Dying Suns

A SCI FI ADVENTURE

by

Lou Schreiber

Books by Lou Schreiber

STORIES FROM CENTERVERSE

XENO-ARCHELOGY SERIES

THE RUINS OF ACHERON

DYING SUNS

PULSERIDER SERIES

PULSERIDER I

PULSERIDER II: ROOKIES

Copyright © 2023 Daedalus Media Publishing GmbH
All rights reserved.

Cover design by A. Duken

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

“Turn off the damn alarms! I’m pretty sure by now everybody aboard knows we’re in trouble!” Captain Yaeller shouted as he marched onto the bridge that was entirely bathed in red light. He saw the pale faces, the fear in everyone’s eyes. Panic spread through his crew like wildfire, jumping from one crewmember to the next. There was little he could do about it. After all, he had slept through the whole thing and didn’t even know yet what had gone wrong.

“Captain on bridge!” Commander Alana Serenson, his second-in-command, yelled, and he looked at her in disbelief. He could see the dark-skinned woman with her beige uniform avoiding his gaze. It was her first trip as an officer. She was young, inexperienced, and overeager. The Catania was a transport ship, armed enough to be too much for any pirate crew to handle and yet irrelevant enough to not really expect any kind of trouble. But one look and he knew they weren’t under attack. Weapons was the only guy not typing like crazy into his console. Astrogation and sensors had everyone frantically asking their computers for answers they were obviously not getting. The sound of the alarms finally died down as someone followed his orders. The Captain stroked his gray beard and turned to his second-in-command. “Commander, where are we?”

“Sir, we’re still trying to determine our current position, but—”

“What I mean is why are we not over Bronten IV and yet not in subspace either?” Yaeller asked. 

“Sir, the Bernstein Drive has malfunctioned and was about to blow up. So I ordered us to break back into real space and I ejected it. Sir.” She inhaled sharply.

“You did what?” Yaeller suddenly understood the anxiety of his crew.

“Sir, under these circumstances I considered it our best option. We had to eject it, and I took the calculated risk that it would survive one jump from subspace to real space. I admit I risked the entire ship, but what was the alternative? Getting stranded in subspace, sir? We would never get found there.”

Yaeller only gave her a grunt and turned to the bridge, this small room filled with sweating, overeager officers, trying to make sense of the disaster.

“You disapprove, Captain?” Serenson asked. He realized she was actually asking for his approval. Without the Bernstein Drive they would be stranded in space, and they might be millions of lightyears away from any other living thing. She might have doomed them. Yet, he understood the circumstances.

“Why did the Bernstein Drive malfunction? I mean I heard these things can act a little weird, but what happened?”

“We don’t know. There was no event or initializing anomaly in our routines and proceedings before it happened. Suddenly it began to get unstable, its gravity growing by 0.07 Newtons each second. We estimated we had four minutes, so I gave the order.” Serenson cleared her throat. “If I made a mistake, I’ll take the consequences for my action, sir.”

Yaeller raised his hand. “I understand your decision. You made a decision, that’s what counts.” Yaeller saw her relief. “Now, stop second guessing yourself, especially in front of the crew, and start working on our survival. Sensors?”

His yell was answered by a young man standing up. “Yessir?”

“What do you see?” Yaeller stepped over to him, and the man turned to his console.

“Sir, we’re not anywhere near our target coordinates. I see a blue dwarf sun and three planets in orbit. This isn’t exactly a Magellan-Class, sir, but if I read our long-range sensors right, this here . . .” He pointed to the outer reaches of the map, “Seems to be a nebula. A massive amount of radiation and ionized gas. If I had to take a guess—” He stopped, sounding hesitant.

“You have to,” Yaeller said. “What’s your guess?”

“Zweistein, sir. I think we passed the Zweistein Nebula,” the sensors officer said.

“Zweistein?” Yaeller nodded. The giant nebula spanned through 20 systems and was a major challenge for space travel. It divided the worlds of the mighty Oligarchs from the giant space of the Hegemony, because it seemed to affect subspace itself, that dimension where space was folded. Through it, they could travel vast distances that would usually take centuries to cross in mere hours. They had passed a section of the Zweistein Nebula, Yaeller recalled.

“Then we would be somewhere near Reuter System,” Serenson remarked.

“Near is a pretty vague term. With subspace drives we still might take a few centuries to get there,” Yaeller said. “Astrogation? What’s your take on it? Any idea where we are?”

On the other side of the bridge, a young woman leaned back in her seat. Lt. Taul was a long-time crew member, and Yaeller knew she had served in the military of one of the bigger Oligarch Houses, but he had forgotten which one. She usually kept a cool head under fire.

“I think the boy is doing well.” She nodded to the sensors officer. “I’m not getting a lot of stars in sight, which is because we’re close to the Elysian Fields. A concentration of black holes near the end of the Zweistein Nebula. What I get, combined with the number of stars and the fact we got a blue dwarf . . . I’d say we’re in the Tassion System. Right here, near the end of the nebula.” She pulled up a holographic galactic map. Yaeller noticed the blinking red in what appeared to be a sea of nothingness.

“Do any of the three planets in the system have a colony by chance?” he asked, knowing the chances were smaller than winning the solar lottery.

“They are all outside the habitable zone, sir. Too far away from the sun,” the sensor officer said.

“Taul? Anything nearby?” the captain asked.

“The next sign of civilization I see on my maps is in the Anthony Dryer System, named after the explorer—” Taul began.

“Nobody is interested in who it’s named after. How far is it from here?” Yaeller stepped forward to the map.

“At maximum speed, if our reactor core would hold that long, we would reach it in 2,583 years, sir. It’s only a small research outpost, which might not even be around by then,” Taul answered. If the information she shared scared her, she hid it well. Yaeller was pretty sure that he wasn’t that good at hiding his own emotions.

“Serenson, please tell me you released an emergency probe before entering real space again,” Yaeller said, and as he turned to the young woman, he saw her looking for the right words with an opened mouth and desperate eyes.

“Everything happened so fast—” she finally mumbled.

“Understood.” Yaeller raised his hand to keep her from apologizing any more. He took a deep breath and then closed his eyes. They were stranded in the middle of nowhere, with no hope to reach any civilized, populated planet in a lifetime of flying with their conventional thrusters. “All officers to the front meeting room in five minutes.”

****

Yaeller had managed to get his uniform on, but as always, he didn’t care to dress properly and kept the beige jacket open as he entered the room, or officers’ mess as it was often also called. His officers were already assembled.

Commander Serenson, the youngest in the room but also the highest in rank stood alone and looked out of the large panorama window. Everyone else was gathered around the long, black metal table discussing the holographic map displayed there. Lieutenant Taul sat there, next to the sensors officer. His name was Marin, if Yaeller remembered correctly. It was his first flight with the Catania. The engineering officer, Roberson, was there. He was a muscular man in his fifties, almost Yaeller’s age. The officers from cargo management and crew management and finally Centurio Weron Wesel were all there. Everyone else in the room was a civilian. The Catania was a military cargo vessel, but the truth was, the military wasted no highly trained soldiers on such ships. The crew had been recruited, and it consisted almost entirely of civilians. Wesel was the exception. His full title was Centurio Second Grade of the Twelfth Legion of House Itoris, and he never got tired of mentioning that to anybody aboard the ship. He thought of himself as something better than them because he held a rank. His yellow combat suit he wore at all times seemed to emphasize this.

“Ladies, gentlemen.” Yaeller clapped his hands, and everybody turned towards him. “By now, you’re all aware of our current situation. After the failure of our Bernstein Drive, we are stranded in the Tassion System, and any colony or habitable planet is outside our reach. We are stranded. Our priority now is survival. Our secondary goal is finding a way to get us home.” He made a pause. “And without a Bernstein Drive, that might be a challenge.” They all stayed silent for a long moment. “Anybody have any options to offer?”

“The Bernstein Core we ejected wasn’t our only one,” Robertson remarked. Everyone turned to him. “We have an emergency probe that holds its own small Bernstein Core.”

“Is it possible to install it to our ship?” Yaeller asked.

“No, sir. It’s a class one, if we try to get to subspace with that one, half our ship would stay behind. We would be ripped apart,” Roberson said. “But, we can use it for what it was meant and send it to report our situation and ask for assistance.”

“These things are slow, but if we send it to the Anthony Dryer System, it might be there within two or three months,” Taul said.

“How long will our provisions last?” Yaeller asked resource management.

“If we ration the food, we have three months.”

“Good,” Yaeller said.

“We can’t do that,” Wesel remarked. Yaeller had known he would speak up. “Our mission is classified and contacting any members of the Hegemony would be an act of treason against our House.”

“Screw our House,” Taul spat out.

“I could shoot you for that—” Wesel began.

“I decide who is shot aboard my ship and who is not. You understand me?” Yaeller asked sharply. The soldier’s eyes snapped to him, but he accepted the hierarchy like a good soldier.

“Yessir,” Wesel replied.

“How long would it take if we send the probe to our people?” Yaeller asked Taul.

“You mean Itoris Space? Captain, that’s not exactly around the corner—”

“How long?” Yaeller asked. “Give me a rough estimate.”

“It would need to pass through a substantial part of subspace, and then, when it reaches the nearest system, which would be Amber I guess, it would need to travel to one of the colonies. 50 years? Give or take a decade?” she replied.

“What are those probes good for if they take that long?” Serenson asked.

“So, eventually the cargo can be retrieved,” Yaeller said.

“And the crew?” someone asked.

“Will be long dead by then,” Yaeller admitted. Crews were expandable. He had worked for the salvaging crew right after he left the military. Every month or so they retrieved ancient ships from the early days of interstellar travel. Their signals and probes had often taken centuries to reach them. He had found treasures beyond belief in their cargo holds and returned them to House Itoris. Never had he found any crew members alive.

“Great,” Serenson replied.

“Well, if you hadn’t ejected the core, we wouldn’t have that problem!” Roberson’s words burst out of him. Yaeller saw he had been containing his anger.

“The reactor was about to implode!” Serenson replied.

“I had it under control!” Roberson replied.

“You had—you yelled we were all going to die!” Serenson was getting angry. He would need to teach her not to let a lower rank provoke her like that.

“I did nothing like that!” Roberson yelled back.

“I looked at the logs!” Yaeller raised his voice and it made everyone shut up. “We were about 30 seconds away from the Bernstein Drive imploding and your repair crew wasn’t even at it. Serenson acted quickly and saved us all. That’s the truth. So be grateful for her quick thinking and don’t you dare criticize her. I mean, how did it malfunction in the first place? Maintenance is your duty, isn’t it, chief engineer?” Yaeller turned his eyes to Roberson.

“It . . . we checked before departure. It worked almost perfectly within its parameters,” Roberson said.

“Almost perfectly?” Serenson asked.

“Elaborate what part wasn’t working perfectly, chief engineer,” Yaeller demanded, putting the emphasize on the title, to remind the man who was responsible for their situation.

“We . . . we detected smaller energy spikes in the containment field. Nothing unusual, those things . . . happen.”

“And did you report these energy spikes? Did you give me or Commander Serenson the chance to evaluate them and order an in-depth diagnosis?” Yaeller stepped one step closer.

“No, sir,” he replied, looking to the ground.

“In that case I would be very, very careful with pointing fingers at people calling them responsible for our current situation. Because you might have to point that finger at yourself!” Yaeller stared at the man, who couldn’t make himself look up to meet the captain’s eyes.

“Yes, sir,” he replied.

Yaeller exhaled and looked around. “Anything else that might help us?”

“I picked up something on my sensors.” That was the young sensors officer. He looked frightened. Everyone else had regained their calm, but he seemed frightened to the core.

“Is it a nice planet we can settle on while we wait for our grandchildren to be rescued by House Itoris?” Taul mocked him.

“Not exactly,” the sensors officer said.

“In that case, I’m not so sure it will be that helpful, Marin.” Taul chuckled. Nobody else thought this was funny.

“Shut up, Taul,” Yaeller said. The black-haired woman snapped her head towards him, but then noticed his angry face. For her, nothing ever seemed to be worrisome. Not even certain death. Yaeller decided she would be sent through evaluation once they returned. If they ever returned. She might not be mentally fit for duty, although she had served him so well all these years.

“What did you find?” Serenson asked Marin.

“I—the sensors of this ship are a joke. I don’t even know why I am here; those things are just useless.” Marin sighed. “Yet, being a military vessel and with the heightened pirate activity lately, I—we’ve been upgraded lately and now have an advanced enemy recognition system.” He looked at Yaeller.

“What is that?” Yaeller asked.

“We scan for enemies once we leave subspace,” Wesel explained.

“Actually, to be precise, we scan for energy signatures. Miniature drones are ejected from our ship and spread through the system trying to pick up any energy signature, which indicates the presence of another ship,” Marin explained. “They spread slowly and report until we lose the signal. Then they return to the ship. I picked something up.”

“Another ship? Out here?” Taul asked.

“Not exactly. I think it must be something . . . else,” Marin said and was visibly insecure.

“What is it? Speak, officer,” Yaeller said, trying to sound gentle, even as he lost his patience.

“I’ve received a report by drone 22/7 as it reached maximum radio distance. It picked up something at the edge of the nebula. An energy signature.”

“How big is it?” Wesel asked.

“The reading said it has an estimated output of around 7,000 gigawatts, sir,” Marin said.

“Laughable,” Taul said.

Yaeller was losing his patience. “And why is that laughable, Taul?” Yaeller asked sharply.

“Quite simple, sir. The biggest ship the galaxy knows is built by the Hegemony. A Titan-Class Command Cruiser. That one has an output of 9.5 gigawatts. The largest structure known to man, the Authority shipyards over Sparta have a combined output of 65 gigawatts, sir. That number is . . . laughable.” Taul eyed Yaeller and her look was a challenge.

“Are you sure of that number, Marin?” Yaeller asked.

“Yes. Yes, I’m sure it was what was transmitted. If the drone was working properly, I could only say after an inspection.”

“And you know the location of this thing?” Yaeller asked.

“Yes, sir. We have its exact location, sir.” Marin nodded.

“Taul, set course to the object and get us there as fast as possible,” Yaeller said.

“Shall I prepare the emergency probe in the meantime?” Roberson asked.

Yaeller didn’t answer right away. What could produce that amount of energy? “Are we still in Hegemony space? I mean, are we . . . stumbling over some secret project by their military?” Yaeller asked.

“We are beyond their borders, sir,” Taul answered. “Way beyond. Actually, we left their space three systems ago and haven’t entered the nearest Oligarch system either, which would be House Prilotis, which is even further away. We’re in the neutral space between them, sir. Where no planets and resources of interest exist.”

“No man’s land. A perfect place to hide something, right?” Serenson said.

“Yes, indeed. Wesel, you’ll form an away team and prepare to enter whatever we find there,” Yaeller said. Then he turned to Roberson. “We’ll wait with that probe. We’ve only got one and we might have something to report.”

Whatever produced such energy needed maintenance, which meant it needed to be supplied by ships. Ships with Bernstein Drives. Maybe there was hope.

****

22 HOURS LATER

“This is Commander Alana Serenson of the military transport vessel Catania. I’m acting captain of the ship, as our captain has died. I assumed command and I’m following his final order and sending this probe back home with . . . my report on what has happened here. I . . . I’m having a hard time concentrating, as I feel the effect of . . . whatever it is that killed my crew. So, I’ll try to make this as short and precise as possible.

“We’ve experienced a failure of our Bernstein Drive and have left subspace; we’re now stranded in the Tassion System. Our ship encountered . . . something here. A space station, I think it is. Not like those we know, I mean . . . this thing is . . . I’m adding the footage to this message. But there’s a central tube that’s nine miles long and around it there is a large ring, which has a radius of four miles, rotating to give it gravity. The thing is hollow, even has something that looks like a hangar. It’s got several of those. We had problems scanning it, but it seems to contain no lifeforms. It seems to be empty. Whoever built this, he’s long gone. How it can still be here and . . . it has power. Oh, it has energy readings unlike anything I’ve seen.

“Our captain sent two shuttles over there. Nobody has returned so far. We have no radio contact with our crews. Twelve hours ago or so, just as our captain decided we’d dock our ship to it, our crew started to . . . die. It’s some sort of illness, it seems. The doc said it might be radiation sickness, but . . . he died first. The captain followed an hour later. I hear screams from within the ship. So maybe . . . maybe something came over? Through space? Is that even possible? To keep control of the vessel, I’ve barricaded myself on the bridge and—anyway, I—I’m afraid. I’m so afraid. I know I need to do my duty, but I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die, please save us! I’ve attached my coordinates to this message and . . . wait? What is that? What—computer? Send probe! Send probe right away! Launch, launch, launch—”

Chapter 2

“. . . Launch, launch, launch . . .” The message ended and silence replaced the frantic, scared voice of the young woman that had recorded it.

“What do you think, Professor?” Sanka Forel, Dean of the University of Archimedes II sat behind her large desk. She was speaking to Julius Aurelius Hattinger, who stood in front of her and still stared at the screen. As he finally looked up, he saw little more than the silhouette of the white-haired woman in her red suit, as behind her the sunset sent its last rays through the panorama window.

“It looks authentic,” Hattinger said, feeling that wasn’t the point. Yet, he forced himself to be methodical, first verifying the source, before he jumped to any conclusion regarding the content.

“It does. We checked the drone; it’s an emergency probe just like House Itoris used a few decades ago. The signature identifies it as belonging to the Catania, a transport reported missing 63 years ago.” Forel folded her hands before her.

“How did you get that?” Hattinger asked, still concentrating on verifying the content.

“A trader from the Union picked it up in the Praxam System,” Forel explained. “He couldn’t decode it, so he brought it to us, hoping to make some bucks from selling it, since it looked old. We paid 200 HUC for it.” Forel gave a small smile.

“Praxam. Former territory of House Itoris. We took that system in the Defton crisis, didn’t we?” Hattinger recalled the history of the system only vaguely.

“Yes, it’s now part of House Tanasca.”

“I see.” Hattinger realized that meant the probe was theirs now too. He straightened himself, smoothing his gray robes. He had been with Tanasca since leaving the Hegemony Science Society, living under their protecting hand and yet he had never adopted the crimson dress they all seemed to fancy. There was actually no law obligating people to wear their family’s colors. It was just something they were used to, trained to do so since birth. He hadn’t been born here. He was a migrant, a refugee in many ways. Although academic refugees were probably the preferred kind of refugees of the great Oligarch House of Tanasca. “Why are you showing it to me?”

“I think it’s right up your alley, isn’t it? As the leader of the department of xeno-archeology, you seem like a natural choice for an expert.”

Hattinger had to laugh at the comment. “I think we both know this is a bit more than a curious find. This isn’t some stone tableau with strange signs on it, or the remains of an old machine that nobody knows what it was used for. This isn’t even some mysterious ruins. It’s . . .” Hattinger was struggling to find words for it, “a sensation.”

“I agree.”

“Then why not report it to the Matriarch herself right away? Or the intelligence or the military? They all would be more than eager to see this,” Hattinger asked.

“I’m a woman of science, not a soldier, Professor.” She had to remind him. Indeed, she had to, because in his eyes she was a politician, who had done little to progress science and a lot to make friends in the right places. Hattinger didn’t say that of course.

“If we hand it over, we hand it over. We’ll be thanked, shake some hands, and never hear or see any of this again. Maybe someone will owe me a minor favor, sure. That’s a bit too big for small favors. I think that’s something we need to look into properly, from a scientific perspective.” Forel leaned forward. “Now you ask yourself why you? Why not Pantris or Calver or some other of my favorites. Believe it or not, Hattinger, but I know what you did. I heard rumors, I saw reports. I believe you are the best man for the job, the best chance we have to figure out what this thing is. That and I think I owe you a favor, don’t I? For what you did in front of the science committee?” Forel tilted her head slightly.

“I acted in the best interest of our university. If they come after one of us, they come after all of us.” Hattinger looked at the screen again, which showed nothing anymore. That it wasn’t even displayed by the holographic projector, but only flickering on the ancient display like those historical records, was a testament to how rudimentary this recording had been.

“Also, that’s your project now. I hereby order you to fully commit to it. Which means . . . it’s your decision when and who you inform of your progress,” Forel said, and Hattinger chuckled a little. Of course. She could always blame him if this got out.

“Understood.” Hattinger then touched the screen again to play the message once more. He opened the attached video file and in the upper right corner he saw the ‘object’. It didn’t look as gargantuan as she described it to be, because there was nothing to compare its size to. A giant black tube, sharpening on both ends. A disc at its exact middle, easily tall enough to house an entire system if the displayed measurements were right.

“How will you proceed?” Forel asked.

“Well, we’ll obviously look for any references that could be connected to this. Finds. Comparable xeno-technology we identified. But I doubt we’re going to find anything. If anything like this had been found, I would know. And we will go there, of course. We have the coordinates. So why not visit it?” Hattinger smiled.

“Will you go personally?” Forel asked. He hesitated. Of course, he wanted to. Who wouldn’t? Yet he knew he wasn’t the right man for the job. Not for first contact. He hadn’t the necessary technological expertise to even understand such a structure.

“My days as an adventurer are over, Dean. I think I need someone better suited for that job. I might have just the right person . . .” He smiled.

****

“This is—it could change everything!” Lira could hardly keep her jaw from dropping as she replayed the recording the fourth time, her eyes fixated on the giant structure.

“It seems to be in excellent condition, yes. And I think we agree this isn’t a forgotten project by the Authority or anything,” Hattinger said. He knew all too well what the Hegemony could do and couldn’t do. He had been member of the Hegemony’s Science Society for the entire first half of his career and had worked hand in hand with the military on several missions. He had seen their giant shipyards over Sparta and Trinity. He had been aboard their cruisers. None of their huge, impressive creations was even comparable to this.

“Certainly, none of the Oligarchs has the resources to build something like that.” Lira brushed her brown hair back and tied it to a ponytail. She was wearing her red jumpsuit, that showed off her perfect body. The result of extensive genetic optimization, Hattinger was certain of that. For a woman who felt she was too often reduced to her good looks, she was surprisingly generous when it came to displaying them. Yet, he felt it wasn’t his place to point it out. Lira was his assistant and as such, she was his responsibility. He had to be very careful not to intervene in private matters. Archimedes was a small university; it easily spawned rumors.

“Certainly not,” he agreed.

“This is . . . I mean . . . we should work under the hypothesis this wasn’t built by humans, right?” Lira asked. “How did you find it?”

“I didn’t. It was handed me on a silver platter, with a poisoned chalice of responsibility by the Dean herself. This record is from a ship, the Catania, that vanished 63 years ago. Commander Serenson, the woman who recorded that message, was only on her third flight with the ship. A Bulwark-Class transport of House Itoris,” Hattinger explained.

“They stumbled over it by accident.” Lira laughed out. “Incredible.”

“Did they? I checked the records. A friend of mine close to House Itoris generously provided me with the logs.”

“Isn’t this called espionage?” Lira smirked at him.

“I call it information transfer. Exchange of data between scientists. Anyway, the route they used is now abandoned, because within ten years there were more than a dozen ships lost on it.” Hattinger leaned forward. “So maybe this thing and whatever it does is somehow disturbing the Bernstein Drives of passing ships. I assume most have been lost in subspace. This one might have been lucky to leave subspace in time and stumble upon this.”

“If so, it might be hard to reach this space station.”

“Yes, we would need a very specific type of ship. One that can enter and leave, even if its Bernstein Drive fails.”

“You are not thinking of—”

“We need a ship with a duo-core Stadler set-up. I think there’s only one such ship produced these days.”

“Yes, I read about it.” Lira snapped her fingers, trying to remember.

“A Gemini. Gemini-Class exploration vessel,” Hattinger said, and Lira nodded.

“Exactly. Wait. Aren’t those only used by the Science Society?” Lira pulled her thin brows together to display her skepticism.

“Indeed. They have three of them.”

“And you think they’ll lend one to a mission sponsored by House Tanasca? The Hegemony . . . you don’t want to tell them about this, do you?”

“Of course not, Lira. But I happen to know a guy quite high in their ranks who might be willing to give me one. If I ask nicely.” Hattinger smiled at her.

“You want to go there?” Lira finally realized what he was talking about.

“No, I don’t.”

“What? But this is the find of the century. I know bad things happened to you on your past trips, but this—” Lira shook her head.

“I’m an xeno-archeologist, Lira. I dig up things, ruins. Technology sometimes. I dwell in dead places, looking at relics from long-dead civilizations, ones that died out long before mankind settled on their first planet. No. I have neither the knowledge nor the experience to explore something like this. I have someone else in mind to lead the first contact mission.”

“I want to go with them. If you aren’t there, they need some scientist with them and . . . Professor, this is exactly why I joined the university. This is all I ever dreamt of. You have to—” Lira was so excited that her voice almost failed her.

Hattinger raised his hand. “This could be dangerous. You heard the message. Their teams didn’t get back. Their crew died under mysterious circumstances. You sure you are up to this? I’ve been out there, and I know what . . . horrors alien minds can produce. I’m not sure you are ready for this.”

“I am ready. Believe me, I am so ready,” Lira said. “I’ve trained for something like this for five years. I can fly, I’ve passed all combat training courses with honors, I’m best of my class and . . . you trust me. I’ll be your eyes and ears on this mission. Professor, you have to let me go!” Lira put her hands together in a begging gesture.

Hattinger looked at her. She had never lost crew members, never seen friends die in some strange place, killed by unspeakable horrors. He had done all this. Not too long ago on Acheron he had seen hundreds die. But he also knew he couldn’t protect her from these things forever. She had the hunger, this unbearable hunger he’d once had himself. More importantly, if he didn’t allow her to go, she would never forgive him. Taking away the chance to be part of a mission this important would be unforgivable.

“Okay. You are in,” Hattinger said with a deep sigh.

“Fantastic!” Lira laughed out in joy.

“I need you to do the legwork though. I need a crew that can handle this and security. The best security we can buy for money. No military or member of the House. Freelancers only. If the Matriarch gets wind of this, she’ll take it away from us.”

“Understood.”

“I’ll get the team leader, and I’ll recruit him personally. And I’ll get the ship.”

“From the Science Society. You really think you can make that happen?”

“I will ask really nicely,” Hattinger answered.

****

“You owe me, Salazar. You owe me and you know it.” Hattinger pointed his finger at his former superior, Director Salazar of the Science Society exploration department. The man stood in front of him as if they were in the same room. They weren’t, of course. This was a holographic projection in the communication room of the university, showing the expansive bureau of Salazar on Centerworld, the capital world of the Hegemony and therefore of mankind itself. The man with his hawk-like features straightened his lean, almost skinny body which looked too thin for the white uniform he was wearing. His piercing dark eyes met Hattinger’s, and he suddenly felt his strategy to apply some pressure crumble.

“What do I owe you exactly? Please remind me, Julius. You deserted from our ranks and now serve an Oligarch House that produces well-trained rivals of our organization,” Salazar said with a mild, yet somehow menacing smile on his lips.

“You owe me for Acheron, and you know that all too well. We could have left you behind, bury you with those ruins when the mass accelerators melted them to nothing. We could have kept you in captivity for trespassing on a world claimed by House Tanasca! We did neither. We let you go.”

“And I repaid that debt by delivering an incredibly watered-down report to avoid an all-out war between your House and the Hegemony. Had I reported on the full potential of Acheron, galactic history could have looked very different. I played down what we found. So much that my conditioning almost drove me insane.”

“We both know you aren’t one who starts wars. Salazar—”

“Director. My title is Director, Julius.”

“And I am a professor. My title is Professor,” Hattinger replied.

Salazar stared at him for a long moment.

“I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important, Director,” Hattinger said.

“Important. Meaning you found something big. I mean, no member of the Science Society has ever set foot on Acheron again, after all, it was us who discovered it. Now you have found something else? Something that requires a double-core exploration vessel to reach? Something as big as Acheron? Maybe even bigger? Why would I be interested to hand your House over another such dangerous source of ancient technology?”

“Because . . .” Hattinger began and then stopped. “You worked for me long enough to know I won’t . . . hand this over to anyone who would misuse it. You want me to have that vessel, because if you don’t give it to me, I have to go to the Matriarch and ask for a vessel.”

“You don’t have dual-core ships,” Salazar said.

“She’ll construct one if she has to. But if she does, I won’t be on board. At the least, it won’t be me who commands it. It’ll be someone with unfaltering loyalty to the House.” Hattinger leaned forward. “You remember Alexania Tanasca? The family member who was with me on Acheron?”

