6 Months Later

Howler Beta was a hot, gloomy world in a lonely corner of the galaxy; a heat-blasted expanse of jagged rock rendered almost uninhabitable by the power of its blue giant star. The enormous, searing globe reared over a horizon of snarling crags and snaggle-toothed valleys, pouring out deadly radiation and cooking the terrestrial world with lethal temperatures.

And yet, it was home to a small, disconsolate population of colonists, almost all of whom were in thrall to the local sector's mining and shipping contractors. Out in the blind spots of colonial space, you took what you could get. The evidence of this human incursion was limited to a score of half-buried mining settlements that had been dug into the huge series of shaded canyons that scarred the planet's equator

And it was in one of these settlements that Amber found herself battling with her nerves as Hammerhead Squad tackled their latest assignment. Within the mining complex the scorching heat of the surface was counteracted – barely – by a formidable system of liquid nitrogen coolant that coursed through the structure like icy blood. Even with this frigid temperature control, Amber could feel the sweat beading on her cheeks.

The lack of windows make her uneasy, but whoever had built Howler Beta's colony had decided to dispense with the expensive luminosity screens that would have been needed to counteract the blue giant's brightness. Instead they stood inside featureless, silver-walled passages, lit by soft, pale ceiling discs that made everything look colder than it actually was.

She fidgeted with the strap that held her lance carbine securely in place as they discussed their strategy. She still couldn't shake the strange unreality that Blink had given a gun to a sixteen-year-old girl. Back on Illuvari nobody really needed guns. The carbines were not standard military issue – lightweight and compact with a rectangular telescoping barrel – they were designed for a user that didn't carry the build of an average colonial marine.

It had taken a lot of getting used to. She grimaced at the memory of the Blink instructors berating her as she hesitated on the firing range, unwilling – almost unable to process the fact that she had a weapon that could kill people. Eventually, after plenty of harsh language and a lot of concentration, she'd managed to dig her mental heels in for long enough to get through her combat training, but compared to the rest of the squad her scores were still below average.

But it wasn't the gun that had her on edge right now. On the other side of a six inch titanium blast door was an armed man, along with a dozen hostages, one of whom already had suffered a bullet to the leg as the criminal strove to show strength of his resolve. Disgruntled, under-paid and overworked, Tobias Van Hoyt had simply cracked, and with the slack security on these fringe systems, it hadn't been hard from him to get hold of a firearm.

She'd heard his frantic – almost hysterical – demands for a blank cheque of g'lactic and a ship to ferry him off the space-forsaken furnace, and it made for grim listening. Locked in a sealed room with his unfortunate co-workers, he'd made it abundantly clear that he would start killing people in the next hour if his demands weren't met.

What had also been made abundantly clear to her, however, was that the colonial governments did not like to negotiate. This man was getting nothing and going no-where, and it fell to the operatives of Hammerhead Squad to make sure no one died in making that happen.

Not exactly the kind of situation she'd hoped to encounter on her second operational Blink. The rest of her team averaged over fifty, and standing with them now she felt every inch the white-blood rookie.

"Alright, listen up," Darien said as they gathered around a three-dimensional schematic of the facility. An electronic display removed from the planet's rock, it showed a building shaped like a tiered wedding cake that broadened out hundreds of feet below the surface. They currently stood on the top level – a small jutting disc that bore the full brunt of the Howler Beta's blasting heat, where the main administration hub had become a hostage zone.

"Our target's shut down the normal atmospheric failsafes," he continued. "And sealed all access to the main administration office." As he spoke he thumbed a button on the console and the schematic zoomed in around the top section highlighted in red at the top of the complex. Beyond the pulsing rectangle of the bulkhead door was an oblong room containing Van Hoyt and the administrative staff that had been unfortunate enough to inside when he cracked. "He's locked himself in with thirteen civilian hostages, one of whom has a leg wound – we don't know how serious yet. Nearest military help is three days away at best speed; when we were dispatched he'd given an ultimatum of an hour before people start dying."

"That leaves us with fifty-two minutes to knock some sense into this grounder," the girl to his left drawled, glancing idly at the chrono on her right wrist. The only other female in the group, Niamh was a lithe, willowy individual with long, flame-red hair and one synthetic eye – a piece of black, rectangular metal grafted against her right temple, supplanted with a glowing emerald iris. As well as being a veteran operative, the two white bars on Niamh's left shoulder marked her out as the second in command. Darien sported three bars; everybody else had one.

