This is a fan translation of Fighters of Danwait (Бойцы Данвейта) by Mikhail Akhmanov, currently only available in Russian and, because of the author's passing in 2019, unlikely to ever be published in English. This is the third book in a six-book series called Arrivals from the Dark (Пришедшие из мрака), which also has a six-book spin-off series called Trevelyan's Mission (Миссия Тревельяна).
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
DROMI. The name of the race has come from the language of Lo'ona Aeo.
Their name for themselves is unknown and probably cannot be reproduced using the sounds of Earth Lingua.
The galactic coordinates of the Dromi sector: OrY57/OrY64, Orion Arm. Homeworld: Fytarla-Ata, coordinates OrY60.08.72, the number of colonized planets is close to eighty. A B3-level technological civilization, possessing the contour drive, which they have, most likely, obtained from Lo'ona Aeo. They have evolved from the amphibians of Fytarla, retaining their claws, fangs, and scaly green skin during the process of evolution. Sex differences are absent, the same individual can serve as both male and female. They reproduce by laying small, roe-like eggs, which then hatch into larvae, who rapidly go through the cycle of development into maturity. This period is analogous to the human concept of childhood, and, at that time, a larva's body mass grows rapidly. However, adult Dromi continue to grow, although not as fast, and, in their old age, can reach the mass of 150-200 kilograms. They live for 45-50 years, but the small lifespan is compensated by their incredible fertility; estimated population is 350-400 billion. Extremely aggressive. Clan-based social structure with the obedience to the elders and clan chiefs is entrenched on the genetic level. For the past two millennia, they have served as Defenders of the Lo'ona Aeo, from whom they borrowed certain technical advancements and tricks. The contract between the Lo'ona Aeo and the Dromi was terminated in 2099, when mercenaries from Earth replaced the Dromi.
By USF estimates, the Dromi will most definitely become competitors to humanity.
Sources of information: 1. Communication from Servs and other intelligent artificial lifeforms of the Lo'ona Aeo. 2. Data collected by USF Secret Service agents.
Xenological Compendium, section Galactic Races. United University edition, La Sorbonne, Oxford, Moscow (Earth), Olympus Mons (Mars), 2264
Chapter 1
Dromi. The Blue Zone, sector 223/18, year 2266
The distress call came on the fifth day after departing Danwait. As usual, they were unpleasant, even loathsome for the human senses of smell, sight, and hearing: light started blinking in all compartments, the siren blared, pretending to be a pig in a slaughterhouse, and, in addition, the smell of tar was clearly detectable. Perhaps the former crew of the beyri Lancelot would be called to do great feats and perform acts of well-paid heroism by this cacophony, but Sergey Valdez viewed the smell, the blinking, and the squealing as a mockery of humans. Not specifically him, or Cro, or Atigem, but of all of humankind. The equipment in the Pink Zone had been replaced long ago, adapting it to human demands, but they were too lazy, or, perhaps, too greedy, to do the same in the Blue Zone, and, as a result, the three-man patrol teams flew the old beyri, interceptor craft, that had remained from the Dromi. And they were fighting the very same Dromi, although there were cases when they had to get to within the gun range of other clients interested in getting their hands on someone else's stuff.
The squealing, the light show, and the smell stopped only when they took their battle stations. The arc-shaped control panel was equipped with three built-in cradles; the central hole was for the pilot-commander, meaning Valdez, the other two on the sides were for the gunners, Atigem and Cro. Then again, Cro preferred to be called by his Navajo name Chief Lightwater.
It was uncomfortable to sit, stand, and work with the pilot console: while the Dromi bodies were in some ways similar to that of humans, with a head and four limbs, that was where the similarities ended. Their legs were shorter, their arms were longer and bent in a different direction, their fingers had claws, and their eyes did not distinguish the extreme spectral colors, dark red and violet. Driving a ship meant for the Dromi was hellishly difficult, and it was even worse to live and fight in it! But such trivialities did not bother the Lo'ona Aeo, or rather their Employer-Masters. They seemed to think that the veterans of the Void Wars and the Frontier Fleet would be able to manage any equipment, anything that rolled, crawled, flew, and shot. Generally speaking, that was true.
Atigem, having managed to fit his butt and other body parts into the tight cradle with some chugging sounds, rumbled, "Where are they calling us to, Captain? The Border trading post or some sector?"
