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 10
Nickel
Clo was steaming on the table, in a pot and mugs. Three people were sitting at the table in a casemate, buried deep beneath the earth: Kirk Tsendin, an engineer from the mine, Maria Quintana, a farmer in her sixties, and Nikolay Ilyich Alferov, a former Space Fleet officer, veteran of the Void Wars, former Earthling, and now a T'haran writer. The Western Limit Headquarters… All three of them were well-respected and had known the Valdez family for many years and Mark himself almost from the cradle. He tried to look at Tsendin and Nikolay Ilyich. He couldn't bring himself to meet Maria Quintana's gaze.
"So they're all dead," Alferov spoke, and his face, stern, showing signs of emaciation, grew even surlier. "Thousands of people, a cruiser, three frigates, fighters… How could this have happened, Lieutenant? In my day…" He waved his hand. "Forget my day! We haven't known a defeat like that in two hundred years!"
"It was believed that there was only one clan here," Mark said hoarsely. "We would've been able to handle it!"
"One clan…" Tsendin shook his head. "One on T'har, and more on Ro'on and Aezat. We don't know how many, but four or five times more than what your superiors thought. They should've sent an entire fleet!"
Silence fell. Tsendin, whose ancestors had been either Mongols or Buryats, was squinting his narrow eyes and drumming his fingers on the table. Alferov, a tall gaunt elderly man, was sitting deep in thought, staring at the light sphere hovering by the ceiling, possibly remembering his past battles and friends he'd lost there. Maria Quintana's face paled, her lips went dry; it seemed she wanted to ask something but couldn't bring herself to do it. Clenching his fists, Mark thought that there was nothing to do but tell her.
"Many of our people were in that expedition," he said. "Hundreds upon hundreds, from T'har, Ro'on, and Aezat… We hoped to save our loved ones…"
His voice froze.
Quintana finally resolved to ask, "Don't hide your eyes, boy, don't hide them! Tell me who! Gonzalo? Pablo, Juan? Or Chiquita?"
Gonzalo was her husband, Pablo and Juan were her sons, and Chiquita was her daughter. Lieutenant Junior Grade Chiquita Quintana, turret gunner on the frigate Diomedes…
"Chiquita," Mark managed to say.
Maria swayed. She was a strong woman and never showed her tears to anyone, only whispered something in Spanish. "Mi corazón…" Mark made out, "hija, luz de mis ojos…" Tsendin and Alferov silently bowed their heads.
"You still aren't looking at me," Maria said. "Who else?"
"Juan. Eight months ago, in the Alpha Leonis system."
"Juanito, my Juanito…" For a moment, she covered her face with her broad hands. "Half of my family…"
"Hold on, Maria," Tsendin said and stroked her shoulder, "hold on. Focus on the fact that your husband is alive, and so is Pablo, which means you'll have grandchildren, and your line will continue, and–"
"Trying to console me?" Quintana roared. "Don't bother! My ancestors fought and died in the Void, so I'm used to it! We…" She suddenly sobbed and whispered quietly. "Sorry… I'm sorry, Kirk… I didn't mean to offend you."
Alferov splashed some clo onto the stone floor.
"To our dead and all those who have fallen in battle… May the Lords of Emptiness be merciful to them!"
It was the traditional farewell saying in the Fleet. Although, neither humans, nor the Dromi, not any other race knew who these Lords of Emptiness were: possibly the ancient Daskins or some other mysterious beings left by the Daskins to watch over the galaxy. If they were no myth, Mark thought, then they were doing a poor job. But, maybe, all these wars were no more than convulsions to the Lords, the kind that accompanied the birth of new galactic civilizations? No one knew for certain.
Maria Quintana's face grew dispassionate. Glancing at her, Alferov spoke, "Let's get back to our situation. Your sister and Maya are saying interesting things, I mean your interpretation of that event with the exiling of the kids." He threw a glance at Tsendin. "I guess I was right, Kirk. Not mercy, not a wish to establish contact, and not even an act of intimidation… They were just acting within the limits of their logic. Our children for them are… how do you call this Dromi category, Mark?.. Halla?.."
"Hallaha. Literally means 'brainless.' If that term is applied to the Named Ones and those of the higher castes, then it carries an offensive meaning."
Alferov's gray eyebrows shot up, "Really? The Fleet knows even details like that?"
Mark shrugged, "That's not details, elder. All we know is what the Lo'ona Aeo mercenaries and the Dromi from Danwait and Tintakh tell us, and there's not much that can be squeeze out of that. Those peaceful Dromi haven't contacted the other clans for a good two hundred years… So our data is extremely vague."
"But there is some information about the toads," Tsendin said. "Considering how little we know about them, you're a priceless consultant to us."
"I've heard that before." Mark grimaced. "I hope you're not going to hide me away in some safe corner? I am a marine officer, after all!"