"If we can trust what he's said, he's pumped a round into one woman's leg already," Darien told them, and cast a glance at their medical specialist, a slender, sandy-haired operative named Hekket. "When we get in there, she's your first priority."

Hekket nodded. "Depending on the wound, the longer we wait the more danger we run of her bleeding out. If he hit one of her femoral arteries she'll be dead already."

Amber swallowed hard at that. They were all talking about it so casually, and she hadn't quite fixed her mind into that gear yet.

"I could pop the lock easy enough," said Uther, the team's lead tech, rubbing his stubbled chin with one hand. He was the tallest and oldest operative in the squad, a veteran of over eighty operational Blinks. "But the minute this guy hears a gear turn he might just start shooting again." He cast an apologetic glance at their squad leader.

"Can't risk it." Darien shook his head unhappily. "And we can't blast it open without compromising the structural integrity – not to mention potential collateral damage."

"Well, we can't Blink in blind," Idas rumbled, leaning forward and resting his palms on the table as he scrutinized the schematic. "We've got no idea what the dispersal of the hostages is, or if he's done any redecorating while he's been holed up in there."

The implication of the burly teenager's warning was clear enough. Without knowing where the people or the items of furniture were, the risk of accidentally Blinking into a desk – or worse, another human being – was horrifyingly real.

To Amber, their course of action seemed clear enough – they needed to see inside the room.

"Any way to get eyes in there?" Niamh wondered, as though reading her mind.

Uther gave a grim shake of the head. "Guy might be a gun-toting nut-job, but he knows how to seal a room. That place is like a lifeboat now – airtight down to the molecule. He triggered the local disaster protocols."

"What about the vents?" Amber said softly. All eyes rotated and locked onto her, sending a shiver of unease up her spine, but she suppressed it. Stepping forward, she pointed at the cluster of slender lines above the main room. "They go right over the top of this room. We could plant a camera stud right in the centre and get eyes on the whole place."

"He's sealed them all off, Newbie," Niamh sighed patiently. "Can't even sneak a drone in. All the external access points are shut tight."

"We're Blink operatives, aren't we?" she replied. "We could physically bypass those access points – one at a time."

Darien gave her a dubious look. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"It could work."

"Or you could end up getting half mangled into a ventilation shaft if you judge it wrong," Uther snorted. "It's your second op, Garret. Don't play hero."

She bristled at that, turning to face him. "Yeah? Well, what's your great idea? You can't hack your way through a steel plate."

"That's enough!" Darien growled dangerously. "Both of you just put a lid on it."

Reluctantly, Amber fell silent, still glowering at the older tech. When she found the squad leader's gaze on her, however, she felt the nerves rise. She braced for a rebuke.

"So you think you can Blink through the vents and position a camera for us?" he asked.

She was so surprised it took her a moment to answer. "Oh, I...err, well, yes. I think so."

"You think so?"

"Yes, I can do it," she told him, forcing hardness into her voice. She might be nervous, but in this one area – perhaps the most important of all – she had confidence in her abilities. She may not have lit up the score sheets for her gun play, but her Blink skills were second to none. Odd, she thought wryly, that the strangest aspect off all this was the one that she felt at ease with.

Amber nodded to the map. "Zoom in on those sections."

Darien did as she asked and in a flash of movement they had a highly detailed depiction of the section of ceiling and wall vents that surrounded the chamber. Directly over the administration hub a series of vents converged like spokes on a wheel, forming a metallic spider web right in the middle of the top tier. A ring of blinking red dots just outside the structure of the room itself indicated the locked vents.

"All I need to do," she continued. "Is to Blink into this section here." Her finger made the diagram shimmer as she touched it, pointing to a section of venting within the red ring. "I'll have bypassed all the hard seals – I'll be inside the lifeboat. Then I work my way into the centre of the room, to the maintenance access panel here." Another point; another shimmer over a green square slap-bang in the centre of the administration hub. "I can sneak a camera stud in there and voilà, you've got eyes." Then she stepped back, her stomach turning over as she gauged the reactions of her squad mates.

Idas and Hekket exchanged noncommittal looks, keeping their council to themselves. Uther still looked scornful. He rolled his eyes and she had to suppress her annoyance. Instead, she turned her attention to the ranking officers. Darien glanced at Niamh. The red-haired girl held his gaze for a moment; shrugged.

Darien turned to her, a thin smile on his face. "Alright, Amber. Come with me."

