Iron Relay: Czech Corridor Leg 4

Leg 4 — LKMT → LKPD Ostrava, Czech Republic → Pardubice, Czech Republic

An emergency relocation flight evacuating communications specialists and transporting revised defensive orders westward.

The Relay Fractures

The retreat had already begun by the time you departed Ostrava.

Military engineers loaded portable communication systems beside wounded signal technicians evacuated from collapsing eastern sectors. Some personnel still believed the front line could stabilize.

Others no longer pretended.

The route west toward Pardubice crossed forests and industrial valleys beneath violent storm systems moving across northern Moravia. Several times, unidentified radar returns appeared briefly before vanishing again.

Friendly patrols.

Or hostile aircraft probing deeper westward.

No one could tell anymore.

Pardubice operated almost entirely underground now. University basements and parking structures had been converted into improvised command centers linked only by courier aircraft and limited shortwave radio.

Every new message arriving contradicted another.

And every hour without trusted communications pushed the region closer to paralysis.