Amber felt numb.

Murderer.

At first she couldn't speak. All she could do was stare in utter horror at the corpse of Theodore Logan, the head a pulpy mess of bone and brain matter, his body still twitching spasmodically. She clapped a hand over her mouth, feeling bile rising in her throat. A stunned silence hung over the group and for a long moment no-one spoke.

Eventually she hauled her eyes away from the body and looked at Darien. She did not like what she saw. His face remained twisted by a feral rage she'd never seen before, Compac hanging loosely in one hand. He swept his cold gaze over the others, watching, waiting for anyone to challenge him.

"Darien..." Amber breathed, shaking her head. "What did you do?"

"What I had to."

"That was murder," Hekket said shakily. "We were supposed to bring him back; put him on trial!"

"Are you telling me that because you think I don't know?" A hollow smile crossed Darien's face. "Or did you just not see what I saw? This place – those dead kids – it's all his fault. He would have strung us up in those cages too given half a chance. He was never going to change."

Amber stepped towards him, feeling her anger rising. "Maybe not, but who the hell made you judge, jury and executioner?"

Before she could get any closer, however, a hand shot out and grabbed the collar of her armour. An instant later Niamh stepped to bar the path between her and Darien, shoving her back and holding her at arm's length.

"Back off," she said, her voice low and hard.

Amber glared at the other girl and wrenched herself free, leaving them staring eye to eye. Niamh was as an intimidating individual, but right here, after what she'd just witnessed, Amber didn't feel like backing down. She stood there, holding the iron gaze of the squad's second officer for several seconds before she felt a hand curl gently around her arm. Jaw tight, she looked to see Hekket, his face filled with conflicting emotions.

He tugged her back, fixing his eyes on Niamh. "Let's not do this here."

"Bastard got what was coming to him," she spat back. "Save your pity for the people that deserve it – for the people he murdered."

Amber had to fight to keep her anger from spilling out, and she felt Hekket's grip on her arm tighten. Then Darien stepped forward, pulling her attention away from Niamh. He walked slowly, Compac hanging from its strap across his chest and his hands resting on it. When he met her gaze his expression remained hard, but the rage was gone. Without breaking eye contact he gave Niamh a gentle nudge with his elbow. The other girl shot him a dark look and then turned away. Amber watched her walk across the room, unable to voice her fury. In one instant of madness everything the thought Blink was supposed to be had been thrown out the window.

In the ensuing silence Idas cleared his throat, drawing all eyes to him. The burly teenager looked left and right, then let out a heavy sigh. "Let's go get Farrier out of that cage," he said quietly. "Then we can fire up the beacon and get the hell off this hulk."

"We're not using the beacon yet."

"Huh?"

Darien shook his head. "We're not leaving anything behind."

Uther looked uncertain. "But...Smith ordered us to."

"Don't you get it?" Darien exclaimed, rounding on the lanky operative. "Logan was right! The minute Smith and the Colonial Government get their claws into this ship none of this will go away. They'll try again. They'll see what Logan managed to do here and they will try to recreate it."

"So what exactly are you going to do?" Amber said.

"We're going to find any kids that are still alive, get them to the shuttles and then blow this death-trap to pieces. Then we'll activate the beacon."

"Sounds good to me," Niamh put in, turning back to look at them.

Amber shook her head in disbelief. A small part of her understood, on some level, his logic. For all the horrendous methods it had taken, Theodore Logan had accomplished something. A whole ship being able to Blink, to instantly be anywhere, in any system; if it became widespread it would revolutionise the way the entire colonial network operated. Leaving the vessel intact ran the risk of someone else trying to duplicate the feat.

But she wasn't willing to simply murder whoever it took in order to hide the evidence. Her stomach turned and she tried not to look at Logan's corpse. They'd already shot their way through two dozen guards, enough blood on all their hands to last a lifetime. By her side Hekket clearly felt the same. Idas and Uther seemed to be doing their utmost to pretend the whole thing hadn't happened. Then there was Niamh, coldly, grimly uncompromising over Logan's death. It was one of their second officer's greatest strengths, but right now it filled Amber with a sense of nausea.

