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 5

Ibáñez

The hospital's thick walls, reinforced with buttresses, remained standing, but the roof and the second floor ceiling had collapsed, crushing furniture in the wards, equipment in consulting rooms, and all those who had been in the medical center at that moment. There was hope that no one had suffered long, as the enemy shots produced furious flames in addition to a powerful blast wave. For that, they used a compound unknown on Earth, which started an exothermic reaction with the oxygen in the atmosphere; a terrible weapon, which the Dromi employed during planetary operations. There was about as much oxygen on T'har as there was in the Himalayas at the altitude of eight kilometers, but the diabolical compound burned at least as well as the ancient napalm: the walls had darkened from the smoke, and charred skulls and bones could be seen under the ceiling debris. Catching Mark's accusing glare, Pierre shrugged and grumbled, "We buried anyone we could, over two thousand bodies and skeletons. We can't pull these out without equipment, and all the robots have been destroyed. During the first days after landing, the toads combed through each city and set fire to whatever hadn't burned yet. We barely managed to escape to Nickel."

Mark nodded ruefully; he already knew that there were fewer survivors on T'har than the dead. The population of the Inhabited Belt used to be a hundred and sixty thousand, not counting those who had enlisted in the Fleet with the start of the war; the Dromi had wiped out two-thirds of them, while huddling twenty thousand captives in Western Port, where there was a spaceport and where the Patriarch of the tribe occupying the planet had made his home. The rest had run away to the mines of Nickel and Northern Port, settled in the deep shafts, and started engaging in guerilla warfare. Pierre had insisted that there were at least thirty thousand people in the two mines, but half of them were children. Children were those under the age of twelve; at twelve, T'harans were considered fully-capable workers, and, at fourteen, they were issued weapons.

Originally, the hospital's entrance used to be on a square, which was now filled with chunks of stone, plastic, and piles of ash from burnt-down trees. On the other side of the square were the ruins of the library and the entertainment center. Both were painfully familiar to Mark; he used to come here to see holofilms, dance, swim in the pool, and relax at the café. He grimaced and gritted his teeth.

"Tearing up your soul?" Pierre grunted with a grim chuckle. "We're gotten used to it, brother."

"No one can get used to this." Maya adjusted her belt with the needle gun, and checked if the clip was full. "Orders, commander?"

"Go with Xenia and Kirill to the southwestern outskirts," Pierre said. "Pancho and Prokhor will check out the eastern quarters. Pavel, you're with us. Show us where you left the helmet. All right, let's get to it!"

The groups split up. Mark looked around, watched the girls' thin figures disappear in the ruins, and sighed.

"How they've changed… grown up…"

"It is what it is," Pierre agreed, switching the heavy tube of the thrower to his other shoulder. Then he slowed his step, let Pavel move further ahead, and spoke quietly, "A good girl… I mean Maya… a real T'haran! Never expected an aesthetics teacher to touch a weapon. She could've been sitting with the kids in Nickel… But she grabbed a needle gun and can shoot better than our boys, better than even Pancho and me! And, would you believe it," he lowered his voice, "she's been waiting for you. All these years, she wouldn't let any guy get close to her."

"How do you know that?" Mark asked, feeling the pounding in his heart.

"Hah! The whole city knew about it! Everyone, starting with your mother!" Pavel turned to look at them, and Pierre yelled at him, "Move it, soldier! And stop listening in on your superiors! We're discussing the plan of a secret operation."

"Like I need it!" The kid chuckled and ran ahead, jumping over soot-covered rocks. Alameda Boulevard, Mark noted. There used to be houses of the Kovalevs, the Chavez family, and Cynthia Polo, the most beautiful girl in college, here, and, behind them, there used to be the Three Pesos tavern, where he'd first tasted rum from a drunken mushroom. Farther… what had been farther?

His gaze slid along the blackened ruins, the piles of churned earth, the holes in the ground, and the broken roof tiles. There was a metal figure, partly melted from the terrible heat, but still recognizable, on a half-ruined wall. A monkey, Mark thought. This had been the Happy Baboon billiard hall, which he remembered well. From a very young age, the animal hanging over the entrance seemed to be something incredibly mysterious and attractive to him, for there was nothing like that on T'har with its poor fauna. No monkeys, no elephants, no tigers, no giraffes, not even donkeys or horses… He had harassed his father for a long time, demanding a baboon like the one on the sign; after all, he'd brought Mother those falcons! Besides them, others had brought cats, dogs, squirrels, martens, and other small animals to T'har, which had made the city and the forest their homes… Finally, Valdez Sr. gave him holofilms about monkeys, and he discovered that baboons were disgusting creatures. Mark ended up getting himself a dog and calming down.

They passed the city theater. There were few animals on T'har but plenty of stone, and all structures, both public buildings and private residences, had been built entirely out of granite, diorite, labradorite, and other types of rock. The theater, which had been the pride of Ibáñez, had been erected out of yellow, pink, and white marble. Now it was a heap of soot-covered remains. Here, as in the medical center, skeletons and skulls could be seen under the rocks, but they were little, child-like; there must have been a children's performance going on at the theater when the attack had happened. Swallowing convulsively, Mark turned away from the horrible sight and asked, "Do you patrol the city?"

"Yes, regularly."

"Why?"