*

Lying on the cold metal floor of the facility, Amber inhaled and exhaled long slow breaths, calming her juddering nerves and pounding heart. In theory, the distance was paltry, but in such a real situation she couldn't shut out the apprehension – not completely.

The higher logic functions of her brain whirled into readiness as she prepared. Blink operatives simply thought faster than the average human, allowing her to rapidly calculate the complete equations of mass, volume and distance that would bring her safely into the vent.

She felt someone kneel down beside her, but kept her eyes closed.

"You good?" Darien asked quietly.

Amber gave him a thumbs-up with both hands.

"That's what I like to see." She felt a hand on her shoulder for a moment, then his presence moved away, the rasp of boots on metal fading. He spoke again, addressing the others. "Everyone link in. As soon as the camera stud is in place we're not wasting time. Take one good look, mark positions of the hostages and our target, and then we go. Five meter spread, and we want him alive. Nobody's died yet and we want to keep it that way."

It occurred to her that Darien might have agreed to her plan for more than just its practicality. If everything panned out as it should, she wouldn't actually have to take part in the apprehending of their quarry. One the one hand, it might have coincidence – someone had to do the Blinking. On the other...she was, on paper, the lowest rated combat specialist on the team. Perhaps Darien didn't want that variable in play when he assaulted the room.

"Okay, Amber," he told her. "You're up."

"See you soon," she replied.

No more waiting. Amber lowered her mind to an almost trance-like state. This might have been simple, but she was taking no chances. She visualised the air shaft, re-ran every single number in every equation, checking for errors.

So far so good. She factored her own mass and shape into the calculations, fitting herself into that small empty space like a key into a lock. More checks. Everything still looked bang on target.

You can do so much more. Darien's words echoed in her mind. Well, it was time to prove him right. Taking a final steadying breath, Amber made the Blink happen. For the briefest instant she didn't seem to exist at all – then suddenly her body dropped a distance of maybe an inch, hitting a solid, unyielding surface with a muffled thump. It was cold. And dark.

She opened her eyes.

A mud-coloured metal ceiling stared back at her from barely a foot away. Gently, she moved both her arms out from where they had been tucked against her body. It didn't take long for her to find the walls of the vent. A shudder of pride shot through her. Bull's-eye. Allowing herself a smile in the darkness, she tipped her head backwards. At the end of the passage she could just see the faint lines of light that speared from the access hatch.

Amber turned over carefully in the confines of the shaft, instantly grateful she'd opted to leave her lance carbine behind. Small and lightweight as they were, the less equipment she had dangling off her body the better. She wiped the film of sweat from her face. The planet's heat was even more pronounced inside the vents. After taking a moment to breathe and calm her nerves, she touched a hand to her earpiece.

"Darien, you read me?" she whispered.

"I hear you," he answered immediately, and she could hear the relief in his voice. "How are we looking?"

"I'm in – moving toward the access vent now."

"Copy. Off-comms from hereon."

"Copy that. Amber out."

Then she started inching her way slowly, silently forward. The closer she drew to the hatch the more audible Tobias Van Hoyt's ranting became. What had begun as a faint tenor tremble in the air now swelled like and angry spectre, tinny and distorted within the echoing confined of the vent. Amber forced herself not to listen to it, focusing only on the task she had to complete.

She stopped above the access hatch and reached into her combat vest, withdrawing the necessary tools. The camera stud – a cube barely five millimetres across packed with a cluster of surveillance lenses – rested in one hand, and she gently affixed it to the end of a thin spine of metal. Part of her technician kit, the spines were normally meant for fixing broken circuits, but this one would serve well enough to slip the stud in through the small hole in the centre of the access hatch and let it fix to the ceiling.

Keeping her hands rock-steady, she threaded the spine into the tiny aperture, briefly blocking out the tiny beam of light that came from below. Then she angled her wrist with as soft a motion as she could, bending the spine ever so slightly. Once the metal rod had a slight kink in its structure she rotated it between finger and thumb, bringing the stud up to the ceiling. A moment later she heard the faint but unmistakable click as the stud's magnets automatically trigged, snapping it tight against the hatch. She let out a silent breath of relief and withdrew the spine.

With the stud in place, she began to shuffle back down the passage. There was no need to radio her success. When the stud booted up it would instantly dispatch its precious images on a secure frequency to the operatives outside the room. Her part in this operation was over and she allowed herself to relax just a little bit.