"To a sector," Valdez replied, sticking his fingers, wearing clawed tips, into the console openings. "The twenty-third sector, eighteenth coil… Ready? We're going to come in firing."
"I have already dug up my tomahawk," Cro said, grabbing the trigger levers.
"Me too," Atigem confirmed, staring at the tactical screen. In it, on the left gunner's monitor, the quad barrels of his cannon were moving up and down, and the ammunition supply unit was filling with a yellow light.
"Then let's go." Valdez entered the jump command.
They exited Limbo [Limbo is a dimension of quantum chaos, an unordered portion of the universe, the inverse side of matter structured in the Metagalaxy. When submerged in Limbo, it becomes possible to combine two points (two contours of a material body) at different locations of metagalactic space and perform an instant transition between them. This effect is used by all highly-developed races for interstellar travel. The chaotic fluctuations of the force fields in the Limbo dimension, the inverse of the ordered Creation, are called the quantum foam.] with incredible precision, just over twenty kilometers from the target. According to Earth military doctrine, the beyri Lancelot was an obsolete ship, something between a corvette and a fighter, but its electronic systems, or, rather, what was used in their place, would be the envy of even the most powerful cruisers. The Lo'ona Aeo were considered masters of such things; no one could design computers the size of a buckwheat grain or other miniature machinery better than they. All that was reliable, long-lasting, and operating with a fantastic speed.
The viewscreen above the console zoomed into the disaster area, allowing Valdez and the gunners to assess the situation. As was expected, three Dromi tubs were attacking a caravan: two were hovering at the edges of the long chain of container-barges, keeping them in a force grip, while the third was already mounting the transport module, the lead vessel, which was pulling the cargo to the nearest trading post. Scarlet sparks were visible above the transport; it looked like the Dromi were already cutting into the hull to get to the Servs [Servs are biomechanical, almost sentient devices, made to look like the Lo'ona Aeo, analogous to androids.] and the computers controlling the caravan.
"I'll take the left moron," Atigem grumbled. Cro didn't reply, but both of the beyri's guns started working with the usual synchronicity, spewing sixty-four rounds per a unit of time roughly equal to an Earth second into space. What those rounds were, what they were filled with, where they were made, all that remained a mystery to Valdez and the human mercenaries from the Patrol and the Convoys, but they punched through force fields and armor of corsair tubs like a hot knife through butter. Yet another secret of their Masters… All the while, the ancient and wise Lo'ona Aeo did not use nuclear warheads or antimatter, considering these technologies to be potentially dangerous.
Valdez was piloting the Lancelot, not accelerating too fast, giving Cro and Atigem a chance to get their shots off, and making sure that the Dromi tubs did not exit the kill zone. His crew knew where to shoot: the very first volleys disabled the enemy force field systems and gun batteries. The shimmering halos, surrounding the ships, vanished, then cracks appeared in their hulls, puffs of air, leaking from the punctures into emptiness, turned into a white fog, bright fountains of explosions blossomed, spinning chunks of the hull, the cargo from the holds, and the broken drives. The Lancelot was only a fifth of the size of the pirate ships, but she was ten times deadlier: those turned into sieves without managing to get off a shot or even maneuver under the continuous cannonade. Only Dromi dreadnoughts, with better defenses and the firepower of human cruisers, were the real danger for the Patrol. But encounters with them were rare.
One of the ships split apart, spewing a flaming cloud, the other, thrown away from the caravan by the cannon hits, was drifting off into empty space, silent and lifeless.
"The morons are sucking vacuum! And we have over two hundred more pesos!" Atigem said and burst out in a booming laugh.
The third ship, the one that had attached itself to the transport module, opened fire. It looked like the Dromi had finally woken up, realizing that the hunters had become the hunted. Their reaction was slower than that of humans, and, at the time the Lo'ona Aeo were replacing their Defenders, this had played to Earth's advantage. There also had been aesthetic considerations: the Dromi seemed extremely ugly to both humans and their employers.
The Lancelot passed over the caravan, chased by plasma streams, turned around, and went into a steep dive, aiming her guns at the Dromi.
"Let's pincer him, Cro," Atigem offered. "Like that wreck in sector eighty. Remember?"
