The green, grainy world of the PVS-14 night vision goggles turned the Driftless coulees into a prehistoric landscape of glowing moss and obsidian shadows. Cronauer leaned the BMW GS into a hair-pin turn on a logging road south of town, the boxer twin engine purring with a low, muffled thrum. In his ears, the “Y-splitter” in his helmet hummed—one side playing the clinical, driving bass of Queensrÿche’s Empire, the other carrying the crackling, fragile tether of Dave’s voice on the Yaesu handheld.

“Cronauer, you copy? It’s Dave. Stay off the ridge-tops for a second, I’ve got something you need to hear.”

Cronauer tapped the push-to-talk on his handlebar. “Copy, Dave. I’m in the shadows. What’ve you got?”

“I’ve been running the SDR Waterfall and monitoring the DHS ‘Command loops’ out of Chicago,” Dave’s voice was tight, the kind of tight that only comes from staring into the sun for too long. “We were wrong about the EMP, Cronauer. It wasn’t just a stray burst. It was a ‘Super-EMP’ protocol—high-altitude, non-attributable, probably Iranian origin but launched from a freighter off the Gulf. It was Phase 2.”

Cronauer shifted down, the bike engine braking as he navigated a wash-out. “Phase 2? What was Phase 1?”

“The Coastals,” Dave replied. “The shipping container nukes in Philly and LA? They weren’t meant to win the war. They were meant to draw the entire National Guard, FEMA, and every surviving satellite asset to the shorelines. While the military was looking at the fire, they popped the ‘Dark Sky’ burst over the Midwest. It hit the 765kV extra-high-voltage transformers. It didn’t just kill the grid; it physically melted the internal iron. That’s why the lights aren’t coming back. Not in our lifetime.”

Cronauer felt a cold sweat prickle under his Biltwell helmet. He adjusted the PVS-14s. The green world flickered. “And the DHS? Walker?”

“That’s the part that’ll make your blood turn to ice,” Dave’s voice dropped. “Walker isn’t just a survivor. He’s the architect of the ‘Resource Extraction Zone.’ I found a decrypted manifest on a DHS relay. They knew the EMP was coming. They shielded the Driftless because the topography here—the deep valleys and the limestone—acts as a natural Faraday cage for some of the analog infrastructure. They let the rest of the country burn so they could have a ‘feudal kingdom’ in Wisconsin to feed the bunker-elites in Mount Weather.”

“So the signal… Station Zero…” Cronauer grunted, jumping the GS over a downed oak branch.

“The signal is the only thing they don’t control,” Dave finished. “They’re not searching for ‘contraband calories’ at the creamery, Cronauer. They’re searching for the ledger. They want to know exactly who has the grain and the meds so they can ‘nationalize’ them. If you get Emmy and those meds to the Lock and Dam, you’re not just saving a friend—you’re delivering the only ‘Cold-Chain’ assets they don’t have on their spreadsheet.”

Cronauer gripped the throttle. In his left ear, Geoff Tate sang about a world turning to stone. In his right, Dave provided the map of the graveyard.

“I’m three miles from the Battle Hollow waypoint, Dave. Keep the frequency hot. If you see a thermal spike on the ridge, you scream.”

“Copy that, Cronauer. Ride fast. The sky is getting crowded.”

Cronauer kicked the GS into third gear, the matte-black beast lunging forward into the glowing green dark. The truth was heavier than the rifle on his back, but the mission finally had a face.

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