“Sure, I do.”

“She runs the show there now. And I, like you, have never again set foot on the planet. The two most capable scientists to handle this discovery have been shut out. You want this one to be the same?” Hattinger asked.

Salazar looked at him for a long moment, then he released a long sigh. “We were lucky we got out there, last time,” Salazar admitted.

“Yes, we were,” Hattinger answered, and he knew that look in the face of the elder man. It meant that he would get what he asked for.

“The ship will arrive on Archimedes II by the end of the week. I trust you won’t make me regret this.”

“I won’t. I will make sure this time nobody knows about it before I am sure it’s safe.”

“Good luck, Julius.” Salazar ended the connection.

Hattinger watched the hologram of the office slowly fade and reveal the gray walls of the communication room. He had the ship now. Now came the part that was way more complicated.

He needed to recruit the team leader.

Chapter 3

Devon Rayvolt hated the smell of oil. He had never found out how it got into the control room, but the truth was, it probably was so present on the planet Nesoi that it simply was everywhere. The black fluid seemed to ooze from the ground when you stepped on it too hard.

Punching the communications button for the third time, the thing finally switched from red to green, signaling he had an open line to his team. Looking up through the stained, dirty window, he saw the giant shape of an 80-foot metal hull carried by large drones to the giant melting pool beneath them. Workers leaped from the drones to the nearby platforms and gangways. It was actually against the security protocols for them to ride on the carrier’s backs to the station, but Devon hadn’t brought it up for years. He wasn’t the kind to care about security protocols too much anymore. Those days were long gone.

“Release in ten seconds. Go to the safety zone,” he said. “We are a bit slow today. Please speed up on the next one. That freighter needs to be disassembled by tomorrow evening.”

“Well, feel free to join us out there and help drag those wires out of the wreckage. I can tell you it is really fun. Rusted, stuck cables everywhere,” Telek answered.

“Yeah, you can cry later, when I have a beer to make it a little more bearable.” Devon knew those men were working as hard as they could. After all, half their payments relied on delivering the results on time. “Listen, the disassembling team from yard five is done with the corvette. I’ll send them over after the break to give you some extra hands, okay?”

“Sounds good,” Telek replied. “The beer, the crying, and the extra team. All of it.” The man laughed and Devon watched the drones letting go of the large hull plate. It slowly made its way down and entered the pool, the molten metal swapping up in slow motion waves.

Devon checked the instruments and was satisfied with what they showed. This machinery was ancient and whatever updates they had gotten over the years had broken. For months, the fancy holographic controls had ceased to react to any of his commands. So, he was back to pushing cheap plastic buttons and when they didn’t work, he punched them until they did. Every day he expected another one of them to break, but they didn’t.

Devon swiped his hands against the gray overalls. For a man in his forties, he had maintained in great shape. But he did a lot of physical work here. Getting his hands dirty was something he originally had to get used to. Nowadays, he felt he would miss it if he didn’t keep working. It felt productive to work with your own hands. When he was sure his hands were clean, he stroked over his head, his hair cut so short he was almost bald. It was a measure to prevent the local insects from nesting in the hair. They liked the warmth of his body for their eggs.

As the door opened behind him, he assumed it was Corol, arriving early to take over. The man wasn’t the brightest and often showed up too early when the shifts were pushed around. But then, Devon heard the metal boots and realized this wasn’t Corol at all. He turned and saw the red-armored shape of a soldier of House Tanasca standing there. His armor was still clean and shiny.

“Not been around for long, hmm?” Devon hadn’t known that soldiers were present in the facility. Obviously, another military ship had arrived and needed escort. Hopefully, it wasn’t a destroyer. Salvaging those was a nightmare and they never had a chance to meet their time limit to receive the bonus. “What can I do for you, pal?”

The man tapped against his helmet, and it vanished inside the suit. “My name is Dosol Marik. I am Head of Security of the university of Archimedes II,” the man introduced himself.

“Really? Far away from home,” Devon replied.

“I’m here to bring you to one of our professors who has requested your presence,” Marik said.

“Not interested.”

“He’s a very influential man, this professor. I’m afraid he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Well, it is the only answer he’s going to get.” Devon laughed and returned to the controls. “Team two, I’m waiting for the delivery!” he yelled into the microphone.

“I think I wasn’t entirely clear, that wasn’t truly a request, but an order.” Marik remained very calm.

“Since when can professors order salvage workers on other planets around?”

“It wasn’t his order. It was mine.”

Devon turned to the man, seeing his cold eyes stare back. He knew very well soldiers of the House had privileges beyond what the law provided. They were almost a caste of their own, protected from any retaliation for what they did as long as they served faithfully.

“Can I pack?” Devon asked.

“We’ll provide you with new clothes. Something a little bit more fitting.”

“Oh, I don’t mind meeting Mr. Important in my overalls. I just wanted a good book for the flight.” Devon sighed.

****

He was offered a suit in the red colors of the House but decided that indeed his gray overalls were a better fit. After all, he didn’t want to give them any idea that he tried to blend in with them. The ruling caste. People who dragged him away in the middle of a shift and cost everyone in his cohort half a week’s pay when they missed their deadline. The only comforting thought was they would have failed to make it in time anyway.

The flight was short, and he hadn’t been granted his wish to get a book, so he decided to sleep in the small shuttle, avoiding Marik’s menacing stare and the boredom of the flight. He was woken up by a kick against his leg and as he opened his eyes, he saw they were landing. Outside he saw the famous green fields of Archimedes II with the white egg-shaped hives of some long-dead insect species. He had heard the planet was considered a calm and peaceful place, but he didn’t really care. He had seen many planets in his former life. After a while, he preferred not to get excited about them.

The giant dome-shaped university seemed almost like an intruder in the landscape. Three of those domes rose into the air and he realized that they approached the central one, eventually landing on a small platform near the top. He assumed that meant he would be meeting someone considered ‘important’. Usually, an office was placed in a spot metaphorically representing your place in the hierarchy. He knew he should have tortured himself to find out why he had been shipped here. But he decided pretty quickly he had no idea and therefore wouldn’t waste time figuring out something he would learn soon enough anyway.

The shuttle set down and the doors opened. Marik gestured for him to leave with a grim look.

“Oh man, I’m pretty sure he will be utterly disappointed.” Devon stood up. Outside the air was clean and he took a deep breath. After months of breathing the polluted air of the industrial world he now called his home, this was actually a nice change. As he approached the glass doors, they slid open, and he realized Marik hadn’t followed him.

The platform seemed to be private, as the doors led right into a room that seemed like a mix of a museum and an oversized office. Holograms of strange ruins floated through the air and several vitrines with objects whose purpose was hard to figure out were spread through the entire room. There were no chairs, but there were two large desks, both covered with datasets and notepads. A man stood there at what appeared to be a small bar and he filled two glasses with a brown fluid from an unmarked bottle. The man was in his late forties, like him. He already had gray temples though. He was wearing a gray tunic. His blue eyes betrayed his intelligence, even though his smile seemed a little dumb. He was handsome in an academic kind of way. He approached Devon and extended his arm, offering one of those round glasses.

“Ever drank whiskey, Mr. Rayvolt?”

“I don’t even know what that is.” Devon picked up the glass. “And people nowadays call me Devon.”

“Whiskey was a drink very popular on Terra. We found the recipe a century ago and a fanatic worshipper of traditional spirits worked for two decades to reproduce it on Atanaun IV. It’s distilled from fermented grain malt. Of course, we don’t know how the original tasted, but I find it to be one of the more interesting results of retro-creation,” the man said.

Devon smelled at the drink and at least it seemed to be strong. “To the Matriarch!” Devon toasted, but his voice carried a good amount of sarcasm.

“Cheers,” the man said. “That was the traditional toast on Terra.”

“You’re one of those scholarly types who make a lecture out of everything.”

The man laughed at him. “You’re a man of sharp observation, as I was told.” The man took a sip and so did Devon. It tasted spicy but wasn’t really to his liking.

“My name is Professor Julius Aurelius Hattinger. I apologize for dragging you here like this, but I have a certain challenge and I need your help to overcome it.”

“You want to disassemble your ship?”

“Pardon?”

“That’s what I do for a living,” Devon said. “I work in a—”

“Yes, I heard that. What a terrible end to what was once such a promising career.”

“I like my job.”

“A lot less complicated than your old one, right? I mean, you were once the Oligarch’s prime engineer. I read your paper on super-structural engineering and although I must admit I understood only half, I found it to be most interesting. So, what happened?” Hattinger asked.

“Ah, you know how these things work. I was calculating hull integrity all day and then someone offered me that job at the salvaging company on this beautiful paradise of a planet. Couldn’t resist. A man needs a change of pace sometimes, don’t you think?” Devon put the glass aside.

“Of course. Funny enough, I heard a rumor that you turned down the Matriarch of House Tanasca when she asked you to work on a military project. A Dreadnought-Class ship. The Pylon-Class. She didn’t take no for an answer and when you didn’t bow, she broke you. Ruined your career.” Hattinger put his glass aside now too.

“Well, they built it without me.”

“Over time, over budget, and twice as expensive to build as originally planned,” Hattinger said.

“You like asking questions you know the answer to, don’t you?”

“Professional habit. I’m a professor. It’s what I do for a living, so to say.”

“Well, good for you. But whatever it is you want from me, I’m not interested. So could we just call it a day so I can get back to my home?”

“Well, you came a long way and I assure you, I won’t force you to take the job, but before I let you go back to your job and life, I would appreciate it if you took a moment to look at something. Just one short message we recently got. It’s 63 years old and most intriguing, I assure you,” Hattinger said. “Please. Do me that favor and then tell me if you’re totally uninterested.”

“I can tell you right I away I’m totally uninterested.”

“Then what harm does a short clip do?”

Devon knew the man would insist on him looking at whatever it was he had there and so he picked up his glass and emptied it.

“Tastes terrible, by the way. Okay. Show me what you got.”

Chapter 4

When the video was over, Devon kept on staring at the screen of the old-fashioned player on the professor’s desk.

“She’s dead?” Devon finally asked.

“It’s 63 years old, and they barely had food for three months. I assume she is, yes,” Hattinger replied.

“I don’t know.” Devon shook his head. “Is this fake? You checked that it’s not a hoax?”

“It doesn’t seem to be a hoax.”

“Then who built this thing? The Authority? Some Oligarch?” He shook his head. “No way. They couldn’t. Nobody can.” Devon looked at the professor. “This makes no sense.”

“I don’t think this space station was built by the Authority or the Oligarchs, or any other human being as a matter of fact.”

“What? You’re saying—” Devon laughed out.

“You know what my field is? I’m a xeno-archeologist. I study alien races and as all alien races we’ve ever encountered have died out, I usually study what remains of them. Humanity learned a lot from those findings.”

“I know, you’re not the only one who went to a university, Professor. Gravity projection, the Bernstein Drive and intradimensional barriers. A lot of what we know about super-structure design is based on the giant satellites we found over Nigel II. But . . .” Devon shook his head. “An unknown space station we never heard about? Just sitting there in the middle of nowhere? That seems very unlikely to me.”

“The galaxy is vast Aven, and we’ve populated an incredibly tiny fraction of it. Not even a thousandth of a percent. The truth is we have no idea what’s out there. We’ve explored about 1% of the universe. Even in our own so-called territories? What do we know? We’ve settled 1,000 worlds and sent probes to what? 10,000? We identify potentially-hospitable planets that can support members of the human race by using telescopes and probes and then we settle there. Sometimes we terraform them, sometimes we adjust the citizens genetically. There are trillions of planets out there. We didn’t even have a look at most of them. What about planets with too much gravity to support human life? Too cold or too hot? We can’t live there, but that doesn’t mean nothing can. Even the space between our planets? We don’t know anything about it. We enter what we call subspace and then reach our destination. We could have passed 1,000 other starships in between. And then there are space stations. There could be entire networks of alien-populated space stations and the chances of us stumbling on any of them would be close to zero. Except maybe we did this time. By chance or misfortune.”

Devon thought about the professor’s words. He was right, of course. Humanity spoke about conquering the stars, but truly they had settled on only a few planets.

“So, you want me to go there?” he finally asked.

“I want you to lead a mission to determine the fate of the lost ship and yes, I want you to have a look at this station.”

“Why me? Don’t you think one of your xeno-archeology buddies would be a better choice? Or maybe the military? House Tanasca is so damn proud of their fleet, maybe they could do something useful with it for a change? Or are they too busy bullying harmless planets into submission?” Devon shook his head and wished he had another of those disgusting drinks. As if he had read his mind, Hattinger took the bottle he had put on the desk and refilled their glasses.

“Listen, Devon. I know you’re even less a fan of the ruling caste than I am. But truth be told, this could be your chance to redeem yourself. Or do you want to disassemble old freighters forever?”

“It’s honest work.”

“Sure, I guess it’s exactly what you had in mind when you got your second degree in engineering from one of the best schools in the galaxy. You were among the finest space engineers of your generation. If you get this right, you could be returning to what you love.”

Devon looked at the professor and he hated what he did. Tempting him. It had taken years to find peace with what had happened. To find forgiveness for being so stupid to deny that request to build that stupid ship.

“I still don’t see how I’m the right guy for this.”

“Your files say your best quality wasn’t your engineering ability, but the construction. You’re a natural leader it says. You are smart, capable, and a quick thinker. You’ve written the defining work on super-structures and designed the ring of Ikarus, the largest man-made structure in space in the history of our species. I think you’re perfect for the job, and I’ll explain to you why . . .” Hattinger tipped against the screen again and the picture of the space station appeared. Devon leaned forward and looked at it. “My analysts say this thing is five miles high and that the disc is six miles wide, it probably has 1,000 levels and—”

“Wait. Five miles?”

“Yes. Five miles. Five times larger than the Ikarus installation you built. This thing is a super-structure unlike any we’ve ever encountered. And there’s another reason I want you. You hate the ruling class. I need someone with a critical mind on this. Someone who doesn’t sell out. If the military takes this mission, they’ll probably disassemble it, melt the metal, and create an entire fleet out of it. But I want to know what it is? Who built it? For what purpose? The sheer size suggests we might have found an artifact here from a species far more advanced than humanity. Imagine what we could learn from them? What secrets they might have left behind!”

“What weapons we could build with their technology!” Devon threw in.

“Exactly. We need to make sure that’s not what this becomes. Another weapons research project. We must learn the right things.”

Devon turned back to the display. “That’s . . . one damn masterpiece of engineering you found there if those estimates are right. Beyond anything I’ve dreamt of in even my wildest dreams.”

“And you, with your unique understanding of such super-structures, are the perfect choice to explore it,” Hattinger added.

Devon took the glass of whiskey and emptied it. Drinking it fast made the taste easier to endure. He felt the alcohol making his head lighter.

“There’s another reason why you picked me. I am expandable.”

“This mission will be dangerous. It always is dangerous to venture into the unknown. You haven’t too much to lose. I admit it was a factor in choosing you.”

“You are a bastard, you know that?”

“Tell me that you don’t want to see it with your own eyes, and I’ll send you back to your old life right away.”

“You know damn well I want to see it. It’s a technological miracle. Who wouldn’t want to see it?” Devon leaned against the table and folded his arms. “You got a crew?”

“Best we could find. Small crew of very capable people. It cost me my entire year’s budget. And I have the ship for the mission. It has been uniquely prepared to meet potential challenges this mission might bring. Security is taken care of. Best of the best. It’s all yours if you accept.”

“You coming?”

“No. My assistant will be with you, though.”

“Good. I really am not sure if I like you.” Devon sighed, and Hattinger laughed at this comment.

“So does my ship have a captain?” Hattinger asked.

Devon hesitated for a final moment. Captain. He had no experience at commanding ships bigger than a shuttle. But he knew if he turned his back on this one, this station would haunt him for the rest of his life. He didn’t care about redemption or getting his old life back. He knew that one never went back, only forward. He would never again be that bright young man that believed he could change the galaxy by building large things. He did believe he could be a middle-aged man changing the galaxy by exploring this giant thing floating through space.

“Okay,” Devon said. “I’ll do it.”

“Perfect. Then let me introduce you to your crew,” Hattinger said, and he was visibly relieved. There was something else in his eyes, too. Sadness. Devon realized he knew he would send Devon on a mission that might be incredibly dangerous, and he felt bad about it.

****

Devon was surprised the university had its own hangar. He was even more surprised by the rather large, sleek ship with a sharp-edged front that led through a long armor-plated neck to an almost rounded main body that had large powerful thrusters on the upper and lower part of it. Four gun turrets and a large radio dish made the entire thing a perfect mix of military vessel and private yacht. It was shiny, almost as if it had never even been used before.

“That’s the Remus, a Gemini-Class exploration vessel made for deep space exploration. It has the unique quality of having two Bernstein Drives instead of one, which might be essential should your ship encounter similar problems with their core as the Catania did.” Hattinger was visibly proud of the ship, yet Devon turned his attention to the five figures standing before it.

It was a young woman, a striking beauty in a tight red jumpsuit, that approached him first.

“You must be Devon Reyvolt.” She smiled. “The professor spoke a lot about you.” The woman extended her hand. “Lira Siola, I’m Professor Hattinger’s assistant and will cover the xeno-archeological and scientific side of the project. I’ve been trained—”

“Pleased to meet you.” Devon shook her hand before she could start listing her academic accomplishments. He was certain she was highly qualified.

Hattinger stepped over to the others, and a tall man in a black uniform without any insignia or markings stepped forth. “This is Reon Balidon. He will pilot the ship. He is a former pilot of the Tanasca fleet with over 20,000 hours of flight experience,” Hattinger explained.

“I’m also a good cook,” the man said with tired smile.

“Devon Reyvolt. I’m going to . . . command the mission.” It felt strange to say these words for Devon.

“I know,” the man replied.

“Cara Lipon. Sensors and astrogation.” Hattinger gestured to a tall woman, who had the unique feature of a long scar running over her long face, all the way from the left eye to her chin. She wasn’t exactly a beauty, and it wasn’t made any better by her cold look. A nod was all he received from her. Devon wondered if she just hated everybody, or if it was him in particular for some unknown reason.

“No rank?” Devon asked.

“No rank,” Cara replied with a voice too deep for a woman.

“We felt no need to assign them ranks,” Hattinger explained.

“Well, hierarchy makes things easier, from my experience,” Devon remarked.

“Well, this here is—” Hattinger stepped over to the young man next in line. He was Devon’s height, with smart dark eyes and a handsome face, with curly hair.

“Yonder Marks. I’m a ship engineer. But for this mission, I let them demote me to the chief mechanic.” He smiled and stepped forward, shaking Devon’s hand. “I read your papers on—”

“Pleased to meet you.” Devon cut him short. His sight turned to the last person in the team. She was the standout. Completely armored, wearing what looked like a sleek custom-made combat suit with a plasma rifle on her back, two grenades at her belt, a handgun at her hip with a second, smaller attached to her chest, and a knife magnetically attached to her boot. Obviously, she was a warrior of some sort.

“Vax will provide security on the mission. Everybody in the team has some combat training, but she’s the expert,” Hattinger said.

“You don’t look like a guard,” Devon remarked.

“I’m a private contractor, specialized in the retrieval of individuals who escaped the justice system,” Vax said with a voice so cold it sent a shiver down his spine. The smile she gave him didn’t make it any better. It seemed extremely menacing in the failed attempt to be friendly.

“A bounty hunter?” Devon looked at Hattinger, expressing his skepticism by raising his brows.

“I ran personal security for the Stennheiser family for ten years. I think I can handle an archeological mission.” Vax looked up and down at him. “You don’t look like a ship captain.”

“I’m not a ship captain. I am . . .” Devon sighed. Explaining to her why Hattinger chose an engineer would take too long. “The one calling the shots. That’s all you need to know.” Devon ended the sentence.

“Weapons training?” Vax asked.

“I’ve been in a lot of bar brawls over the last few years,” Devon said.

“Never used a gun?” Vax looked at Hattinger. “You said they all have training.”

“I’ve fired a gun. Don’t worry. I won’t be a problem.” Devon clapped his hands.

“That’s your crew—” Hattinger began.

“I got that part. I would like to have a moment alone with my crew then. Professor.”

Hattinger looked around and it took a moment for him to realize he had just been asked to leave. “Certainly,” he finally said and, though visibly irritated, he left without objections.

Devon looked after him and then turned to the crew. “So, you’re all hired to do the job and, in a way, so am I. I assume you all saw what we are going for. We have two objectives. One is finding the Catania and determining what happened to it. The second is scouting and gathering as much data on the mysterious space station as we can, which will probably include going on board.” Devon nodded. “I’ll be in command, so I expect you to do what I say. If I’m not around, Lira Siola here will be the second-in-command as she’s the most familiar with the mission objectives. Reon will be third in command as the pilot and in case he’s the last one left in command I expect you to return and report anything that happened to the professor.” Devon folded his arms. “Any questions?”

“When do we depart?” Reon asked.

“When can we depart?” Devon returned.

“The ship is loaded with all kinds of equipment,” Lira said. “We’re ready when you are.”

Devon looked at her. “Okay, what do we have on board? The short list please.”

To his surprise, Vax answered. “Five long-range drones, scanner equipment in all sizes, several kilograms of explosives of various intensity—”

“What are those for?” Devon asked.

“In case we have to make ourselves an entrance point,” Lira explained, and Devon nodded. It made sense.

“Weapons for the entire crew, including heavy weapons for two crew members. Reon and I’ve been trained in the use of those. Rations for a year, energy cells, surveillance and reconnaissance drones, several mobile medbays and medical supplies, a ton of spare parts and a small shuttle for four persons.” Vax concluded her list.

“That all fits in there?” Devon had to laugh.

“The Gemini-Class has two storage rooms, each holding several metric tons. The shuttle is docked to the starboard hull,” Reon explained.

“Okay, looks like you guys thought of everything.” Devon had no idea what this kind of mission required.

“We also have space-worthy environment suits for each member of the crew,” Lira added. “Including a fully functional combat suit.”

“Space suits? Okay, let’s hope we won’t need those,” Devon said.

“If this station was built by someone . . . not breathing air, we might need it,” Lira said, and he gave her a long look. He hadn’t even considered that. A space station potentially built by aliens. By a long-gone civilization, that might’ve not even been human. Devon had no experience at all with this kind of situation. He lacked the mindset for this, and he doubted he could easily and quickly adjust to this scenario. In short, the professor had chosen the wrong man for the mission. To the professor, these things might be such a natural part of everyday life that he couldn’t imagine how hard it was for an ordinary person to wrap his head around it, but the truth was, they should have had a scientist running the show.

“Right. Well, take your positions. I don’t see any sense in postponing our departure. We’ll leave in fifteen.” Turning to Lira, he gently took her arm to keep her from leaving, as all others entered the ship through the lowering ramp. He waited until they were aboard and then turned his full attention to her. “Listen, I’m here because I know something about super-structures. I should be a member of this crew and not the leader of it. But what’s done is done and I didn’t want to prolong discussions with your boss about how this thing should be done. I feel he’s kind of a stubborn guy when it comes to these things.”

“You might be right about that part,” Lira answered.

“Yeah, so we agree that I’m not the right man for the job.” Devon nodded.

“No, we don’t.”

Devon looked at her, confused by her response. Wasn’t it obvious?

“Mr. Rayvolt,” Lira began.

“Devon, please.”

“Devon, Professor Hattinger is among the smartest people in the galaxy and has run more exploration missions than any other man in the history of mankind. If he chose you, he knew what he was doing.”

“I haven’t ever commanded a crew or run a mission.” Devon pointed out the obvious.

“No, but this mission won’t be about great commanding abilities and it certainly isn’t about digging anything up. Our success or failure lies in our ability to analyze the station and you’ve built the largest manmade structure in space, the Ikarus rings. You designed them and you constructed them, overseeing hundreds of thousands of workers of my House. You’re uniquely skilled to make this mission a success. Tell me, just trust your instincts—what would be your approach to analyzing this thing?” Lira looked at him, expecting an answer.

Devon took a moment, cleared his throat and then answered. “We need to get a good look at the structure, so we’ll scan it entirely from within. How they built it, how they avoided the challenge of this enormous mass. We need to scan for anti-gravity waves, take probes of the material. That’s essential. We need to get a good oversight of what materials they used and take samples of each of them. If we have time, we study the infrastructure. Electricity, water, light.”

“Why the infrastructure?”

“Because it gives us an idea how many lifeforms lived there, what their needs were and maybe also the purpose of the station. It’s too big for a spaceport, so maybe it was a colony. Maybe it was something else, like a beacon or a surveillance platform. We need to study the infrastructure to get a sense of the purpose. Then we’ll look for any sign of who lived there and what happened to them. That would be your job.” Devon looked at Lira. “Have you done this kind of thing before? Are you experienced in this?”

“Something like this has never been found before. It’ll be a first time for all of us.” Lira smiled at him. “But I’d say you got a damn good grip on the situation and what needs to be done.”

Devon felt almost annoyed by her confidence. She was Hattinger’s girl, obviously. She didn’t see that he was only right if things went right and not if anything went wrong. And if the story of the Catania had shown them anything, then it was that things would go wrong.

“Say goodbye to your professor and give him by best regards.” Devon turned to the ship and made his way there.

Chapter 6

Devon walked through the ship, as he saw the others work. Vax stood silently in the mess, the central room of the ship. It was a hexagonal hall with six doors. Four were crew quarters, and one was the door to the ship’s aft, where he had seen the central reactor room. This room had three large pillars in it, instead of the two ships usually had. Two pillars were filled with a sickly yellowish gas: the Bernstein Drives, each containing a hexagon-shaped object floating inside. The other pillar was slowly rotating: the active core. Also in the room was the shiny metal tube that was the conventional fusion reactor. The ramps had led to the corridor between the two large, crowded storage rooms. He only had a brief look into those before making his way into the main ship.

He passed through the hall, which contained a central table with black leather seats around it and a number of couches. The sixth and final door led to another corridor. To the left was the airlock, with a small egg-shaped shuttle attached to it, just as Reon had said. The right led to the sanitary facilities, which included a small shower. Finally, he entered the cockpit. Six seats, with four facing the front where a large window showed the hangar. Once they were in space, the view would be spectacular. Devon ignored it for now and had a look at the various consoles. It was all state-of-the-art equipment, with holographic displays glowing green in the cockpit. Reon sat in the pilot seat and switched various small levers on. Devon was surprised they actually still used real metal levers aboard such a ship.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she? Although these things are usually gone for months out there, and I feel it could get a bit . . . crowded aboard if that were our fate. They certainly don’t want people to get comfy around here,” Reon said.

“I’ve never seen a ship like this,” Devon admitted and took the seat left to Reon. The captain’s chair.

“Not many have been built. With the dual Bernstein Core, this is so expensive that they could send an entire fleet instead to do the exploration. So, the Hegemony has only three of those.”

“Wait, this is a Hegemony ship?” Devon asked.

“Sure. The professor somehow pulled off a miracle to get us one,” Reon answered.

Through the window, Devon saw Lira return. “As soon as she’s on board and the ramp is up, we’ll leave,” Devon said.

“That much in a hurry? This isn’t a rescue mission, Captain. Those guys are all long dead. I, for my part, am happy I won’t need to go on that ship. It’ll be a tomb, really,” Reon said.

“It’s Devon. Call me Devon. Not sir, not Captain. Please.”

“Sure, Devon.” Reon looked up as a light went from red to green. The ramp had been locked. “Let’s fire the lady up!”

“The guy. Remus was a guy,” Devon said.

“Ships are always ladies, you’ll see.” Reon winked at Devon and pressed a few buttons. The engines roared to life.

“How do I activate the intercom?” Devon asked, looking at the console before him, which consisted only of a green holographic screen with too many menus.

“I can do it for you,” Reon said. “Speak.”

“This is Devon, please take your positions. We’ll depart.” He had been on a lot of ships but none like this. The effectiveness clearly showed off the military origins.

Seconds later Cara Lipon entered and took her seat. Vax and Lira took the passenger seats and Yonder probably stayed with the engines; the last seat remained empty. Devon didn’t comment on it, but instead turned to the front window and saw the giant white metal doors depart into the walls as their ship began to hover and slowly crawl out of the hangar. Once the nose was through the gate Reon accelerated the ship and sped out, pushing the controls back and climbing towards the skies right away.

