Amber tried to regulate her breathing, counting in and out in her head, doing her best to ignore the fact that her heart was pounding. No matter how hard she tried, however, she couldn't forget the heavy cannon clutched in her hands or the bulk of their new body armour. The Compac felt strange in her grip; a heavy, brutish instrument that lacked the speed and grace she'd come to associate with Blink. Glancing at her companions, seeing their bodies encased in the thick hybrid polymer plates filled her with unease. She'd adjusted for a lot when she became an operative, but now, barely a year later everything seemed to be spiralling out of control again.

Nothing about what they were about to do felt normal to her.

Swallowing down the lump in her throat, she instead turned her attention to the glitter of stars beyond the bridge window. Maybe for the next few minutes she could lose herself in the vastness of space.

It had been a long, drawn out wait before the operatives struck lucky again, catching the enemy ship in a system where Blink could dispatch a ship in close enough proximity to intercept them. They couldn't afford to chase every reading; if tried to catch the other ship every single time then their adversaries would quickly realise they were being tracked. One encounter could be dismissed as luck. Beyond that the advantage they had with Brock's bio-trace agent would quickly be squandered.

While it had given them added time to train with their new equipment, it also meant letting their enemies get away with half a dozen kidnappings unchallenged. Her jaw clenched tight at the memory, having to sit idly by, knowing that innocent children were being snatched from their homes and families. She understood the cold logic of it, but the human part of her still felt ashamed; frustrated by the necessity of the waiting game.

But now that wait was over and the operatives of Hammerhead Squad were rushing into what would be – if everything went to plan – the encounter that would finally end this mission. Once again the sleek, blade-like hull of the Mattock streamed through the emptiness of space, its hull gleaming under the tiny light of the stars.

Breathe.

"Are you okay?" Hekket whispered to her.

Amber nodded, pressing her lips tightly together, unwilling to trust her voice.

"You look a little tense." He gave her an apologetic smile.

"It's just the waiting," she lied. "I'll be okay once we, you know, get over there."

Hekket nodded and didn't press her any further. Despite his attempts to reassure her she could see that he was nervous too. He cradled the Compac in one hand while the other drummed restless fingers against his thigh, his eyes flickering from station to station on the bridge. She looked at him; forced a smile across her face.

Around her the others didn't seem overly concerned. She could tell from his face that Darien was neither excited nor worried. He stared at the main screen, his brow furrowed, deep in thought. His mind was focused on one thing: what the operatives would do once they boarded that ship.

Niamh lounged by his side, the bulky Compac hanging loosely in her hands. Her mechanical eye gleamed, its emerald light scanning the room, ever-impassive. Idas had a hand locked around one of the support handles built into the wall, clearly more concerned about the impact of fast manoeuvring than what might happen to them if they made it onto the enemy ship. Uther didn't seem interested in any of it. He was tinkering with the sight of his assault cannon, making some minute adjustment that Amber doubted she would even notice. The transmission beacon was safely stored in his backpack.

"Twenty thousand kilometres," the helmswoman warned. "Closing fast." Amber felt a judder of apprehension pass through her. In interstellar travel terms they were within spitting distance of their quarry.

"How close do you need to be?" Barikov asked them, staring impassively at the forward camera display.

"Lock us at ten thousand metres," Darien replied. "We'll do the rest."

Barikov nodded.

Then Darien turned to them. "Fire up the mufflers. Time to disappear."

Amber reached up shakily and activated the little stud of a device attached to the top right side of her chest plate. No sound came from it and it didn't have a light to indicate functionality; she couldn't tell if it was working. Only after the Mattock's systems officer tried to locate them did they get confirmation that the mufflers had engaged, slipping a protective bubble over their bodies that masked their inertia and heat emissions. For all intents and purposes, they had become phantoms.

Her grip on the Compac tightened. Everything was falling into place. Through the magnification on the forward cameras she could see the bizarre bulk of the enemy ship now, still a small spec in the distance but drawing nearer by the second. The Mattock's newly-enhanced sensor array was already bombarding their quarry with invasive scans, trying to carve through the interference and provide the operatives with a more complete image of their target area. It wouldn't be long now.

The bridge of the Mattock lapsed into a crackling silence as they piled on more and more speed, arcing out towards the edge of the catchment sphere where the reading of the enemy ship blinked innocently on the main display. The distance counter clicked down, down, down...

"One hundred kilometres," came the count from the helm. At this range the ship's strange features were now displayed clearly on the camera; its huge stern, the spines protruding from its hull; the disc-like projections that generated the distortion field. It was all there, just like she remembered it.

Amber shook herself, trying to shrug off the apprehension that loomed over her. At the Mattock's tremendous velocity they would have less than three minutes until they reached their optimum distance. She started running through the calculations in her head for the hundredth time: her bodily dimensions, the space of the enemy ship's cargo hold, the distance from the Mattock to their target. On the ship's central display a much more detailed breakdown of the chamber's interior layout started to appear – concentrating every single sensor probe on that one place was paying off.

The space seemed mostly empty; an odd void in the ship's structure, but the readings showed atmosphere and gravity both well within the norm. Some scattered blocky structures littered the room – perhaps equipment stashes but she had no way of knowing without seeing them firsthand.

"Looks clear," Uther said with an approving nod. "Perfect spot for us. Central too; we can cut in both directions."

"The source of the distortions was coming from that big sphere," Niamh put in, indicating the bulbous projection of the other ship's stern. "We'll need to start there."