"We won't," the engineer chuckled. "And now tell us where and how you got your information on the Dromi. How reliable is it?"
Mark opened his mouth to speak, but Alferov headed him off, "The Fleet trains its officers, Kirk. Especially the marines, who, on occasion, fight the enemy in close combat. So everything that in our lieutenant's head matches the knowledge of the Dromi in the Secret Service archives. Not everything reaches the ranks, but what they do hear is the data that has been meticulously selected and repeatedly verified. Am I right?"
"You are, Nikolay Ilyuch." Mark nodded.
"Then you can help us with our problems," Maria Quintana said. Only her unnatural paleness and the feverishly clenched fingers reminded of the grief that had stricken her.
"Do they exist, elder? I assumed that you were waiting for help from the Federation. Until then, you keep scouts in the Inhabited Belt, in the cities, and near Dromi bases, observe them, and, when you can, deal with small groups. That's what Pierre Graver told me."
"Maybe they're waiting for help from the Federation on Ro'on," Quintana spoke. "A warm climate and an excess of oxygen relax people, which is why they sit there, wait, and try to avoid the Dromi. But this is T'har, young man."
"This is T'har," Tsendin confirmed, "and we intend to fight. We have six thousand fighters in Nickel and five thousand in Northern. All of them, from fourteen to eighty years old, will carry weapons. But we don't have a lot of weapons, and that is our first problem."
"We can't punch through force screens without powerful emitters," Alferov added. "For the most part, son, we just have needle guns and firearms, hunting gear. We have very few military-grade throwers."
"This problem can be resolved," Mark said. "T'har has an Arsenal. You can find more than just throwers there."
Alferov, amazed, stared at him for a moment, then slapped himself on the forehead, "Damn this old pepper-box! Of course, there's an Arsenal! There has to be one! We were a border world during the wars with the Faata! Do you know where it is? Can you find it?"
"The Arsenal is somewhere near the North Pole, elder, by the Polar Mines. From here, it's four thousand kilometers down the Naked Wasteland," Mark explained. "We can reach it on crawlers in five or six days."
"Somewhere by the pole…" Quintana frowned. "Can you be more specific?"
"The Arsenal has a beacon that emits a signal with coded coordinates. A clever device! Besides the coordinates, it also tells the time and frequency of the next pulse. I am detecting these transmissions, there is a receiver in my helmet."
"We'll send people there. Immediately!" Tsendin livened.
Mark shook his head, "You won't get into the Arsenal without me. It's protected, humans will be barred, and aliens will be vaporized. Only I, a Fleet officer, have access. I have an identification implant right here," he touched his temple. "I will enter and disengage the defenses. There should be robots and transport and combat vehicles. The robots will load them up, so you won't need a lot of people."
"What type of robots, Lieutenant?" Alferov asked in a businesslike manner.
"I figure Mark 4 or 5 UCRs [Universal Combat Robot.]. Century-old weapons, but they're reliable."
"When can you leave?"
"As early as tomorrow. But I would recommend going by air. Do you have a flyer?"
"We have flyers, but the observation from orbit–" Tsendin started, but Mark interrupted him.
"Forgive me, elder… The Dromi would have a hard time tracking aerial targets from orbit, since our squadron managed to vaporize their satellite. Of course, they did start mass fly-overs of their atmospheric craft… They were following Santiago's crawler."
"Yes, we know. We received birds with messages from almost all posts," Alferov noted. "They're reporting increased Dromi activity. I think the attack of your squadron put them on alert, and now they're trying to find and eliminate all centers of resistance."
"But they don't fly far north." Activating the projector, Tsendin called up the map of the continent. "We've seen them over the Western Wind Highlands and between the Andalusian Mountains and the Chaos. But not a single case beyond the Chaos and, especially, over the Wasteland. They must think that the area is uninhabitable."
The HQ members exchanged glances. Then Alferov said, "I think we can risk it. What kind of flyer do you need?"
"Medium-sized, for six people. I will choose the crew myself. I need people with experience working with robots. I went to college with Ivan Pospelov… Is he alive?"
"Yes. He became a cyberneticist. He…" Maria Quintana suddenly made a long face and fell silent.
"Then you leave tomorrow. Better do it at night," Tsendin spoke quickly, glancing at the woman. "You can reach it in four hours by flyer."
Something wrong with Ivan?.. Mark thought. Detecting the alarming pulses coming from the engineer and Alferov, he froze for a second, trying to figure out what was the problem, but they seemed to be worrying about Maria rather than Ivan. She remembered something when he mentioned Pospelov… What? Her mental field was dark and gloomy, like the nightly Void. He was unable to figure it out.