Pierre gently stroked his heavy weapon, "So that the toads don't have it easy here. So that they remember that there are other masters on T'har. They know where to find us and often show up in the ruins. In Ibáñez, Kitezh, Main, and other cities, even on burnt-down farms… We hide from big groups and wipe out the small ones. This distracts them from Nickel and Northern."

"Have there been big Dromi with a spot on their bellies among the ones you kill?"

"Don't recall. Although…" Pierre squinted. "Yeah, I think I've seen something like that once or twice. A palm-sized purple spot, right here?" He put a hand to his abdomen.

"Yes. They're Zong-tii, the third generation. They need to be eliminated first, not the Sinn-ko. The Named-Ones are just ants, they're easy to handle without a commander. They–"

Pierre shouted for Pavel to stop and turned to Mark, "How did you call them? Zong-tii, Sinn-ko? What sort of beasts are those? Explain!"

Mark did. Any greenskin tribe was a huge family, all members of which were descended from its Zong-er-zong, or Elder-over-Elders, as the Dromi called their Patriarch ancestors. The generation following the elder was considered the ruling one, the first in the familial hierarchy, and held the title of Sidura-zong, the Big-Elders. The second and third generations were the Zong-ap-sidura, the Elders-over-Big, and Zong-tii, the Elders-with-Spot, who served as supervisors, while the fourth and the younger generations, the extremely numerous Sinn-ko, or Named-Ones, performed the functions of workers and soldiers, basically, cannon fodder. The spot appeared on a Dromi at about the age of twelve to fourteen as an indicator of sexual maturity, but progeny was only produced, in great amounts, by the Zong-tii and Zong-ap-sidura castes. The life cycle of the latter typically ended on their fifth decade, and only a few of them became Sidura-zong, whose lives, like the life of the Patriarch, was prolonged using artificial means. Besides that, unlike humanoids, the Dromi grew throughout their lives, and, having moved on from the caste the mindless youngsters, called Hallaha, into Named-Ones, they were already larger and physically stronger than humans. On average, they weighed a hundred kilograms, while the third and second generations reached a hundred and fifty to a hundred and eighty.

Frowning in thought, Pierre listened to Mark, and then muttered, "So that's how it is… We don't know anything about that, neither in the Western HQ nor in the Eastern. There are no, and have never been, specialists on the toads on T'har, and all our libraries have been destroyed. Where does this information come from?"

"All Fleet officers go through training, while the marines, who engage the enemy in physical contact, are also put through special courses," Mark explained. "We know a thing or two about the Dromi. Not as much as we'd like, but some data was received from those who used to serve the Lo'ona Aeo as Defenders and from the Servs."

"And you remember all that?"

"Whatever I don't remember is in the helmet's data unit."

Pierre pursed his lips in thought, "I had no doubt that you, my friend, were a valuable acquisition. When we found you and stuck you in the resuscitator, I sent a falcon to the Western HQ. Tsendin wants to see you."

"Who is this Tsendin?"

"Kirk Tsendin, a mine engineer and a member of the HQ. I'll probably send you to Nickel tomorrow."

"First, we need to find the helmet and the escape pod," Mark said and waved to Pavel. "Let's keep going, soldier. Lead on."

Behind the theater building, they saw ruins of residential homes, about two dozen of them, beyond which was a wasteland, overgrown with Martian grass, which perfectly suited T'har's cool climate. The grass was a blue-gray color, as tall as a human, and, from the north, this field was framed by a thicket of ancient pines, cedars, and firs, which had also been genetically modified long ago for the first Martian colony. The birds, fish, goats, sheep, and some small animals had been also imported to T'har from Martian farms and preserves; these living creatures were capable of living and reproducing in a low-oxygen environment. Until then, there had been no birds and no mammals here, as T'har's native species were land or amphibian egg-layers, similar to lizards and snakes. Although, speaking of stone devils, they were more like dinosaurs than lizards.

"Here, elders," Pavel spoke. "This is the road that we took."

The road, as Mark recalled, led into the woods, to the streams and waterfalls that fed into the Lilac Lake and served as a site for walks for young couples. He had not been able to walk this road much, having left for Earth at the age of seventeen to exchange his t-shirt and shorts for a military uniform. Four years at the Academy, a year of training, and four more years of active combat — that was his entire adult biography. During his learning years, before the war, Father and Mother had visited him, but they would not bring his sister with them; Xenia had waited for him here, on T'har.

And, as it turned out, she hadn't been the only one, Mark thought, looking around the familiar landscape. The traces of fire and devastation were not noticeable here, and T'har seemed the same to him, as he had remembered it while in space and on Earth: the deep violet sky, the small bright disk of the distant sun, the blue grass, the thick light-brown tree trunks, and their beautiful canopies at the backdrop of low-hanging gray clouds. It was the green month, the middle of summer, the temperature was about twelve degrees, but, in his light jumpsuit, Mark did not feel cold or lacking in oxygen, so his breathing implant was clearly working.