The Chief remained silent. He was generally taciturn, but, being part-cyborg, acted with commendable speed. Valdez had great respect for him, not only due to his venerable age and gunner skills, but also for personal reasons: in his younger years, Cro had fought under his great-grandfather, Paul Richard Corcoran. Corcoran had been a full admiral in command of the Frontier Fleet, one of those legendary heroes, who had defended Earth and its colonies from the Bino Faata invasion, one of those people who got monuments built in their honor while they were still alive. Valdez was very proud of his origins.
The Lancelot was falling upon the Dromi ship, like a hawk upon a dove, ready to rip it to shreds and drown it in flames. The trigger levers came to life under the hands of the gunners, the vessel shuddered from the first burst, and the guns immediately fell silent. But the intercom system activated on its own, and they heard the Lancelot's high-pitched voice.
"Attention Defenders! The weapons have been temporarily locked. There is a living being in the transport. A Master, a Lo'ona Aeo. If the Dromi are attacked and their ship destroyed, he will die with a probability of 78%."
The warning was made twice, in the Lo'ona Aeo language and in Earth Lingua [Earth Lingua is a global language, which was created at the end of the 23rd century on the basis of the European languages, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic.].
The jaws of all three humans dropped. A Lonchak? A Lo'ona Aeo in a trade caravan? That was a miracle, nonsense, an absurdity! Naturally, the Lo'ona Aeo traveled through space, but only among their ethereal astroid-cities, for pleasure, in luxurious yachts or liners. But to a trade post, a military base, or an alien world: never! They were quiet xenophobes: on the one hand, they tried not to quarrel with anyone, on the other, they refused to maintain direct contact with even the most developed galactic races. All trade and communication came through the Servs, so sophisticated and similar to living beings, that humans had, for a long time, assumed they were the Lo'ona Aeo and treated them as equal partners. The Servs had built a base on Pluto and opened a recruiting center, the Servs looked for mercenaries to protect their Masters' tranquility, the Serves traded, delivering objects of art and amazing technology to Earth, and even the Lo'ona Aeo embassy on Luna only had Servs, just Servs, no one but Servs! To the Lo'ona Aeo themselves, proximity to alien beings was unbearable; they were gripped by revulsion that turned to terror. That was their race's biological instinct, as powerful as the passion of humans, Faata, or Kni'lina for conquest and unlimited expansion.
The guns were silent. Valdez made another pass over the Dromi vessel, dodging orange plasma darts. One of them still touched the shield, and the Lancelot received a powerful jolt.
"Those comet-fuckers!" Atigem swore. "They'll fry us, Captain! Have you ever heard of someone being sent to fight but not allowed to shoot?!" He slammed a heavy fist on the console. "Because of that flunky! That damned, crummy, mongrel–"
"Shut up," Valdez said, having a lot more experience dealing with the Lancelot's artificial intelligence. "Shut up and let me speak." He fidgeted on the uncomfortable seat and spoke. "Pilot to the ship. We are unable to destroy the enemy with locked weapons. In that case, the living being is doomed. I suggest we risk it. The probability of 78% is not 100."
"The risk is out of the question," the Lancelot informed him. "I will remind you that the life of a Lo'ona Aeo is sacred!"
"Then I request instructions."
"Save the living being. Save the Lo'ona Aeo."
That was the very essence of the Masters, their entire psychology and attitude towards the mercenaries of the Patrol and the Convoys: get it done! Of course, they did pay well, sixty-four pesos per four eight-days plus twenty-eight for each Dromi tub. After a few years, having gathered three hundred kilograms of precious metal, Valdez could buy out his family's property, an island in the Pacific Aquatoria [Pacific Aquatoria is one of the new Earth nations, located in the Pacific Ocean. It includes tens of thousands of artificial floating islands, most of which belong to family clans and are passed down from parents to children. The inhabitants of Pacific Aquatoria come from various continents and generally engage in fishing.].
"Unlock the guns," he suggested to the ship. "We're not going to blow up the Dromi, only destroy their defenses and plasma cannons. Then we'll dock with their tub and eliminate the crew with handheld weapons. Would that be satisfactory?"
"Yes," the Lancelot replied.
"But only for special payment!" Atigem added. "A premium rate or something… We're highly qualified specialists, damn it, not some boarding party!"