"Our weapons problem is solved," Nikolay Ilyich said. "But that's just one, and there is another. Pierre told you correctly: until now, we've been giving the Dromi tiny pinches here and there and spent more time hiding than fighting. But if we go on the offensive, there could be trouble. Big, big trouble! They have our people, Lieutenant… What's going to happen to them?"
Mark fell into thought, trying to remember what his instructors had told him. During the clashes at the border of the Lo'ona Aeo sector, no one had taken prisoners; at least, neither Father, nor Cro, and not Uncle Atigem had told him about that. There were also no such precedents in the more large-scale military engagements that had been going on for four years now. Neither side had yet to land marines on each other's planets, limiting itself to assaults on space stations and other similar defensive sites. As for space battles, they continued until one side was completely destroyed, as it was technically impossible to capture a Dromi ship or a human cruiser by capturing some of the crew, since this triggered a self-destruct mechanism. The Dromi, by the way, had never attempted to do that yet, either unwilling to die in the explosion or because there simply had not been a good opportunity. But the tactic of capturing a vessel in open space or simply boarding it was not something strange or unusual; that was what they had done during their pirate attacks on Lonchak caravans. Then again, there had been no living beings on the trade ships, or, at least, living beings in the fullest meaning of the term. Zantoo's transport, of which Chief Lightwater had told Mark, had been an exception; in all other cases, the ships were controlled by Servs, and they were the ones who conducted trading operations. If the Dromi attacks had been successful, all the Servs were destroyed, just like all the Patrolmen who could not protect the caravan.
"I think you're mistaken in viewing the prisoners as hostages," Mark spoke finally. "The Dromi don't have such concepts, as well as the concepts of revenge, acts of intimidation, and so on. You've exterminated hundreds of Sinn-ko, dozens of Elders-with-Spot, but the progenitor hasn't touched the prisoners. Or is there information on mass reprisals?"
"No," Alferov said, "there have been no such messages from our scouts. There are killings, but for other reasons; the Dromi destroy anyone who can't work."
"This is within the framework of their logic. They, or rather, their overlords, are rational beings. They need the prisoners not for reprisal for the killed Dromi, whose value is small, but to build. If there was a worker clan here, they would've exterminated all the T'harans."
"A worker clan?" Tsendin asked.
"They've never had anything similar to Earth's peoples or races," Mark explained. "At least, that's how the instructors from the Fleet's Scientific Corps explained it. Their clan is a specialized community of descendants of the oldest of them, their Zong-er-zong, the Patriarch progenitor. There are warrior clans, there are worker, engineering, food producing clans, and so forth. These are very numerous, each of them has hundreds of thousands of beings. But there are small clans, whose task is to rule their empire, to keep the memory of their past, and to make predictions for the future. Politicians, psychologists, historians… Most of their Patriarchs are members of the Elder Council and–"
"Let's leave out the details," Alferov spoke. "So they don't have a worker clan here." He rubbed his chin with a thoughtful expression. "Why not?"
"No idea," Mark admitted. "If I understand you correctly, you want to free the prisoners?"
"Of course. Attack their base at Western Port and take our people to Northern or Nickel. There's enough space for everyone. We're a little short on food, though, but we'll think of something."
"There's food in the Arsenal, as well as transportation, like I said. Here is my question: eleven thousand not very experienced fighters can't defeat the Dromi. A warrior clan has twenty to thirty times as many soldiers, plus hundreds of vehicles, both ground and aerial, plus ships in orbit, not to mention the help that can be sent from Ro'on. They'll grind us into dust."
Tsendin frowned, "You said that there were robots in the Arsenal… what did you call them… UCRs?"
"They'll grind us along with the UCRs," Mark answered. "I don't know how many of them are there, but probably no more than two hundred units. We'll lose in an open battle. We need to think of something else."
"Any thoughts on that, my young strategist?" Alferov said with a chuckle.
"Maybe. I need to consult my father."
"Your father is far away, and I'm not entirely sure…" Tsendin started and broke off.
Maria Quintana elbowed him and whispered, "He's a Valdez… Don't forget that, Kirk."
Tense silence fell. It continued, until Alferov sighed and said, "Go consult, Lieutenant, consult and think. And now, isn't it time we parted? It's time for the evening meal… Go, Mark, eat and choose those with whom you'll fly north. Some of your friends were lucky and survived… Ivan Pospelov, Claude Sharon, and others… They'll be happy to see you."