The woods, planted during the early years of T'har's settlement, couldn't fill the atmosphere with enough oxygen, as their area, when compared to the size of the whole landmass, was tiny. T'har was an unusual world. Two-thirds of the planetary surface was covered by a gigantic mushroom-shaped continent; its enormous "cap" crossed the equator with its lower edge, almost reaching the North Pole with the upper edge, while the thick "stem" stretched all the way to the South Pole. All this area, except for the equatorial zone, were rocky, almost entirely dry and virtually uninhabitable; only stone devils and a dozen species of lizards and snakes could survive on T'haran plateaus. The continent was bisected by the Inhabited Belt, which lay on both sides of the equator, and that was the territory which had been terraformed and planted with forests. Really, humans had finished what the Faata, from whom the Far Worlds were taken, had begun; humans imported the familiar trees and grains, found underground water sources, set up irrigation and a simple ecocycle. T'har was about the size of Earth, and the Inhabited Belt stretched for thirty-four thousand kilometers with the width reaching eighty to a hundred. Its western tip with the city Cuba was separated from the eastern, where Port Columbus stood, by a seven-hundred-kilometer-wide ocean straight; as a result, the Belt was shaped like an open ring. The settlers had erected a dozen cities in the zone, the largest of which, Western Port and Main in the east, used to have a population of forty and thirty thousand people, respectively, while the rest had been home to between five and twenty thousand each. Maybe T'har, with its harsh natural environmental conditions, should not have been settled at all, especially since there was the much more pleasant Ro'on nearby, a planet rich in water and vegetation and very similar to Earth. But valuable ores had been found in the northern regions of T'har, and, besides, the planet had a certain charm for those who did not wish to live in big cities, which appeared on almost all human-settled worlds. T'har had lived through the dark years of the Void Wars, and the survivors had become completely close to it. This was their home, a planet of stone, empty spaces and an as yet lifeless ocean, small towns, where everyone knew each other, turbulent rivers with clear water, and cool air; a habitable world on both sides of the equator, separated into the Western and Eastern Limits. Those who wanted warmth could take a flight to Ro'on, but came back weary: it was too hot and had far too many people, nearly twenty million! But, having become attached to their planet, the T'harans were not a stay-at-home people; the eldest son or daughter in many families would enlist in the Fleet, usually the Marine Corps, and were considered the best officers there.

T'har also had an unsolved mystery: free oxygen in the atmosphere and life, which, while sparse, had been present before the arrival of the Faata and humans. By all rights, such a harsh planet should only be able to give birth to microorganisms and primitive algae, or sea creatures like the terrestrial trilobites at best. But the ocean was empty, and the pitiful land vegetation did not produce oxygen at a fast enough rate to create a supply necessary for breathing. The assumptions of the ecologists usually came down to the theory that the planet had been terraformed by the Daskins in times immemorial and preserved some forms of the ancient fauna and flora. But other specialists objected to that, believing that writing off every unclear fact as the work of the Daskins was absurd and that such a path led nowhere. According to an alternative theory, the source of oxygen, like back on Earth, had been the blue-green oceanic seaweed, but no one could figure out where it had disappeared to [The following century, this assumption would be confirmed. Once, T'har's ocean had enormous masses of blue-green seaweed, which furiously produced oxygen and served as the beginning of the food chain for marine organisms. But this oceanic plant life differed from its terrestrial analog by the fact that an excess of oxygen in the atmosphere and the aquatic environment was fatal to it. As such, T'har's seaweed had been producing the very poison that killed it, which was, in short order, followed by the extinction of the marine fauna dependent on it.].

Then again, this didn't bother the inhabitants of T'har. They hunted stone devils, which were stealing sheep, bred chickens and ducks, grew vegetables and grains, mined ore, continuing the work of the Faata, who had laid down the first mines in the north, and smelted metal. They used to have everything necessary to live and work: schools, hospitals, and comfortable homes, a spaceport and a transportation network with air and ground traffic, animals and plants, adjusted to the local climate. What they hadn't had were enemies, as the last war with the Faata ended half a century ago, and, as the people of the Far Worlds had believed, those terrible events would never be repeated.

But then another war began after that one.

"Here, elders," Pavel said, pushing away the thick stalks. "This is the place."

Mark could see it now for himself: the pod had plowed a furrow a good ten meters long, ripping out the roots of the tall grass. His rescue craft looked like a flower with eight deceleration petals that surrounded the pilot seat. The seat's back, armrests, and support had built-in life support system units, while behind it, like a broken-off piece of a flower stalk, he could see the drive's cylinder. This whole structure, made out of a special type of plastic, had become distorted from hitting the ground, the petals were bent, the seat's cover was cracked, and nipples of multiple tubes were sticking out from it. The pod looked pathetic, but Pavel, a fan of military equipment, looked at it with desire. For a second, Mark wanted to give him this junk heap to take apart and study, but regulations forbade such generosity. The actions of a pilot in a hostile environment were clearly specified.

"Well, where's the helmet?" Pierre inquired. "Where did you hide it?"

Pavel silently threw away a clump of grass, pulled the helmet out from a shallow hole, and handed it to Mark with a sigh. Their grotesquely distorted faces were reflected in the convex silver surface; below, the helmet was gripped by a metal collar, engraved with Mark's name and serial number, and wide clasp bands were attached to it. Everything seemed fine at first glance.

Putting the helmet on, Mark clicked the fastener under his chin, and immediately felt a familiar tingling in his temple — the helmet was connecting with his implant. After waiting for the helmet to recognize him, he extended his binoculars, then removed them, and activated the receiver with a thought command. Except for rapid sharp clicks, a characteristic sign of Dromi communication equipment, there were no broadcasts. Mark tilted his head to the side and listened; no signals from the beacon in the Arsenal… Then again, he had not expected anything different. The beacon was a clever device! It activated only once per day, at an unspecified time, and each time on a different frequency. But the helmet's direction finder should be able to detect it. Engaging the multi-frequency search mode, he turned to his companions. Pierre was looking at him with a grin, Pavel had a look of immeasurable respect and curiosity; the teenager's eyes were practically glowing.

