'Two sets of boot tracks,' Satou thought. 'Northeast, before dawn. Gone before morning rotation.'
He looked at the map on the command post wall. The settlement's boundary. The patrol routes. The outer detection network Vessa had developed over the past year — further ranging, more thorough, the product of lessons learned from the war.
'They avoided the outer network,' he thought. 'Which means they know it exists. Which means they've been watching long enough to map it.'
He felt something that was not quite the cold settled anger from the Chronus arc — that had been specific, personal, the specific wound of Cassius and Freda and Vael'kira landing in one place. This was different.
This was the particular quality of someone who had just realized the next threat had already begun while they were still finishing the last one.
'Of course it has,' he thought. 'This is what threats do. They don't wait.'
He looked at the people in the room.
