Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
The corridor stretched ahead of Doren like a throat, dark and narrow and faintly organic in its proportions.
Mining operations carved functional spaces—straight lines, efficient angles, no wasted effort.
But time and neglect had warped this place into something else.
Dust coated every surface in a grey shroud.
Cables hung from the ceiling like entrails.
The air tasted stale, recycled too many times through filters that should have failed decades ago.
Someone’s been keeping this place alive, he thought, his hand resting on the plasma pistol at his hip. The question is why.
He’d spent years exploring places like this.
Abandoned stations, derelict ships, and ruins that hadn’t seen living beings in centuries.
He knew the rhythm of such spaces—the silence, the darkness, the particular loneliness of places where people had once lived and worked and died.
He’d always found it oddly peaceful. No expectations, no complications, just the hunt for treasure and the satisfaction of discovery.
But now, with Emma and Ari waiting on the ship, the darkness felt threatening in a way it never had before.
Get in, find what you’re looking for, get out. Simple. Clean. The way all jobs should be.
The corridor opened into a junction with three passages branching in different directions. He paused, consulting the schematic on his scanner. The device struggled to penetrate the asteroid’s composition, returning only partial readings, but he could make out enough to navigate.
The control room should be down the left passage if it followed the standard mining station layout.
Operations would be at the center, and extraction bays at the periphery.
Unfortunately, the star map hadn’t been specific as to their destination on the asteroid.
He finally decided to find the control room, access whatever records were left, and go from there.
The passage sloped downward, deeper into the asteroid’s heart. The walls here showed signs of old violence—scorch marks, impact craters, and the distinctive pitting of plasma fire. This wasn’t the random damage of time and decay. This was deliberate. Someone had fought here.
His pace slowed, his senses sharpening. His enhanced night vision picked out details in the shadows—old bloodstains, long since dried to rust-brown flakes.
A section of wall that had been melted, then resolidified into a grotesque sculpture.
The faint outline of a body, or what remained of one, huddled in a corner.
Nothing good had happened here.
The control room wasn’t far now. He could see the heavy blast doors ahead, partially open, frozen in whatever position they’d been in when the power failed. Or when someone had pried them apart.
He slipped through the gap, sweeping the room with his light and his stomach sank.
Fuck. The destruction here wasn’t the result of a battle or an accident.
It was systematic—every console smashed, every display shattered, every data storage unit ripped from its housing and crushed.
Someone had wanted to ensure that nothing remained.
No records, no evidence, no trace of whatever had happened here.
He moved deeper into the room, scanning the wreckage for anything salvageable. His boot crunched on broken glass, the sound unnaturally loud in the silence. Someone had cleaned the place out. It might have been the Grorn or it might have been whoever came before them.
He crouched beside a destroyed console, examining the damage. The cuts were made with plasma torches, wielded with precision. Fast, professional work. Whoever had done it had come in hard, killed everyone, and erased everything.
But why had they left the life support running? As bait? Or because they planned to return? Neither answer was comforting.
He moved through the room quickly but methodically, checking each station, each storage alcove, and each shadowed corner. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Whoever had done this had been thorough. Too thorough.
Almost too thorough.
The thought made him pause. He’d seen this before—the aggressive destruction that came from fear rather than efficiency.
When you were truly confident that no one would find your secrets, you didn’t need to be this meticulous.
This level of destruction suggested paranoia.
It suggested that whoever had done this was worried about something surviving.
Which meant there might be something worth finding.
He returned to the main console, studying the damage more carefully. The most violent destruction was centered there. Whatever they’d been trying to hide, this was where it had been stored.
But the console wasn’t the only access point in a station like this.
He dropped to his knees, feeling along the base of the console. Mining stations were built for function, not aesthetics. Redundancy was key—backup systems, emergency protocols, failsafes. If the main console was compromised, there had to be a secondary access point somewhere.
He finally found a seam in the metal and traced it, until he found the outline of a panel. A maintenance hatch, probably, for accessing the wiring underneath. But when he pried it open with his claws, he didn’t just find wires.
Instead, he found a small metal box, wedged into the space behind a bundle of cables. It was plain and unmarked, covered in the same dust that coated everything else in the room. But unlike everything else, it was intact.
He pulled the box free, examining it. No seams, and no obvious mechanism for opening it. Just smooth metal, warm to the touch despite the station’s ambient chill. But someone had hidden it deliberately. Which meant it was important.
He turned it over in his hands, searching for a release.
Nothing. He tried pressing various points on the surface, twisting, sliding.
Still nothing. Then his thumb found a small depression on one corner.
Not a button—more like a sensor pad, designed to respond to biometric input.
He pressed his thumb against it and felt the metal hum beneath his skin.
The box split open along invisible seams, revealing its contents.
A data crystal. Small and crystalline, glowing faintly with an internal light that was distinctly Precursor in origin. And beside it, a holographic projector, compact and ancient.
He lifted the crystal carefully, marveling at its construction. The glow intensified at his touch, responding to his body heat or his life signs or something else entirely. Whoever hid it had wanted it found. Just not by whoever destroyed this station.
He set the crystal aside and activated the projector.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the air above it shimmered, coalesced, and formed into an image.
A face with pale blue skin, angular features, and large dark eyes.
A female, he thought, although it was hard to be certain. She looked tired. Haunted. Afraid.
And then she spoke.
“If you’re seeing this, the station has fallen.
” Her voice was soft and melodic, heavily accented despite the translation bug, but understandable.
“The Grorn came without warning. We had no time to evacuate, no time to send a distress signal. They killed everyone who resisted and took the rest for questioning.”
She paused, glancing over her shoulder as if checking for pursuit. “They’re looking for the artifact. The one we found in the deep caverns. They know it’s here, but they can’t find it. The caverns are too extensive, and the readings too confused. They’ve been searching for weeks.”
Her image flickered, static rippling across her features.
“I am hiding this recording because someone needs to know. The artifact is real. It’s in the deepest section of the mining complex, in a cavern we accidentally breached during extraction operations.
The coordinates are encoded in the crystal. ”
Another glance over her shoulder. Her voice dropped to barely a whisper.
“I don’t know if I’ll survive long enough to retrieve it myself.
But if you find this message, if you’re one of the ones who’s been searching...
please. Don’t let the Grorn get it. Don’t let them complete their collection.
Whatever they’re planning, it can’t be allowed to—”
The recording cut off. The female’s face dissolved into static, then nothing. The projector sat silent and dark.
He stared at the space where the image had been, his mind racing.
Another artifact. Here. In the deep caverns. The star map had been right. Faith’s analysis had been right. There was an artifact hidden on this asteroid, somewhere in the labyrinth of tunnels that honeycombed its interior. All he had to do was find it.
He picked up the data crystal, turning it over in his palm. The glow intensified again, and this time he could feel something—a pull like a compass needle swinging towards magnetic north. The crystal was responding to his intention, guiding him towards the artifact.
He had no idea when the recording had been made. It could have been months or even years. The station had been abandoned for a long time, but the life support suggested recent activity. Which meant that the Grorn might have come back.
Letting the crystal guide him, he left the control room and descended deeper into the asteroid.
The corridors grew narrower and rougher, transitioning from station construction to raw mining tunnels.
The walls here bore the marks of industrial extraction, laser-cut and drill-scarred, veins of ore still visible in the exposed rock.
The data crystal pulsed in his pocket, warm and insistent. Left here. Down this shaft. Through this junction. The guidance was subtle but unmistakable, leading him through the maze of tunnels like a thread through a labyrinth.