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“Attention! You are entering a restricted zone. The quarantine regulations forbid approaching the station. Leave the sector immediately! Attention! You are entering a restricted zone…”
“Shut that thing up, Smed!” Tullie Stakh was reclining in the second pilot seat and oozing disgust towards the automated warning system.
“Shut it yourself!” His brother Smed was manually guiding the ship slowly through the labyrinth of debris of a once huge space station, situated smack in the middle of an otherwise empty sector in the Morag system.
Some time ago, before the invasion, several adventurous families built a maintenance and fuelling station here. The location was just a short jump away from the closed sectors, where small bounty hunter ships often went in search of easy profit and mysterious artefacts. Then came the big guys on big ships with big guns, and the artefact extraction took on an industrial scale. Factories and transshipment bases were built all around the area. Transport convoys and patrols swarmed the space. Those were the best days! The station’s advantageous position on the crossroads of all the main transport arteries brought excellent profit to the owners.
Even during the war with the aliens, the area was not too affected by the battles. The station was not destroyed or even damaged. On the contrary, it developed even further, thanks to various refugees building homes around it. The underground trade bloomed. Illegal business is never far away from slums.
But now there wasn’t a single ship in the system, except for the “Crown and Thorn”, the old Imperial frigate, which the brothers got at a dirt-cheap price. They said they won the ship in a game of tonk. But who would ever believe the Stakh brothers? Nobody would. Their reputation would not allow for that.
Station debris were slowly drifting along their intertwined orbits and made the task of reaching the centre of the steel labyrinth quite difficult. The ship often shuddered from another collision. It made a droning noise that tickled your teeth while struggling to withstand the barrage that threatened to breach the hull or break the arrays off the bulk.
“I wonder what happened here,” said the scrawny young lad named Timmy Lockan from the navigator seat behind the pilots. All of his safety belts were meticulously strapped on. He rarely went on free search operations and was somewhat scared of open space.
“It all got blown up a couple of years ago,” the oldest of the four finally spoke. In closed sectors, he was known as Fisher.
He sprawled in the commander seat next to the navigator’s. Neither he nor Timmy didn’t know the first thing about piloting battle starships. But it was Fisher who brought them all together and proposed this risky venture, promising great profits.
“They say it was quite a mess. All the big players faced off here, the Empire, the Federation. Rumour has it, even Jericho ships were seen, but that’s a lie, of course. Ellydium, on the other hand, was involved for sure. All of them were looking for something here and couldn’t play nice. And then boom! It all went up in flames.” He coughed. Everyone believed that Fisher wasn’t long for this world, but up until then he managed to outlive all his rivals. “I once crossed paths with the guys that were fighting here. They didn’t go to the station themselves, small fries, but they told me that the battle was fierce. Lasers and rockets flew in every direction, rocking their ship to the core. And then the station exploded.”
“Then why did we come here?” Tullie Stakh was never pleased with anything. “What valuables can we possibly find after an explosion took everything down?”
“Pipe down, idiot.” Fisher coughed again. “Those guys told me that there was a cruiser in the middle of the station, in the old maintenance docks. The cruiser itself is worth nothing, common civilian garbage. But it had something of value inside. Something everyone is after!”
“Didn’t those who blew up the station get their hands on the prize first?” Smed was listening to the old man carefully. He was much smarter than his brother and hoped to increase their profit from the operation by removing Fisher and Timmy from the equation after they grab whatever they came here to get.
“That’s the thing, they couldn’t get to it in time. The place blew up before they ever got to the cruiser.”
Fisher had no plans to tell the brothers everything that he knew. He understood perfectly well that being stabbed in the back by them was like shooting fish in a barrel. Fisher was somewhat of a dangerous guy himself. He was experienced. He had been in similar situations many times before and outlived many a bounty hunter. His client sought him out through an anonymous mercenary network precisely because of that. The client called himself the Collector and told fisher many interesting things about the cruiser and what they might expect to find on it. And how much money they can gain…
“Looks like we’re here, Fisher.” Smed brought the ship to an almost full stop, and it was now slowly drifting alongside other large debris.
“Great job. Your tin can came through. Now it’s in and out, as usual.” Fisher took an old comb out of his chest pocket and tried to fix up his thin grey hair.
“There’s nothing to comb there, old man, you might as well be bald!” Tullie laughed.
Fisher paid him no attention and after thoroughly rubbing the comb on his scalp gently put it back in his pocket. Not everything is what it seems to be. The comb was not a simple hair-wrangling tool, but a very valuable artefact from the Collector. It was supposed to show them which objects from the cruiser were worth taking.
The exploded state of the station made the work ahead of them much more difficult. In order for the artefact to work, Fisher had to use it as a comb, which was quite uncomfortable in a space suit in the airless space. That’s why he had to buy a small one-person space bathyscaphe, in which he could use the comb and still see his surroundings.
And so they left the ship, with Fisher’s bathyscaphe leading the way and brothers and Timmy following it in spacesuits. It took them quite long to wander through clouds of flotsam and jetsam swarming the centre of the former station. Finally, they found their way to the former docks. There was much less debris here, a big bubble of space with almost nothing floating around. And in the centre of this bubble, the cruiser hovered suspended in space.
The blast went rough on it, practically tearing it in two, but the halves still remained close to each other. It looked like a toy broken in half by a giant toddler. The edges of the tear were rough and the hull burst in several places, creating wide cracks. Hatch doors popped out of their frames and floated nearby. Small objects that were pushed out from the cruiser by the explosion lazily orbited the ship.
“There she is, my beauty.” Tullie chuckled over the intercom. “Shall we get inside?”