"What are you doing?" Pierre asked.

"Testing the equipment." Mark didn't want to mention the Arsenal until he established communication with it. "Everything is in working order. Now we need to get the supply container out."

He stepped to the pod, bent over the seat, pulled out a metal backpack from its footboard, and opened the lid. Inside the container, in a particular order, were a blaster with a holster, five spare batteries, a cyber-medkit, a two-liter flask with a tonic, food ration bars, and a laser whip. Pulling out the whip and the blaster, Mark attached them to his belt, closed the backpack, and straightened out the straps. Pavel grimaced and sighed, obviously sorry he hadn't found the weapons and the other interesting things first.

"We'll have to destroy the pod," Mark spoke.

"Incinerate it?" Pierre uncertainly glanced at the seat and the bent petals. "Does this stuff burn?"

"No. There's another way."

Mark stepped away from the pod and sent the self-destruct signal. The petals, the seat cover, and the drive sticking out behind them started to darken quickly, as if stricken by a rot virus, and fall apart as gray dust. The deceleration petals disappeared first, followed by the pilot seat with all of its contents, then the mounting frame, the drive's turning mechanism, and the drive itself. A light breeze tossed the weightless dust into the air, scattered it through the grass, and the last connection with the lost Malta had sunk into the past.

"Too bad…" Mark heard the boy's voice behind him.

"Regulations!" he said imposingly. "If you want to serve in the Fleet, know that regulations are your Quran and your Bible."

"I will remember, elder. But what are Quran and Bible?"

Mark opened his mouth to explain, when a piercing howl came from a distance, from the direction of the western city limits. Starting with a dreary vibrating note, it rose so high that it seemed that something would break: either his eardrums or the throat producing this eerie sound. Mark knew it well.

"A stone devil? They come so close to the city?"

"No, it's Kirill." Pierre let the emitter drop from his shoulder. "The toads are here! Pavel, give a reply!"

A piercing howl, this time very close, once again ripped through the silence.

"Quickly! Their damned vehicles fly low… And fast! By the time you see one, it's already landing."

Breaking through the grass thicket, they jumped out onto the road and ran to the city ruins. Mark had to slow down: as a trained marine, he ran faster than Pierre and the boy. The straps, holding the pack on his back, tightened, keeping the burden close to him, a face-protecting plate slid out of the collar; the helmet interpreted any sharp movements as battle readiness. They rushed past the ruins of the theater, then the tavern, and the Happy Baboon billiard hall. Ibáñez was a small, compact town, and it wasn't difficult to run from one end to another in six or seven minutes.

"Kirill was yelling somewhere by the Llagas hacienda," Pavel said, panting. "It's–"

"I remember their house." Running ahead, Mark turned into an alleyway that led to a small circular square. Here, hiding behind the rim of a miraculously intact fountain, he saw the girls and Kirill lying in wait. The Llagas home and the other buildings on the opposite side of the square had collapsed, the furniture and the plastic fences had burned down, so the field of fire was clear. Through the protective plate, Mark made out a Dromi craft, flying low over the ground and approaching really fast. The built-in rangefinder locked onto the enemy vehicle, numbers showing the distance slid down the visor, and a disembodied voice rustled over his ear, "Type: small atmospheric transport. Crew: two Zong-tii pilots and twelve Sinn-ko. Armament: two medium-power plasma emitters."

"There are fourteen soldiers in the craft," Mark said, kneeling next to his sister.

"Then let's send them to toad heaven!" Pierre bared his teeth in a predatory manner and waved to the running Pancho and Prokhor, "Take your positions, T'harans! Here, next to the girls!"

The flying craft stopped about eighty meters away from the ruins, hatches opened on both sides of the hull, and Dromi started jumping out from the wide dark openings. All of them were wearing helmets and thermal shoulder straps, Mark noted; T'har was too cold for them, and the oxygen level was too low. Their massive bodies, their green scaly skin, the long spikes of their shoulder straps, and their helmets with the extended face section made them look like evil goblins from children's holofilms. But they were not moving like humans, using strange hops, their legs bending backward at the knees instead of forward.

He counted the appearing figures. A dozen Sinn-ko, ordinary soldiers, one of the pilots with them, an Elder-with-Spot as field commander… There he was, jumping out of the hatch… noticeably larger than the Named-Ones, even though they were already big… Damn, there was another one coming out! So there was no one manning the craft's guns? But their barrels were moving up and down, until one of them aimed at the square, and another faced the ruins of the Llagas home. Three Zong-tii, a reinforced crew, Mark decided, looking at the needle gun in Maya's hands. He had no doubt that a surprise attack would slaughter the Dromi, but the craft would remain, which might fly away or spit fire at the T'harans, leaving only piles of ash behind. Their needle guns were useless against armor and plasma throwers, and so was Pierre's weapon.

He leaned to his comrade's ear, "Pierre, I'm going to get closer to them, knock those throwers out. You guys should spread out. Catch the Dromi in a crossfire."

"Deal!" he agreed. "Maya, Xenia, Kirill, the three of you head to the Llagas hacienda! Pancho, you, Prokhor, and Pavel, go to those ruins! I'll stay here with my lady." Pierre stroked his weapon tenderly and added, "Fire on my command."

