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It turned out that it was simply impossible to get close to the station. Some sort of field had recently appeared around it and prevented any ships from approaching the town. Perhaps this was the technical obstacle Olaf was referring to. However, I suspect they would never destroy Oars under any circumstances. They wanted the same thing I was after, I was sure of it. The decoder key to the Black Abyss gate, that’s what brought everyone here. It must be the source of the contagion. That’s how the Unnamable usually works.
The Empire patrol ship gave my spacesuit the acceleration it needed and sent me on a long journey on a tricky trajectory that brought me to the walls of Oars after a few hours of boredom. I suppose I could have tried to penetrate the field in my ship, but I didn’t want to show off all my abilities and secrets before time.
Getting into the town turned out to be easy. Oars was a jumble of old ships and orbital stations, welded together to form a labyrinth of tunnels. There were hatches and doors everywhere, left over from the original junk that was used to build the town and carved out by locals who were probably up to some dark deeds. I just found the nearest airlock and got in without a problem.
I took off my spacesuit and walked the dark corridors to finally get to the so-called streets of the town. They were more like narrow branching passageways between steel walls, with lots of small shops, cafés and cheap housing. The favelas of the modern world. There were no citizens in sight. Only the dim emergency light filled the streets. A couple of times I thought I was being watched from the window slits nearby, but I didn’t see any people. Having a rough idea of how the decoder key worked, I headed confidently towards the town centre.
The closer I got, the clearer it became that I was not mistaken. I began to see corpses in the street. Completely blackened and twisted. The closer to the centre I got, the more there were. The key attracts the infected, drives them to walk towards it, and only death could stop them. Though sometimes it didn’t.
As I got closer to the small square that was the centre of the town, I started bumping into infected who were still alive. They were no longer able to move, so they sat or lay there, watching me with blackened eyes. With every step of the way, there were more and more infected. I was not afraid to catch the disease from them. I had a special gift that Ms Hate had given me a long time ago, especially for cases like this. But I still didn’t want to touch the infected. They looked pretty bad. Luckily, they stepped aside as I went, letting me pass. And so I came to the central square of the town of Oars.
What I saw there was quite interesting. Several people in dark robes stood right in front of me. Their hoods hid their faces. Across from them were the ones who had found the key. The power from the infected had made them noticeably stronger. One in particular stood out, a large man of athletic build. His angry eyes glared at the hooded people. Two other men stood next to him. It looked like they might have been brothers. Now all three looked the same. The key changes people if they’re exposed to it for too long.
“We’ve come for what we ordered,” one of the hooded men said. “Give us what you owe us. We have brought the promised payment.”
“You tricked me!” The voice of the centre man boomed like thunder. “You didn’t tell me what the wedge could actually give me! You wanted me to give it to you for a pittance of gold?”
“We had an agreement.”
“To hell with your agreement, you pathetic collectors! The wedge is mine!” He put his suddenly inhumanly long arms around the brothers, pulling them to him. “Did you think you could take it away and become its servants? No! I’ll do what it commands myself! And become its best friend, its assistant, its regent! Me! Alone!”
He pressed the brothers’ bodies even harder against him. In an instant, they were gone, and their empty clothes fell to the steel floor. The man himself grew even larger, almost resting his head against the ceiling tiles. His body rippled with muscle. His voice became like the call of the underworld. His arms swept towards the robed guys, becoming longer and turning into a tangle of snakes or steel ropes, tearing bodies apart in an instant. I stepped forward and pulled out the Duke. A huge, heavy and very ancient pistol loaded with special bullets. I managed to fire it three times. All three shots hit successfully. One even landed in the monster’s head. But he still managed to hit me with his tentacle arms. The gun flew out of my hands and rolled away, I was thrown back a couple of yards. It was hard to breathe. My body felt deadly heavy. I was almost gone. The monster wasn’t.
Despite its wounds, it moved towards me. I didn’t know what it was going to do to me and I didn’t want to find out. With a trembling hand, I reached for the amulet around my neck and snapped it. The monster stared at me for a second, not realising what was happening, and then fell to the floor. The key gleamed in its hand. It was very close, but I didn’t have the strength to move. I must have blacked out periodically. Several of my ribs were broken and one seemed to have punctured a lung.
I don’t know how much time passed. Not that long, I guess, and then I heard footsteps and Imperial fighters ran out into the square. Following them came Olaf and Ramirez. Both were wearing heavy assault spacesuits, but there was no one left to fight. With the key’s owner dead, it was likely that all the infected on the station had perished as well, and the protective field was down.
Olaf took out a huge cleaver and with a single blow severed the hand holding the key. Ramirez deftly picked up the limb and placed it in a container. It was obvious that they had prepared well.
“Let’s go,” Olaf commanded. “Time is of the essence!”
They left the square quickly, not even looking at me, and their support squads followed them.
It was getting harder and harder to breathe. With a great effort, I did not let my body switch off completely. And I waited. After an abyss of time, I heard the footsteps of living people again in this realm of death. Stepping lightly, Summer entered the square. Huron and his crew followed her.
“My poor faithful one.” Summer stepped over the corpse of the big guy and sat down beside me, placing her hand on my head. It made me feel better all at once.
“It was all for nothing,” I whispered with dry lips. “They took the key.”
“I know,” she smiled in a way that made all the pain go away. “It’s alright.”
“They’re probably at the gate by now,” I coughed up blood. “It’s been too long.”
“We lost the battle, but not the war,” her voice was soft, captivating, enchanting. “He can be stopped. He is not omnipotent. But we will need everything we have.” Her eyes became bottomless, and I sank into them. Darkness fell…
