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 7

The Road to Nickel

The crawler's engine was almost silent; at the very least, it didn't prevent them from talking. But the shaking was soul-wrenching, and, besides, they had to speak carefully to avoid biting off their own tongues. There was a ground path heading north from Ibáñez, or rather, it was a rolled and fairly wide trail heading through the woods and invisible from the air. The ride on it was comfortable, but, after forty-three kilometers, at the edge of the Inhabited Zone, the path ended, and then there was nothing but off-road riding. Actually, the unsettled areas of T'har were accessible to ground vehicles, if one knew where to go and how. Uncle Pancho, a superb driver, did know. First, go along the Western Wind Highlands, then through the Red Rock Ridge down the Winding Tract on the Castile Plateau, beyond which rose the wall of the Northern Andalusian Mountains. Between the two peaks, Cervantes and Blasco Ibáñez, in whose honor a city had been named as well [Blasco Ibáñez (1867-1928) was one of the most famous Spanish writers of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.], there was the Hunter's Gorge, the usual path taken by people driving out to the Chaos to shoot stone devils. From the Chaos, a maze of canyons and cliffs, caves and treacherous crevasses, capable of swallowing up whole caravans, Nickel was close, a mere seven hundred kilometers. Of course, the area was considered dangerous, infested with devils.

Having left Ibáñez at six in the morning, they reached the Western Wind Highlands by seven. The wind blew constantly here, as there was a plain without any noticeable elevations, scattered with large boulders, which had been brought by a glacier in ages past, stretching until the ocean coast. Nowadays, there was almost no snow or ice on T'har, although, based on the data provided by glaciologists, the far south and the far north had underground layers of ice three kilometers thick. The ocean winds hit the highlands in gusts, whose strength varied from an almost lull to a crushing hurricane. Fortunately, it didn't bring with it any sand or uprooted trees, and the stone boulders were too heavy and refused to budge to the winds.

This time, the wind was mild, and the crawler was moving with a decent speed, while navigating between the boulders. Santiago had activated the sky-tracking camera and was driving the heavy transport the old-fashioned way, using miomotor automatics, without any contact helmets or mental amplifiers. The crawler was a tracked vehicle, although it did have a grav-drive. This device allowed it to become weightless for a minute or two and hop over crevasses, which, occasionally, stretched for dozens of kilometers and intersected other faults, not allowing them to go around. It would have been virtually impossible to cross the Chaos using any other ground vehicle.

Nowadays, the crawlers were the primary means of transportation. Plenty of them had survived, both in the cities and in the mining settlements, as they were considered working transport vehicles, whose place was in underground parking lots beyond the city limits. Flyers, both personal and communal, had burned along with the cities, except for those twenty or thirty, whose owners lived in Nickel and Northern. But Xenia had said that people were afraid to fly them: first of all, aerial vehicles were more noticeable than ground vehicles to observers from orbit, and second, a flyer's path could lead the Dromi to the mines.

Mark, Maya, and Xenia were sitting in the cargo compartment, having settled in the metal chairs that had been hastily-welded to the floor. Normally, crawlers carried heavy cargo, explosives, drilling equipment, agricultural robots, and produce from the farms, but now, according to the girls, almost all the transports had been refitted. Some had been given armor plates and a pair of mining lasers, turning them into combat vehicles of sorts, while others were meant for people, for trips to the destroyed cities or searching for supplies. Santiago's crawler was of the latter kind, lacking any weaponry, but lighter and more maneuverable than the armored vehicles. It was usually used to communicate with Ibáñez, where, like in all other cities, groups of observers were hiding. Small T'haran squads also kept their vigil on the coasts of the Western and Eastern Limits, by Western Port, Cuba, and Port Columbus, everywhere the Dromi had settled, building their cylindrical structures that looked like the towers of an ancient castle. According to intelligence reports, these structures served the role of dwellings or hangars for military equipment, some sort of production facilities had been set up there, while others, which were lower and wider, served as prisons for the captives, who were working at the spaceport. There were twenty thousand prisoners.

The pain and the hope of those who remained free! Hope because, except for a few, people didn't know where their loved ones were, either burned in the ruins or in Dromi claws. Could they be alive? They might be imprisoned by the aliens, but they hadn't become piles of ash or charred bones! But even so, slavery, a concept of bygone times, was a calamity and a disgrace. And that resulted in the pain.

Looking at the gray boulders and the rocky soil, covered in tiny cracks, through a porthole, Mark was listening to the story of his people's bondage.

"We hid in the woods with the children," Xenia was saying. "About two hundred of our people from the city were already there, and someone, who realized that we were being attacked by the Dromi, contacted Nickel. Kirk Tsendin, an engineer from the mine, told us to head north, towards the edge of the Inhabited Zone, and said that he would send a transport for us, but he had few vehicles, and some of them needed to be sent to other cities. This was how we found out that they were bombing everywhere and that there would be no help from Kitezh or Western Port. Luckily, Uncle Pancho and a few guys brought crawlers, so we loaded them with the younger kids and those who were burned or wounded. The rest were taken by Nikolay Ilyich through the woods on foot…"

"Alferov," Maya clarified. "He turned out to be the oldest among us."

