Blink: Phantom (Book 3)

03

Their flight back to Blink Station Alpha was a long and quiet one. Darien didn't feel particularly talkative, his mind running over the sequence of events leading up to the disappearance of Indigo Farrier. He could tell Amber's view of the galaxy had taken a sharp downward turn after their visit to Marnill. She worked mechanically at the pilot station, unwilling or unable to articulate her feelings.

He knew well enough, though. It wasn't her fault she'd been born on one of the cleanest, richest colonies in human space, but it meant she had a narrow, undeveloped spectrum of what the galaxy really looked like. The encounter with Farrier's father drove that forcibly home. For his own part, Darien now wanted nothing more than to find the people responsible. They had just picked a fight with Blink – he would make them regret that decision.

At last the asteroid field that signified home came into view outside the bridge window. A wall of floating debris ranging from the size of their little shuttle, to building-sized, all the way up to the mass of dwarf planets, fenced off the Blink headquarters from prying eyes. Amber guided the ship through the rocks with practised ease and to the casual observer this looked like any other asteroid field in any other dead end corner of space.

To his eye, however, the place bristled with defences. He could pick out the dark studs of asteroid-mounted rail cannons tracking their approach through the outer edges. As they penetrated deeper he could just spot the faint exhaust flares of patrol flights on constant duty on the perimeter. An ordinary navigation console would have been thrown completely haywire by the minefield of sensor scrubs, leaving an unwary passerby blind. Fortunately the Blink issue shuttles utilised the Nav-Rod frequencies to guide them through the maze.

After several minutes of lazy, looping turns through the drifting hunks of rock, Darien's eyes found the spherical structure of home. Blink Station Alpha lurked in a small clearing amidst the field, protected by powerful gravity generators and a small fleet of colonial warships. Its black metal plates glinted dully under its outer lights and he could see dozens of ships coming and going as the Blink organisation delivered its own unique brand of law an order to an increasingly wild galaxy.

"It's good to be back," Amber said quietly, relaxing back into the pilot's chair.

"Yes it is." He looked at her. "You alright?"

"Yeah, I'm okay. It's just, you know...I feel kind of stupid."

"Because of Farrier?"

"Just the whole thing." She shrugged. "That planet, the people; I just hated being there. And then he made me feel guilty just because of where I was born."

"It's not your fault," he told her. "A lot of High-Belt colonies are exactly the same. The Colonial Government doesn't help them out, and then they see the kind of rich jewel that a colony can be when it's looked after properly. You can understand why they feel a bit cheated in the grand scheme of things."

"I know – I get it." Amber's brow creased into a frown as she made a minor course adjustment. "Back there, you told him you grew up on Ravine and he seemed to know what that meant. I've never heard of it."

"Nor have most people," Darien replied.

"Was it like Marnill?"

"Worse."

He felt a twang of remorse when a hurt expression flashed across Amber's face. He didn't often speak of the volcanic murder-hole that had branded itself across the first twelve years of his life. When the operatives from Blink pulled him out of that place he'd never looked back. He knew better than most what Indigo Farrier and people like her went through.