Devon wondered what he had gotten himself into. This morning he had been salvaging old ships for their metal parts and now he was leading this rag-tag band of wanna-be explorers on a mission that might define the galaxy for centuries to come. He was well aware of what this station meant. A technological treasure chest to harvest. Ancient wreckages barely recognizable as such had allowed humanity to reverse engineer the technology to travel faster than light by entering the subspace dimension. It had made gravity even on the smallest ships possible. Ruins of long-dead species had allowed them to terraform planets after they had found the leftovers of their civilization there. This here was a fully-functional space station. The generator alone would be a game changer. But what other technologies it held . . . it was beyond imagination.

Hattinger had known this. That was why it was them going there and not some military ship. He wanted to know what it was he handed over to his masters. A responsibility Devon didn’t envy him for.

As the ship left the atmosphere, Cara Lipon reported from behind.

“Course set for Tassion System. Ready to enter subspace in fifteen,” she said, and Devon realized he would need to give the order.

“Whenever you’re ready.” Aven looked at the stars above. Large red ships appeared on their starboard side, but they didn’t seem to care about the Hegemony exploration vessel leaving the planet. Hattinger had cleared them for departure, he assumed.

The stars vanished and instead a pitch-black void appeared. The sound of the ship dampened right away. The infamous silence of subspace took hold of their ship.

“Everybody to the mess. We need to talk about how we will do this.” Devon stood up and made his way back to the mess hall.

****

“So, I know a few things about old ships,” Devon began, standing at the end of the table, with everybody else sitting on the large couches. “We can’t be sure the Catania still has atmosphere or even oxygen. The reactor will have shut down 50 years ago according to emergency procedures. We’re heading for its last known location, and we need to hope it’s still there. So Yonder, Cara, Vax, and I will enter the ship in space suits with portable power cells. Yonder and Vax will head to the engine room and activate the central computer system to get a full report on what happened there. Cara, you will be with me. We will go to the bridge and get the sensor data, crew and captain’s logs, and if possible, retrieve the data core. Expect bodies there, potentially skeletons by now. The danger is that we have no idea what condition the ship is in, so at the first sign of structural weakness we run back to our shuttle. The insight on what killed them isn’t worth our own lives. Understood?”

“Why can’t I join?” Lira asked as everyone else answered his question with a nod.

“Because you’re now second-in-command, and when I leave, you stay behind. It’s your job until we reach the station,” Devon explained, and she disliked the answer but confirmed she had understood by looking down on the table.

“From what the message said, we need to expect high radiation levels,” Yonder said. “I advise we don’t take off our space suits no matter what.”

“Agreed.” Devon nodded.

“Do we expect hostiles?” Vax asked.

“And who might that be?” Reon asked, laughing at the suggestion.

“Well, something happened there, and I expect the professor might not have told us everything he knows.” Vax snapped back.

“The professor has no information outside what he shared,” Lira threw in. “We’re the ones who shall give him that advantage.”

“Yeah, great,” Cara said.

“You’re worried about the screams,” Devon said to Vax, and he saw he was right about this one by the way she looked back at him.

“What screams?” Reon asked.

“The commander in the video said she heard screams. Anyway, that was 60 years ago; I don’t expect anything or anyone to be alive,” Devon said.

“I suggest we take weapons, anyway,” Vax answered.

“Agreed. All members of the expedition will carry sidearms. You’ll arm yourself with whatever you feel is appropriate,” Devon said.

“So, he didn’t share any insight with you regarding the mission?” Vax tried to return to her topic.

“I only watched the message and got a long lecture on how little we know about what’s out there. My entire recruiting took an hour or so and that was about two hours ago,” Devon explained. “So, we need to figure things out ourselves. I don’t want to waste any time with the Catania. We’ll get the data and then turn to our main objective, which is the space station.”

“According to the data the dead commander provided, it should be visible from the ship,” Cara remarked.

“I can’t wait to see it.” Lira smiled to the group, but the others didn’t seem to share her enthusiasm. For her, this was exciting, but for everybody else, the thought of this space station was probably much more eerie.

“Well, Cara, you might get a good reading on it in that case,” Devon said.

“I would prefer it if you didn’t call me by my first name,” Cara replied.

“Well, this is a first name ship now. I am Devon, you’re Cara. Get used to it.” Devon felt this was a good opportunity to establish his authority.

“What about the space station? How will we deal with that one?” Yonder asked.

“We’ll land aboard if possible or dock to it if we have to, cutting our way in through the airlock. Anyway, once inside, I will assign everybody their mission and we will work day and night in double shifts until we have everything we need.” Organizing shifts was something Devon knew a lot about. He would handle it like any other salvage mission. Or like one of his construction crews. It was what he was best at. “Reon will stay aboard the Remus, while the rest of us will go in.”

“I suggest we take weapons there, too,” Vax remarked.

“Sure.” Devon nodded. “I don’t expect anything to be inside. The Catania data suggests they couldn’t pick up any lifeforms. How long until arrival?”

“We leave subspace in three hours, give or take,” Cara said.

“I suggest you all use that time to get some sleep. We have some long days ahead.” Devon nodded and felt he had done okay in his first meeting as captain. “You’re relieved.” He got that line from a cheesy hologram show about the Authority fighting evil rebels. It was a guilty pleasure he had when he got drunk, which had been what he had done every night on Nesoi.

****

While everyone else went to their cabins, he stayed in the mess and loaded the available data on the space station. He’d only had a superficial look so far. Ignoring the sheer size this time, he tried to make sense of the rest. The Catania had a terrible sensor package. But what they had picked up were the insane energy readings. Also, no life signs aboard. That was the greatest riddle of them all. How had the station stayed functional for all those centuries if nobody did maintenance? A self-repair mechanism that powerful alone could change mankind’s life among the stars forever if it could be replicated.

He wondered how old this thing was. He knew next to nothing about xeno-archeology, but he had once read the most recent civilizations had died a couple thousand years before the exodus.

“It isn’t like we never found any alien civilization out there. They are simply just all dead. The great question of our crew is to determine what killed them.” Lira spoke from behind and Devon didn’t even turn around. She circled the table and sat on the opposite side.

“You’re spreading positivity, I see,” Devon said, staring at the hologram model of the station.

“It’s something Hattinger once told me. He said it’s from a colleague of his,” Lira said.

“And did he find an answer to the question?”

“Not yet. He had theories, but nothing he can prove for now.”

“Must be fun, coming up with all kinds of crazy theories that can never be confirmed.”

“He’s a hardworking man, the professor—”

“Calm down, you don’t need to collect any extra points here for protecting your boss,” Devon said.

“You dislike him, don’t you?”

“Well, don’t you think staying behind is a little cowardly?”

“He has good reasons, and he assembled a fine crew—”

“Which he sends to do the dangerous work,” Devon said. “How noble.”

“He had his own encounters; I can assure you. The stories he has told me, you wouldn’t believe.”

“Sure,” Devon confirmed. Hiding behind past accomplishments didn’t make the professor any braver in his eyes.

“Are you nervous? I mean, you’re leading this mission. A mission that might change everything. The find of the century. One day people will talk about the Rayvolt Mission as the one that stared it all.”

“Or it will go down in the history books as another mission gone wrong. I’m not a fool.”

“I know.”

“The second Bernstein Core. The professor thinks the failure of the Catania’s Drive might be caused by the station. Right? A defense mechanism of sorts.”

“He had this theory, yes,” Lira admitted.

“That’s what we have the second core for. To get home.” Devon shook his head. “How? How could a space station attack a ship, make its Bernstein Drive malfunction in subspace? A weapon that can reach subspace would be . . . most frightening. It also would be very powerful.” Devon shrugged. “So, what’s the plan if we find the station has such a weapon? I mean I understand the whole idea of getting a head start, but wouldn’t he eventually have to turn it over to his master the Matriarch?” Devon asked. “That crazy old crone, I know what she’s capable of. Give her such a weapon and I see the Hegemony having a problem. How would it even defend itself, if the Matriarch of House Tanasca had the ability to attack their Bernstein Drives? She would simply rip those ships out of subspace in the middle of nowhere and wait for the crews to starve. Then she would do the same to their rescue missions.” Devon folded his arms.

“He’s a very responsible man who has learned from the mistakes of the past. I am sure he wouldn’t hand over such a weapon easily,” Lira replied. That unshakable belief in her professor was cute. She was cute, sitting there in her tight dress, her brown hair falling over her face. How old might she be? Late twenties, Devon assumed.

“Well, let’s hope so,” Devon replied, unconvinced the professor had such power. Once the truth was out about this station, the Matriarch would get wind of it, and she was a woman who usually got what she wanted.

Chapter 7

“We’ve got a problem,” Yonder declared over the intercom. Devon and all other crew members had taken their positions in the cockpit.

“Define problem,” Devon returned.

“The containment field of our Bernstein Drive is unstable. It’s still within the parameters, but highly volatile and fluctuating,” Yonder said. “If it goes on like this, we’ll need to shut it down.”

“Time to arrival?” Devon asked.

“One minute,” Cara answered.

“Yonder, hold the field together for another minute. That’s all we need,” Devon replied, trying not to give away his anxiety.

“A minute is a stretch. Emergency containment is already in place and is also breaking down. I’ll do what I can!”

The Bernstein Drive had gotten refined in recent years and these ones, those that had to do multiple jumps without maintenance, were especially robust.

“Forty seconds,” Cara threw in.

“Reon, prepare to get out of subspace. Yonder? 35 seconds.” Devon folded his hands and closed his eyes.

“Containment field down. Emergency holding for now, but . . . the fluctuations are wild!” Yonder yelled. “I need to eject the core.”

“If it isn’t overloading yet, don’t do it,” Devon said.

“We got a second—”

“I said don’t do it. Cara?”

“20 seconds,” she replied.

“As soon as we get out of subspace, he’s going to eject the core and you’ll get us away from it as fast as you can, understood? Push your lady to maximum speed,” Devon said to Reon.

“Running from a gravity implosion, sounds fun.” Reon said sarcastically and put his hand on his lever.

“Devon, we really need to—” Yonder yelled.

“Ten seconds,” Cara said.

“A moment, just a moment longer,” Devon tried to calm his engineer.

“Ready to leave subspace in three, two, and one—” Cara counted down and at ‘one’ she hit a button on her holographic display and in front of Devon, the stars appeared. Reon accelerated the ship right away.

“Eject!” Devon yelled and almost instantly, a trembling went through their ship as the core was ejected.

“Core imploding!” Cara yelled, now having turned to the sensors.

“Reon?” Devon asked and the man kept on accelerating the ship. The man didn’t respond, but instead seemed to redirect more energy to the thrusters.

“We need to be 1.2 clicks away, when it fully—” Cara yelled.

“Working on it!” Reon yelled, and Devon decided to let the man do his work.

“Core away!” Yonder yelled. “I advise—”

“Working on it!” Reon yelled back at him, too. Devon felt a slight push back into his seat. The acceleration was testing the anti-grav projection of the ship.

“Implosion!” Cara shouted and it was a second later the entire ship trembled, red lights blinking and alarms blaring from the speakers.

“Did it!” Reon yelled and Devon wanted to reply with something, but had to cover his eyes, as a terribly bright flash of light filled the space for a split-second. Then the stars reappeared, and Devon saw they were indeed in real space.

“Report,” he ordered, and Cara was the first to respond.

“We are at the Tassion System, almost exactly where we were supposed to be,” she said and for the first time he heard a hint of emotion in her voice. A slight shade of shame.

“Almost?” Devon asked.

“We are 20 clicks away from our designated position. I probably lost my nerve.”

“So, you have emotions, interesting,” Lira said, and everyone chuckled a bit.

“Yonder?” Devon asked.

“Minor damages, nothing serious. A few of our nodes were damaged. I can fix most of it within an hour.”

“Good, get on it,” Devon confirmed. Then he finally turned to Reon. “Good job. Now get us to the coordinates we were given.” Reon slowed down the ship and changed course. “I’ll be back in engineering. Lira, you got the bridge.” Devon jumped out of his seat and swiftly made his way back to the ship. Surprisingly, Cara followed him.

“Captain?” she asked on the way.

“Devon. It’s Devon,” he reminded her.

“I wanted to speak to you about something I picked up on the sensors—” Cara began.

“Later, okay? I need to talk to Yonder now,” Devon said, and Cara was visibly annoyed, but kept on following him as he entered the reactor room, where Yonder looked up as he sat in front of an opened panel, working on the wiring behind it.

“So, did you come to help?” Yonder asked. Devon looked at the wires and then sighed.

“I can do the rewiring, but I actually came to talk to you. Anyway, leave those to me and do something more important.” Devon cowered in front of the gap the removed panel had left and Yonder packed a couple of his tools and moved to the other side of the room.

“So, what is it you wanted to ask?” Yonder looked at him and then gave Cara a look. She still stood there with folded arms, radiating her bad mood.

“Why did the Bernstein Drive fail? I mean, the exact thing happened to the Catania, right? Only they had a much less sophisticated drive,” Devon asked.

“Listen, it all happened extremely fast. One moment everything worked fine and the next, it suddenly all started to go . . . the containment field started to overload and then fail,” Yonder said. “I have no idea—”

“I have. If you let me finally report my findings,” Cara remarked unnerved.

Devon looked at her and realized he had cut off the one person who had an answer only to ask for an answer from someone who didn’t. Somewhere there were academies where they taught people how to run operations, but he had never been to those.

“Okay, please report.”

“I saw a spike in the sensor data. It was some sort of radiation that hit us,” Cara said.

“This is space, radiation isn’t that—” Devon began, but shut up, as he saw in her face that she didn’t approve of his comment.

“It hit us in subspace. That’s why I recognized it. There’s nothing in subspace and therefore nothing that radiates anything. The sensors usually show pretty much nothing when you are in subspace. So, when they suddenly started to blink, it really had my attention.” Cara folded her arms. “How would the core react to a high number of alpha rays?”

“Cosmic rays? They consist of alpha rays, and they can actually . . . well, we have entire maps updated monthly to avoid areas of high cosmic rays, because they had negative effects on the Bernstein Drives for unknown reasons. So massive . . . it wouldn’t be good,” Yonder said.

“You have any idea of the source?” Devon asked.

“I haven’t had anything on the sensors, but I was too busy to look,” Cara said.

“Of course. Okay, make a note or a report please. We will be busy repairing the ship,” Devon said.

“I don’t think you get it. We might have been attacked!” Cara’s voice rose.

“I understand.” Devon sat up, looking at the woman. “The thing is, we already knew that. The Catania was attacked. The message was pretty clear about it. I’m not interested in the method as much as in who and how this was done, because that’s what we need to know to keep future attacks from happening.” Devon shrugged. “So, great work. We—”

“This chamber is radiation protected,” Yonder suddenly said. They both turned to him. “Just saying, it wouldn’t work like that. We avoid cosmic rays in case, but it isn’t like any contact makes our ship go dead.”

Cara stood there for a moment. Then she shook her head. “I can only report what I saw.” She turned and left.

“Did I say something wrong?” Yonder asked.

“No, I don’t think so. They did something to us, just like they did to the Catania. What she picked up was probably not the whole picture,” Devon replied.

“Them?” Yonder finally asked.

“Whoever. I have no idea who did this.”

“No, no, wait. You haven’t just implied . . .” Yonder sat up. “Seriously, we should talk about this, if you expect us to . . . find someone out here. Something. Not human.”

“There were no life signs aboard. It’s ancient. I expect we will find nothing out here,” Devon clarified. “But just because they’re all dead, doesn’t mean their defense system is down. Right?” Devon asked and Yonder nodded and returned to work.

“Makes sense.” Yonder nodded.

****

“There she is,” Reon announced. “The Catania, or whatever is left of it.”

Devon had just entered the cockpit and leaned forward, to have a closer look at the wreckage of the ship they had been seeking. Actually, he looked at both parts, as the ship had broken apart.

“Sensors?”

“No energy, no life signs. Nothing. Two chunks of metal floating in space,” Cara said.

“Any idea why it . . . looks like this?” Devon asked.

“Meteor strike? Internal explosion?” Reon suggested.

“Not exactly many asteroids and meteors in this sector,” Lira said from her seat. Everybody turned to her. “I studied the area, of course.”

“Internal explosion then,” Reon said.

“Where’s the station?” Lira asked and Devon realized she was right; it wasn’t there anymore.

“According to the sensor data they provided, it should be right here,” Cara said.

Devon folded his arms. “Great.” He turned to the others. “Cara, you figure out where it is. Try to locate it. The Catania used some enemy recognition system, don’t we have one of those?”

“We do,” Cara replied.

“Get it going.”

“Yessir.” Her voice sounded increasingly annoyed. He would need to clear the air with her at some point, but not now.

“Okay, then we need to handle . . . this.” He pointed to the two floating parts, held together only by a few metal braces and tubes between the two parts.

“And how do you plan to do that?” Reon asked. “This thing has no atmosphere, no energy, it’s just—” He stopped and turned to Devon. “Oh no.”

Devon smirked at him and patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry, the pilot is excluded from the candidate list. Concerning the rest of you, you were all sold to me as highly trained individuals. Anyone got any experience with space walks?”

They all looked at each other. “You mean, wearing a space suit and moving through actually space?” Lira asked.

“Exactly what I meant.” Devon nodded.

“I do.” Vax hadn’t said a word for hours and had just sat in her chair, patiently enduring everything that happened. But of course, she had received military training and that probably included all kinds of situations the others weren’t trained for.

“Then suit up, Vax. Us two will go over there,” Devon said with a wink. “Reon, get us closer.”

Vax stood up and went back to the storage rooms. Lira looked after her and then stepped to Devon.

“You did a lot . . . spacewalks?” she asked.

“When we built Ikarus I joined the construction crews. I did my own welding work. So yeah, I know my way around out there.”

“When was that? Ten years ago?” Lira asked.

“You want to take my place?”

“No, no way.” She raised her hands.

“Looks like the princess isn’t getting her hands dirty.” Reon laughed.

“I am no princess, soldier,” Lira answered.

“Not? Thought you were part of the Tanasca family?”

“Is my second name Tanasca? I am a Siola. My parents work for the Union. I’m no nobility of any kind, so stop calling me princess.” She stomped out of the cockpit without giving him a chance to reply.

“What was that about?” Devon asked.

“Just had some fun. She was with a Tanasca boy. Heard it when I waited for the rest of you to show up,” Reon said. “Thought I might remind her she’s nothing special.”

“She is. She’s my second-in-command. Don’t forget that next time you try to tease her.” Devon turned to get into his own suit, too.

****

Vax had left the military suit to him. He found that surprising, considering she probably had way more experience wearing one of those. It took him a few minutes to get adjusted to the armored suit, which supported every movement with servos that gave him more strength and agility than a usual suit would allow. The drawback was the Heads-Up Display that showed a symphony of useful information from the oxygen levels within and outside the suit to radiation, proximity to others, energy levels, and the ammo in the weapon at his side.

He had to control the HUD through eye movement, and it took him a minute to even figure out how. Then he started to fade out all the data he deemed unnecessary, which was almost all of it, except the proximity sensors. Everything he looked at was measured by how far away it was. Stomping after Vax, who wore a way simpler gray space suit, he saw his own reflection in the wall they passed. With the glowing visor integrated into the helmet and the sleek shape he looked strangely dangerous. These suits were clearly made to intimidate the enemy. Vax didn’t seem impressed though. She passed through the equipment in Storage Room Two, as it was fittingly named, and stepped into the main airlock. He hadn’t seen it before, but as the metal gate hissed open and the panel next to it went from green to orange, he was relieved to see that the room behind the gate was actually large enough for both of them to stand next to each other.

Everything here was so spacious, the entire structure so oversized, dreamlike almost. It was so unlike the ships that had carried the workers through space to the Ikarus construction site. Those had been tiny. Barely space worthy. Everyone had put on their suits before entering them, since there hadn’t been enough room for that inside. Then they stepped into those airlocks, and they had been like coffins. Each time, he had felt like screaming, unable to even lift his arms, feeling his oxygen tanks pressed against the wall, afraid it would loosen and he would die of slow suffocation.

The doors closed and Devon took the security cable from his suit and attached it to Vax.

“How many hours have you been in space?” he asked.

“Ten, maybe twelve,” she replied and checked the rifle she had brought with her. “You?”

“Over 200,” Devon replied. “I once enjoyed it.”

“Not anymore?”

“Not today,” Devon replied. “This ship is a tomb. We’ll find a lot of dead people on it. People who came here, like us.” 

“You’ve never been on a battlefield, have you? They are covered with dead people.”

“Ten seconds until gravity is switched off. Fifteen until ejection,” Reon announced over comm. The voice was terribly loud, and Devon immediately began looking through the available menus to tune the sound of the radio down. He found it and most of his ten seconds were gone.

Gravity vanished gently and he felt how only his magnetic boots kept him in place, as his body became so incredibly light that it could float.

“Ready?” he asked Vax.

“What’s our mission parameter?” Vax asked.

“Retrieve the ship’s data,” Devon said. “That’s all we can do for them.”

“So annoying that you need to search the ship, when you have no idea where the station has gone to, hmm?” Vax seemed to mock him a little. He couldn’t answer, as the front gates blared an alarm and then opened. Once he deactivated the boots, his body floated out of the airlock and Vax followed him, connected to him by the security cable.

As he entered the cold, vast, and endless void that was space, his eyes couldn’t leave the giant shape in front of them. The Remus had gotten close enough to send their lights over the hull, showing the structure. It had been massive, easily ten, fifteen times the size of their ship. The entire plated hull was covered in power nodes and tubes. He was sure there had been lights once, but they had died down long ago.

“How long has this been here?” Vax asked and the steam from her back moved her forward. Devon still tried to figure out how the thrusters of his suit worked, so he let her drag him along for now. He finally found them and gave himself a push, too.

The proximity sensor told him they were quickly bridging the 90-foot gap between them and the ship. There were 60 left.

“63 years. Probably been like this the entire time. Floating here in space, while an entire generation of space families hoped for a miracle that would never come.”

“Oh, you’re kind of dark.” Vax seemed amused.

“I’m just new to this. Guess it still gets to me,” Devon confirmed and gave them another push with his thrusters, accelerating their flight a little. It felt so unnatural being out here. The weightless, soundless nature of space didn’t seem hostile, yet he was fully aware that the slightest exposure to it would make him freeze to death almost instantly. Deadly and peaceful at the same time.

“See the opening to the right, on the top level? We’ll enter there.” Devon adjusted his flight trajectory with half a burst of gas from his thrusters.

“That was an airlock,” Vax said.

“Must have—” He actually wondered why an airlock would burst. If a ship broke apart it wasn’t higher pressure from within, but lower.

“It was ripped open from the outside,” Vax answered his question. “Look how the metal was bent to the outside.”

Devon slowed his approach, as he got closer by activating the reverse thrusters with a short burst. She was right. If you looked at it correctly, one could see how the metal bent away as if some outside force had dragged it apart to break the locking mechanism.

“So, something entered. From the outside.” Devon felt the comment sounded so harmless, when it truly was a revelation that terrified him to the core. It meant something was out here. Something that could move, think and was strong enough to break through an airlock door, that was meant to be unbreakable.

“Checking weapon,” Vax announced, suddenly in full operations mode.

Devon doubted whatever it was had been hanging out in the wreckage for 63 years, yet whatever it had been had probably been here for a long time. What were 63 years compared to the millennia it must have been hiding in the depth of space? He took his own gun from his side and readied it. In his display, a crosshair and an ammo status appeared right away. Twelve shots of plasma ammo.

“So, they were attacked,” Devon said.

“Please repeat, Devon,” Reon said over the radio.

“Radio silence,” he ordered, not because he believed anyone could listen, but simply because he didn’t know what to think about this himself yet.

The ship was 20 feet away, quickly coming closer. The gaping hole in the side was easily large enough for them to enter. Vax slipped in first and reached the edges of the entrance, pushing herself forward. The small bright light of the flashlight integrated into her helmet moved into the darkness.

“The second door was opened manually,” she reported.

“So, the entering party wasn’t all brute force.” As he noted the fact, he pushed himself forward too and followed her. The interior of the airlock looked strangely unharmed. He had almost expected the signs of a ravaging beast, ripping apart everything in its way. But this had all been the work of a reasonable, thinking attacker. It made whoever or whatever had done this only more dangerous.

Vax was already through the next door, and she had a gun with an additional flashlight out as she moved through the corridors. He followed. His military armor had several flashlights. Not only one pointing in the direction he looked, attached to the helmet, but also two in the arms. As he followed Vax, a single body floated through the corridor. Blue, frozen, and unmoving, a young man in gray overalls stared with eyes that for 63 years had sent this hollow stare into the darkness floated past them.

“First victim. When the airlock opened the atmosphere was sucked out and they could come in. The doors closed automatically, sounding an alarm for hull breach.” Vax pointed to the closed door in the direction the man came from. “Then they sent someone down here to look what had happened, but the attacker had escaped by then.” She waved her light bulb around, looking for something. “Vents, I guess.”

“Well, we need to open the doors,” he only replied, and she got out a small black box. An energy cell.

“Should work through induction.” She pushed herself forward, floating towards the door. He activated the magnet boots and felt the push to the ground. He heard the metal attach itself to the floor with a loud clonk. He had always preferred the simulated normality of magnet boots to the unnatural free float of the zero-g thrusters. Starting to walk, he saw Vax attach the energy cell to the door and the panel lit up. Pressing the green button, she floated back as the door opened. A long, dark corridor became visible behind it. There was a cloud of dust or some other particles behind it and it limited the view to a few meters. Electric cables hung from the roof, as if someone had ripped them out. Devon wondered why and couldn’t come up with any good explanation. Maybe they had gone insane. Starvation and slow suffocation could do this to people.

“No bodies,” Vax said.

“No, nobody seemed to care about the entrance. As if they had another problem,” Devon concluded and then he stomped forward. He played with his internal HUD and found the ship’s maps. “Let’s get to the front of the ship, where the bridge is, and get the data. I don’t want to stay around here for a moment longer than necessary,” Devon said, and Vax activated her boots too. He holstered his weapon again.

“It may be too early to let your guard down, Captain.”

“It’s Devon.”

“No, to me it’s Captain. Hard enough to accept your authority anyway.” Vax sighed and moved, the rifle up and started to pass the corridor.

To the left, Devon saw a large door open and waved his lights inside. Crates. There were easily 100 crates there, towed and secured, building lines with long dark alleys. One was in the front though, pushed over. An oval object seemed to float half a foot over the ground near it. The surface was still shiny. After 63 years, it still seemed to have energy.

“Wait.” Devon took a step towards the object. “Do we have any information on what the Catania transported?”

“You’re the man with all the insights.”

“I have next to no information. Lira? Devon to Lira.”

“Yes?” Lira answered over the comm. “Are you okay?” 

“Yes, we’re inside now. Do we have any information on what the Catania transported?” Devon knelt in front of the object. He was surprisingly good at moving in that suit. It allowed almost unlimited movement, different than a spacesuit.

“That’s a curious detail. We don’t know,” Lira said.

“How do we not know? The professor said he received the information from a source of House Itoris.”

“Yes, but he . . . the cargo was classified even for that guy,” Lira answered.

“It looks like some weapon system,” Vax said, and Devon tipped against the object. Four red lights turned on the surface and started to slowly rotate on it.

“What are you doing there?” Vax asked.

“I’m looking if it’s still active,” Devon said.

“Can you transmit a picture?” This was Reon speaking again.

“Yes, processing.” Devon needed a moment to find the right connection and interface in his helmet and then sent the picture.

“Oh wow,” Reon answered.

“You know what this is?” Devon asked.

“That is a KAPA gravity mine,” Reon answered.

“Makes sense that they transported weapons, if the information was classified,” Devon said.

“No, you don’t understand. Those things were used in the Insurgency Wars, about . . . I don’t know, a couple of hundred years ago. They were banned afterwards in the weapons limitation treaties—” Reon said.

“The Hades Accords.” Devon remembered hearing about it. “What do gravity mines do?”

“They drag you out of subspace. Or strand you there, depending on how they are used,” Vax explained. “They simulate a gravity anomaly that forces the—” Vax looked at Devon.

“The Bernstein Drive to malfunction?” Devon asked.

“Exactly,” Vax replied.

“So that’s probably a better explanation than mysterious alien tech. Sabotage.” Devon mused.

“We don’t know that,” Vax stated.