"What's done is done," Darien said finally, looking at them one by one. "If anyone here disagrees with what I've done, you can file a formal complaint when we get back to Blink Station Alpha. The consequences of this will be on my head, no-one else's. Until then, I am still in command and you will follow my orders."

The tension hung thick in the air, but no-one spoke up to disagree.

He nodded. "Alright then. Niamh, you and I are heading to those cell blocks. We're going to bust out anyone who's still alive. Amber, you and Hekket are going back to that rear compartment. I don't care what you have to do, but get Indigo Farrier out of that cage."

Her fists strangled the grip of her Compac as she listened to him reel off orders as though nothing had happened, all the while standing only a couple of meters from the man he'd shot dead in cold blood.

"Uther?" Darien continued.

"Yeah?"

"This ship's running a standard Goliath reactor, right?"

"Looks that way."

"And when a Goliath overloads?"

Uther nodded reluctantly. "It makes one hell of a bang."

"Then you and Idas get down to the engines and do what you have to do. I don't want there to be so much as a cinder left to find."

The two young men looked at each other, then back to Darien. Their mouths stayed shut.

"You know what you have to do," Darien told them. "We rendezvous at the shuttle bay in thirty minutes. Then we're leaving this place behind forever."

After a long moment Amber turned, grabbed Hekket by the arm and stalked from the bridge, dragging the medic along with her. Right now she couldn't bear being in the same room as Darien.

"Let's go," she hissed as they walked. "The sooner we do this the sooner we can get out of here."

*

They materialised inside the rear chamber again and Amber instinctively scanned left and right with her cannon, only to find that the thick airlock door remained closed. The control mechanism that unlocked it lay in a mangled smoking heap where a shot from Uther's Compac had ripped it apart. Listening intently she could no longer hear the guards outside. Evidently they'd abandoned their efforts to break in. Perhaps the remaining troops on the ship had been summoned back to the bridge.

She let the cannon barrel drop and turned to look at the cage at the far end of the room. It, too, remained sealed, still holding the trapped form of Indigo Farrier in its embrace. Alongside her Hekket took in a deep breath through his nose, looked at her and nodded once.

"Let's get her out of there."

Side by side they crossed the cavernous space until they reached the holding tank. Amber felt her gut twist at the sight of the plugs invading the girl's body and for an instant she felt a jolt of sympathy for Darien's actions. As quickly as it had come she shoved it away. However wrong this was, Blink teams were not meant to be killers. At least that's what she'd believed before they had become entangled in this interstellar manhunt.

"How's she doing?" she asked, shunting her attention back to the girl in the cage.

Hekket gave her a dubious glance. "Not great."

"Then let's get her out."

"I'm working on it." He pointed to the load monitor on the far left of the cage. "Keep an eye on that reading. We start by uncoupling the outer clamps from her arms and legs. It should have a minimal impact, but if you see anything spiking on that panel, shout."

Amber nodded, stepping over to the monitor in question. On it a blue silhouette in the shape of a human glowed and alongside it two dozen bars marked the neural load on Farrier's body. She pursed her lips, staring at them intently. At the main rig Hekket's hands moved over the controls, slowly and carefully. She glanced up at the vat.

"Here goes." Hekket tensed up and pressed a button.

A faint series of muffled hisses sounded from within the cage and Amber watched in horrified fascination as several of the clamps unhooked. They slid free from Indigo Farrier's body, leaving behind tiny swirls of crimson in the thick liquid. She snapped her gaze back down to the monitors.

"Everything looks stable," she said. "So far, so good."

Hekket blew out his cheeks with a sigh of relief, nodding to himself. Then he set off on the next sequence of commands. Minutes passed as he worked and despite her building anxiousness, Amber kept her mouth shut and watched the monitor. The loads flickered as Hekket disconnected the outer coils, but remained in their safe zones.

"Okay," Hekket breathed. "The next one's that bundle at the base of the spine. This is the big one – if that reading moves, tell me."

