"Three mechanized infantry divisions? Heavy armor confirmed."
"Good. That's enough."
"When they take the bait—close the net. All units act according to plan. The air force will perform routine interdiction runs. Rahm, hold your ground. Make sure Omaha's frontline troops last one more week."
Large-scale military maneuvers were impossible to hide. Just as the Federal Intelligence Agency maintained endless networks across Japan and Night City—Militech's troop deployments, embarkation data, and landing numbers were practically transparent to Myers—so too did Arasaka maintain a fully functional intelligence web within Washington.
They couldn't access the deepest secrets of the White House, but detecting movement and trends? That was routine.
Thus, by the time Myers issued her orders for the NUSA-D.C. Reserve Army to march west, the report had already passed through Arasaka's intelligence relay chains and landed neatly on Vela's desk that same day.
Beep. Vela closed the integrated communications frame after briefing her subordinates.
With a faint smirk, she reached out and swiped across the holographic display showing Militech's mechanized division mobilization data. Her deep indigo eyes gleamed with shrewd amusement.
The gesture was almost playful—like a merchant toying with the weight of gold in her hands, measuring the value of this latest "chip."
Moments later, she tapped the console again, opening a secure conference channel that included both the Ministry of External Affairs [Night City Branch] and the Presidential Security Office [North America Division].
"Mizuno, Morishita—make arrangements. Four days from now, I'll inspect the Nebraska theater. We'll visit the wounded and honor the fallen. Keep this classified. Execute the order."
Mizuno Masao, the Foreign Minister—Vela's trusted ally in diplomacy, media, and propaganda—had just returned from an official visit to Austin, the capital of Texas.
Morishita, Chief of the Presidential Security Bureau, was of Arasaka ninja lineage—bodyguard, enforcer, and executioner all in one.
After giving her orders, Vela leaned back in her chair, opened a drawer, and retrieved a cigarette case and an antique metal lighter.
Clink— the lid flipped open.
Scritch! The spark wheel hissed alive.
Flick— a thin flame, and the cigarette glowed.
"Phew."
Vela exhaled, the smoke curling into the air. Two fingers held the slender cigarette loosely, her gaze distant and calculating.
Half a month had passed since the start of the war, and the situation still leaned slightly in Arasaka's favor.
Her command zone—the North American main theater—was broadly divided into three sectors: North, Central, and South.
The North remained in a grinding stalemate; in the Central, Arasaka attacked while Militech defended; in the South, Militech advanced while Arasaka held.
Vela's overall deployment followed the ancient "Tian Ji's Horse" stratagem.
Her best horses—the elite forces—were hidden in the north, conserving strength.
The worst horses fought in the south: the Barghest main forces, Free States Alliance troops, and a mixed Arasaka detachment led by none other than Adam Smasher.
The middle horses—the central line—comprised Free States auxiliaries and a considerable Arasaka military contingent. Capable of both offense and defense, strong but unspectacular, it was her flexible front.
The "best horses," of course, needed no elaboration.
As for the "middle horses"—the media portrayed them as ferocious, unstoppable, and heroic. Endless headlines, glowing reports—all paid for, all amplified. A temporary blaze fueled by borrowed strength, burning through the future for the sake of the present.
Their conventional forces were being drained dry. The Death Camps—composed of cyberpsychos, prisoners, corporate dissidents, and desperate criminals forcibly converted into extreme cybernetic soldiers—were expended in droves. Alongside them were experimental and mass-produced models of Cyber Tyrants and the chaotic inventions of Arasaka's countless weapons labs.
It was, to use an unflattering metaphor, as if Vela had injected her central forces with a cocktail of top-tier stimulants and steroids—brutally effective but guaranteed to burn out.
For now, they looked impressive.
They fought fiercely, and the illusion held.
But once their manpower and supplies dropped below critical thresholds, collapse would follow inevitably. The central line would lose momentum—slipping from offense to defense, perhaps even retreat.
And the "worst horses"... well—
Cough. "Poor Kurt Hansen," she muttered.
Reports showed the southern front in crisis—cities lost, territories abandoned.
Hansen's mobile command post had been attacked multiple times. He himself had narrowly survived repeated assassination attempts.
Even Albuquerque had fallen. Had it not been for the ASDF's 3rd and 14th Divisions reinforcing in time, the front might have been pushed all the way back to Arizona.
Vela mobilized the first batch of reinforcements Yorinobu had "kindly" transferred—two divisions to reinforce Hansen, while the 1st Division that had landed in Night City merged with a newly organized Free States allied division, all thrown directly into the inferno of Omaha's central front.
If Yorinobu dared to give, she dared to use.
To single out or discriminate? Too primitive.
For obstinate, uncooperative types, Vela had far more elegant ways to destroy them—cleanly and publicly.