Mark nodded. Nikolay Ilyich Alferov, an ex-marine and a veteran of the last two Void Wars, and currently a famous writer, was not T'haran by birth, but, having finished his service in the Fleet, he had settled in Ibáñez. The reason was simple: Blood and Sand [Blood and Sand (1908) is one of Blasco Ibáñez's most famous novels.] was one of his favorite novels. He used to say that he owed it to the memory of the great Spaniard to write something similar, maybe Stars and Darkness or Gloom and Flame. He had been working on the book for over forty years, occasionally spitting out children's stories and adventure books for teenagers. He had been a well-respected man in Ibáñez.

"We walked through the forest all night and all day," Maya said. "We didn't see our city burn, but, even twenty kilometers away, we could smell the smoke, cinders, and desolation. Then we walked on this plateau…" She nodded at the bleak plain beyond the porthole. "Five days later, we were picked up by vehicles sent by Tsendin. We ate moss, mushrooms, and hunted lizards and snakes. We couldn't stock up on water in the woods, since no one had brought a flask or a bottle, but Marta Gutiérrez found an underground spring, and Vlad Borisov made some stone axes. We managed to dig down to the water and drank our fill."

"Wherever a T'haran can't survive, no one can," Mark muttered. That was a saying among his people, who weren't known for being boastful.

The girls nodded. Maya's dark head nodded, and so did Xenia's blonde head… They were so unlike one another, but both were so dear to Mark! This feeling was so sudden, so sharp, that he closed his eyes and sighed. The Lords of Emptiness themselves must have brought him back to T'har, giving him this joy: to see the faces of his loved ones, to hear their voices…

"Then we found out that the Dromi had landed in Ibáñez and all the other cities," Xenia spoke. "They were grabbing people, those who were still alive but had been stunned by the explosions, and those who had not had time to hide. They took them to the ruins of Western Port and put them behind force screens. And then something strange happened…"

The crawler jolted perceptibly, causing Mark's teeth to clang. Cursing, he looked through the porthole. Their transport was moving along a scree, a large space covered in broken stone, the treads crushed tiny pieces of stone, but if it hit a large one, the crawler jumped and tilted to the left or right. A swarm of flat snakes that looked like brown ribbons was quickly fleeing before the vehicle.

"Strange," Mark repeated. "What was strange?"

"The Dromi put the prisoners in rows and started selecting children, teens, and short women. Not a single man, all our men are tall and strong," Maya said. "Then they took them here, to the highlands, almost to the Red Rocks, they took about five thousand captives here and let them go. All that happened very quickly; we had only just made it to Nickel, along with the refugees from the other cities. The exiles had a communicator, and they contacted Nickel. Tsendin sent all the vehicles to get them."

"It must have been a big convoy," Mark noted. "Were you not afraid that the toads might notice Nickel?"

"We were, but we couldn't abandon the women and children. Dromi had not yet built their satellite and, we think, were not observing the landmass from their ships. And, since they haven't yet found the mines…" Maya shrugged.

The shaking subsided: the crawler had crossed the scree and was now moving on a fairly smooth rocky surface. There were no snakes here, who liked to hide among rocks, but nimble sirend lizards were basking in the sun. Red moss, their favorite food, covered the rock in broad sections that stretched for kilometers. Drunken mushrooms, a local sugar plant, which was used to distill rum, grew here and there among this moss.

"So the Dromi let the children and short women go;" Mark said. "And that seemed strange to you?"

"Yeah," Xenia confirmed. "Then there was a lot of debate at the headquarters: Tsendin saw it as an act of mercy or, at least, an attempt to establish a contact. Nikolay Ilyich argued with him, claiming that we shouldn't apply human concepts to aliens, especially non-humanoids. Tsendin accused him of xenophobia. But Nikolay Ilyich was supported in Nickel and Northern too."

Naturally, Mark thought. Tsendin was pushing fifty, but Alferov was twice his age and, besides, an ex-astronaut… The authority of age meant a lot on the patriarchal T'har.

"Alferov is right," he spoke. "I did not express myself clearly enough, since 'let go' is not the appropriate term. Here is a better description of the situation: they exiled them, left them to die among the mountains and the rocks, unwilling to fill the area around Ho with corpses." The girls exchanged puzzled looks, and Mark explained. "Ho is their main base, the place where the Patriarch is located. The one who rules a warrior or a worker tribe."

Maya frowned.

"So why did they let them go, I mean exile them? Can you explain that?"