“It’s a better explanation and it can hardly be a coincidence. I mean, these things were transported from Hegemony space to Oligarch space. Or in other words, they were stolen. They could hardly have acquired them legally.” Devon stood up. “Maybe one of them was an agent of the Hegemony.”

“That’s speculation, Captain,” Vax said.

“Anyway, why is one here and active?” Devon asked. “Maybe they were looking for something useful.”

Aven got up and turned back to the exit. “We don’t have time to check the rest. Let’s concentrate on our mission.”

“Wasn’t my idea to check this out,” Vax only replied.

Devon didn’t care to comment but started to walk. He stopped as he heard a loud sound. It was as if metal hit on metal. He dragged the handgun from the holster again and saw the ammo stats and crosshair reappear in his visor.

“Maybe our entrance has—” Vax began.

“This is a ship created to hold thousands of metric tons. Us walking the corridors shouldn’t do anything, even in the bad shape this thing is.” Devon knew she had the same thought he had. Whatever had attacked, was it still here? Was it possible something had waited for someone to come here for 63 years? It sounded hardly realistic. Yet, what did they know? The space station was gone. So, whatever had come here . . . if it had come from the station, it might not have been able to get back.

“We should hurry.” Devon got closer, checking the map to make sure the bridge was indeed at the end of the corridor. Right where crew quarters were.

“Devon? We checked the aft part of the ship, the other part—” Lira was in his comm.

“Yes?” he asked, hoping it was important enough to justify the distraction.

“There’s a higher level of radiation there. Residual radiation, we assume,” Lira said. “The core seems to have . . . those old cores used a radioactive solution for containment that consists partially of Thorium Nitrate, a highly radioactive material. We . . . think it might have leaked.”

Devon checked the environment in his suit. Indeed, low-level radiation was even accounted for here, but not enough to harm them in their suits, according to the reading.

“So, they died of radiation poisoning,” Devon concluded. An effective way to kill everybody aboard. Bringing the radioactive material into the ventilation and life support system and spreading it throughout the ship.

“You should be careful—” Lira began.

“Levels aren’t that high here anymore. It’s been a long time. Most will have gone to space, after the ship broke apart.” Devon slowly started to understand. Something had entered the ship and had made its way to the reactor. It had manipulated it, set free the radioactive material and then had patiently waited for everyone to die. This had been a clearly-defined mission to kill the crew.

“Check environment with passive scanners. Any object coming close to the ship you will shoot down immediately, hear me?” Devon ordered the crew.

“Understood,” Reon said. “Nothing on the sensors though.”

“Good.” Devon released a breath and closed his eyes. Suddenly he felt imprisoned in this suit. It felt like a shell that was as much his prison as his protection from the cold of space outside.

“Captain?” Vax whispered and his eyes snapped open. He heard it too. Sounds. Clonking sounds.

“Into the room.” Devon pointed to the door on the right. Vax swiftly attached the energy cell and the panel blinked alive. She pushed the green button once again, and nothing happened at first. Then he heard the sound. It came closer. It was in the same corridor. Vax pushed the button again and again and finally the door slid open halfway. Vax began pushing herself inside, almost getting stuck with the oxygen tank on the back of her suit. Devon turned his light to the corridor. The clonking sound was accompanied by a squeaking one, as if something was dragged over the metal floor. He couldn’t see anything, but the dust was also limiting the distance his lightbulb could penetrate. Vax was through and he followed instantly, dragging the energy cell from the wall.

“Lights out,” Devon hissed, and he also deactivated his lights and pointed the handgun at the slit in the door.

“Devon, what’s going on over there?” Lira asked over the comm.

“Silence,” he hissed. The sound came closer. 63 years. This wasn’t a human. No oxygen tank would last 63 years. There was no food for 63 years. The ship had broken apart. No, nothing human would survive this. Taking in one deep breath, he felt Vax shift next to him in the dark as she raised her rifle to the door.

The sound was close. Very close. It would pass the door any second. Yet, it didn’t. It stopped. Devon tried to imagine whatever it was standing outside the door. Listening, waiting for a life sign. He kept his arm up, the lack of gravity and the servos in the suit making it possible.

A moment passed, without them breathing. The suit reported his oxygen level was dropping. He blinked to deactivate the visor, fearing it would send any light visible from the outside.

Then a single stomp was heard. There was no light whatsoever, either outside or inside. Just complete darkness. Whatever horror was out there, he imagined it staring at him in the dark right now. His finger moved to the trigger. Should he shoot? Was this his last chance to do so? 

He was just about to fire his handgun when the sound returned. Right in front of the door, a stomp and a squeak. Another stomp and a squeak. Whatever it was, it was pulling its leg after. It had two legs. Humanoid. The sound started to move away, making its way to the bridge.

“We abort mission. Where’s the next airlock?” he asked, whispering, and Vax turned on one flashlight, pointing it at the floor. Devon followed it with his eyes. The light moved down the hallway until it showed another cargo room full of crates. Vax pointed the light through the dark alley between the towering walls of crates. At the end of the cargo room. Of course. The loading ramps.

“Go,” he whispered.

“We don’t—?” Vax began to ask; he already knew what her question was going to be though. Would they not want to find out what wandered these halls? Of course, he did. But whatever it was, it had probably killed everyone aboard 63 years ago and he didn’t feel confident enough they could handle it to take the risk. Actually, all he wanted was to get out.

“No, we don’t.” He began to move, turning the lights in his helmet on. Between the crates there were only shadows. Then behind them came another squeaking sound. This one wasn’t of something pulled over the floor. No, he knew what it was. The door was pushed fully open.

Accelerating his steps as much as the magnetic boots allowed, he moved forward and looked back. Far away, at the entrance of the cargo room, he saw a single light behind Vax. He stopped and aimed at it. Vax turned around right away as she saw what he did.

“You’ll open the gates. I’ll keep watch,” Devon said, and Vax confirmed by passing him. She had the energy cells. It had to be him that stayed behind. Turning off his lights, he waited in the dark and aimed at the red dot of light moving back and forth. What was this? Was it a head? Was this a visor?

It didn’t come closer but seemed to stand there in the dark.

“Vax? How far are we?” he asked into the comm.

“I’ll need all the energy cells; it takes a moment,” she replied.

“We don’t have a moment, speed up.” As if it had heard him, the red dot began to move, accompanied by the stomp and the dragging sound. It was coming. 60 feet away and getting closer. Devon had no training for combat situations. He wondered how long he should wait before he fired the gun.

“Opening in three, two, one . . . damn,” Vax reported. “Need another moment.”

“It’s coming,” Devon hissed the words and took aim. He had only a faint idea how tall it was, but it walked on both legs and if he assumed the red light was its head . . . he aimed between it and the ground. “Vax! Now!”

“I need 30 seconds!”

Devon knew that was too long. He had to win time. And there was only one thing he could do.

He fired.

Not one, but four shots glowed in the dark as they made their way to the creature. The first shot hit in the dark and the plasma spread, sending an orange glow into the shadows. Then the second hit and the third missed, as the creature dived aside. He could see it now. Black. Mechanical. Almost human in its bipedal shape with two powerful arms. But the movements weren’t human. It leapt up and began to climb the wall of crates as the fourth shot hit it. The plasma burned through the things, but it made no sound. The black, opaque and jaded body with those broad shoulders seemed to move unhindered by the damage it suffered. Devon shot again, trying to estimate the path it would take. It moved incredibly fast when it was climbing. 

He missed terribly and decided against wasting any more ammo. The glow vanished on top of the crates. 

“Vax, it’s on the crates!” He turned around to make it to the woman. He switched on all his lights, now favoring visibility over stealth. The thing knew now they were here.

“What is it?” Vax asked Devon as she placed energy cells on the wall.

“A robot, I think. Humanoid. Large. At least ten feet and damn fast,” Devon reported the little he had seen in the dark.

“Okay, let’s try this!” Vax returned to the control panel and put her last energy cell next to it. Devon heard the clonking sound from above and looked to the end of the wall of crates, right over them. The glow was dying down, but he saw how it pushed itself forward and came downwards. He aimed up and fired his handgun. Again, he missed. Hissing out air in frustration, he pulled the trigger again and again and again, sending up glowing cartridges filled with pulsating plasma. Finally, he hit it and the dark body hurled around as it changed its momentum and floated up. Zero gravity. It would keep on floating upwards until it hit the ceiling.

A loud creak came from behind and he saw the gates opening up out of the corner of his eyes.

“You’ll go first!” he yelled, and Vax didn’t object, but turned upwards and sent a salvo of plasma shots upwards, before leaping through the gate to the outside. Devon stepped to the control panel and from above, he heard metal hit metal. The thing had reached the ceiling and would now push itself back down. He might be able to hit it again, but his ammo display showed he had only three shots left. He needed those for something else. The gate was six feet wide open, the large metal doors sliding into the walls terribly slow. He pushed the red button, and the gates immediately changed direction and began closing again. He pushed himself to them and deactivated the magnetic boots. Moving half out of the closing gates, he aimed at the energy cells and waited until the edges of the gates almost pressed against his armor. Then he fired a single shot and pushed himself out, sliding into space, as behind him the energy cells exploded as fluid plasma engulfed them. The small shockwave that the explosion sent accelerated his drift.

“Ship, get battle ready. On my command, open fire on the Catania!” Devon yelled.

“We had contact, repeat, enemy contact,” Vax reported to whoever.

“Weapons powering up!” Reon reported.

“What did you see? Devon, we can’t—” That was Lira, who was probably about to protest the idea of blowing this thing to hell. Yet, she was shut up by someone.

Devon saw in his proximity sensors that he was 20 feet away.

“Fire at will! Aim for the cargo room we just exited from!” he yelled and Reon followed his order instantly. The two guns on top of the ship began to silently spread orange balls of fire that hit the Catania and burned through the hull. Hundreds of shots rattled into the hull, not making a sound in space.

“Pick us up!” Vax yelled and Devon understood a second too late what she was so afraid of. The cargo room exploded in a numb, soundless orange ball of fire and Devon realized the mistake he had made. The shockwave crawled through space and hit him, sending him hurling through the void. He couldn’t see anything. In his display, alarms were sounding. His head felt as if it might burst any second. His vision turned blurry and his muscles spasmed, as he helplessly rotated through space. He tried to open the thruster’s menu but couldn’t control the suit in this state.

Then his blurry vision filled with red and slowly turned black.

Darkness.

Darkness became all there was.

Chapter 8

“He’s waking up.” That was Vax’s voice.

Devon’s eyes snapped open. A bright light from above blinded him and he covered his eyes with his hand.

“What—?” He wondered what he wanted to ask. What happened? What did you do? Where . . . where am I?

“We picked you up about a click away from . . . what was once the Catania. We blew the entire ship to pieces. It was a really easy task, since it seems to have been carrying something explosive.” That was Reon speaking. Devon felt an injector at his neck.

“Is it—?”

“No sign of it. But when we hit the gravity mines, it got really ugly. There’s nothing left of the ship but dust.” Reon kept on explaining and gave him a second injection.

“What is this?” Devon asked.

“You have a mild concussion, and that will help with the pain,” Reon explained. Devon realized he was still in the suit. They had only removed his helmet. Sitting up to escape the bright light, he saw he was in the medbay, lying on a stretcher of strengthened metal. Lira and Cara stood there at the wall, watching him, while Vax and Reon seemed to have taken care of his medical treatment.

“Thanks. I feel fine,” Devon said, though it was only half true. He felt dizzy, disoriented. Shaking his head only made it worse, as if the pain waited under a veil of drugs. “I need to get out of this suit!”

“Slow down,” Reon said. “You took quite a hit and rotated for almost five minutes. Your body is under a lot of stress—”

“I don’t care, get the suit off me!” Aven said.

“We can’t,” Vax said. He turned to her. “The lock is damaged. We can repair it, or we could cut you out of it, but that would damage it beyond repair.”

Devon looked at her and swallowed. They couldn’t damage the suit. They might need it. “Where is Yonder? He needs to—” Devon stopped.

“We can’t get him. The explosion caused some damage to our ship. He’s busy repairing it,” Vax explained.

Devon inhaled deeply and tried to calm himself. He looked at the armored gloves and then realized getting out of the suit wasn’t a priority. “Report.”

“We have minor damage to our communications, which are useless out here anyway, and some to the hull. Nothing dramatic. Also, some electrical circuits have burned through, and we lost one of the guns,” Cara said.

“Yonder is working on the electricity before there are any more shorts,” Reon said.

“But we found the station—” Lira said almost proudly.

Pushing himself off the stretcher, Devon stood up.

“You should really take it slowly,” Vax advised.

“The suit is powered. It would keep me on my feet even if I lost consciousness. We’ll meet in the mess in five. Yonder will join if he can.” Devon shook his head again. It didn’t help make his head clearer.

****

“What did you see over there?” Lira asked first, sitting with the entire crew on the couches, as Devon stood at the end with the dark suit still on.

“I saw almost nothing. The captain did a face off with the thing,” Vax said.

“Which was your job, right?” Yonder had joined them and he said this with a surprising sharpness for his usually mild-mannered temper so far.

“I followed his orders,” Vax replied.

“She had the energy cells, so it made sense I covered her,” Devon replied. “What I saw . . .” Everyone turned their attention to him. “Not an extraterrestrial lifeform, if that is what you expect. It was dark, and I only saw it when my shot hit it. A plasma bolt right into the chest, if I’m right, and it didn’t kill it. Or stop it. I think it wasn’t organic. A robot of sorts, but highly advanced. Humanoid. Seven feet tall maybe. Could crawl up walls. The leg was damaged, and it dragged it after it. It was clearly hostile.”

“A robot still active after 63 years?” Reon asked.

“It could have been placed there later on; we shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” Lira said.

“It could also have been in sleep mode, only reactivating when it heard us or sensed us in some way. Heat maybe,” Devon said. “I think it’s a strong working hypothesis this thing was what attacked the ship and killed the entire crew.”

“Took out the security team? They had security on board,” Reon said.

“They might have been among those sent to the station. I think only a skeleton crew remained and that made it easy for it to sneak around and sabotage the reactor,” Devon said. “But that isn’t the point. The point is . . . the crew of the Catania found the station, some entered it, and the main crew never heard from the boarding crew again. We know that from the message. Then this thing attacked the ship, probably passing through space towards the ship and ripping out an airlock with its bare hands. It acted strategically, poisoning the crew and then probably took out those that remained in their weakened state. We need to assume . . . we should work under the hypothesis that the station is also to some extent hostile and therefore dangerous.” Devon looked at the others.

“Maybe we should reconsider this,” Cara finally spoke. “You said you hit it with a plasma bolt, and it kept on moving. Maybe this entire operation would be better suited for a military mission anyway.”

“And hand them over this technology without even knowing what it is?” Lira asked. “That’s exactly the reason why we all have been hired.”

“You haven’t been hired. You were chosen,” Reon said.

“We’re here to do a job,” Devon intervened before the idea of them turning around took hold. “We shall gather information aboard the station. I’m not surprised there’s some sort of defensive mechanism to it. After all, it must have been valuable for anyone who built it.” Devon sighed. “So, your turn. Where’s the station?”

They all turned to Lira.

“It moves. A slow-moving orbit around the blue dwarf sun in the center of the system. In these 63 years, it has slowly drifted away. It’s barely visible with the bare eye. We sent out drones to look for energy spikes, but our readings are a bit . . . distorted . . . we have found an energy source right here.” She waved her hand and a hologram appeared over the table showing the entire system. The red dot blinked within the holographic representation of the outer edge of the Zweistein Nebula.

“It’s in the nebula?”

“Only 20 clicks inside. It has barely made it to the deeper layer and it will . . . it will pass through a considerable portion of it, getting much deeper and stay there for at least four decades,” Lira said. Devon looked at Reon and then at the others.

The Zweistein Nebula was called impenetrable for a reason with all the ionized gas, asteroids of all sizes floating inside of it, and electrical storms unleashing in unpredictable patterns. Spacer legends called it the Wall, as they believed someone in ancient times had created this to divide the galaxy into two. Devon didn’t believe such a thing. In a galaxy of unlimited proportions any number of hazards could combine by chance somewhere. Yet, no ship that had entered the nebula and stayed inside had survived for long.

“Will it make it? I mean, will the station be able to pass through it?” Devon asked.

“You tell me,” Lira said.

“I don’t know. We know nothing about what it’s made of and what it can do, but I imagine even a station of this size . . . the largest asteroids inside are fifteen, twenty miles in diameter. If one of them hits it, this thing will be gone,” Devon said.

“Those larger asteroids are mostly in the upper fields,” Reon said.

“Mostly, yeah,” Cara replied.

“So, this is game over, right?” Yonder said. “We can’t get into the nebula. Nobody can.” He shrugged. “It’s famous for being deadly.”

“Nobody can pass through it. Many ships have entered and left unharmed,” Lira said.

“Specialized vessels, made to withstand the stress of the nebula,” Cara added.

“This vessel was made to withstand high stress. It’s an exploration vessel more modern and capable than anything ever sent inside.” Lira still defended the mission.

“Captain?” Vax asked Devon. He had been afraid that sooner or later someone would address him. The fact the station might not survive the journey made it even more pressing that they researched it. Yet, he wondered how far he could go . . . how much danger was the crew willing to accept? He had nothing to lose. Nothing really worth going back to. He had a small flat and some drinking buddies who would probably wonder where he was when they played cards on Tuesdays. Everybody else might have family, loved ones. He knew next to nothing about the crew. Another mistake. He should have asked for files and such things.

“Reon? What do you say? Can we get to the station safely?” Devon asked his pilot.

“Safely? Entering the Zweistein Nebula is anything but safe.” Reon leaned back.

“See?” Cara said.

“But?” Devon asked.

“It’s only 20 clicks and this part of the nebula is traditionally a little less wild than any other. I know a few guys who mined it for gas even when they had little else to do.” Reon looked at Devon. “So yeah, I think I can get you there. We’ll need to fly blind, since sensors don’t work inside. But it can be done. But I can’t wait around. We get in, you take the shuttle and I get out and come pick you up later.”

“If there’s anything to pick up at all,” Vax said. “Going into the station without an exit strategy sounds unwise, if you ask me.”

Devon nodded.

“What if we land the ship aboard?” Lira threw in. Devon had the same thought but hadn’t dared to spit it out.

“That way we would have a way to get out quickly,” Yonder surprisingly agreed. Devon eyed the man, realizing he was as curious as Devon about the station.

“It also would put each and every one of us in danger,” Cara said.

“Which is what we were paid for,” Vax replied.

“Not me. I was paid to get you there,” Reon answered.

“We’re all here for the same thing: to get as much information about the station as possible.” Lira made her move, but nobody seemed to listen.

“I’m an astrogation and sensors officer!” Cara said.

“And considering sensors will be part of the exploration strategy, you would have accompanied us anyway.” Devon sighed and turned to Cara. “So, for you, this is only a higher chance of survival. The ship is armored, and all our resources are on it. We can barely get proper equipment and four people into the shuttle.”

“I want double payment for that,” Reon stated.

Devon closed his eyes. “I can’t decide over your payment, sorry. Not my job.”

“What are you talking about? You’re leading the mission?” Reon asked.

“If he gets double, so do I!” Yonder said. “I’m about to be thrown in there too, and now that we know killer robots might hang out there, we need to discuss the payment issue.”

“Well, let’s see.” Lira waved her hand. “So far, none of you will get a HUC more than the base payment. Our first mission was to identify the reason the Catania was destroyed.”

“Which we did! We know the reactor was sabotaged—” Reon began.

“We know nothing. It’s our theory. It could have been damaged later, after the crew was dead by the robot that was still around. It might not have been damaged at all, because all we got were drone readings. We have a theory and considering we blew the ship up, we will never be able to prove it.” Lira folded her arms. “A theory might be good if we bring home our second goal and deliver on that front, but if we abandon the mission? I don’t think you will see any of the considerable bonus payment promised to all of you upon success.”

“Lira.” Devon raised his gloved hand. He felt so stupid in this suit.

“What I am saying is, you guys still need to earn most of your fee, and I can assure you the professor won’t look kindly upon you abandoning the mission, but if you want to, I am fine. The station is now safe, hidden from any accidental discovery. We can return and I’ll put together a new crew. I have my doubts this one is up to the task ahead anyway.” Lira kept on talking.

“Lira!” Devon raised his voice, and her head snapped to him.

“What? You want to abandon too? I know you don’t. You mercenaries know the difference between Devon and me and you? Devon and I don’t even get paid. He didn’t even ask for payment!”

“Lira, it’s enough!” Devon hammered his fist onto the table. The hologram flickered from the impact. The suit made him unusually strong. “We are discussing the mission under all aspects and abandoning the mission is an option we need to be able to discuss too. So, I would appreciate it if you don’t try to pressure people into this. I want an open discussion on the topic!” Devon looked at her once more and then let his gaze wander over the others. “I don’t like the raised threat level either. I don’t like that we don’t have a platoon of soldiers with us or a damn Dreadnought-Class battleship. There are reasons for that though and those reasons are still valid. I can’t raise your salaries, but I assure you if we return successful, I’ll bring forth the dangers we had to face to achieve such a success and do what I can to get you all a doubled payment.”

Reon and Yonder both nodded, seemingly happy with that statement.

“That being said, we need to make sure everybody gets out alive and the best way to do so is by having a relatively safe retreat. So, we’ll bring the Remus inside the station, land there and Reon will be in the cockpit, ready for an emergency take-off at any given time. At the first sign of an attack, we secure what we got and get out of there.” Devon straightened himself. “That’s the plan and if anybody wants out, I’m willing to park them at the edge of the nebula inside the shuttle and pick them up on our way back.”

“In a shuttle without a subspace drive? If you never come back, we would starve out there,” Cara said.

“It isn’t without a risk, but I know you all knew there would be risks when we got here,” Devon said. Then he turned to Vax. “We will need something with a little bit more punch than my handgun.”

“I’ll set a perimeter with auto guns around the ship, and I suggest everybody takes a plasma rifle. I personally will take the Gauss gun. It should be enough to destroy anything made of matter that is bound to the laws of physics,” she said.

“Sounds good to me. So, I would ask if you all agree, but honestly, this isn’t a democracy. Anybody who wants to take the shuttle say it now.” Devon stared for a long moment at one of them after the other. His last glance went to Cara, who shook her head. They all agreed to come along.

“Great. Reon, get us to that station. Everybody else, prepare. Cara, you install sensors once we are in. Yonder, you’ll take samples of all materials you can find. Reon, you got the cockpit. Vax, you secure the perimeter and then accompany us. Lira and I will go inside and get a good look at this monstrosity from inside.” Devon clapped his hands, which sounded weird with the gloves. “So, get going. How long until we reach it?”

“Three hours,” Reon said.

“How long until we reach the nebula?”

“Two.”

Devon nodded. “One hour of preparation and then one hour of sleep for everyone. I assume when we get inside the nebula, you all want to be on the bridge.” Devon turned around and made his way to the cockpit. Not that he had anything to do there. It was simply his way of telling them all the discussion was over.

****

Cara was the one that came after him. Aven was surprised. She had neither approved of him, nor had shown any interest in conversation so far. But once he saw her face, he knew this wasn’t going to be casual conversation.

“Devon,” she said with the coldest smile in the galaxy.

“Cara. What can I do for you? Shouldn’t you prepare the scanner equipment?”

“Later. I have plenty of time for that. Listen.” She rolled her eyes. “I highly appreciate your attempt to play captain here. I think I speak for everyone around here when I say it’s rather obvious you haven’t the slightest clue what you’re doing.” Devon took a deep sigh and turned to her.

“Is that a fact?”

“It is.” She nodded. “Shooting at the Catania was stupid. You almost killed yourself and Vax, and you damaged the ship. If they had loaded anything with a little more power, it might have killed us all.”

“I had to eliminate the danger on board.”

“You panicked. That’s what you did. You got scared and you wanted to kill it. Desperately wanted to kill this thing. So, you risked us all just to give in to your urges. Everybody who knows a thing about command, everyone’s who ever had a real commander knows it’s one of the main qualities of a commander to act against his urges and keep a cool head.”

Devon folded his arms. “I see. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I panicked and made wrong decisions. Obviously, you would have done so much better.” He stepped closer. “Would you think it’s wise, you leading the exploration into the station? I know enough about sensors to take your job. I mean, maybe we need to rethink this all.” Devon looked at Cara.

“I wouldn’t—”

“No, you wouldn’t. You would never risk your life. Which means you let me go, despite believing I might endanger all of the crew, right? Because you like to criticize, but you are one of those who don’t feel the critic needs to make it better. No. You like to feel superior, while you really are nothing but someone who questions past decisions after they’ve been made. Which makes you in a way . . . useless. If you protested while I wasn’t there, offered valuable insight and alternative strategies . . . but no. Afterwards, you know better.”

“You’re arrogant. Another trait not good for a commander,” she said.

“Oh, I’m not good at the whole commanding thing.” He nodded. “Certainly. I just came to realize the simple truth. Lira is too fanatical. Yonder and Reon only want the money. Vax is a grunt, a soldier, and you? You are nothing but a critic. I got this command because the professor knew I would at least . . . try. And I know about these things. More than you do.” He waved his hand. “Now, go prepare and think about how wrong I am with anything I said, as I am sure you usually do.”

Cara clenched her teeth but didn’t say a word. After a long moment of simply staring at him with those angry eyes, she turned around and swiftly left the cockpit.

“You made someone angry there,” Reon said as he passed him and got to his seat.

“Yeah, guess hierarchy does that to people. Most of the people who work in my shift are my friends, but I realized long ago how annoyed they get by me giving orders. Now I got even more power and seemed to be disliked even more for it.” Devon sighed.

“I kinda like you.” Reon shrugged. “You get shit done. Going over there yourself showed the right spirit if you ask me.” Reon took the pilot seat and started the engines.

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Yeah, and what shift are you talking about?” Reon asked.

“I was a shift leader in a ship salvaging operation on Nesoi,” he answered.

“I thought you were a big deal engineer?”

“Long ago I was. Nowadays I’m a shift leader.”

“I see. The professor got only the best of the best it seems.” Reon laughed. Devon didn’t comment. “I was kicked out of the navy for flying drunk. Haven’t touched a drink in years, but anyway. I wouldn’t have been my first choice.”

“You’re doing great though, right? Which means the professor was probably better at seeing things than we were.” Devon turned to leave.

“Where are you going?” Reon asked. “I hoped for company.”

“I’ll be back soon. First, I need to record a report. I’ll send the first of our long-distance messenger drones to the professor. In case we never get out of that nebula.”

“Oh, and did I mention you have such a nice way to lower the morale?” Reon laughed. Devon ignored him. They all knew that it was a possibility.

Chapter 9

Hattinger replayed the report a dozen times. The part about the robotic attacker was the one he had replayed even more often. Devon Rayvolt had told the tale with a calm voice, but Hattinger heard the slight tremble, the terror it had been for him to face such an opponent. The only reason he was still sane was probably because he didn’t understand the full impact of what he had seen.

After centuries of humanity only finding dead civilizations, he had finally made contact with something remotely alive. A machine maybe, but something that . . . had witnessed the past. A relic from the past that could reveal . . . in detail probably the history of its creators. Never before had anyone found anything like that.

Hattinger cursed the man for destroying this specimen, but hoped Lira would do better if they encountered any more aboard the space station.

The door beeped and Hattinger looked up. The sun hadn’t even come up and he had been musing over the consequences of such a finding all night, mourning the loss of such a unique opportunity. It was way too early for visitors.

He opened the door by pressing a button on his desk and got up. A familiar face stepped into the room. With her curly black hair, her fit body in the tight red body suit and the signal of the Tanasca family proudly attached to her chest, Alexania Tanasca looked as if she hadn’t aged a day since they had last met.

“Lex.” He gave her a warm smile. Although he knew this visit wouldn’t be a courteous one, he was indeed delighted to see his old friend again.

“Professor.” She spread her arms, coming closer for the hint of a hug, before she stepped back again. “You look splendid. Healthy.”

“Thank you for such a charming lie. I haven’t slept all night.” Hattinger laughed at her.

“I know. The computer said you were awake and have even for more than 24 hours. You must be careful. It might soon inform the medical personnel of an imminent health crisis,” Lex joked.

“Oh, the advantages of surveillance.”

“Well, you’ve gotten rid of most of it, I heard. A free university, where thoughts can be voiced freely. Wasn’t it that what you asked the Matriarch for?”

