Amber didn't know it was possible for a world to be this cold.

Even clad in her thick, fleece-lined Blink parka she shuddered as sweeping gusts of frigid wind scoured the landing pad. Trying to still her chattering teeth, she hugged herself tightly, squinting through her goggles, searching for the entrance to the colony complex. Carluke's baleful sky churned overhead, disgorging sheets of snow upon anyone foolish enough to brave its elements. For some reason that she couldn't fathom there had been a colony established here for almost ninety years. This frozen wasteland somehow supported a thriving and surprisingly large population, tucked safely into a network of bunker-like settlements across its northern continent.

"You okay there?" Hekket joked, stopping beside her. She eyed him balefully. Joke he may, but he was geared up in exactly the same heavy winter gear as she was. His slender form was swamped by the iron-coloured jacket and the goggles gave his blue eyes a strange shine. He jerked one gloved thumb over his shoulder. "C'mon, ice-bones; the entrance is this way."

"Keep it up," she warned as they trudged off in the direction he'd indicated. "I'm sure you'd just love getting left on this frozen rock."

He grinned. "Promises, promises."

"I'm in charge, Amber," Niamh called from further ahead. "I decide who gets marooned."

Amber gave a derisive snort. "Yes, sir." She threw in an exaggerated salute to her superior's back. Hekket saw it and had to stifle a laugh. He made a motion across his neck with one finger. She stuck her tongue out – then immediately retracted it from the biting cold.

The three operatives hurried across the landing pad toward the inviting doorway leading into the main colonial structure. The thing loomed like a small mountain out of the planet's surface, a grim geometric shadow of blast-hardened steel jutting defiantly against Carluke's ferocious storm systems. Lines of light glittered along its edges, bright and effervescent in the half light of the blizzards, warning away any low flying craft. To Amber the thing looked formidable enough to withstand a hit from a meteor.

Mercifully they piled in out of the cold. Having circumvented the chaos of the planet's main spaceport, they had instead wrangled a spot on one of the emergency exterior landing areas normally reserved for first response and search-and-rescue craft. She felt they more or less qualified for the latter.

Shaking snow from her body, Amber swept back her hood, setting her thick black tresses free and exhaling a long, grateful sigh. Touching a gentle finger to the right side of her goggles, she released the vac-seal and neatly caught them as they fell. Slipping the goggles into her pack she twisted the shoulder toggle of her jacket, releasing the velcro-fasten down the front.

Now a little more presentable for the indoors, she looked down the passage they stood in to find a trio of armed men striding towards them. The one leading wore a neatly fitted grey overall and had a pistol holstered around his thigh – a port officer. His companions, however, wore the full flak gear of the colonial marines, their armour coloured with the grey-blue fatigues of the local regiments. Both of them carried rifles, held crossways across their chests.

Some welcome party, she thought dryly as Niamh stepped to meet the newcomers.

This was the tenth planet they'd visited so far and their results left an awful lot to be desired. Two weeks of Blinking from planet to planet, from one colonial dive to another and she was already getting frustrated. They still had well over forty planets to check – any of them could be hiding their answers. Or none of them.

The places they'd been so far had either been proven dead ends, or at best, inconclusive. On one planet they arrived only to receive an update from Blink two hours later that the girl in question had turned up as a corpse. Amber wasn't sure if she could handle that happening too many times on this little safari.

When the port officer and his entourage arrived Amber was struck by the fact that, unlike most of the people they'd encountered, this man seemed perfectly comfortable with their presence. A little older than his accompanying guards, with a short crop of iron-coloured hair and matching moustache, he had the look of someone who'd seen enough in the ebb and flow of civilised space that nothing surprised him anymore. He walked briskly up to them and extended a hand, and a smile.

"Afternoon," he said cheerily. "Braden Shanks, 1st Lieutenant, Carluke Port Authority. You're the team from Blink, yes?"

"Officer Niamh O'Toole," Niamh answered, accepting his hand. "These are operatives Garret and Mozer."

"Pleased to meet you." And he sounded like he actually meant it. "Can I ask the three of you to show your credentials? Just a formality."

"Not a problem." Niamh pulled her Blink ID from her jacket, motioning for the others to follow her lead. He took each of them in turn, producing a square console from the back pocket of his overalls and passing the IDs through it. Each time it flashed blue. Apparently satisfied, he handed the cards back.

