Blink: Interdiction (Book 4)

11

For a moment no-one spoke. Amber looked at Hekket but his expression was blank; uncomprehending. She turned her gaze on Darien.

"How do you know?" She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer.

He sighed. "Because, long time again, I helped build one."

Amber's eyes widened in surprise. "You did what?!"

"I didn't know what it was at the time," he snapped. "So save the holier-than-thou crap, alright? I was a dumb kid, doing what I had to do to stay alive." But Amber couldn't force the expression of horror off her face, so he continued. "You have no idea what I went through on this rock, okay? Maybe I'll tell you all about it one day, but not today."

"Amber," Hekket said, having moved up close beside him. "Listen to him."

"I ... sorry." Her eyes went downcast and she shook her head. "I didn't mean to ... I'm not judging you."

Darien's face softened, his mouth pressing into a flat line. "Ravine does things to people, and not everyone gets the escape route that I did." Wincing at her own insensitivity, she forced herself to look up and meet his eyes. Her mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out – her head still whirled with the implications of it all.

"Well, I reckon we can rehash all those good times later," Uther interjected, rescuing her from the awkward silence and forcing a jocular edge into his voice. "What's our plan, boss?"

"This means we've got two jobs now," Darien told them firmly. "We'll try and take that woman back to Merlynn, but if we do nothing else, we make sure they don't finish building that bomb. If they finish it – if they detonate it – a lot of people are going to die."

"How big are we talking about here?" Hekket asked quietly.

"If it's built to the specifications I think it is, it would level several city blocks."

"Hell," Uther muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. "Well I'm in. Let's put a spanner in the works right now."

Darien nodded and pointed to the security console. "Can you get me a floor plan?"

"On it." Amber had regained control of her surprise and set to work, fingers flying across the controls, digging through the archaic systems of Gartole's security. One screen below the cameras clunked along with line after line of white, blocky text against a black background.

Her eyes flickered over the lines of code as she punched in commands, navigating through the directory as quickly as she dared. It was like walking through a cardboard corridor – one wrong step would put her through the wall and bring the whole thing crashing down on her, more by accident than any actual design. Eventually she tip-toed her way through the myriad of subsidiary systems and accessed the main base schematics from the central computer. With a final push of a button she brought the schematic to prominence on one of the larger security monitors.

"There it is."

"Zoom on the level where the bomb's being held."

The dim blue lattice of the schematic swivelled and zoomed under Amber's commands until it had closed in on the section of the complex in question. The middle level of the five displayed on the screen was their target, but as far as she could see there weren't any easy points of access, or any helpfully secluded spots they could Blink into undetected. She also couldn't help wondering if the people in charge of Gartole had retrofitted their more important areas with advanced security measures.

"Match up the cameras," Darien said, his voice calm. She could sense the shift in him, his mind moving up through the gears that made him such a formidable squad leader. Even here, on Ravine, with all the torrid memories it must have held, he could order his thoughts and focus on nothing but the next objective. His eyes narrowed as he examined the camera screens and the schematic in tandem, looking for a chink in the armour.