There was a small widescreen monitor above my head. I switched it on.
We were fast approaching a space station. The bulk of the station was shaped like a truncated skull, with a greyish texture like it had been dipped in old wax and then rolled in ash. The rest of the station sprouted from the top in a series of spires, corridors and docking gantries forming a jutting crown of black crystal. The skull’s eye-sockets were hollowed out, but I got the feeling it was staring back at me.
The ship tilted down towards the jawline, where a hangar was already opening, the blue shield-barrier crackling. My breath steamed hot in my face as the chainship swerved around in a sluggish circle before settling with a jolt. What if they decided to open the hatch? What if they’d picked me up on thermal-scanners? I held my handcannon tight to my chest, listening hard, waiting to be dragged out.
Muffled voices. Feet scuffling metal. Fading footsteps. Clanging and shuttering of metal.
Silence.
I waited for a good half hour before deciding to risk it. I stabbed the emergency opening switch. The hatch opened and I slid out and into cover.
The hangar bay was immense enough to easily hold the scattering of chainships, corvettes and slipships sitting in their drydocks, their hulls scuffed and scarred with age. Rusted chains and hooks dangled from eyeball-shaped apertures in the walls. The House of Suns symbol had been daubed across the utilitarian grey walls of the hangar bay, dozens of them smeared tens of metres high in fluorescent white paint. Subtle.
Behind me, a huge viewport looked out into a sweeping asteroid field. Hundred, thousands, of broken chunks of primordial rock, swirling past the length of my sight and pockmarked with gaping craters. No matter how often I saw them, I’d never been able to understand how something so vast could be so silent.
I peered past them, but could see nothing. No commercial spacecraft, no flybys, definitely no Compass. We’ve all heard about those wayward stations and semi-abandoned outposts. Hard to believe I was in one of them now. No connection appeared in the upper-right corner of my HUD, as if to confirm I was truly off the beaten path. No way of calling in help if this went sour. But I couldn’t waste time worrying about that now.
I slipped out of the hangar and into a telescopic corridor. It was dark and uninviting, the only light coming from blinking terminals and more symbols painted across the mirror-smooth walls. In the darkness, the glowing symbols looked like the mouths and eyes of some midnight predator from the depths of space. I felt the gentle hum of whirling machinery between my feet, the rhythmic heave of oxygen pipes and superconductor cables. Not a smear of dirt nor speck of grime anywhere. It was artificially serene. Like something vital was missing here. A body without a pulse. A great old mansion without inhabitants, wind howling down its empty hallways in the dead of the night.
You know that feeling you get when you know something’s wrong, but you can’t put your finger on it?
Yeah, that.
This place was infested with that feeling. And it was making me horribly uneasy.
My hands and feet flared up as the stormtech throbbed like a heartbeat. The same reaction as when I’d broken into the Tipei Corporation and discovered the storage of stormtech canisters. But this was gnawing at me like heartburn, all over my body.
I almost didn’t want to know what they had stored here.
Almost.
Senses sharpened, I mentally mapped the facility as I slipped into what looked like a dimly lit library. Tight staircases spiralled up past towering bookshelves, the room scattered with dark, brooding decor. The air was perfumed with something sickly-sweet. It took me longer than it should have to realise it was trying to replicate the smell of stormtech. Maybe even the smell of a person infused with stormtech.
Dread knotted in my stomach as I glanced at the onyx walls decorated with artistic impressions of the Shenoi, quotes and eulogies framed in block fonts. Documentaries and reports about the Shenoi played on a loop, the sound muted. Mats had been stretched out in front of teapots filled with hallucinogenic herbs and various chemicals used to crank your mind into hyperaware mode. Some sound-absorbing tech had been meshed into the walls, making the room as silent as a crypt. The ominous feeling I’d had in the corridor returned, only stronger. Like I was somewhere no one should be and surrounded by malevolent information no one should have access to.
I slipped a leather-bound tome off the shelf and confirmed my suspicions. This was the cult’s collection of relevant texts. Viklun Ryken’s scientific papers were probably here, along with dozens of other works pertaining to the Shenoi. Theories, histories of alien civilisations, possible Shenoi homeplanets, the mysteries surrounding them, articles about the stormtech, collected testimonies from other aliens about the Shenoi. Collected listings about the cult itself, its dogmas, people who had promoted it and founded it, those who had opposed it and how they should have – or had been – dealt with.
I looked up through a layer of shielding that formed the ceiling, straight into the dark canvas of space. Constellations of unfamiliar stars stared back at me, winking in muted colours. It should have been beautiful, but here it felt like I was dipping my head into a dark ocean, teeming with crawling parasites and unknown dangers lurking in the depths.
Because that’s exactly what they’d come here to find. This was their place of contemplation, where they gazed up to the countless stars, systems and celestial bodies the Shenoi had once infested like an interstellar fungus. They marvelled at it. Respected the aliens’ strength and audacity. They came here to wait until the aliens went for round two.
These people were off their rockers. Fundamentalist in every sense, living inside a narrative of confusion and fear