"Yes. You see, my T'haran, the greenskins, like us, are capable of making mistakes, and the most common mistake is to apply your own concepts, your own customs to an alien race. The structure of their society, actually, of any society, any civilization, any culture, is, in large part, determined by physiology and its most delicate detail — reproduction. We, a two-sexed species, consider them hermaphrodites, which isn't entirely correct; it's just that the same individual produces…" Noticing the grimaces on the girls' faces, Mark decided not to get into the slippery topic and grunted. "Well, let's just say they're very prolific. A Dromi who has reached sexual maturity can give life to thousands of larvae. They develop quickly and, twelve to fourteen years later, receive names and enter into Sinn-ko, the lowest caste. But, until that time, they're not seen as sentient beings; they're Hallaha, younglings, and have no value. Nine out of ten Hallaha die in fights with one another or from the claws of their elders, and that's not a tragedy, it's a natural process. If all the Hallaha were to survive, the galaxy would be full of Dromi and nothing but Dromi. There are already hundreds of billions of them, they reproduce uncontrollably, constantly capture new worlds, and that's why–"

He wanted to say that that was the reason why the Federation was at war with the toads, but Xenia interrupted him, "Why are you telling us this? How is their reproductive method related to the exile of the children?"

"And some women," Mark added. "Don't forget the women and the teenagers! The thing is, the Dromi have a hard time telling apart humanoid faces, our age, our sex, or even which of us is attractive or who was born with a deformed nose and doesn't wish to get it corrected. Basically, the main indicators for the Dromi are height and bodily strength. Those who look short and frail to them are seen as Hallaha, or brainless, who aren't even good enough for slave labor. It's best to destroy them, but the bodies need to be burned to avoid them becoming a source of infection and disease. They can burn them, but it's much easier to just take them alive out into the desert and leave them to die. Which is what they did."

Silence fell, only the engine was humming at the edge of their hearing and rocks were creaking under the treads. The girls were silent. Apparently, Mark's explanation had amazed them, as it could amaze and frighten any human who was far from xenology and contacts with alien races. Everyone knew that these races existed somewhere out there in the galaxy, all read about them and seen aliens in holofilms, marveling at the beauty of the Lo'ona Aeo and being terrified at the beast-like appearance of the Haptors, but only specialists and the Secret Service knew the details and the minutia that were sometimes shocking. Some of these experts served as instructors in the Space Fleet, so Mark's information had come from first-hand knowledge and was fairly precise.

Finally, Maya shrugged and said, "This… this is horrible, Mark! They kill their own children! Those poor Hallaha!"

"They have no concept of children, especially their own children. The fertilization process takes place in an aquatic environment, in special pools, where ova and semen of thousands of individuals end up, and there's no way to tell who is whose offspring. They consider the entire clan to be descended from the Patriarch, the oldest of the family." Looking at the girl's confused face, Mark spoke softly. "Don't judge them from the viewpoint of human morality, my T'haran. Dromi aren't human, and their lives are not like ours."

That day, they crossed the Western Wind Highlands and reached the Red Rocks. The ridge of cinnabar-colored cliffs stretched from the ocean to the east, some of the mountains rose hundreds of meters into the air, and all of them were steep, precipitous, standing tight to one another, like fangs of a giant's jaw. An impassable barrier to ground vehicles, unless, of course, one knew the passages in this wall, narrow, curtained by rocks, hidden from prying eyes. The Winding Tract was one of such secret paths. During the early days of T'har's settlement, the only way to cross it would have been on foot, but, about a hundred and twenty years ago, the bottom of the gorge had been widened slightly, the larger stones had been removed, and three tunnels had been cut. The first of them connected to a natural cave, where stone devil hunters spent their nights. There were hammocks hanging there, a table stood with rough stools and even a fire pit with a pot, a supply of firewood and coal briquettes. All this exoticism of primitive life, as well as a well that had been cut to an underground stream, had now become useful; the cave was a foothold on the path from the Western Limit to Nickel. As a boy, Mark had been here several times and remembered that the shelves and the freezers at the back wall of the cave used to hold batteries, flashlights, hiking gear, and food containers. But now, this warehouse was empty; apparently, everything had been taken to the mining settlements.

After cooking the moss they had gathered on the way in the pot, the travelers ate a ration bar each, washing it down with a slightly bitter, smoky drink. Mark hadn't tried this T'haran tea in nine years; its taste awakened memories of peaceful times, of hunting trips with his father, of his friends' visits, when their home in Ibáñez would shudder from Atigem's thundery roar, and, in the evenings, Chief Lightwater would take Mark into the woods, light a fire, and, looking at the dancing flames, tell wondrous stories. Mark still remembered them, especially the one about a planet of shapeshifters, whose bodies flowed like water, taking on any shape. Cro Lightwater had insisted that there were spies from that race in almost every galactic civilization and that they, at times, curtailed the more zealous ones and clipped the claws of the overly predatory ones. Mark had asked then if those shapeshifters were the Lords of Emptiness, the ancient Daskins? But the Chief shook his head and explained that the Daskins had ruled the galaxy so long ago that none of the contemporary races had contacts with them, except, possibly, the Lonchaks. But they kept their secrets well.

The Chief had also spoken of other things, of the years spent on Danwait, when he, Atigem, and Father served the Lo'ona Aeo. He had talked of the fairytale castles of crystal and silver, of the almost-sentient beyri ships, which the Patrolmen had flown, of the Servs, which were most definitely sentient, of the gigantic transport ships with cargo, and the enormous space citadels, of battles, assaults, and chases, of the hot lightning bolts spat out by Dromi emitters. At times, Cro Lightwater would close his eyes and start to sing, but those had been strange songs, they only included people's names with the same refrain: dead, dead, dead… Thousands of names, thousands of the dead, who had burned in their ships, fallen in assaults on Dromi fortresses or while defending trade caravans… The Chief had called them memory songs and said that it was a Navajo tradition: to remember the names of fallen warriors to bring joy to their souls.