The group scattered. Mark went with Kirill and the girls, looking for a good cover. Small Dromi transports were not protected by a force field, but their armor was pretty good, too thick for a blaster. But he could melt the thrower barrels with a pulse at full power; of course, he would have to replace the battery after that.

By the time the Dromi formed up in a line and started to quickly hop to the square, Mark and his companions had managed to hide behind a collapsed wall. The sun was pouring light on the enemy figures, their scales gleamed like malachite, and the emitters in their huge claws seemed like toys. He had briefly met Dromi before and knew that they had no concept of clothing, which, when necessary, was substituted with functional devices, helmets, vacuum suits, breastplates, thermal shoulder straps, and coverings. No clothes, no decorations, no insignia… Except for their purple spots and larger bodies, the two Zong-tii did not stand out from the rank-and-file soldiers; maybe also their position in the squad: both of them were moving in the center of the line. One of them was noticeably taller than the other with a larger spot; he was probably approaching the Zong-ap-sidura age. Mark had never seen one like that before.

"How often do they visit you?" he asked Maya.

"It differs," the girl whispered, gripping her needle gun with both hands. "Sometimes, twenty-thirty days may pass without any toads or their machines. But other times, they can show up almost daily. We scatter the small squads and hide from the big ones."

"Yeah, Pierre told me about that." Mark rubbed the bridge of his nose with the blaster. "Why do you think they come to these ruins? What do they want here?"

Squinting, the girl was looking at the approaching enemies. Her hands were thin and gaunt, but the needle gun in them did not shake.

"They come to all destroyed cities, and we kill them wherever we can. They come again… Alferov from the Western Headquarters said once that they're testing our will to resist. An experiment! But it already cost them hundreds of lives. Strange, right?"

"Nothing strange about that," Mark replied, looking at the Dromi, which had already entered the square. "They're not human, T'hara, not even humanoid, and their concepts of the value of life differ from ours. For their elders, hundreds or thousands of dead Sinn-ko are a small price to pay for useful information."

Kirill crawled up behind them and jerked his pant leg, "Elder, elder! Can we fire?"

"I'm not in charge here," Mark waved him off. "What did Pierre say? Fire on his command! Wait. And I'll try to get to those rocks."

"You be careful, brother," Xenia said. "You've only been out of the resuscitator for two days…"

Mark nodded and crawled among the piles of cinder and gravel, selecting a good position. His blaster was not a long-range weapon, and the firepower at the target depended on the distance. It would be best to melt or, if he could, cut down the thrower barrels from about twenty meters away… But the Dromi craft was hovering farther from the ruins, and there was no tall grass here, only ashes and the unburned tree trunks. The Llagas garden, Mark remembered. The famous garden, for which Cynthia Llagas had ordered apple and plum trees from Mars, and there were enough fruit from them for the whole town… Where was Cynthia now? Was she alive, or had she also become a pile of ash in her garden?..

A thrower barrel jerked in his direction, and he froze, hiding behind a pile of rocks. The distance to the target appeared on his faceplate: 42 m 15 cm.

I can run to it, Mark decided. Pierre's team would start firing, there would be turmoil, the pilot would not have time to get his bearings… It would be nice to vaporize him before he fired… If he fired, it'd be bad! The throwers may be medium-power, but plasma was plasma and could still grind rocks into dust.

Pulling his blaster out of the holster, he activated it and slid the power gauge to maximum. A green light blinked for a second, the weapon having recognized its owner. He heard creaking behind him, which was immediately replaced by a grinding sound, as if someone was trying to cut sheet metal with a saw; the Dromi were talking, not knowing that they had gotten caught in an ambush. Mark rose slightly, not taking his eyes off their craft. He needed to aim for the spots where the short thick barrels came out of the capacitor cylinders…

He heard the roar of Pierre's thrower, the predatory whizzing of the needle guns, and dashed forward. Dromi eyesight was at least as good as that of humans, and the pilot must have noticed him; a blue lightning bolt passed over Mark's head. Too high to kill him, but low enough to singe his hair… Luckily, his helmet protected him.

Mark dashed left, then right, rolled on the ground, jumped to his feet, ran to the vehicle like a quick sirend lizard, and raised his blaster. Dromi eyesight was fine, but their reaction was slower, an inevitable penalty for their powerful muscles, strong bones, and enormous physical strength. Then again, Mark had heard that marines from Baal or Timaeus, who weighed over a hundred kilos, could break Dromi spines, or whatever they had instead of spines, with their bare hands.

Both embitters fired, erupting in hot blue lightning bolts, causing the burning earth to start smoking and throwing up fountains of scalding-hot gas, but he was already in firing range. The blaster beam flashed twice, barely visible in bright sunlight, and the emitter barrels drooped, like a pair of melting icicles. Behind him, in the square, he continued to hear the whizzing of the needle guns; Pierre and his team were finishing off the enemy. A needle gun with explosive needles could only kill instantly if striking vital organs, but Mark could not make out the sound of return fire; obviously, the T'harans knew where to aim.

A greenskin jumped out of the vehicle. He was huge, a head taller than Mark, wearing a spiked shoulder strap, his powerful claws holding a thrower. The palm-sized purple spot on his belly suggested that the pilot was of the Zong-tii caste, the third generation. Behind the transparent face plate, Mark could see his bulging round eyes and opened mouth, with a purple snake-like tongue thrashing about in it.