Amber had moved perhaps a meter away from the hatch when a faint twang followed by a horrible metallic grinding echoed through the shaft for a second. She stopped dead. Her eyes went wide and she instinctively braced herself against the sides, not daring to breathe. Had the gunman heard? She waited, hoping and praying the sound hadn't been as loud outside the vent as it had inside. What the hell was that?

Then the whole section of plating beneath her gave way.

Amber couldn't contain a shrill yelp of panic as she tumbled down into the room with a thunderous crash of metal on metal. Pain rattled through her body as she struck the solid decking of the administration office and for a moment her mind spun as though she'd been stunned. Precious seconds slipped by before she forced herself to react, scrambling into a sitting position and looking up.

The room took the shape of a half barrel, its low arched ceiling stretching out before her, studded with the same pale blue lighting nodes. Symmetrical rows of control consoles ran down both walls, and at the far end an enormous circular screen displayed the station's quota demands, profit projections and mine status indicators.

But all of those details quickly faded from her mind when she found herself staring down the barrel of a gun.

Fear enveloped her and she scrabbled frantically backwards, away from the wrathful figure of the hostage taker. He stepped toward her on long, wiry limbs, the bald dome of his head shining under the light of the room. She was dimly aware of the hostages scattered around her, a blur of colour and faint hubbub of surprised exclamations, but all she could focus on was Tobias Van Hoyt and his gun. Confusion flashed across the man's cratered features for an instant, before his mouth twisted into a hated-filled snarl and he squeezed the trigger.

A lancing pain in her lower abdomen; Amber was sure she was dead.

Clutching the bullet impact she could do nothing as Tobias took another step forward, ignoring the shrieking hostages. Terror boiled through her and she suddenly remembered her side-arm. Clumsy fingers fumbled for the weapon on her thigh and a whimper slipped from her mouth.

Then she felt the sudden twinge at the base of her neck, the slight warping of physical space that heralded the arrival of another operative. Her eyes went wide as she watched two figures materialise behind the gunman, popping into existence from strangely buckled spaces of emptiness.

"Van Hoyt!"

Darien and Idas.

The pair moved like lightning. Idas lunged forward with both fists locked together like a club, and hacked down hard on the man's gun hand as he half-turned to face them. His heavy pistol clattered away across the deck, and before he could recover from his initial surprise the burly Blink operative swung his elbow back savagely, connecting with Van Hoyt's face with a sickening crunch of breaking cartilage. Idas leapt aside as the hostage-taker reeled backwards, revealing Darien standing with his volt-gun aimed.

The weapon's stubby barrel snarled once, and the next instant Tobias Van Hoyt was blasted with an electrical charge that completely overwhelmed his nervous system. He toppled to the deck plating with a dull thump, twitching spasmodically.

Just like that it was over. Amber could only stare at the man's body, the fingers of one hand loosely curled around the grip of her side-arm. It wasn't until someone took a firm grip on her shoulders that she jerked her gaze away and found herself looking into Darien's eyes.

"Amber," he breathed, voice thick with relief. "Still with us?"

"I..." She shook her head, glancing down to where the bullet had hit her. A lump rising in her throat, she took her hand away, bracing for the worst...

"You're okay, you're okay," Darien told her, cupping her face in one hand and forcing her to look at him again. "The armour took the hit. Barely scratched the surface."

"Oh." Amber gulped, then exhaled a shuddering breath. Of course. A sudden wave of embarrassment washed over her when she remembered. The tungsten-fibre weave of her body armour was stab-proof, bullet-proof and could even withstand lower yield explosions – more than a match for any black market firearm.

"You're okay," he repeated, letting his hand drop. "You'll have a nasty bruise, but that's it." Then he glanced over his shoulder and yelled, "Hekket, talk to me!"

"Superficial wound," the medic's lilting voice answered from behind one of the consoles that littered the room. "I've stopped the bleeding locally till we can get her to a medical centre; we're out of the woods."

"Idas, secure Mr. Van Hoyt for the authorities." Darien turned back, nodding to himself. Then he looked at her again.

"Space," Amber cursed as she slumped into a sitting position against the wall. "The vent – it just...broke."

"I know, we saw on the camera feed just after you got it into position." He smiled. "Good thing you got it locked in when you did. Once you got us our eyes, Idas and I were able to Blink in without risk to the hostages. If you hadn't..." He stopped himself from finishing the sentence, but she didn't need to hear it to know where it was going. If she hadn't got the camera stud in place Tobias probably would have killed her.

That was when she started trembling uncontrollably.