But Mark didn't go to eat dinner, deciding to head to the surface. The elevator took him to a spacious cave with crawlers and flyers standing there, a wall slid, disguised as part of the mountainside on the other end, and a beam of the dim evening sun pricked his eyes. The wild mountain landscape lay before him: the peaks of the T'haran Urals were fading in the distance, not as unassailable and high as the Andalusian Ridge, but still reaching eight hundred, or even a thousand meters; the snake-like faults and canyons, filled with gray shadows, seemed to be a spider web, wrapping the foothills and the slopes of the mountains; the dark-violet sky loomed over them, and the Naked Wasteland stretched to the north, a gigantic rocky plateau, reaching to the polar portion of the landmass and the pole itself. No signs of civilization around him; all the roads and pads, where orbital shuttles used to land to pick up loads of metal, had been covered by crushed stone, and all the surface structures had been destroyed and their remains also hidden under the fallen rocks. No roads, no trails, no bore pits, no piles of barren rock… Only a driver used to the area knew how to take his crawler between the basalt boulders and where the gate into the cave would slide open before the vehicle.
The mines of Nickel, as well Northern and Polar Mines, which were not yet under development, had been inherited by humans from the Bino Faata. In 2125, Commodore Vrba's squadron had pushed them out of the Far Worlds, and a stream of settlers rushed to Ro'on, which had a climate similar to Earth's. But T'har hadn't been forgotten either: the Fleet and the human scientists wanted to know what the Faata had found on this barren and cold world. It had turned out that the bowels of its enormous landmass were full of treasures; gems, marble, and ornamental stones were only a tiny part of them, while the depths had ores of rare earth metals, valuable raw materials that could not even be found in the Asteroid Belt. The shafts, dug by the Faata, went almost five hundred meters deep, but, within a century, mining machines had deepened it by another few kilometers, revealing several natural caverns, underground rivers and lakes, and rich lodes. Now, Nickel and Northern were like two dwarven kingdoms, the western and the eastern; the mountains were pockmarked with passages and elevator shafts, enrichment facilities and smelters had been set up in the caverns, and, closer to the surface, comfortable living spaces and technological control centers had been built. The output had not been that great, only a few hundred tons per year, but it had been made up of the most valuable production: europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, and other unique lanthanide metals. Besides that, they had smelted nickel, copper, lead, osmium, iridium, gold, and platinum in amounts that covered the needs of T'har and Ro'on. The development had been automated, of course; robots and mining machines had been digging underground, and the computer monitored ore enrichment, its separation into components, and the smelting, so the staff in Nickel and Northern had been small, two dozen engineers and technicians each.
Like the former Faata owners, they had lived underground. For the Faata, this type of settlement was commonplace after the Second Eclipse, a devastating cataclysm that had nearly wiped out their species. The destruction of the huge cities on their homeworld had been followed by revolts and food riots, fighting for shelter, and general savagery; it was easier to defend and control the population of underground cities, forcing them to submit to the will of the higher caste, which the Faata called the Fully Sentient. Humans were not too fond of living underground, but their predecessors had done their best, building a cave town with ceilings covered in light-emitting plastic and a power plant with a Limbo generator. Now, all these spaces, even the gym with the pool, were filled with children. The adults were making do on the lower levels, in the old mining tunnels and shafts, hastily refitted for habitation.
Mark had visited Nickel two or three times in his younger days, but the school field trips had not gone down into the deepest areas. Even now he did not have time to see even a tiny part of the complex: Santiago had picked him and Maya up at dawn, and they reached Nickel in four hours, where he was immediately called into the headquarters. He didn't even know where he would spend the coming night. Well, Maya and Xenia would probably take care of that…
Thinking of Maya, Mark smiled, sat by the rock that covered the entrance to the cave, and thought that Mother and Father would approve of his choice. Especially Father; he had said that he needed to live at least until he was a hundred and see if his children had inherited the Valdez Curse. The curse involved the fact that all members of their family had had unnaturally long lives, if they didn't die in accidents, but children were born late, usually caused by the males. Mark had been born after his parents had lived together for seventeen or eighteen years, and that seemed very surprising, since young couples on T'har never had issues with producing offspring. When he grew up, Father, smiling mysteriously, had told him his family legends, his bloodline's genealogy; Father's brothers and sisters, whom Mark had met on Earth, had spoken of the same thing. From their words, it seemed that there was Faata blood flowing in Valdez veins; since the Faata lived for centuries, the Valdez men matured late in their lives, closer to fifty or sixty. An amazing story! Mark didn't know whether to believe it or not.