The pilot stretched out his paw with the emitter, but he didn't have time to fire; Mark's laser whip hit him between the shoulder strap and the helmet. The huge creature's eyes rolled up, his weapon falling out of his clawed fingers. He started to sink down, but this movement did not look human: his legs bent, his massive body bent at the waist at an impossible angle, and, finally, his helmet stuck into the ground. "For the Malta," Mark muttered and sliced the corpse from shoulder to hip. A stream of blue-scarlet blood sprayed, and he stepped away, wincing in disgust. Dromi, especially dead ones, smelled awful.

"Mark!" he heard Pierre's voice. "We finished them off, Mark! All except this freak!"

Turning, he started walking towards the square. There, among the rocks, was a Baker's dozen of Dromi, with needles sticking out, with a stench coming off their corpses. The Semyonov triplets were collecting their weapons, which, for anatomical reasons, were unfit for humanoids: the greenskins had different hands, and their fingers had sizable claws. The adult members of the team were surrounding the last surviving Dromi, the largest of the Elders-with-Spot; he was standing in a submissive posture, slightly bent forward and his powerful arms lowered. Pancho Santiago was standing behind him, ready to fire his needle gun, Pierre and the girls were grimly examining the prisoner. Mark understood them; it was one thing to kill in combat, and something completely different to take the life of a sentient being begging for mercy.

"What are we going to do with him?" Pierre asked. "This one's an important bastard! Look at the size of that spot!"

"With a spot, without a spot, who cares?" Santiago grunted. "Let's take his gear, crack his helmet, and let him hop to Western Port twelve hundred kilometers away. Either he suffocates in half an hour, or the stone devils will eat him…" Pancho spat on the ground and chuckled, "Unless, of course, they're picky."

"He threw down his weapon," Xenia spoke, her eyes asking Mark for support. "As soon as we started shooting, he dropped his emitter and lay down on the ground. Maybe…"

She fell silent.

"Send him to the headquarters?" Maya put her hand on Mark's shoulder. "Can you talk to him? They must have trained you… Or is there a translator in your helmet?"

"Translators like that don't exist, and I can't talk to him," Mark said. "No one can, not humans, not Haptors, not Kni'lina; our larynx is too different, and so are the semantics. The only way to communicate is through the Lo'ona Aeo language, but I doubt he knows it. I don't either, by the way."

"So what do you suggest?" Pierre asked.

Mark looked over the prisoner. A typical Dromi: green scaly skin, sharp claws, short trunk-like legs, a frog-like mouth on a noseless face… But something told him that this creature was unusual, not like the other toads, and his strangeness was not related to the rank of an Elder-with-Spot or some special position in the Dromi hierarchy. Something else, something personal, if the concept of "personal" even applied to this race…

Closing his eyes, he tried to probe the greenskin's mental field. The way Father had taught him once: not to try to establish a link on a thought level, which was hopeless, but to catch emotions, that aura of strong sensations, generated by any being in moments of stress. Figure them out, Valdez Sr. had advised. Feelings sometimes speak as much as words and thoughts. Fear or joy, hate or affection, pleasure or pain… that which lay at the core of subconscious reactions…

The Dromi was not experiencing fear, as well as hate or affection towards humans. The range of his emotions seemed strangely sparse; or, perhaps, his sensations were so alien to Mark that he couldn't even label them with a term or even understand. Perhaps the most powerful and clear feeling was regret, as if the Dromi didn't wish to die only for one reason: there was something (duty?.. obligation?.. care?..) that needed to be finished. He was going to do something (now?.. in the future?..), but hadn't had the time, and that weighed on him. It weighed on him greatly, Mark realized, just like the memory of the Malta's destruction, the deaths of the three frigates and hundreds of comrades-in-arms weighed on him.

He opened his eyes, looked at Xenia, and, after receiving her nod, said, "We've encountered something strange. This is an exile, an outcast, or maybe a psychologically anomalous individual. He doesn't feel hostility towards humans and doesn't wish to destroy us. I think we should let him go. What do you think, sister?"

Xenia gave another nod.

"All right then," Pierre grunted. "You're the Valdez family, you know better."

He didn't ask how the siblings had come to that conclusion; there were certain rumors going around about Valdez Sr. and his offspring, not insulting rumors, but those that added respect to their family. On T'har, it was not considered shameful to have a fad of some sort: some distilled rum from drunken mushrooms, some tried to domesticate the untamable sirends, and, as in this case, some were able to look into the soul of another.

"Tell him to go," Maya spoke in obvious relief. "He should get out of there!"

"I can't tell him." Mark smiled to the girl. Her hand was still on his shoulder, and he could feel warm gentle currents flowing from Maya's fingers. "I can't tell him," he repeated, "but I'll try to explain it."

Putting the blaster and the laser whip on the ground, Mark stretched his hand towards the prisoner, then pointed at the flying craft. The greenskin blinked, his lower eyelids raised, covering his eyes, and then lowered again. He was still in the submissive posture, but there was a new note in his emotional range, something akin to surprise. Go and live, Mark said mentally and imagined the Dromi hopping towards the craft. Go and live! You will not go into the Great Emptiness today.

The prisoner straightened, put a claw to the spot on his belly, squeaked something, and slowly trudged from the square.

