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 13

The Arsenal

There were five of them in the flyer: Mark, Ivan Pospelov, Maya and Xenia as guards, and Roy McCloskey, an old geological engineer from Nickel, who had been to the Polar Mines several times. Mark had decided not to bring a sixth person; instead of a human passenger, they took a mining robot with laser cutters, drilling millers, an x-ray camera, and other equipment. The Arsenal had not been opened for fifty years, if not an entire century, and no one could vouch for how well the shaft that led to the airlock chamber had preserved. Mark figured that, at best, they would have to cut a few boulders, and at worst, dig open the whole shaft, so the robot was more useful than a sixth member of the expedition.

The rations in his container had ended, so he had gone to the kitchen to Aunt Carmen, the former owner of Bilbao. Upon seeing Mark, she had squeezed him to her enormous bosom and, simultaneously laughing and crying, started saying that she, an old woman, was still alive, while the three girls, who were sitting in her establishment, had been burned alive with not a bone being left, and she had crawled under the counter and was trapped under debris, but the counter was strong and held, and the neighbors, those who had survived, dug her out and dragged her into the woods, even though her legs had been barely moving; they dragged her like a carcass, and kept saying that Ibáñez was not Ibáñez without Aunt Carmen and that they were rescuing the old and the young first, then stuffing her into a crawler. Having said all that, she had sniffled and asked if he had heard anything about her great-grandson Duero, who was serving on the frigate Admiral Venturi. But Mark knew nothing about him, either good or bad.

They had departed at night and reached the Polar Mines long before sunrise. Ivan was grim; he had stuck himself into a corner of the cargo compartment and kept silent the whole trip. Xenia sat close to him, started talking to him in a low voice, probably not consoling or pitying him, which could have insulted him, instead remembering aloud how brave and beautiful Chiquita had been. Ivan listened and, while he didn't say a word, his face was gradually lightening. My sister has a great talent, Mark thought, sensing the waves flowing from Xenia; it seemed she could use her empathic gift consciously.

He was piloting the flyer over the Naked Wasteland with some tension, at first, since the absence of a helmet and a mental link seemed unusual, but his confidence grew with each passing minute. He had flown such craft only as a boy, on T'har, but his experience as a pilot and his innate sense did not fail him; after half an hour, Mark's former skills had returned. He was flying between the dark ground and the dark sky, looking at the equipment and at the stream of dim stars, which were flowing near the horizon, and was remembering the hills and rocks, canyons and valleys, below him. The Mike Bierce Cliff, the Chloe Drew Canyon, the Nemchenko Crack, the Dominquez Scree, the Sargsyan Spring, the Colin Pasa Blockage… These and other notable places were usually named after the person who had visited them first or first put them on the planetary map. While the wasteland, rolling under the flyer, could have been considered naked, it still had a terrain, there was moss, lichen, and shrubs growing between the rocks and there was even life: stone devils came here in the summer, during the green month, to mate and lay eggs. Mark, who had been in these parts with his father, knew that this time was coming, and that the devils would be especially aggressive now. They were not pack animals, and, in any other season, each of them hunted on its own, but, during the mating season, the predators packed into large groups and wandered the Wasteland in tens of thousands. It was dangerous to bother them during this time, as the pack would continue attacking until it was completely destroyed.

Then again, the predators walking in the darkness below did not bother Mark; he was thinking of the advice he'd received yesterday and the psychic link with his father. It had to have been his father; who else could have given him the right suggestion? Kill the Patriarch! And the Big-Elders too, preferably, but the Patriarch was the primary target. Even second- and third-generation Dromi needed far stricter and firmer leadership than humans, especially a warrior clan during a military operation. If their top leader was taken out, it would result in chaos, and then it wouldn't matter how many toads there were per each human fighter, ten or a hundred. Mark realized that, in this case, chaos meant a lack of coordination and disorder in the enemy ranks, but not panic; his instructors had warned him that the Dromi did not succumb to fear and panic and fought to the end in any situation. Well, chaos will be enough, he thought; during the disorder, they might be able to cut up the field emitters, incinerate the hangars with their machines, blow up their launch silos, and arm the prisoners. Much could be done, but the important thing would be to send the Patriarch into the Great Emptiness! But where should they look for him? Mark didn't have the slightest idea about that, and neither did the Western Limit Headquarters.

This had been revealed in the morning, while talking to Alferov. There were no mountains or big hills near the Western Port, the Dromi primary base, so T'haran scouts could only observe the perimeter and the structures close to it. Aerial reconnaissance was suicide, there was no way to penetrate the force screens, and so they had been unable to come up with a detailed layout of Ho. They were, however, able to see certain things from ravines, the edge of the forest, and from the tops of the trees: the line of the poles with force field emitters, the edge of the spaceport, where the prisoners were working, large squat towers, where they were being herded each night, and a few other structures, both residential and industrial. Raw materials were being transported from the forest, after ripping out pines and spruces with their roots, to four ribbed towers, connected by tubes; the stench, coming from this complex, was sometimes revolting and other times quite tolerable. The scouts had decided that this had to be the place where fiber was being processed into food concentrate for the Dromi and the prisoners. There were also a dozen heptagonal prisms in the visible area with flying craft taking off from them; through their binoculars, the scouts had made out multiple hatches on each face. That was all.

Not enough to look for the clan's progenitor among hundreds upon hundreds of structures on a territory of over thirty square kilometers! Mark was counting on finding ancient Owls [An Owl is a SAD, a small autonomous drone, a robotic craft with equipment for scanning in the optical, thermal, and radio bands. It has been used in the 22nd century and nicknamed "Owl" due to a pair of round antennae that open up on the sides of the forward part of the cylindrical hull.] in the Arsenal, which could be sent to conduct a reconnaissance flight; if the Dromi shot them down, it would be a minor loss. But if there didn't turn out to be any of them… He still had no idea what to do in that case.

