Blink: Phantom (Book 3)

08

Sleep didn't come to Darien that night. Thoughts, plans and schemes whirled through his over-active brain and he couldn't shut them off. Resigning himself to it, he trudged down to the Blink training centre, clad in nothing more than featureless black t-shirt, grey sweatpants and trainers. The empty hallways rang eerily with his footsteps. He knew that tucked away in monitoring offices there were plenty of station staff hard at work – a station like this never truly slept. But in order for the inhabitants to have some semblance of a normal schedule the operators – or perhaps just Smith – imposed a day and night rotation. Human beings simply need that pattern.

The duty guards of the marine garrison barely gave him a second glance as he went. Leading the most highly regarded team on the station had its advantages – pretty much everyone here knew his face. He didn't see any other operatives, though he knew plenty would be out on operations throughout the galaxy. Blink might have worked to an Earth-length day, but the rest of the galaxy didn't.

He started with a trip to the firing range. It was deserted at this time, but he checked out a training carbine from the duty master and trudged into the long, narrow chamber. A row of sectioned off cubicles ran down one long edge, facing out into the expanse where the virtual targets would appear. He selected one at random and stepped inside.

He keyed a custom programme into the system, one that would demand all of his considerable reactions and maybe help wrench his mind away from the phantoms they chased through the galaxy. Taking a deep breath, Darien raised the stock of the carbine to his shoulder and took aim. The training weapon didn't actually fire the superheated ceramic lances of the real thing, but instead was fitted with a low power burst laser. It would simulate the kickback and had a power pack instead of a bandoleer, but wouldn't waste ammunition. More importantly, it meant he couldn't damage the training centre with a wayward shot.

Not that Darien had many wayward shots.

A few seconds later a curtain in the form of a blue grid rose up in front of him, extending back to the far wall of the room. In a gentle motion he slid one foot back and bent his knees slightly. Then the targets started flashing.

A sphere of light shot across the target space, made up of coloured layers starting from yellow on the outside, to orange, to a central red core. Darien tracked it and fired in the blink of an eye. The burst laser lashed out and pierced the red centre; the target disintegrated into coloured pixels. Before the image had died another target was rushing across the space. He shot it too. The light kick of the training carbine dug into his shoulder but he barely noticed, aiming and firing a third time.

More targets whirled into existence far too fast for an average human to follow. Even the best colonial marines of the station's garrison wouldn't have been able to keep up with the deluge, but Darien's whole body was wired just a little bit differently. All Blink operatives displayed heightened reactions, and even by their standards he was quick. He twitched left, right, up and down, his full concentration centred on the targets.

After two minutes the programme ran its course and the blue targeting cube shimmered out of existence. Darien glanced at his score.

Ninety-seven percent centre hits.

Normally the number would have given him a little jolt of pride, but right now he just felt irritated. Even that rigorous test of his marksmanship had barely taken the edge off his whirling mind. The face of the man on the recording still haunted him. He wanted to have the bastard in front of him; to dig out the information about who was responsible for snatching away lives all across colonial space.

He ran the programme three more times before his eyes started to hurt from tracking so many targets for such a long time. With a snort of annoyance he returned the training carbine to its cradle and stomped out of the firing range, his body still blazing with pent up energy. He knew he needed to sleep if he was to be at his best for the coming hunt.