The infiltration of a criminal syndicate was not as thrilling as it sounded.

The info packet directed them well beyond the hamlet's perimeter and true to their informant's word, Hjaltar was there. A gangly blond man with a scrubby unwashed beard, he didn't look particularly threatening. However, the retinue of bodyguards scattered through the crags with high-powered rifles more than proved his credentials.

He inspected the crates, gave a seal of approval on the merchandise, and just like that the transfer was complete, a vast some of Ravine credits being swallowed up into the dummy account the colonial spooks had provided them with. Their first sale was done. They dutifully paid off the woman who'd put them in contact with Hjaltar, and then the waiting began.

For the better part of a month Darien orchestrated the Blink efforts to drag themselves closer to their quarry, inch by painstaking inch, while on the far side of the Haze, Vanna and Rigel Squad spearheaded the drive into the local narcotics rings.

A week after their first drop Hjaltar was back in touch. More weapons; more explosives. They needed it all.

Keeping to the script, they didn't ask any questions. Another clean drop along with another credit transfer and Hjaltar was gone again. The operatives – particularly those who were not directly involved in the action were getting restless. Darien toyed with the idea of cutting a detachment loose and sending them back to Merlynn to be used for something else, but a faint premonition on the back of his mind told him not to. With the slow burn of the mission so far it was easy to forget that they were standing on a knife edge. One false move could blow their cover, and if that happened they would need every capable gun-hand they could get.

So they carried on. More Blink operatives were gradually rotated into their entourage from the other squad, creating the impression that Darien had a fairly sizeable criminal force to draw upon, but also keeping him and Amber as the main faces of their group. And two more drops with Hjaltar brought them a step up the food chain.

A new drop point was supplied, deeper into the Haze, which they eventually discovered to be a supposedly broken-down and abandoned geothermal plant. As it turned out the plant was neither broken-down, nor abandoned. A raven-haired woman named Gazi waited for them there, and it became quickly apparent that things had moved up a gear. She was cold, distant, carrying the kind of repressed anger that only came from someone with an axe to grind. That, and the men and woman accompanying her bore little resemblance to the ragged hired guns that infested the towns of the Haze. Gone were the baggy, shredded cloaks and makeshift air-filter masks. These guards had proper protective gear: sin-dark fireproof cloaks, gleaming blast goggles and a daunting array of weaponry.

The checks were far more invasive now as well. Gazi's people subjected them to a full range of scans, looking for tracers, concealed weapons and communicators. They found two out of three, and they had expected to. Any self-respecting criminal enterprise travelled armed, and with the means to contact their companions, but Darien had specifically avoided any kind of direct tracking devices or bio tracers. Since the prototype that had been used to help them capture Theodore Logan and the Blink ship, the bio-trace agents had been rolled out into more general usage, and inevitability some had slithered into black market trades.

It was a complication he didn't want to have rocking their boat on this delicate venture.

Eventually Gazi and her troops were satisfied by the group's appearance, and the story that Darien fed them. He convinced her that for the right price they could keep up a steady, dependable stream of military hardware for, through a fabricated contact in the military hierarchy of Ravine's defenders.

And then the floodgates broke open.

Demand for weapons, armour, munitions, communication equipment and surveillance gear hit them like a ton of bricks and on more than one occasion Darien had to bring his foot down hard, flatly refusing some of the more outlandish demands. He and the others were forced to walk a thin line, supplying what they could to keep Gazi's mysterious buyer sated, while at the same time not making it seem like they had too ready a supply.

Keeping the line of contraband running required a constant relay between the operatives, all the way back to Merlynn's command post, and an alarming amount of colonial gear was starting to be swallowed up by the operation. Now the pressure came from both fronts. The Dragoons did not have a limitless supply of surplus equipment that could be spared for Darien's operation. They needed to get results, and soon.

The day finally came, however, when they got what they were looking for. After making a routine shipment to one of Gazi's rotating drop locations, he'd been set to collect his fee and be on his way, but this time instead of the usual terse acknowledgement of his services, Gazi waited while her crew loaded the crate of grenades and heavy mortar rounds onto the bulky crawler that accompanied them. This one was larger than normal, Darien noted, and sported a big rotating turret on its roof.