The flyer's cabin was gloomy, only the radar and navigation screens were glowing. Mark was piloting the craft a few meters above the ground, occasionally hiding among cliffs or in a big enough crevice. Maya was sitting next to him, McCloskey was snoring behind them, and Xenia's quiet voice could be heard coming from the seats by the cargo compartment; she kept whispering, as if singing a long soothing song. Maybe she likes Ivan?.. a thought ran through Mark's mind. He would be glad to have a relative like that, but personal interest was absent in the mental pulses coming off his sister, only compassion and carefully concealed pity. She wanted to get a guy with the rank of, at the very least, a lieutenant from the Fleet, Mark recalled and smiled.

At around three in the morning, the navigator emitted a high-pitched beep, and the flyer, decelerating, froze over the rocky ground. Mark pulled the craft up higher and turned on the turreted spotlights. The accuracy of the coordinates was between fifty and a hundred meters, so this was the circle where they needed to search for the entrance to the Arsenal, which was probably well-hidden. A ridge of short bare cliffs was sliding past Mark in the bright spots of light, pockmarked with passages and caves, whose round maws seemed darker than the night sky. Strictly speaking, these were the Polar Mines, located not far from the pole. The Bino Faata had been getting rhenium, iridium, and platinum here, but human specialists thought that the deposits were poor in this area; of course, new veins might be found eventually.

"There's no way from the mines, young people," McCloskey said, awakening. "I've crawled through all these passages before you were even born, and x-rayed all the walls, floors, and ceilings. I was fairly romantic in my youth, looking for treasure or a secret Faata vault, but found only their skulls and bones… So I would suggest we examine the ground directly below us. I can tell you for sure that no one dug in these rocks and boulders."

"Should we use the robot in a spiral search pattern?" Mark asked.

"Of course. Land the craft, and let our metal beast of burden do its work. Ivan, hey, Ivan!"

"Yeah," Pospelov called out, and Mark, landing the flyer, noted that his voice, while not very happy, sounded more or less normal. Apparently, Xenia's psychotherapy had borne fruit.

"Let our cyber out. Have it do a spiral search one hundred meters in radius with the x-ray camera. I'll walk with it. A pair of extra eyes won't hurt."

"What search mode should I set?" Ivan asked.

"Have it look for regularly-shaped hollows… no, hollows of any shape! By the way, Mark, what should there be? A vertical shaft?"

"Could be anything: a shaft with a lift, a gravity well, a tilted passage, an airlock chamber right under the surface… I'm not familiar with the layout of old vaults and haven't even seen the new ones."

"Then you will," the geologist muttered, getting out. He was short and overweight but moved with a young man's agility, despite being in his eighties. Mark and the girls followed McCloskey. Ivan sent the robot out and started working his magic on the portable console. The mining cyber, a two-meter-long caterpillar with six limbs, extended the x-ray camera tubes out of its belly, aimed them down, and departed, circling the flyer in an expanding pattern. Screens flared to life on its sides, like two huge eyes, and glowed white, showing that there was nothing but rock underneath.

McCloskey was walking next to the robot, holding a geologist's hammer.

"I'm going with Roy. A devil might jump out of the darkness," Xenia said, touching Maya's shoulder. "You keep an eye on the boys."

Nodding, Maya pulled her needle gun out of its holster. It looked like the girls were taking their bodyguard duties seriously. Mark smiled, making sure they didn't notice it by covering his face with his hand. He was wearing his helmet, there was a powerful blaster and a laser whip in his belt, so anyone in their group could envy his gear, not to mention his marine training and reflexes. But the thought of Maya protecting and keeping him safe warmed his heart. He felt like he was a child again, when there was no man stronger than Father, no woman more caring than Mother, and both of them kept him safe. He had never thought that he would someday again experience this feeling of complete and total security.

The robot, the geologist, and Xenia, moving through the stone boulders and continuing to make circles in the light of the spotlights, had moved to about sixty meters away. The cyber occasionally emitted quiet signals, but McCloskey, who kept looking at one screen and then the other, only frowned and shook his head. Suddenly, he threw his hand up and stopped.

The screens were showing the black outlines of an odd-shaped crevice. The x-ray camera was showing it from two sides, the images differed slightly, but both looked similar to the first letter of the human alphabet.

"'A'," Mark said. "Looks like the lowercase letter 'a'."

"The word 'arsenal' starts with an 'a'," Xenia added.

"Exactly! The robot would never have noticed it," McCloskey said with a pleased look. "'Arsenal' comes from the Arabic 'dar as-sin'a', which means 'manufacturing shop', and starts with an 'a' in all Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages, as well as the modern Lingua. Besides, the word 'attention' starts with an 'a' in English, the language of my ancestors."

"How do you know that, elder?" Xenia asked respectfully.

"My interests aren't limited to looking for Faata treasures," McCloskey claimed, hit a stone with his hammer, and commanded the robot, "Push this boulder aside and cut a hole in the ground a meter and a half in diameter."

The cyber started working: it hid the x-ray camera tubes, extended the manipulators, moved the flyer-sized rock, and took its place. A thin beam came out of its belly, and the ground started smoking. The beam made a circle and started cutting precise rocky cones inside it; the manipulators were grabbing and throwing them aside.

"How deep is the crevice?" Mark inquired.

"About three meters, no more," the geologist said. "Well, if I'm not mistaken, my work here is done. It's up to you now."

Ivan and Maya approached them. The hole was already fairly deep, and the robot's flexible manipulators could no longer reach the bottom. It leaned over and stuck the forward part of its body into the opening. Rocks continued to fly out of there at a machinegun pace.

"This is one of the newer models," Ivan explained. "We got a shipment of these before the war started. At this size of the hole, it can move up to twelve meters per hour."