On occasion, something mysterious would slip through his stories of Danwait, something personal, which had a direct bearing on the Valdez family. Once or twice he had remembered, as if in a glimpse, of a Lo'ona Aeo woman named Zantoo, an exile from the astroid Anat, who used to fly on a trade transport. Allegedly, their warship had protected this transport on the star lanes, and they had met Zantoo, which was amazing, since the Lo'ona Aeo could not bear to be in the presence of an alien. Well, technically, only Father had been meeting her, while Cro and Atigem frightened her, causing her to avoid them. But why had this fear, this primal fear of the Lonchaks before the other races, not touched Valdez? The Chief had spoken extremely vaguely of this, but Mark, subconsciously sensing that he should not ask his parents about it, still guessed that something must have happened between Father and that Zantoo woman. Strange! What could possibly happen between a human male and a being, who was not even humanoid? The Lo'ona Aeo had four sexes, and, strictly speaking, Zantoo wasn't even a woman, from a human viewpoint at least. Having grown older, Mark had realized there were family secrets that he would, perhaps, be told, but not now, when he grew even older. Maybe now he could ask Father and get an answer, even if that answer was that it was none of his business. But where was Father and where was he!..

Mark was pondering these subjects, sitting at the entrance to the cave and guarding his sleeping companions' rest. T'har's night, moonless and almost starless, opened up its dark wings above him, covering the plain and the rocks, the earth and the waters, the destroyed cities and the humans, who had remained on the planet, in darkness. Mark suddenly thought that this world held the memory of three races: of the Bino Faata, who had landed here after crossing the Void, of humanity, who had taken T'har from the Faata and who had been in the process of settling it, and of the Dromi wolf pack, who had appeared here for unknown reasons. But had these aliens been the first? Maybe T'har remembered someone else, for planets and stars lived on a different time rate than living beings and their civilizations: ten thousand years was but a moment for a planet but an inordinately long time for its inhabitants, if they existed. They could leave their caves or come down from the trees and reach the stars… well, at the very least, erect pyramids and make the first bronze axe…

Who else do you remember, T'har? Mark asked the night, the plain, and the rocks. Who else have you seen?..

But he did not get an answer.

In the morning, they continued their path through the Winding Tract, crossed the Castile Plateau, and spent the night in another cave, also a hunting shelter. This T'haran activity was, in part, of a sporting nature, and, in part, a result of necessity: with the appearance of fowl and cattle, the stone devils' sparse food base had expanded, and the sudden spike in their population was now a serious problem. The predators had obviously decided that all these new creatures, so defenseless and so tasty, had appeared here just for them, and there was only one way to thank the fate for this generosity: to be fruitful and multiply. It had taken seven decades to convince them of their error and push them out to beyond the Andalusian Ridge. But even now the devils frequently appeared at the edge of the Inhabited Belt and attacked cattle and, on occasion, even killed people. They ran quickly and could cross both the Castile Plateau and the Western Wind Highlands in a matter of days.

The next day, the crawler dove into the deep fault of the Hunter's Gorge and started gnashing on the stones along the water stream coming down from the mountains. To the left of them was the fifty-two-hundred-meter Miguel Cervantes Peak, while, to the right and a little farther, was the two headed Blasco Ibáñez, not as famous as his great fellow countryman, and so only reaching four and a half thousand meters. Other mountains could be found beyond it: Velasquez and El Greco, Rachmaninoff and Karl Bryullov, Picasso and Blok. There was even a tiny mountain only a few kilometers high, named after Kozma Prutkov, which was very spiky and inaccessible; no T'haran had ever been able to climb it.

About twenty minutes before noon, the holocamera tracking the sky beeped, and Pancho immediately pressed the crawler into a rocky wall and shut off the engine. The travelers stepped down onto the rocky ground, and, almost immediately, three dark angular craft silently passed over the mountainside. Mark's helmet immediately informed him that they were combat vehicles, armed with medium-power plasma throwers, whose range was three kilometers, and equipped with mass detectors. The latter turned out to be an unpleasant surprise, since the crawler could be detected when moving on an even surface. Although, there weren't that many even surfaces here.

The machines did not go down into the gorge, which was fairly wide but full of stones, but new dark dots appeared in the sky after them. Wings of Dromi craft were flying from the southwestern direction, from the ruins of Western Port, the aliens' current base. Some were turning towards the Castile Plateau, others were heading north, towards the Chaos, while the rest were stubbornly circling the mountains. It was difficult to watch them from the gorge, since the high, steep slopes limited their visibility, and Mark could only observe a bright strip of the violet sky.

"Wonder why there are so many of them here today," Pancho grumbled, rubbing his lower back.

"But we're managed to cross the plateau," Xenia noted. "And there is plenty of cover here."

