Blink: Phantom (Book 3)

05

Amber didn't know it was possible for a world to be this cold.

Even clad in her thick, fleece-lined Blink parka she shuddered as sweeping gusts of frigid wind scoured the landing pad. Trying to still her chattering teeth, she hugged herself tightly, squinting through her goggles, searching for the entrance to the colony complex. Carluke's baleful sky churned overhead, disgorging sheets of snow upon anyone foolish enough to brave its elements. For some reason that she couldn't fathom there had been a colony established here for almost ninety years. This frozen wasteland somehow supported a thriving and surprisingly large population, tucked safely into a network of bunker-like settlements across its northern continent.

"You okay there?" Hekket joked, stopping beside her. She eyed him balefully. Joke he may, but he was geared up in exactly the same heavy winter gear as she was. His slender form was swamped by the iron-coloured jacket and the goggles gave his blue eyes a strange shine. He jerked one gloved thumb over his shoulder. "C'mon, ice-bones; the entrance is this way."

"Keep it up," she warned as they trudged off in the direction he'd indicated. "I'm sure you'd just love getting left on this frozen rock."

He grinned. "Promises, promises."

"I'm in charge, Amber," Niamh called from further ahead. "I decide who gets marooned."

Amber gave a derisive snort. "Yes, sir." She threw in an exaggerated salute to her superior's back. Hekket saw it and had to stifle a laugh. He made a motion across his neck with one finger. She stuck her tongue out – then immediately retracted it from the biting cold.

The three operatives hurried across the landing pad toward the inviting doorway leading into the main colonial structure. The thing loomed like a small mountain out of the planet's surface, a grim geometric shadow of blast-hardened steel jutting defiantly against Carluke's ferocious storm systems. Lines of light glittered along its edges, bright and effervescent in the half light of the blizzards, warning away any low flying craft. To Amber the thing looked formidable enough to withstand a hit from a meteor.

Mercifully they piled in out of the cold. Having circumvented the chaos of the planet's main spaceport, they had instead wrangled a spot on one of the emergency exterior landing areas normally reserved for first response and search-and-rescue craft. She felt they more or less qualified for the latter.

Shaking snow from her body, Amber swept back her hood, setting her thick black tresses free and exhaling a long, grateful sigh. Touching a gentle finger to the right side of her goggles, she released the vac-seal and neatly caught them as they fell. Slipping the goggles into her pack she twisted the shoulder toggle of her jacket, releasing the velcro-fasten down the front.

Now a little more presentable for the indoors, she looked down the passage they stood in to find a trio of armed men striding towards them. The one leading wore a neatly fitted grey overall and had a pistol holstered around his thigh – a port officer. His companions, however, wore the full flak gear of the colonial marines, their armour coloured with the grey-blue fatigues of the local regiments. Both of them carried rifles, held crossways across their chests.

Some welcome party, she thought dryly as Niamh stepped to meet the newcomers.

This was the tenth planet they'd visited so far and their results left an awful lot to be desired. Two weeks of Blinking from planet to planet, from one colonial dive to another and she was already getting frustrated. They still had well over forty planets to check – any of them could be hiding their answers. Or none of them.

The places they'd been so far had either been proven dead ends, or at best, inconclusive. On one planet they arrived only to receive an update from Blink two hours later that the girl in question had turned up as a corpse. Amber wasn't sure if she could handle that happening too many times on this little safari.