Read Paying the Price (Book 5 of The Empire of Bones Saga) for Free Online Page B

fragile because of the empty space. It wasn’t rotating, so the purpose wasn’t to generate artificial gravity. Frankly, he was at a loss as to what it really did.
    The most obvious guess was that it was there to study the black hole. Certainly, the Empire would want to do the same thing. The opportunity was unprecedented.
    That still didn’t explain who had built the station. It didn’t look Imperial, but there had been other human polities before the Fall. He wasn’t quite ready to jump on the “aliens” bandwagon.
    Humanity had never found a single example of non-human sentience. Not even the remains of a long-dead civilization. Nothing.
    Well, arguably the AIs were sentient non-humans. He should be more precise.
    Yet, this station wasn’t using battle screens to filter out the deadly radiation. In that environment, it would quickly fry an unprotected Imperial facility, so there must be something there shielding it.
    Or, perhaps not. Maybe the screens had failed long ago and the station was a dead hulk. They wouldn’t know until they got a chance to examine it more closely.
    The hatch to his lab slid open and Princess Kelsey walked in. Her guard dog was at her heels.
    Perhaps that was being too harsh, but he’d never seen Major Ellis smile. Of course, perhaps having her ship shot out from under her had something to do with that.
    In any case, he wasn’t really a fan.
    Kelsey came over to him. “I heard you got hurt and I wanted to see you for myself. Why do you have cotton balls in your ears?”
    He tried to give a nonchalant shrug. “Just a problem testing something out. The docs fixed me up and put those in to help speed the healing.”
    She gave him a stern look. “You should know me better than that. I want the real story and I want you to trot it out right now, young man.”
    He sighed. He should’ve known this wasn’t going to be easy.
    “It’s a surprise.”
    “Congratulations. I’m surprised. Now, let’s have some details.”
    He shot a look at Major Ellis. The woman had obviously ran to tattle on him. His opinion of her plummeted.
    “I’m not sure what you heard,” he said as he walked over to his desk, “but I’ll wager some important details were left out.”
    He pulled the hammer out of his pack and handed it to her. “This is Mjölnir.”
    She hefted it with a frown. “It’s kind of light. After watching that vid, I expected something with a bit more heft.”
    So, she’d already seen the vid. He considered turning off the grav support, but that might cause an injury. He’d already done enough to give her the wrong opinion about this.
    “Set it down, please.”
    She placed it on the floor and he stopped the miniature grav drive from neutralizing the weight. “Try it now.”
    Kelsey went to pick it up and her eyes widened in surprise. “Wow. Okay, that is heavy.”
    She lifted it, but he imagined it had taken a significant percentage of her Marine Raider artificial muscles to do it.
    “The shell is made of partially collapsed matter,” he said. “It weighs about three tons. And that’s not all. Set it back down.”
    Once she did, he engaged the grav drive to resist motion. It didn’t precisely make the hammer weigh more, but it added resistance to movement. If someone tried to lift it, it quickly adjusted the drive to counteract that pressure. It could stop a dozen Marine Raiders acting in concert, but still not damage the floor.
    When combined with the neutral buoyancy function he’d worked out, it wasn’t dangerous to set it on a glass table and yet still prevent others from moving it. One of his smarter ideas, he thought.
    This time Kelsey couldn’t budge it.
    She stood and shook her head. “I suppose I’m not worthy. Impressive.”
    “You could be worthy, with the right additions to your implants.”
    Kelsey nodded. “You can tell me all about it, but I want to make something particularly clear first. You’re my friend and we’ve been through so much together. I