When she caught up to Lieutenant Palmer, he was inspecting one of the quarters at the far end of the corridor. Like all the others she’d passed, the room was strictly functional, the kind of place only suitable for short stays and contract work, as spiritless as it was sparsely furnished. A single bed, a few floating shelves, a storage locker (double wide), a desk, and a chair were all that were afforded the overworked souls of Hephaestus Station.
“Not much here beyond a few personal effects, Commander,” he said as she approached. He’d shouldered his rifle and was holding up a delicate, gold chain. There was a medallion hanging from it, small, like an old coin, and he stared at it fixedly before laying the pendant flat in his palm. “Who do you suppose that is?” he said, holding it out for her to see.
Shepard stepped closer and leaned in. The relief was worn, but she could just make out a loose-robed man standing mid-strike, his foot pinning down the head of a wretched creature who lay splayed on the ground. Both figures appeared to have wings.
“That’s Saint Michael,” she said plainly.
Palmer looked up in surprise. “How the hell'd you know that?”
“My grandad used to wear one just like it. It’s supposed to be a protection from evil. See how Michael’s got a sword?” She pointed to the longsword he brandished above his head, a weapon he was poised to plunge into the creature beneath him. “The old stories say he led the angels into battle and defeated the Devil.”
“The Devil?” intoned Palmer. He squinted through the narrow visor of his helmet, holding the medallion closer to his face. “I’ll be damned. That’s quite a feat.”
“Yeah, well, he cast the devil and his minions down to Earth. Not so great for us mortals.”
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here?”
Shepard smirked. “Feels like that sometimes, doesn’t it?”
Palmer carefully laid the medallion back down on the shelf where he’d found it. “Whoever owned this must have left in a real hurry.” He glanced down at the unmade bed, its sheets thrown off to one side and touching the floor, as if the person who’d slept in it had rushed out in the middle of the night. The double locker too was evidence. Its battered doors were flung open, revealing a hang bar still half slotted with clothes, the shirts and jumpsuits drooping from their hangers by one shoulder. Someone had tried to tear them out but in the end abandoned the effort. A mad French exit. No warning, no forethought, just a scramble to some place else.
“Everyone left in a hurry.”
Not that it mattered why. The people who’d lived and worked here, who had helped to ensure the galaxy’s collective existence, would never return. The station was a ghost town.