He was sitting on the stone, remembering these strange legends, looking at the sunset, and smiling. Then his face grew sterner; he started reflecting on the attack on the Dromi, on the guerilla war, and the plans of the HQ. There was something that he hadn't told Maria, Kirk, or Nikolay Ilyich, not regarding the greenskins or the situation on T'har, but regarding him, Mark Valdez, personally. He was a lieutenant and a Hawk pilot, a rank-and-file marine; he did not command people, or a ship, or even a group of four UFs. A regular soldier, not a tactician and not a strategist… Someday, perhaps, he would become a leader like Father, a commodore or an admiral, would get promotions, experience, and awards, everything that came with the years and allowed him to bear the heavy burden of responsibility on his shoulders. But now, all he knew was what he had been taught in the Fleet and at the Academy; he could also fly, shoot, and obey his superiors' orders. Not much for the role of the savior of T'har and its people! There were, of course, other sources of knowledge, the tales told by Atigem, Father, and Cro Lightwater. They had fought the Dromi long before his birth, clashed with them on the magical beyri ships, which had fantastic capabilities, captured space citadels, made plans along with the all-knowing Servs, the servants of the Lo'ona Aeo… Maybe he would remember something? A trick of some sort or a right move that would ensure victory? That was what he had meant when he said he needed to consult his father… just that, nothing mystical, not a shred of telepathy… Where was New Hellas and where was T'har!? It was doubtful Father would be reachable for a psychic link…
His eyes closed. Almost imperceptibly, he was floating away into a deep trance, where there was no time, no space, no great distances, where the stars of the galaxy did not shine, the planets did not spin, the ships did not fly, and only the gray fog of oblivion undulated. He was like a gnat in the enormous clouds, which didn't seem to have a beginning or an end, but this, strangely, did not appear to scare Mark. He knew with a certainty that the gray mist held the answers to all of his questions; all he needed to do was open his consciousness and touch another mind, distant, but friendly and wise. Maybe it would be his father, or someone with even greater wisdom and strength; either way, he would receive advice, an important hint, and, which was a remote possibility, quick aid. His certainty in this kept growing, until he heard a voice, or rather he sensed it, like a dolphin sensed the reflected wave of its natural sonar. The pulse he'd sent was a question, the reflected wave was an answer, and, even though Mark did not immediately realize what happened, the thought that had come from the outside, settled in his memories like golden glitter. This was followed by the rustling of the sliding rock, and someone's hands touched his shoulders.
Mark jerked, inhaled deeply, and opened his eyes.
Admiral Valdez was standing on the bridge of the cruiser, in the pilot room, looking at the enormous screens. His ships were floating through them, the huge cylinders of the cruisers in gleaming armor, the thin silver arrows of the frigates, and the cargo transports that looked like flattened turtles, packed in a ribbed shell. Rising over the ecliptic, the flotilla was moving towards the Oort cloud [The Oort cloud is an area at the periphery of the Solar System, made up of pieces of protoplanetary material, which, when approaching the Sun, produces comets. Similar formations exist in other star systems. Usually, they are located at a distance of a hundred or more astronomical units from the primary. (An astronomical unit is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun)], where they were to conduct training exercises and war games. Valdez wanted to find out in practice what sort of reinforcements he had been sent. The Pallas-class cruisers were magnificent, but would their crews be able to fully utilize their overwhelming might?.. This needed to be tested.
The hatch of the grav-lift opened with a quiet rustling. Cro Lightwater, the emissary of the Secret Service, entered the pilot room, a large hemispherical chamber, where pilots and navigators stood watch over their consoles. With the permission to be in any of the cruiser's compartments, he did not abuse his privileges and tries to remain unobtrusive. But this time, Chief Lightwater was walking straight to the ramp leading onto the bridge, and he had a strange look on his face, either alarmed or triumphant. Something must have happened, Valdez realized.
"Sorry for getting in the way, Admiral," Cro said, stepping onto the bridge's sickle-shaped ledge. "Mark, your son… He contacted me, can you imagine that!?"
Valdez's cheek twitched. It was difficult to imagine something like that; T'har was separated from New Hellas by hundreds of parsecs. He himself wouldn't be able to send a psychic pulse at this distance without Lightwater's help. His Metamorph friend had a natural gift for telepathic communication.
"Mark?" he repeated with a trembling voice. "Are you sure, Cro?"
"Completely. The boy definitely has talent! He was looking for you or me… Looking purposefully!" Lightwater, normally imperturbable, was glowing like an admiral's golden chevron. Nothing bad had happened, Valdez realized with relief.
"Is there a reason for happiness, my friend?"
"Not sure. But there definitely is one for discussion."
"Is that urgent?"
"No. Mark asked, and I answered… But there was interesting information in his question. When are you free, Admiral?"
Valdez glanced at the timer glowing on his wrist.
"We'll set course in eighteen minutes. I'll await you in my cabin."
Lightwater nodded and turned to the ramp, speaking over his shoulder, "There may be other news waiting for you, Sergey. Looks like it's a lucky day."
"There you are! We've been looking for you!"
Mark raised his head. Two girly faces were bent over him. Gray eyes, black eyes… so different, but both equally dear to him…
"I was thinking. I'm heading north tomorrow. Are you coming with me?"
"Of course," Maya spoke. Xenia added, "We won't let you go otherwise."
Where they were going, why they were going, no questions… With you, to the edge of the galaxy, Maya's eyes said…
"Let's go!" Xenia pulled him back into the cave. "Everyone already knows you're here. They want to see you."