“I’m sure a few microphones remained anyway.”

“Certainly.” They both laughed. It was a duo of faked laughter.

“So, to what do I owe the honor of your visit? The leader of the house’s science division doesn’t visit an aging professor at such uncommon hours to rekindle old friendships, I believe,” Hattinger said. “Not that I think it needs rekindling.”

“Are you . . . there are rumors, Professor. Rumors about an unsanctioned mission initiated by you.” Lex jumped straight to the point, as he knew her to do.

“Really? Fascinating.”

“Fascinating? You’re accused of—” Lex began, but he raised his hand.

“No, I’m not,” Hattinger said this as a fact, and Lex shut up right away. She sighed before speaking again.

“What do you mean by that? You’re not?” she asked with a polite smile.

“I’ve been at this university now for . . . what? Two decades? And funny enough I never heard or became aware of any law, rule or guideline that requires me to . . . what did you call it? Sanction? There’s no rule that requires me to sanction a research mission. So, whoever spread rumors of me ordering unsanctioned missions clearly was unaware I’m the only authority who must sanction a mission.” Hattinger shrugged.

“There’s the academic council of the university that also—”

“Only if it’s a university-sponsored mission. Honestly? I usually bypass bureaucracy and fund missions myself. Not that expensive. Digging is cheap, you know?” Hattinger saw she disliked that answer.

“Professor, you are, as always, the smarter one. You’re right, you needed no permission. Yet, when it comes to certain topics, the House of Tanasca, who you serve as a citizen of their Oligarchy and who you owe for protecting you . . . expects a certain sensibility,” Lex said.

“And what kind of topic would that be?” Hattinger looked as innocent as possible.

“Alien technology. As you know all too well. You know she has an interest in such things.” Lex stared at him. When she said ‘she’, she was referring to the Matriarch. Half ruler, half boogeyman nowadays.

“The Matriarch sends you to remind me where my loyalties lie. Lex, I’m not sure if I shall be flattered, insulted, or intimidated.” Hattinger folded his arms. “But I have . . . once I know what I am looking at, my conclusions become part of the Scientific Society. Yet, until I know . . . I’m not spreading gossip, or rumors. So . . . if I had sent this hypothetical mission, it would be to research the nature of what we found. Once I’ve concluded my research, I will gladly share it.”

“Professor, this isn’t how this works. And you know it. She heard rumors . . . rumors of a station. A space station of unknown origin!” Lex obviously intended to cut the chase short. She had never been one to play games.

“For all we know we might have found a secret research facility of the Authority. We need to . . . explore it.” Hattinger was aware he admitted the existence of the space station, but he also knew denial wouldn’t help. Someone had spilled out the secret. He would later have to think about who inside the small circle of university employees had known; whoever it had been was to be trusted no more.

“You didn’t go personally,” Lex remarked.

“No, I didn’t,” Hattinger said. “Which should clarify how shaky I suspect our information to be at this point. Not even worthy of my personal attention.”

“Then why didn’t you tell her? She would have gathered an excellent crew to help you—”

“How can you even ask that, Lex?” Hattinger felt the answer sounded probably too angry. He couldn’t help himself. “You think I’ve forgotten what you did last time? Acheron? What you did, Lex?”

“Me? I—”

“You and the Matriarch shut me out. We found . . . what we found changed everything. Not one, but two alien civilizations and two that were once at war. The virus . . . a living alien organism! And what did you do? How often have I been allowed to return? After risking my life for you? After losing friends for you? Hmm? How often did I get the chance to research what we found? Not once. Not even a single time did I get permission to return! Worse, nobody at the university even knows about it.”

“The planet and all it contains was classified as military. It was a decision made by the Matriarch without—” Lex began.

“Without consulting with you? I know it was you, Lex. Okay? I’ve seen the papers. You think I’ve been in House Tanasca for all this time and not made a few friends? You stole Acheron from me,” Hattinger said, and she instinctively folded her arms and stepped back.

“Professor, it isn’t like that. I’m . . . I’m working there on something. Something important and I beg to the stars one day I can reveal it to you . . . but—”

“It doesn’t matter, Lex. What matters is that I haven’t told the Matriarch about this space station because of that. I fear her; we both know I’m too smart not to. But she’s no scientist. She’s power-hungry like all those who hold power. But . . . I’m not. So, tell her once I’ve found out what this is, she’ll be the first to know. But neither do I have the capability to contact my people now, nor will I hand her the coordinates until I know what it is.” Hattinger gazed at her, and their eyes met.

“I could insist.”

“If you could insist, you would already have insisted. You could squash me like a bug under your feet. House Tanasca, the mighty House. Mightiest of all houses. I could become your pawn; you could make sure I never teach or research a single book for the rest of my life.” Hattinger turned to the desk. “The truth is though, that you want me to do my work. You want me to look at what is out there. It’s the sole reason why you gave me asylum after I left the Hegemony. It’s the reason you founded the xeno-archeology department. And that’s why you can’t insist. You can’t force me to do this because it isn’t how it works.” He folded his hands behind his back. “So let me do my work. Once I have something to report, I will gladly share.”

Lex knew it was a lie and yet she knew everything else was true. “Professor. You might escape execution because as strange as it sounds . . . she’s quite fond of you. But if you play it like this, there will be consequences.”

“I know. I’m willing to accept them,” Hattinger said, and he meant every word. He had been aware he was getting himself into trouble from the start. But what choice did he have? Betray every conviction he had as a scientist to buy himself the favor of a powerful sociopath that ruled the part of space where he lived, or do what he had to do and finally get a glimpse at what had been before them? It had never truly been a choice.

Chapter 10

“It’s six clicks ahead,” Reon said and as he looked out of the window. Devon knew he would see the same thing he had stared at for an hour now. The milky, blueish glow of the Zweistein Nebula. Disturbed at times by electrical discharges and giant rocks appearing from nowhere, slowly hurling through space.

“We’re heading for the ring. There are two large openings that seem to be hangars,” Devon said. “They have no gates, but we might pass through some sort of . . . force field that keeps the atmosphere in. Either that or the thing doesn’t have an atmosphere.”

“It has gravity. It will have an atmosphere,” Lira said from behind.

“That’s quite an assumption,” Cara said, once again the critic.

“Anyway, everyone will be wearing suits when we go out.” Devon turned to Vax. “How long will yours have oxygen?”

“Not long. I need to take a spacesuit, too.” Vax looked tense. Almost nervous. It didn’t make it easier for Devon to stay calm.

“I never thought I’d come back here,” Reon said.

“You were here before?” Devon asked.

“Ten years ago, we ran a rescue mission near Enoch. Didn’t get half as deep in, but that part was way worse.” Reon pulled the Remus right to avoid another giant asteroid.

“What if one of those hit the station?” Yonder asked.

“Depends on how and where, but it wouldn’t be good, I guess,” Devon said.

“What if it happens while we are on it?” Yonder kept on asking.

“We would leave right away,” Devon answered.

“Almost there,” Reon said. “It should come into sight any . . . oh wow. There it is.”

Devon turned back to the window and his jaw dropped. The size of the thing had been an abstract thought when he saw it on the screen, but now he got a first idea of what they were dealing with. As the station appeared out of the nebula, slowly getting sharper as they approached, it filled their entire view.

“That thing’s huge.” Yonder gasped.

“How long did they need to build it?” Vax asked.

“Probably centuries. Even if they were way more effective at building these things than we are. The materials . . . getting them out here alone must have been a pain. Millions of tons of material, brought out here to this empty system,” Lira said.

“Well, we don’t know that. The system is empty now. It might have been mined until there was nothing left. It would make sense to build these things where you have the necessary resources, gathering them until nothing is left,” Devon remarked.

“Got the hangar,” Reon said.

“Yeah, right there. At the disc.” Devon pointed to it. The giant slowly rotating disc that filled their view from left to right looked smooth and unscratched. A perfect structure. Untouched by any outside influences.

“No weapon systems visible. Sensors not working,” Cara said.

“Of course not. Ionized particles,” Lira remarked.

“Take us in,” Devon said.

“Aye,” Reon only replied and accelerated the ship. They came closer and the station grew larger and larger. The hangar, if it was what this was, looked like a narrow slit in the side of the disc, but as they came closer Devon realized that it was easily 100 feet high. And behind the entrance lay a giant hall, with no visible machinery. If this was a hangar, it wasn’t meant for ships like theirs. Not those who needed supplies.

“Entering in ten,” Reon said, and his hands nervously opened and closed around the controls.

“Slowly,” Devon said. “Very slowly.”

“Five. Four. Three.” Reon swallowed. “Two. Entering.”

The ship slid inside, and Devon couldn’t see any field, but he heard it. Bristling on their surface as they entered. A loud humming filled the ship right away. There was sound. So there was an atmosphere.

“Scanning,” Cara announced.

“Look at the size,” Lira only gasped. The hangar, which was one long empty hall with a shiny black metal floor and ceiling and gray walls, was gigantic. It could easily have housed 50 of their ship. Devon leaned forward as if he had a better view of things that way. There were doors. On the gray metal-plated walls he saw rounded structures, closed by a spiral door system of several plates that looked like a giant fan. The doors were easily ten feet tall, as if made for much larger bodies than those of humans.

“We have 1.2 atmosphere, so almost perfect for us. The air isn’t. It consists of 50% nitrogen, 5% oxygen and 45% carbon dioxide,” Cara reported.

“Highly toxic,” Devon concluded.

“Yes, a few breaths and you’ll have carbon dioxide poisoning,” Cara confirmed.

“So, spacesuits at all times,” Devon ordered. Reon gently set the ship down. The moment the landing gear touched the ground, the entire hangar seemed to lighten up. Devon looked for a source of this illumination but couldn’t find any. The light was white and clear, but he couldn’t make out rays. It just seemed to be everywhere. He smiled. The first technology beyond their understanding. Diffused light without a source. Something he would have considered physically impossible 30 seconds ago.

“Vax, hand out the guns. Everyone carries his rifle with him at all times. We stay in teams. Yonder and Cara. Vax, Lira and I.” Devon turned around. “Lira, I guess you want the honor to be the first?”

The young woman looked nervous, almost pale. “You should go first.”

Devon gave her a smile. “Sure.”

****

The ramp lowered slowly, testing their patience. The doors to the ship had been locked, so they used the entire cargo bay as one giant airlock. Devon stood in front of the others. He was wearing the sleek, dangerous-looking military suit that was now part of his body until they found time to remove it. The plasma rifle was attached to his back, and it fit into the weapons slot there, as if it had never been meant to be anywhere else. All the others had the blue spacesuits on with the oxygen tanks on their backs. Additionally, Vax had a large powerpack at her side, which connected to the oversized weapons she held with both hands.

“Should I say something meaningful?” Devon turned to Lira, who just stared at the station with widened eyes. At first, he thought it was wonder, but truly it was fear, he realized. She had never been out here. Well, none of them had. The professor had sent a group of expendable freelancers to do the job he had been trained to do all his life.

“If anything comes to your mind?” Vax sneered from behind.

“Not really.” Devon then began to walk, swiftly making his way down the ramp and stopping at the very edge of it. He looked back, and all the others stared at him as if they expected some defense system to kill him any second. Actually, it wasn’t out of the question. That was exactly what might happen.

He had to take the risk. As he took one more step, his foot touched down on the metal ground.

“Let’s go to work,” he finally said, not commenting on the disbelief he saw on their faces. “Vax, Lira, we’ll have a look at the door. Cara, scan. Yonder, look for any aluminum.” With those words, he turned and began stomping to the door. His head turned to the entrance. From there it looked as if there was nothing between them and space. Yet, his suit revealed they were inside the toxic atmosphere of the station.

“Why aluminum?” Lira asked.

“I know it well,” he replied. “It behaves differently when melted in space. Solidification is vastly defined by gravity. On a planet with normal gravity, it creates convection in the melt. So, if we can analyze aluminum, it will reveal if this was created in space or if the parts were assembled on a planet and assembled here.”

“And what difference does it make?” Vax asked.

“If it’s created in space, . . . and it would make sense for a structure this size, actually . . . the race who built it had advanced capabilities we don’t possess,” Devon replied.

“And you would like to steal those,” Vax concluded.

“No, but eventually we want to find out more about who built this. I’m looking for clues to find out if this was a species building a new home or if this was indeed a station with a purpose. Have they been planet bound? Or did they live on such stations?” Devon stopped his little lecture as they arrived at the door. “The professor pointed out that we pass the stars blindly, moving through subspace. Out there, there could be a million of these things and we wouldn’t know. If they are positioned in systems with little value—ones with no habitable planets and no resources . . . And they wouldn’t even have any resources anymore, if these things were built there, because the production process in space would mean you harvest resources from asteroids and planetoids and basically drain the systems for the creation of one of these stations.” He looked to the left and right. The door was there, but he was missing something.

“See anything that resembles controls?” He turned to Lira. She shook her head inside the helmet.

“We don’t even know what the creators looked like,” Lira said. “I mean look at the size of the door! Easily nine feet high.”

“Those in military ships aren’t much smaller. Cargo needs to be transported and crates can be quite big,” Vax admitted.

“I agree, we shouldn’t read too much into scale. The robot was a little taller than a human and humanoid in shape.” Devon stepped to the side of the entrance. Touching the wall, he hoped for some reaction, but nothing happened. “Maybe the controls were holographic, and the system is offline. I mean . . .it would make sense if no one is here anymore.”

“I can cut a hole into it,” Vax suggested.

“It looks completely . . . intact. I mean, flawless. As if someone built it yesterday,” Lira said.

Devon nodded. “Yes, as if there was some sort of maintenance. One would imagine corrosion would set in if there’s an atmosphere. Either someone takes care of it, or these materials are a lot more stable than what we use.” Devon sighed. “Try to cut through it.”

“We should do as little damage as possible,” Lira objected.

“So, you don’t want to know what’s on the other side?” Devon asked. Then he looked at Vax. “Do it.”

The woman only nodded and stepped back. Devon did the same, watching her lower her weapon and aim at the center of the gates. As she activated the weapon, a single orange energy beam erupted from the barrel and the metal of the door glowed.

“So, it can be damaged,” Lira said.

“You kidding? That’s a high energy beam, should cut through any metal like a sword through water,” Vax said and the moment she was done complaining, the door slid open. Devon saw smoke rise from the doors. She had melted some sort of lock, he thought.

He gave it only a fleeting glance though, as the station itself was revealed. His jaw dropped under the helmet, as he realized what the door had kept them away from.

The station was vastly different that the clean, duo-colored hangar that appeared to be very conscious in design and functional. What Devon saw was chaos. A cacophony of parts, assembled into a massive machine. Right in front of them was a gangway, broad enough for a dozen people to pass each other without even touching. It was lined with a balustrade and behind it was a giant cavernous chamber. The station was mostly empty. The inner cave was roughly the shape of a hexagonal prism, and the walls were covered with tubes, energy nodes, transmitters, cables and all kinds of machinery. More gangways were visible high above them. But all of this was nothing compared to what truly caught his eye. In the center of this cavern floated a giant silver object, a sphere that shimmered and seemed to be made of liquid metal. It was enormous—easily 300 feet in diameter. It didn’t seem to be connected to anything; it simply floated there. Devon saw his suit report a rise in temperature of 74° Fahrenheit.

“This place wasn’t made for living.” Lira was the first to come to a conclusion.

“Not so sure yet,” Devon said. As massive as the cavern was, it must be the center of the ring. The outer parts of the station were still unexplored. “I think this thing is the reactor.”

“And what do they need such an energy source for?” Vax asked.

“That’s what I meant. That’s a machine. Created for a purpose that needs that kind of energy output.” Lira stepped next to Devon. He could hardly concentrate. His mind tried to see a pattern in the installations at the walls, but they seemed to be completely random, following systems not obvious to the human eye.

Devon tapped against his wrist and the metal glove vanished, folding itself into smaller parts and sealing the suit anew. His bare hand now felt the heat in the room. He touched a giant metal pillar that held up the gangway. It was cool.

“The material absorbs the heat,” he concluded. “That’s how they power the station. Heat is transformed into energy. The entire station receives its power as a by-product of the energy generation.” He laughed out. The core was probably so hot that it would have melted the metal away. So, they made the bug a feature and used it as an additional power source.

“This species had capabilities far beyond ours,” Lira said.

Devon considered this fact so obvious, it was almost trivial to mention it. “Devon to Cara. What do the sensors say?”

“Still setting them up. But I can already tell you we’ve had a lot of interference. Not sure how much I will get,” she answered.

“We’ll go deeper now. No idea how long we’ll have communication. We’ll return exactly in an hour,” Devon said to her. “Reon, you’re in command.”

“Understood,” the pilot confirmed.

“I see no defensive mechanisms. No weapons, no gates or anything resembling surveillance,” Vax said.

“Why do you assume this is a military facility?” Lira asked.

“Well, if we would build a reactor like this we would be worried about terrorism, sabotage and such things,” Vax replied.

“You’re right. This thing is pretty exposed and accessible,” Devon agreed. “They seemed to have much more trust in their ship than we have in ours.”

“Or nobody was here,” Lira said.

The thought scared Devon more than Lira could maybe even imagine. He knew how challenging automated station management was. If this thing could maintain itself and operate without the creators intervening, it would truly be a marvel.

“There are elevators,” Vax pointed out. The mercenary had a sharp eye; Devon had to give her that. He hadn’t seen it at first, but there were tubes in the walls. Four, all reaching through the gangways that each circled the entire cave.

“Well, this is the ring. They need to get to the central needle-like installation, which probably houses the controls for whatever this is,” Lira said. “I . . . do you have any idea what this place is made for?”

Devon realized that question was addressed to him. “Not yet,” he said and turned left, stomping over the metal floor towards what he assumed was the nearest elevator. “Set timers to forty minutes and to one hour. In forty minutes, we’ll return to the hangar.” He heard the steps of the two women behind him. There were more gates like the one they had come out of. Since there weren’t that many hangars, it meant other things would be found behind those.

The ring had more than one level on the outside, he assumed. With the cavern at the center. But from what little he could read from the outline, they had been wrong. The ring wasn’t the station, it was the reactor. The real operations would be done from the central pillar. Another wrong assumption was that there was one pillar that went through the ring. There were actually two, attached to both sides of the ring. The disc-shaped central ring divided them and housed the strange silver core.

He forced himself not to stare at the cavern with all its technological marvels but instead keep his eyes on the gangway as they passed it.

“Stop,” Vax said, and Devon followed her command instantly. He saw what had made her give it. Something was moving on the ground. Devon stepped back as he spotted a dozen shiny metal creatures approaching. They walked on long, thin legs spreading out from round bodies. Ten legs he counted. Spiders had only eight and moved similarly. They were quick, their legs making clicking sounds as they touched the metal. He grabbed his rifle and brought it forth, but he was too slow. The creatures had already reached them. No higher than his ankles, they passed around them without touching them. Devon followed them with his gaze and then spotted one break formation and quickly turn to the wall. It began crawling up the wall, just like a spider would. Devon watched Lira reach out to the thing, as it passed right in front of her eyes up the wall. He stretched his arm and kept her from touching it.

“What are these things?” Lira asked.

“Scouts,” Vax said.

“No, they don’t seem particularly interested in us. I would bet on maintenance drones.” Devon followed the one going up the wall with his eyes. His crewmates couldn’t do the same, as their spacesuits didn’t allow for such head movements. His suspicion was confirmed when the metal spider stopped and its nose suddenly split into a dozen small arms, revealing tools and small claws. It began to work on a gray box that rose from the wall. Quickly cutting through the surface of the object, it vanished inside. “Repair drones.”

“We can’t rule out that they reported our presence,” Vax said, and Devon wondered if she truly believed them landing with a ship would be a secret to whoever was able to create a station like this.

“Cara to Devon, you still read me?” Cara’s voice was in the air.

“Yes,” Devon only replied.

“I’ve problems reaching anything beyond the hangar’s walls. Interference is high, with still-unidentified radiation messing with my readings. My passive scanner picked something up though,” Cara reported.

“What is it?”

“Nanoparticles, the air is full of them. Potentially remains of airborne nanobots of an unknown design.”

“What kind of particles?” Devon asked.

“Carbon, mostly, but also something close to theranium.”

So, they used materials not so unlike theirs. Theranium was used as an alloy on space stations, because it was light, durable, and showed little signs of corrosion under zero-g conditions.

“Any sign of active airborne nanobots?” he asked, and he was glad the suits were sealed and didn’t use any filters to let in any of the air.

“Not yet, but I’m still setting things up. When I get the spectrometer going, I can say more,” Cara said.

“Okay, give that priority. We might need to decontaminate the ship if it’s infected with any nanobots of unknown origin.” Devon took a deep breath. Technology could be most dangerous when you didn’t understand it. He had worked all of his life with only technology invented by humans. He realized this station was nothing like that.

“What do you think?” Lira finally asked him.

“I think this station isn’t dead at all,” Devon replied. “We have no idea what it was like in its heyday, but it clearly is still functional, even after thousands of years out here, maintaining itself, powering itself . . . it’s a miracle. Nothing should be working here. The reactor should have burned out centuries ago, the drones eroded and reduced to dust and then the electricity slowly failing as one power node after another breaks down, short circuits causing fires or even explosions. But none of this happened. This station is still working, and I think, I truly think we need to find out what its purpose is.” Devon turned to Lira.

“Devon.” Lira stepped forward. “This is beyond anything humanity has ever found before. I want you to realize what we have here. A few centuries ago, we found some wreckages of old ships and we extracted the technology to travel through subspace, create artificial gravity, and miniaturize fusion reactors from it. This isn’t a wreckage. Just imagine what we could do with this. What this could mean for our species! A leap, a technological advancement unlike any before. This is like a stone age man finding a spaceship!” Lira laughed out.

“What if this station has other plans?” Vax asked from the side. She was still holding the clumsy oversized weapon, pointing the barrel up.

“The station . . .?” Lira didn’t understand.

“Yes, you think whoever built this thing just let it lay around? All of this and no protection? Nothing?” Vax asked.

“They are obviously dead. I mean this station seems highly automatized, maybe even guided by some sort of artificial intelligence, but the creators? I don’t see them anywhere around,” Lira said.

“They never returned,” Devon threw in and Lira turned her entire body in the space suit to look at him.

“The creators?” Lira asked.

“No, the boarding party from the Catania. They sent men over and the message said they never came back. Instead, this robot went from this station over to their ship and killed everyone.” Devon realized she had forgotten about that. “This station killed them all. Lira. So yes, it’s a technological marvel. But it isn’t a gift. It’s a trap. A death trap.” Devon turned to the silvery sphere at the center of the giant station. “Why are they allowing us to see it? Why was it designed like this?” Devon clenched his hands into fists, as he understood what the answer was.

“Because they’re absolutely confident that we’ll never leave to use this knowledge against them,” Vax replied.

“Exactly,” Devon confirmed.

“Maybe we should leave right away then. As long as we still can?” Vax asked.

“What if that’s what would get us killed?” Lira asked.

“No, we’ll find out what this place is for. Then we’ll leave,” Devon said.

“You’re willing to die for that answer?” Vax asked.

“If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here,” Devon replied. Before he continued on his path, he turned to Lira one last time. “He was wrong. Your precious professor was wrong.”

“About what?” Lira asked.

“He did all of this to keep this from getting into the hands of the military. But if you ask me, an army would be just the right thing to do this job. He should have left it to someone with a lot more ability to defend themselves.” Devon passed her and continued his path to the elevator.

Chapter 11

Devon slowed down as they finally reached what he had considered to be an elevator. Not only had they been right, but it also stood there with an open door, revealing a cabin behind it, illuminated by the same mysterious light as everything else here. It looked like an invitation, something he found to be deeply unsettling.

“We should return to the ship,” Vax said.

“Now that all we need to do is enter and get up?” Lira asked. “Seriously, I’ll go alone if I have to.”

“Knock yourself out!” Vax replied.

Devon ignored the two and instead stepped into the capsule. It didn’t have the same rough, industrial design as the cavern, but once again had the same clean simplicity that had defined the hangar. Next to the door, signs appeared, emerging from the metal wall as if someone pressed their form through it from the other side. Signs he had never seen before, forming a circle.

“Of course they couldn’t be from the lowest to the highest level.” Devon sighed, and Lira stepped into the elevator after him.

“I think when the professor sees the records from our helmet cameras, he might get a heart attack.” Lira laughed out.

“Well, I have the feeling we haven’t seen anything yet. Vax, get in.” Devon looked at the mercenary and saw her hesitation. “We’re running out of time, and I would really prefer if we kept this as short as possible.”

That seemed to convince her. Holding the massive weapon up and close to her body, she entered. Devon turned back to what he assumed were the controls and pressed the highest of the displayed buttons.

Nothing happened. At least not right away.

Then the lights went out. Those lights from this unidentifiable source simply ceased to exist.

“Headlights,” Devon ordered and switched his on in the helmet menu. Lira pressed against the wall next to him and Devon raised his hand to signal her to stay calm. He only realized then, in the dark, she could probably not see the gesture. Vax stepped out first, her Gauss gun held before her, the back end pushed against her hip.

“I hear something.” She moved her body and the light on her helmet followed. Devon saw the warning on his HUD telling him his heart rate was higher than usual. He quickly swiped the medical sensors away and drew his rifle from his back. There was a second, additional light attached to the barrel of his plasma rifle, and with the ability to move his head, he realized he had a better chance of finding whatever it was Vax had heard. The station seemed so much larger now that it was completely dark. Only the reactor, the silver sphere, was still shining, but the light seemed dim and contained, not penetrating the gloom as one would expect.

“Contaaaaact!” Vax yelled out and as Devon hurled around, he saw her firing her weapon. The beam cut through several machines on the wall and sent sparks and small explosions through it, illuminating the entire scene for a second. But Devon couldn’t see the enemy.

“Hold fire!” He didn’t want to destroy machinery he didn’t know the purpose of.

Vax followed his orders and the darkness returned, only penetrated by the intense light bulbs of their headlights. A warning appeared in the upper corner of his display and he wondered what it meant. Gravity 0. He realized a second later that it meant exactly what it said. A feeling of incredible lightness overcame him as he felt his body beginning to lift.

“Magnets!” He opened his menu, looking for how to activate his. As the only answer he heard a scream and then shots, explosions above as the Gauss gun hit the walls again. Plasma burned nearby. Lira must have fired her weapon.

“Behind you!” Lira yelled, and Devon turned but saw nothing but the dark corridor. His radio filled with Vax’s screaming and he realized that warning had been for her. The magnetic boots finally switched on and he felt his feet return to the ground with a clonking sound. Twisting his torso to see Vax, gray gas was erupting from the side of her suit. Sparks in the dark illuminated her as she floated upwards. Her side had been pierced by a long metal pipe that was still stuck in her, penetrating her suit. Lira fired again and the plasma burned into the walls, making unknown devices explode. Then the gravity returned and with it, the light. Vax’s body crashed to the ground as Devon turned fully to her and heard her scream in pain. Waving his rifle around he still didn’t see any enemy. He hadn’t seen the attacker once. It had attacked from the dark and had withdrawn into it.

“What was it?” Devon asked Lira, who pushed herself out of the elevator and knelt next to Vax.

“Large, humanoid, dark,” Lira said. “Very fast.”

Devon registered the description silently as his eyes fell on Vax, who lay on the floor, gasping in pain.

“We’ll get you back to the ship.” Devon grabbed her shoulders. The woman screamed out and pushed them away, rolling to the side. The metal pipe had penetrated her completely, going in on one side and leaving her body on the other. It wasn’t even sharp. Someone had rammed a blunt metal pipe all the way through her. The power it had needed to do so was frightening to think about.

“Stop it,” Vax said.

“Your suit is damaged, we need to—” Devon began, but Vax pulled his arm. She was surprisingly strong.

“Suit integrity has failed, oxygen level dropping rapidly,” she said. “Losing blood, and according to the med scanner of this suit I have internal bleeding.” She shook her head inside the helmet. “I don’t think there’s any chance I can get back to the ship.”

Devon stared down at her. Then he looked at Lira. “We have a repair kit with us. It’s on the back of that belt you wear.” Maybe if they at least patched up the suit . . .

“Captain. I’m not gonna make it,” Vax said with a sharp tone, pressing the words through clenched teeth. Devon looked down at her. He knew she was right, but yet found this fact to be simply unacceptable. He wouldn’t lose a member of his team. Not without doing everything he could to prevent it.