"So it must be almost there," McCloskey noted. "I've sent it to the approximate center of the letter 'a'."

Five-six minutes later, the robot produced a short beep and crawled out of the hole.

"Lower a manipulator in there," Ivan commanded.

Grabbing the flexible limb, Mark slid down and jumped off, hitting his heels on the rocky bottom. Cones of light hit from his helmet, showing a narrow passage with protrusions sticking out of the walls. The crack looked like a natural fault in the rock; it seemed as if neither the hand of man nor a robot's equipment touched these uneven walls and irregularly-shaped stones under his feet. The walls came to a sharp angle above him, the ceiling was cut through with the shaft made by the robot, and up there, several meters above him, Mark could see the faces of the girls, Ivan, and McCloskey.

"Well, what's there?" the geologist asked.

"Nothing interesting yet. Let me look around. Wait there."

Mark oriented himself and, squeezing himself through the narrow gap with some difficulty, headed for the top of the letter "a". He had to turn twice; his head, protected by the helmet, was fine, but he hurt his elbow and bruised his ribs. Finally, he found himself on a tiny spot, where he could barely fit his feet; a sharp stone was pressing under his shoulder blade, his knees were gripped as if in a vise. But he must have picked the right position; a red dot blinked on his faceplate.

"There is a request for identification," the helmet reported. "State your name."

"Lieutenant Mark Valdez, Earth Federation Space Fleet."

The words sounded muffled, as if he had been packed into a burial container. A second later, Mark felt a prick in his temple; the device, hidden in the walls somewhere, was reading the data from his equipment. Then he heard a monotonous voice that seemed to come from below, "Arsenal #7/315 greets you, Lieutenant Valdez. Do you wish to enter?"

"That would be nice," Mark muttered, trying to push away from the damned rock that was pressing against his back.

"I do not understand. Please state your intention clearly," came from underground.

"I wish it!" Mark roared, remembering the rules of communicating with older computers. "Yes, I wish to enter! As soon as possible!"

Something shifted under him. Some sort of heavy masses were moving apart and turning, revealing a passage; the ground under his feet was quivering, as if a trapped giant was turning in the depths of the planet. Then a slit opened below him, light flashed, and Mark, scraping his butt cheeks and back on the rocks, fell into a gravity well.

It turned out to be fairly spacious; he would have had to stretch out his arms to reach the smooth glowing walls. As he was slowly and smoothly descending, Mark thought that the girls and the lean Ivan could move around in the gap, but McCloskey with his belly would have a hard time doing that. Then again, there was probably a more convenient entrance and exit; no combat vehicle would fit in this shaft.

Reaching the bottom, Mark found himself in a small hemispherical chamber with an oval hatch. A red light was blinking above him, and a crimson dot was pulsing on his helmet's faceplate.

"Secondary identification," the Arsenal spoke. "You are targeted by lasers, Lieutenant Valdez. Name your personal code and the number of your unit. You have ten seconds."

Mark did that with great haste, cursing silently.

"The data matches the information in your implant," the Arsenal informed him. "Welcome, Lieutenant Valdez."

The red signal turned green, the hatch slid down, and Mark, stepping over the threshold, found himself in a large square hall. The air was musty here and smelled of metal and plastic, but then he felt a fresh breeze; apparently, the Arsenal had turned on the ventilation in the presence of a human. Constellations of lights were glowing on an enormous console at the far wall, wide, unlit hallways stretched to the left and to the right, while in the middle, next to some chairs and a long table, he saw a transparent glowing column of a grav-lift, which seemed to have been cast from the purest crystal. Glancing at it, Mark asked, "I assume that the entrance I used isn't the only one?"

"It is not. It is the maintenance tunnel number four. It is not meant for human personnel," he heard in reply.

"There are people on the surface, my companions, four individuals. Bring them here," Mark ordered. "I hope you have a main entrance?"

"There is a personnel entrance," the Arsenal answered, and the grav-lift glowed with a bright light. "There are also two hatches for ground vehicles, two for aerial vehicles, and sixteen maintenance tunnels. Which would you like me to activate?"

"The personnel lift and all hatches for ground and aerial vehicles," Mark spoke. "We're going into battle, my friend."

"That is gratifying to hear, Lieutenant Valdez," the Arsenal informed him, and the grav-lift's crystal car smoothly went up. "This cybernetic device has been waiting for this for one hundred forty-one years, two months, and eighteen days. Do you wish to know the time period down to the hour, minute, and second?"

"No. Down to days is enough." Mark looked over the spacious chamber and the wide entrances to six hallways, three on each side. "So you must have been built during the Second Void War?"

"That is correct, Lieutenant Valdez."

"Are you functioning normally?"

"In accordance with my instructions."

"Yes, instructions are a great thing!" Mark agreed. Then, remembering about the Owls, he asked. "Are there SADs in storage?"

"Forty units," the Arsenal reported.

"Excellent! And now, tell me, where do these hallways lead?"

"Tunnels A1, A2, and A3 lead to the aerial and ground vehicle hangars and the robot depository, tunnel B1 leads to the personal arms and protective equipment warehouse, tunnel B2 leads to the ammunition depot, and tunnel B3 leads to the medicine and food supply stores."

"Food supply…" Mark repeated thoughtfully. "Do you only have dry rations, or is there something tastier?"

"Anything you wish, Lieutenant Valdez."

"Then defrost and cook five steaks and five chickens, add bread, beans, green peas, potatoes, and… hmm… something sweet. By the way, do you have wine?"

