Like an old friend, the White Horse drone passed overhead again, but this time I didn’t greet it. On days when the weather is calm, the raptor drones are deployed. The waves of communication between them always make me uncomfortable, especially when there are many of them.

These days, I rarely leave the underground tunnels. Even a little distance helps to greatly reduce that discomfort. But I still try not to stray too far from Ali, so I can warn him if anything goes wrong.

In the distance, I heard the sound of a heartbeat, anxious and hurried. I carefully considered whether I should avoid it. However, the armored vehicles and search teams on the ground turned in another direction, so I decided to wait and see.

"Hey, kid." The owner of the heartbeat appeared around the corner—a grown cheetah. He saw me and dragged a few bags over, panting. "Could you be kind enough to point me in the right direction? I’m not familiar with this part of the colony."

The cheetah wiped the sweat from his brow, looking at me with those green eyes, waiting for a response. His body was covered in dust, and there were bloodstains on his clothes.

I noticed he wasn’t wearing a collar, which confirmed his identity—he was a member of the Liberation Army. Ali always said that those brainless mobs were nothing but trouble for our kind, a bunch of dangerous elements better avoided at all costs.

Most of the big cats here just want to survive on this barren moon, so they don't think much of these liberation groups that claim to want to overthrow the Federation’s rule and free our people.

Part of the reason is that they don’t believe in the old promises, which is a great disrespect to the less secular older generation. But the real reason is probably that in hundreds of years, the Liberation Army hasn’t really liberated anything—they’ve only worsened the relationship between our kind and the herbivores.

At that moment, a group passed above us, causing the ground to tremble slightly and dust to fall. The cheetah flinched, glancing upwards nervously.

That action made me hesitate.

I motioned for him to follow and led the exhausted cheetah through the labyrinth of tunnels.

Everyone knows the general location of the Liberation Army's base, but the natural caves on the edge of the colony are unimaginably complex. Without top-tier equipment or an extremely experienced guide, you’d get nowhere except in circles. So, I just led him out of the residential area, emerging from an inconspicuous pipe.

I pointed towards the small hill on the horizon—he should recognize the way from there.

"Hey," the cheetah called out from behind me. I turned just in time to catch the bag he tossed my way. "A little something to say thanks."

After the cheetah walked off into the distance, I checked the contents of the bag—CO2 filters, water purifier cartridges, compressed rations, and a fuel cell—clearly stolen goods, but I saw no reason to refuse them.