This is a fan translation of Dark Skies (Тёмныенебеса) 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 fourth 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.
Chapter 1
Visions
He was drowning in a thick, viscous, impenetrable gloom. If he really thought about it, that could not be happening: his Hawk was maneuvering in battle, and the inner surface of the cabin kept showing the enormous gray-brown T'har, the distant Gamma Malleus sun, and the sparsely scattered stars at the edge of the Void. But he didn't see them: not the planet, not the star warming it, not the faraway constellations, memorable since childhood. But, most importantly, he didn't see those with whom he was fighting, not a single ship, not a single target.
What could that mean? A failure of the external observation systems? But the micro-sensors built into the hull continued to function even when there was only a pile of debris left from the UF [UF stands for "universal fighter," a small multirole combat spacecraft. Fighter units (groups: four machines; wings: three groups, twelve machines) were usually carried by larger ships like cruisers and frigates. In the century and a half of the Space Fleet's existence, there have been multiple fighter models, traditionally named after birds-of-prey or mythical creatures: Vulture, Kite, Harpy, Peregrine, Falcon, Dragon, Hawk, etc.]. There was only one way to destroy them — to turn the fighter into a ball of plasma. But, of course, this theory was also ridiculous; had the Dromi vaporized the Hawk, he would've burned up along with his ship.
But he was alive! Definitely alive, even though he couldn't move either his arms or his legs or even see a thing!
Maybe the problem was with him and not the fighter? A gravity strike was capable of shutting off all perception centers… But the Dromi did not use such weapons, which were too bulky, expensive, and ineffective in battles with human ships. Besides, a powerful gravity surge would have popped all his blood vessels, resulting in immediate death. At the very least, he would have been unable to still be thinking of the reasons for his immobility, of this gloom and the complete lack of reference points! On the other hand, a plasma thrower's discharge, that had penetrated his defense shield, could have crippled him without killing. For example, by punching a hole through his spine, slicing off a limb, piercing his gut… This was par for the course, and the Hawk would have activated the hypothermal unit to save its pilot from the shock. Maybe that was what had happened, and he was now rushing towards the Malta's resuscitation units in his tiny ship. Flying there frozen like an ancient cockroach in a chunk of Arctic ice… But did stasis not block conscious thought? The instructions for the junior officers and the lower ranks had not been particularly clear on that subject… Probably to avoid shocking them, he decided; then he thought that the hypothermia was, likely, partial and had not affected his brain.
But it was still interesting to know how many holes he had in his body. And what was currently moving through his blood vessels: his own blood or a nutrient solution? Maybe his blood had frozen along with the arteries, veins, and the rest of the stuff? No, that was impossible, his brain was still active! I think, therefore I am… Meaning, his brain cells were being supplied with the necessary amounts of glucose and oxygen… Then again, his thoughts were not particularly clear, and his memory wasn't working right either. He couldn't even remember the most basic things, not even…
The darkness parted, as if a supernova had suddenly lit up the dark abyss of the galaxy. He saw someone's face; it was floating before him in a dim haze and seemed so familiar and dear… He had definitely seen it somewhere! Somewhere, at some point… Blonde hair, gray eyes, white skin, and a freckled nose… A woman! Mom? No way! His mom was now with his father aboard the cruiser Ural, hundreds of parsecs from T'har, at the edge of the Dromi sector… They were there, and he was here, in the Malta's squadron… It would be nice to remember who he was. His head was empty: no name, no position, no rank! Then again, he had to be a lieutenant if he was a Hawk pilot… No one would trust a war machine to a snot-nosed cadet…
No, it wasn't Mother, he thought, peering into the familiar features; Mother was in her sixties, and this girl was a third her age. Mother also did not look old, but this was not about the scarlet lips and the soft skin, but about the facial expression. Mother always looked as if there was a gunnery monitor of a Lo'ona Aeo ship in front of her, but these eyes were young, naïve. Where have I seen them before? It was spinning around in his head, but he couldn't grasp it…
The gloom closed around him again, and the thought, interrupted by the vision, ended: he couldn't remember the most basic things, not even his own name! The only thing he knew with certainty was that he had fought the Dromi over T'har, covering the Malta's lower quadrant, along with the other Hawks. He thought they had been fighting two megameters above the surface, and the toads outnumbered them five to one… It seemed their dreadnoughts had been attacking, along with their smaller ships, and the Malta managed to vaporize one or two with annihilator blasts… He seemed to remember one of the frigates dying, but which one? They looked so similar: Hector, Achilles, and Diomedes…
It seemed, it seemed… Nothing was clear, nothing was certain! Had that gray-eyed girl been one of the cruiser's doctors? Great Emptiness! He couldn't even remember that! Nothing, he remembered nothing!