They went down to the first tier. The hallway was moving in whimsical curves here, following a vein that had once been mined out. There were wide arches in the walls, spacious chambers could be seen through them, not round, not oval or rectangular, but shapeless, with walls smoothly transitioning into an eternally-glowing ceiling. The Faata had cut them through the rock three or four hundred years ago, and, as Mark recalled, who was here on a field trip, these spaces had been empty once. But now, some of them held long troughs of hydroponic equipment with hoses connected to it, and others contained refrigerators and cabinets for sublimation drying, and yet others were filled with clucking chickens on multi-tiered racks, and everywhere, despite the late hour, people, mostly teenagers and women, were bustling about. These underground farms, as well as hunters, were feeding Nickel, twenty-plus thousand people, most of whom were children, rescued from the cities of the Western Limit, and those who had been exiled by the Dromi. Mark's heart sank. Including the prisoners and the people living in Northern, T'har's current population was now less than a quarter of what it had been before. And, any day, at any moment, his people could be wiped out for good.
That advice that he had been given by… Father?.. Chief Lightwater?.. or, maybe, the Lords of Emptiness themselves?.. It didn't matter!.. The important thing was that the advice was good. Not enough to guarantee victory, the destruction of the toads' warrior clan, and the liberation of the prisoners, of course. But there was hope, however; if the T'haran scouts, who had been watching Ho for the past two years, were to put together a plan, even a rough one, which structure held the prisoners, where the combat vehicle hangars were, where the shield emitters were, and, most importantly, which hole hid the progenitor. There was no way to succeed without this plan, Mark thought, descending to the second tier.
Unlike the first tier, silence and gloom reigned here, occasionally broken by sniffling and sobbing. This level had been made by humans, and the hallway was straight here, while the walls had alcoves with regular doors made of colorful or transparent plastic, depending on what was behind the door: a personal compartment or a public area, a gym, a cafeteria, a medical unit, a library, a laboratory, or a control center. All these halls, compartments, rooms, and cubbyholes were filled with beds or, where there were not enough of them, covered in thick grass-woven mats, and children were sleeping everywhere. Some were really small, two or three years old, some were older, about twelve. Gaunt faces, thin fingers, blue shadows under their eyes, the pale skin of people living in catacombs… In the gym, where about three hundred younger students were gathered, there was a slogan on the wall, scribbled by a child's uncertain hand: "T'harans don't cry, T'harans avenge!"
"Our hope," Mark heard his sister's voice behind him. "Almost all of them orphans, but if every family takes in two or three…"
"There are no more families," Maya said quietly. "Only splinters are left…"
"Then there will be!" Xenia suddenly stopped, threw up her clenched fist and declared, "I swear! I swear on the Great Emptiness and T'har's sun! When the Federation Fleet comes here, I will get married immediately! I'll take in three of these kids and give birth to three more!"
"Married," Mark muttered, "getting married isn't easy, it's customary to consult your older brother. Are there suitable candidates, sister?"
"Not yet, brother, but there will be with the Fleet. I'll find a cute lieutenant like you. You'll see!"
She glanced at Maya, and that gaze was as transparent as crystal: and you, girl, don't even have to search!
They went even further down the stairs with stone steps, to the levels where adults were nestling in the old mining tunnels and passages. Semicircular grav-lift cars were sticking out of the walls, which could be used to go two kilometers down, balls of light were glowing in straight broad hallways, which had once been cut through by the mining units, entrances to the living areas were cordoned off with mats or sheets of plastic, pumps were rustling, pulling in water from the wells, and crowds of people kept on flowing. Some were heading to the sanitation unit with the bathrooms and the showers, some moved to a cafeteria or a kitchen for a meager ration, some were walking to the sleeping tunnels for some rest, and some were leaving for the surface to hunt or keep watch, carrying needle guns and beat-up throwers. Kids and women, seniors, and the very elderly… But Mark was not deceived by that; T'harans matured early, grew decrepit late, and were a stubborn and stern people.
There were familiar faces in the crowd, but they didn't appear to recognize Mark. When one was young, nine years was a long time; he had changed, grown into a man, and no longer looked like a boy. He now looked more like his father, dark-haired, tan-skinned, with rugged features; meanwhile, Xenia was a copy of her mother, up to and including the freckles on her nose.
"Here," Maya said. "This is the second cafeteria, for those from Kitezh, Ibáñez, and Cuba."
They turned into a passage with hundreds of tables near the walls. The tables, stools, chairs, and benches were all different, made of plastic, wood, or metal, sometimes extremely simple, with legs made of pipes, occasionally decorated with intricate carvings. Apparently, they had been gathered in the city ruins for a while and taken here, along with other non-matching furniture. The mines of Nickel could have held not only thousands but tens of thousands, the entirety of T'har's former population, but the trouble had struck suddenly; the mines were not adapted to serve as a shelter.