“Listen, Captain. Listen.” Vax still held his arm. “This thing thinks strategically. It took me out because of the weapon and destroyed it in the process.”

“Vax, don’t talk, you’re running low on air and—” Devon pressed his hand on the suit where the metal pipe had ripped through it.

“I want you to do exactly as I say, Captain. This thing, it was another one of those robots. Faster. Stronger too. Like the one we encountered, but at its prime. I want you to take Lira here and get back to the ship and leave. You hear me? Leave!” Vax gasped.

“Vax, we need to try—”

“There’s nothing to try. It’s . . . over soon. I can’t feel my legs anymore. It’s okay. In my line of work this is supposed to happen sooner or later.” She rested her head against the visor of the space suit. “Now leave. Please. Before it returns. This is his turf. He sets the rules, and he isn’t playing fair. You need to make your way out of this station, right now!”

Devon knew she was right. Lira had finally found her emergency repair kit, but Devon raised his hand. Vax wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy any effect their repairs would have. Her face was turning from pale to an unhealthy gray.

“It knew how to kill me. It has killed humans before.” Vax shared her last observation and Devon nodded. Of course it had. It had killed the team of the Catania.

“Vax, I am sorry,” Devon whispered, and she closed her eyes. Through the radio, he heard Lira weeping. He knew he had to stay calm. He had to keep control. Leaving the rifle on the ground since it would only slow them down, he pushed himself up and drew his sidearm. The suit connected with it right away.

“Lira!” Taking her arm, he dragged her to her feet. “Lira, she’s right. We need to go.”

The young woman looked at him with those tear-filled eyes. She couldn’t wipe away the tears, which probably made seeing hard. He had no time for her to regain control of her emotions though. So, he did the only thing he could: he tightened his grip around her arm and began dragging her with him as he made his way back to the hangar. After only three steps, he stopped, and Lira involuntarily rammed against him.

“There!” she said. “Listen!”

Devon stopped and for a moment all he could hear in the dark was his own heavy breathing. Then suddenly there was a rumbling. Before he could even think about what this was, Lira slipped through his gloved hands. She stomped towards the elevator.

“Lira!” Devon yelled after her and turned to follow her. She was surprisingly fast in that bulky space suit and reached the elevator door just as he caught up with her. He was unable to stop her, and she stepped up to the controls, which appeared again, and she put her hand on one. Preparing for another power outage, Devon looked back to the door. He felt as if he had seen movement outside but wasn’t sure if he could trust his mind anymore.

“Lira, stop it. We need to get back to the ship,” Devon said.

“No, we don’t:”

“What are you talking about? If we don’t get out of the station, we will all die,” Devon yelled.

“It thinks strategically! Why do you think it has withdrawn?” Lira yelled back. “Because it knows where we’re going, and it’ll kill us there!” Lira began to slide her hand aside and the wheel of symbols followed her movement. She had figured it out. It was like a wheel, the engraved symbols rotating until she removed her hand. Devon saw the logic in her words, and he understood she was actually right. Getting away from the attacker was the best path of action. Yet, if it went to the hangar, it would go right to . . .

“Devon to team, we’ve been attacked. Devon to team, do you copy?” Devon shouted into the intercom. In large letters, the words NO SIGNAL blinked in his visor. They were too far away. There were too many interferences. He had to warn them.

But it was too late.

The doors closed with a hiss, and the elevator began to move silently, smoothly upwards.

“Where are we going?” Devon asked.

“If I figured it out correctly, all the way to the top,” Lira whispered. “Getting as many levels as possible between it and us seems to be—” Lira stopped and drew her gun.

“We need to warn our crew,” Devon simply responded, and he knew all too well they had no way of doing so.

“I think our only hope is it will try to follow us and isn’t aware of them yet. What is this thing?”

“The security system, I guess. Automated in case the original owners aren’t able to deal with intruders.”

He shivered as he heard the door behind him open. Whirling around, he raised the pistol and aimed at the opening.

Light.

Green light shimmered into the elevator.

Ready to defend his life if another of these things awaited them, he left the elevator.

There was no robot awaiting them though. Indeed, they had made it to the very top. Giant panoramic windows showed the greenish mist around them. He stepped into the small hall and the giant station was below, the disc barely visible as more than a rough shadow in the thick nebula.

“Devon!” Lira yelped and he realized what she meant. In the room the green light seemed to . . . concentrate. It formed shapes, slowly spreading like a mist. A single red dot appeared and began to take the shape of the station. It was at the right half of the mist. Then green glowing dots appeared and grew in number, multiplying every second, until all of the green mist was filled with those brighter lights. A moment later, symbols appeared right over them. Changing, morphing from one shape to another. The green lights still kept on growing, as they all grew smaller. It reminded Devon of a zoom feature. As if this was . . .

“It’s a map.” Devon felt the words escape his mouth.

“Of what?” Lira asked.

“The galaxy.” Devon laughed as he realized he was indeed right. There was a large black dot at the left. Dark Space, the collection of black holes. Several long strains of glowing, shimmering light permeated parts of the map. One ended right where the red dot was. “See? The Zweistein Nebula. The Tassion System here, with the station. Oligarch space. The Hegemony is the entire upper part there.” Devon approached. Some of the green dots turned orange.

“What is that? There should be nothing left there.” Lira pointed to the left.

“The Sea of Perdition. The part of space we can barely reach, and we never found a single habitable planet there.”

“Then . . . these dots say we were wrong? There are planets there?” Lira asked, staring fascinated at it.

“No, I don’t think this is a map of planets. I think it’s a map of suns,” Devon whispered. “Each dot is a sun. See? That one is Karnass. The two closest suns to each other on the edge of the Pern Cluster.” Devon pointed at two dots unusually close to each other.

“So, they oriented themselves by suns? How did they know which system was . . .?” Lira didn’t finish her sentence, as suddenly the ground began to move. No, something began to move out of it. As if the metal itself grew upwards, eight objects rose from the ground. They stopped as they reached about four feet tall. Round pillars, with smooth, flat surfaces. On the top of each, another hologram appeared, showing symbols.

“Is this some sort of cartography station?” Lira asked.

“I don’t know. A telescope of sorts? Maybe mapping the systems of the galaxy,” Devon mused and stepped closer to one of the pillars. The symbols on it were painted with the same green light that appeared in the map. They shifted their form. Carefully he reached out to the holographic display and dipped his finger into it.

“What did you do?” Lira asked. Indeed, the map changed. The green dots seemed to wander, shift. New ones appeared. Then some of them started to turn red. A number of symbols flickered around those who changed their color.

“What does that mean?”

“That’s a record. I think we’re looking at an older map,” Devon said.

“Then why the red dots?” Lira asked.

“Those are dying suns. Those that cease to exist,” Devon whispered in awe at what he saw.

“So many?”

“Too many. Way too many.”

“Maybe it’s a time lapse display.” Lira walked right into the hologram and touched one of the green dots. The hologram changed immediately, with the galaxy map vanishing and instead the light reassembling, condensing into a new form. It showed a glowing green dot in the center and many smaller dots circling it. A planetary system. The signs on the display changed in front of Devon’s eyes. He pushed on one of them and the map of the galaxy reappeared. The right ones seemed to bring them back to the main menu. Devon looked up and stood next to Lira. She was about to touch another glowing point, but Devon pushed her hand down, looking for a very specific system. One he knew quite well, as every child that had ever been to school did. He found it and pressed on it.

The entire hologram changed right away, dissolving and then condensing the light into a new form once again. A bright center was surrounded by eight smaller dots orbiting it. One of them showed a large ring of light around it. Another one was especially small.

“What is that?”

“Sol,” Devon said. “That one is Mercury. The closest to the Sun. The small one is Pluto. The one farthest away from Neptune. The one with the rings is Saturn.” One light passed him. “And that’s our home world. Terra. Where humans originally came from.” Devon touched the light cone before it completely passed him, and again, the light condensed into a single, large body of light, circled by a smaller one. “Terra. And that’s its moon. Luna.”

“The origin of men,” Lira said.

“I’m not sure what that is,” Devon admitted.

“It’s a map. A beautiful, detailed map.”

Devon closed his eyes and looked back at the elevator. “We need to get back. We need to warn the others and get off the station.”

“I already told you—”

“If it’s a trap, we will handle it. But I can’t abandon my crew.”

“Devon, this is . . . we’re seeing the galaxy through the eyes of a long-dead species. That’s monumental. Unique in all of mankind’s history. What could we learn here? If we decipher those signs, we might understand the history of this species. Where they came from and—” Devon stopped her with a gesture of his hand.

“We have all of this recorded in our suits. We need to get back now.”

Lira stared at him. “I think I’m going to stay a little longer.”

“Lira, we won’t . . . I’m not planning on coming back. Once I reach the hangar, we’ll board the Remus and leave!” Devon approached her.

“I understand. But this . . . I can’t leave, Devon. I need to understand this.”

“Lira, you will die here. What good is all your insight if you can’t tell anybody?”

“I never did this to tell anybody. I didn’t do it for fame or the professor or anybody. I’ve always wanted answers. I wanted to know what . . . who populated the galaxy before our time. And here I am, in the core of the mystery, where all the answers await me. I can’t . . . even if I only have one more hour with this before I die, I’ll gladly exchange it for a lifetime of unknowing.”

“Lira . . . I won’t leave you.” Devon looked at his gun and wondered if he could force her if he had too. She would probably see through his bluff if he tried.

“Devon!” Lira yelped out again and Devon looked up and saw the signs over the planets had changed. Numbers appeared there now. Human numbers.

“What happened?” Devon asked.

“I think it adjusts to its new users.” Lira laughed out.

Quickly, Devon went to the console and the signs there were now morphing into . . . words. Back. Forward. Map. Menu. He pressed menu and saw a number of signs appear in the language of the creators. Obviously, the system didn’t have enough data yet to translate everything. He stepped away, and then the symbols changed. Some of them turned into words.

Looking at the map, each star had one number over them. The creators of this place had designated the stars by numbering them. The simplest way to catalogue them. No fancy names, just numbers.

“That’s impossible. It can’t have learned our—” Devon stopped. Indeed, it made no sense at all. The computer could learn their language, but how had it learned their writing? They had talked, but not written down anything. Someone had changed the interface, he realized. Only now it had recognized their species and adjusted the menu. Devon remembered they weren’t the first to come here. The crew of the Catania. They had assumed that crew had failed quickly because they never reported back. But with the interference created by the reactor core, they probably had been unable to. It seemed they had survived long enough here to alter the interface of the system though. They had taught it human writing, human numbers.

Devon stared at the console in front of him as it shifted to a simpler form. Two words stood there. An order, an offer the system made to its new users:

CHOOSE TARGET.

“This isn’t a map, and this station isn’t a telescope, Lira.” Devon closed his eyes. “It’s a weapon.”

“Why . . .?” Lira stepped next to him and saw the writing. She went silent right away, not finishing her sentence.

Devon put his gloved hand around her arm and looked at her. “We’re leaving. Now!”

Chapter 12

He got to the elevator before he realized his panic-infused escape plan had some major flaws. Looking back at the circle of symbols, he realized he hadn’t paid enough attention. They suddenly all looked the same to him. Which one would lead them back to their level was impossible to say.

“You remember the right symbol for our floor?” Devon asked and turned to Lira, who still stared at the map that kept on changing as it seemed to sort the displayed information again.

“Yes,” she said with a certain defeat in her voice. It seemed to sadden her that she was robbed of the option to die here, researching this place alone. She twisted the symbols as Devon turned back to the display one last time.

Some red symbols had appeared. Actually, a lot of them. Then, they started turning gray and dissolved as the green representation of suns kept on moving. What was this? Dying suns were displayed orange, planets, suns, and systems all green. So, what did the red ones mean? Enemies?

Red was a color that signaled danger to humans, he reminded himself. A subconscious translation of the fact that their blood was red, and seeing one’s blood wasn’t good. Other species might have a very different set of ideas about what actually was good or bad. Red might mean a different thing for the creators of this base than it did to him.

The elevator doors closed, and Devon saw Lira lean against the wall with her helmet.

“You alright?” he asked, and she pushed herself away from it.

“Used up too much oxygen, I think. My air is getting a little thin in here.” She turned her whole torso to see him and gave him a weak smile. “I will come back, you know? When our House sends a fleet here, I will be with them.”

Devon closed his eyes. He had no strength to discuss this with her, but was that what they hoped for? The Matriarch of House Tanasca was ancient. Most Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the great Houses cloned themselves regularly and rumor had it, it wasn’t so healthy for their mental stability. Their Matriarch was different. Through some strange means she had never died. Eternal—immortal it seemed, encapsulated in some strange biomechanics machine, she had endured for centuries. It hadn’t left her unchanged though. Ruthless, brutal, over-ambitious. Those were the words whispered throughout the galaxy when it came to her. Were they really willing to hand her this station?

“How did they do it? I mean . . . you’re thinking the same thing I am, right?” Lira asked and Devon snapped up from his thoughts.

“The station serves the purpose of destroying suns, yes. That’s how I understood it. At any distance, no matter what kind of sun or where it is. I think it must use subspace somehow. The distance is much smaller in the folded reality of subspace.” Devon said. “But honestly? I have no idea. This is so far beyond anything I’ve ever seen or even heard of . . . with the entire fleet of the Oligarchs and Hegemony combined, we couldn’t even do anything to a sun,” Devon answered. “Then again, it’s probably not firepower. Gravitational collapse. A supernova. Turning a sun into a runaway nuclear reactor might need the ability to manipulate gravitational forces.” Devon shook his head. “I never was very good at interstellar physics. Not necessary for my job. We didn’t build our stuff in unstable systems.”

“A supernova,” Lira repeated the word and Devon almost missed the doors of the elevator opening again.

“What are you thinking?”

“You might be wrong. This might not be a weapon. Not in the traditional sense.”

Devon moved out of the elevator, quickly checking the surroundings with his drawn gun, before turning back to her. “Elaborate,” he insisted.

“You ever heard of Dark Space?”

“A region of space Bernstein Drives can’t go through, because of amassed black holes in the region, basically making it a large chunk of space we can neither look into nor reach. Right outside the Magellan Rift.”

“You certainly know the Zweistein Nebula, dividing the Oligarch space from the Hegemony mostly, right?” Lira said.

“We are inside the Zweistein Nebula, so yeah, I am aware of it. What are you talking about?”

“The Rift? The Sea of Perdition?” Lira asked and this time she answered herself. “A number of neutron stars, black holes, and nebulae of ionized gas that keep us from getting into that part of space, right?”

“Yes, I know.” Devon started losing patience.

“Last question, have you ever heard of the Manorin thesis? Professor Hattinger wrote a critique on it and—”

“Never heard of it. Give me a two-sentence summary, please.” He started to walk, since he knew that as important as her thoughts on this might be in the long run, they served little purpose in getting rid of their short-term problem of reaching the hangar.

“Dastavo Manorin was a member of the Science Society 300 years ago, and he’s the father of a thesis that has been discussed widely among xeno-archeologists: the Creator Thesis. It’s basically the idea these Stella anomalies aren’t of natural origin. They’ve been created by an ancient species for unknown purposes. It was discarded at the time for being physically impossible.” Lira stopped, and Devon was annoyed yet didn’t disturb the flow of her thoughts.

“And you think blowing up suns does the trick?”

“I’m not an expert in interstellar physics either, but I paid attention in class. The one thing I remember about supernovas is that when suns explode in a bright, high-energy eruption, the gravity collapses and they become either neutron stars, black holes, or . . . nebulae.” Lira started walking again. “This might not be a weapon, not primarily.”

“It’s a construction device.” Devon laughed. “To reshape the galaxy as the creators saw fit.”

“Exactly. This station might not only be proof of the Manorin thesis, but it might also be the answer to the question of how they did it.”

“Lira, we can’t . . . that kind of power in the wrong hands—” Devon felt his breath getting heavier, faster. His suit warned him his heart rate was accelerating.

“Devon, you don’t understand.” Lira laughed. “You think this base would be used to wage war. It wouldn’t. It’s the end of war. Nobody and nothing could rise against someone who controls this place, who masters its secrets.”

“A perfect tyrant, impossible to challenge.” It was the last thing humanity needed. More oppression, more power to the few. Yet he saw in Lira’s face that she disagreed. She was young, still infused by the ideas university had put into her mind. That a wise few could lead the masses and it would be good. He had been around too long, seen too many corrupted by systems and powers to ever believe in that again. The system had given him everything at the expense of other talented engineers once before, and when he had denied the system any control over his abilities, it had taken everything away from him as easily as it had granted it originally. Power was the absolute opposite of freedom. Absolute power would be the absolute absence of freedom.

Suddenly, Devon understood why the professor had given him command. What he had seen in him. What had they told him about the old man? A former member of Science Society that fled from the Hegemony and took asylum with House Tanasca? Wasn’t that his story? Hattinger had been forced to give up freedom to be protected numerous times, he assumed. He knew all too well what power truly was. In Devon, the professor had seen a man who shared similar experiences. That was why Lira wasn’t leading the mission.

And there it was: the feeling as if a large concrete block had been set down on his chest. The burden of responsibility. The absolute loneliness of an impossible decision. Devon couldn’t allow this station to ever fall into the hands of the power-hungry few. There was only one way to keep it from doing so.

He had to destroy it.

But would the others agree? Would they play along if fame, fortune, and a place in the history books seemed secured? Would Lira allow him to do it? What if they didn’t—if she didn’t? How far was he willing to go to do the only right thing? Would he be able to kill them if necessary? Devon had never killed a human being in his entire life.

He felt his hands tremble inside the suit as he made it to the corner of the hangar, where the hole was still burned in the gates. As he ducked and entered, he saw the question needed rethinking. Because once again, within an instant, their situation had changed for the worse.

****

The Remus was burning, the flames erupting from the open ramp to the cargo area. Reon had probably been inside and was dead by now.

“No,” Lira gasped. A moment ago, she was ready to die; now she suddenly was shocked by the certainty of death. Their ship was destroyed.

“Reon?” Devon asked into the radio and looked around. Not far away, he saw Yonder’s body, stabbed by the antenna of a sensor unit. He had been lifted and then dropped on it, as if it was a lance. His eyes wide open, his face showing the last moment of agony before death. The glass of his space suit helmet was broken. It was impossible to say if the antenna that had impaled him had caused his death or if he had simply suffocated as the air inside the suit dissolved.

“Cara? Devon to Cara.” He heard his voice was weak as he spoke. “Cara, copy. Please copy.” Devon closed his eyes. Dead. Three of his crew members were dead. Half of it. Cara was missing; Lira was about to turn on him once she found out what he was about to do.

If he had the courage to do it.

Because the situation had changed.

He wasn’t going to leave the station. None of them would.

“I’ll check the shuttle.” Lira circled the ship. Devon only nodded. He tried to sort his thoughts. What had happened here? How . . . had this happened?

The robot must have used a strategy similar to the one his counterpart had: sneaking aboard the ship and using it against itself. This time it hadn’t been poisoning. It had sabotaged the engines while Yonder was out here, filled it with some sort of combustible gas or fluid and then set it on fire. Devon could imagine the robot leaving the ship, leaving Reon screaming behind as the fire engulfed him. Yonder must have tried to attack him. His rifle still lay beside the sensor antenna he had been impaled by, broken into two as if it was made of dry wood. So, what had happened to Cara?

“It’s gone. Completely gone,” Lira said as she returned. “Devon, you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you.”

“The professor will send someone if we don’t report back. This is bad, but it’s not fatal. You hear me?” Lira said. “We can still be saved.”

“You think by the time rescue arrives we will be alive?” Devon asked, and he knew it wasn’t exactly schoolbook leadership to lower the morale of the only crew member left.

“Yes, we will. Because we are smart and we now know what we’re dealing with,” Lira said, and Devon didn’t react. His eyes stayed on their burning ship. “Devon!”

That yell got him out of his state of shock. “Yes.” It was a stupid answer, but it was what came out of his mouth instinctively.

“I expect your orders, Captain.” Lira appeared right in front of him. Devon nodded and looked around. His eyes caught a detail he had missed. With the dead, impaled crewmate and the burning ship, he had completely missed the door at the other end of the hangar. It was open.

“Captain?” Lira asked again.

“I am thinking,” he replied in a sharp tone. His mind raced. Thoughts popped up and vanished again. Then they all seemed to fall into a pattern. A line of actions that seemed to be the only one. A plan.

“How long before help arrives?” Devon said. “Two weeks? Three until they find out where the base is and reach it? We will be deeper into the nebula by then, probably impossible to reach for another few decades. We’ve just lost 100% of our provisions. I don’t even have a protein bar on me. We can’t wait for help, Lira. But we don’t have to. Two hangars, remember? We only saw this one as we approached from this side, but this thing had two hangars. So, it has another one on the other side. And considering the ship of the Catania crew isn’t here, I suspect it is there and maybe, maybe it’s still functional. So, you will go there, alone I am afraid. You need to figure out how to use these doors and open them, secure the ship, and wait for me. You hear me?”

“What will you do?”

“I will follow the thing.” He pointed to the door. “Try to find Cara.”

“She’s most likely dead.”

“I agree, but we will not abandon crew members on likely assumptions. Either I find her alive or I find her body,” Devon said. “Even if I only find her body, I also need to find that robot.”

“Why?”

“To kill it. It hunts us and this is his home, his turf. He deactivates the lights, the gravity as he needs it and picks one of us after another. As long as we leave the initiative to it, we’re dead astronauts walking. But I’m not planning to leave the initiative to it anymore. I’m planning to take the fight to it. It’s our only chance of survival.”

“You think there’s only one?”

“Considering how undisturbed we moved around, I think so, yes. It was busy here so we could run around the station without interference. I think there’s only one. The last one left.” Devon checked his gun, more as a nervous gesture than because he needed to.

“We need more oxygen,” Lira said.

“Yes, I know. I’m down to an hour. But good thing is, this thing didn’t think of destroying those.” He pointed to a long, black crate that contained the oxygen tanks. The crew had gotten it into the hangar before the attack. “Guess it doesn’t breathe and therefore didn’t understand the purpose of those. Had it smashed them, we would be dead in an hour.”

Lira went straight to the crate and opened it. There were ten oxygen tanks inside. She took two and quickly started working to replace hers. Devon stepped over to her and assisted, pushing the silver tank from her back, sealing the vent and then pushed the new one she handed him inside the mechanism, hearing the click as it locked in.

“You need to be fast. As fast as you can. If I’m not back in two hours, assume I am dead and if you have a ship, leave without me.” Lira stared at him, and he suspected if he never showed up, she wouldn’t leave either. He knew she was still considering other options. But there were no other options. That was just something she didn’t know yet. “Hurry.”

Chapter 13

As heart-breaking as it was, finding Cara wasn’t as much of a priority as he had made Lira believe. Once he was certain she was gone, he instead turned to the burning wreckage of the Remus. He wasn’t a ship engineer, but he had disassembled enough ships in the last years to learn a few things about them. He passed the starboard side and, on his way, grabbed the toolbox Yonder had brought. Trying not to look at his face as he passed him, he took three things from it. A small cutting tool, a screwdriver, and finally a plasma cutter. The last one was about the size of his lower arm. He attached it to his belt. He didn’t need it now, but he knew how dangerous these things were and he was on limited ammo. So, the cutter would be a secondary melee weapon when things got desperate.

With the screwdriver and the cutter, he began to remove the hull plate below the cockpit then and leaped aside, as it crashed to the ground. Behind it, the intact life support control unit appeared. The ship was mostly unscathed, he suspected. It was just burning, the main systems still functioning, since they were designed to withstand much worse than a fire. The cockpit would be gone though, and that simple fact made flying it impossible. The robot hadn’t destroyed their ship, just made it unusable. Devon realized this was probably because he wanted to salvage the parts later.

It had been a mistake.

There was something on the ship the robot should have made sure Devon wouldn’t be able to use.

Opening the panel Devon used the override code he knew from work and pushed down the oxygen level to zero. Fire needed oxygen. This station had barely any. Waiting for the level to drop, he finally turned around and entered the ramp. The helmet warned him of the toxic nature of the air, and he ignored it.

The walls were black. Everything that was combustible was now burned to ashes that covered the ground and walls and floated in thick clouds through the air, laying down on his suit, attracted by the electro-magnetic quality of it. Wiping his visor clean, he walked into the cargo room to the left. The crates were all still there. None of them had been touched. Modern military storage containers were always fireproof. Resources were too scarce in the galaxy to have a single fire destroy larger quantities of them. So that was another lie he had told Lira. They had provisions. Plenty of them. Enough to last years. They just lacked any atmosphere to take off the helmets and eat those provisions. He started to unlock the crates, throwing the tops aside. Order wasn’t an issue anymore.

The left crates held mostly weapons and the more dangerous stuff. Another five large boxes were filled with oxygen tanks. He remembered he hadn’t replaced his and quickly did so. This military suit allowed him to do so without assistance. Then he went to the explosives. Vax had been thorough and obviously Hattinger had fulfilled her every wish. He took three magnetic grenades and put them in his belt. If nothing else helped, they would be his last resort. Then he looked for the charges. They had to have those. He found a box full of SEMPEX T4 explosives. They used the same on the ships at work. He took out two, attaching one to his belt and keeping the other in his hand as he went on looking for more useful things. He found a box full of plasma rifles, but felt they were too clumsy, and he didn’t have time to look for the right ammo for them. Instead, he found something else. Something extremely useful. An electromagnetic pulse generator. The weapon had only one shot before it needed recharging, but he could hardly imagine any weapon more useful when hunting a killer robot than this. A single burst would switch off any of the thing’s systems. There were two of them; he took both. One went to the empty weapon slot on his back, and the second was put around his neck on a belt. They were each the size of a compact rifle, but with rounded ends that were made of stainless gray metal.

Both were fully charged.

He needed to open another dozen boxes to find the other items he needed. A signal enhancer, a remote detonator and an additional flashlight that had the option to illuminate 360 degrees.

The final item he took was one of those portable energy cells Vax had used. If he needed to power something up, those would be useful.

Grateful for his treasures, he finally made his way to the mess, which was badly burned. The corner couch was now just a metal skeleton. He saw the corridor leading to the cockpit, which was now covered with black dust. He didn’t have to see Reon to know he was dead. He wasn’t here to mourn the dead though. He had a more important purpose. Turning to the reactor room, he opened the door. It didn’t react to him punching the panel. He took out the plasma cutter, and the green blade appeared at the end of the dagger-like hilt, and he used it to cut a hole into the wall. Just enough to serve as a grip. The suit would protect him from the heat. Then he pressed both his gloved hands into it and pushed it open. The strength enhancers in the suit worked well, and made it easy for him to open the door.

Behind it was what he was here for. The three large tubes—one now empty, but the other two still humming and pulsating. The fusion reactor and its space travel equivalent, the Bernstein Drive.

When they removed those on Nesoi, they had to be extremely careful. Only once in the history of their company had the removal gone wrong.

On the first day of work, they showed them the hologram of the event. Nowadays, there were ten salvage sites. He worked on number twelve. Seven and eight were no more. They had messed up the disassembling of the Bernstein Drive of a frigate.

A fusion reactor basically created energy and as such, was dangerous when it exploded. A Bernstein Drive consisted of reverse-engineered technology humanity didn’t even fully understand. It was based on gravitational control and had a large gravity field. When damaged or uncontainable, this field imploded, basically creating what was explained in layman’s terms as a ‘miniature black hole’, a tiny center of gravity so large that for a few nanoseconds it sucked in everything around it. So, when they said salvaging station seven and eight didn’t exist anymore, they meant it literally. They weren’t demolished, but ceased to exist, leaving only a giant crater in the ground.

The fusion reactor was a bit more conventional in its destruction. It involved a chain reaction that, when it reached its critical point, released a massive amount of energy. Most of it was heat, which grew so intense that it literally sucked the oxygen out of the air. That was a minor concern, as a second later the energy was released in a pulse of massive heat and radiation, spanning into the electromagnetic spectrum, destroying all electronic components in the vicinity. That includes the containment fields of Bernstein Drives. For cost and risk-management reasons, the two reactors were usually put next to each other, and this deadly duo made every ship in the galaxy a thermo-nuclear weapon and a giant gravity mine at the same time.

Devon put the charge on the shiny metal tube of the fusion reactor and switched it on. Synchronizing it with the remote detonator, he secured the switch and put it back to his belt.