He heard a firm voice somewhere in his subconscious, Soldier, you can forget everything but your instructions. They are your Quran and your Bible. While your commanding officer is with you, you follow orders, but if you're alone, what's left? Only the instructions.
The voice was familiar. His pilot instructor at the Academy… what had been his name?.. Samid Suhrab or Suhrab Samid?.. Not important! But his talk of the instructions had not been in vain, as the instructions clearly indicated that PTSD could lead to temporary amnesia, and that, in that case, he needed to remember not names, not circumstances, and not facts, but visual images… the most stable images, the face of a lover or a wife, or, if he did not have a girlfriend, remember his mother… that was the first step towards recovering his memories…
It sounded like he had followed the instruction and remembered his mother. Or had that not been her?..
The mental effort turned out to be too great, and the wings of oblivion closed around him.
He still could not move. But he was remembering more: that pilot instructor had been called Jafaral-Hussein, not Samid Suhrab. Samid Suhrab was the captain of the Malta, the commander of the Farthest Boundary Task Force. A heavy cruiser, three frigates, seventy-two fighters, a marine battalion, and combat robots… Captain Samid was thin, gloomy, swarthy, with a hawkish nose… Something like a Moroccan with a little bit of French blood in him. Same age as Father, had spent half a century in the Fleet, had fought in the Fourth Void War, but had not served the Lo'ona Aeo and had not met Father. But, of course, he had to have heard of him… Who hadn't heard of Admiral Valdez?
The name had surfaced like a fish from the depths of the sea. Valdez, Sergey Valdez, admiral of the Earth Federation Space Fleet, his father. He himself was Mark Valdez, lieutenant, fighter pilot, attached to the Farthest Boundary Task Force. He had requested that, requested the transfer to the Malta. He was T'haran, although only his mother's side. Father was not from T'har, he was from the homeworld, an Earthling… He was not of T'har, but he had become a T'haran…
Mom… what was Mom's name?.. Inga. Definitely Inga! And she'd met Father on Danwait; he had served in the Patrol, and she had been in the Convoy [The Patrol and the Convoy are units of human mercenaries that have protected the Lo'ona Aeo galactic sector (see Appendix about the Lo'ona Aeo and other races) starting with 2099. The Patrol is the border guard, while the functions of the Convoy includ escorting interstellar trade caravans. The ships of the Patrol and the Convoy are based on the planets of the so-called Outer or Blue Zone of the sector: Danwait, Tintakh, Harra, etc.]… There had also been some story with a Lo'ona Aeo female… Mom didn't like to talk about it…
They were at war, the entire family was fighting… Or not everyone? There was someone else, someone close, very close… Father's friends? Uncle Stepan, often called Atigem? Cro Lightwater, a Native American chief? No, closer, much closer… That gray-eyed girl who looked like Mom… Who was she?