Patta was astonished: the Paired Creatures had let him go. He made a gesture of gratitude and wished the Hossi-moa [Hossi-moa is the Dromi term for humanoids and, in general, all beings with two sexes, who engaged in physical contact to produce offspring. The closest equivalent in Earth Lingua would be "Paired Creatures". It should also be noted that all the Dromi terms that entered the Federation language (Hallaha, Sinn-ko, Zong-tii, etc.) are not equivalent in how they sound to Dromi pronunciation; instead, they were selected based on two criteria: a remote similarity to the sounds produced by the Dromi and the possibility for the human vocal apparatus to reproduce them.], who had managed to engage in a sensation contact with him, to live until Spot Time. Although, that Paired Creature was probably fully mature and capable of reproduction, judging by his size. Like all members of his species, Patta had trouble differentiating humanoids by their sex and appearance, so height and body mass served as more reliable criteria. Those Hossi-moa, who did not reach the standards decreed by the Patriarchs, were treated as Hallaha younglings, Mindless Ones, whose life was worth less than a claw clipping or a fallen scale. The adults could be equated to an Elder-with-Spot and Elder-under-Big, but the leading role of the progenitor Patriarchs and the Big-Elders were not served by the largest or the oldest specimens among the Hossi-moa. Age and body mass were not symbols of wisdom and power among them, and even to the Splinter Clans, who had been fighting Paired Creatures for thousands of years, their hierarchy remained unclear. Patta, who belonged to a tribe of lords, or, as humans would say, politicians, psychologists, and historians, tried to figure it out, as well as the other aspects related to the Hossi-moa, their behavior and customs, but had only reached very modest results. Even then, he owed his knowledge to Tihava, not the Splinters, not Rikkaraniji's clan, where he had been sent as an adviser.

Well, all he needed was time, and then he would understand more! He would become Zong-ap-sidura like Tihava, live for another twenty years, and that was not a small number. What was important was that he was alive now, and he should thank the Thought Giver for that. The Giver was great! Only He decided who to save from death and who to cast into oblivion! He'd probably saved Patta, so that he could see his mentor Tihava and continue his secret mission… For He was not only great but wise!

Patta was not especially religious, but, after getting into the vehicle, he ripped off his shoulder strap and helmet and immediately scratched his neck. A drop of blood fell onto the controls, the only sacrifice accepted by the Giver. Then he stuck his claws into the control slots, raised his flying craft, and set course for the Patriarch's abode in Ho. The cabin seemed too spacious, as it no longer held the Zong-tii pilots and the warriors of the caste of the Named Ones. Patta did not feel sorry for them. They belonged to a Splinter tribe and were also warriors; an early death was their duty.

The craft was flying west, and he, gazing from up high onto the grim landscape of the Cold World, was pondering the mystery of the local Hossi-moa. Why did they live in the ruins, where there was no food and no water? Why did they resist with such senseless persistence? The destruction of small Sinn-ko squads and a few dozen Elders-with-Spot did not harm Rikkaraniji's clan, which was powerful and fairly numerous. It seemed as if those Paired Creatures that remained free should have shown obedience or, at the very least, hidden in holes and prayed to their gods that they would not be found and taken to Ho. But they continued to exhibit incredible activity in all the destroyed settlements! Logic could not explain that. Patta knew that Hossi-moa valued their existence greatly, especially since their lifespan was two-three times that of the Dromi. And yet they risked their lives, and for what? To destroy a few hundred Named Ones?.. That seemed absurd.

There was another mystery, related to the different behavior of the Paired Creatures in the Cold and Warm Worlds. The Warm World, which revolved closer to the star and was more suitable for habitation, had been occupied by Korroningata and Sinvagatansher's tribes, also of the Splinters. The population of that planet had turned out to be significant, mostly concentrated in cities, partly in the countryside, which produced food and various raw materials. There, the reaction of the Hossi-moa had matched the prediction: terrified by the attack on their cities, by the fires and destruction, they preferred to hide rather than fight. According to the advisers from Patta's tribe, who were studying the Warm World, many had died and many worked hard, receiving food and shelter in exchange. But here, in the Cold World, the situation was different.

Patta decided that, despite the fact that the Paired Creatures that were fighting the clans in the Great Emptiness belonged to the same variety, their groups differed greatly from one another. These differences were not represented the same way as among the Dromi, where some clans produced warriors, while others produced the ruling elite, merchants, technicians, or specialized workers. The Hossi-moa social structure was far more complex, which was likely explained by the presence of two sexes and their method of reproduction. The abilities of individuals, as well as groups that lived on different planets, were expressed more sharply, which added an element of randomness into their plans and actions. At first glance, it was disorder and chaos! But there was a system of some sort hiding behind this tangle, which bore pulses of enlightenment, rapid progress, and a surprising ability to survive. Patta had long ago figured out that the human Hossi-moa developed faster than his own race, had more advanced ships and more powerful weapons. He also knew that his people, millions of clans on hundreds of worlds, a species whose numbers were greater than all the Hossi-moa of the galaxy, was slowly but surely heading for a dead-end.

This war was also a dead-end. Tihava, a Zong-ap-sidura and Patta's mentor, had warned him that dead-ends could be different: it could be a wall, a hole, or even a bottomless pit. There were dead-ends that allowed one to stop, turn back, and choose the right path, and there were those where disaster and death awaited. The war with the human Hossi-moa was one of the latter dead-ends.

The ocean coast, city ruins, and a landing field, built by the prisoners, appeared below him. Then the towers of Ho appeared, the tallest of which was the Patriarch's abode. Cutting speed, the craft started to descend.