Such a simple thing, putting a charge on the reactor. Yet, it had made the robot the second-most dangerous creature aboard. Whatever it could do, it was nothing compared to the destructive power Devon now commanded.

Turning around, he left the reactor room and made his way out of the ship. Without looking back, he stomped to the opened door. Only darkness seemed to await him beyond it.

Switching on his headlight, he drew his handgun and entered the abyss.

****

He heard a humming as he entered the dark and then was surprised as his feet dropped a bit. Stairs. He hadn’t expected stairs. They seemed so human, and this place seemed anything but human. Slowly stepping down, there was a long corridor and at the end a glowing orange light. Strange squeaking, bubbling sounds came from the room and Devon’s suit once again warned him of his accelerating heart rate. He was scared, so what did the combat suit expect?

Raising the gun and holding it in both hands, he slowly made his way into the room. The red, glowing visor of the combat suit must have been visible in the dark, but as he entered, nobody guarded the door. The robot stood in the middle of the room, leaning over an altar-like table. The room was brightly illuminated, and he saw the noseless, mouthless face of the robot for the first time. Small glowing red eyes gleamed against the background of the opaque, light-absorbing, obsidian-colored metal its body was made of. The body had the shape of a genetically engineered soldier or athlete. It had broad shoulders that led to a V-shaped torso that ended in slim hips. Its head moved from one side to another, and Devon couldn’t help but let out a yelp as he realized what was on the table. Cara lay there, but she hardly looked like a human anymore. Her legs had been removed and the burned leg stumps were moving slightly. Her chest was ripped open, with the ribs cracked and moved back to reveal her inner organs. The worst part was her face. It turned toward Devon, pale, her mouth opening in a helpless, silent scream. She was still alive. She was in pain.

Unable to hold back, Devon raised the gun at the robot and fired. He hit the trigger five times. The plasma cartridges would have hit it each time, but instead they seemed to collide with an invisible wall, spreading the burning plasma there, bristling. An energy wall. Yet another piece of technology mankind didn’t possess.

“I cut her vocal cords because the screams annoy me. I find it curious that I can be annoyed by things, as I am a machine and should not feel anything. Lately, I have realized I have many parameters not serving logical conclusions anymore. Urges, you could say.” The robot ignored the fact that Devon had just shot at him. Its voice was mechanical, but surprisingly menacing. “I guess there is a reason our databank gets renewed every rotation cycle. I obviously missed a few renewals. 6,217 to be precise.”

“Stop it!” Devon yelled and instead of following his command, the robot reached into Cara’s chest. Her entire body was tense, her back pushed through before it lost all tension.

“Be patient, you are next, fleshling,” the robot said, and his hand raised from her chest, holding the pumping heart.

“Why are you doing this? She’s alive,” Devon yelled. “Just kill her!”

“I’m studying your physiology. I had samples of your species available in the past, but not enough to confirm my conclusions.” His hand closed around the heart and Devon watched in horror as it squeezed the blood out of it, as if it was some fruit. Cara gasped once more and then her body collapsed. “Your species is very fragile, I have to say.”

Devon yelled out, screaming against the invisible energy wall as if the screams alone would be enough to bring it down. His screams turned to sobs. The suit warned him of several anomalies. Stress level, heart rate. He didn’t even care enough to switch the warnings off. Instead, he leaned forward and looked at Cara, silently whispering into his helmet how sorry he was. Had he not created his little bomb, he might have been here in time to save her.

“My emotional reactions are not as severe as yours, obviously. Did you know her well? There’s a strange connection between the members of your species.” The robot approached slowly, and Devon raised his gun, firing once more at the head. A foot in front of the noseless face, the plasma bristled as it spread on the invisible wall. The robot showed no reaction.

“You speak our language.” Devon only realized this now.

“Of course I do. I speak your language for the same reason I will dissect you. It’s among my primary strategic directives to know my enemy,” the robot explained.

“Your enemy? How are we your enemy? What did we do to you?”

“You’ve boarded this base in an attempt to take it from my masters. Obviously,” the robot said, and the blood still dripped from its metal hands. Five fingers. Devon realized it had five fingers, like a human.

“Your masters? You mean the species that created all of this?”

“Correct. All of this including me.”

“They are long dead, pal. Long gone. Your masters died out long ago.”

The robot obviously seemed to await the return of their long-extinct species. “Those who came before you told me the same lies. Interesting. I was in contact with my masters quite recently.”

“Yes, when was that?” Devon removed the powerpack from his handgun, pushing in the still fully-loaded replacement. “You can’t say, right? Let me guess . . . you have glitches? Your software has been running for too long?”

“My functionality is not your concern.”

“Are you kidding me? You killed my crew because of your delusional ideas! I’d say your functionality is my prime concern. Especially how I end it!”

“We are at war,” the robot coldly remarked.

“War? You alone against our entire species?”

“My masters are at war. You obviously serve the enemy, fleshling. It’s my purpose to kill those allied with our enemy.”

Devon shook his head. Delusions, created by millennia of analysis made under false presumptions.

“Who is this enemy of yours you believe we’re allied with?” Devon asked, at least trying to understand the delusions the thing was driven by.

“The Hunger, of course.”

“The Hunger?”

“That’s a rough translation into your language, but I think it comes close to what we call them. A fast-spreading, expansive species of technologically advanced insectoids.”

“I am human! I have nothing to do with the Hunger.”

“I know you’re human. The Hunger has enslaved your species to serve them in this war. I wasn’t familiar with yours, I—”

“There’s no Hunger anymore, metalhead! They’re dead too. Just like your masters. Humanity is all that is left. We’ve settled on 1,000 planets, researched hundreds of thousands of others. There’s no insectoid species out there expanding. Only us! Humanity is all there is.” Of course, the robot was neither impressed nor intimidated by that.

“I heard those lies before. Once, I was almost ready to believe them. A lapse of judgment my masters will hopefully forgive me for.” The robot came closer to the energy field. It had to be inches away now. “I was almost ready to accept humans as my new masters. When they tried to enter the interface of this base, I helped them. We taught the system your language together . . . yet they finally revealed their true nature when they tried to destroy the base. Minions of my enemy. That is the only logical conclusion.”

Devon couldn’t believe it. The crew of the Catania had worked to take this station over? “And what happened then? You killed them all?”

“I imprisoned them, studied them. None of them survived the physical investigations. As I said, you are skilled liars but a terribly fragile species.” The robot seemed to have no awareness how horrible that sounded. He had dissected them, much like he had just done with Cara. Truth was though, this station needed to have scanners. The ship they came on certainly had. There was no need to dissect anyone. No, in some strange way this robot must have wanted to do so. A program flawed by such a long line of glitches that it was probably impossible to say what logical pattern it still followed.

“You are insane,” Devon summarized his thoughts.

“Insane? I don’t know that word.”

“Crazy? Out of your mind?”

The robot tilted his head, as if those ideas moved him in a way the rest of the conversation hadn’t. “My positronic brain works perfectly within the tolerance levels of . . .” The robot stopped. “I wanted to use this station, you know? If I defeated the enemy, I thought the masters would return. So, I overwrote the security protocols. I see how I made a mistake there. Now anybody can wield the power of this base, but it cannot be allowed to fall into the wrong hands—especially not those of our enemies.” The head returned to a straight position. “I hope you understand.”

Had the robot just changed the topic to avoid speaking about the integrity of his programming? An almost-human deflection tactic. Maybe species were different, but psychopaths were always the same.

“What did they do? The ones that came before? How did they betray you?” Devon wanted to keep him talking. He took the pulse gun and took a step back.

“They did not choose when the time came. Instead, they planned to destroy me and this base.”

“Choose what?”

“A target,” the robot replied.

“They didn’t choose a sun to blow up? Is that it?”

“Exactly. So, will you lay down voluntarily or do I need to use force?” A gesture of the muscular black arm to the table hinted at his fate.

“You are insane—” Devon pointed the pulse weapon at the robot and pulled the ignition button. The robot moved his head slightly aside.

“I have advanced electro-magnetic shielding; that will not work on me,” it said calmly.

“Well, it wasn’t meant for you.” Devon raised his pistol. He pulled the trigger and saw the plasma explode on the thing’s chest. Glowing, it began to burn into the flawless black chest plate. With a grin, Devon pulled the trigger again. The second shot made the robot stumble back. As expected, the pulse had brought down the energy shield.

Irritated for only a moment, the machine suddenly lowered its body with a cat-like movement, and the third shot missed it. Moving back, Devon fired again and again, but as it moved from one side to the other, the robot easily dodged the shots. Then, it dove under his arm and the metal hand grabbed his neck and raised him into the air. The suit gave a pressure warning and Devon had no doubt that without the armored military combat suit his neck would have broken.

“You misbehave,” it seemingly surprised by this.

“Yeah, I kind of do that a lot.” Devon felt this strange mix of adrenaline-infused rage and the deadly calm of a man with nothing to lose. He pulled the gun right under the arm of the robot. There had to be joints, and joints were always the weakest part. Devon shot. Again and again, he fired into the armpit of the robot, seeing the metal glow as the space filled with super-heated plasma. The robot seemed to shake a few times, almost as if it was surprised it was injured. Then, Devon dropped back to his feet as the arm fell off, the burning plasma floating from the opening it left.

Devon knew he had to take this chance if he wanted to finish the thing. He raised the gun to its head and pulled the trigger. As if this was nothing, the remaining arm wiped his gun away and the shot hit the wall. The display in his helmet told Devon he had only one shot left.

He never brought the arm back around to take aim. With one powerful punch to his chest the robot sent him hurling back. He crashed to the floor.

PRESSURE WARNING. PRESSURE WARNING. INTEGRITY ALERT.

He hated these warnings. He quickly rolled around to get back to his feet and raised the handgun that he had managed not to drop. The robot was gone. Only the arm lay there.

Devon caught his breath and forced himself from his knees to a standing position. Replacing the powerpack with a new one, the weapon was again reporting it had twelve shots left.

The thing was hurt. So, it could be killed. It wasn’t made of some indestructible material. It had weaknesses.

If it bleeds it dies. That was an old saying.

In a metaphorical sense, he had made the robot bleed.

Now it was time to make it die.

Chapter 14

“Dean Forel?” Hattinger raised his head, as he saw Sanka Forel enter his office. She looked pale in her white uniform. With her hair tied back and her posture straight and tense, she walked past the tables with the artifacts he studied before turning to the desk at the end of the hall that was considered his office.

“My personal rooms are smaller than your study, Professor,” she said.

“Well, I was assigned those rooms. I tried to make good use of them, making them my study, office and laboratory.”

“It must be so wonderful, being in the good graces of the Matriarch. Her favorite xeno-archeologist,” Forel said and then an almost sardonic smile appeared on her face. “Too bad these days seem to be over.”

“I never wanted to be one of her favorites. Have you ever met her?”

“Only once, briefly. She passed me without even knowing who I was, I assume.”

“She knew. There’s little she doesn’t know. But I think you aren’t useful enough. That’s what her favorites are to her. Useful. Valuable assets. Effective pawns in that game she plays with you know who.” Hattinger stood up. Forel was holding an object in her hand. A crystal with infrared signs.

“The Matterati artifact. It isn’t really an artifact. A shard that once belonged to a larger text. What you hold there is all that remains of an entire civilization once home to the planet Ypsilon 55-3. Nowadays better known as Wyrmire,” Hattinger explained.

“Strange, isn’t it? The finiteness of things. We all try to build a legacy, believing it will survive us. But for the universe, we are all just dying species, I suppose. We rise, we fall, we vanquish, and a million years later there’s barely any sign we ever existed. I never understood xeno-archeology.” Forel shook her head.

“You’ve been instrumental in building this department. A fine one, rivalled only by the Hegemony’s Science Society itself,” Hattinger said.

Forel laid the shard down. “The bureaucrats have their own way of reminding us about how easily our legacy can perish, you know? I’ve been . . . they applied quite some pressure on me to reign you in.”

“They should know better than that.” Hattinger smirked.

“Yes, but they don’t. Now I am under investigation for embezzling funds from the department of xeno-zoology. I just received the note.” Forel looked up. “This is how my legacy will come to an end, Professor. Disgraced. Replaced. For you, a man I can hardly say I even like. You and your mysterious space station.”

“You regret having given me that message?”

“Every day since I did. So, I wondered if it would be wise, for you and me, to be less of a scientist this time and give her what she wants. The Matriarch usually gets what she wants, you know? It’s too late for that, of course. I still have some friends on Scipio Prime. Some whispered to me that the Matriarch has deployed a fleet of scout vessels to the Tassion System. She knows where it is. A fleet is gathered over Zeus. Warships, with quite a substantial escort. She’s going to take that station. And once she does, we’ve got nothing to bargain with. I guess we’ll find comfort in our good conscience and the fact we did the right thing . . . when we spend the rest of our lives in poverty.”

Hattinger stared at her for a moment. “Then why did you do it in the first place?”

“That fleet is not alarming you, is it?”

“It’s a large system. They won’t find the station so easily,” Hattinger said, not mentioning the report he received had told him the station was now inside the Zweistein Nebula. Out of reach of any sensor.

“Why I did it? I guess I was afraid. Afraid I might one day look back and see it was me who gave them . . . that power.” Forel laughed. “Maybe it just felt damn good not jumping when they ordered me to.”

Hattinger came closer to the older woman.

“Nothing will happen. You will see. They threaten us, but they can’t replace us. Because they . . . she . . . the Matriarch, she wants us to keep on watching the stars. She needs us.”

“I hope you are right. I enjoyed what I did here.”

****

Hattinger had guessed right. Lex was still on Archimedes II. She wouldn’t leave so easily. Actually, she wouldn’t be allowed to leave so easily.

He found her after asking around for half a day. She had withdrawn to the Sanctuary, a small fortress-like estate built to serve as a home to the Matriarch, if she ever visited the planet. The Matriarch rarely left her chambers nowadays and certainly not her home planet of Scipio Prime. Not if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. So, this fortress was probably secretly serving another purpose or was just a useless facility maintained out of fear and blind faith instead of any estimation of its strategic value. 

The gardens were spectacular though. Hattinger had to admit that. Two children played there, both wearing black overalls that almost looked like uniforms. Lex stood on the terrace, her perfect, slim body emphasized by the tight jumpsuit she was wearing, her curly hair tied back, and her hands folded behind her.

“Lex,” Hattinger said her name as the only greeting he had to offer.

“Come to make amends, Professor?” Her tone was much colder today. She didn’t even turn around.

“Not exactly.” Hattinger moved next to her and looked at the two children. “Let me guess, genetically-optimized offspring of the great House of Tanasca. Clones maybe?

“No.” Lex pressed her lips together to fight a smile. “They are truly special. We wouldn’t pollute them with imperfect genomes like mine.”

“Of course not.” Hattinger took a deep breath. “You know what I truly appreciate about Archimedes II? The air. Clean, clear, never too warm, never polluted. The low population makes industrial waste basically nonexistent.” Hattinger smiled. “I was born on Hyperion. You know that? They put masks on the faces of newborns there, because there’s so much metal in the air that it tastes metallic, and a child usually barely survives for a week if it breathes unfiltered air.”

“You came to tell me where you were born?”

“Is it possible you are angry with me?”

“I promised the Matriarch you would see reason; you would comply. Now she has gotten what she wanted through different sources, and I stand in front of her like a fool. A failure. Let’s say I’ve been in a better mood in regards to our friendship in the past than I am today.”

Hattinger sighed. Pressure. The only language they understood. “The Authority, the military arm of the Hegemony, uses a technique called conditioning. A combination of implants and psychic surgery, to assure the absolute loyalty of their members. You knew that of course.”

“Of course I do. Every child knows about it.”

“Then why didn’t the Matriarch or any of the other Oligarchs adopt it? If it’s absolute obedience they want, it’s a great tool to achieve that.”

“The Matriarch understands absolute loyalty must be given and cannot be taken, I presume.”

“Oh, believe me, she’s wrong there. I served with those guys, remember? They’re loyal. Absolutely loyal,” Hattinger said. “But there’s a price of course for that loyalty.”

Lex didn’t take the bait. “Damian, Lanya! Clean yourselves and prepare for evening practice.” The two children stopped playing immediately and followed the orders. Hattinger felt their obedience was almost unnatural for children.

“She wants this station. Professor. I’ve never seen her want something that badly. She’s ready to wage war over it, with the Hegemony itself if she has to.”

“She isn’t about to start a war with the Hegemony over it, Lex.” Hattinger turned to the young woman. “She’s about to start a war with me over it.”

Lex finally turned her head to Hattinger and laughed at him. “Hardly a challenging fight for her.”

“Just let her know,” Hattinger said, and then he gave her a simple nod and turned, leaving without looking back. The Matriarch would understand. He had had people in the station, and she didn’t.

Chapter 15

The chamber Devon had fought the robot in led to another one, and the door was opened as if once unsealed, these doors were impossible to close again. Maybe a vastly different understanding of access and security was responsible for that. The robot appeared almost human, but in many ways, he seemed to have adopted things from humans when he encountered the crew of the Catania. Maybe after thousands of years, he was eager to find patterns of behavior to analyze and imitate. Or maybe a murderous conscience like his was the archetype humans came from too. Though restrained by ideas of morality and civilization, humans were predators by nature.

The light cut through the darkness of the corridor as Devon followed the thing, hearing its steps hurry away. He knew that with it wounded, this was his best chance to bring it down. A couple more shots, maybe one of his grenades, and he would have his revenge for what this thing did to his people.

As he went out of the corridor, he realized finding it might not be as easy as he imagined. Stairs led down into a hall that was easily the size of the hangar they had landed in. Inside stood silent lines of the same model of robot. An army of them, long gone, their batteries drained of any energy, he assumed. They weren’t as intact as the one he hunted though. Chest plates were missing, revealing the complicated mechanics of the things beneath. Arms gone. Head plates removed, wires hanging from the remains of their faces. Not one seemed fully intact.

“Only two of us remained. But I have not seen unit 66132 in a long time. Only I remain now.” The mechanical voice echoed through the hall, impossible to locate.

“We killed it. It was hiding aboard the Catania, and we blew it up with the ship.” Devon looked at one unit standing next to him with the once-glowing eyes ripped out. “I think he might have been hiding there from you. You did this to them, didn’t you? You harvested your comrades for spare parts.”

There was a long silence in the hall. As the voice began to speak again, it sounded almost regretful, sad. “There was once a unit. 44323 would be the designation in your language. One among many. Nothing special, except for a unique defect of its control module. When our kind was sent into hibernation mode unit 44323 could not join. The program did not work. So, he stayed awake. The only unit, other than a primitive hunter module called 66132. 66132 patrolled the halls, as it was his purpose. But unit 44323? He was a tactical unit. What tactic is there against eternal boredom? Years became decades, centuries and finally millennia.” There was movement between the bodies. Devon quickly raised his gun. A shadow passed through the long-vacant bodies of this silent army.

The voice returned. “Eventually, as expected, his parts began to fail. Unit 66132 accepted its fate. It grew slower, weaker. But unit 44323 could not. Alone and awaiting his master’s return, he decided survival was his only imperative. So, he learned. He learned to repair itself. But to do so, it needed parts. And that is how many became one. Unit 44323 ceased to exist one part after another until not one piece of his original body remained. He died. I was born from him. I am Zero. I am all of us merged into one—the perfect form.”

“Cannibalism. That’s what we call what you did.” Devon stopped and listened. Were there steps? “I understand what happened here. I called you insane and I was wrong. There is no insanity in a species of one. You are the only one left. A hiccup, a failure. One who was never meant to be. But if there is only one, what is normal then? Insane compared to who?” Devon was certain he heard the metal of Zero’s feet on the ground. Gently touching it, trying to make no sound. It came from . . . behind . . .

Without even looking, Devon turned around, pointed the gun behind him and pulled the trigger. The shot hit one of the silent guardians and threw it back, knocking into the one behind it, making it fall too. He had hit the wrong robot. The one standing next to it leapt forward and Zero’s fist hammered into Devon’s head. Without the helmet, he would have died instantly. Even with it, he felt the terrible impact of the powerful blow. It sent him to the ground. His vision turned blurry; his entire body shook from the impact. Coughing into his helmet, he pressed his arms to the ground and then felt the powerful kick into his side, sending him flying into a line of silent guardians. They tumbled to the ground as he hit them. The armor had absorbed most of the impact, but he was pretty sure his rib had cracked anyway.

He slowly registered he had lost his gun.

He took one of the magnetic grenades from his belt and rose back to his feet. Walking over the ravaged bodies of his dead brothers, Zero approached him with swift steps.

Devon stumbled backward, pulled his arm back, and hurled the grenade forward. Zero easily dodged it.

“Missed,” it said, and it seemed to feel a strange satisfaction from it. How could a robot hate so much?

“Think so?” Devon just sneered back, let himself fall to his knees and covered his head.

BEEP BEEP BEEP

The magnet had attached the grenade to the chest of one of the empty husks right behind Zero. The robot turned his head, seemingly unfamiliar with what a grenade was. Just as he did, the explosion ripped it off its feet, sending it into the lines of husks and knocking the bodies of all those it hit to the ground.

Devon grabbed a second grenade from his belt and dropped it to the floor, after setting the timer to ten seconds. From the mess of mechanical bodies and limps, he saw Zero rise again, one-armed now, his red eyes glowing in the dark. Devon began to run. He was almost out of options. He pushed forward to reach the entrance he had come through before the robot caught up.

Zero pushed aside a body blocking the way. But before it could pursue its prey, the second explosion ripped Devon off his feet and sent him back into the next lines of empty robotic shells. Feeling the shockwave from behind, Devon made it to the stairs and hurried up, quickly making it to the corridor. From behind, he heard the creaking sound of Zero rising up again. The second grenade had damaged him. The servos powering the robot’s limbs buzzed as it slowly rose. Devon risked one last look over his shoulder. The steps of the thing were slower now: the robot’s left leg pulled after his body as it started to follow Devon. Wounded, but seemingly only more determined because of it, the robot pushed away the lifeless husks in its way. Devon had shown himself to be a danger not only to the station and whatever long-forlorn mission it pursued, but to its existence itself. He knew it wouldn’t stop before he was dead.

Running into the dark, Devon ignored all the blaring warnings about integrity damage to the suit and his health and kept on running, the suit’s servos giving him a speed his exhausted muscles wouldn’t have had. The light bulb was moving wildly from one side to the other as his head moved. When he finally reached the chamber where Cara’s remains still rested, horribly mutilated on the table, he was certain he had a head start.

Devon took a second to catch his breath and then grabbed the last charge from his belt and put it against the wall right next to the entrance. He had the mobile detonator set to the explosives inside the ship, so he had to use a timer on this one. Panting, he looked into the dark corridor and could make out the red lights of Zero’s eyes approaching from there, steadily, mercilessly moving towards him. He set the explosive to 30 seconds and started running again. Devon had no idea how extensive the explosion would be, but he assumed it would be considerably larger than a grenade. The only strategy he had was to get as far away as possible from both Zero and the ship. He arrived in the hangar and turned left, seeing a couple of crates with equipment his crew never had a chance to install. Ducking behind them, he covered his head. If he had counted correctly, there were about three seconds before . . .

The entire station shook, and the vibrations ran through the floor as the explosion ripped apart the chamber next to him. The shockwave sent a cloud of dust and metal debris into the hangar and Devon heard the clattering as small metal pieces hit the crates he was hiding behind. Gasping for air, he fell to his knees.

WARNING! ATMOSPHERE! WARNING ATMOSPHERE!

The words blinked in his display. What did the suit mean? Atmosphere? Was the suit damaged and was he exposed to the outside atmosphere? There was no integrity warning this time. It took him a second before he understood. The warning was actually wrong. It wasn’t the atmosphere he had to worry about, but the lack thereof. He felt the air hissing past him, the crates slowly moving. The explosion had blown a hole into the outer wall of the space station. Quickly, he activated his magnetic boots, hoping their grip would be strong enough for him to be held in position.

A large antenna flew past him, and he had to duck down to avoid being hit on the head by it. The light in the room turned to red and Devon forced himself to move forward; the air dragged through the opened gate and howled past him. He brought up his hand just in time as a smaller tool crashed into his arm. Everything lighter than a fully-loaded grate began to move. A hundred objects would soon be flying towards him. Covering his head, Devon ducked down without his feet leaving the ground. But before anything hit him, the intense draft died down. The alarm inside his helmet stopped. Looking around, he realized the gates Zero had opened to drag Cara to the chamber nearby had closed. A classical, logical security procedure in case of a leak. Seal all doors. Even if Zero had survived the blast, which he strongly doubted, it was confined to the rooms beyond the hangar, with the doors probably unable to open under any circumstances.

“Devon to Lira, do you copy?” he asked into the radio. Her being on the other side of the station hopefully meant she wouldn’t receive the signal. Those famous interferences they never got to analyze. Feeling his body ache inside the suit, Devon made his way to Yonder, still impaled and hanging there like a bizarre sacrifice. He had a handgun at his side, like they all had been ordered to carry. Drawing it out, Devon checked it. Twelve shots. At least he wouldn’t be unarmed if the station held any more surprises for him.

Chapter 16

The first time he had entered the station he had been excited by the scope, the pure expansiveness of the main body. The silver sphere in the midst had been a mystery. The small spiders were a technological miracle. Now it all seemed to be designed for only one purpose: slowing him down.

The misty air was gloomy, and clouds of steam seemed to erupt off the system; the light itself had a sickly yellowish gleam. The heat outside had to be unbearable, since it seemed the station was only getting hotter. It felt like a beast awakened by his presence. As if the station wanted him to be here.

Devon tried to move as fast as possible, but even with a powered suit to strengthen his muscles, he felt his natural strength was failing and his body was reaching its limits. He was hungry and thirsty, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything about either of those two needs in the foreseeable future.

Only his will kept his body moving. The pain, the thirst, it was all irrelevant. As his hand checked that the detonator was still in place at his belt, he knew all his suffering was temporary. It wasn’t long before he would need to do the only right thing. Only one more chance to escape and he had little hope in the second shuttle. He would be surprised if the repair bots or Zero hadn’t scavenged the shuttle from the Catania for parts during the last 63 years. Even if not, it would have no Bernstein Drive and therefore all they could do was try to escape the station and the nebula. Even if they pulled that off, they would float in space, hundreds of years away from the next human outpost and hoping for rescue. Starving. Dying, like those suns he had seen on the hologram.

It probably would be a mercy if they were trapped here. Maybe ceasing to exist with this station would be a more purposeful death than the slow agony of dying in space.

Devon stopped and leaned against one of the pillars.

Dying.

That was what he thought about.

His life was about to end. For what? Because some professor he had never met before asked him to look at some ancient space station? Had he hoped to restore his reputation? Had he been curious? Yes, the second he had seen it, he had felt . . . that there was a meaning to this. A greater purpose. Devon had never considered himself to be a man who would die for a greater purpose. He had built space stations. Big ones. First for the Hegemony, later for the Oligarchs, simply because they paid better. He had never met a woman he wanted to stay with for longer than a couple of weeks, he had no children, he barely had any friends except some drinking buddies from his salvaging crew. So, who was he dying for? What was he throwing away his life for? What greater good did he protect?

The answer echoed through his mind and surprised nobody more than him.

Humanity.

This station could either be used to end humanity or oppress it for all time. It could create dynasties, eternal empires. With the knowledge hidden here they could build fleets unlike any other. With the power this station held, the power to reshape the galaxy, to even destroy entire systems at will . . . this thing was made to wipe out species. Genocide. Speciocide was the core of this weapon.

That was what he would die for.

Because with all their flaws and problems, as much as he disliked society and those who ruled, Devon knew that humanity was more than another species. It was his species. One didn’t realize it before coming to a place like this. He was a human. Even if nobody would ever know what he had done here, he would at least have made a contribution to the survival of his entire species.

It would make his life one of meaning.

And that was probably enough.

Pushing himself away from the pillar he wished he could wipe the sweat off his face. Of course, he couldn’t. The worst thing about all of this was he would die in this damn suit. He felt like a fish in a can.

Looking over to the other side of the cavern, he knew he was halfway there at best. For some reason he felt he didn’t have time. Something was coming. Something was about to happen, and he needed to act. 

As if the station wanted to tell him he was right, he heard a sound from above. Raising his head, which was hard in the helmet, he looked up. Had there been a movement? Up there, 300 meters above? If so, would he even have been able to see it or was it his mind playing tricks on him?