"Mark!" he heard someone shout. "It's Mark, guys!"
He was immediately surrounded by young men and women, seven in total, those who'd gone to college with him. There had been sixty-three students in the three senior groups, and half of them now served in the Fleet. Where are the rest?.. he thought with bitterness, peering into the emaciated faces, hugging the grown-up girls and shaking the guys' hands. Among them were Katya Pozdnyakova, the thin and fragile Dolores Key, Ivan Pospelov, Claude Sharon, who had grown a beard, Rita Celli, Georgy Tkhelava, and Martha Robinson. That was it! Seven of his friends, who had survived the bloody hard times.
He, Maya, and Xenia were taken deep into the passage. The people of Ibáñez eating here recognized Mark, most of them being elderly; he was walking in the hum of greetings, occasionally bending down to exchange kisses with women, whose names he no longer remembered, but knew for sure that this cute brunette was his mother's friend from Madrid Avenue, and that sharp-nosed lady was the director of the library. Finally, he sat at a table, sipped a cup of hot clo, swallowed a few spoonfuls of boiled moss with chunks of meat, and started talking. He spoke of the same things he had told Pierre Graver and his scouts: of the arguments in the Federation Parliament, of the new powerful cruisers, of the battles at Alpha Leonis and Betelgeuse, of a fight in a nebula of an ancient star, a monstrous red giant, of Earth and Mars, Gondwana, Baal, the Centauri planets, and the other worlds, settled by billions of fellow humans, who had scattered among the stars. These tales continued for an hour, then another, until the balls of light under the passage ceiling started to dim, and Mark's tongue started getting tied. At some point, he noticed that his listeners were leaving, and only Maya, Xenia, and Ivan Pospelov remained next to him.
"Time for bed, brother," Xenia said. "We're leaving tomorrow."
Ivan fidgeted in his chair, then cleared his throat, "I wanted to ask… Among our people in the Fleet, have you met a girl from Ibáñez named Chiquita Quintana? She and I…"
He didn't finish, gritting his teeth, understanding everything from Mark's facial expression. Rising, he touched his friend's shoulder; a mental wave of grief rolled up and vanished, like the last ray of a dying star. I've come home a dark herald, Mark thought. He turned around at the exit. Ivan was sitting at the table, hunched over, and his eyes were dead.
Xenia and Maya were silent, while they were walking along the now-empty hallways, turning from one passage into another, descending down tilted ramps deeper and deeper into the world, where peace, quiet, and dreams reigned. Finally, Xenia stopped, slid a plastic divider, and said, "This is me."
In the dim light of the hovering ball, Mark made out a room with dozens of trestle beds and women sleeping in them. The picture passed like a mirage; the divider slid closed, cutting off his sister's figure, and he and Maya were alone.
"You…" Mark started, but the girl pulled him farther.
"Let's go! And, please, don't ask anything!"
She took him to a small nook, also separated by a sheet of plastic. The floor here was covered by a thick rug, and there was a real bed with a carved headboard, figures of stork-like birds, and a small table with a vase by the bedhead, which had a branch of the local flowering shrub sticking out of it. All this appeared to have been prepared in advance; Mark's helmet, backpack, and weapon were lying next to the vase. Looking around, he muttered in a daze, "Cozy, even nice! I've been given a great honor…"
"Not you, we," Maya said and pulled down her jumpsuit zipper. "These chambers are for newlyweds, honey. This is where we're going to live."
"For how long?" Mark asked and received a reply, "Until another couple shows up."
Late at night, breathless in his arms, she whispered, "Mine, mine! Now I'm never letting you go, ever! My love!"
A person was free, Mark thought, kissing her eyes and lips, but even freedom had its limits. It was constrained by love, which gave one the right to control the fates of others and, in return, trusted them with one's own life. This link was far stronger than the bond of duty, stronger than all other obligations, for all of them stood on the foundation of love, rooted in it, nourished by its juices. Love for one's home and homeland, love for one's children, everything was born here, in the passion that burned a man and a woman, and that was humanity's strength. A great gift given to Earth! And terrible to its enemies…
"Don't think, don't think that I won't let you go," Maya whispered, "I know that you will leave, that you must leave, but you'll still be with me… I will remember… I'll remember the days you spent in the resuscitator, remember how the Dromi were chasing us, remember the night by Vinge Falls and this one too, which means that you will be next to me… And I will feel when you think of me… I know, I know! Xenia said…"
"Xenia said…" Mark repeated, holding her naked shoulders. "They say different things about our family, my darling. That doesn't disturb you?"
She laughed, "No! Oh, no! Everyone has their oddities, my love."
"This is more than just oddities. My father told me…" Mark paused, then asked, "Do you know the history of the Invasion?"
"Yes, of course. At the end of the twenty-first century, a Faata starship appeared in the Solar System and attacked Earth. It was destroyed, right?"
