"Almost there," Elara whispered. "Ten seconds."

Elias stared at the parrot. “Why didn’t you just fly there yourself? You could have broadcast the coordinates.”

“That’s my favorite joke,” Chuck 3.0 said. “I learned it from you.”

IP5X (dust) and IPX3 (water) ratings; operates from –40 °C to +70 °C MIL-STD-461G (electromagnetic) and EN 300 328 Cybersecurity

The room went cold. Elias’s hands fell to his sides. He hadn’t programmed that. He hadn’t programmed any of the survival protocols into Chuck 3.0. He’d built the bird to be a companion, a storyteller, a last library of human warmth. Not a navigator. Not a savior.

“Hope you’ve got a plan, because the radiation cloud is shifting southwest and you’ve got seventy-two hours before this bunker becomes a tomb.”

“Who’s there?”

Elias slumped against the wall. “I built you to recite poetry.”

: Supports 5G, MARS frequency hopping, and an encrypted LoRa backup link for long-range, low-bandwidth telemetry.

Kael flailed, firing wildly, blowing holes in his own ceiling. The lieutenants dove for cover.

Kael froze. His hand went to the plasma pistol at his hip. "What was that?"

“Chuck the survival protocols. We leave at dawn.”

A jam-resistant, multi-band frequency-hopping radio (covering 1.8–5 GHz) designed to resist spoofing in electronic warfare environments.