“This thing still works?” Boo wondered.

“Most of the time,” Lark replied, which didn’t calm Leo’s nerves. “Back when the excavator was active it consumed vast amounts of energy. Naturally we used cores of EL-four eight six to power it. However, I have managed to redirect most of the facility’s basic systems to run off the solar arrays. As long as the planet’s primary star shines, everything stays operational.”

“And when those dark gray clouds move in?” Leo wondered.

“Then I wait for them to pass.”

As the elevator creaked downward with a rusty, shuddering moan, Leo took in the abyss beneath him, the bottom impossible to see. He thought about that poster, that one of the Earth fountaining blood. He wondered if any of the Orin had ever protested the Aykari being here. If they ever put up a fight.

He hoped not. He was pretty sure how it would have ended.

Once at the entrance, Lark activated a button on the door’s controls and a miniature black eye revealed itself, an aperture in its center emitting a blue beam that scanned the Aykari from his sandaled feet to his slightly pointed head. The door slid open and Lark gestured them all inside. “Welcome,” he said.

Baz didn’t move. “Crayt’s in here?”

The Aykari nodded.

“He better be,” the captain warned. “Not a big fan of walking into eerie abandoned buildings at the edge of a giant hole in the middle of a barren desert on a backwater planet nobody’s never even heard of at the request of someone I consider my enemy.”

“You still think we are enemies?” Lark asked.

“We certainly aren’t friends,” Baz shot back, but he stepped through the door anyway. Leo followed, one hand still wrapped around that rock in his pocket as if it were some kind of talisman that would keep him safe.

As soon as they were inside, a row of white lights activated, revealing a large octagonal chamber, nearly the size of the Beagle’s bridge. Banks of computers and other unfamiliar machines lined the walls, along with storage crates of all kinds, some open and empty, others sealed tight. By the entrance, the metal floor was coated in a fine layer of yellow dust dragged in from outside, but a few paces beyond that it gleamed. Leo recognized the chairs stationed around the room with their silver frames and tall, arched backs, designed for the lithe Aykari frame. At one time this would have been a control center for the entire mining operation, with a team of engineers monitoring the extraction process, making sure not a single speck of 486 was wasted. Now Leo didn’t know what it was used for.

“Do the Orin know about this place?” Boo asked.

“They know, but they will not come near it,” Lark said. “They believe the holes in the planet to be haunted, that our drills burrowed too deep into the ground and we released evil spirits that had long lain dormant. They say that is why their buildings crumbled and their crops withered. I’ve tried to convince them that it was us, that we were the vengeful spirits, but I cannot make them understand the science. It is easier for them to believe in ghosts.”