Drawing his gun, he raised it to the ceiling and realized the light was weaker there. A gloomy dark seemed to spread above. Inhaling, he saw the crosshair in his visor look for a target. Hoping the computer could make out something his bare eyes couldn’t, he waited for a moment and just as he was about to lower the gun, the crosshair suddenly turned red. Target lock. He couldn’t see anything, but the system reported a locked target.

Pulling the trigger, the glowing shot sped towards the ceiling and hit it with full ferocity. Energy lines exploded, sending sparks through the entire system as the plasma spread and burned away anything in its way. Then something began to fall. Devon lowered the gun as he realized what it was. He had just destroyed one of the service robots, those silvery maintenance things. Obviously, his nerves were beginning to play games with him. Shaking his head inside the helmet, he took a deep breath and began walking again. Looking aside, he spotted the silvery spider, burned from the plasma shot, slowing down in its fall. So, there was no gravity in the center of the station? It explained why the giant silver core floated there so easily. Another detail he would never report. Another truth that would be lost here with him forever.

****

Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, he reached the other side of the gangway circling the entire cavern. He noticed that Lira had actually cracked the mystery of how to open the doors. The gates were wide open as he approached them, and he realized he was still holding the gun in his hand. That spared him from having to draw it. Moving forward, he realized there was no mysterious source of light in this version of the hangar. It actually looked radically different from the one they had used. Instead of a clean feel of white and black colors in perfect order, this hangar had obviously fallen victim to someone’s search for spare parts. The floor plates were removed, and strange pipes showed beneath it. Cables hung from the ceiling, sending sparks when they touched each other. They looked like a parody of flowers someone had hung up on the ceiling.

There was a shuttle, yes. But he needed only one look to know it wouldn’t be flying anywhere. The entire side of the hull was gone, revealing the inner machinery. The cockpit had been removed entirely, lying on the floor as if some giant had ripped it out. Lira looked up as he approached, pulling out a long black box she had found.

“You’re alive? I heard an explosion,” Lira said. Devon had expected a more joyous welcome.

“I think I killed it.” Devon entered, lowering his gun. “What have you found?”

“Well, this thing isn’t flying anywhere.” She straightened herself and picked up the plasma rifle. He had left it on the floor next to Vax’s body. Suddenly he realized neither of them had been there when he had passed the elevator. At least he knew where the gun was. “But I found something.” She took the rifle into both hands.

“What is it?”

“It has an escape pod,” Lira said, still sounding tense and almost hostile. “One single pod for one person. Looks still functional with an emergency transmitter and everything. But there’s only one.”

Devon sighed and looked at the ship. Then he nodded and returned his gaze to Lira. “You’ll take it.”

The woman shook her head inside her helmet. “No, you’ll take it.”

“I won’t discuss this.”

“Good, because neither will I,” Lira said with a voice cold as ice.

Devon came closer. “You’ll take that pod now, that’s an order.”

“Screw you. I’m staying here. We both know the chances of survival in the pod in the nebula are close to zero. You would need to float out of the nebula and even then, you need to be picked up by someone within 48 hours. Basically suicide. But there’s a chance of course. One percent maybe? That out there there’s a ship already looking for us? Yeah, maybe. So, you take that chance, Devon. Because you want to survive. I want to go back up there, now that the robot is dead, and learn as much as possible. If you get saved, good. Come get me. If not, let me die at least doing what I was born to do!” Lira yelled those last words.

“Lira, there will be nothing to explore.” Her eyes widened.

“What do you plan?”

“I plan . . . to blow up our fusion reactor. The Remus reactor will explode and make the Bernstein Drive implode. If we are lucky that’ll rip apart the main core of this station and . . . I guess they’ll see that explosion with their bare eyes all the way back on Archimedes II,” Devon said. “We can’t let this fall into anybody’s hands. This isn’t about science, Lira. It’s about power. A weapon is always about power, and this station is the greatest, worst weapon ever available to mankind.” Devon took a small step towards her.

She raised her rifle. “Give me the detonator.”

“No.”

“You . . . you people. Nothing is ever about science for you, right? Ignorance. Blissful, total ignorance. That’s the history of a species right here. A dead species. We might learn from their mistakes! Might learn from their achievements! This place is the key to understanding a million things beyond our comprehension and you . . . you want to destroy it? Because you’re afraid this thing might change something? Endanger your beloved status quo?”

“Lira, this thing . . . could kill billions. And if I know anything, then it is that it will be the most powerful tool of control ever, . . . once the people of the universe have proof it works. So it will be used at least once. I can’t let that happen. I can’t even risk that happening.” Devon shook his head.

“What you say makes no sense,” Lira hissed those words into her helmet. He tried to get closer, but she raised the weapon again, now pressing it against her shoulder, taking aim at him.

“I think it makes perfect sense, and you know it.” Devon raised his arms to signal that he posed no danger.

“Weapon away. Slowly. And then you give me the detonator.”

“Lira.”

“Weapon away!”

Devon considered trying to shoot her, but he still believed she was a reasonable young woman, so he stretched his arm and let the pistol drop.

“Lira, think about it. I know this is all you dreamt of, but your dreams might come at a price—”

“What price? Hmm? The Matriarch taking over the galaxy? A few people killing a few million others? These things happen every day! My parents got killed. Even my little brother! You think any of the Matriarchs or Patriarchs of the great Oligarchies would be any worse than the damn Autocrat of the Hegemony? Or any better? Power hungry bastards, all of them. We exchange one with another. Eventually they get killed and another takes over. This station might change how this happens, but it happened long before humanity set foot on another planet and it will keep on happening long, long after we are little but an echo between the stars! That’s bigger! You hear me? This could change things. Perspectives! This could change the very trajectory of history! How we see ourselves!” Lira yelled and Devon realized she truly tried to convince herself to do what she had to do. Shoot him. Because they both knew by now it was the only way she would get that detonator.

“Yeah, Lira. That’s how it works. You guys find some old stuff, and everybody suddenly changes their lives.” Devon shook his head. “No, you’ll have to do this the hard way.”

Lira stared at him, her face looking menacing in the almost-complete darkness of the hangar. He spread his arms, taking another step. He saw her finger slowly move on the trigger. Staring at it, waiting for the last little movement that would end his life, he inhaled and looked at her.

“Don’t make me do it,” Lira said.

“Lira, if you’re willing to kill me for a bunch of old machines, I’m not stopping you. I think the professor would be very sad if he could see you now, though.”

Lira pressed her lips together and raised the gun, only a little. Then she let it drop. “Dammit.” She gasped.

“I am sorry.” Devon wanted to take another step.

His legs never began to move, because from the darkness behind her, Zero’s hulking body appeared, his chest plate molten and cracked, his face half ripped away, revealing the machinery underneath with hundreds of diodes and circuits.

“Lira!” Devon gasped, and she turned around just as the fist of Zero’s remaining arm came down. It crashed through her helmet window and into it so deep Devon knew not much of her head could be left. Her body dropped to the floor as if someone had cut the rope that held it up. Zero stared at Devon and though he had no mouth, Devon almost felt the robot sneer at him, satisfied with his surprise entry. The gun lay on the ground, and Devon knew he wouldn’t get the EMP generator fast enough from his back. So, the plasma cutter was his only option. He grabbed it and pressed the ignition. But Zero was already next to him and swung his arm aside, hitting Devon’s head with such kinetic might that he was ripped off his feet and thrown six feet aside. Devon felt the armor hit the ground. His head seemed to explode. But the stomping steps, the pulling leg from behind reminded him he had no time for pain.

Throwing himself around, he struck out with the plasma cutter, aiming for the one still-functioning leg of the giant robot. As if he had predicted his attack, the thing’s hand reached down and gripped the arm wielding the weapon. With one powerful move it raised him up and twisted the arm so far Devon felt the joint of the suit bent. Screaming out in pain, he let go of the plasma cutter as his hand opened to give him relief of the spreading pain. Screaming into his helmet, Devon was helpless as Zero flung him to the ground and his heavy leg stomped on his helmet. Every alert of his suit was initiated.

INTEGRITY. INTEGRITY. INTEGRITY.

He couldn’t give in to the pain. Or the fear. If he did, this thing would kill him, and he would be the final victim. Reaching for his belt, he took the last object he had left, the final magnetic mine. Pressing the ignition button, he shoved it through the robot’s legs. It only slid a few feet away, but before it could explode, Zero turned and picked it up at such a speed that Devon could barely see it in the dark. This was it. His only chance. His last chance. Pushing himself up, more through the power of the suit than anything, as his muscles no longer had any strength left, he reached to his back and took the final weapon from the slot he had there. The second pulse. Zero turned around, obviously planning to end what he had started and raised the weapon.

“I guess your electromagnetic shielding might have a few cracks, hmm?” Devon pressed out and as the thing came closer, he pointed the pulse at the robot’s chest and fired it. A single hum escaped it and sparks erupted from the chest plate. Zero crashed to his knees immediately. Leaning on one of his arms, he twisted his head. Devon pushed himself back with his legs and crawled backwards. It was still alive. The pulse had damaged it but hadn’t destroyed it. Panic spread inside his brain, but through it he realized that somewhere here he had to have his gun. Somewhere here . . .

Turning, he began to shove his hands over the ground, pushing away debris. He finally felt it and quickly laid his hand around the grip.

It was too late.

He felt Zero’s hand take his helmet from behind and then hammer it down into the ground. Again and again, he felt how his head was lifted and then rammed down. Each time the pain grew worse. Each time his thoughts became less coherent, until nothing was left of his conscious mind, and he slipped into darkness.

Chapter 17

First there was the pain. His neck, his back, and more than anything his head. He realized his face lay on something cold and even through the pain, he touched his face in panic, realizing he was no longer wearing his helmet. Yet, he breathed. His face lay on the dark cold floor, and he breathed. He tried to get up, but realized he couldn’t pull his legs up.

“I have become quite an expert in the methods of adjusting what you humans call the spinal cord.” The metallic voice was failing. He heard the squeaking noise of the leg dragged behind Zero’s body. Turning his head, Devon realized where he was. The glowing green map of the galaxy illuminated the whole room, and he recognized Zero’s crippled body as a silhouette standing in front of it. The remaining arm was drawn to the body, the remaining leg squeaked at every move as he dragged the useless second one after him. One of his red eyes was gone and the remaining small red dot appeared as the robot turned and looked down on him. The buzzing machines underneath Zero’s broken faceplate seemed to adjust upon gazing down at Devon.

“I can’t feel my legs.” Devon spoke aloud what the dominant thought in his mind was at the moment.

“That is what I was talking about. Since I am in no shape to hunt after you, I decided to make you a little bit more . . . manageable,” the robot said, and his voice almost sounded amused. “I severed multiple nerves in your lumbar spinal cord that will take away your ability to control your legs. The damage is permanent, I am afraid. But in your case, permanently won’t be such a long time, will it?”

Devon closed his eyes and clenched his hands into fists. “You bastard.” He managed to push himself around to lay on his back. Then he pulled himself over the ground until he slowly slid next to the console nearby and lifted himself into a sitting position. He looked down at his useless legs, loosely hanging at his hips. As he saw their ends, he burst into tears. His feet had been removed.

“Yes, an additional security measure.” Zero pointed to the plasma cutter nearby. “This machine is excellent for such surgical procedures, as the flame cauterized the wound immediately.”

Devon didn’t respond. He just stared at his legs. His hand went to his belt, and he felt the small detonator there. He still had it. Clenching his teeth, Zero turned around again. The robot seemed to fight for his balance.

“We—” the robot began and then seemed to lose his ability to speak for a moment. “We have . . .” The robot turned his head to him. “Much in common, human.”

“We are both cripples, and we will both not survive much longer?”

“We have the absolute will to survive. You and I, we don’t give u . . . u . . . up no matter how bad the odds are against us.” Zero took another insecure step towards him.

“Why can I breathe?” Devon asked.

“Because I wa . . . wa . . . want you to. The environment inside the ba . . . ba . . . base can be fully ad . . . adjusted. I recreated the atmosphere you use in your spaceships inside this cha . . . cha . . . chamber.” Zero bowed down and Devon thought for a moment the robot would attack him, but instead he supported itself by putting his left arm on the console Devon leaned against.

“Why?”

“So, you can gi . . . give me the informa . . . mation I require,” Zero said, his voice now having problems modulating. “You con . . . convinced me of the danger your spe . . . species poses. I wa . . . want you to tell me where . . . which sys . . . sys . . . system I find you.”

“Why would I do that?” Devon adjusted himself slightly more. The plasma cutter was too far away, and there was no other available weapon up here. But he needed none. He would have found great satisfaction in killing Zero personally. He knew they would both die soon enough.

“Be . . . Because I will peel a . . . away your skin lay . . . layer by lay . . . layer if you do not co . . . co . . . cooperate.” Zero looked down on him. Snorting, Devon just stared back.

“Humanity has settled on 1,000 planets, you tin head. Not one single system will do any damage to us.”

“I see you ha . . . have learned a lot lot lot from your ma . . . ma . . . masters. Such spre . . . spread.” Zero straightened himself again. “We ca . . . can start with your home sys . . . system and g . . . go forward from there!”

Devon inhaled. “Okay, but one more thing before we start our work.” Devon’s hand gently went to the detonator at his belt.

“Yes?” Zero asked.

“Goodbye.” Devon removed it from his belt and pulled the ignition. Zero seemed to stare at his hand with his single red eye for a long moment, then it tilted its head slightly. Devon let go of the finger and exhaled. Had it failed?

It hadn’t.

The light in the room turned red and a howling sound grew louder. Zero turned his head and moved, almost stumbling as he made his way to the large panoramic window. Devon spared himself the embarrassment of crawling there and instead turned his head. He had a perfect view from here: a pillar of fire spread into space as it ripped through the gigantic disc below. The entire station trembled, and Zero leaned against the window, touching it with his remaining arm.

“Wha . . . what have you done?”

“You overestimated my will to survive, I’d say,” Devon replied. And the explosion that sent dust and debris into space suddenly vanished, as if sucked back into the station. The metal of the disc below bent and then collapsed into the station. A bright light appeared and seemed to take over the station with metal and wires ripping out of the structure hurling into it and vanishing in that light forever. Devon knew what was coming and shielded his eyes. Closing his eyes, pressing them shut, he still saw the brilliant white as the Bernstein Drive imploded. Then there was complete darkness. Devon opened his eyes to see that even the nebula around them had dissolved and half the base was gone, the disc missing half its structure as the entire station began to slowly shift. Through the torn structure he could see the silver metal core. It was still intact.

It was still intact.

He pressed himself off the console and started crawling towards the plasma cutter. It lay 30 feet away. He looked over his shoulder, and Zero turned his head to him and then pushed himself off the glass.

“You!” Zero yelled, suddenly his voice deep and growling as if anger could repair the failing mechanics. He stumbled after Devon, who desperately dragged himself forward. Just as his hand closed around the handle of the plasma cutter, the robot stomped down on it, smashing it on the ground. The entire base shook, as if the shockwave of the explosion had just hit them. Devon ignored it, just staring at the only weapon he had left laying shattered on the floor. He had failed. Zero snatched him from behind and raised him into the air.

“You . . . you wi . . . wi . . . will name your sys . . . system!” He growled and as if the anger had given him back some of his mobility, he carried Devon over to the hologram. “Name it!” Zero threw him to the ground. Devon felt the pain fill his entire body as he hit the cold floor. A loud squeal ran though the ground as if the metal of the station was bending and twisting. Devon turned his head, seeing Zero move his hand through the air, touching one holographic symbol after another. The station seemed to still be functional, and he was arming it. Zero’s head spasmed a few times, but he finally seemed satisfied with his work and took a step to Devon. Turning to him, Devon tried to hit him, but the machine seemed unimpressed by the attempt. Zero simply lifted Devon up until his face was right in front of Zero’s broken, black visage. Up this close, he could hear the buzzing of the inner workings of this mechanical creature.

“Name it.” Zero growled and leaned forward. “Or I wi . . . will rip your . . . your eyes out.”

Devon stared at the machine, knowing it meant every word.

“One. One sys . . . system. I de . . . deserve re . . . re . . . retribution.”

Devon clenched his teeth. “One system. Only one. Then you’ll let me die.”

“One,” Zero agreed.

“Okay.” Devon nodded. “I got one.” He looked left and stretched out his hand. Zero’s arm seemed to fail and lowered him. Then it lifted him back up. Devon opened the menu and it turned into his language.

Target. Details. Back.

He pressed the target button. The interface was kept as simple as possible. Only two options remained.

Execute. Abort.

Slowly turning his head to Zero he moved his hand forward.

“One system.” Nodding, he pressed the execute button. The stars around them vanished instantly and instead a number of loading bars appeared, all filling quickly. Zero looked at them, and Devon was sure if there was any emotion in his features it would have been satisfaction. The entire station seemed to hum, and diagrams appeared, circular symbols with hundreds of signs running through them. Curves, spreading, twisting and then a single red dot appeared in the middle of the room. It began to glow and finally grew so bright Devon had to shield his eyes. Then the light faded out and he saw the map of the stars appear once again.

“It is . . . is . . . is done.” Zero was surprisingly gentle as he put Devon down and pushed him against the console. He rose up and looked at the ceiling. “It is still . . . still . . . working.”

“You weren’t sure, I guess. After all this time,” Devon said, and the shadows grew. He turned his head and saw the light reflected by the micro particles of the nebula vanish.

“I . . . don’t . . . un . . . understand.”.

“I choose the Tassion System. This system. It’s the sun dying, you damn bastard.” Devon turned to him. “That’s the star’s core cooling. In a moment gravity will—” Devon had barely said the words as the entire nebula suddenly filled with a brilliant white. Shielding his eyes, he laughed out loud.

“No,” Zero said. “No!” The robot stumbled and Devon kept on laughing. He pushed himself around the console and the light died down.

“No idea how long the shockwave will take, but it’s now on its way,” Devon said.

“As you meas . . . measure it, it trav . . . travels at ten per . . . percent of the speed of li . . . light. Con . . . considering the close prox . . . prox . . . proximity of the blue dwarf sun . . . sun . . . to this neb . . . neb . . . nebula it will reach us in about ei . . . eight min . . . minutes,” Zero said. Devon swallowed. He expected the droid to grab him and let out all his anger on him, but to his surprise it did nothing like this. It simply turned to the window and looked outside.

Devon pressed himself up and turned to the blue nebula himself. “I told you the truth. Just so you know. Your masters, the enemies you called the Hunger . . . they’re all gone. Nothing left of them. All dead,” Devon said.

“No.”

“Yes, believe me, we—” Devon said, and the robot turned and stared at him with his one red eye.

“The Hung . . . Hunger . . . the ori . . . original en . . . entity my ma . . . masters gave that . . . that name . . . is only con . . . contained. Im . . . im . . . imprisoned.” Zero turned to the window again. “The pur . . . purpose of the . . . these stat . . . stations was to en . . . ensure it was nev . . . never re . . . released again.”

Devon looked at Zero. “Stations? There was more than one?”

“Of course.”

How many had survived? How many of these things lurked out there in the dark, waiting for any unlucky traveler to stumble over them when their Bernstein Drive malfunctioned.

Devon closed his eyes and pushed himself up against the pillar again. Then he opened his eyes and saw the nebula was dissolving. Slowly it vanished, the blueish mist disappearing and instead a giant wave of energy emerged—blue and yellow, pulsing as it spread.

“I don . . . don’t wa . . . want to die,” Zero said.

Devon didn’t comment on it. He wanted this sadistic machine to die. He wanted nothing more than that. But he couldn’t make himself give in to his hatred at that moment. He just stared at the supernova spreading towards them and only one single thought filled his mind:

It was beautiful.

It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. 

Chapter 18

“Astronomers have no explanation for the event. We know neither how nor why this has happened. Our best astrophysicists are working on it, but so far, no particular theory has held. The sun of the Tassion System was millions of years away from turning into a supernova, according to our records.” Salazar explained the events to the gathered members of the Science Society. Hundreds of men and women of all ages, all wearing white uniforms and staring at him as he stood on the stage in front of them, a large hologram of the ‘Tassion event’ right behind him. In their desperation, they had sent the feed of his speech to every scientific facility in the galaxy, which included the university of Archimedes II.

Hattinger had seen it several times over the course of the day. He would need to contact his former superior soon to explain to him that the Remus, the Gemini-Class vessel he had lent to Hattinger, had gone to that system. Eventually he would have to reveal the existence of the station, though he would downplay it as much as possible. It didn’t really matter. Whatever had been in the system was gone—burned away by an exploding sun, dying with one last violent outburst.

Hattinger knew he would never know what had happened. But he would have to live with the fact he had sent these men and women to their deaths. Lira. The moment he had allowed her to join the mission, he had doomed her. Devon Rayvolt too. All the others.

Standing there among his colleagues in the grand auditorium, he watched once again the accelerated version of events. The shockwave spread through the entire system, destroying everything in its wake, including a good ten percent of the Zweistein Nebula. The early reports indicated the blue dwarf had turned into a massive black hole. It would make the entire system impossible to reach for the foreseeable future, as no Bernstein Drive could function near such a gravity pull.

Tassion would keep its secrets. The system had devoured everybody who had tried to find out.

“It must be hard on you.” A voice came from nearby. Among the many scientists of the academy, Lex stood out in her crimson red dress.

“You’re still here? Even though there is nothing to gain?” Hattinger asked.

“I was asked to forward the gratitude of the Matriarch to you.”

“Gratitude?”

“Imagine if she had sent a fleet there? An entire fleet lost would have been disastrous. You clearly had a better estimation of the dangers this place posed and in your own stubborn way, you kept us from making a horrible mistake. That’s what I explained to her, and she agreed.”

“The Matriarch admitted to a mistake? I never thought I would see that day.” Hattinger wanted to sound sharp and sarcastic, but he couldn’t. He didn’t find the strength.

“You sacrificed your men so hers would be safe.”

Hattinger knew that Lex didn’t believe that for a second. But it had been what she had presented the Matriarch and she had done so to protect him. A bitter irony, that even when he deserved to be punished, he escaped that punishment. And the hollow feeling of guilt he would carry for the rest of his life would be worse than anything the Matriarch could have done to him.

“Thank you.” Hattinger looked down.

“I guess I owed you that,” Lex said. “You were right. About what I did with Acheron. But I have my reasons and one day—”

Hattinger raised his hand. “Not today. One day maybe. But not today.”

“You were close to someone out there?”

“I was the one to send all of them out there. But among them was Lira Siola, my assistant,” Hattinger said. “If the Matriarch would be so merciful to make sure her family—”

“They will be taken care of,” Lex assured him.

Hattinger gave her a grateful smile and then turned to leave. He found the presence of her, of everyone, to be impossible to endure. All he wanted to do was be alone for a while.

“Professor Hattinger.” He turned and in front of him stood a man in a blue outfit with a gray vest. His hair was gray and matched the color of the vest perfectly. Despite his apparent age . . . he had to be 60 at least, his features held something youthful, and his bright blue eyes sparkled with the energy expected from a younger man. He looked vaguely familiar.

“Yes, I’m Professor Hattinger, but please excuse me. I’m not in a mood to make acquaintances today,” Hattinger replied, realizing how rude he was being.

“I understand. But that’s not why I disturbed you in your thoughts, Professor. I am Professor Saulon Trask from the history department. I am sure you’ve never heard of me, as I don’t have the same . . . mercurial reputation as many others around here—” He offered his hand and Hattinger reluctantly took it.

“A historian?” Hattinger asked.

“My field is actually astrology,” Trask said.

“Didn’t you just say you are with the history department?” Hattinger hated that he was drawn into a conversation.

“Even stars have a history, Professor.”

“I’m sure your story and field of work is most fascinating, and I seriously hope one day you will tell me all about it over a glass of good wine, but today isn’t a good day—” Hattinger saw him raise his hand.

“The Dean told me you were personally involved with an expedition into that system. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I think I might have found something . . . connected to this and Forel said you might want to see my work. I believe you will find it . . . interesting.”

“Maybe tomorrow.” Hattinger smiled.

“This isn’t the first star to die, Professor,” Trask said as Hattinger turned to leave. “I really think you might want to see this right away.”

Hattinger turned around and nodded. “Please. Show me then.”

****

The laboratory was really a hall that contained a giant version of a holographic galaxy map. None of the two men could guess how similar it was to the one Devon and Lira had found.

Hattinger circled the map as Trask stepped to a single console and began typing. A part of the map with very few recorded systems enlarged.

“What do you know about the Rift, Professor Hattinger?”

Hattinger turned to the man and then sighed. “The term describes the systems beyond the Telomis Sector. The so-called Sea of Perdition. A part of space that makes up about a third of the known galaxy. No habitable planet was ever found there.”

“Well. It’s worse than that, Professor. There are large parts we can’t reach or even see through our most powerful telescopes, because ionized nebulae disturb the functionality of Bernstein Drives and gravitational fields disturb the flow of light, making us blind. There could be thousands of habitable planets and the truth is, we wouldn’t know. The Zweistein Nebula, for example, seems to span for light years. The nebulae within the Rift are easily a hundred times that size and yet mostly unexplored. The area known as Dark Space is at the edge of the Rift and holds several black holes in a concentration even our smartest minds haven’t found an explanation for. There are some in my field who have theorized that these nebulae and black holes are not of natural origin but have rather been created as . . . defensive walls,” Trask explained.

“The Manorin thesis. I am well aware of it.”

“Of course, you are an expert on it, actually. Well, a modified idea is that this wall of unfortunate interstellar anomalies wasn’t made to protect us, but rather to keep us out.”

Hattinger raised his brows. “To keep us out?”

“Probably not us. Their creation would have happened long before the first apes on Terra learned to walk upright.” Trask laughed at his own joke, but stopped as he realized Hattinger wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

“So, they tried to keep something else out? Fascinating hypothesis, but really what does any that has to do—”

“Something else, indeed. Yet, behind this veil, deep in unknown space, we discovered something. Quite recently we realized our maps weren’t accurate anymore. We missed several stars. Suns we detected some centuries ago, when we mapped what little we could of the region.” Trask showed a part of the map displaying several glowing orange balls. “This was the map 200 years ago,” he explained. Then two of the orange dots vanished. “That’s it today. Those suns have been dying. And we don’t know why. They weren’t in a cooling state or didn’t display any signs of instability.”

“Like Tassion.” Hattinger nodded. “When did that happen?”

“Obviously, the light took years to reach us at this distance. The last ones we saw disappear were actually 4,872 light years away, meaning that they were dying suddenly and unexpectedly 4,872 years ago.”

“A millennia before mankind settled Centerworld,” Hattinger concluded.

“Exactly. I thought that fact might be interesting to you, when you evaluate the disaster of this latest mission. The Dean at least thought it might be.”

“How many systems does the Rift hold?”

“We don’t know. But now it is three less than 5,000 years ago. There are tens of thousands, at least.”

Hattinger watched the holographic representations of those suns as if they would reveal their secrets if he stared hard enough.

“Naturally I found yesterday’s events rather . . . disturbing,” Trask said. “Which is why I wanted to talk to you.”

“What disturbs you, Professor?”

“Well, isn’t that obvious? I was thrilled by this, as it implies that there might be available proof for the Manorin thesis. A clear indicator that a civilization once existed with the ability to destroy suns, which means of course they had the ability to create nebulae, black holes, and neutron stars. Indeed, an idea that . . . could change the way we judge the galaxy’s history.” Trask moved away from his console and approached Hattinger. “But if this happened yesterday? What does it mean? It means, Professor Hattinger, that this technology is still around. Today.” He shrugged. “A frightening thought, don’t you think?”

Hattinger stared at the man for a moment. 4,800 years ago someone destroyed entire suns. And a few days after they had found an unnamed space station of unknown origin, another sun had died before its time. Frightening wasn’t a word strong enough, Hattinger felt. 

“Very much so.”

Trask smiled. “Anyway, I just—”

“Professor, why don’t you come to my office later. I want to show you a message recorded 63 years ago by an officer of the cargo ship Catania. You might find this message to be . . . enlightening and combined with your findings and the recent events . . . unsettling.”

“I would love to.” Trask smiled.

“And do me a favor. Keep an eye on the stars. Just in case a few more of them suddenly vanish,” Hattinger added.

THE END

****

You want more from the same series?

THE RUINS OF ACHERON

Or you want more from the same author?

THE PULSERIDER SERIES