Starfishers Volume 3: Stars End by Glen Cook

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 over