He tried to remember but couldn't; another thought had overshadowed everything else – he was at war! The Earth Federation was fighting the Dromi Empire, the time of peace had ended, and it hadn't been that lengthy anyway, only about forty years. From the Fourth War with the Binucks to the first clashes with the Dromi… Although, who knew when the first clash had taken place? The mercenaries of the Lo'ona Aeo were also human, and they'd been fighting the Dromi for two hundred years…
So where was he, in his own Hawk or on the Malta? If he was wounded, and that seemed obvious, the UF would disengage and rush the pilot to the cruiser. Getting aboard would require very little time… Had that time passed or not? Hypothermia sometimes had strange effects: seconds could stretch into hours, perception could be slowed down. Which was perfectly explainable; after all, the feeling of subjective time was connected to physiology, and, if his vital processes had been put on hold, then a second could indeed last an eternity… No, he couldn't tell for certain; he could be in the Malta's sickbay or in his fighter. That gray-eyed girl could have been merely a vision, a delirium…
His thoughts were running all over the place, and he decided that he needed to concentrate, to restore the last moments of the fight. But why had they even been sent to T'har, to the Gamma Malleus system? Here, to the distant reaches, to the edge of the Void that separated two Galactic Arms [The galactic arms (branches of the galactic spiral): the Sagittarius Arm is closest to the galactic core; the Orion Arm, at the edge of which one can find Sol; the Perseus Arm is the outermost one, separated from the Orion Arm by a 4000-parsec gap. This abyss, utterly lacking in stars, is called the Void.]? Battles with the green-skinned toads were being fought in completely different places, in the direction of the enemy sector and the worlds adjoining it, which had been colonized by the Dromi over the last century. They bred like rabbits and spread like wildfire… there, hundreds of parsecs from T'har…
T'har had been captured, he remembered. Not just T'har, but both star systems: Beta and Gamma Malleus. Beta had the human colony of Aezat, while Gamma had Ro'on and T'har; humans had been living on these worlds, originally taken away from the Binucks, for over ten generations. They had been one of the Federation's oldest outposts, having lived through four terrible wars; here, in these dark skies, the human fleet had fought the Binucks, until their armadas were thrown back to the other side of the Void. Now, four thousand parsecs separated humans from the Bino Faata, and both of the Malleus systems had been considered safe. Strictly speaking, this was the boondocks of the civilized universe, too far from the toads' sector, and from the others' too. Far from the Haptors, the Kni'lina, and the Lo'ona Aeo.
Why had the Dromi occupied these human colonies? There was no clear answer to this question. Dromi weren't humanoid, and their motivations were just as strange and not always clear, just like the secret of the disappearance of the Daskins, the oldest of the galactic races. Humans and the Dromi were separated by psychological barriers, differences in physiology and reproductive methods, in their attitudes towards life and death, towards the value of a sentient being, and the concept of mind itself. But there were, of course, similarities: the space technology, including the contour drive [The contour drive allows one to travel through Limbo and cross interstellar distances virtually instantaneously. Limbo is a dimension of quantum chaos, an unordered portion of the universe, the inverse side of the Metagalaxy's structured matter. During the submersion into Limbo, it becomes possible to combine two points (two contours of a material body) in different places of the metagalactic space and perform an instantaneous transition between them. This effect is used by all starfaring races for interstellar travel.], and the overpowering drive to expand. Which, really, was what had led to the conflict.
T'har, Ro'on, and Aezat had been captured in the first years of the war, the interstellar communications with the colonies had been severed, and Earth had no information about the fate of the humans on these distant worlds. Twenty-eight months of silence and uncertainty… In the past and the present, all contacts with the Dromi came down to the exchange of fire, and the experience of these battles had suggested that, while they might be intelligent creatures, they did not value life, either theirs or that of others, and did not take prisoners. Did they even have a concept of a civilian population, of women and children? That was a dubious point, as the Dromi lacked any sexual distinctions and reproduced differently from humanoids. Therefore, the forecast of the fates of the many millions of colonists did not exclude their total extermination.
The Farthest Boundary Task Force had been sent to clear the Malleus systems of the Dromi and, if necessary, to summon the flotillas carrying humanitarian cargo and doctors, which were waiting on the bases of Baal and Gondwana, the closest inhabited planets. It had been assumed that a cruiser and three frigates would be enough to deal with this task, for, by all strategic reasoning, the Dromi forces had to be small. On the one hand, it made no sense for them to keep sizable garrisons far from the theater of operations, and, on the other, they could have advanced by attacking Gondwana, but they had not exhibited any activity. The Fleet HQ believed that the three colonies had been taken by a combat family tribe with a few dreadnoughts and six or seven dozen smaller ships, so the firepower advantage would be on the side of the human squadron; annihilators were superior to Dromi weapons in any engagement.
Mark's chain of reasoning was interrupted, he thought that the darkness was parting, that a woman's face appeared in a bright window that had opened for a moment. That girl that looked like Mother?.. Probably not, this one had dark eyes… Then again, he couldn't say if the new vision was real or not.
