The surviving operatives that trudged off the transport formed a grim, quiet procession through the dock at Beltock's Wake.

The long ride back to the nearest Blink Nav-Rod had given Amber a lot of time to process what had happened on Ravine, but her anger hadn't gone away. It clawed in her guts like a physical thing as she tried to sort out who to blame for what.

Overriding it all was the hard truth that they'd failed their mission.

Ravine's melting pot had left no winners in its wake. Kyros's broadcast had blasted across the entire inhabited surface of the planet, and it whipped up fresh hell with every settlement it passed through. Open war raged across huge swathes of the planet with the rebels whipped up into righteous fury after their leader's televised assassination. Rather than put fear into their hearts it had stiffened their resolve. A lot of people living on the planet had simply had enough and there were not enough guns in the universe to change that.

Amber kept replaying all the steps of the mission back in her mind, trying to think of what they could have done to head things off. The realisation she kept coming to with each new circuit of those events was that things on Ravine had been well out of control before she or any other Blink operative ever set foot there. It had been like trying to stick a plaster over an erupting volcano. Hell, for all she knew they'd sped things up.

She'd battled with a lot of things as a Blink operative, forced to confront and overcome things a normal person her age would never had dreamt of, but for all the tests and all the hurt she had never felt useless. Right now that word rattled around her brain like a wrecking ball. The knowledge that all the death and all the conflict that had played out on Ravine may not have changed anything left an ashen taste in her mouth.

In the long run, alone, Kyros's forces couldn't win. She knew that much. They had no navy of their own, no off-world supply lines, and relied on captured or converted factories and machine shops to arm their ragtag army. The Beltock Dragoons and the loyalists of Ravine's government had them outnumbered and badly outgunned, but that didn't seem to matter to the rebels.

Ravine is over the edge, and the rest of the galaxy is going to follow.

That was what Kyros had said, and he clearly believed it. She wondered if anyone else did. Certainly the killing on Ravine showed no signs of stopping, but did that really mean this fire could spread any further? She tried to imagine it. On her home planet of Illuvari it was simply unthinkable that such a jewel of a world could fall victim to violence and strife. But their galaxy spanning manhunt of less than a year ago had shown her the darker side of the colonial system; downtrodden worlds of downtrodden people.

None of them approached the situation on Ravine, but still she wondered.

With an effort she dragged her gaze from those screens and her mind out of her ruminations. Ravine was behind them now; out of their hands. On one level she felt nothing but relief. She looked up the line to the head of the group where Darien walked, his shoulders square but his head slightly lowered, unwilling to meet the gaze of anyone in the port.

She was glad for him that they were no longer on Ravine. She thought back to that briefing, what felt like a lifetime ago, when Smith had explained the rationale. Someone native to Ravine, someone who knew the planet and its people – he had been the logical choice. Now, however, it was clear that assigning Darien to the mission had been, at the very least, a serious risk. He had too much history, too much stake in what happened there and it had taken its toll.

The anger she'd felt towards him for ordering them to kill had been assuaged somewhat after his confrontation with Merlynn, but she still felt uneasy. He'd barely spoken two words to either Hekket or herself since they'd left Ravine. Niamh and Idas kept a wide berth too, their trust shaken. The pair would follow Darien to hell and now they knew there were people in the squad who didn't feel the same.

Ravine had torn Hammerhead open.

Her gaze drifted back to the screens, passing over the curious glances of dock workers and guards. No-one here knew the specifics of what had transpired on Ravine, but Amber saw the colonial news networks covering the fresh hostilities. Ernest-faced reporters chattered against backdrops of smoke-filled streets, headlines like VIOLENCE INTENSIFIES IN SOUTHERN CONTINENT or EXTREMIST ATTACKS ROCK CAPITAL. They were still shying away from calling it anything as unpalatable as a war.

Amber felt a grimace tightening her features as she watched the clips of coverage. Karpa Luna itself remained secure in government hands, but other cities bordering rebel territory were turning into guerilla battlegrounds. People were dying – a lot of them – but the coverage seemed to downplay everything into little more than escalating attacks from a band of disgruntled terrorists.

It wouldn't do to tell the rest of the civilised galaxy that one of their worlds had descended into an all out civil war. All of a sudden Amber felt unclean from being involved in any of it. She hated the grubby, underhanded tactics being employed by both sides, and hated the part she'd played in the game, however small it might have been.

"Ready to face the music?" Hekket asked quietly as Blink contingent cleared the main dock and turned off into a secluded passage leading to the Nav-Rod control room.

"Ready as I'm going to be." She hitched her backpack higher on her shoulders, straightened her back and looked at him. "We'll do it together."

