Even though he expected it, the fury of the weather still staggered Kalan as they stepped off the ship. A particularly violent gust of wind combined with the standing water on the pad slid Kalan sideways the better part of a foot. Temera slid past him, her lighter body providing less resistance, and Kalan snaked a hand out to grab her arm. The rain lashing them ran across the face shield of the suit and obscured anything more than a few feet away. Even inside the helmet, the noise from the rain and thunder was almost deafening. Kalan opened a comm channel with Tessan.
“Which way?” Kalan said.
Tessan turned to look at Kalan, pointed at the helmet, and shook his head.
“Which way?” Kalan bellowed.
Tessan started to speak, shook his head again, and just pointed. Kalan trudged toward Tessan and kept a firm grip on Temera’s arm. He reached out and grabbed a carry handle on the back of Tessan’s suit. He let go of Temera’s arm and waved to get her attention. He pointed at the carry handle on his own suit. She nodded and took hold. Kalan reached out and slapped Tessan’s shoulder twice. Tessan didn’t look back, just started a plodding walk in the direction he’d indicated earlier. The rain lightened enough as they walked that Kalan could make out shapes in the watery gloom around them. He thought they were just visual tricks at first. Nothing more than his mind trying to discern patterns in the visual chaos. The shapes didn’t dissipate as the rain mostly fell away in a brief calm. He realized they were the ragged stumps of buildings that had once decorated the landscape around the pad. He reasoned that a few more years with the rain and wind would likely wear even those stunted remnants of human civilization down to nothing.
Tessan led them toward a smaller, more intact shape on the edge of the pad. Kalan let go of the carry handle on the man’s suit but reached over his shoulder to make sure that Temera still had a hold on his. He felt her gloved hand there and focused on Tessan again. The man had opened a panel embedded in the concrete structure and was connecting a cable to a port. The panel lit up and Tessan worked some kind of technical voodoo for a minute. Kalan almost felt himself relax, then a bolt of lightning crashed into one of the nearby mountains. He watched in fascinated horror as a number of small boulders cascaded down the side of the mountain on an almost direct path for them. Reason reasserted itself and he banged on Tessan’s shoulder, pointing up at the mountain. Tessan’s eyes followed the line of Kalan’s finger. He immediately went back to work on the panel with a panicked expression on his face. Kalan’s eyes moved back and forth between the panel and the approaching boulders. Tessan jerked the cable free from the panel and a door opened in the small structure.
Kalan turned, grabbed Temera’s arm, and sent her stumbling toward the door. He lurched in the same direction but lost traction and went down on his back. A boulder big enough to crush his skull bounced over the small building and clipped his leg, sending a lance of pain up and down the limb. Another boulder hit the small building with enough force that Kalan felt it through the suit. Then, it arced over the building on a collision course with him. He tried to push himself aside only for his hand to slip in the water. He had enough time to think that being crushed by a huge rock was a stupid way to die, but at least it would be quick. A hand wrapped around his leg and slid him toward the structure. The boulder crashed to the ground mere inches from his helmet. Small chips of stone pelted the top of his helmet like hail. He heaved a sigh of relief and looked up. Tessan was standing in the doorway, his hand outstretched and a look of mixed terror and relief on his face. Temera was on all fours, dragging him toward the open doorway. Once she managed to pull him inside, Tessan followed and punched a few keys on an interior panel.
The whole compartment gave a hard lurch as another boulder struck the outside of the structure, then it started moving down at a sedate pace. Kalan allowed himself three entire seconds to feel relief before he pushed himself up into a sitting position. He looked at Temera. She was crouched with one knee hard against the floor. He could see that she was breathing hard, and her eyes were squeezed shut. Her complexion had gone deathly pale. Kalan checked his injured leg. The suit was badly scraped, but not torn open. He pressed a hand against the spot and his leg sent up more pain in protest. He launched the suit’s limited medical diagnostic program. It was basically only good for telling someone that they were going hypoxic, having a heart attack, or had broken bones. In this case, though, it was broken bones he was worried about.