His memory was coming back slowly. He was already clearly recalling the cruiser popping out of Limbo and accelerating towards T'har, with the three frigates dashing after her, like cheetahs being led by a lion. On any long-range jump like this one, it was difficult to pinpoint the exit location within the range of a million kilometers: the squadron could have found itself closer to Ro'on than T'har, or vice versa. The latter had ended up happening; on a cosmic scale, T'har was nearby, only twice the distance from Earth to Luna. The possibility of a surprise attack was a stroke of luck! And Captain Samid had made use of it, accelerating with the gravity drives towards a Dromi orbital base and vaporizing it with the annihilator. Several minutes later, he had clashed with the toads' ships in a very dangerous battle near the planet, in a gravity field, where each maneuver required quick and precise calculations. The Malta also had an advantage in this respect, as her ANS [ANS stands for "astronavigation system", an artificial intelligence module that controls a spaceship.] was more powerful than those strange devices used by the Dromi in lieu of computers.
Mark was remembering four dreadnoughts and about fifty of the smaller tubs. It had been Uncle Stepan's name for the ships, who, after taking a drink, used to tell tales of his service in the Patrol, of the strange beyri ships, of the fantastic Lo'ona Aeo cannons that could punch through even dreadnought-level armor and shields. As a boy, when listening to these stories, Mark would always glance at Lightwater: if he nodded, then the tale was true, and if he chuckled, then Mark shouldn't believe it.
Four dreadnoughts and five dozen smaller tubs… That was at the moment of the launch of the UFs from their catapults… Then there was suddenly more of them, many more; the enemy had moved in from beyond the planet's dark spheroid like a thundercloud. The Hawk groups, four machines in each, had drowned in it, and now only separate fragments of the battle were surfacing in Mark's memory: a torrent of crimson arrows from plasma throwers, an outline of an enemy ship in the targeting reticle, a fountain of white-hot debris and scarlet flashes of an explosion over the planet's gray-brown visage. There were also voices: Panshin, the lead, was screaming for everyone to get close to him, Rijs, the cruiser's second officer and fighter coordinator, was spitting out orders, trying to combine the groups and the wings into a single force.
Mark had been maneuvering and firing, firing and maneuvering. This required quick mental reaction rather than physical effort; the combat helmet linking him to the Hawk turned the pilot and the fighter into a single whole. The Dromi had fought desperately… No, he thought, that was wrong; desperately, bravely, stubbornly — all these were human terms that could not apply to an alien race. That had not been his first battle, and he had already realized that the Dromi did not retreat. Never! During training, this had been explained as a characteristic of their psyche: to the lower Dromi, especially the Sinnko caste, the thirst for life was not as big an imperative as it was for humans. At the Hallaha stage, they would die by the millions; the question "to be or not to be?.." did not have the same terrible relevancy to them as it did to Hamlet's descendants.
On the seventh minute of the battle, the Dromi had destroyed a frigate. The Hector, maybe, but it could also have been the Diomedes or the Achilles… A hundred and ninety people, Mark thought with a grim death knell. No, a hundred and seventy-eight; twelve marine pilots from this ship had been, at the moment, fighting in Hawks. The frigate was hit by Dromi plasma weapons, which punched through her shield. The sun and the distant stars had been overshadowed by a fiery cloud, the world had shuddered and froze for a moment, as if thinking whether to vaporize those other tiny creatures that had been killing one another in a distant corner of the universe, near a tiny planet?.. But, compared to the crucible of the stars, to the explosions of the supernovae, and the monstrous fire burning at the core of the galaxy, their bustling had been so insignificant, not worthy of attention at all! The world had sighed and scattered the frigate's debris and the human ashes in the Great Emptiness.
This strange picture held Mark's imagination as a bright brushstroke on the surrounding darkness. He tried to move further down the string of memories, but the gloom suddenly parted, revealing a woman's face to him. That gray-eyed girl… Xenia, he thought. How she had grown! He hadn't seen her for nine years…
Xenia, his sister! The tears in his memory were disappearing, rapidly closing with the flesh of the past events, and he now realized that he was seeing something real, not a phantom or an illusion. Xenia's face seemed a little blurred, as if he was looking at her through a thin layer of water; her blonde hair was bristling in disorder, her eyes had sunken, and there were blue shadows under them. But it was her!
Incredible!
