The cigarette burned to nothing between Max's fingers. Vito's words pulled him out of Samir's story all at once, and his hand trembled slightly as he let the dead stub fall. His eyes were full of fury and sothing that refused to believe what it was hearing.
"Another mole. What is happening to the Serpents? Selling out your own people to the Night Wraiths—"
He closed his fist until the knuckles went white. The easygoing clan leader who greeted everyone by na had been replaced by sothing harder. Betrayal had a way of doing that to people raised in the Badlands, where survival was a group effort from birth and there was no word for it that didn't carry the weight of every na attached.
Vito pressed his cigarette out against the tal floor of the transport.
"Anger doesn't solve anything."
Max pulled in a long breath and pushed the fury down.
"Do you have a plan?"
"Yes."
Vito laid out what he'd already worked through.
"First thing tomorrow, you tell all transport and escort personnel that you're splitting supply runs across multiple routes to spread the risk. Divide everyone into five squads. Each squad gets a different supply point and a different departure ti. The real destination for all five is the sa place, the abandoned mine relay station deep in the Badlands."
Max picked it up imdiately.
"You and I take the fighters and wait near the relay station without showing ourselves.
Five squads, five routes, staggered departures. Only the mole will pass information to the Night Wraiths ahead of ti. They'll set up on whichever route or destination they're tipped off about.
Whichever squad gets hit is the squad with the mole."
He paused.
"Full blackout on the real plan. Nobody except the two of us knows the actual arrangent. At minimum, it narrows the field to transport personnel."
"We do it your way. I'll handle the assignnts tonight. Nothing gets out."
That night the camp settled into its usual quiet. Nobody knew that a hunt had already begun.
Carlo sat with Samir in her tent while her breathing steadied. She stared at nothing, wrapped in the weight of what she'd done.
Jackie checked weapons and ran through his ammunition inventory, ready to move when the ti ca.
At first light, the Badlands wind still cutting hard, Max assembled all transport and escort personnel and split them into five squads as planned. He gave each squad different supply point instructions, added a note that squads weren't to communicate with each other during the operation, and kept his voice exactly as it always was. Nothing unusual. Nobody asked questions.
The squads sorted their cargo, checked their vehicles, and rolled out of the Serpents camp one after another in different directions.
Ti passed. The first four squads moved without incident, converging smoothly toward the abandoned mine relay station. No contact.
Max stared at the tracker in his hand, his expression tightening with every update.
Then the radio broke open. The last squad, just entering the canyon approach to the relay station.
"Ambush! Night Wraiths convoy. They were already here waiting!"
"Their firepower is too heavy, we can't hold!"
Vito's voice ca out flat and final.
"Max, take Carlo and your fighters through the left canyon. Flank them. Jackie, with , straight in. No survivors."
The Magician's engine roared. The vehicle punched through the wind and dust toward the ambush site.
In the canyon, the Night Wraiths' modified vehicles had the Serpents' cargo convoy boxed in from every angle. Gunners on mounted weapons were pouring sustained fire into the trapped Nomads and the return fire was falling apart.
The Magician hit the canyon entrance at speed. The Type-31 opened up imdiately, sweeping across the Night Wraiths' gun positions with tight, precise bursts. Max's fighters ca through the left flank a mont behind, completing the encirclent.
The Night Wraiths had no contingency for this. They'd co on a tip to intercept cargo and walked into Vito's setup instead. The ambushers had beco the ambushed, and the adjustnt ti was zero.
The fight lasted under twenty minutes. Every Night Wraiths vehicle was destroyed. Every attacker was flatlined. Bodies lay scattered across the canyon floor in the drifting dust, wrecked vehicles bleeding black smoke into the sky.
The Serpents cargo crew stood in stunned silence, looking at Vito and Max like they'd appeared from nowhere.
Max stepped to the front of the assembled group. His expression left no room for questions.
"Five squads. One destination. Only your squad was hit. The mole is standing in front of right now."
The words went through the group like a current. Everyone looked at everyone else. The shock curdled into sothing else.
Vito moved forward without preamble.
"Separate them. Question each one individually. Collect every comm device and personal terminal. I'll read the data."
Jackie and Carlo split the group and moved each mber to a separate vehicle section. One by one the questioning ran through them. Every person denied it. Every person was angry about being asked. Not one of them showed a crack.
Vito worked through the seized terminals and comm devices thodically, pulling recent communication records and location data.
One mber caught his attention. A man nad Toby, responsible for cross-checking escort routes. Quiet. Unremarkable.
The terminal showed a pattern: repeated encrypted data uploads, each one tid to just before a transport or delivery departure.
And the biotric self-check residuals showed it clearly. Consistent Flash tabolism in his system. Frequent intake records going back a long ti.
Vito picked up the terminal and walked to where Toby was being held alone. He dropped it in front of him.
Toby's face went white. His whole body started shaking before he'd ford a conscious thought. His hands clenched.
"Toby. It's over. Running on Flash every day. At this rate the Night Wraiths are going to be the only people who'll take you."
Toby's body went slack. He slid down in the chair and put his hands over his head and let out a sound that had nothing left in it.
A forr field worker, born into the open country. He didn't have the wiring to hold a secret like this.
"It was . I did it."
His voice was gone. The rest ca out in pieces.
Long-haul escort runs, months of them. To get through the exhaustion he'd started using Flash. The habit built. He couldn't stop.
Then the Night Wraiths found out. The choice they gave him: supply them with Serpents transport and camp information, or they'd go to Max with the drug use and have him thrown out of the clan.
The addiction on one side, the clan's rules on the other. No exit. Toby made his choice.
Even the raid. After Samir had given up the camp location, Toby had passed the defensive details along on top of it. That was what had made the Night Wraiths' assault so clean and so devastating.
Max listened to the outco and couldn't hold himself still. He looked at the person he had trusted and all that was left in his eyes was the cold weight of it.
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