Devan Bryan

You look into the glass. You look handsome and a bit roguish. Of course you should, you’ve been a mercenary and a smuggler for more than a decade. Sadly, your last job went horribly awry. You thought you were snuggling wine into a **** free world. Only dissolved in the wine was a nasty ****. The authorities on Betana four discovered the wine and the ****, forcing you to flee.

Taking the job as a guard was a stroke of genius. No one will ever think to look for you here. A year from now you pocket a huge chunk of change and the heat will have died down.

Before you even finish your thought, the station shudders. A quiet monotone voice drones, "Hull breach, observatory deck A."

You remember the schematic and head towards deck A. You stumble as the station shudders again.

There is a disturbing creak and this computer voice drones in a monotone. "Hull breach in prisoner section two."

You make it down to the observatory deck, with the six others with you. You look at the hull and are amazed. There is a hole right out into space. A **** field is keeping the stations atmosphere inside and nanobots are slowly closing the hole like a healing wound. After watching in amazement as the hole shrank to half its size, you begin to search for what caused it. It isn't hard. Five feet away sits what looks to be an ancient scorched metal box.

"Computer, analyze that object."

Object is of alien origin, it appears to be a box designed to hold something. There is writing on the outside, although some of it is charred and worn away. There is an additional information disk within.

"Computer translate writing and disk."

Translation of external writing is simple. It says the following: If this box is found do not open...the rest is illegible.

You find this a bit disturbing as the box is open and empty.

Beginning translation on the disk. It appears to be mostly intact: If you have found this box we have failed and The Weapon still exists. If you find it destroy it, or it will destroy you and perhaps even the universe itself. We were foolish to have constructed it. Our planet was under **** from a far less evolved race. We did not believe in **** so we sought to create a weapon with which they would destroy themselves.

It took our greatest minds nearly a year, but we created The Weapon. Its function is simple. It warps reality around the user allowing them to bring there darkest desires to life. Foolishly we thought ourselves immune. Before its use it was given to a lawmaker. It changed him. He unleashed madness. With our world in ruins we chose to destroy The Weapon rather than use it to save ourselves. With our enemies attacking us we launched it towards the sun. Hopefully this message is nothing more than molten slag. If it is not, do not use The Weapon. Destroy it or it will destroy you. End message.

You can’t help but wonder what a weapon like that might be worth. Of course it’s probably destroyed, but…

Somebody needs to check it out.