Shanks then nodded to his marine escort. "Okay, lads, I think I'll manage the rest of this without a security detail. Return to your posts." The marines nodded, and without a word turned and marched off down the hall, apparently eager to be away from this part of their duty. He turned back and grinned wryly. "Port regulations – security, you know. Now that I've verified that you are who you say you are, they can go and do something useful."

Amber smiled at that. "Have you dealt with Blink before, Lieutenant?"

"Oh...here and there." He tapped his nose with one finger. "But that's a story for another time." Then his cheery expression hardened. "Control bounced me your request. I gather you're here looking for a missing person?"

"That's right."

Shanks nodded, and then beckoned them forward. "Walk with me."

The three operatives obediently fell into step with the man. His attitude left Amber in something of a quandary, as did his response to her query about his dealings with Blink. The best reception they'd had so far was something approaching fear – fear of what it might mean that a clandestine organisation like theirs was getting involved. Other officials and soldiers had treated them with downright mistrust and even contempt. Whatever the Blink reputation might have been – a lot of people struggled to match it up with the teenage operatives that represented it. Shanks, on the other hand, treated them like normal people trying to do a job, just like him.

"Damnest thing," he told them as they made their way through the corridors. "Security's pretty snug out on this rock. We lose people to the weather systems – surface operations, construction – that kind of thing. It's usually an easy trace."

"But not this time," Niamh said knowingly. "What can you tell us?"

"Not as much as I'd like. From the local security net we've determined when and roughly where the boy was taken, but after that we hit a wall. There's no trace – not so much as a footprint to tell us what happened. He just vanished off the face of the planet." He looked at Niamh, his eyes almost hopeful. "I'm at a dead end trying to trace this, and running traffic control here is enough of a day job for any three people. I just don't have the hours or the manpower to throw at this."

"If we can help, we will."

He frowned. "If you don't mind my asking, why the sudden interest? People go missing all the time."

"We think there's more to this than meets the eye," Niamh told him. "Let's just say that your missing person could well be part of something a lot bigger."

Shanks looked at her for a moment, and then shrugged. "Alright – I'll take whatever help I can get."

The lieutenant led them through a series of white and grey passages, and slowly the shriek of the wind started to fade as they moved deeper into the colony complex. The further in they went the more people they saw – now with splashes of civilian colour mingling with the uniforms of the marines and port control personnel.

They followed Shanks into a long rectangular chamber lined with screens and with over two dozen technicians monitoring them down each wall. Built into the far end was an enormous display, showing a three-dimensional read-out of the station.

"Well, this is where the magic happens," he declared, making a sweeping gesture toward the room. "Every piece of security footage gets routed through here. We have round-the-clock eyes on every single screen. The security net covers every major population centre and we have satellite substations between the main settlements for co-ordination."

"Sounds like a pretty good system," Amber commented, letting her eyes wander over the glittering displays all around them.

"It is," Shanks agreed. "And normally it would have told us exactly what happened."

"Normally?"

"You should see this for yourselves."

Leading them over to a screen in the back corner of the room, Shanks addressed the attending technician. He reeled off a case-file number and a date and the other man obediently rattled out commands into the console. The two-meter wide screen flickered and changed to show a whole grid of images, each one corresponding to a small part of the district in question. Amber's eyes widened at the sight. Shanks wasn't exaggerating. If she was reading the display properly this net would give coverage of everything and everyone, from any angle. It would be impossible to move through this section of the city – or the city at all – without being spotted.

"How did they...?" Niamh started to ask but Shanks waved her question away.

"Watch. Specialist, play back – track the case-file."

The screen started to move. Amongst the hum and thrum of civilisation Amber quickly spotted the individual they were trying to locate. A diminutive figure, the boy weaved around the other people with practiced eased, barely breaking stride. He moved across two different grid segments, but when he emerged into the third the screen suddenly went dark.

"What...did you lose power?" Hekket asked uncertainly.

"I wish it was that simple." Shanks' jaw tightened. "That, my friends, is what we call a thunderclap."

Amber exhaled a long breath. She knew the term – it was almost like a mini-hack. Thunderclaps were simple but extremely effective tools for criminals, or anyone else, to temporarily disable an electronic system. Once triggered, their programmes would unleash a single, powerful deluge of junk data, flooding the target system so quickly that for a short time it would be overwhelmed. By the time the system was back online the damage was already done.

