Blink: Interdiction (Book 4)

26

Amber had never been part of an operation with this kind of mobilisation, and seeing it made her stomach knot with fear. Every other mission she'd been a part of had demanded the small, precise units of Blink – games of cat and mouse, small scale incursions and battles of wits. This was a different order of magnitude.

The staging area for the dragoons was a few miles south of the cracker, and she could see its vast dome protruding out of the crags in the distance, the spine of the gun itself reaching up out of the shell like a spear. In the machine-flattened clearing below her she watched as a full battle company of Merlynn's troops girded up for war.

Wyvern gunships growled on their landing pads, fuelled and loaded, while ground crews scuttled around them performing final pre-flight checks. Heavy tracked troop carriers manoeuvred into serried ranks, some ready to deploy, others still loading their cargoes of heavily armed dragoons. Then there were tanks and self-propelled guns – sleek dark metal machines gliding along on massively powerful gravity treadmills that rendered all but the most hazardous terrain meaningless. Their guns protruded from beetle-like armoured shells, primed to unleash destruction on the rebel stronghold.

It was a force that wanted to be unleashed. She could feel it. The loss of the Roshven had struck the government forces like a punch in the heart and they wanted revenge. A lot of people on the ground weren't thinking about the casualties that would surely come in a full frontal assault.

She tried to push that thought to the back of her mind. If the Blink operatives did their jobs properly they could minimise that risk. Tightening the straps of her combat vest to wrap in snugly around her body, she cast an eye down the sight of her carbine before circling up with the other members of Hammerhead Squad. The other Blink teams were scattered across the raised plateau, each with their own objectives.

The plan, as far as she could figure it, was a halfway-house compromise between what Vass and Darien had clashed over. Surprisingly enough, it also seemed better than both. Tundra Squad, supported by Panther, were tasked with a lightning, diversionary raid on the main entrance of the facility, that would open the door for the others to Blink in and sweep the interior, taking out the secondary power-plants for the cracker's outer defence guns.

With those main defences wiped out the army units would then come seeping in with overwhelming force. If everything went to plan there wouldn't be a chance for the rebels to truly resist. Casualties would be kept as low as they could be under the circumstances.

"Everybody ready to go," Darien said flatly, his carbine hanging from its strap across his chest. He rested his wrests across the barrel and the stock, turning from the mobilising colonial troops to face the squad.

Nods and murmurs of confirmation came from the others, their faces hard with resolve but somehow uneasy. The incident with Vass still left a sour taste in the air, like pall hanging over the mission. This needed to go well, if nothing else to ensure they could put the whole sorry affair behind them.

"Stay sharp, stay safe," he told them. "We hit our targets and get out fast. Let the dragoons do the heavy lifting."

"About time," Idas muttered. Niamh smirked – even Hekket stifled a snigger at the remark. Amber managed a smile, but her mind was in the wrong gear for humour right now. Her focus was simply on remaining calm and doing what she had to do, burying all the apprehension deep into the recesses of her mind.

Minutes ticked by as the dragoons continued their deployment, a fast armoured spearhead being assembled at the front of the staging area, ready to strike the breach the Blink operatives would create like a hammer. Eventually word passed through the comms, through all the military branches and through to the Blink teams. Everything was ready.