The usual group of Amber, Idas, Whikker and Isaac accompanied him, bristling with an array of suitably black-market firearms. They lounged around the surrounding rock formations, wary eyes tracking the men and women who formed Gazi's entourage. The black-cloaked guards were sinister in the reddish glow of Ravine's daylight hours, never speaking beyond grunts and gestures.

He noticed they had spread themselves out as though getting ready to encircle the operatives, but any kind of attack simply didn't make sense. They had nothing to go on – no link to Darien's supposed supplier. Despite the situation, he didn't think there was any real danger. Still, it was odd.

Gazi came striding out from the back of the crawler, and he spotted her swift nod to one of the guards. They spread out, weapons ready but not raised, as though anticipating a confrontation rather than looking to provoke one.

"A good haul," Gazi commented, walking up to Darien. She stood nearly a head taller than him, rangy and built like a whip.

"It always is." Darien glanced around pointedly at her guards. "Your people seem twitchy today. You going to pay us?"

"Of course," she snorted.

"Then why all the itchy trigger fingers?"

"You're going to have to stick around a little longer before you get your credits," Gazi told them, her sharp accent hooking around the staccato syllables. "Parker wants to see you."

Darien frowned. "Parker?"

"Just Parker." Gazi jerked a thumb towards the open rear of the crawler. "You pack up and come now, no questions asked. And you'll get a bigger payday at the end of it."

"Or?"

"I don't like to ask more than once."

Although he put on a front of suspicion, Darien's heart was thundering with excitement. This was exactly what they'd been hoping for. He put on a show of resignation, examining the armed guards carefully, as though weighing his options. When he spoke his voice was tight.

"Always happy to meet new people." He flashed her an endearing grin and motioned to his companions. "Alright everybody, pack it up. It looks like we're taking a field trip."

*

Their hard work was about to finally pay off. All the graft, the surveillance, the schlepping from one barren drop-site to another, had finally heaved them far enough up in Gazi's estimations to get an introduction to the real power behind the operations in the region. At the rate the locals had been snapping up the weapon shipments from Darien's group there was no doubt.

Only one organisation could possibly need that kind of firepower.

The man never seemed to be referred to anything more than 'Parker'. Darien assumed that bore little or no resemblance to their quarry's real name, but that didn't matter right now. Every step they took now was a step closer to their quarry. For all Darien knew Parker might be the man they were hunting for.

The cinder-black truck trundled along, bouncing and crashing its way through Ravine's cragged surface, ferrying him and his companions to an undisclosed location. With the level of security that was sure to be on display in the headquarters of their target, so they were very much alone, heading into the hornet's nest. The bouncy, winding ride continued for the better part of an hour, jarring Darien to his bones as they traversed the unkempt, sun-blasted terrain. There were no windows in the rear of the truck so there was no way to grasp how close they were to their destination.

The only indication that they'd arrived somewhere was an abrupt levelling off of their uncomfortable ride, the wheels finding purchase on something smooth and flat – not the rocks of Ravine's wastelands. He took in a deep, steadying breath through his nose, casting warning glances at his companions. This was it.

Minutes later the truck clunked to a halt. The guards in the rear compartment with them rose, weapons bristling as they disengaged the rear entrance ramp. With a hiss of hydraulics the thick metal plate descended, revealing their destination.

Darien walked out at the head of the group, his eyes flashing around the room they found themselves in. A hangar-like space, it yawned over a hundred meters from side to side, with a ribbed, arched roof studded with yellowy lighting nodes. Other heavy trucks were parked in loading bays, waiting for dispatch, and he saw others disappearing down dark rectangular doorways in the walls. They seemed to lead downward – perhaps into some kind of tunnel system, he guessed. Assuming this was a major staging point for the resistance movement, being able to ferry critical supplies beneath the surface would explain how they'd managed to keep up the pressure against the full weight of colonial military strength.

Their guards formed a corridor which the operatives dutifully marched into, being shepherded swiftly out of the bay and through a thick double blast door into the interior of the base itself. The halls beyond were square and bland, featureless grey-painted walls illuminated with more pale lighting bars. After a handful of twists and turns Darien understood why. For a normal human with a normal mind, it would be virtually impossible to remember the route they were being taken. Every passage looked identical.

"Are you sure about this?" Amber whispered as they were guided through the complex with the speed of urgency. "No-one knows where we are. If something happens-"

"We don't have a choice," he interrupted, his eyes continuing to rove around the interior of the complex, making sure he had every turn marked. For a Blink operative with an eidetic memory the deliberate similarity of the halls would be no barrier. "We see this through."

