Talon said, “I don’t even want to know how we’re going to get back out.”
Margie wept softly, her fingers clutching at her belly. Shock was written all over her face, and her features had changed, softened and shifted in a way that said the Oracle had gone silent and now Margie was alone in her head.
They all managed to shake off the damage as Talon set the engines to a locked idle to prevent theft of the ship but enable them to get a running start if it was needed, and Drake was really positive that it would be.
Weapons were gathered. Drake’s weapons were as familiar to him as the shape of his own body, but as he checked them, his mind went back to the bigger questions.
Would he have to kill this crew of people he had brought along with him? The power within Tralam was said to be so strong that it could corrupt any and all.
What if he was the one to be corrupted by it?
Would they have to kill him?
His eyes met Jeval’s. His mind immediately went blank and smooth. Jeval could read, scan minds and secrets, and keeping as far from Jeval as possible had been his defense against that but he didn’t know just how much of his thoughts Jeval could actually read without touching him.
Maybe too much of them.
They all went to the bay door and stood there, all of them grim and worried. This would be either what saved them all or what killed them all.
There was only one way to find out which it would be.
Drake reached for the bay door. He stepped out and onto a dock that was so ancient that it looked incredibly unsafe, all crumbled and broken. That did not bode well, but they were there now, and there was nothing to do but go forward.
The station hung at a cantilevered angle away from Tralam’s outer walls. The sloping floors of the dock tunnels swayed sickeningly with each step. Drake’s breath caught and held as he navigated a particularly weak spot, calling to the others to be careful there.
They pressed onward and then came to a heavy door. Rust and faded splashes marred it. Drake knew that whatever had killed the beings whose bones lay behind them had killed them as they’d tried to run for the station.
“Did any of you see any other ships up on that dock?”
Talon said, “No.”
“I wonder if they all left then.” Drake’s words made his heart beat too fast. What if they had gone? What if Tralam had been deserted and the weapon was now hidden in some other desolate and unreachable section of the universe?
His feet carried him along the tunnel. The tunnel’s expanse smelled old and unused. There was no sign of life. A few painted signs, so faded that the words on them could not be made out, hung from the ceilings. Words had also been placed on the wall, and Drake paused, his hand coming up to wipe the dust away from one wall. He asked, “Any of you know what this means?”
Marik spoke. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Talon? Blade?”
None of them had ever seen it before, and Drake turned away from the rune-like writing, and they began walking again, treading carefully.
Further along, there were bones, brittle and crumbled into small heaps of dust and the occasional fragment. Those heaps of bones continued down the hallway, and Drake’s hands stayed close to his weapons. The bones were old, yes, but who knew if whatever had killed the beings who had once inhabited those bones was still a threat?
The floor’s slope got more intense and then leveled out before going back to a steep upward climb, and an even steeper drop again. It was like climbing hills back on his home planet, and Drake had to remind himself to slow down, to breathe and not let his curiosity and need to get to that weapon cause him to harm himself with a fall or other injury.
The lights were mostly gone; here and there one flickered, buzzing and hesitant. Control panels, smashed and broken, framed the walls in a few spots. They didn’t bother stopping to examine them as they were clearly useless now.
Was everything here gone and dead?
Drake didn’t think so. There was an undeniable current of energy flowing through the place. He just didn’t know what that meant or whether that was a good sign or not.
They came out of the tunnel, and as they did, a shout rang out. It was a shout of warning and Drake’s eyes took in the massive and lumbering thing, one eye glaring from its misshapen head, and his hands dropped to his weapons.
Weapon fire came from behind the beast. The others in his party immediately went into defense mode. Weapons came out and fired. The thing just kept coming.
A woman ran along the wall, up high and right where it met the ceiling. The oddity of that made Drake’s attention waver for just one second, just long enough for the beast to get a swipe in. That swipe sent him flying backward. Pain exploded into his system, and along with it came a sensation not unlike the feeling of fire trailing over his skin.
Grayness swam along the edges of his field of vision. One thought came through his pain: how in the hell was she running that way?
The woman leaped to the floor. The floor cracked and broke beneath that leap. The others were trying to fight the beast back from him, but they were failing; the beast seemed to be immune to the fire of the lasers! It had lost limbs, but new ones were growing so fast that at several points of its body, three limbs grew where only one had been before.
