As soon as she saw the broadcast, Amber knew that the bastard had played them all.

She and Hekket had been trying to distract themselves from the actions she knew were being undertaken by her squad-mates, but the military base at Karpa Luna wasn't exactly a shore leave hub. After spending some respective time brooding in their quarters they'd carved themselves out a quiet corner of a secondary mess hall on the far side of the base – well away from the other operatives and colonial troops that they'd spent time with. They tried to pass the time playing games on their data slates and reading, but the dark cloud hanging over the pair had refused to abate.

So far their reckoning with Colonel Merlynn hadn't arrived, but both of them knew they wouldn't be walking away from such a direct confrontation with a superior unscathed, no matter the reasons. Amber couldn't guess how it would all shake out. One one hand she'd disobeyed Darien but on the other, Smith had been clear when they departed for Ravine what felt like a lifetime ago.

There are limitations on what they should expect from you.

She had to believe that included assassination.

But when that broadcast played, any worries Amber might have had over her own punishment quickly evaporated.

The camera must have been hidden, tucked away in some wall recess out of sight. Darien would never have acted if he knew his actions were being recorded in such away. From their little, metal-walled mess hall on the military base, to the screens of the capital, from the government chambers to the tiniest, life-scratching towns, the whole bloody scene played out before them.

Amber could only watch with a sense of sickening dread as the screen jerked and fuzzed, cutting off a local news broadcast before blaring back to life. This time there was no introduction; no stirring preamble calling the rebel sympathisers to arms. The events on this screen spoke for themselves.

She saw an armoured room – what had to be the command module of the installation Darien's team had been sent to attack – and it was littered with bodies. The image was a little fuzzy and janked with blips of static as the broadcast fought its way through Ravine's highly charged atmosphere, but it was clear enough for her. She could clearly recognise Darien and the others as they encircled the last rebel in the room.

From the angle Amber only got a sideways look at Kyros, but she was shocked by how young the man actually was. All this death and mayhem had been wrought by an individual who could barely be more than twenty five.

"So this is how you want it to be?"

The rebel leader's voice came out over the video link. Devoid of the disguising software that earlier broadcasts used, this laid bare the gravelly choke of his voice for the world. A voice burned by the very air he breathed. Amber watched with growing anxiety as Kyros lit a cigarette as though he stood among friends, unperturbed by the guns trained on him. They continued to speak.

"Oh... no, no, no, no," Hekket murmured, leaning forward involuntarily to look even closer. He clasped his hands together tight, his knuckles white. Amber reached across, clamping her hand over his, but she couldn't tear her eyes from the screen either.

Darien's words came out over the broadcast, crackly and distorted from the concealed camera's rudimentary microphone, but agonizingly audible nonetheless.

"As long as you're alive this war won't end."

"He's goading him in," Hekket managed through gritted teeth, shaking his head in despair. "He doesn't care that he's going to die."

"Just another recruiting tool," Amber whispered, unable to look away even through she knew what was coming. The exchange was not a long one and she felt her muscles coiling as Darien pressed the stock to his shoulder, raising the carbine. It was coming and she was powerless to stop it. A sudden surge of uncertainty filled her. Should she have gone along with the mission, if only so she could have been there now to stop this madness? Was stepping aside and washing her hands of it really the brave thing to do? The right thing to do?

"Good luck, Darien."

And then Kyros went for his gun.

Amber didn't know if Darien had really planned to pull the trigger, but she knew he'd hesitated. She knew on some level her squad leader – her friend – understood the wrongness of what he was doing. But in that split-second Kyros ripped the choice away and Darien fired.

Her breath hitched in her throat as the lance punched cleanly into Kyros's skull between the eyes and his body collapsed, dead before he hit the ground. Her jaw tightened with anger and she dug clenched her grip tight around Hekket's hands, squeezing out the rage that churned up inside her with the suddenness of a geyser. Kyros had served himself up as a willing sacrifice to fuel the fires of his crusade. There were others like him and he knew it.

This wouldn't change a thing.

The image of Kyros lying dead at Darien's feet lingered for several long, excruciating seconds before fading out. A black screen took over, leaving a stunned silence to descend on the sparsely populated mess hall. She shifted her grip, lacing the fingers of her left hand through Hekket's right and squeezing, as much to comfort herself as him. Then a message appeared – just white text on the blackness in geometric capital letters. An anvil settled in her stomach as her eyes ran over the accusing words that only confirmed everything she'd feared.

WE OFFERED THEM PEACE.
THEY SENT AN ASSASSIN.

THEY WILL KILL YOU BEFORE THEY HELP YOU.

WE ARE FIGHTING FOR A BETTER WORLD.
YOU SHOULD TOO.
JOIN THE REVOLUTION.

*

She didn't want to say I told you so.

