In the brutal digital trenches of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the most dangerous weapon is a line of code, and the deadliest battlefield is the one you cannot see.

Lieutenant Anya "Kestrel" Kovalenko is a master of the new war. From a cramped command truck miles behind the front line, the brilliant but arrogant software-engineer-turned-soldier commands the Skystalkers, an elite Ukrainian drone unit. With her fleet of cheap, modified drones, she is the tip of the spear in the bloody 2023 counteroffensive, turning the tide of battle with every click. To her, the war is a complex real-time strategy game, and she is winning.

Her dominance is shattered by a ghost in the static.

A mysterious Russian adversary, whom Kestrel nicknames "Orlan," begins to dismantle her operations with terrifying precision. At first, her drones are simply jammed, falling silently from the sky. But the unseen enemy adapts with breathtaking speed. Soon, Orlan is not just jamming her signals but hijacking them, turning Kestrel's own weapons against her own soldiers in a horrific friendly-fire catastrophe.

Thrust into a deadly intellectual duel, Kestrel is forced to retreat from the front line of the war and fight a new battle in the abstract domain of her own code. To protect her team, she builds an impenetrable digital fortress around her drones. But her genius only makes things worse. When Orlan changes tactics again—using the drones' own launch signals as homing beacons for precise, immediate artillery strikes—Kestrel's fortress becomes a tomb, and her soldiers are the bait.

Haunted by guilt and faced with an enemy who mirrors her own skill and perfectionism, Kestrel realizes she cannot win with a better machine. She must understand the mind of the ghost she is hunting. In a final, desperate gambit, she decides to build a lie—a perfect, irresistible target designed to lure her nemesis into the open. It is a trap where the bait is a high-value NATO drone and a mistake costs more than just lives; it could cost the entire war. But in this silent battle of frequencies and wills, to catch a ghost, you may have to become one yourself.