Blink: Interdiction (Book 4)

02

The walls of the cave closed in around them in a veritable dome of oily black, completely shutting them off from the outside world. With her night-sight goggles Amber could clearly see the terrified faces of the mining personnel trapped within, many of them sporting bruises, cuts and a handful of more serious injuries sustained in the collapse.

These were the lucky ones. Over twenty of their colleagues had been killed instantly when one of their Tecton mining lasers had misfired, erasing a series of vital support ribs with a single blast and bringing hundred of tons of rock crashing down on the miners. The mine entrance was smashed to rubble, leaving the survivors trapped in an airless, lightless pit, unreachable by normal means.

And that was when the station operators above had screamed out to Blink for help. The administrators of Jalur VIII ran a tight, threadbare operation out on the smoky, arid world, and lacked any means of extracting the trapped workers. On top of the loss of life, the dividend payouts to the miners' families would already be skyrocketing, so much so that it might cripple the whole operation. If they couldn't get the survivors out, the entire mining complex would have to be shut-down. A cold justification, perhaps, but one that had leant extra urgency to their desire to rescue those who were still alive.

Amber passed a breather to one of the miners, helping the woman as she fumbled in the darkness to fix it to her face, able to see through the night-sight goggles, a ragged smear of dried blood that ran down the miner's temple. The first thing the operatives had done upon arrival was Blink into the disaster area, loaded down with spare oxygen tanks and breather masks for the survivors. One commodity they needed to buy was time.

"Easy," Amber said softly. "Take slow breaths."

The woman nodded, clasping a hand gratefully over the mask to hold it, even though it vac-sealed in place. Steering her with a gentle hand, Amber sent her towards the flickering guide-beam of Hekket's torch. The sandy-haired medic stood with Uther, their veteran tech, and the survivors of the cave-in. After an examination of the interior coupled with blueprints provided by the station operators they'd identified a number of structurally safe zones that should withstand the forces they were about to unleash in their attempts to free the trapped miners.

Amber turned to check on the progress of her squad-mate who also stood handing out masks and acting as a guide. To her relief, the slim-framed girl standing opposite her in the passage seemed to be in her element.

With their squad leader suspended, Hammerhead Squad had been left short-handed, something Smith wouldn't tolerate. So, in Darien's absence he'd assigned them Bryn Harvard, a rookie operative fresh out of her training. Initially, Amber had braced herself for a tumultuous transition, the memory of the last unwanted transfer still raw in her mind. This time, however, the integration ended up being smoother than she could have hoped.

A lot of that was because of how Bryn had ended up with Blink – a refugee from the murderous experiments of six months ago that claimed dozens of lives that could have been better used in service of the Blink organisation. The now fourteen-year-old Bryn Harvard already showed formidable skills in eluding those criminals. That, coupled with the fact that half the squad had been present to see it, meant that she got a healthy reception from her new comrades.

And she was holding up here as well. The dark didn't bother the hard-featured teenager and she moved with a confidence well beyond her years as she directed confused, reluctant workers to their safe zones. Looking past her, Amber narrowed her eyes as she observed the dark figures at the far end of the cavern.

Their current squad leader, Niamh O'Toole, was busy double-checking the ring of charges that Idas had spent the last hour painstakingly positioning. The only workable plan they could put into action was to find a stable point on the interior of the collapse and trigger a focused incendiary blast that would fuse them a temporary tunnel out, something that had been impossible to gauge from the outside.