The diagnostic program hemmed and hawed for about thirty seconds before announcing that he wasn’t hypoxic, nor having a heart attack, and all his bones were intact. Kalan set his jaw and pushed himself up into a standing position. Putting weight on the leg hurt, but it would support him. He stepped over to Temera and extended a hand to her. She let him help her to her feet but managed to avoid ever looking directly at him. Kalan turned to Tessan, who looked ashamed. He, at least, met Kalan’s eyes. Kalan opened a group channel and addressed Tessan.
“I thought this place was abandoned. Yet, there’s power?”
“The main power is offline,” said Tessan. “There were a couple of auxiliary backups on standby. I cycled them up. They won’t last long, though. A few hours at most.”
“Understood,” said Kalan. “That means no sightseeing, Temera.”
“Any particular reason you directed that at me?” She asked.
“An abandoned, secret Zeren facility. This has to be every spy’s dream. Just remember, I’m the only ride off this planet.”
“Fine,” she huffed. “I won’t wander.”
The compartment shuddered to a stop and the doors opened. Tessan leaned out and looked around before he stepped off the lift. Temera gave Kalan a slightly sullen look before she followed. Kalan limped after them. The hallway was barely lifted out of total darkness by pale, widely-spaced emergency lighting. Even with the lighting, huge tracts of the corridor remained in deep shadow. Kalan brushed a foot back and forth and exposed clean flooring beneath a substantial layer of dust. He gave the floor a hard look in either direction and saw no evidence that anyone had been there in the recent past. There had always been the chance that the abandonment of the facility was more fiction than fact. It seemed that the Zerens really had cut their losses.
“Tessan?” Kalan asked. “Where do we go now?”
Tessan thought for a moment before he turned to the left and started walking. Temera fell in behind Tessan and Kalan limped after the two, wincing with each step. As they followed Tessan deeper into the facility, Kalan opened a private channel with Temera.
“Thank you,” he said. “You could have solved your problem back there.”
Temera started to turn toward him but apparently changed her mind. “Don’t thank me. It wasn’t a decision. I just reacted. Besides, if you died out there, I’d never get that data.”
“Of course,” said Kalan.
He directed an amused smile at the back of her head that faded almost instantly. The deeper they got inside the facility, the more obvious it became that some kind of disaster had happened. There were overturned chairs and desks. Data pads littered the floors in some places, no doubt dropped and forgotten in the mad scramble to escape. Cracked screens on some of them suggested they’d been stepped on by fleeing staff members. Then, they found the first body. It was sprawled across the floor as if the person had fallen. Probably trampled to death, thought Kalan. The air in the facility must have been dry based on the level of desiccation. It reminded Kalan of images he’d seen of ancient mummies. There was no way to tell if it had been a man or a woman. Tessan shook his head inside of his helmet, his lips pressed into a hard line. Temera gave the body a cursory look before she averted her eyes.
“Tessan, we need to keep moving,” said Kalan.
The older man gave Kalan a hard look but nodded. He turned and pressed deeper into the facility. They came across more corpses in much the same condition but didn’t linger near them. They were all well beyond the help of the living. They passed transparent, sealed doors that apparently led into laboratories. Temera lingered outside one of those long enough that Kalan put a hand on her shoulder and nudged her forward.
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“You can always mount an expedition and come back here later,” he said over the comm channel.
“And risk that weather again. To the hells with that. Those marines I mentioned earlier can come back here. They’re trained for this kind of thing.”
“How do you train for that kind of weather?”
“How should I know?” She asked, turning to look at him.
“Fair point,” Kalan admitted.