The taciturn Santiago only chuckled. Mark remembered that the northern slopes of the Andalusian Ridge were less steep, and, even though they were fairly close to the Chaos, they would still have to drive across an open space for an hour or two. Well, maybe not that open, since it also had rocks and faults, but there were no deep gorges like the Hunter's Gorge there.

Santiago was no longer looking at the sky; he was standing, staring at the ground, and thinking about something. Psychically reaching for him, Mark sensed his calm coolness; their driver was choosing a road, recalling the cliffs and the crevasses, the screes and the stone boulders awaiting them ahead.

"Should we wait them out?" Maya asked. "Maybe they'll leave."

Mark looked into her dark eyes and shook his head, "Doubt it, my T'haran. They're looking for something."

"Us?" Her face grew alarmed.

"Unlikely. How would they know that we're on our way to Nickel? They're just studying the area in search of moving objects or some structures. Probably searching for our bases in Northern and Nickel. I forget…" Mark furrowed his brow. "Is there any equipment on the surface? Personnel housing, lifts, a spaceport?"

"No," Xenia said. "Everything has been blown up or buried under rocks. Even the landing pads for orbital shuttles."

"A good precaution. The mines are deep, can't find anything there even with a mass detector."

Above the gorge, breaking up into groups of three or four craft, a new wave of alien machines passed by. The helmet informed him that it recognized small transport vehicles with crews, which meant that the Dromi were planning on conducting ground reconnaissance, in suspicious places, at least. There were almost a hundred transports, but they did not turn towards Nickel, instead flying east in a dense flock.

"They went to Velasquez," Santiago grunted. "All they'll find are the old copper mines built by the Faata back in the day. A few shacks, put up by malachite miners… Let them search! There's no one there." He turned to the crawler. "Let's go. Don't see a reason to sit here."

Three hours later, the gorge led them to the northern slope of Cervantes. Slowly descending, it stretched for about twenty-five kilometers and was cut up by ravines and shallow hollows, towered over by mountains. There was sparse vegetation here native to T'har: low thorny bushes, crooked, almost rheumatic trees with blue leaves, and the invariable moss. Sirends were sunbathing on the stones that came up above this rough carpet, while local rats were darting about in the bushes, called thus for their voracity, gray hide, and long tails. They had no relation to actual rats, actually being a type of plant-eating lizard.

"We hunt them," Xenia said. "There are plenty of them even near Nickel. But the kids refused to eat them at first."

"And now?" Mark asked.

His sister shrugged, "Now they do. There are hydroponic greenhouses in the mines, where we get vegetables, but we can't keep goats or sheep there. Chickens have been brought from farms, but their meat and eggs are only for the sick and the youngest ones. We tried devil meat, but it's utterly inedible."

Mark looked at her emaciated face, then shifted his gaze to Maya, and sighed. They had grown up in a world where crop failure and starvation didn't exist, not knowing the lack of food or some rare delicacies, for they could have been brought from Earth or other planets. In this world, children had not known refusal in anything, at least in relation to food, and, starting at two-three years old, any tiny human could enter any store, any café or trattoria and choose whatever his or her heart desired. It had been this way here, on T'har, and on Earth, Baal, Gondwana, and dozens of other worlds, but this period of abundance, matching flights to other stars, had only been going on for a very short time, not much longer than two hundred years. Humanity's genetic memory still held the horrors of the past eras, for millennia of hunger and sickness were not that far in the past to become mere stories or myths. This past, where squeamishness before eating rats, crows, and other unpleasant creatures had not existed, had been reborn on T'har, reminding its inhabitants how vulnerable humans were and how fragile their civilization was without machines.

The crawler was moving in a shallow gorge, flattening bushes and moss. They could already see the Chaos mountains ahead; their peaks were lit by the sun, the gaps between them were hidden in shadows, and the black cave mouths looked like gaping dragon maws. Long ago, while retreating from the south, a gigantic glacier had stopped and melted here, and everything it had been dragging with it, small stones and huge boulders, settled on the ground, pressing hard with their million-ton weight, forcing some areas to crack, others to open up under the heavy burden, and yet others to take in the glacier's water and hide it deep underground. The place of the onetime agony of ice and stone was amazingly beautiful; here, rainbows were floating over hundreds of waterfalls, colorful marble pleased the eye, deposits of rhodonite, charoite, and labradorite, druses of amethysts and rhinestone could be found. Everything had been moving towards, in time, turning the Chaos into T'har's first nature preserve. No one had objected, and the only point of contention was whether the Chaos's stone devils should be exterminated or considered as protected as the picturesque views and the marble of all shades of the spectrum.