No need to split or sabotage. So long as it aligned with the strategic picture, she used her forces efficiently, showing magnanimity and control. That, after all, demonstrated leadership.
Because sooner or later, it would all be hers anyway.
Her decision to inspect and console troops in the Nebraska theater wasn't just about public relations or morale—it was also another layer in her ongoing misdirection of Washington's intelligence assessments.
Sure, a wise person avoids danger—but sometimes walking toward the tiger's den was itself a statement.
"I'm with you," she murmured to herself, exhaling smoke. "Can't just say it—have to show it."
She couldn't lead the frontlines personally, but a symbolic visit within a hundred kilometers would do wonders for morale. And besides, sitting in an office drawing lines on a map wasn't her style. Ever since leaving the battlefield, a gnawing, violent hunger for the scent of blood and iron had grown inside her.
Deception, after all, was only useful when it worked—but even if it didn't, no harm done.
...
Vela smoked and replayed her mental battle plans.
Tap, tap.
Her idle fingers rhythmically tapped against the desk, the holographic light reflecting across her faint smile.
...
Three days later.
Omaha City—deep underground, beneath the steel, concrete, and sewage.
Beep-beep.
[AI: SCULPTOR (David Martinez) — Location: Omaha East; Distance from old Missouri Riverbed: ~500m; Distance from Council Bluffs, Iowa: ~2.5km.]
Surfacing through a layer of rotting refuse, David Martinez lifted his gaze. For seventy-two hours, he and his squad had advanced barely 1,500 meters—slow, silent, and unseen through the city's clogged subterranean veins.
They had become sewer crawlers, ghostly plumbers in a nightmare.
As they drew closer to the old Missouri riverbed, filled with toxic sludge and industrial waste, the tunnels narrowed, air grew foul, and the tremors from above intensified—battle raged with apocalyptic fury overhead.
Every step forward meant forcing through layers of putrid, half-solid muck.
BOOM!
A deafening blast shook the tunnel. Dust and rust cascaded from above. A corroded rebar, wrapped in crumbling brick, fell and clanged against David's shoulder plate, leaving a deep dent.
Checking his HUD coordinates, David turned. "Here. Plant one."
"Got it."
Suneo—mud-smeared and grim—dragged forward a conical cargo pod, pried open its mechanical clamps, and withdrew a 50cm × 120cm iron-gray prism.
He wiped grime from the activation panel, entered a keycode, twisted the manual latch, then carefully embedded the Hybrid Sakuradite Cracking Bomb into a fracture in the tunnel wall. Smearing a layer of thick, grease-like sludge over it for camouflage, he gave David a nod.
Splash...
The team pressed onward.
Where the way was blocked, they cleared it. Where water pooled, they waded through. Between intervals, they set directional beacons, flooding emptied cargo pods with waste before sinking them to erase traces.
With each step deeper, their numbers dwindled. Used oxygen tanks, empty power cells, nutrient pouches—all discarded. The team moved in tense silence, guided by a constant feed of environmental data from their netrunner.
Another day passed.
[Pacific Time: 2077/5/10]
Inside his sealed [Oni 4-B Type] power armor, David silently chewed through compressed rations. Four days underground—appetite lost, body on edge—but the team had learned to ignore the nausea. Discipline was survival.
[AI: SCULPTOR — Location: Omaha East; Distance from Missouri Riverbed: ~150m...]
"Almost there," David murmured, resting a hand on the last bomb pod beside him.
Whether the tunnels collapsed behind them didn't matter. Their goal was singular—go east. Cross the Missouri.
When the netrunner signaled all-clear, David ordered quietly: "Keep moving. We cross tonight."
...
Roughly eighty kilometers west of Omaha.
At Arasaka's secret field base, sealed under heavy lockdown.
Above, fighter squadrons patrolled the skies; below, radar and anti-air systems hummed at full power. Surrounded by ninjas, security troops, depot commanders, and aides, Vela walked the camp's perimeter.
Her generals, like Rahm, were absent by design—she'd ordered them to prioritize their operational posts. Theater commanders had no time for ceremonial escorts.
"Reinforcements from New America have been pouring into Omaha," the logistics officer reported nervously. "Our casualties are significant."
Vela listened quietly, eyes sweeping over the camp.
Before long, the entourage arrived at a half-empty Death Camp maintenance bay.
"The Death Camp..."
She gazed at one of the soldiers undergoing recharge.
A grotesque fusion of cybernetics and flesh—lobotomized, its body built from chemical byproducts of the Sonnentreppe Project: layers of overclocked cyberware, organic grafts, hypertrophic muscle fiber, and steel. Its multi-jointed limbs bristled with weapon ports, its plated skin stretched taut over sinew and cables, encased in an exoskeleton so brutal it resembled torture machinery.
A sight enough to shred one's sanity.