"Recorded and transmitted to the Danwait base. Payment will be made in accordance with the category 'non-standard operation of particular complexity'. One hundred and twenty-eight pieces of eight each."
"That's better," Atigem grumbled. "Now we have something to work for."
Valdez turned the beyri around and accelerated. They distanced themselves from the caravan a good five hundred kilometers, getting lost in the darkness; maybe the enemy sensors could no longer track their tiny ship. That would be good; when they returned, they could deliver a sudden strike.
"We'll have to work surgically, my friends. Cro, deal with their gun turrets. Atigem, the shield emitters are yours."
"Will do," Lightwater spoke calmly.
In his one hundred and seventy plus years, he had participated in so many battles that today's fight did not worry him in the least. He was a veteran of the First Void War and the three that had followed; Sergey could count the number of people like that on Earth, Gondwana, Ro'on, and the other colonies on the fingers of one hand.
They entered striking range, and Cro perforated the Dromi gun turrets with three bursts. Atigem worked just as delicately: the rounds from his gun pierced the black cones of the emitters at the bow and the stern of the ship, and the force screen disappeared. One more burst from him made a neat hole at the spot the airlock had occupied moments before.
"Guess we'll have to pull on the suits, Captain," Atigem grumbled. "I don't like them. Can we just use the bubbles?"
With his dimensions, it was just as difficult for him to get into a spacesuit as it was into the tight gunner's cradle. Deciding that there was no time to waste, Valdez nodded in agreement.
"The bubbles will do fine. But don't forget the gloves. And now… Hold on, people!"
The Lancelot shuddered; the ship landed right on top of the opening in the hull of the Dromi tub. Lights flashed on the console; the devices were informing them that the tractor beam had a firm hold, that the docking spot had been sealed with foam, that there was air aboard the enemy ship, and that there were no more than a dozen living enemies. Pressing his hands against the edge of the panel, Valdez got out and, throwing the clawed tips off his fingers, shifted a plate on his belt. A slightly shimmering force field cocoon surrounded him, as durable as armor, but not restricting his movement. A safe opened next to the cradle, Valdez took out gloves with emitters and laser cutters on the back side, pulled them on, and looked over his crew. The gunners, maybe not as young as him, were at full combat readiness: Atigem was warming up by rolling his mighty shoulders, Cro had already managed to replace the prosthetic on his right arm. His new limb was a lot longer and ended in fearsome pincers.
"We're ready," Valdez said. "Let us out, Lancelot."
"And don't forget about the premium rate," Atigem added.
A section of the floor melted away, and they dropped through the hole, and then into the Dromi ship. There was air, light, and even gravity; it looked like the vessel had not lost anything except for the turrets and the shield. There was, though, an awful smell, but Valdez was prepared for that, remembering that Dromi glands, excited by combat, emitted the same scents as rotten eggs in a pile of manure. The layout was also familiar to him, for it was not the first time he had boarded an enemy ship; this horseshoe-shaped chamber was the outer airlock, and the ramp at its far bulkhead led to the living deck and the control rooms. In three leaps, he crossed the airlock, stood by the ramp, hiding behind the corner, and activated the loudspeaker and the Dromi-lingua cyber-translator.
"This is Danwait Patrol. You have violated the border of the Zone of Influence [A Zone of Influence is a sector of the galaxy dominated by a particular starfaring race (in this case, the Lo'ona Aeo).] and attacked a trade caravan. Two of your ships are destroyed. Drop your weapons! Surrender!"
The loudspeaker boomed so loudly the walls shuddered. The translated ultimatum seemed to be a mix of the kind of roaring, clanging, growling, and grinding, with which a drill entered a steel beam. A searing beam came out from the hallway at the bottom of the ramp, and Valdez, deciding that he had received a clear enough answer, stretched out his arm and clenched his fist. A pair of tiny grains shot out into the hallway, where they instantly fell apart, flooding everything around them with a dim silver glow, then there was a barely audible clap: the air filled in the resulting vacuum. Freezer shots froze gas, liquid, and any organic matter within the range of five to six meters, but their effect was brief, and the explosions did not prevent their advancement. Letting Atigem and Cro go first, Valdez slid down the ramp after them. The sensation of the icy cold forced him to pick up his pace. The ceiling, the floor, and the walls here were covered with hoarfrost, a Dromi's frozen corpse lay across the hallway: green scaly skin, short stumpy legs, sharp claws, a frog's mouth on a noseless face, bulging round eyes. The Dromi ethnogenesis was not yet understood by xenologists; it was possible that they had evolved from amphibians or lizards but very different ones from their terrestrial analogs. In any case, their appearance did not instill one with joy.