Hell, there was nothing she wished she'd been more wrong about, but the face remained: killing Kyros had been a mistake, though even she had not expected the man to virtually orchestrate his own assassination just for even greater propaganda. Perhaps, once he'd met Darien and knew Blink operatives were on the planet, he'd decided it was only a matter of time before he was tracked down. He'd made contingencies and captured the whole grisly affair on camera to prove once and for all what a gang of jackbooted murderers the colonial forces really were.

The worst part of it all was that he almost had a point. From the general chaos now engulfing the Karpa Luna base she had a horrible feeling that the blunt recruitment tool for Ravine's downtrodden population had been successful.

With Hekket by her side she jogged back across the concourse to the main barracks, looking to join the remaining Blink operatives that no doubt had been subjected to the same spectacle as they had. With Darien off base and Vass dead, command fell to the level-headed Vanna, but for now the others had nothing to occupy them except licking their wounds and waiting. All around them military personal scuttled back and forth, with vehicles growling by and gunships climbing into the bruised sky.

They found no-one in the mess hall when they arrived there, but in the Blink operatives' section of the barrack block they found Vanna, Taggs and Bandle in a heated discussion, frantically hooking up their earpieces and throwing on their casual Blink fatigues while several other operatives loitered uncomfortably nearby. When Amber and Hekket clattered into the room Vanna's piercing eyes flickered towards them.

"Good, you're here," she said. "I take it you saw...?"

"We saw it." Amber nodded. "Looks like everyone else did too."

"Crazy bugger served himself up like a slab o' meat," Taggs muttered. "All hell's kickin' loose and Merlynn's on the warpath."

"Darien might have pulled the trigger," Hekket interjected. "But Merlynn gave those orders. She sent him in there as an assassin, not a Blink operative. It's her mess."

Taggs gave him a dubious look. "You wannae tell her that?"

"I will if I have to," Amber snapped. "He's right. Merlynn made the call not to bring Kyros back alive. She's in command here. We're not going to let her pin Darien to the wall for the fallout."

"He arrived back on the base five minutes ago." Vanna told them grimly. "Radioed his arrival and then reported straight to Merlynn. There must have been a time delay on that transmission. I don't think he knows it was just broadcast to the entire planet." Zipping her jacket up to her throat, Rigel's leader smoothed down her blonde hair and straightened up. "Taggs, hold the fort here and make sure everyone fit for duty is accounted for – earpieces for everyone, just in case. Bandle, get down to the infirmary. Tell them what happened and wait for my orders. Amber, Hekket, you come with me. Let's see if we can stop Darien and the good colonel from shooting each other."

Amber gulped at that, exchanging a worried look with Hekket. Her medic shrugged and nodded to Vanna. "Lead on."

The stern young woman set a ferocious pace as they moved out of the barrack block towards Merlynn's command post, and Amber could feel the melting pot stirring all around them. Groups of heavily armed Beltock Dragoons marched from the blocks nearby, sergeants bellowing assignments as they went. The air was thick with engine fumes.

They dodged the columns of troops, marching as straight as they could towards the hub of this chaos, but when they reached the doors of the command structure the soldiers their stopped them.

"Vanna Proctor, squad leader, Rigel Squad," Vanna told them impatiently. "I'm with Blink and our commanding officer is in there with the colonel. We need to speak with them."

"Colonel Merlynn has enough on her plate with this shitstorm," the taller of the two guards grunted, rotating his body slightly to bar their path through the security checkpoint. "She's given orders – no entry to command without her express permission. If she didn't ask for you, you're not getting in, girl."

"Call me girl again and I'll ram that rifle so far up your ass you'll be picking bullets out of your teeth for a week!" Vanna exploded with a fury Amber didn't know she possessed. "I'm not here on a god-damned class trip – I am a Blink operative and I don't answer to you. Radio Colonel Merlynn now and get the authorisation or we'll go in without it."

"Simmer down, ma'am," the other guard interjected, stepping forward and very deliberately taking a more respectful tac than his companion. "If the colonel is already speaking with your commanding officer then why do you need to join them?"

"Because I believe they are about to have a serious misunderstanding that we might be able to prevent."

"Is that a fact?"

"I don't have time to give you chapter and verse. Get the authorisation and let us through. I'm not going to ask you again."

"Get the major on the horn," he said after moment, nudging the taller guard with an elbow.
"You kidding me? These kids-,"

"Just radio Khumalo and see if Merlynn's in a state to deal with more Blink troops right now."

The man rolled his eyes but keyed his radio anyway. He barked his callsign though and along with a request code that Amber didn't recognise. A moment later he spoke again, relaying the request to allow the three operatives access to the building. He waited, listening to a response. Something that was said made him look sharply back over his shoulder into the building. He nodded, still listening.

"Yes, sir, understood." He shot his partner a dubious look before turning back to Vanna. "I don't know about the colonel but Major Khumalo's sent your authorisation. You're clear to proceed." With a twinge of reluctance he stepped aside and waved them on.

