Chapter 4 #2
The tower rose like a dark spear against the stormy sky.
As we got closer, I could see more details of its construction.
I couldn’t determine who’d designed it, but it was clearly old.
Very old. The metal had the patina of decades, or even centuries, of exposure to harsh weather, and I could see places where the structure had been repaired multiple times.
“Someone definitely lived here once,” Zara observed, following my gaze. “But not recently.”
She was right. There were no signs of current habitation. No lights, no maintenance work, no indication that anyone had been here in years.
“What do you think happened to them?” she asked.
“Could be anything,” I said, though unease was starting to creep up my spine. “Equipment failure, supply problems, evacuation due to dangerous weather patterns.”
“Or they all died horribly and their bodies are still inside,” Zara said. “Or they mutated into horrible beasts who will tear us apart the instant we enter the tower.”
I gave her a look. “Not helpful.”
“Sorry. I irrationally theorize when I’m nervous.”
That self-observation made me smile. “You’re nervous?”
“Terrified,” she admitted. “But I figure if I’m going to die horribly on an alien planet, at least I’m doing it with good company.”
Despite everything, I let out a chuckle. “Good company?”
“Well, you did crash-land a ship and save my life. That counts for a lot in the good company category.”
I said nothing to that as we had reached the entrance to the weather station.
It was a heavy metal door set into the base of the tower.
As we approached, I could see that it had clearly been abandoned.
There were no signs of battle, from blaster marks or explosions, thankfully, just the quiet decay of neglect.
The door was heavily corroded, and long-dead, brittle vines had grown over it in thick, twisted ropes.
The vines indicated that at some point, this planet had had a life-supporting environment.
“This is going to take some work,” I muttered, examining the overgrown barrier.
I started breaking off the vegetation, trying to clear enough space to access the door mechanism. Some of the vines came away easily, crumbling to dust in my hands. Others were more stubborn, requiring me to break them with brute force.
“Here, let me help,” Zara said, joining me in the work despite her bandaged hands.
“You should rest. You’re injured.”
“They’re just scratches. I can pull dead plants.”
Working together, we managed to clear most of the growth away from the door. Underneath, the metal was in worse condition than I’d hoped. Rust had eaten through several sections, and the locking mechanism was completely corroded.
“Can you get it open?” Zara asked.
I examined the door more closely. The handle was rusted solid, but there were weak points in the metal where the corrosion had done most of the work for me.
“Stand back,” I said, then put my shoulder against the door and shoved.
Nothing.
I tried again, throwing more weight behind it. This time, I felt something give, but the door remained stubbornly closed.
“Let me try a different approach,” I said, looking around for anything I could use as a lever.
I found a piece of metal debris that would work as a makeshift pry bar and wedged it into the gap between the door and its frame. Bracing my feet against the tower’s base, I pulled with everything I had.
With a screech of protesting metal, the door finally gave way, swinging open to reveal a dark interior that smelled of stale air and abandonment.
“Well,” I said, staring into the blackness. “That’s not ominous at all.”
“At least it doesn’t smell like dead bodies,” Zara pointed out. “They have a distinct odor.”
“I’m aware,” I replied, amused by how relieved she sounded about the lower likelihood of facing a corpse. “There are worse things out there than the dead.”
“Do go on.” She nudged me with her elbow. “What should I be afraid of?”
“The living.” I pulled out the portable light I’d salvaged from the ship and clicked it on. The beam cut through the darkness, revealing a small air lock with another door on the far side. The walls were lined with environmental control panels and covered with a thick layer of grime.
“Environmental seals look intact,” I observed. “That’s something, at least.”
“Should we go in?”
I hesitated. Once we crossed this threshold, we were committed, but staying outside wasn’t an option either. The toxic atmosphere was already eating through our improvised protective gear, and the storm showed no signs of abating.
“Yes,” I said finally. “We go in.”
I stepped across the threshold first, sweeping the light beam around the small chamber. Everything looked normal—if you could call an abandoned facility normal. There were no immediate signs of danger, no bodies, no obvious structural damage.
“Come on,” I said to Zara. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
She stepped inside behind me, and I heard her breath catch as I closed the outer door behind us. The sound of the wind immediately muted, leaving us in an almost oppressive silence.
“It’s so quiet,” she whispered.
“Better than being out in that storm,” I pointed out.
I moved to the inner door and found that it was in much better condition than the outer entrance. The locking mechanism was still functional, though it took some effort to get it to respond.
When the inner door finally opened, we stepped into the main interior of the weather station, and I swept my light around the space to get our bearings.
What I saw made my stomach sink.
The place wasn’t just abandoned. It looked like whoever had been here had left in a hurry, leaving behind equipment, personal belongings, and the dried-up remains of half-finished meals sitting on plates. There were clear signs of some kind of emergency evacuation.
“Torven,” Zara said quietly, and I could hear the unease in her voice. “What do you think happened here?”
I moved the light beam across strewn furniture, scattered data pads, and empty consoles.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But whatever it was, I don’t think they left by choice.”
The question was: was whatever had driven them away still here?
And if it was, had we just walked into a trap?
I listened carefully to the silence around us, every sense alert for signs of danger. But all I could hear was our own breathing and the distant sound of wind outside.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said finally, as much to convince myself as to reassure Zara. “For now, we need shelter, and this is the best option we have.”
But as we stood in the doorway of that dark, abandoned facility, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d just entered something far more dangerous than the storm we’d left behind.
And if I failed to protect Zara here, like I’d failed to protect my crew, I’d never forgive myself.
Whatever horrors had driven the previous occupants away, we were about to find out about them firsthand.