The Dromi bodies and their weapons were incinerated by Pierre with his thrower, leaving large holes in the ground with piles of ash. The girls turned away; the sight was unpleasant, and the smell was even worse. Mark took out a spare battery, charged his blaster, then started handing Xenia and Maya dry ration bars, which weren't very tasty but were nutritious. However, they refused to eat, noting that the rations would be needed on the road, since the path to Nickel was not close, over four thousand kilometers across mountains and plateaus, and the only edible things there were moss, rats, and stone devils. But everyone tasted the drink from the flask, and the triplets started to remember the fruit juices Cynthia Llagas used to make, the crumpets baked by Aunt Carmen, the owner of Bilbao, where the best ice cream used to be: in Bob Pinch's Sweet Tooth or at the Portugal Café owned by Don Alfonso. Having discussed these problems, they started a furious argument: Kirill regretted letting the toad transport leave and swore that he could have stuck his fingers into the panel's openings and handled the vehicle; Prokhor objected, claiming that claws were necessary, that his fingers might fit into the slot, but they would never reach the sensor keys, having tested it himself several times, explaining that the damned thing jerked but would not move; Pavel, a scholar of military equipment, laughed at his brothers, calling both of them idiots, that the problem was not the fingers and the claws but a special computer-like device that could tell friend from foe. Having failed to reach consensus, the brothers asked Mark, and he explained that regulations forbade using Dromi equipment, since many of their machines, like human devices, could self-destruct.

With those conversations, they returned to the medical center and came down into their shelter. Next to the spacious on-call room was a smaller office, where the girls slept; according to the name plate on the door, it used to belong to a juvenologist [A juvenologist is a life-extension specialist.] named Dr. Kashirin. Xenia led Mark there and, noticing that Maya was hesitating, as if wishing to leave them alone, took her by the shoulders and pulled her along with them.

Mark stepped into the room and froze in amazement; all the walls were full of pictures, the landscapes of Ibáñez: on the one wall was the former city, the way it had been over two years ago, on the other was the way it was now, in ruins. The memories of his childhood immediately returned to him, piercing him with a sharp pain: here was the college where he had studied, here was the city theater, the hospital, the museum, the cozy taverns and pubs, the views of the streets and squares, here was the garden of Cynthia Llagas, the homes of Serano, Alferov, the Semyonovs, Santiago, and here was his own home, the Valdez homestead. Gray, yellow, and pink stone, tiled roofs, porticos and columns, wide bright windows, palisades full of flowering moss… Across from it was the horror of the destruction: the chaos of broken buildings, ashes, charred earth, and burned skeletons…

He turned to Maya, and the girl, reading the question "why?" in his eyes, replied, "So that we remember."

"And so that the city once again becomes like that," Xenia added, nodding to the pictures with the former Ibáñez. They were like windows into the past, into their childhood and youth that had vanished in time, while the present was looking at Mark from the other wall, implanting dark thoughts of death and revenge. Maya painted the old-fashioned way, using a light palette on polychrome plastic, which was why her landscapes, while retaining the volume, did not look like holography; they contained what had been seen by their painter, not by the lens of a reality-recording device.

Mark looked at one wall, at the other, thought that sorrow and happiness usually go together, and asked, "How do you do this? It seems to me that painting on the surface is too dangerous."

"It's all in here." Maya touched her temple. "I remember everything that I see and paint it here."

At the far end of the room, behind the girls' beds, there was an easel with a sheet of plastic. Maya put on her palette glove and started to deliberately select light rings: black for coal, gray for stone and ash, brown for the singed soil, and the brightest of them, violet, for the shade of the sky. A black beam struck from her finger, touched the plastic, ran across its snow-white surface, leaving a clear black trace. Soon, gray, brown, and violet beams were added to it, and a painting started to rapidly appear before Mark: the square, where they had fought with the Dromi, the ruins of the Llagas home, the tree trunks in place of the garden, and, in the distance, the vehicle of the greenskins with its throwers aiming at the square. He and Xenia were watching the magic being created before them, while the beams continued running back and forth, pulling the figures of the Dromi and the humans out of the past: Pierre with the heavy tube of the emitter, Mark running to the craft, Pancho crouching by a broken wall, the Semyonov triplets…

"She paints all the time," Xenia whispered. "I thin, she does it to distract her from the thoughts of her sister and parents. But now…" She paused, then exhaled right into Mark's ear, "Now you're here."

"Now I'm here," Mark replied just as quietly. "I'm here, and she's no longer thirteen."

Closer to evening, Pierre and the triplets headed to the surface for a walk-around, ordering Mark, Pancho, and the girls to go to bed. The road to Nickel was long and difficult; actually, there was no road at all, since, during peacetime, all travel to the mine had been done by air. But a flyer would be too noticeable, and there were very few flyers left on T'har.

Santiago fell asleep quickly, but Mark kept tossing and turning, thinking of the destroyed squadron, of Mother and Father, of Xenia and Maya, and that continued until a quiet ringing came from the helmet, which lay on the bedhead. Putting the helmet on, he heard a quiet disembodied voice, Twenty-two thirty-four, local time. Beacon signal received. Coordinates… The faceplate slid closed, a scattering of symbols and numbers appeared, and Mark, peering into them, shook his head: the Arsenal was located almost at the planet's North Pole.