Not waiting for her reply he keyed in the next command. Out of the corner of her eye Amber saw a clump of easily two dozen wires slide free from Farrier's back, staining the containment liquid with blood as they came.

Then the readings on the load monitor started to move. It wasn't a spike, just a slow, inexorable climb toward the red danger zone. She swallowed down the lump in her throat and looked at Hekket. Amber had no idea what would happen when the readings hit the red, but she didn't particularly want to find out.

"Get through the rest as fast as you can," she warned. "The readings are climbing now."

Hekket nodded, brow furrowing in concentration as his fingers raced over the controls of the cage. She could see beads of sweat on his temple. Looking back and forth, Amber bit her lip as the neural loads crept closer and closer to their critical levels. More and more of the clamps slipped free and the thick liquid had taken on a definite blood-hue.

When the last of the connections had been severed Amber relaxed, but only for a moment. At first she thought it was simply a time lag, but when she looked again she realised that while the neural load bars had stopped their advance, the girl's vital signs were dropping like a stone. Farrier was still dying.

"Hekket..." she murmured. "Something's wrong."

"What?"

"Her vital signs are...oh no." She looked at him. "Those connections were keeping her from drowning in that gunk. Without them-,"

"Crap." Hekket set back to work feverishly, fingers flying across the interface. "There's no command for getting rid of that stuff. I can't find it!"

Amber bounded over beside him. "There's got to be." Then she looked up. The girl in the cage looked almost peaceful, floating there unconscious, but Amber knew that right now what little strength she had left was fading fast.

And then Farrier's eyes snapped open.

Even through the murk of the containment liquid Amber could see the panic on the girl's face and she began thrashing weakly, limbs unable to gain any momentum within the tank.

"It's not draining!" Hekket yelped, his voice shrill. "I can't find the fail-safe!"

"She'll drown if we don't get her out of there!"

Hekket gritted his teeth and Amber looked over his shoulder at the display. At a glance there was nothing that looked like a command sequence to drain the liquid. There might not even be one, and Farrier wouldn't last long. Staring for a few precious seconds Amber realised they only had one remaining course of action.

"Get back!" she yelled, grabbing Hekket by the arm and hauling him away from the panel. Then she pivoted back, bent her knees and aimed her Compac at the base of the cage, angling it away from Farrier's fragile body. She hesitated for the briefest instant before her finger curled tight around the trigger and she squeezed.

The cannon thumped and blew a hole the size of a jam jar in the thick glass of the holding tank, instantly causing the thick liquid to come splashing out, running down the dais and onto the deck plating. Amber stared at it for an instant, watching cracks spider-web up the whole structure, but the glass held. With a snarl of frustration she bounded forward.

"Amber!" Hekket exclaimed, but she ignored him, taking her Compac in both hands and smashing the heavy stock against the weakened glass with every ounce of force she could muster.

At last the reinforced casing gave way, buckling inward before coming apart with a rending crunch that echoed through the room. A wave of the thick heavy liquid flooded out, taking with it a river of broken shards, but Amber stepped unheeding into the path. Planting her feet against the flow, she reached forward and caught the pale, slender body that came rushing out to meet her.

Farrier's body slammed into her and she started back-peddling away from the broken, knife-like shards. She made it several paces before her boots slipped on the liquid that now coated the floor and she toppled over backwards. Bracing herself for the impact, she wrapped her arms around Farrier and closed her eyes.

The impact sent a jolt up and down her spine and the back of her head whacked off the deck plating, but she held on to her burden. She slid several yards with the flow before coming to a halt, soaked from her chest down in the thick, sticky substance.

"Lie her down," Hekket blurted out, eyes wide as he took a grip on Farrier's shoulders and turned her over.

Amber grimaced as her hands slithered over the girl's skin, made slick by the liquid that still clung to her body. She glanced at Hekket but he seemed unphased, his face a mask of total concentration. Slowly and carefully they lowered her to the decking. She was breathing, but Amber could see the girl's eyes rolling in her skull. Her whole body was sprinkled with tiny pinpricks of blood where the clamps had been attached.

