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  A wistful expression passed over Burr’s face. “You sound like your father, Lord Bray. Of course you’re right.”

  Iden joined them and motioned toward the building as he pulled a handheld from his pack. “Everyone gather near where Burr’s standing, and I’ll take a stilpix. You know, to show everyone back home.”

  Galen thought about asking Eria to suit up and come out to be in the pic, but he instinctively knew she wouldn’t respond well to the request, accusing them of not caring about the tragic demise of Zed. And, in a way, she’d be right, he thought. Only it wasn’t that they didn’t care. It was more like the mood had to be lightened because it was not the time to drop into a pit of despair. Eria had the right to mourn more deeply. She earned that right by living on and watching over the station. We, on the other hand, don’t have that luxury. There’s serious work to be done. There’s the zaf and . . . there’s Trem.

  Galen and the others headed over to Burr while Iden set the handheld to autopic and released it into the air in front of him.

  “Technically, we’re home now,” said Messel, smiling.

  Iden shrugged. “That’s true. All right, everyone get close together and—”

  “Wait!” shouted Galen. “Hex, you should be in this pic, too.”

  “Oh! Very well,” said the clearly delighted bot as he hurried to join the group.

  “Say ‘zaf.’”

  The entire group repeated the word, and the handheld snapped the stilpix, then zipped over to Iden, who glanced at the viewscreen before showing the pic to the others. “That one’s a keeper.”

  Messel groaned. “My eyes are closed.”

  Iden chuckled. “Your eyes are always closed in these. Don’t worry, I’ll edit them open . . . like I always do.”

  “Thank you.”

  Burr sighed. “Perhaps it’s time we get going. Better to reach the mining outpost during the day than—” The old man paused, and Galen watched as he reached out toward a different part of the ruined structure. “This is interesting. I wonder if . . .” Burr’s fingers lightly touched what appeared to be a heavily ornamented panel that lit up on contact. “Ho! Now that’s Ruam engineering at its finest. Still working after many hundreds of standards of disuse.”

  “Amazing,” said Messel.

  “What is it?” said Galen, raising his eyebrows.

  “I’ll show you.” Burr repeatedly tapped the panel with his fingers. The panel briefly emitted a mild buzzing noise followed by a click, and then a door appeared as if by magic in the center of the wall. Burr pushed the door, and after a whoosh of escaping air, it swung inward. “Whatever chambers lie within have been sealed since the bombardment,” said Burr as he stroked his beard. “There might be items worth salvaging in this space. Lord Bray, I think we should take a moment to investigate.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll grab some sacks and a push cart from the Ghost Star,” said Messel. “Just in case we find something.”

  Iden retrieved his handheld and followed Messel back toward Galen’s ship. “I’ll help you.”

  Burr gestured toward the open doorway. “Lord Bray, after you.”

  “Hex, you stay up here and keep an eye on things. I don’t want anyone or anything sneaking up on us while we’re in here.”

  “Understood.”

  Galen stepped into the dark space and paused for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the gloomy interior. When they had, Galen found he was standing in a cluttered space just slightly larger than the cargo bay of the Ghost Star. Row after row of freestanding shelves took up a good portion of the floor space, and a bank of counters lined the walls closest to the door. The shelves and the counters held a number of what appeared to be household items such as cooking appliances, pots and pans, plates, cups, and bowls, some of which had been knocked off their shelves—by the Nell bombardment, Galen assumed—and lay broken on the floor. “Is this a store?”

  Burr nodded. “Yes. By the looks of it, it appears this shop specialized in selling items for the kitchen.”

  “That’s kind of disappointing.”

  “I suppose it is. We can pick up a few items and bring them back to Dob. There’s a small historical museum in the village of Malon on the other side of the planet. I’m sure they’d be interested in some genuine home-world artifacts, as ordinary as they might be,” said the old man with a wink. “Come, let us select a few representative objects, then be on our way.”

  Galen stepped into one of the aisles, and the moment he did, he noticed something strange on the back wall. A small panel similar to the one on the outside wall was flashing sporadically. “Burr . . .”

