Abyss by Troy Denning Read Free Book Online Page A

pour from the next section. As Luke and Ben continued deeper into the station, they began to come across detritus of all kinds—vac suit helmets, an ammoniabreather’s air tank, blaster rifles, flechette launchers, and half a dozen single-wheeled carts with round bellies and gel-padded kneeling benches. Each time a new section of wall illuminated, the light grew more anemic, and soon the hue was more yellow than green.
    “This place is starting to dark me out,” Ben said, stopping beside a half-inflated vac suit. “Why can’t they just pick a color?”
    “Good question,” Luke said. He was not happy to see Ben reacting to his feelings instead of focusing on the problem. “Maybe the colors are supposed to tell you where you are. You have a guess?”
    “Yeah, maybe.” Ben used his boot toe to flip the vac suit onto its back and shone his wristlamp into the helmet’s faceplate, revealing a visage so shriveled and gray it might have been Ho’Din or human. “The lights could be a warning system, you know? Like blue means safe, green means danger, yellow means big trouble.”
    Luke felt only a faint tingle of danger himself, but that didn’t mean Ben’s theory was wrong—especially considering the body they had just found. He activated the status display inside his faceplate and found all radiation levels well within the normal range.
    “Ben, are you sensing something that worries you?”
    “You mean aside from that strange presence in the central sphere?” Ben asked.
    “Right.”
    “And besides the fact that we’re poking around a ghost station with no way to contact anyone?”
    “Yes, aside from that.”
    “And that somebody really old, powerful, and mysterious obviously went to a lot of trouble to keep this place hidden from the likes of us?”
    “And that, too.”
    Ben shrugged and shook his helmet. “Then no, I’m all systems ready.” He stepped over the body and continued up the corridor. “Let’s keep moving.”
    They continued up the corridor for another two hundred paces, passing a series of intersections and huge chambers filled with equipment so alien and mysterious that Luke could not even guess at its function. There were huge barrels made of the same material as thewalls, surrounded by glowing coils of what appeared to be fiber-optic cable. In another chamber, they saw a silver sphere the size of the
Millennium Falcon
hovering over a disk of dark metal. The next cavernous room held a warren of containment-field cubes, each one holding a hammock, a couple of basins, and a large, wedge-skulled skeleton still draped in a thin yellow robe.
    Reluctant to cross a still-shimmering barrier field that had probably sealed the entrance for centuries—if not millennia—father and son lingered outside the chamber for a time. They could not help debating whether the prisoners had belonged to the species that had created the station, were some enemy species the creators were fighting, or had been a crew from one of the vessels abandoned in the hangar, left here to die by a long-forgotten band of pirates. After discussing the likelihood of each possibility for several minutes, they finally realized they would never know and continued on their way.
    Twenty meters later, they came to another detention center. The remains inside
these
cells were exoskeleton parts. Judging by the size of the thoraxes and abdomens, the inhabitants had been a little smaller than humans. Their chitinous skulls were large and heart-shaped, with openings for huge multifaceted eyes. Scattered around each cell were at least half a dozen small limb tubes and no more than four larger ones, suggesting insectoids with two powerful legs and four long arms.
    Ben’s voice came over Luke’s helmet speaker. “Hey, those look like—”
    “Killiks,” Luke agreed. “Unu
did
claim they were involved in the building of the Maw and Centerpoint Station.”
    “As
slaves
, it looks like,” Ben replied. “Dad, what
is
this place?”
    “I