After jinking through the featureless labyrinth for several minutes, they came to a halt facing an enormous bulkhead that shimmered faintly in the light. More than just metal protected the room beyond. Two guards flanked the structure, but carrying bulky shotguns and sheathed in heavy suits of armour. Faceless helmets concealed their features.

A film of sea-green light descended on them from a ceiling mounted scanner, sweeping both the Blink operatives and Gazi's entourage for bugs and tracking equipment. Darien licked dry lips, willing his hands not to fidget. The guards didn't bother disarming them, which he found a little odd, but given that his operatives were surrounded by Gazi's heavily armed group, they didn't pose any real threat to whoever was beyond the door.

"Gazi is here, sir," one guard said into his helmet transmitter. Darien couldn't hear the reply, but a moment later the armoured figure nodded and stepped aside. The shimmer over the door vanished an instant later and the two slabs of metal heaved apart, revealing a large, low-ceilinged room beyond. And in that room was a single individual.

All things considered, Parker looked pretty normal. He lounged behind a broad rectangular desk, a seemingly random arrangement of screens scattered all around him, flickering and flashing with reports, maps and graphs. A faint haze of cigarette smoke hung like a fuzzy aura, a half-full ash tray smouldering on his left, within easy reach. The cigarette in his mouth flared a lurid orange as he took a draw. His hair had been shaven, leaving a faint dark fuzz over his skull, but a thick beard bristled around his mouth. Despite the lines and bags under his eyes, his pupils moved sharply, flickering across the operatives one by one.

He rose in a leisurely motion removing the cigarette and letting out a puff of smoke. His free hand drifted over a holo-interface as he stepped around the desk, and the screens around him went abruptly dead.

"Gazi," he said, his voice thick and rasping.

"You wanted to meet the supplier," she replied, stepping aside and inclining her head towards Darien. "This is him. Goes by 'Flint'."

"Flint?" Parker nodded, lips crinkling into a quizzical smirk. "Suits you."

"Thanks," Darien replied, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket nonchalantly. "You're friend said you were real anxious to speak to me."

"I like to know who I'm dealing with."

"That makes two of us."

"You will know what I want you do know about me. Understand?"

"Of course." Darien looked from left to right before fastening his gaze on the man. "Nice place you have here."

"It does the job."

"So what is it you wanted to speak to me about?"

"I understand you acquired much of your merchandise by robbing a military convoy?" Parker asked flatly.

"That's right."

"Not just anyone can pull of something like that."

"I'm not just anyone."

"Then who exactly are you?"

Darien smirked. "Give to get, Parker."

"I'm just trying to get a handle on who I'm dealing with. Anyone who can tackle a military convoy is dangerous."

"Like I told everyone else," Darien said. "Off-worlders are soft. They don't know the lay of the land here. It's easy if you know what to look for and how to exploit it. How do you think I've kept my supplies coming? One convoy doesn't hold even half of what I've sent your way."

Parker took a deep, final draw on his cigarette before stubbing it out in the ash tray and folding his arms, looking Darien in the eye. "And you understand exactly what you're supplying, don't you?"

He shrugged. "All I want to do is come out of this mess with enough credits to keep afloat. The whole world's going to shit – someone might as well win."

"So you're neither with us or against us?"

"I couldn't give a cinder about your politics. I just want to get paid."

A thin smile stretched over Parker's cracked lips. "Good. Because I have a job for you that will pay very well, and requires some special skills."

"Do tell?"

Parker's smile broadened evilly. "I've found you a fresh military convoy and its carrying something we need."

Darien's stomach twisted with dread. "A military convoy?"

"That's right."

"And you want us to help you crack it." The dominoes fell now and his mind raced, churning through possibilities as the conversation continued.

"You seem to be experts," Parker said. "It shouldn't be a problem. And we can always use more supplies."

Darien knew he couldn't refuse. Backing down from this would set Parker running. Everything up until this point would have been for nothing. He was about to set a very delicate chain of events in motion.

"It'll cost you," he said.

"Name a price," Parker returned breezily. "I need what's on that convoy."

"No kidding." Darien forced a smile back onto his face, painfully aware of what he was about to ask of his operatives. "Okay, Parker. You want a convoy cracked, that's what you'll get. Just tell me where and when."