All three of them ran down the central, fairly wide passage with a number of branches, throwing freezer grenades into every suspicious hole. A frosty haze clouded behind them and settled on the floor, there were claps of air, and the echo carried the rumbling of their heavy boots. Three-four streams of fire flew towards them, flowed in spots on the force bubbles, and Atigem swore: he had probably gotten singed. They answered with their emitters and, jumping over a couple of dead bodies, rushed into a spacious compartment, which seemed to Valdez to be packed with green figures wearing helmets and plastic breastplates. He fired, ripping through an enemy's carapace, and immediately grappled with another foe, who was reaching for his throat with its claws.
The Dromi was strong. An average member of this race was stronger than a human and possessed natural weapons, claws and teeth, but it still could not match a trained human fighter: not in speed, not in composure, and not in the knowledge of the moves with which one living being turned another into a corpse. Despite this, one always had to be careful with the Dromi: these creatures were warlike, vengeful, and fierce. In certain situations, the coating of civilization slipped off them like old skin from a shedding snake, and the control of their reason shut off, turning them into true berserkers. Remembering that, Valdez did not linger, activated his laser cutter, and swiped at the Dromi's neck. Then he threw the now headless body aside and looked around.
It was all over. Nine green-skinned dead bodies were lying in the compartment, some with wounds in their chests, some with broken necks or holes in their heads, and some without heads at all. Blue-purple blood was splashing out of their veins in weak jolts, a stifling stench filled the air, burnt clumps of plastic were sliding down the walls, where they'd been hit by stray shots. Chief Lightwater was detachedly cleaning his prosthetic, burning off the alien flesh and bones with a laser blade. Atigem, his jumpsuit charred on one shoulder, was kicking a Dromi with his boot, not noticing that it was already dead, swearing at it.
"You stinking toad… You scum, I'll make you pee ammonia… I'll tear all our guts out and feed them to a p'hot… only even a p'hot won't eat trash like that…"
"Calm down, Stepan, it's already dead," Valdez said. He called Atigem, formerly Commander Stepan Rakov, by name only in extreme cases, to remind him of discipline and to help him pull himself together. "Let's count them: three in the hallway and nine here… Is that all of them?"
Cro grimaced, shaking his head, "It smells like a skunk's burrow… Maybe not all of them, Captain, someone could have gotten into the transport."
"Let's go and check," Valdez said, taking off his gloves. He pulled a med-kit out of his pocket and handed it to Atigem. "Here… treat the burn and inject something invigorating."
"Something invigorating should be drunk, not injected," Atigem grumbled, but he shook the burned tatters off his shoulder and covered the wound with a spray. "When we get back, we'll head to the Wooden Nickel or to Papa Tuck's and drink… drink something stronger, rum or shiryak, to sterilize the stomach and get rid of that awful stench. You know, fellas, in '21 or '22, when we clashed with the Dromi at Ponkichoga, our lieutenant ordered us to put on battle suits. We had to throw them away afterwards! The scent was so…"
Ignoring his grumbling, Valdez headed to the lower airlock. There was some sort of machinery sticking out its long giraffe-like neck above the wide opening of the cargo hatch, probably a powerful laser, with which the Dromi had been cutting through the hull of the transport ship. The transport was large and, like all Lo'ona Aeo trade ships, was cylinder-shaped with an elliptical cross-section, to which four smaller pipes were attached, the contour drive acceleration shafts and eight toroidal gravitators [The contour drive allows a ship to travel through Limbo and cross interstellar distances virtually instantaneously. Its typical design is a pipe (an acceleration shaft or well), which excites a specially-configured field. Gravitators are gravity drives used for in-system flights, maneuvering, docking with space stations, and landing on planetary surfaces.]. A large part of the ship was taken up by holds for especially valuable cargo (occasionally, they transported various exotic animals), while the very heart of the ship was the crew pod, with the crew typically being forty or fifty Servs. The Dromi had docked right above it, like a parasitic wasp mounting a large caterpillar. The hole it had made entered into a hold with hanging light balls and large containers of various shapes. The hold was spacious and deep, and there were soft sounds, like cracking and hissing, coming from it.
