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 14

Junior Adviser Patta

The Elder-with-Spot in command of the group of four aircraft decided that the Hossi-moa they had been chasing must have descended to the plain and were hiding among the rocks. There were a great many pieces of stone here, and there was also a rock that looked like a tree stump, which had cracks at its base, where the Paired Creatures could also have hidden. The senior Zong-tii wanted to look inside them and examine the boulders. It was his responsibility to find the debris from the enemy vehicle and the bodies of the Hossi-moa or find them alive and kill them.

The craft hovered over the ground, eight Splinters went down and started walking towards the cliff. The Thought Giver enlightened Patta to stay where he was; search and confirmation were not his tasks, and neither was killing aliens. Then again, good sense told him that this would not happen: either the Hossi-moa were dead, or they had come up with some trick. In the latter case, he would not have given a dry scale for the lives of the Splinters.

Large animals were roaming the plain. The junior adviser, as well as the Splinter pilots, who had been born and grown up in space citadels, had not had a chance to encounter them before; apparently, they inhabited the high latitudes, these rocky plateaus with cold winds. On Fytarla-Ata, the Dromi homeworld, where Patta had first seen the light and lived to see his mind awaken, there had not been any large beasts for a long time, as well as on the colonized worlds. On the homeworld, all living creatures, except for a few species of tiny creatures that hid underground, had been devoured millennia ago during a time of famine, long before the age of interstellar travel. As for the other worlds, their settlement was accompanied by a radical restructuring: all living things on land and at sea, all the local fauna and flora, went into the food factories, which processed alien organics into nutrients suitable for the Dromi. The equipment for planetary readjustment and delicate molecular transformation of organic materials had been initially supplied by the Lo'ona Aeo astroids, but, in time, the Dromi learned to produce it themselves. Alone with the radical cleansing, the colonized worlds were sown with vegetation from Fytarla-Ata, setting up a familiar ecological cycle. Timber cellulose from the home planet served as raw material for artificial food; no one remembered other means of producing it, if they had ever existed. At the very least, Patta, a historian, did not know any.

When teaching him, Tihava had said that alien living beings could potentially be dangerous. Naturally, he had not spoken only of microbiological infection or poisoning, but also of the obvious and visible threat, of animals capable of killing with their teeth and claws, trample, or impale with horns. But Patta had no personal experience on that account, much less the Splinters, whose lives had been spent aboard ships and space settlements. The Dromi, descended from predatory reptiles, also had sharp teeth and claws, not to mention great physical strength, protective gear, and weapons; the thought of danger coming from animals seemed preposterous to them. Actually, the thought never even crossed their minds, as their subconscious completely lacked an atavistic fear before a predator.

It was a fatal mistake, which Patta soon saw, watching the behavior of the animals. Suddenly, the pack pounced on the pilots, and, even though they were shooting and killing many animals, they were unable to fight off the attack. Watching the deaths of the Splinters, the junior adviser did not feel any emotions natural to a human: no bitterness, no regret, no fear. If the lives of the pilots had any kind of value, it was not for Patta, only for their progenitor Rikkaraniji and the chiefs of his clan. Besides, he thought, if his mission succeeded, the Patriarch himself and all his descendants, starting with the Sidura-zong and ending with the lowest Sinn-ko, would be dead. Did it really matter where and how they would die?.. Finishing the thought, he repeated a phrase to himself like an incantation, "This war needs to be lost."

Raising his craft into the air and making a circle above the pack, Patta headed for the rock. The situation was favorable, if the Hossi-moa were alive, of course; he was alone now and could give them his xilot-tlan, maybe even explain their goal to them. Until now, these stubborn people were ripping the scales off the Splinters, not realizing that they needed to strike at the nerve center, that a loss of a hundred or a thousand Sinn-ko and a few Elders-with-Spot was insignificant to the clan. The clan was alive for as long as its progenitor and the Sidura-zong, those who could take his place, remained alive. The elimination of the heads of the hierarchy broke the line of succession; no second-generation Dromi could lead a tribe, for their life experience was too small. No one, Patta repeated silently, except his mentor Tihava. But the exception only proved the rule.