“Wait. Let’s have a look at the things floating outside first.” Fisher floated into the cluster of items and began combing his hair, carefully looking around and pointing out which objects to grab to his companions.
There were a lot of artefacts among the scrap. The comb made them seem glowing, sometimes brighter, sometimes dimmer. Fisher didn’t know the purpose of these artefacts, he simply had a list of things the Collector wanted. Anything they found beyond that was theirs for the taking and selling at any price they can bargain. It was basically free golden standards. But anything they might gain by selling the extra paled in comparison with the pay for the main item they came for.
“Looks like we got everything from the outside.” Fisher smiled. “Time to get inside. I’ll stay behind, get as close to the hull as I can. You will have to toss things out for me to sort through them. This thing does not work through monitors. Eyes only.”
The brothers went inside the cruiser. Combing through bay by bay, they threw everything that wasn’t nailed down outside, where Fisher and Timmy sorted the artefacts out. It took them a few days to completely clear out the cruiser. Finally, all the bays of the ship were thoroughly checked and emptied out. The cargo bay of the “Crown and Thorn” was meticulously filled with crates with all the artefacts they found. Most of them were personal belongings, like mugs, notebooks, pens and stylos. No electronics or complex mechanisms. All of them were simple and straightforward. The containers were meant to prevent artefacts influencing each other with their powers. This was a specific warning by the client. Fisher took some artefacts from the special part of the list to store in his cabin.
It was time to tackle the safe in the cockpit of the cruiser. That’s where the main treasure the client wanted was supposed to be.
The safe was a matte black monolithic box built into the wall of the cockpit. It seemed to grow out of it as if it were a blob of darkness. The Stakh brothers agonized over it for two days, trying to open it with plasma cutters, but to no avail. They couldn’t even make a single scratch. Then came a message with instructions from the Collector.
“Take the glasses, the ring and the glove from the artefacts you found. They will allow you to peer into the darkness. Take the cream. It will allow your flesh into the darkness. Remember that the cream can be used separately.”
“Used separately,” Fisher whispered with parched lips as he received the message through a secure channel. “Separately…”
Indeed, among the artefacts he found a pair of old horn-rimmed glasses, a metal ring that barely fit on his little finger and a leather glove with cut fingers. Fisher gingerly put on all of those. The ring and glove on his right hand. The glasses on the tip of his nose. Nothing happened. There were no visible effects. He had to put on a spacesuit and float to the cruiser.
The brothers were still prowling around trying to find anything of value and salvage anything they hadn’t already for sale. Artefacts were fine, but other surviving items could be sold as well, which meant there was no rest for the wicked! Fisher flew past them into the cockpit and to the safe. Seen through the glasses, it no longer looked black. Now it resembled a piece of rock crystal. Cloudy, fractured and cracked. But there, inside the crystal, in the very heart of it, a silver wedge gleamed brightly white. Or at least something wedge-shaped, like a huge nail, tapering into a point on one side. The thing they had come here for. The one the Collector wanted the most. Mysterious. Dangerous. Ominous. Calling.
Fisher could not stop staring at it and had to force himself to turn away from the safe. He felt a bit relieved after he managed that. But he could still feel some sort of connection established between himself and the artefact. The wedge knew it had been seen and wanted to be retrieved. And Fisher also wanted it, more than anything. But he managed to pull himself together and retreated back to the ship.
It took them another twenty-four hours to prepare for the operation to retrieve the wedge. The night passed restlessly. The old man tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep. He felt the wedge calling him. And it was scary. In the morning they went to the cruiser for the last time.
This time everyone were in their spacesuits. Fisher was wearing the glasses, the ring and the glove. Smed carried the cream in a special box so it wouldn’t freeze. The cockpit became crowded. Fisher looked into the depths of the safe. The wedge was there. It seemed to glow even brighter.
“Let’s do this.” The old man coughed. “Timmy, go on.”
Timmy got up close to the safe. Tullie Stakh deftly unstrapped and removed part of Timmy’s suit sleeve from his right arm, using a special tourniquet to keep the oxygen from escaping. His brother Smed applied the cream to his arm at the same time. They were afraid that if they applied it beforehand, it might not work. So they opted for taking a few seconds to do it in the vacuum of space. Then Timmy hesitantly reached out his bare hand to the surface of the safe.
“Go ahead, Timmy!” Fisher cheered the young man on. “The wedge is right in front of you. I can see it perfectly.”
Breathing heavily, Timmy moved his hand forward. The hand plunged into the darkness of the safe easily, unobstructed, like into a cloud or water. Timmy hovered near the safe, eyes bulging with fear. His pulse was racing. His blood was bubbling with adrenaline.
“A little to the left, Timmy,” the old man guided him. He was the only one who could see the wedge. “You’re right there. Grab it!”
Timmy grabbed the wedge and immediately screamed so loudly that the volume limiters on their intercom network went off.
“Grab him!” Fisher shouted, trying to reach Timmy, who continued to wail. Blood dripped from his nose, staining the inside of his helmet.
Smed didn’t hesitate and yanked Timmy towards him. The hand with the wedge popped out of the darkness. Timmy unclenched his fingers, but Smed had already deftly caught the wedge with a special container, careful not to touch it, even through his spacesuit. Timmy stopped screaming and passed out. Fisher had already put the sleeve back on his arm. The pressurisation system and the inbuilt first aid kit of Timmy’s spacesuit whirred to life.
“Can be used separately,” Fisher muttered under his breath so that no one could hear him. “Used separately…”
“Guys, we’re done here,” he announced loudly over the intercom. “Get him back to the ship. Time for us to return home.”
To be continued.