Kalan fell quiet as the oppressive silence of the place bore down on him. It was unnerving to see a place that looked perfectly functional completely absent any kind of life. The sheer size of the facility also unsettled Kalan. Based on how far they’d already walked and the number of side corridors he’d seen, the place had to cover a square mile. He wondered how many levels the facility had. He tried to imagine the finances necessary to make building, let alone abandoning, a place like that feasible. It staggered his mind. The costs to keep his small freighter up and running were substantial but mere drops in the bucket next to keeping a facility like this online and staffed. If the Zerens decided to, he realized, they could put out a bounty on his head big enough that he’d never be safe. Anywhere. As that notion settled over his mind, Tessan came over the comms.
“Here,” he said, drawing to a stop outside what looked like a reinforced door.
Tessan once more pulled out a cable and attached it to an inset panel on a wall next to the door. The panel lit up and Tessan went to work on it. Temera took up station next to Kalan. She peered at him with questioning eyes.
“Yes?” He asked.
“What do you think that data is?”
“I don’t know,” he hedged.
“Obviously, or we wouldn’t be here. I’m curious what you think it is. What’s worth all this hassle?”
Kalan looked at the facility around them and considered the devastation on the surface of the planet. “I think it’s about a weapon of mass destruction.”
Temera gave Kalan a startled look. “Seriously?”
“Yes. Why? What do you think it’s about?”
“I thought it was something about the Zeren ruling class. Something that could discredit a bunch of them. Maybe something that would weaken their interplanetary political position. Why would you think it’s about a weapon of mass destruction?”
“Call it a hunch,” said Kalan, wanting to move away from the subject of Tessan and Estra’s daughter. “My father had dealings with the Zerens years ago. Let’s say that I’d find it in character for them, based on his descriptions of how they operate.”
Temera pursed her lips, perhaps intuiting the half-truth, but the door swung open before she could pursue it. Tessan waved for them to follow him, and they stepped into a room filled with computer consoles. Kalan had no idea where one might even begin to start in a room like that, but Tessan walked unerringly to a specific console. He played with the console for a minute and then kicked the base. He threw his hands into the air and gesticulated wildly as he walked over to a wall and started searching around for something.
“What’s he doing?” Temera asked.
Kalan gestured to the dark surface of the unlit console. “Looking for power?”
Temera sighed heavily over the comm. “Neither of you considered that you might need a power pack for this?”
Kalan directed an unamused look her way. “This is not my day job. If you want to know about hauling Kelops from here to there, then I can talk to you about contingency planning.”
Temera burst into laughter. “Kelops? You actually haul kelops?”
Kalan shrugged inside his suit. “It’s honest work. Plus, I almost never have to kill anyone when I’m hauling that sort of cargo.”
Temera’s laughter cut off. “No, I don’t imagine you would at that.”
Kalan watched as Tessan tossed aside a wall panel, poked around for a moment, and then jerked a cable free from the wall. He heaved several times to pull more of the cable out of the wall and dragged it over the dead console. He cracked open the case and fiddled around inside with the cable for what felt to Kalan like a very long time. Tessan stood up and looked down at the still-inert console. He lifted a fist over his head. Temera grabbed Kalan’s arm. Kalan groaned internally, just imagining the big man leaving the console utterly useless.
Kalan shouted over the open comm channel, “Wait!”
Tessan brought his fist down on the console. It lit up and a projected display came to life. Tessan offered Kalan a triumphant smile.
“You just need to understand what it needs,” said the older man.
“Carry on,” said Kalan.
Temera muttered, “I can’t believe that worked. That would never work for me. Never.”
It immediately asked for a verification code. Tessan fiddled around on the console until the verification screen vanished and was replaced with computer code that Kalan didn’t recognize. Tessan typed sporadically, altering things here and there, and the projected screen reverted to a user interface. Tessan waved the Kalan and Temera over. They joined him at the console.
“Crystal?” Tessan asked.
Kalan dug the crystal out of a sealed pocket on the suit and handed it over. Temera gaped at him.
“A data crystal?” She asked. “It was on a data crystal the whole time? I could have just stolen it from you?”
“You could have tried,” answered Kalan.