*

Blink Station Alpha didn't feel very friendly right now.

That was the overriding through that filled Amber's mind as she and Hekket walked side by side, escorted by a pair of the station's marines, answering the summons of Smith. It had been a day since they returned from Beltock's Wake, and the squad leaders had already been debriefed and filed their after-action reports. Given their current situation, she suspected both Hekket and herself had been cast in a less than flattering light.

The anger churned again. Had Darien really just thrown them to the wolves? It seemed clear that he understood their actions at least on some level. He hadn't fought them when they refused; hadn't tried to strong arm them into following orders. Eviscerating her actions now in the safety of a private debrief and a report to Smith smacked of cowardice.

Her fists clenched by her sides. There was nothing they could do about it now. She had made her choice and now needed to swallow the consequences.

They reached the corridor that led to Smith's private domain, passing through the steel slabs that made up the blast door. The marines escorted them down the long corridor beyond, mechanisms grinding as the door thudded shut behind them. Amber could feel her heart beginning to race and she glanced at Hekket. Her comrade's face looked drained of blood and his hands were buried tightly into the pockets of his jacket.

She wanted to reach out, to hold his hand, hug him close and just forget it all, but being back on the station now they had to keep their relationship hidden – at least for now. If it came to light, one of them would have to transfer to a different squad. Frankly, she could handle that, but right now she didn't think they needed to give Smith any more ammunition than he already had.

The plain door of the office looked unremarkable in every way, with only the plain plaque that read 'SMITH' indicating its importance. One of the marines indicated for them to halt before she stepped forward, pressing a button below the speaker grill built into the door.

"Sergeant Kackston here, sir," she said. "Reporting with Operative Garret and Operative Mozer as ordered."

"Thank you, sergeant," Smith replied from within. "Send them in."

Amber steeled herself, looking sidelong at Hekket quickly. This time he looked back, still looking ghostly pale but wearing a resigned expression on his face now. He forced a smile and gestured to the door.

"Ladies first?"

"Oh, shut up." Despite everything she gave him a playful thump on the arm before squaring her shoulders and holding her head high, facing the door. A faint hiss of retracting locks sounded a moment later and the door to Smith's inner sanctum slid open.

They stepped over the threshold and a surge of nostalgia washed over Amber at the sight that met her eyes. A clogged mass of shelving units, each one overflowing with old fashioned file folders bulging with paper documents dominated the walls on all sides. In the centre of the room was a semi-circular desk surmounted by four computer screens arranged in an arc, behind which sat Smith. It was all eerily familiar, barely having changed since the first time she'd walked onto Blink Station Alpha two years ago.

"Good afternoon." Smith's coarse voice betrayed no hint of emotion as he looked up from the screen. He pressed a button on one of the keypads at his console and two small, boxy metal chairs folded up out of the deck places. "Please, have a seat."

The two operatives complied, sinking silently into the chairs and settling into an expectant silence. A few awkward seconds trickled by before Smith straightened up in his seat and regarded the pair from behind his slender spectacles.

"Well, I think you know why you're both here."

"Because we didn't want to start murdering people?" Amber replied flatly. There didn't seem to be much point in caution – whatever punishments coming their way had been decided long before they set foot in this room.

"That's about the size of it." Smith confirmed, but to her amazement he was actually smirking. "It seems there were some disagreements."

"It was a little more than that," Hekket snapped.

Smith barely registered the outburst, his eyes flickering across one of his screens.

"You were ordered to eliminate Kyros Bakirtzis, identified as the rebel leader on Ravine."

"And we refused." Hekket shrugged. "So yes, we disobeyed orders. We're not pretending we didn't."

"I can see that." Blink's commander sighed heavily, leaning back and idly scratching the back of his neck with one manicured hand. "I have Darien's report. He has been clear about your conduct."

Amber stiffened. "When we joined Blink I was told that we were not soldiers."

"And you most certainly are not."

"Then no-one gets to order me to kill," she continued, venom in her voice. "Not you, not Darien – no-one."

Smith nodded. "I also received a rather... acidic communication from Colonel Merlynn regarding your actions, and those of the Blink teams more generally."

"She wanted us to be court marshalled and thrown in a cell," Hekket said bitterly.

Smith's smile broadened. "That may be, but no matter how angry she might be the colonel does not have the authority to mete out punishment on members of Blink, and she knows it. Particularly considering the orders she gave."

"So we were right?" Amber interjected. "She should never have issued that order?"