The sky-tracking camera emitted a piercing shrill. Six flying craft passed over the gorge and immediately, after turning around, started descending. "Hold on, T'harans! They've noticed us!" Pancho Santiago roared and engaged the grav-drive. The crawler dashed forward in a meteoric jump, while lightning bolts were already punching holes in stone and rock behind it, and the crimson plasma was spreading out like fiery lava, burning the bushes and the moss. The heavy transport jerked right, left, right again, then froze, suddenly ran up the gorge's steep slope, and immediately rolled down. Pancho was zigzagging, dodging thrower volleys; blue bursts were either hitting ahead of them or behind, the air shuddered from the discharges, the stones under the treads were creaking, dark boulders were rapidly moving away, the wall of the gorge, pockmarked with cracks, was jumping up and down. Almost like in a Hawk during a battle, Mark thought, gripping his seat. Yes, almost like in a Hawk, except now he had no armor, no shields, no lasers, and no mental link to the ship. And the ship wasn't a ship at all, but a defenseless crawler…

"To the hatch, T'harans! As soon as I slow down, jump and get into a crack! Then head to the Chaos!" Santiago yelled. "I'll lead them away! I'll lead them, confuse them, and come back for you! Wait by Vinge Falls."

"Pancho's right," Xenia said. "We'll never lose them in the Chaos."

"We can't show them the way to Nickel," Maya agreed. "But will he be back?"

"He will, and so will I. We can't leave him alone, without any protection. Pancho isn't young anymore." Xenia reached out her hand. "Mark, give me your blaster."

She wanted to stay! Mark felt sweat appear on his temples at the very thought.

"The blaster is useless to you, it's a personal weapon," he forced out hoarsely. "It won't fire in your hands, girl. Which means that, if someone should stay behind with Santiago, it's me. I've been trained to survive in situations like this."

The girls exchanged glances. Gray eyes, black eyes… Their eyelashes lowered in agreement and shot up again, as if both had the same thought. Xenia seemed to say something to Maya, and the other girl responded, wordlessly, with a single wave of her eyelashes. Protect him, Mark understood and caught the answer, Yes, of course.

A lightning bolt struck directly in front of the crawler, stone flowed in a melted puddle, and crimson splashes flew away from under the treads.

"I know you're a marine and has been trained to do a lot," Xenia spoke. "Which is why you're important to us. To all T'harans! We need you, brother! You–"

"Ready?" Santiago shouted.

"Yeah," Maya answered and handed Mark his backpack. Then she commanded, "Put it on. You'll jump first and try to catch me. I'm not a marine, I just teach good manners."

The hatch opened with a clang.

"There's a hole in the slope ahead of us," Santiago warned. "Go!"

Marked jumped, rolled, and, getting up on his knees, caught Maya's light body. He held the girl to his chest for a long, long moment, feeling her breath on his cheek, then let her go, and they dashed to the slope. Pancho must have known this place; a cliff hovered over them, hiding the gorge's bottom in deep shadows, while a crevice gaped under the cliff. They could squeeze into it on all fours, but then the path widened, allowing them to sit.

"We can get to the Chaos from here in about forty minutes," Maya said. "Even twenty-five, if we run… Marines must be fast runners?"

Mark didn't see her face but knew that she was smiling.

"Marines do everything fast," he said and kissed her neck.

"I can see that!" she spoke sternly but did not move away. Then again, there was nowhere to move to.

They sat in silence and quiet for several minutes, sensing each other's warmth and breathing in the scent of cold stone. T'har, their home planet, hid two of its children well.

"Do they have a chance?" Mark asked finally.

"I think so. It's not Uncle Pancho's first rodeo."

"There are six combat craft above him… That's a lot!"

A deafening sound of an explosion came from a distance. Before the echo had a chance to roll through the gorge, Maya yelled out, "Fewer than six now!" and started crawling towards the exit. Mark hurried after her.

A dirty-gray cloud was spreading out over the Chaos mountains. One of the Dromi machines was circling over it, as if trying to find and rescue any survivors, but Mark knew that it was only an illusion: there were no survivors, and the Dromi didn't value the lives of their pilots very highly. What was more likely was that they were recording the disaster onto a memory crystal for a report to their superiors. The other four craft were heading west, spitting out plasma discharges, obviously chasing the crawler.

"They're in the Chaos already," Maya said. "The toads won't get them there. They already crashed one of their machines into a rock and will crash the rest. Pancho…" she smiled, "oh, Uncle Pancho is very clever! He's leading them to the Lost Souls Canyon. The slopes there have hu-uge cliffs! Sharp as knives!"

Mark nodded. He remembered the place.

"Maybe we should've stayed in the crawler then?"

Maya immediately grew serious.

"It was best not to chance it. Pancho might not have made it to the Chaos, and you are very–"

"Yeah-yeah," Mark interrupted her, "I've already heard that. I'm a very valuable individual. My knowledge is so important, so…" Suddenly, he remembered the Arsenal and shut up. No one besides him would find the vault, and no one else would be able to enter it. Maybe he really was a very valuable individual.

"Let's go," Maya said. "We'll get to Vinge Falls by nightfall." She sighed quietly. "We'll probably have to wait until morning…"

"I could wait the rest of my life with you," Mark replied.

