Moving through the human base was surreal.
Everything was familiar and foreign at once—the sterile smell of recycled air, the hum of machinery, the harsh artificial light. Humans in uniforms hurried past, carrying tablets and coffee cups and the thousand small tools of civilization. They didn't look at him twice. Why would they? He was just another face in the crowd.
But he wasn't. He was a ghost. A spy. A traitor in their midst.
Kaelen kept his head down, his movements slow. The wheelchair helped—people tended to look past the disabled, to see the chair before the person. He used that. Glided through corridors, listened at doors, memorized patrol routes and supply caches and the locations of key personnel.
On the third day, he found what he was looking for.
The command center.
It was buried deep in the base, behind multiple security doors, but Kaelen had learned a few things in his years as a soldier. A stolen badge. A moment of inattention from a guard. A door that opened just long enough to slip through.
Inside, holographic maps floated in the air. Verath. The forest. Hometree. Red markers everywhere—troop positions, artillery emplacements, landing zones for the attack that was coming.
And at the center of it all, Commander Thorne.
"Three weeks," Thorne was saying to a group of officers. "In three weeks, we sweep through this sector and clear it. Every tree, every creature, every blue-skinned savage. I want this forest burned to ash. I want them to have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere to pray to their tree-god. Is that understood?"
"Sir." An officer stepped forward. "What about the native population? Estimates suggest several thousand in this area alone."
"Several thousand problems." Thorne's smile was ice. "We have the firepower to solve them. Any other questions?"
No one spoke.
Kaelen slipped out as silently as he had entered. He had what he needed.
Three weeks.