"Shall we drop some freezers?" Atigem asked, leaning over the opening.
"No. We might freeze something we shouldn't." Valdez chuckled and squeaked, imitating the voice of the Lancelot. "The life of a Lo'ona Aeo is sacred!"
They climbed into the hole; Cro went first with his biomechanical prosthetic, followed by Valdez, who put on his gloves again, and Atigem brought up the rear. The gravity was a quarter g, so the team gently dropped to the floor, finding themselves among scattered crates and boxes, some of which were charred or shattered by hits from beam weapons. Here and there, they saw Serv bodies, at least three dozen, who had defended their Master to their last breath and met their deaths in this uneven fight. Valdez was familiar with their appearance: fragile creatures a meter and a half tall with thin, graceful limbs and an almost human head. They had hair, ears, and faces with a gentle pinkish skin, but the too-big eyes, pulled towards the temples, and the unusual outlines of the lips and the nose suggested that these copies had not been made of humans. Valdez had never seen a living Lo'ona Aeo, even on a holographic image, and believed that their appearance matched that of their androids. At least, this fit the opinions of the xenologists back on Earth.
The bodies of the Servs had been mutilated. The more a biomechanism looked like a living being, the easier it was to destroy it, and these had not simply been killed but had had their remains ravaged. Torn-off limbs, gouged-out eyes, broken skulls, marks from the claws that cut through their clothes, skin, plastic of the endoskeleton, and exposed internal mechanisms, a complicated mesh of tubes, wires, miniature parts, and muscle tissue… The attackers appeared to have been furious.
Atigem stopped, scratched the back of his shaggy head.
"Those sons of bitches have really done a number on them! They don't like the Lonchaks, I get it… But why do it to the robots? The innocent creatures?"
"They were protecting their Master," Valdez said and jerked his head. "Let's go! It's there."
The central section of the hold was free of boxes and containers. The floor lowered here, and the end wall of the living pod was coming out into this groove with a massive hatch, crowned by a handle. A Dromi machine was next to the hatch, looking like a six-legged giraffe; its neck was bent, and a thin stream of light was coming out of the knob on top of it. The wall was durable, but a two-meter trench was already glowing scarlet, running around the hatch in a semicircle. Heat and poisonous fumes were filling the air.
"I hope that bastard doesn't jam the door," Atigem spoke, raising his emitter. "Should I calm it down, Captain?"
Valdez nodded, and lightning crossed the mechanism twice. Its supports slid apart, the neck and the head crumpled to the floor with a loud thud, wisps of smoke reached for the ceiling.
"Lancelot, we're in the transport," Valdez spoke into the communicator. "The Dromi attempted to cut open the living pod's hatch, but they failed. We have destroyed them. What do we do next? We can't get into the pod."
"The Defenders should enter and provide assistance to the Master," the Lancelot instructed. "I will send a signal to unlock the hatch. It will open."
A minute passed, but, contrary to expectations, the hatch did not open.
"Never seen a living Lonchak before," Atigem grumbled. "Don't think the Captain has either; he and I are too young… What about you, Chief? Been on the warpath for a century and a half… Have you seen a Lonchak? Alive?"
Cro shrugged. "Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe something else. For example, you're talking nonsense, kid."
The hatch continued to remain motionless.
"Lancelot, the locking mechanism is damaged," Valdez said. The hatch won't open. What are your instructions?"
"Enter and provide assistance to the Master," his ship responded stubbornly. "Quickly, immediately, urgently."
"Well then, if you really need us to, then we will." Cro stepped to the hatch and grabbed the handle with his pincers.
There was Herculean strength in his prosthetic: the hatch creaked, clanged, and gave way. They entered the pod, one after another, into the first compartment, which, based on the alcoves in the walls and the row of charging devices, was meant for the Servs. There were two of them in the room, and both of them leapt to Valdez, but they stepped away, recognizing a Defender from a Patrol beyri.
"Enemies…" one of them chirped in the Lo'ona Aeo language, which Valdez knew pretty well, "enemies… Will the Defender protect from enemies? Will the Defender stop them from taking the Master? Will the Defender–"
"The enemies have been destroyed, the Master is safe. You can let him know," Valdez spoke, stopping in front of the door leading to the second compartment.
