It had responded to his command slightly before the message should have reached it, which meant it was not receiving his messages through the allied channel at all. It was receiving them some other way, faster than a real allied unit ever could.
That was a timing error a real allied unit could not have made.
Ning turned his Mecha, raised its weapon arm, and fired point-blank into the new unit's chest.
The disguised Mekharan had been raising its own weapon toward the back of Ning's Mecha at that very moment. It never finished the motion. It staggered backward as the bolt tore through its chest, its corrupted allied signal cutting off abruptly, and collapsed into the snow.
In the observation gallery, someone let out a sharp breath.
"How did he know?" one of the cadets from the second academy asked, loudly enough for the entire gallery to hear. "That was an allied signal. It had an allied signal. How did he know?"
Nobody had an answer.