  Burr poked his head around the corner. “Hmm?”

  “Take a look at the back wall.”

  The old scientist’s eyes widened at the sight of the panel, and he hurried down the aisle toward it, pushing past Galen without making eye contact. “This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for.”

  “Another door?”

  “Indeed,” said Burr, reaching the panel. “This one, however, was not meant to be seen.”

  “Meaning whatever’s behind it was not meant to be seen.”

  “Yes.” Burr fished a small pry bar out of his belt pack and pulled the panel out of its wall socket. “The panel’s been damaged, which is why it’s flashing. Let me—” A small click of something was all it took to restore the panel lights to a steadier blinking. “There we go.” Burr entered a command sequence, and when that didn’t work, he tried another, then another. On the third try, the lights stopped pulsing and turned to a solid green. A moment later, the door started to slide open but quickly caught on something blocking the other side.

  Galen held in a laugh when Burr glanced back and forth between his belly and the small gap between the door and the doorframe. “It’ll be a tight squeeze,” the scientist said, “but if you give me a push, I should be able to do it.”

  “Happy to help.”

  Burr turned sideways and tried to pull himself through the gap. When he could move no more, Galen put both hands on Burr’s shoulder and pushed as hard as he could. After several awkward moments of grunting and holding his breath, Burr popped through the opening like a cork from an aged bottle of brew. “That wasn’t so bad,” he said. “But I do believe I’ll have to cut back on my caloric intake if I want to make a habit of exploring tight spaces in old ruins.”

  Galen joined Burr. Illuminated by a beam of light pouring in through a hole in the ceiling, the room looked like a bomb had gone off in it. Rubble and debris were everywhere, and two heavy support columns had been knocked off their foundations and were lying across the room like a pair of fallen trees.

  “Whatever they kept in here got torched.”

  Burr nodded and bent down to pick up what looked like a piece of twisted metal. When he stood up, Galen saw that he was holding a badly mangled rifer. “It seems we’ve stumbled across a weapons cache. At least it was until a Nell bolt pierced the ceiling and destroyed it all.”

  Galen sighed. “That’s too bad. We could always use more firepower.”

  “Let’s look around,” said Burr. “We might find something.”

  Galen poked around the room for the next few minutes, kicking aside fractured chunks of aggregate and warped lengths of metal framing. “That bolt did a number on this place.”

  “That it did. Wait . . . help me move this rubble.”

  Galen joined Burr, and together they cleared a small pile of debris off a container roughly the size of one of the storage lockers of the Ghost Star.

  “This looks familiar,” said Galen.

  “Like it came from your ship?”

  Galen nodded.

  That’s because it’s Ruam tech, a military storage locker. This looks promising.” Burr wiped off some of the remaining dust, then sat back with a sour expression on his face. “Unfortunately, it fell forward.”

  Galen gripped the bottom edge of the locker and tried to lift it, but the box was too heavy and did
n’t budge. “So we can’t flip it over.”

  “On a positive note, the heaviness is a clue that there’s a lot of something inside. What that something is, I haven’t a clue. Could be anything from rifers to flak suits.”

  “Or really old military rations.”

  Burr made a face. “Those could be used as weapons too, I suppose.”

  “Yeah. Just peel them open and throw at the enemy before you gag. I’ll get Hex after we’re done here. I think he’s strong enough to flip this over, especially after your upgrades. Hold on, what’s that?” Galen pointed.

  Burr turned, his eyes following Galen’s finger to an area under one of the fallen support columns. Galen watched the old man’s jaw slowly drop and amazement fill his eyes. “That, Lord Galen, is a hover tank. It’s one of ours, of course. The Nell tank you saw on Zed was a poor copy of my design.”

  “Your design?”

  Burr nodded. “I dabbled in weaponry for a time. This is a Bora model, completely autonomous.”

  “And completely wrecked.”