"Impossible," the Serv intoned in a thin voice, staring at the humans with its enormous eyes with no pupils. "Impossible! The Master is not well. Not long, and the Master will be dead."
"Why?"
"Took ertza to not be afraid. Driver broken… We don't know what to do…"
"What's he talking about?" Atigem asked, frowning, knowing the language of his employers only in general terms.
"The Master swallowed some potion and will get on the ground soon [To 'get on the ground' is a common phrase used by Earth's astronauts to indicate a landing on a planet. Occasionally used as a euphemism similar to 'croak', 'buy the farm', 'kick the bucket'.]," Valdez explained. "The Driver, meaning the computer controlling the caravan, has been destroyed, and, without it, the Servs don't know how to save the Master. They're only servants, not navigators."
"We have no idea how to save him either," Atigem noted reasonably. "After all, they're not humans but Lonchaks, pseudo-humanoids… What do we know about their physiology? Only one thing: our medicine would be about as useful to them as a poultice to a dead man."
"We have the Lancelot. He can tell us."
With those words, Valdez opened the door, stepped into the second compartment, jerked and stopped, shocked. In his four years of service, he had visited many different trade ships, large and small, but their living pods had barely varied. More often than not, the differences were only in two particulars, depending on the purpose of the Servs and the location of the bridge, which could be in the pod or outside it. The Servs flying the inner lines had cramped pods that only featured charging alcoves, but if a ship was meant to visit otherworlders, its pod was made more spacious and set up as living beings, who needed food, entertainment, and rest, were accustomed to. This helped maintain the illusion that the aliens were being visited by the Lo'ona Aeo, not a crew of biorobots; an important detail, useful in the diplomatic sense. But even then the surroundings were sparse, purely Spartan: cots, tables, supplies of clothing and food pills, drinks, hypnomusic, laughing gas, etc.
The surroundings here were different, startling with the luxury of colors, the spaciousness, and the fresh aroma of greenery flowing through the air. The walls of the compartment appeared to serve as screens, showing beautiful locales: a scattering of palaces and villas with crystal towers and spires, golden green hills, whimsical mountains with waterfalls and a rainbow, fluttering over the rapid stream, a large lake or sea, gleaming blue on the horizon, winged figures hovering over the hills, the parks, and the smooth surface of the water. An enchanting view, although not connected to a planet: to the left of Valdez, the locale dropped down sharply and then rose just as sharply, as if he was standing not on a planetary spheroid but inside a cylindrical structure with an inhabited bottom and walls and an artificial dome of the sky. The sky was the most magical thing in this picture: its edges were a gentle pink color with blue, lilac, and silver clouds; the center was velvety-black with large bright stars and the plume of the Milky Way. A fairytale sky, where night and day were in a state of strange but so enchanting unity.
This fantastic scenery was adjoined by things that were more real, which could be not only examined but touched. From the two sides of the compartment, separating reality from the mirage, there were thin columns or supports, wreathed in a vine with large golden leaves. There were sixteen of them at each wall, and, between them, there were objects that would be considered luxurious furnishings on Earth: a desk and cabinets of carved wood, small tables incrusted with gemstones, decorations, perhaps, vases, sculptures, or fixtures, instruments of unknown purpose, made with a rare elegance and beauty. Separating the pod in several sections, there were translucent cloths, embroidered with silver and gold, an ash-colored rug with blue patterns was strewn under their feet, and everywhere the eye kept seeing something alien, strange, which had no names in the languages of Earth. For example, a tall, twisted cone by the door, seemingly made of jade, with a multiple tiny openings… What was that? What was it for?
Noticing Valdez looking at this thing, Lightwater waved a hand over it, and the Captain's nostrils widened. A scent… The delicate, pleasant aroma of blooming jasmine… Or, maybe, lilacs or roses…
"An aromatizer," Cro explained laconically. "It creates a veil by the entrance."
It was unclear how the Chief knew that. Then again, there were plenty of things one could learn over such a long life, both useful and pointless…
"That's a pretty rich life!" Atigem boomed, sniffing the air and looking around. Admiration was frozen on his cheeked face, flush had appeared on his tanned skin. "Rich, by the Lord of Emptiness! You can't find anything like that even in a museum back on Earth!"
