Blink: Phantom (Book 3)

24

Nothing could have prepared Amber for what they would find in the aft section. When Darien had summoned them he'd given no information, not wanting to be on their unsecured radio channel for longer than he had to.

They moved as fast as possible, Blinking back to their point of entry using the partial floor plan they'd pieced together from the mappers. Once there the trio moved at a rapid scuttle through the bowels of the enemy ship, spurred on by the residual urgency in Darien's message. Not since their encounter with the Leviathan of Marianas had she heard the same chill in his voice. And there were unlikely to be any undersea behemoths hidden on this ship.

Following the conduits they soon reached the rear section of the vessel, and it wasn't long before they found the trail of their comrades. Amber swallowed hard when they stumbled across two dead guards, their bodies tucked away in a shadowed alcove, chests caved in by the unmistakable armour-piercing force of Compac fire. Not long after that they reached the airlock itself, and the site of a much more destructive battle.

Red smears and the scorch marks of weapon impacts pockmarked the walls around the airlock, and a few feet from the door lay the body of Tannis Brock. He was harmless now, dead and still seeping blood onto the decking from the horrific wound in his back. The acrid smell of gun-smoke mingled with the tang of death.

She exchanged a worried look with Hekket. The medic took a moment to examine the corpse then looked to the open airlock, clutching his Compac tightly.

"C'mon," Uther said quietly, leading them through the passage with his cannon raised. They slipped through the short, squat corridor and through the next aperture where the walls opened out into a cavernous space.

Amber scanned the room and instantly noticed the massive dynamos the power conduits fed into, their barrel-like structures filling the chamber with a low, resonating hum. Then she saw the three armoured forms of Darien, Idas and Niamh gathered at the far end of the room around...

She rubbed her eyes with one hand, making sure she wasn't imagining it. Beside her she heard Hekket curse under his breath. Then the three of them were pelting across the open space to join the others around the plinth. Amber had hoped that what she saw at a distance had been a distortion – an unfortunate trick of the light.

No such luck.

Her heart thudded sickeningly against her chest as she looked at Indigo Farrier's body, floating there in the embrace of dozens of metal plugs and wires. For a moment all she could do was stare, unable to fully analyse what she was seeing. Then her mind clicked into gear. She'd been right about the purpose of the ship's antennae. Someway, somehow, the builders of this hellish vessel had managed to invade and amplify the innate ability to Blink present in this girl. The experiments they'd stumbled across earlier now made chilling sense.

"Space..." Hekket breathed. "So this is how they did it."

"We can talk about how wrong this is later," Darien said, though she could hear him fighting to keep his voice level. "But right now all I want you to do is get her out of there. Can you do it?"

"I'm sure as hell going to try," Hekket replied, stepping over to the tank's control panel without hesitation.

With a conscious effort Amber dragged her eyes from the sight and tried to examine the layout of the room, to understand what was happening. The power conduits fed out from the tank into the dynamos, from there amplifying the signal of Farrier's Blink capacity, but that was far from the only thing going on. Tapping into the gift was one thing, but the ship builders had also managed to direct it, able to make their ship appear and disappear at will.