Amber frowned. "We're not just there to break that ship." The eyes of the group turned on her but she pressed on. "We're supposed to be finding out what happened to all those kids they took. They could still be on that ship. The front half has the bridge and from the layout it also holds the living quarters. We should head there."

Darien patted the barrel of his Compac thoughtfully. He looked at her; nodded and opened his mouth to speak, but one of the bridge crew cut him off.

"Sir!" the systems officer exclaimed. "I'm reading the same power spike as before. They must be getting ready to...Blink."

"We're still too far out," Barikov grated.

"No, stop the ship," Darien told him sharply. "This might be our last shot at this. We'll Blink from here but we need the Mattock to be at a locked distance."

Barikov stared at him for a moment, then nodded and barked to the helmswoman. "You heard him. All stop!"

"Aye, sir!"

The sudden deceleration was short and brutal, nearly hurling Amber from her feet. She managed to grab one of the nearby handles to steady herself, but her stomach lurched under the tremendous shift in momentum. Ignoring the feeling, she straightened up as Darien turned to the operatives.

"Alright, circle up. We go now. Give a ten meter spread – plenty of room." He looked at each of them in turn. "Everybody good."

Amber nodded with the rest, even though her stomach turned, and she formed up in a loose circle as they prepared. With her heart hammering in her chest she took a final glance at the distance counter on the Mattock's central display and burned that figure into her mind as Darien started his countdown. They were still several thousand kilometres further out than they'd planned, but she could adjust.

"On my mark. Three..."

Visualise the room.

"Two..."

Know the distance.

"One..."

Believe.

"Blink!"

*

When she emerged back into reality Amber felt an instant of weightlessness before she dropped and her boots clunked against something hard; metallic. Every muscle in her body relaxed like a series of uncoiling springs and she took a deep breath, tasting the chemical tang of recycled oxygen in the air. She'd made it.

Immediately the first thing she noticed was the silence. On board the Mattock, or any other ship for that matter, there was always the faint rumble of an engine. Here she heard nothing but her own shallow breathing and it filled her with unease.

Squinting she tried to make out features of the room through the dull half light, resisting the urge to trigger the torch mounted under the barrel of the Compac. Her sharp eyes began to adjust, picking out the bulky cube-like structures of equipment cases and storage containers. Then a flash of movement caught her eye and she swivelled to the left, taking aim.

Hekket stood there, his Compac held crossways over his chest. He raised one hand, and then pointed behind her. Letting her weapon drop Amber turned silently. Uther emerged from behind one of the nearby crates with Idas alongside him. The four of them moved together, hunkering down amongst the dark cover of the boxes.

Listening intently, Amber heard the faintest rasp of rubber soles against metal and turned to look. Sure enough, a few seconds later the last two members of the squad emerged from the eerie twilight. They both moved like shadows, barely making a sound as they crept through the crates, Darien in the lead and Niamh gliding along in his wake, covering his back.

A few seconds later all of Hammerhead Squad gathered in a shadowed alcove between two of the largest equipment crates – each one three metres tall. They crouched down in a circle and Amber let her eyes wander up and around to examine the space they stood in. The cargo bay ceiling loomed at least twenty metres above their heads, holding no lights save for two rows of weak white pinpricks that barely served to illuminate the area around them.

"Well, the hard part's over," Idas joked quietly. "So what's the plan?"

"Now we wait," Darien whispered. "We're not announcing our presence until this ship has reached its home base."

They didn't have to wait for long.

The instant it started Amber knew the ship was Blink travelling. The sheer scale of it made the process take longer than normal, but she could feel the warping, bending of space-time around them. Nausea swelled in her gut and she grimaced. It felt wrong; unnatural. Seconds crawled by and she could see that the others felt it too, even Idas, the least precise Blink traveller among them had a expression of faint disgust stamped on his rugged features.

Then the ship Blinked, and Amber nearly threw up when it did. Everything shimmered out of focus and a band of fire ignited right behind her eyes. She rubbed her eyes with one hand, trying to refocus on her squad mates. She was gratified to find that she wasn't the only one who had felt the turbulence of whatever ad-hoc method the ship used to replicate their mode of travel.

"That's a rough ride," Niamh muttered, massaging her temples. "I think their little invention needs a lot of work."

"That's an understatement." Idas turned his eyes skyward, sucking in a deep breath.

Amber couldn't disagree. The pain behind her eyes receded and her vision cleared. Not long after that the nausea fell away. She still felt a little odd after the transit, but she pushed the sensation aside, focusing on Darien as he gathered the other operatives around him.

"Well now we know," Darien told them. "Somehow, they've figured out how to get a whole ship to Blink. I think it's time for us to find out how."

"What's our move?"

"We'll split up," he said. "Niamh, Idas and I will go aft – we'll try and get to the engine room and see where the distortion is being generated. Uther, you take Amber and Hekket; see if you can find a route to the bridge." He paused for a moment, meeting Amber's gaze. "And you were right. If there are living quarters or holding cells down there, find the kids they took and get them out."

Amber nodded and felt something unwind inside her. The real Darien was still there, despite the frustrations that had dragged the darker part of him to the surface, he still cared; still knew what they were there to do. She smiled as he continued.

"Stay out of sight and do not engage any hostiles unless you have to. We don't know how many people are on board this ship so the longer we keep hidden the better. Use your mappers – build up a floor plan as you go. And keep off comms unless it's an emergency. I don't know how tight the internal sensor grid is on this hulk, but we don't want to chance giving ourselves away with a radio call."

Then he stood up, unfurling to full height, eyes shining with determination in the half-light. "Alright, boys and girls, let's go be heroes."