"According to regulations, lieutenants are not permitted to drink wine. Alcohol beverages are only permitted for officers in the rank of captain or above." The Arsenal thought for a moment and added. "My apologies, Lieutenant. There are twelve varieties of juices and thirty-seven varieties of non-alcoholic beverages, including tea, coffee, milk, kidda, and pasrig [Kidda is a milk cocktail (made from mare's, cow's, and goat's milk, mixed in a specific proportion) vaguely reminiscent of kumis. Pasrig is a non-alcoholic punch, made of fruit juices and tonic extracts of several herbs. Both are the national beverages of Baal.]. What would you like?"

"Coffee," Mark said. "Also tea, pasrig, and grape juice. A lot of all that and quickly."

"Yes, Lieutenant."

The grav-lift car came down, and the girls, Ivan, and Roy McCloskey stepped out of it. All of them were wide-eyed.

"You should see what's happening up top!.." Xenia started.

Mark nodded, "I know. The Arsenal is opening the exit hatches."

Not listening to him, his sister started chattering, "The earth moved apart, can you imagine?! Stones flying everywhere, dust in the air, mountains sliding, and there are chasms under them! Four of them! And things are coming out of them…"

"…lattices," Maya suggested, her cheeks flushed from the excitement. "Also emitters on poles and transparent columns with spirals!"

"Those are ramps for ground vehicles," Mark explained. "Arsenal, what type of Roaches do you have? SIMs [SIMs are amphibious tanks, produced by the Simagin Design Bureau, nicknamed Roaches for their speed and maneuverability. Used by the Space Fleet during the late 21st and early 22nd centuries]?"

"That is correct, Lieutenant Valdez. SIM16's."

"Old but reliable." With that, Mark turned to the table. "I think it's time for us to grab a bite, my friends."

The middle of the table lowered and immediately returned, loaded with plates, bottles, mugs, and flasks. The smells of cooked meat, coffee, and freshly-baked bread filled the room, pushing out the odors of dust and plastic. The mugs were steaming, the pink crust of the roasted chickens looked appetizing, the steaks were overflowing with juices, the chocolate glaze on the round fruitcakes was enticing, the grape juice in tall glasses looked like rubies. At the sight of all this splendor, the girls gasped, Ivan gulped loudly, and McCloskey muttered, "Let's get to work, guys!" and headed for the nearest chair.

How they ate! Not hungrily, but as educated people, and yet the meat and the bread, the potatoes and the peas, the beans and the fruitcakes were disappearing with an amazing speed. Fifteen minutes later, the plates were cleared, the bottles and the flasks were empty, and only the glasses and the mugs still had something left in them. Mark, who had not yet had a chance to starve as much as them, ate slowly, but he finished off his steak and chicken with pleasure. Then he drank a glass of pasrig, which he had tried once on Baal, and said, "Let's get to it, people. We need to form two convoys: to Nickel and Northern. There should be aerial transports here, exactly as many as necessary to carry all the ground vehicles, so you'll fly quickly and in comfort. You, elder," he turned to McCloskey, "will leave with one group, Ivan with the other. The girls and I will follow you and bring the combat aircraft. All of them will go to Nickel."

"Makes sense," the geologist nodded. "I'll head to Northern. The road is long, and I know it better than Ivan. What else do we have here besides this?" He pointed at the plates with chicken bones."

"Let's find out. Arsenal, what do you have in terms of food supplies?!"

"The supplies are meant for a marine corps," he heard in reply.

Mark whistled.

"Is that a lot?" Xenia asked.

"Plenty. It'll last us a while."

A marine corps consisted of two divisions of seven-eight thousand soldiers each, and the ground and aerial transport vehicles had been meant for the same number of people. There were also combat vehicles, at least eight hundred units, just as many robots, and enough supplied for at least a month. Mark had not expected such a boon.

"Full demothballing of equipment and gear," he ordered. "Load the Roaches and the transports and bring them to the surface. Load everything: weapons, ammo, food, drink! And don't forget the SADs! Bring the aircraft to full readiness, check ammo loads, and wait for my command."

"Yes, Lieutenant Valdez."

The depths of the underground base started rumbling, buzzing, clanging, cold blast of air came from the hallways, carrying smells of grease, plastic, and metal. The colorful lights on the console started dancing, screens lit up, and cargo mechanisms shifted in them, endless rows of conveyors with containers of all shapes and sizes started moving, squat vehicles started crawling up the spiral ramps. Mark spent a few seconds watching this spectacle, then nodded in satisfaction and said, "Go to the top, people, and form two columns: a quarter of the equipment will go to Northern, and the rest goes to Nickel. The girls will monitor from above. It'll be light soon… I hope we can get this done in a day."

"Are you staying here?" Maya asked.

"Yes, my dove, I'll work on the robots, they need to be woken up and calibrated. They've been sleeping for a long time… almost a century and a half."

Maya also thought that she had been sleeping and then suddenly woke up from a nightmare. The air on the surface was cool and sweet, the morning sky was clear and bright, and pink clouds were floating through it to the west, to the ocean shores. It was as if there were no Dromi on T'har, no war, no cities in ruin, no thousands upon thousands of dead, no remains of the house, where she had found the charred bones of her mother, father, and sister… The thought now came with sadness, but without gloom, and she thought that fate took and fate gave, and no one had the power to change that. Even now, when man could cross enormous distances, when his eyes were looking at alien suns, and his feet were stepping on the soil of virgin worlds… Humanity's might had grown in leaps and bounds, illness and old age had stepped away, work had become easy and pleasant, and each person had such freedom, of which no one had dreamed two-three hundred years ago. But the all-powerful fate still ruled the human world, giving and taking, promising and lying, bringing joy to some and grief to others. And so it would be until the end of time…

Maya made herself comfortable on a big boulder, and, from up here, she could see the maws of the huge shafts at the foot of the mountain, with streams of machinery pouring out of them. Armored amphibious tanks, which Mark had called "Roaches", and transport vehicles, big and small, were forming up in ten lines, extending emitters and antennae, turning on headlights, opening their hatches with a clang, as if each of them was preparing to take in a crew. The vehicles were old, on wide tracks, without grav-suspension, but even now she could sense deadly power coming off them. Their streamlined gray cermet bodies looked like the hide of a mastodon, their emitters were like a pair of tusks, their antennae rod was sticking out like a trunk raised in a warning. Maya had not expected there to be so many of them; they kept coming and coming, by the dozens, by the hundreds, and it seemed as if there would be no end to them.