  “We’ll see about that. It might’ve been knocked offline by the bolt impact . . . or never activated in the first place. It would be nice to have one of these in our arsenal. Let me see if I can get it functioning again.”

  Galen fidgeted. “Do you think that’s a good idea? I mean, what if other parts of it are damaged?”

  Burr pried a panel off the dull gray carapace of the hover tank and rooted around inside what appeared to be a control module. “Other parts? Like what?”

  “I don’t know. The AI module or friend or foe recognition?”

  “Highly unlikely.”

  **

  Iden sat in the command module of the Ghost Star running some routine diagnostics when the building in front of him, the building that Burr and Lord Bray had stayed behind to explore, exploded. The roof pushed upward and shattered—more like disintegrated—and a dull gray hover tank rose out of the cloud of dust and started lobbing explosive rounds back into the building along with withering sprays of automatic boltfire. Iden froze in place for only a moment before his wits came back and he yelled, “Messel, get up here. Now!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Galen yanked the old man into a gap under the fallen column just as the hover tank rose up and unleashed a torrent of explosive rounds and boltfire. He pushed Burr to the back of the space, shielding him with his battle suit–clad body.

  “I’m sorry, my boy, you were right,” shouted Burr, struggling to be heard above the deafening chaos that filled the storage room. “I should’ve been more careful.”

  “Don’t worry about it. If we make it out of here alive, I’ll be able to tease you about this forever.”

  An explosive round detonated above them, and the pressure wave of the explosion caused the column to fracture and drop a foot toward Galen’s head. “Snat! Do those things have a kill switch?”

  Burr’s eyes widened. “Yes, they do! Command it to stop.”

  Galen blinked. “Seriously? Oh, right.” He took a deep breath before springing out of the gap and shouting, “Stop!” as loudly as he could.

  The hover tank whirled around and trained all of its formidable weaponry on Galen before shifting into standby mode and lowering itself to the ground. “Understood,” said the hover tank in a voice that surprised Galen by being female.

  Just then, Messel and Iden burst through the doorway, each carrying a pulse cannon. At the same time, the Arrow appeared overhead, its armament-packed nose pointed squarely at the tank.

  Galen waved his arms wildly. “Don’t shoot! It’s under control!”

  Iden lowered his pulse cannon, but Messel kept hers trained on the tank. “Where in the world did that thing come from?” she said. “And where’s Burr?”

  “It came from under this support column, and here I am,” said Burr, crawling out of the gap and doing his best to wipe the dust from his clothing.

  Galen looked up and waved to Eria, who was glaring down at the tank from the downward facing viewplates of the Arrow’s command pod. “Everything’s under control. Thanks.”

  Eria nodded and banked off.

  “I made the mistake of activating it before properly identifying myself,” Burr continued. “Fortunately, I had a young Ruam noble with me who was able to control the tank with his command tone.”

  “It’s this thing I do,” said Galen, puffing himself up.

  “Tell me about it,” snorted Iden before turning to Burr. “He nearly scared us to death when he first landed on Dob. Shut our bots down with just a couple of words.”

  “So I heard.”

  Galen finally had a moment to look the hover tank over. Impressive. Dull gray, big and blocky, its entire surface was covered with angled armor panels designed to throw off enemy scans, making it virtually undetectable. The weaponry was intimidating. A single heavy pulse cannon, encased in a full-motion turret capable of spinning 360 degrees, sat on top of the mechanical beast. Several smaller guns, including a pair of hefty autorifers, were strategically placed around the hull of the vehicle. Six rocket ports dotted the upper and lower halves. Finally, an array of four hover tank engines bathed the floor beneath the tank with a soft blue glow. “What are we going to do with this thing, Burr? It looks too big to fit in the cargo hold of the Star.”

  “Actually, it’s designed to do just that—to fit snuggly into the hold of a pocket destroyer. Unfortunately, there’d be room for little else. Lord Bray, will you do me the favor of commanding this Bora model to recognize everyone in our group as friendlies?”