Hekket took a gentle hold of her wrist for a moment. "Her heart's racing." Reaching into his combat vest he freed another hypo and checked its contents, before injecting it into the side of Farrier's neck. Her body convulsed, her back arching violently as the drug took hold. Amber gave her companion a worried look, clambering up into a sitting position facing their new companion.

"It's okay," he assured her. "Just give the sedative a second to kick in."

Fighting down her unease, she waited. Seconds ticked by and sure enough, Farrier began to relax, her body uncoiling flat against the cold metal of the deck.

Then her eyes opened again, blood shot and wild. She sat bolt upright and looked around, before a hoarse scream ripped from her throat, echoing around the room. Amber recoiled for an instant, before lunging forward and catching a hold of Farrier's wrists as she tried to scramble away from them.

"Let me go, let me go, LET ME GO!" she shrieked, blood trickling down her chin from the exertion. Amber clung on, trying to not to grab the girl too tightly.

"Indigo, it's okay," Hekket said softly, placing a firm hand on her shoulder to hold her in place. "You're safe now. You're safe."

Farrier's blooded gaze turned on him and she shook violently. Tears streamed freely down her hollow face but she didn't seem able to articulate anything else. She tried twice more to tug herself free from Amber's grip but she was much too weak to put up any real struggle. Eventually she stopped moving, sitting shaking on the floor.

"We're here to take you home," Amber whispered. "It's over."

"Wh-who are you?" Farrier stammered, her voice hoarse and choked.

"We work for Blink. We're putting a stop to this."

"The others..." Farrier coughed and spat blood onto the deck before continuing. "There were others, in the holding cells-,"

"Don't worry, they're coming with us," Hekket told her, removing his hand. "Our friends are down there getting them free right now."

For an instant her wild eyes seemed to find focus. "And...and Logan?"

Amber hesitated before answered carefully, "He won't hurt anyone else."

"Good."

"Here." Hekket handed her a thick fire-proof blanket from his medical kit. "Wouldn't want you to freeze to death after all this."

Despite everything that had happened, Amber was amazed to see Indigo smile through chattering teeth as she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, covering her body as best they could.

Amber stood, touching a hand to her earpiece. "Darien, come in."

"Go ahead."

"We've got Farrier out of that cage. It looks like she'll be okay. What's your status?"

"We had a bit of a shooting gallery down here," he replied flatly. "But we've made it to the cells. They had fifteen test subjects locked up down here."

"Had?"

"They're with us now. They can't Blink – we have to hoof it to the shuttle bay." There was a long pause in the transmission before he spoke again. "Can you make a window big enough to get Farrier through?"

Amber glanced back at the spindly girl sitting on the deck. "Yeah, I can do it."

"Then get down to the shuttle bay and find us a lifeboat. Get the engine warmed up. We'll meet you there."

"Copy that. Amber out." She looked to Hekket. "You get all that?"

"Yeah," he answered without looking up, still examining Farrier for injury. "We got her out just in time. Her nervous system's been knocked haywire."

"Then let's get her off this ship." Amber stepped over and took Farrier under the arms, hauling the girl to her feet and holding her there. Turning the trembling figure around, she pulled Farrier into a hug looking Hekket in the eye. "I'll get her through."

"You're sure?"

"Trust me."

"I do." He smiled and Amber felt a surge of confidence flood through her.

"See you on the other side," she said, and held Farrier close.

Focusing, she visualised the distance. The other girl was of a similar height and build which would make the process easier, but still a challenge. Theoretically it was perfectly possible to take another body through – Amber had the Blink capacity to keep the window open long enough, but she'd never actually tried it. With a broken airlock door in the way and Farrier barely able to stand, let alone walk, she didn't have much choice.

"Stay still," she whispered, and felt Farrier nod weakly. Then she closed her eyes, visualising the shuttle bay from the floor plan of the vessel. She doubled the calculations of mass for herself, compensating for Farrier's extra spacial displacement. The distances buzzed in her mind as she lowered herself into the trance-like state needed for a precision Blink.

Then she made it happen.