"It's not quite as black and white as that," Smith replied, eyes darting up to meet hers. "The relationship between Blink and branches of the colonial military has always been somewhat... strained, and there is a reason we seldom perform joint operations with them. Our roles in colonial affairs are fundamentally different. But in my opinion you are correct. She overstepped her bounds."

Smith steepled his fingers together, looking at some point past the two operatives as he spoke."If Blink operatives were treated like soldiers; expected to act as soldiers and assassins, our use of such talents becomes considerably more sinister. Right now the colonial powers allow us an element of leeway precisely because Blink teams are remitted with search and rescue, or policing actions. The idea of an armed force able to materialise and kill at will anywhere in the colonial network sets most government officials on edge."

"It was the wrong decision," Amber told him. "Regardless of the fine print. I'm not a killer and I'd be the first to admit it, but this was doomed to fail. Killing Kyros solved nothing. Thanks to Merlynn jumping the gun there's a full blown civil war on Ravine now – the exact thing we were supposed to stop!"

The brief echo of her voice died in the silent seconds that ebbed by. After a little too long of a pause, Smith spoke again.

"I'm afraid it's worse than even the good colonel realised," he said quietly. "It appears Darien's old friend was rather more resourceful than anyone gave him credit for. That broadcast didn't just make it to Ravine's networks. They attempted to broadcast it to the entire colonial network."

"They can do that?!" Amber asked, exchanging a horrified glance with Hekket.

"After a fashion." Blink's commander shrugged his slim shoulders and eased back into his chair, a thoughtful expression on his face. "It didn't carry to all networks, but those without hardened encryption were overridden for the duration."

She closed her eyes for a moment as the realisation sunk in. "So, places like Ravine. The poor colonies, that's who saw this?"

"By and large."

"Space," Hekket cursed quietly, leaning back in his seat and pressing his hands over his eyes with a groan.

"It's difficult to quantify the impact of such a thing," Smith continued. "Beyond Ravine itself the information about the conflict there has been relatively restricted, but it has already provoked a response."

His fingers flashed deftly across one of the three holographic keypads strewn across the desk and an instant later the back of the middle monitor flickered and flashed, mirroring the display to Hekket and Amber. What she saw there made her guts twist with unease.

JOINT STATEMENT ISSUED:

GOVERNORS OF MARNILL, ALURA, CASTIGAIN, DETTON-MOURE AND HOLSBARRACH CONDEMN ESCALATION OF VIOLENCE AND CALL ON WITHDRAWAL OF COLONIAL NAVY FORCES FROM RAVINE.

She didn't need the read the rest of the article – the implication was clear. Kyros had garnered sympathy for his cause that stretched far beyond the volcanic hellscape of Ravine. She recognised most of the colonies listed and had visited a couple of them herself. They were not rich, clean settlements like the central worlds and doubtless some saw themselves as next in the firing line if the revolution on Ravine was brutally crushed.

"They swallowed it," Hekket muttered, shaking his head. "Kyros has been playing propaganda since we landed on Ravine and he's still doing it, dead or not."

"Quite." Smith pressed a button and the mirrored screen disappeared. "Earth's ministers are already convening a special summit of the colonial senate to try and head this thing off at the pass, but the governments of these planets are not happy about what they've seen. Things are resting on a knife edge."

Amber took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. "So where does that leave us?"

"Where indeed?" Smith drummed his fingers thoughtfully against his desk. "This is a special case, with a particularly unfortunate set of circumstances that made you feel that you had no choice. It is not a situation that you or any other operative should have been forced into. Personally, I see nothing egregious in your behaviour to warrant any kind of formal disciplinary procedure."

She felt a tremor of relief pass through her out of the corner of her eye she saw Hekket ease down into his seat as the tight hunch of his shoulders unwound.

"That being said," Smith continued. "You both disobeyed a direct order from a superior officer, and the chain of command needs to be respected. I am not at liberty to sweep something like this under the rug."

And just like that her heart sank again. She swallowed hard and nodded. "So what happens to us?"

"You will both be suspended for one month," he said, his tone startlingly amicable, as though he was simply fulfilling a bland obligation. "Which, having looked over the after action reports from Ravine, is time you could certainly use away from your duties. Once the suspension is fulfilled you will come back to Blink with a clean slate and resume your duties."

"So that's it?" Hekket asked. "We're gone for a month and then just walk back in like nothing happened?"

And that was when the smile finally faded from Smith's lips. His sharp eyes drifted to gaze at his central screen once more and he exhaled, long and slow.

"This is not over," he said at last. "Ravine was just the start. Something bigger is on the horizon, and when it arrives I will need every single one of you."

*******

BLINK WILL RETURN

THANK YOU FOR READING!