He lowered the barrels of the emitters, stuck his body out and started making the gestures appropriate to the situation. Dromi body language was fairly diverse and included movements of the limbs, the body, the tongue, and the eyelids, but facial expressions, thanks to their rough thick skin, were almost nonexistent. Of course, Patta did not hope to be understood, he only wanted to make sure that the Hossi-moa were still alive and not lying dead somewhere among the rocks. After a short time, shadows started moving in the cliff's crevice, and he doubled his efforts. The dark outlines were moving, quivering, wavering, as if deciding if he should be killed with a spray of needles or a plasma burst, but time passed, and he was still alive. It seemed the Paired Creatures were not going to kill him.

Then something happened. Patta thought he felt a beam of light, soft, tremulous, and barely noticeable, pierce his consciousness and start to slide in it, lighting this or that corner, penetrating deeper and deeper, to that threshold, where there were no memories, where he was not even a Sinn-ko but a nameless Hallaha. A strange sense of calm suddenly gripped him; despite lacking a powerful sense of intuition or a gift of premonition, which were common among humans, he knew that he was linked with a certain being, the human who had chosen not to kill him, there, in the city ruins, and here, on this empty northern plain. The strangeness of this contact, which required no gestures or words, merely reinforced this certainty. He was sure that they were prepared to listen to him, that he had found the Hossi-moa, who saw all his thoughts, his intentions; not a friend or a foe, just a partner, with whom he could overcome the barrier of incomprehension. Different psychology, different languages, and different body structure were, of course, obstacles, but far lesser ones than with other means of communication, which seemed imperfect and primitive at the moment. Before now, he had assumed that every thought needed to be formed into words, that, without them, it was like a liquid without a vessel, but, as it turned out, a vessel was not necessary; the thought element churned and flowed like a river, and anyone could scoop up this liquid, drink, and feel its taste.

No, not anyone, he thought. The gift of communion with another mind was incredibly rare, and, perhaps, this Hossi-moa was the only one granted such a talent by the Thought Giver. In the world that Patta knew, a single person, not counting the high-ranking rulers, meant less than dry scale, but the idea of uniqueness, of being especially gifted, was, nevertheless, familiar to him; he knew Tihava, he had been his student, and he himself was a being different from the others of his kind. The realization of this fact pierced him, and he suddenly knew that he did not wish to return to Fytarla-Ata, that there was no place for him in the world of the Clans. Maybe he could live with the other Dromi, those Grir-vatura-ono of whom his mentor had spoken… maybe he could get to them, if the Hossi-moa helped… Maybe! For now, though, it was better for him to leave with the Paired Creatures than to return to Ho.

The human craft soared over the cliff and rapidly lowered next to Patta. A part of the hull slid, revealing an opening that was big enough for his massive body, and one of the beings inside made an inviting gesture. But Patta stayed motionless. He needed to show the xilot-tlan, he realized. He reached it towards the Hossi-moa and said, "Look. This is what you need."

He activated the projection. The xilot had the recording of Ho, all its habitation towers and depots for ground and air combat vehicles, structures for the prisoners, food production facility, the defense barrier with emitter masts and the spaceport that was still under construction. The recording was not static, the image was shifting; first came the overview, then it showed the detailed layout of Ho, the Patriarch's abode, and all other important structures. Patta had annotated each with a specific symbol, and these markings were obviously understood by the Hossi-moa; the beam, sliding around Patta's brain, echoed with a brief quiver. When Rikkaraniji, huge, with sagging skin, barely fitting in his seat, appeared in the view, the beam echoed with a bright flash, fell apart into sparks, and vanished. The mind link ended, but there no longer appeared to be a need for it.

The Hossi-moa said something. If the Dromi had music, if sounds enchanted them, entrapped them with their magical power, Patta would have interpreted this voice as musical, singing, or, perhaps, akin to the chirping of a bird. But there were no singing birds on the planets of the Clans, and there was nothing even remotely similar to the musical art. The Hossi-moa's speech was just as unintelligible to Patta as the whistling of the wind, the gurgling of a stream, and the roaring of the predators roaming the plain.

At the same time, he understood the human's words. The Hossi-moa was confirming that he needed the recording, that he had lacked the layout of Ho in order to fulfil his plan, that he understood the importance of this information. Patta even felt confident that the Hossi-moa had recognized the Patriarch, and that was the most important thing.

"Now you know where the Patriarch is. Act," he said and climbed into the cramped vehicle of the Paired Creatures.