."

Kaiven looked at the moving columns on her map.

"You're saying abandon fixed shelter doctrine."

"I'm saying the shelters have become collection points if the enemy knows where they are."

One of his officers shifted uneasily. "Captain, district command won't authorize—" Kaiven held up a hand. Maelis braced for the argument. Instead he asked, "How quickly can you decentralize four hundred people without losing accountability?"

"I don't know."

He nodded once. "Find out." The trust in those two words frightened her almost as much as the attack. Because now, if she was wrong, people would die by her decision too. She turned back to the map.

"Then we stop thinking of Wasaytu as a place we're defending," she said. "For the next few hours, Wasaytu is a system for making people disappear."

Kaiven stood beside her.

"Tell me what you need."

This time, Maelis did.

Chapter 8 — Protection

By late afternoon, Maelis had emptied the grain complex without sending more than sixty people through any single exit. Families moved in staggered groups through irrigation channels, equipment tunnels, orchard service roads, and two livestock passages that smelled so aggressively of ruda feed that even Kaiven's security officers complained. She distributed the registry across six local devices rather than one central node, then cut every public shelter marker she had authority to disable. Wasaytu was no longer a network of safe places. It was a network of moving people.

That made the civilians harder to capture. It also made them harder to protect. Kaiven hated it. Maelis could tell because he had stopped commenting on it. They were in the basement of a seed-storage cooperative with thirty-eight evacuees, two medics, and a wounded Brigade corporal when the argument finally came.

"You're leaving on the next transport," Kaiven said.

Maelis looked up from the district map. "No."

"That was not a question."

"Then you wasted words."

The corporal on the treatment cot suddenly found the ceiling fascinating. One of the medics turned away to hide a smile. Kaiven stepped closer. He kept his voice low. "The command shuttle has room. It is returning to the western relay in nine minutes. You can run registry operations from there."

"No, I can't."

"They have full tactical communications."

"They have military communications."

"Which are considerably more functional than this cellar."

"And they don't have half my local data."

"Transfer it."

"Some of it isn't data."

His expression sharpened. "Explain." Maelis swept a hand toward the map. "I know which farm has an old storm cellar the owners never registered because they use it for private storage. I know the west irrigation cooperative replaced a pump but left the old service trench open. I know the Verran family keeps three cargo crawlers under Orchard Ridge during dry season because Javin Verran doesn't trust automated weather reports. None of that exists in your tactical system."

"You can tell someone else."

"Someone else doesn't know what matters until it matters."