I'm going to paint this, I definitely will, she thought. The bright sky, the clouds, and, in contrast, the dark rocks and a herd of gray mechanical beasts, who have been sleeping underground for a century and a half. The power of our ancestors, sent to us through time, to defend and protect us… Not all of us but, at least, those who are still alive…

She watched Ivan and Roy McCloskey, wearing transmitters on their necks and walking along the first row of vehicles, directing the new reinforcements, a lattice frame was lifting transport aircraft from the farthest shaft, the enormous disks, bigger than any square in Ibáñez, hovering over the amphibious vehicles, opening huge apertures in their bottoms. Suddenly, the hatches of the ground vehicles closed, the lights shut off, the emitters and antennae drew inside and hid under covers. The outermost aircraft threw out four manipulators through the opening, casually picked up a tank, and pulled it up. A minute later, the armored vehicle disappeared in the belly of the disk.

"Cool!" Xenia shouted, sitting on another boulder. "Like eating a donut!"

Maya smiled to her friend. No, not a friend, a relative. No words had been said between them about this, but Xenia did not seem to need words. A daughter of the Valdez family… Maya thought and stretched sweetly, imagining her future children. Her children and Xenia's children… Now that'll be some family!... she thought. All of them telepaths, with an uncle or an aunt among the Lo'ona Aeo… Only me without anything, without any secrets or mysteries. Like a white sheep in a black herd…

But this thought did not scare Maya.

Happiness curled up in her chest like a furry kitten.

After walking about forty meters down the A3 tunnel, Mark found himself in a large oval compartment with hexagonal prisms sticking out of the walls. This gave the robot depository an appearance of a beehive, and the bees that lived here were monstrous, with stings of hot plasma. But not very smart, as the First Theorem of Psychocybernetics prevented the creation of combat robots with a human-level intelligence. But that was a fairly tolerable flaw, for a marine officer could lead an entire combat unit of UCRs, manipulating them like the fingers of his hand.

"Time to wake them up," Mark said into thin air. "Get to work, Arsenal. Are there any activation passwords I need to say?"

"Your command is sufficient, Lieutenant Valdez," the invisible voice uttered. "Your command and a musical signal."

The drum thunderclaps were so loud that Mark jerked involuntarily. The drums were followed by the striking of the timpani, the singing of the trumpets, the whistling of the flutes, and then the violins cut into this choir and started leading the music. It was severe, menacing, and majestic, like the act of creation or, maybe, death of the universe; it seemed that stars were being born and dying to these sounds, galaxies were colliding, and all of Creation was fluctuating in a mad rhythm, as if sensing a catastrophe. Recognizing Dominic Gornji's Third Symphony, written during one of the Void Wars, Mark froze in shock; the rumbling of the drums, the wailing of the violins, and the victorious song of the trumpets fell upon him like an avalanche.

Suddenly, the music fell silent, and the room was filled with rustling and quiet clicking; the hexagonal prisms, leaving their cells in the walls, hovered above the floor in several rows and started to expand, altering their initial shape. Their bottoms grew flatter, round armor-plate shells were visible on top, slits of plasma throwers were gaping like black pupils, laser barrels were moving under the clanging flaps, manipulators were slicing through the air, extending cutters, claws, or rods with vacuum suckers with sharp whishing sounds. For a second, the armored domes blossomed with lattice daisies of antennae, sensors on long flexible tentacles peaked out, followed by radiation detectors, gas analyzers, and repair equipment. A moment later, the equipment and devices hid under the armored shells, and the UCRs took on their final shape: waist-high hemispheres with flat bottoms. Their grav-drive allowed them to move over any surface, liquid or solid, although, of course, they were not as fast as aircraft. But they were incredibly durable.

"Permission to start the final programming process?" the Arsenal asked.

"Granted."

"Enemy?"

"Dromi."

"Do you plan to take prisoners?"

"No."

"Enemy combat assets?"

"Ground, air, and space vehicles. Their armament–"

"Thank you, Lieutenant Valdez, that information is available. Has anything changed during all this time?"

"Not really."

"The programming is complete. Where should the robots be sent?"

"Load them up into transports." Mark saluted, looked over his army, and spoke, "Go, boys! You will do great things!"

The UCRs started flowing towards the exit. Their movements were silent and so quick that the hemispherical shapes merged into a single current that looked like a huge armored python. "Old but reliable equipment," Mark muttered. Newer generation robots, with which he had once worked, had more powerful weapons and the maximum permitted intelligence, but these UCRs were also fearsome warriors, especially under the command of experienced people. Mark assumed that he would find some, as well as the pilots for the combat vehicles; there were always plenty of old guys Alferov's age, Void War vets, on T'har.

The python's tail vanished in the tunnel, and the chamber was empty. Mark waited patiently. Minutes passed, and, gradually, the echo of distant rustling and squeaking started to fade, and he could no longer feel the shuddering of the floor, the movement of the air, and peculiar smells. The timer on his wrist was showing three in the afternoon, and the loading process must have been rapidly progressing on the surface.

"The vaults are empty. This device's purpose has been fulfilled," the Arsenal reported, and Mark thought he heard a note of sadness in its detached voice. Nodding, he left the empty depository, walked down the A3 hallway, stopped by the lift, and once again threw his hand up in a salute.

"Thank you for your service, Arsenal #7/315."

"Permission to enter your gratitude into my memory unit?"