Temera made inarticulate, annoyed noises as Tessan slid the crystal into a port clearly designed for the purpose on the console. There was a long pause as the console decrypted the data. Then, a series of numbered folders appeared on the display. Kalan blinked at the dozens of folders, unsure where best to start. Tessan confidently reached out and tapped on the last folder. It opened and a file loaded up a recording. It showed a star from a distance with a lone planet in close orbit, far too close to be in the Goldilocks zone. What looked like an oversized torpedo launched from somewhere off-camera and followed a trajectory straight into the sun. A meter appeared and counted down the distance between the torpedo and the star.
“Well, that’s pointless,” said Tessan. “It’ll explode before it ever reaches the star.”
They waited in silence as the meter slowly slipped down to zero. Kalan watched for a telltale explosion or some other sign that the torpedo detonated. Then, the star began to dim. The three watched in stunned silence as the star briefly expanded to the size of a red giant, consumed the nearby planet, and collapsed into a white dwarf. Then, the white dwarf faded into a black dwarf that was barely discernable on the recording. A voice over the recording.
“Test successful. At this point, sir, I’m confident in saying that the weapon is ready for combat deployment.”
The recording ended and the folders reappeared. No one moved for a moment as the implications of what they’d just seen settled over them. The Zerens could somehow accelerate the life cycle of a sun.
“They can kill a solar system,” whispered Temera.
Tessan reached out a trembling finger and selected the second to last folder. It opened and showed a model of a solar system that Kalan didn’t immediately recognize. The model projected a similar star death and its effects on that solar system. The nearest two planets were simply destroyed by the brief expansion into the red giant phase. A shifting demarcation line showed the planets in the previous habitable zone getting flash fried along with serious orbital shifts. If anything managed to survive that, the total loss of light and heat would leave those planets uninhabitable by anyone. Text popped up on the model.
Projected deaths: 68 billion.
“My gods,” said Tessan. “This is unspeakable.”
Temera took a step toward the display. “I know that solar system. That’s the Ikaren system. The gods damned Zerens are going to try to kill the whole Ikaren system.”
Kalan felt cold as he stared up at the display. He just kept reading the projected number of dead over and over again, trying to comprehend it. Kalan thought that Tessan was wrong. It wasn’t unspeakable. It was insanity on a grand scale. The only thing that even came close was sustained orbital bombardment with mass drivers. That could set off the equivalent of a nuclear winter without the radiological contamination. It was also considered so heinous an act that every known government had outlawed the practice. As far as Kalan knew, it hadn’t happened in living memory. What the Zerens had developed made that look almost sane. Temera turned to him with wide eyes.
“Truce?” He asked.
“Truce,” she agreed.
Kalan dug a second crystal out of the same sealed pouch on his suit and gave it to Tessan. “I need an unencrypted copy of those files.”
“You have to give that to me,” Temera demanded.
“No,” said Kalan. “We, and I mean we, will take this to the Ikarens. But I’m going to need some things in return.”
“Money?” She sneered. “You’re going to ransom a solar system?”
“Protection,” he snarled back. “If I just hand this over and send you on your way, my crew and I all die. You may not give a damn about them, but I’m not going to sign their death warrants.”
Temera took a fast step back from Kalan. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“You’re right. I apologize. It’s just,” she gestured at the display. “We need to hurry. They could be launching this right now.”
Kalan looked over at Tessan. The man stared down at the two crystals in his hand in a way that left Kalan uneasy. Kalan slipped his hand down and wrapped his fingers around the grip of his blaster. He didn’t want to kill Tessan, but he wouldn’t hesitate with billions of lives hanging in the balance. Tessan closed his hand around the crystals and spoke.
“Damn them.”
Tessan walked over to Kalan without ever looking up and held out his hand. Kalan took the crystals.
“Tessan?” Kalan asked, easing his hand off the blaster.
“My government always had problems. We all knew it. They were stupid and, often, brutal. But I never thought they were evil.”
Without another word, Tessan left the room.