  “Sure. So, uh, Bora—that’s what I’m going to call you by the way—I am Lord Galen of the House Bray and I’d like you . . . scratch that. I command you to perform an identity scan of the vehicles, bots, and bioforms in the immediate area.”

  “Understood. Scanning. Scan complete. There are two spacecraft. One is a Ruam military vessel, the other, a heavily modified Varran pleasure cruiser. I have established a connection with the Ghost Star. The AI is . . . talkative. There are five activated bots in the hold of the Ruam vessel, also of Ruam manufacture. Bioforms include two Ruam females and two Ruam males, full blood, and one half-blood Ruam noble.”

  “That would be me,” said Galen.

  “Yes. The genetic signature was unfamiliar to me when I was activated. A Ruam and Terran blend. That is why this unit attacked. My apologies, Lord Bray.”

  “Apologies accepted.”

  “I now recognize you and your servants as allies.”

  Galen sent an embarrassed look to the others. “They’re not servants, they’re friends.”

  “Understood.”

  “Tell us your story, Bora,” said Burr. “How did you come to be where you are?”

  Bora clicked and whirred for a moment, and Galen could tell the hover tank was running a diagnostic. “I was manufactured during what I now know was toward the end of the great conflict. So much time has passed. I was to be sent across the void to the Nell home world to wreak havoc at the High Command.”

  Burr drew in a deep breath. “That must have been toward the very end. It smacks of desperation.”

  “I was sent here to be calibrated. I was calibrated, fueled, loaded with munitions, and given orders to await departure on the next available military vessel. Then I was reactivated moments ago. What happened?”

  “A planetwide aerial bombardment by the Nell Imperium,” said Iden. “All of Tac is as you see it, utterly destroyed and devoid of life.”

  The hover tank took a moment to process this. “Everyone is dead?”

  “Not everyone,” said Galen. “There are still a few left. A very few.”

  “My fuel allotment is nearly depleted, or I would ask to be transported to the Nell High Command to complete my mission. Do you have auxiliary energy stores?”

  Burr flipped open a panel on the hover tank and swiped through some status screens. “Not as much as you need, Bora. We’ll have just enough to complete our own mission and return to, uh, a hidden ba
se with, uh, an important artifact.”

  “I have the highest security clearance protocols,” said the hover tank. “I can be trusted with Ruam state secrets.”

  Burr closed the panel and patted the tank. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that the information is of such a delicate nature that were you to be captured, well . . .”

  “Understood. Allow me to be of assistance on your current mission. I have enough fuel to last for a day, at least.”

  Galen glanced at Burr, who nodded. “Very well, let’s go.”

  **

  A short time later, Galen released the steerstick of the Ghost Star and stood. “We’re here.”

  Galen glanced out the viewplate. Sitting in front of the ship was the once thriving mining center of Zidac, now reduced to an assortment of sandblasted ruins. He watched Eria step out of the Arrow in her exosuit, carrying a rucksack.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, joining her.

  Eria checked the magazine of her rifer. “No,” she said gruffly, before offering him a brief smile. “But thanks for asking.”

  The menacing hover tank passed them on perimeter patrol. Galen shook his head. They’d been lucky to escape unharmed.

  Eria grunted. “Leave it to Burr to find a monstrosity like that and almost get himself killed by it.”

  “Hey, I almost got killed too,” protested Galen.

  “Did you now? I guess I forgot.” She punched his arm hard.

  Galen winced, then smiled. Although he was sure she’d suffer the memory of the destruction of Zed for many years to come, the old Eria was back.

  Galen activated his com. “Hex, bring the bots to our position.”

  “Understood.”

  Hex and the four techbots poured out of the cargo hold and fell in line behind Burr, who had joined them.

  “Behold Zidac!” said Burr. “The last time I was here, it was covered with a dome and smelled of razz blooms and spices.”

  “I never visited here, but the history cam reels say it was a surprisingly beautiful city,” said Messel. “I mean, for a mining outpost.”

  “Hex, go higher and keep an eye out for anything unusual,” said Galen.