"Granted. Make sure that the loading process is complete by sundown."

"It shall be done, Lieutenant Valdez."

Mark entered the grav-lift and rose to the surface.

The convoys to Nickel and Northern left with the nightfall. Mark sent the combat aircraft with Pospelov's group, even though he had originally planned to take them himself. But the thoughts of the Patriarch's secret location and the layout of Ho would not leave him; without this information, his father's advice hardly seemed workable. He ordered the Arsenal to load half-a-dozen Owls into a small transport ship, planning on following the flyer in it and launch the SADs at their closest approach point to Western Port. More than likely, they were going to be shot down at the perimeter of the enemy base, but they would have time to send some data, and the combination of six images would provide a complete picture. The SADs could have performed such activities at night, but, considering the enemy countermeasures and the brief time of observation, it was best to take pictures during the day; in particular, the location of shadows provided as much information as the targets' actual appearance. Mark decided that he would leave at dawn, with both convoys, to Nickel and Northern, landed at their destinations.

Xenia and Maya did not wish to leave him, and, as a result, three hours after sunrise, they found themselves over the Naked Wasteland, fifteen hundred kilometers away from Nickel. Like before, Mark tried to fly as low as possible, and the transport ship with the SADs was obediently following the flyer, repeating all the loops and zigzags of their route. From the low altitude, they could watch the packs of stone devils that filled the surrounding area, but the girls averted their eyes, and Mark did as well; the mating habits of these beasts were an unappealing sight. Neither the flyer nor the transport disk frightened them, they did not scatter or even look up; their instincts told them that there could be nothing dangerous in the sky. Until the arrival of people on T'har, there had been no flying creatures on the planet.

They passed over the Santino Brothers Spring, the Vadim Petrov Valley, the Chloe Drew Canyon, and the Mike Bierce Cliff. When they had left the Dominguez Scree, an open space filled with boulders, behind them, the radar emitted a sound. Four dots appeared on the circular green screen, four aircraft in a diamond formation; they were approaching fast, and Mark realized that the Dromi pilots had detected their flyer. It couldn't flee; while the flyer was a maneuverable vehicle, it was not as fast as combat aircraft.

Wiping cold sweat from his forehead, he said in a calm voice, "Strange! HQ said that they don't fly far north."

"There's a first time for everything," Xenia whispered, and Mark suddenly understood that she was afraid; not for herself, but for Maya and him. Maya turned pale; her black eyes on marble-white face seemed like wells, full of fear and anguish.

"It's going to be fine, girls," he said. "We're not defenseless."

It was a bold statement, considering that the most powerful weapon on the flyer was his blaster. There were also SADs, which carried an explosive charge, but its purpose was self-destruction.

"We need to find a cover below," Maya said suddenly. "Like the cave where we hid earlier. There are suitable places in the Pasa Blockage."

"The Nemchenko Crevice is better," Xenia countered. "It's barely visible, and we can… Whoa!.."

A blue bolt passed over them, and the flyer lurched. Mark pressed the craft to the ground.

"There's a big alcove under a canopy in it," Xenia went on. "I remember! Dad once…"

A bolt on the left, a bolt on the right. Dodging streams of plasma, Mark was also remembering. The Colin Pasa Blockage looked like a tiny copy of the Chaos, a bunch of lumps of rock, piling on top of one another and sometimes forming empty space under a stone slab/canopy. But would he have time to find it? With the Dromi on his tail, it was doubtful… Glancing at the navigator, he noted that they were seventy-four kilometers from the blockage and twenty-two from the Nemchenko Crevice. Now Mark could clearly picture the alcove Xenia had mentioned; either he remembered it himself, or his sister's memories could have been transmitted to him. He saw the cliff, sticking out of the ground and looking like a tree stump, steep vertical slopes three-four times his height, and a flat top, split by a narrow crack, as if a giant warrior had struck the stump with a thin blade but failed to cleave it in half.

The Dromi seemed to have figured out that the disk following the flyer was copying its movements; now, all the enemy craft were diving, aiming at the spot the flyer had passed a second ago. They'll vaporize it, Mark thought and quickly pressed the button to jettison the SADs. A flock of small missiles sprayed straight at the Dromi but failed to confuse them; the Dromi split into pairs, fired their emitters at the missiles and the disk, and then soared back up. Balls of fire appeared and faded in the sky, six tiny ones and one big one.

"So much for our Owls," Mark said. "It's okay, we've gained about fifteen seconds from that. We'll make it!"

There were seven kilometers left until the stump-like cliff and the crack. Keeping an eye on their foe through the cabin's transparent cover, Mark cut his speed, and the rocky plain, sliding below them, suddenly slowed its pace. The cliff, squat and huge, like the tower of a giant's castle, was approaching the flyer, and the enemy ships could be seen above; four hawks over a helpless sparrow. But the sparrow was nimble.

Soaring above the cliff, Mark froze in mid-air and carefully lowered the flyer into the crack. It was tight even for the small craft, but he managed to avoid touching it with the wings and slowly moved the craft to a wider space, under a meter-and-a-half thick canopy. Then he lowered the flyer to the ground.

The girls clapped their hands.

"Cool!" Maya said. But the more practical Xenia added, "Yeah, it's cool, but what are we going to do now?"

"Let's get out and look around," Mark suggested and started climbing out of the cabin.

They started walking along the bottom of the crack, more like a small canyon, to the edge of the cliff. Discharges hissed overhead, bolts of lightning struck the stone, tiny shards flew everywhere, melted rock flowed and solidified on the walls. Won't get us! Mark thought in triumph. Then again, if the Dromi summoned a dreadnought or even a small space-capable tub, the cliff would not protect them… But that was unlikely; one didn't shoot at squirrels with an elephant gun.

