Blink: Interdiction (Book 4)

19

Amber couldn't believe they were actually about to do this. Infiltrating the organisation was one thing. Going up against the very troops they were supposed to be helping restore order was something entirely different.

The cold rational part of her brain understood the logic. The operation would prove their worth and put their trustworthiness beyond contest in one night's work, moving them a huge step closer to their goal.

The other part was terrified, because even though they'd passed the word to Merlynn out of the void of the Haze, the soldiers on the ground hadn't been told. They couldn't have been told. Even the slightest hint that their quarry knew what was happening could scupper the credibility that the Blink teams had worked so hard to establish.

That meant the colonial guards of the convoy would be shooting for real, and they'd be shooting to kill.

She almost admired Merlynn's backbone in allowing them to go ahead with the operation. Had she been in the woman's shoes Amber doubted she'd have done the same – knowingly walking a unit of her soldiers into an ambush that she could have prevented. But the cold, calculating side of the Beltock Dragoons' commander had won out over any misgivings, so they were going in.

The bulky slug-thrower felt alien in her hands, a brutish weapon that lacked any of the finesse and precision of the Blink-issue carbines. She turned it over, examining the badly aligned sight with a critical eye, trying to get used to the heft before she was called upon to actually use it. Around her the others did the same, arming themselves with a motley selection of black-market firearms, ranging from colonial assault rifles to ad-hoc, home-made nail guns. The whole thing was quite surreal.

Obviously the Blink operatives had been ordered to minimise any direct fire on colonial troops. The entire operation was a PR catastrophe waiting to happen if word somehow got out that the government forces on the planet had started shooting at each other. But Amber was under no illusions. They would be in a firefight and there was no way out of that. Like everyone else, she had her volt-gun concealed beneath her coat in case she did need to shoot someone, but it didn't make her feel much better.

She currently sat nestled in a craggy cupola of rock, looking down over a barren vista of a lava-carved valley, repurposed by the human population into a transit artery. A snaking, sliver of uniform grey cut through the valley floor, empty for now. Far, far in the distance she could see the lurid glow of a series of gently bubbling volcanos, a constant reminder of the brutality of the environment they found themselves in. She took in the hellish vista through the panes of her blast goggles, face wrapped by a thick breath-scarf that sifted some of the worse elements of Ravine's air out of her inhalations.

"Okay everybody," Darien declared from further back in the rocks, dragging her thoughts away from the spiral. "It's almost go time. Circle up."

She squared her jaw and turned to face him, shuffling over and joining the other operatives in a loose ring around him. Hammerhead's group only covered a small portion of the attack area. Six other teams – some Blink operatives and others comprised of Gazi's troops – had been staggered throughout the crags. They would strike simultaneously, hitting the military convoy from all sides in an effort to overwhelm any guarding force with a minimum of casualties. Darien's story of hijacking a convoy might have been a lie to gain Parker's confidence, but that didn't mean the veteran squad leader didn't know how to do it.

"Our target is due in thirty," he told them. If he had any misgivings about what they were about to do, he wasn't letting them show. "You all know the plan. Just stick to it. Let Gazi's thugs to the heavy lifting. We get in, we get what Parker wants, and get out again." Darien's gaze lingered on them for a moment. "And remember, do not Blink. Anyone sees us Blinking around out there it'll give away everything."