He was now feeling a great sense of relief, as if a weight that had been laying on his heart for twenty-eight months was finally lifted. Over two years had passed since the Dromi took T'har, and no one had been able to say who survived, who died, and what sort of death it was, quick or slow and painful. Now he knew that he had requested to join the task force because of his sister and that there were hundreds of T'harans in the crews of the Malta and the frigates. T'harans and the settlers from Ro'on and Aezat, those who had relatives here… those who had come to fight for them and rescue the survivors or sing farewell hymns over the graves over the dead… those who had hated the Dromi with a black fury, dreaming of exterminating that cursed species throughout the entire universe…
His sister's face vanished, melted away into the gloom, leaving him with joy and relief. Alive! She was alive! But…
But how had she ended up on the Malta? Mark no longer had any doubt that he was in a resuscitation unit, but he still couldn't recall the final seconds of the battle. Maybe they would never come back, having been erased by the pain, the shock, the horror… But that was not scary, not scary at all; life was a long road, and if one took a step and forgot it, then so be it. Especially since this gap could be filled, using the knowledge of what happened before and after. Before: the battle over T'har, the bursts of plasma discharges, the death of the Hector… or the Achilles… or the Diomedes… After: the sarcophagus of the resuscitator… This meant that his faithful Hawk had taken measures to save its pilot, froze him, and transported him to the cruiser, where he had been taken to the hospital compartment. And he was now lying under the lid of the sarcophagus with his pain centers shut off and waiting for his bones to mend, his tissues to regenerate, and his skin to regrow. A perfectly understandable series of events… except Xenia did not fit there at all…
On the other hand, it could turn out that he was not on the Malta at all. Maybe the squadron had crushed the toads and departed for Ro'on or Aezat, transporting the wounded to the planet. To Western Port, Ibáñez, Main, and other cities… There were excellent doctors there and all the necessary equipment, resuscitators, cyber-surgeons, and cryogenic chambers. If that had been the case, then everything was clear: he was on T'har, in a hospital of his hometown Ibáñez, and Xenia was visiting her brother. After all, she hadn't seen him for nine years either, and now he was here, she could look at him as many times as she wanted… Maybe with a hole in his gut or, what was more interesting, with him looking like an overdone steak… But a hero! He had, after all, managed to get to T'har and…
The gloom once again parted, and he saw two enormous black eyes. They were hovering over Mark like two moons in a halo of eyelashes, and he did not immediately realize that someone was examining him, closely, very closely. Then the dark moons started to rise, and other details appeared in the sky: a forehead and a nose, lips, a chin, and dark hair. Another girl, he thought. There had to be a line to the sarcophagus, all the girls in Ibáñez wanted to take a look at the heroic marine. And this one was beautiful. Only a little skinny, just look at her sunken cheeks…
The black-eyed girl was familiar to him, definitely familiar, but he was unable to remember her name. It wasn't strange that he knew her: Ibáñez was a small city, only thirty thousand people, and everyone knew everyone else. As for not remembering her name, that was also understandable: when he'd left for Earth, this black-eyed beauty was still playing with dolls. Maybe she lived next door? Or studied in college, in the younger group?.. That was fine, he would heal up and get to know her again!
The girl's lips shuddered, moved, and he suddenly heard a quiet click and sensed warmth at the neck. He realized they were entering a xi-blocker, straight into his carotid artery. The sounds and the sensations of his body told him that the healing process was going well, despite whatever holes the toads' throwers had drilled into him. He sighed deeply, sensing the cool air pouring into his chest for the first time, and fell asleep.
He dreamt that he, along with Father and Uncle Stepan, were hunting a stone devil, walking on gravel, past dark rocks, scaring away the small sirend lizards. Stepan was wearing pants and a heated jacket, with a mask hovering near his mouth; he was always cold on T'har and needed extra oxygen, while Mark and his father were dressed in light jumpsuits and breathing without effort. They were T'harans and didn't need, they had implants… Here, above the chest, where there was a tiny scar, Mark thought, touching the spot with a finger and then remembering that that implant was gone. The breathing implant had been replaced by an officer's combat one, after all, he was no longer a boy but a lieutenant of the Space Fleet, and his life was no longer on T'har but on an enormous ship, where there was plenty of air. But now, he, Father, and Atigem were walking on the rocky desert, listening to the whistling of the wind, watching for any quick dark shadows moving in between the rocks… How am I breathing here? Mark thought in amazement. And where am I? Maybe, this isn't T'har at all, but a hologram? But Father was turning to him, frowning grimly, and saying, You're already home, Mark. Wake up! It's time!