The crack ended in a low but perfectly steep cliff; the plain lay below, covered in boulders and pieces of rock of all shapes and sizes, and creatures that looked like small dragons could be seen dashing and spinning between them. Actually, they weren't that small, at least three meters between the nasty jaws and the tip of the short tail. The females, whose hides gleamed blue for the mating season, walked among the rocks, opening their mouths and roaring occasionally; the males bristled their crests, dug their claws into the ground, and kept dashing at their rivals, filling the area with their piercing shrieks. There must be three or four hundreds of them here, Mark estimated. Then he thought that, fortunately, they could not reach their crevice. After firing a few volleys, the Dromi descended into the valley. It seemed they could not figure out where the flyer had disappeared to; was it lying broken under a rock, or collapsed between the boulders and hard to spot from above, or, having landed successfully, was it hiding in some crack? The craft kept descending and circling the bottom of the cliff and soaring to the top, and Mark, after watching their activities, muttered, "It's about time you left for your snake pit and report the great victory. Come on, you toads, don't drag it on!"

"You think they'll leave?" Xenia asked.

"What else can they do? They haven't even been able to make out our crack, and, as for getting inside it…"

He stopped speaking with an open mouth, watching the aircraft hovering over the ground, extending supports from the bottom, opening their hatches, whose dark openings showed movement. The first Dromi with an emitter jumped out, followed by others: two Dromi each from three vehicles and three from the last, fourth one. It seemed that the Dromi also followed orders. In this case and in its human version, it stated that the enemy was only dead if you'd seen his body.

"They're going to look for us? Too bad for them!" Maya started pulling her needle gun from its holster.

"It definitely is," Mark agreed. "You can put away your gun, my T'haran, you're not going to need it. There are plenty of candidates here without us."

They exchanged glances, then looked down, at the plain with hundreds of toothy beasts. Some of the males had already noticed the Dromi. The latter, ignoring the predators, were moving towards the cliff, examining the rocks and the ground along the way. There were eight of them, all Elders-with-Spot; the last one, possibly unarmed, had stayed by his craft.

"The crews of these vehicles have a pair of toads each," Mark said. "All of them are outside."

"There are nine of them," Xenia reminded him. "The last vehicle has three."

"It must be an observer, some high-ranking type. Maybe even a Zong-ap-sidura." Mark extended his binoculars. "No, another Elder-with-Spot. But a very big one!"

"The one we let go was just as big," Maya noted.

Xenia smiled vengefully, "They'll eat them all! The giant and those smaller ones!"

A dozen stone devils got really close to the Dromi. One of the predators produced a long wail. The greenskins turned and cut down the monstrosities with a volley from their throwers.

"They think it'll frighten them," Xenia said. "Fat chance!"

At least a hundred of the beasts ran towards the greenskin pilots. The Dromi must have finally realized the danger they were in; they gnashed, creaked, quickly talking amongst themselves, and gathered into a dense group. Plasma beams flew out of their emitters and killed several of the animals.

"Our allies are hungry," Mark spoke. "I doubt they'll leave any bones. And then what? Their metabolism is different from the Dromi."

"Only the devils know," Xenia said.

The whole pack had finally surrounded their prey. There were females among the slain creatures, and this enraged the males to the extreme. Mark knew their ways and had no doubt that the bodies of the other devils would also be eaten, but not now, only after dealing with the Dromi. At the moment, the devils were being spurred on by hunger, greed, and blind fury towards beings of another breed. These feelings were so strong that he put up a barrier on the path of their mental pulses. Xenia must have done the same.

The Dromi continued to fire, filling the plain with corpses, but dozens of beasts were already coming up behind them.

Maya jerked her shoulders and stuck her head out of the crevice.

"It's going to be a horrible death… Maybe we should kill them ourselves? I think it'll be more merciful."

"There's no place for mercy here," Xenia said. "Remember your family, my dear!"

One of the predators jumped on a Dromi's back, ripped off his shoulder strap with its claws, and bit his spine in half. Sensing the smell of blood, the entire pack rushed to attack, and, a moment later, the greenskin pilots vanished, buried under a pile of bodies. Now the terrible crunching sound of bones, the croaking of the dying Dromi, the howling, the shrieking, the furious growling, and, occasionally, the cracking of helmets and shoulder straps under the teeth and the claws could be heard over the Naked Wasteland. The girls turned away from the nasty sight.

The last surviving Dromi, the Elder-with-Spot who had stayed by his aircraft, hastily got into his vehicle. The hatch closed with a clang, the vehicle rose and circled over the pack of the devils, which were tearing the greenskins apart. It seemed that the problems of an alien metabolism did not bother the creatures any more than the strange object sliding through the air. Less than a minute had passed, as the pack, having finished the Dromi, started to eat the dead devils.

"He's flying away," Mark said. "The most sensible or the most cunning one… Must be a high-ranking fellow!"

But, despite their expectations, the craft did not go up, instead flying towards the cliff and hovering two meters above the ground. Then the hatch opened, and the Dromi looked out. He was very close, no more than thirty paces away. The wind carried his smell; it was sharp, alien, revolting.

Xenia grimaced and raised her needle gun, "Well, what does he want? A needle in his spot?"

"Wait," Maya stopped her. "I think he's looking for us, but not to kill. See, he's unarmed."

As if confirming her words, the barrels of the emitters on the combat aircraft lowered and were now looking straight down. The Dromi looked around and, confirming that the predators were not paying him any heed, started studying the cliff. Then his clawed hands started moving; he was making some gestures, but Mark had no idea what they were. A xenology instructor could have possible figured out his body language, but lieutenants were not trained to do that.

"A strange Dromi," Mark spoke. "It would be nice to know what he's doing. Is he threatening us? Cursing us? Or does he want to talk? Except we won't be able to find a common language."