You can't, Valdez agreed silently. The museums, the ancient cathedrals, the royal palaces with all their contents had been destroyed a few centuries ago, during the time of the Faata invasion. Not all of them, but most, which had increased the value of what was left a hundredfold. The damaged, the broken, the burned was being gathered bit by bit, attempting to restore it based on descriptions and films, but that was a work for the ages. Of course, the artists of the new time had worked tirelessly, and there were great talents among them, but they were not the same as Rubens, El Greco, Bryullov, Hokusai. Each artist was a child of his age, Valdez thought, and each was unique… Only a name had remained from most of them, and, for its losses, humanity's vengeance had been long, persistent, and brutal. The four Void Wars had pushed the Bino Faata beyond the threshold of an Eclipse.
"To the Master! Hurry to the Master!"
The Serv's thin fingers gripped his jumpsuit. He started walking on the soft covering, pushing away the light curtains, throwing off the lashes of the golden ivy. Atigem and Lightwater were stomping behind him, dropping clumps of soot from their jumpsuits and battle gloves.
"Lancelot," Valdez asked, hurrying after the Serv, "what is ertza?"
"A drug. In small doses, it calms and relieves stress, in large doses it can be fatal."
"So why did the Master pump himself full of it?"
"No data available. The Lo'ona Aeo can do anything they please."
"So what do we do? Is there an antidote? What is it?"
"Radiation therapy. The controls are by the Master's bed. Put the Master there, then press the button."
"Is that all?" Atigem grumbled behind him. "The Servs could've done that. What good are these lazy bastards?"
"Servs are not allowed to touch a Master. They may not enter his room without being called," the Lancelot informed them and fell silent.
At the very end of the compartment, there was an alcove with a low round couch, above which a force field glittered. Valdez could barely make out a small figure through this shifting fluid barrier, bent in a fetal position: the knees were pressed to the chest, the head was lowered, the narrow four-fingered hands were gripping the head. The being was lying with his back to him and not moving.
He bent down, examined the side of the couch, covered by either fur or fluffy fabric.
"Well, where is that damned key? Where's the button?"
"Here." Cro stretched out the long arm with the pincer, pulling apart a furry curl. "Press, Captain. You get the praise, if you save the Master."
"And if he doesn't make it?" Valdez raised an eyebrow in doubt.
"Then you'll have to answer for that. That's why you're the captain."
The button clicked under his fingers. Something flickered above the bed: it seemed as if silver steam or a myriad of snowflakes were coming off the fabric or the fur, filling in all the space under the force dome. Straightening, Valdez hurriedly took a few steps away and wiped the sweat from his temples. Then he looked at the Serv, huddled on the floor, and spoke, as if summarizing.
"We've done all we could."
"Christ is our witness," Atigem confirmed. "And so are Buddha and Allah. And all the angels in the heavens."
"What now?"
"I believe we need to wait," Cro said with Native American tranquility.
The silver blizzard stopped, the figure moved. The Lo'ona Aeo rose on one elbow, then sat up, touched his forehead with a very human gesture, drew some complicated symbol in the air, and the force field vanished. Valdez's eyes slid down the Master's face.
No, not Master's, Mistress's!
She looked similar to a human and was beautiful. The high, clean forehead made her golden hair, gathered in the style of a helmet and decorated by shiny threads and a blue, seemingly carved from sapphire, flower, even more spacious. The elongated face with a small, firmly outlined chin and a graceful nose, bright lips of an unusual shape, shadows at the temples, enormous eyes with blue eyelashes and the area under: their color was a backdrop for the pupils of such radiant, such transparent blue, that Valdez stopped breathing. The skin of the neck, the cheeks, and the forehead was a familiar pinkish hue, and, for a moment, he thought that the blue eyelashes, the shadows, and the pearl flows by the ears were all part of skillfully-applied makeup. But these appeared to be her natural colors. Her face seemed to be woven from turquoise skies, the rainbow, and the morning fog, shimmering pink above the water in the first rays of the sun.
Unprecedented beauty! Frightening, seductive, enchanting…
She was looking at the three humans, at the bloodstained Valdez, at the gigantic Atigem in a burned jumpsuit, at Cro with his monstrous pincer. Then her mouth opened, and terror blinked in her enormous eyes.