"Not exactly. Its crew and battle modules were destroyed, but the ship itself, as big as a mountain, still stands where it landed, in the Antarctic by the South Pole. I've seen it. The polar region has been declared a preserve; people fly there on tours."
Maya continued to smile, "And what's so odd about that, my lieutenant?"
"In that, my T'haran, nothing. There is another story, and this is the odd one, and also brutal and sad. Before the starship reached Earth, there were battles in space and prisoners taken by the Faata. I don't know how many… only a few, I think, three or four… Among them was a young woman, an officer from the cruiser Lark. The Faata subjected her to artificial insemination. To them, it's the normal way of producing offspring."
Maya's smile faded, and wrinkles cut through her forehead. Mark felt her shudder.
"Why? Why did they do that? With a human woman… What was the point?"
"Father said that they wanted to test the compatibility of our genotypes, since they needed a hybrid race of servants or slaves. It's known that humans and the Faata have a similar physiology and a near-identical metabolism. People don't like to mention that, since they were and remain our enemies, and look more like us than any other humanoid race. So," Mark lowered his voice, "the experiment with that female officer was successful. No, this was a poor choice of words… it's hard to call captivity and violation a success… Anyway, she was freed after the Faata had been exterminated, and, at the appropriate time, she gave birth. To a boy. You've heard about him, my dove. His name was Paul Corcoran."
A sigh of astonishment escaped Maya. In the Far Worlds, on Ro'on, T'har, and Aezat, Paul Corcoran was considered a national hero; in his younger days, he had taken part in the expedition that pushed the Faata out of the Gamma and Beta Malleus systems, during the First Void War, he had commanded the Frontier Fleet, defending the Far Worlds, and died during the Second War, when the Faata had been trying to land troops on T'har. A century and a half had passed since that time, but he was remembered and honored.
"Are you saying," Maya's eyes opened wide, "that Admiral Corcoran was half-Faata?"
"Yes. And also my ancestor on my father's side. One of his daughters married Inigo Valdez, my great-grandfather."
The girl's face took on a thoughtful expression. She touched Mark's chest and the tiny scar, where the implant had been placed, with her finger, then moved away, and looked into his eyes.
"Are you trying to scare me?"
"Not even close." Mark pulled her in and whispered into her tiny ear. "You, my T'haran, are not a fling, you're going to be the mother of my children and should now that there will also be Faata blood in their veins. A drop, just a drop, but who knows how it will show itself? Xenia and I… Well, you know about our oddities. Young girls, I mean my sister, can't keep secrets."
Maya pursed her lips.
"I feel that I'm headed for a difficult life! But I agree, as long as you don't listen to what I'm thinking. Well, not too often. Sometimes… like now… I wouldn't mind it."
"I swear!" Mark said in all seriousness. "But you don't have to worry; I'm not actually a telepath and can't read minds. I…" He wanted to say that his gift was more modest, mere empathy, but then he remembered his trance at the cave's threshold, of the question he had asked and the answer he received. This could hardly be explained with empathy.
"We're going to have to be careful with our children and nephews," Maya said with a concerned expression.
"Definitely with the nephews," Mark agreed. "Maybe we even have nephews that neither I nor Xenia know about. Not human at all… And this joy will also fall on you."
"It sounds like you haven't told me everything, my love." Maya grabbed a strand of his hair and jerked it. "Come on, confess!"
"I only have assumptions. Cro Lightwater, a friend of my father's, with whom he served on Danwait… Do you have any idea where Danwait is? It's a world in the Lo'ona Aeo sector, where mercenaries live… Cro didn't come right out and say anything, but I it seems to me that he didn't want me to remain in ignorance. I don't know why… maybe to prepare me for any surprises. He once let it slip that life was full of wonders, only people don't believe in them and don't wish to notice them…"
Mark sighed. The Chief's dispassionate features appeared in his mind's eye, and it seemed as if Cro was looking at him with approval, as if to say that, if there was someone to tell this to, it should be this girl. She would definitely not let a wonder pass her by! She had already found one, him, Mark Valdez, a descendant of the Faata!
He bent down to Maya, "Before my parents got married, my father had had an acquaintance with another woman… not technically a woman, my dove, not like my mother, or you, or Xenia… a Lo'ona Aeo female named Zantoo. I know this sounds incredible; after all, the Lo'ona Aeo may be beautiful and are similar to humans on the outside, but they are not humanoids… they have four sexes and a different method of reproduction… I know all that, but, it seems to me, that Xenia and I have an older brother or, maybe, a sister in one of their astroids. Can you believe in that, my dove?"
Maya shrugged and smiled, "Believe? Of course, honey! As Cro Lightwater, your father's friend, said, life is full of wonders… Why couldn't love have made this small miracle?"