"I think," Maya said, "that he wants to make contact and is asking us not to shoot."

Mark nodded, rubbing his temple thoughtfully.

"Perhaps. What if this is really that same Dromi? But I've never heard of–"

"We can check," Xenia interrupted. "We can't tell them apart by their appearance, but what about their mental image? Do you remember how…" She tried to find the right word. "How the one in Ibáñez sounded? You said that he was an outcast and an exile, that he felt no hostility towards humans… And that there was no fear in him — that part I figured out on my own. There was… don't know how to say it… something like pity. Yeah, pity for himself."

"Not pity, regret," Mark corrected her. "He thought we were going to kill him, and the matter he needed to take care of would stay unfinished. That was the only thing he regretted. Do you want to try it, sister? I'm ready."

Closing his eyes, concentrating, Mark touched the Dromi's mind. The recognition was instant; he did not even have time to be surprised at his certainty that he was standing before the same strange individual, exile, outcast, or mentally-disturbed being. Disturbed?.. But what did he know about the psychology of the greenskins?.. Maybe this Elder-with-Spot was actually completely normal, while all the other Dromi were the crazy ones? After all, when a member of one race wanted to communicate with a member of another, it was a normal situation, but if he grabbed his blaster, then that was strange…

Mark thought that the Dromi was calmer now than during their first encounter. As before, there was no fear in him, but there was no regret either; was it because his task was coming to an end? Mark sensed that clearly and thought that the Dromi's task (duty?.. concern?.. secret mission?..) might have consisted of finding a negotiator among humans, an individual that was prepared to listen to him, understand, and give advice. How they would be able to communicate remained a mystery, but it appeared that the Dromi had thought of something; a point in his favor, since humanity's primary means of communication was the annihilator. Besides all these vague thoughts and feelings, Mark sensed a firm intention to stay here, despite the predators and any other dangers, since the greenskin wanted to pass along something; maybe it was important information rather than a physical object.

"The Dromi won't leave," he said without opening his eyes in order to maintain his link with that strange creature. "He was looking for us… well, if not us then someone with whom he could talk… no, of course, talking has nothing to do with it, there's no talking, we can't speak with him… it's more important to understand his intentions. A duty weighs on him, and he must… no, wrong again!.. not must, it's more of an honest and very powerful wish that has blossomed in him after many years or, perhaps, under someone's influence. He wants to tell or give us something. And one more thing… I think he wants to stay with us."

Mark opened his eyes and looked at his sister. She nodded in agreement, "I was able to catch less than you, brother. But these two wishes, to pass something along and to not return to the other Dromi, I understood. Can we take him with us?"

"Yes, if he manages to fit into the cabin. He weighs about a hundred and fifty kilograms, no more than Ivan and Roy. But…" Mark waved a hand in front of his face. "But, girls, you'll have to suffer, the smell will be awful. Well, you know… this isn't your first Dromi."

"We'll be fine," Maya said and smiled. "It's too bad I'm not telepathic. It'd really want to talk to him!"

"We didn't talk," Xenia said sternly, "we… we sensed. And we're not telepaths. I've already explained it to you, Maya."

They returned to the flyer. Mark lifted the vehicle off and carefully piloted it out of the crack, occasionally glancing downward. The stone devils were feasting; no trace remained of the Dromi, and the predators were now busy with the charred bodies of their dead friends. There were so many that the feast was, for now, happening without wailing and the usual fighting, but hundreds of new hungry beasts were already hurrying down the plain, which heralded an inevitable fight. Either way, the devils were busy and would stay that way for some time.

The vehicle descended near the Dromi craft, and Mark, after looking over the massive creature, thought that he had been right: the greenskin weighed about a hundred and fifty kilograms, and, while his figure was reminiscent of a hippo, he would be, nevertheless, able to fit into the flyer. He didn't smell very nice; not the stink of an unwashed body, not rotten eggs, and not decaying carrion, but something that was alien and unpleasant to a human. Mark decided that it would not be easy to handle these aromas in the tight cabin.

Maya grimaced but said, "He can get in here with us. Just turn on the air conditioner, please."

"I doubt that's going to help," Xenia grunted.

"I'll fly slowly and depressurize the cabin," Mark suggested. "Let in some fresh air."

He stretched out his hand towards the Dromi, then pointed at the open side hatch, which was used to load robots and equipment. This gesture was clear to any sentient being, but the greenskin did not move. His paw once again reached for Mark, his five-fingered clawed palm opened, and something gleamed in it; it looked like a tiny crystal. The Dromi spoke a short phrase. His speech sounded like the gurgling of boiling water.

"Croaking," Maya said. "He's croaking! What did he say, Mark?"

"I don't know, my dove. No one has ever…"

A pink haze suddenly rose over the crystal, then its foggy edges expanded in all directions and grew clearer, forming a large transparent polyhedron. It was swaying slightly, and, in its depth, Mark saw an ocean and land, ruins of a human city and a spaceport landing pad, filled with lots of tiny figures, and also an area with hundreds of towers, cylinders and prisms, some low and squat and some tall, like steel nails that had been hammered into T'har's soil. The greenskin turned his palm, and the towers grew closer, pushing away the ruins and the coast. A symbol was glowing near each of them, a figure of a Dromi or a human, vehicle outlines, an image of an emitter, and something still unclear, some kind of prongs or zigzags. Then the tallest structure with a large Dromi figure floated out from the center of this layout; it kept growing and growing, blotting out the tower, and Mark suddenly realized that this being was huge and ancient, with sagging skin, which was shedding scales.

"The Patriarch," he muttered in amazement, "the Patriarch, by the Great Emptiness! And these towers, these symbols… He brought us the layout of their base by Western Port! The layout of Ho! With indicators where everything is located…"

The Dromi gurgled again, and Mark, catching his mental pulse, realized that it was a confirmation.