Book 3 - Star's End by Glen Cook

zoo of Hel-born mental mutations was a
blue-chip growth industry.
    The project was too delicate to risk its compromise by the
unbalanced.
    But the production team needed Ion. Nobody had his sure,
delicate touch with the test systems. Best let it ride and hope he
would come around. This thing with Melanie could be a positive if
it jarred him back to reality.
    Paul turned. He looked at a thin, short, weary little man who
had a thousand years etched into his face and a million agonies
flaring from his narrow little black eyes. Right decision? Those
eyes were lamps of torment backfired by incipient madness.
    Something rattled the foundations of the universe.
    The snowy landscape glowed a deep, bloody red. The glow faded
quickly.
    Marescu turned an ashen color. He stumbled to the dome face,
caressed it with shaking fingers.
“Paul . . . That was damned close. They
could have destabilized one of the test cores. We’d have been
blown into the next universe.”
    Fear had drained Neidermeyer’s face too. He mumbled,
“But nothing happened.”
    “I’m complaining anyway. They ought to have better
sense.” Feeling the breath of the angel on his neck had
snapped his streak of self-pity.
    He stared into the darkness outside. A pale new light had begun
etching the shadows more deeply. One brilliant point of light slid
across the screen of fixed stars, growing more intense.
    “They’re coming in fast.”
    Hel’s surface was screaming under a storm of violet-white
light when the dome polarized. The glass continued to respond to
the light beating against it, its inner surface crawling with an
iridescence like that of oil on water.
    “Doctor Neidermeyer? Mister Marescu? Excuse me a
moment.”
    They turned. Marine Major Gottfried Feuchtmayer stood at the
escalator’s head. He was Deputy Chief of Security, and a man
who appeared to have just stepped out of a recruiting commerical.
He was the quintessential Marine.
    “Bet he wakes up looking like that,” Marescu
muttered.
    “What is it, Major?” Neidermeyer asked.
    “We need your assistance in the arsenal. We need two
devices for shipboard installation.”
    Marescu’s stomach went fluttery. The butterflies donned
Alpine boots and started dancing.
“Major . . . ”
    “Briefing in Final Process in fifteen minutes, gentlemen.
Thank you.”
    Neidermeyer nodded. The Major descended the escalator.
    “So,” Marescu snapped. “They’ll never
use it, eh? You’re a fool, Paul.”
    “Maybe they won’t. You don’t
know . . . Maybe it’s a field test of
some kind.”
    “Don’t lie to yourself. No more than you already
are.
The damned bomb doesn’t need testing. I already tested it.
They’re going to blow up a sun, Paul!” Ion’s
mouth worked faster and faster. His voice rose toward a squeak.
“Not some star, Paul. A sun. Somebody’s sun. The
goddamned murdering fascists are going to wipe out a whole solar
system.”
    “Calm down, Ion.”
    “Calm down? I can’t. I won’t! How many lives,
Paul? How many lives are going to be blasted away by those
firecrackers we’ve given them? They’ve made bloody
fools of us, haven’t they? They suckered us. Smug little
purblind fools that we are, we made ourselves believe that it would
never go that far. But we were lying to ourselves. We knew. They
always use the weapon, no matter how horrible it is.”
    Paul did not respond. Marescu was reacting without all the
facts. And saying things everyone else thought but did not say.
    For the research staff, service at Hel Station had been a deal
with the devil. Each scientist had traded physical freedom and
talent for unlimited funding and support for a pet line of
research. The Station was ultra-secret, but the knowledge it
produced was reshaping modern science. The place seethed with new
discoveries.
    All Navy had asked for its money was a weapon capable of making
a sun go nova.
    Navy had its weapon now. The scientists had scrounged around and
found a few Hawking Holes left