Below them was the smoking debris of the craft, which had been scattered by the explosion. Patta was looking at it, while the pilots, two young Zong-tii, were busy recording. Flying among these sharp cliffs was dangerous, and the loss of the combat vehicle, which had crashed into a mountain, urged caution. But it seemed impossible to hit the nimble Hossi-moa transport from higher up, especially since their enemy was maneuvering skillfully, changing his speed, and hiding under rocks. Had he been in charge, Patta would not be trying to vaporize the humans and would have tried to track their path using their equipment, from a long distance. But the Splinters had their own customs, which dictated that any enemy object on the planet or in space needed to be destroyed. This senseless hostility was a legacy of the long years of their war with human mercenaries, the two centuries they had spent on the border, near Lo'ona Aeo planets. Perhaps, Patta thought, the Splinter clans had the best warriors, but they lacked an awareness of the common goal. The elders had made the right decision by sending them here, to the distant and defenseless human colonies. On the one hand, this would show the Hossi-moa that all their worlds were reachable and could be crushed; on the other, the Council had removed the instability from the Clans' order of battle. The members of the Council, the Zong-er-zongs of the ruling tribes, possessed unbeatable logic and could, obviously, see the common goal more clearly than others.

The pilots finished recording and hurried up to join the other four machines, which were trying to get the Hossi-moa. In the narrow winding canyons, among the conglomeration of cliffs, this was, in Patta's opinion, a hopeless task. But, even though he was older than the two Zong-tii pilots and was already approaching the Zong-ap-sidura age, he had no authority over them; moreover, he was there as an undesirable, and even dangerous, passenger. He could have been in the crashed vehicle, and, even though his death would have pleased the Patriarch and Sidura-zong Subyaroka, they would have fulfilled all the formalities which resulted from the death of an Elder-with-Spot from a ruling clan. Most likely, the pilots of this group, who had failed to protect the junior adviser, would have been destroyed.

While the craft was racing over the mountains and spitting fire while diving, Patta was pondering the goal of the Clans, that global goal that had fused the Dromi empire into a firm monolith, and of his own secret mission. The goal was simple, primitive even, and was expressed in a single word: reproduction! Unlimited reproduction and, naturally, without any control on the part of the other galactic races. An unlimited number of Hallaha, hundreds of billions of Sinn-ko, millions of Elders, and, as a result, more and more new worlds, in which they could live and reproduce… So it had been, was, and would be. If someone did not like this policy of expansion and conquest, there would be methods of convincing them: warrior tribes, ships, and plasma emitters. The Dromi domain would grow in size until it reached the edge of the galaxy…

And what then?.. Patta asked himself. Long ago, when he had just become a Zong-tii, Tihava asked him that question. "Here we are, having finally reached the most distant places in our galaxy," his mentor had told him, "even reached the extragalactic globular clusters, settled millions of worlds, destroyed all the other races; and what then? Outside is an ocean of untamable space, inside is the demographic pressure, far greater than in our time… And emptiness, emptiness, for there is no one left but us! No one else in the entire galaxy! Are you certain, Patta, that we can settle the other star islands? We are many and powerful, but our minds are not as sophisticated and flexible as the Hossi-moa and the Secretive Ones. From them, the Secretive Ones, we got the contour drive and the drug that extends the lives of our elders, and many other things, but we will have to destroy the Secretive Ones as well; their sector has so many planets suitable for the Dromi! Will we be able to solve our problems without them? And even if we do, if the Thought Giver helps us and we think of a way to reach the other galaxies, it will not become a step into the future but a step back into the past. For everything will be repeated again!"

The primacy of physiology over reason, this was how Tihava had called the path chosen by the Dromi. He had said that, if a race had no power to change something, if its potential was exhausted, then an outside influence was necessary. "What outside influence?" Patta had asked his mentor and received an answer: a lost war. A war, after which their race would be forced to limit its reproduction and look for other ways in the galaxy, except for those that led to worlds belonging to others.

Was that possible? Yes, perhaps, Tihava had insisted and spoken of that which was so forbidden that it demanded not a quick death but having one's claws torn out and being skinned alive. His mentor had not been afraid, however; he had a mysterious talent for selecting pupils worthy of his trust. Sometimes, Patta thought that he could read minds or maybe guess what had not been said in word or gesture. The progenitor of their clan valued Tihava greatly for this gift, and Patta's mentor was, without a doubt, moving towards the highest honor, to the rank of Sidura-zong, of which there were no more than four or five in each tribe. But he was still young and had not yet started taking the life-extension drug.

He had told his pupils, of which, besides Patta, there were four others, that, besides the Splinter clans, which had settled on the Lo'ona Aeo borders, raiding their caravans and fighting their mercenaries, there were also Dromi who had chosen peace instead of war and asked the Secretive Ones for mercy. They had been given space on Danwait and Tintakh, the planets where mercenaries lived, and they were living there with the human Hossi-moa, and they had no quarrel with the Paired Creatures, no clans, no progenitors, no caste division, their Hallaha and Sinn-ko were called young, and those with a spot were the elders. The Twice-Splinters, as Tihava had called them, also calling them Grir-vatura-ono, Lifestyle-Changers. If they had been able to do that, then so could others, as his mentor had insisted, which was why…

Another combat vehicle crashed into a mountain and, having exploded, fell down in a hail of hot fragments, interrupting Patta's recollections. But, like every other member of his race, he did not like interrupted and unfinished thoughts and postponed decisions. Each thought needed to be finished, and he did that, silently saying what his mentor had said, "Which is why the war needs to be lost. And that should be your goal, wherever and whenever you find yourselves!" Thus Tihava had spoken to his pupils.