Sure enough, when the security net screens came back to life there was no sign of their missing boy on any of the screens. Amber glanced at the time-stamps and felt a tremor of apprehension. The kidnappers had only needed to blast the nets for a mere ten seconds in order to snatch the unfortunate youth.

"This is not just your run-of-the-mill hack either," Shanks continued and she could hear the frustration building in his voice. "Our system is specifically hardened against outside interference. It would take a military grade programme just to get past the firewalls, never mind knock out the cameras."

"I'd say this is starting to add up," Hekket said, looking at her. "You said the gang on Marnill had a top of the line shuttle that could even outrun one of ours. Now they're cutting loose cyber-warfare tech that shouldn't be seen outside Navy intelligence. Sounds like our friends are very well equipped."

"You're saying the same people have been taking others, on other planets?" Shanks asked.

"That's what we're here to find out." Niamh gestured to the other grid images with a wave of her hand. "What about the surrounding area – did you catch anything unusual? Any sign of this kid?"

Shanks shook his head unhappily, even as the displays started playing again. "I've looked over each one of these a dozen times. I just don't see anything out of place."

Amber was no longer listening. Her eyes darted from screen to screen as the images rolled on. Shanks wasn't the only one frustrated. She didn't want yet another dead end. This was as close as they'd got to finding a trace of their quarry – there had to be something they were missing. Silence descended over the group. Seconds creaked by. Then she saw a tiny, dark speck of movement catch in the corner of her eye. She jerked her head sharply to stare at the image in the top left-hand corner of the main screen. What was that?

Then it clicked in her mind.

"Stop – stop the recording!" Amber yelped, her voice shrill. The man complied instantly, but every single eye in the room swung to look at her in unison after the outburst.

She felt the blood rushing to her cheeks and swallowed hard. "Your security display...top left." With the flick of a button the technician brought the image into centre screen. Amber studied it for a long moment. "Reverse it, one-point-three seconds."

The controller glanced dubiously at his superior, but Shanks nodded. "Do as she says."

The screen slipped back to the time she'd specified. It had taken about a second for her to process what her eyes had seen; to be sure she wasn't just imagining it. She took a small step closer, narrowing her eyes.

"Amber..." Niamh began uncertainly. "You see something?"

"Something changed," she replied, not looking at her superior. "I just need to...there!" One hand shot out, pointing. "In the background, grid 224-158, that traffic cluster."

Hekket cocked his head to one side, staring at the screen. "What about it?"

"There's something missing." Amber folder her arms and nodded to the controller. "Can you magnify that?"

"I sure can."

A couple of seconds passed as he fiddled with his console, then the screen zoomed in on the grid reference Amber had given. At this distance the resolution of the security net wasn't fantastic, but it was good enough for her to make out the shapes and models of the bullet cars and crawlers. Right at the back, at a corner junction on the frozen image, there was an empty space – a space Amber was sure had been filled.

"Roll the record back, one tenth speed," she said.

The images started crawling in reverse across the screen again, a slow motion snapshot of the bustle of Carluke's main settlement. A moment later Amber's suspicions were confirmed when a jet-black, shovel-shaped crawler slithered into view.

"Gotcha," she murmured.

Shanks looked on in confusion. "What is it?"

"That black crawler – it's the same model as the one Darien and I saw on Marnill. And now it's two blocks from where that boy was abducted."

Hekket raised an eyebrow. "You're sure about that? I mean, there are a lot of makes and models out there."

"I'm sure." She made herself believe it. The image of the vehicle that they'd confronted was burned into her brain. This image, slightly blurred as it was, matched the scale, the shape and the contours perfectly.

"Space! You've got a sharp set of eyes, kid," Shanks exclaimed.

Amber nodded, feeling a rush of satisfaction. "Between this and the thunderclap, this is either a spectacular coincidence, or the same people were here." It had taken them eleven planets-worth of searching, but they finally had the next link in the chain.

"Good work." Niamh moved up beside her, a grim expression on her face. "We've just got our first clean hit on these snakes." She looked at Shanks and gave him a vicious smile. "Don't worry, Lieutenant. The people who took this kid – they're our problem now. They're going to wish they weren't."