Vanna didn't so much as glance at him as the three operatives stormed past into the seething ant hive of Merlynn's command post. The voices hit Amber like a wall as the doors opened. Everywhere she looked support officers were babbling into headsets and on some of the nearby screens she caught glimpses of fires burning in urban areas; flashes of angry lines of people filling streets and intersections. From those images she couldn't quite tell where the incidents were, but given the state of Karpa Luna's military base she had a suspicion they were uncomfortably close to home.

Dodging and weaving through the bustle, they mounted the stairs and climbed towards Merlynn's command post, tucking themselves up close to the guard rail to avoid officers that hurried in the opposite direction. They reached the third floor, and in the centre of that vast room surrounded by banks of screens blaring images of the rioting citizens of Ravine, they found Darien Flint and Adaya Merlynn, having a disagreement that was anything but friendly.

Amber's eyes widened as she saw the pair angrily squaring off, Merlynn's eyes blazing angrily, Darien standing his ground with Niamh and Idas standing right behind him. The hulking form of Major Khumalo stood off to one side, his face stamped with growing unease as he watched the exchange unfold. His eyes flickered over to them and he gave Vanna a slight nod of recognition.

"It's a tactic they've used before!" Merlynn raged as Amber and the others moved around to join the Blink operatives. "Against you, specifically. You should have swept that room for any kind of recording equipment before you carried out your orders. He didn't even try to escape. It was obvious he had something planned."

"You sent us in there," Darien growled back, his respect for Colonel Merlynn insufficient for him to stomach being spoken to in such away. "You told us to kill him and we did. I followed your damned orders to the letter."

"Your negligence has dumped Ravine into chaos!" Merlynn pointed furiously back at one of the screens where lines of chanting people marched through city streets. "Every man, woman and child saw that killing. Rightly or wrongly they think they're next. There are people rallying in every city in support of Kyros and his causes. Whole divisions of Ravine's armed forces have gone AWOL and we've had to impose martial law on the capital to quell the rioting! You just started the war we were supposed to stop."

"We started it?" Niamh spat, stepping forward. "You send us into that man's damned command post, with no intelligence on what might be waiting for us, and with orders to bury him there, and you have the spine to call us negligent? We didn't have time to start checking every shadow for a hidden camera. We had to shoot our way into that room and there were more guards coming. If this is on anyone, it's on you."

Merlynn turned her furious glare on Niamh. "The first rule of any operation of this nature is deniability. Instead you broadcast it to the whole planet."

"Then maybe you should have sent actual assassins."

The words leapt from Amber's mouth before she could stop them, her anger surging at Merlynn's words. Whatever disagreements she had with Darien the orders to kill should never have been given.

She stood her ground and kept talking. "Blink operatives are not killers – we are not trained to be. You knew that but you sent him in there anyway to murder that man in cold blood."

"Who the hell authorised you to enter command?!" Merlynn motioned to a nearby guard. "Sergeant – escort those three out of here."

"You're not escorting my people anywhere!" Darien barked, taking a sudden backward step to place himself between Amber and the guard sergeant, and to her shock she saw his hand flash down to the pistol still holstered at his hip.

"While on this base you are part of my chain of command!"

"Maybe," Vanna interjected, her voice like ice cold steel. "But you were told by Smith – our real commander – what our limitations were supposed to be. Then you couldn't find Kyros and you just threw all those stipulations to the wind. If you're not holding up your end of the deal, why should we?"

"You were seconded to colonial forces under my direct command and you are expected to follow orders."

"And we did!"

"Not all of you." Merlynn's eyes flashed to Amber and Hekket. "If you were my people you'd have been court-martialled by now."

"Well they're not your people," Darien grated. "They're mine."

"They disobeyed direct orders from both of us. They should be disciplined and removed from duty at the very least."

"That's not your call to make. As far as I'm concerned they were within their rights. As am I."

Merlynn's glare darkened. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"We've followed every order you've given, but I am no longer consenting to my people being under your command. I will not have you blame us for your own poor judgement."

"I could have you arrested-,"

"You are more than welcome to try." Menace crept into Darien's voice as he spoke, his hand still hovering next to his gun. Nearby dragoons raised rifles uncertainly, exchanging worried glances.

"Blink operatives are not your soldiers," he continued. "Maybe next time you'll remember that."

"Next time? There won't be a next time," Merlynn laughed bitterly. "Major Khumalo?"

Her second officer stepped forward, standing stiffly to attention. "Ma'am!"

"Get these operatives out of my sight and on the next ship off this planet. I have a war to win."

Darien straightened up, shooting a warning glance at Khumalo. "We'll see ourselves out."

With that, he turned and only then did Amber see the visible tremor of pent-up rage that passed through his body. She realised, abruptly, that he really would have pulled his gun on Merlynn if he had to. Everything about this planet and this mission and stretched him to breaking point. He stormed past them and as though dragged by a powerful magnet the Blink operatives followed.

Together they left Merlynn's command post for the last time.