He, Patta, had ended up here, in the Cold World, at the edge of the Void. And here, this war, or a small portion of it, would be lost.

At sundown, when Mark and Maya had settled under a mountain with a small gurgling waterfall, named after Karl Vinge, a falcon came to them. It dove from the darkening sky, landed on Mark's arm, gripped the jumpsuit's fabric with its sharp talons and emitted a cry. A tiny cartridge was tired to its leg.

"A falcon…" Maya whispered reverently, "a falcon…" She bent over the cartridge and read the inscription. "Flying from Kitezh to Nickel with a message. The poor bird is tired…"

The bird did indeed not look well. For a moment, Mark touched its mental field and shuddered, sensing immeasurable fatigue, thirst, and a stubborn determination to continue its flight. This creature, which lacked intelligence, had a clear understanding of duty. Duty was that which was greater than everything else; it needed to reach its destination or die trying. There was no other alternative.

"It's thirsty. Give it some water," Mark said.

Maya shook her head, "Give it yourself. See, it came to you… It knows you're a Valdez! Valdez, lord of the falcons!"

Smiling, Mark headed for the waterfall. The falcon drank from his hand, and this seemed incredible, as the bird was young and could not possibly remember him. Perhaps the gift of empathy, passed down from his father, affected not only people but these winged creatures as well?.. Mark wanted to think so.

He crumbled up a portion of a ration bar, but the falcon refused the treat; it sat on his arm for several minutes, then spread its wings, and soared up into the air. Its movements were quick and silent. Mark thought that no human-made machine could fly like that, with such power and freedom, without fear of gravity, without fighting the air elements every second, becoming a single whole with them. And he had never felt such warm feelings towards any machine, even a sentient one.

A mournful cry of a stone devil cut through the silence, and Mark, taking off his belt, pulled the blaster out of the holster.

Maya moved closer to him. In the fading light of the sun, her eyes were as bottomless as T'har's night sky.

"Do you want to check on Pancho and your sister?"

"Check? How?"

Wrinkles appeared near her lips. The girl was hesitating.

"We-ell, you know…" she drawled, touching her forehead with a thin finger. "You do, I know! They say that your father…" Maya waved her hand, as if sending her thought in the direction of the falcon. "And…"

"And?"

"And Xenia once told me. She can do it too, but not as well as you. That's what she said."

"Don't believe rumors and girl talk," Mark said.

"I believe my own eyes. This bird… this falcon… how did it find you? On a flight of thousands of kilometers! It found you, flew to you, and asked for a drink… You lured it, didn't you?"

Her eyes grew wide. She was looking at Mark with such anxious expectation, such excitement, that his heart started beating faster and a lump formed in his throat. Here was a girl, he thought, who would become his life partner, would bear his children, and become the lady of his house. This was how it would be, unless fate turned its dark side to them… She would enter their family, for she no longer had any other, and call his father and mother hers… Could he hide anything from her? And what could one hide from a woman he loved, with whom he wanted to live out the rest of his life? Whoever became a Valdez needed to be included in their family secrets…

He closed his eyes and mentally reached west, to the crawler dashing through the mountains and the canyons. A sense of free flight suddenly gripped him, as if he became a falcon with a wave of a magic wand, or the shadow of a falcon, which moved with the fastest wind, for no bird, either on Earth or T'har, could move so quickly and so effortlessly. The peaks and fault of the Chaos rushed past his mental gaze, he saw stone devils sneaking among the rocks, tracking their prey, then made out flocks of combat vehicles that reached to the seashore, touched the alien minds of the Dromi and recoiled in disgust, having managed, however, to sense that their hunt had turned out to be fruitless. This filled him with triumph. He tried, like his father had taught him, to expand the area of the mental search, directing the search cone downward, and instantly detected the familiar pulses. His sister and Santiago were moving, but not west anymore, east, towards Vinge Falls, and this movement was calm and leisurely. Like coming home after a hard day's work, he thought.

Mark opened his eyes. The girl's face was so close he could touch her eyelashes with his lips.

"They're coming back, my T'haran, but they're moving slowly; I think Pancho is tired. You were right, we'll have to wait until morning."

"Until morning…" Maya repeated and pulled the zipper of his jumpsuit down. "Until morning… We have plenty of time, my dear." Her hand slid along Mark's chest, then her thin fingers moved on, touching his neck, shoulder, back.

"The resuscitator," she whispered, "such a miraculous thing… The scars have already disappeared… no trace…"

"Liver, lungs, heart, and spine," Mark listed with a smile. "Kidneys too, I think… But everything else is intact."

"The marines do everything fast, right?" Maya's cheeks flushed red. "But sometimes there's no need to rush. Especially since the night is so long…"

"And cold, my T'haran," Mark added, his head spinning. "Maybe we should start a fire?"

"We're not going to need it, my love."

Her lips were scorching hot.