This is a fan translation of Counterstrike (Ответный удар) 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 second 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 3
Silmarri, the Gondwana System
Corcoran usually dedicated the hour before the start of his watch to walking the ship. It was impossible to walk around the Europe, where he'd served for seven years, on his own two legs: each of the twelve decks of the enormous cruiser stretched for at least a kilometer, and they were all packed with people, supplies, weapons, and war machines. Except for the biannual audits, the Europe was never walked; instead, it was observed from the bridge, where a large multifaceted screen showed all the hallways, compartments, and holds of the ship. But the Commodore Litvin was a low-tonnage vessel, allowing for a walk, and, while taking it, listening to the quiet rumbling of the drives, absorbing the emotions and thoughts of the crew, Corcoran felt a sense of unity with his frigate. Sometimes, he even thought that Uncle Pavel was walking somewhere behind him, silent, disembodied, but pleased; Commodore Litvin did indeed participate in this expedition, even if not as a living being. Instead, he had become a fighting unit in the squadron, a ship capable of jumping a hundred light years and dealing a crippling blow.
The walk started with the compartments adjacent to the bridge. Immediately behind it, on the portside, were the long-range communication station and the secondary bridge with the auxiliary controls, on the starboard side were the main gunnery post, connected to the annihilator and all the methods of destruction the frigate possessed. Behind them was the wardroom, the largest room on the ship, not counting the holds, interlocked with the galley, as well as the sanitation and medical units. The crew complement of the ship did not include a doctor, but cyberneticist Sigurd Linder was familiar with the automated medical equipment, and even Corcoran could, when necessary, figure out the resuscitator, the cyber-diagnostician, and the autosurgeon. Past the galley, there was a short hallway with plastic paneling the color of light birch and crew quarters on both sides. It ended in an airlock with the hatch irises that led to the turrets, the exit chambers, and the lower deck, also known as the holds. Beyond the airlock, the hallway looked narrower and poorer, without the paneling hiding the metal, as that part of the ship held the cybernetic equipment, the express analysis lab, the life support system with the recycler and the artificial gravity generator, which didn't require any special attention from the crew. At the very end of the upper deck was one more cubbyhole, the so-called reactor room, or the engineering post, where Sancho Hernandez and Sigurd Linder worked. Beyond the convex bulkhead, reinforced by cermet plates, was the tube of the acceleration shaft, with the planetary drives attached to it from two sides, and the annihilator, looking like an enormous spiraling coil, below. The only way to get there was through the technical hatch, but it, like the reactor room, had more to do with tradition than necessity. The contour drive, powered by any source of energy, from starlight to the unified field of the universe, required virtually no maintenance.
Corcoran spent a few minutes in the reactor room, watching the massive stands of the drive control, lit up by calm green lights. Commodore Litvin, hovering somewhere above his shoulder, smiled approvingly. "Everything is fine here, Uncle Pavel," Corcoran whispered and started slowly walking back to the airlock, where he descended to the lower deck. It was separated into two holds, fore and aft; the latter was meant for cargo and supplies, while the fore hold was filled with launcher containers with a dozen combat robots, data probes, a pair of Peregrine-class fighters, and an all-terrain crawler. Also, there, near a special hatch, was a small battle module, looking like a large rectangular box with a corner cut off, one of the machines that had survived the disaster on the Faata ship. Corcoran could pilot it but with difficulty.
Looking over his arsenal and even touching the powerful pushing rods, he came back up, walked down the quiet hallway, looked at the chronometer tableau in the wardroom and, exactly at 0600, stepped over the threshold of the bridge, where Second Navigator Oki Yamaguchi was keeping watch.
"Captain on the bridge!" Oki announced to himself, and quickly got out of the navigator cocoon. "Reporting, sir: no incidents during my watch." He thought for a moment and added, "not counting the grave memories tormenting the watchman. I stand relieved!"
"You are relieved," Corcoran said, getting into Selina Praagh's seat. It retained a barely-detectable feminine scent, reminding him of Vera and the girls. "So what was tormenting you, Oki? The sight of Sapporo in the snow? A memory of cherry blossoms?"
Oki Yamaguchi, the small, tight Japanese man, as if wound from copper wire, hung his head in sadness. Irony mixed with sorrow, Corcoran sensed.
"When I was young, foolish, and adventurous, I made a mistake, Captain. I did not listen to my honored parent."
Oki was twenty-seven, too young of an age to regret youthful mistakes. What did he do?.. Corcoran's thoughts raced. Burned daddy's kimono with a firecracker? Or cut off the wrong chrysanthemum in his father's garden? His telepathic gift was not powerful enough to perceive vague thoughts, and those were the kind usually present in the minds of most people.
"My parent, Commander Oki Saburo, had sent me to the Tokyo Piloting School. Such is the family tradition, even my great-grandfather had finished that school, and all my worthy ancestors then served in the First Fleet of the USF, protecting Japan and the entire planet from the sky. And I," he scratched his ear, "I must be a degenerate. I studied for two years and, when I turned eighteen, ran away to Pluto, to the Lo'ona Aeo. To be a mercenary."
"I'll go to Pluto… Those… what do you call them… Lo'ona Aeo, right, came there! They need mercenaries, fighters!" another voice, still child-like, echoed in Corcoran's ears. How long ago had that been! When?.. And where?.. His memory obediently told him: Mallorca, a quarter of a century ago, a dark-skinned boy named Jose Gutiérrez from Barcelona… It was doubtful that he became a mercenary; probably dealt in wine, like his grandfather and father. But Oki Yamaguchi, descended from pilots and navigators, had managed to get to Pluto.
"How long have you toiled under them?" Corcoran asked, remembering that Oki's personnel file had no record of this episode. "A standard contract? Five years?"
"Three months was enough for me, Captain. One would have probably been enough, but I hesitated… you understand, giri and gimu [Giri is the sense of duty, gimu are the obligations that need to be fulfilled (Japanese terms).], the duty of a samurai, et cetera… Then I decided, what duty to the aliens?.. They are not the sons of Amaterasu [Amaterasu is the sun goddess, the head of the Shinto pantheon, the progenitor of the emperors, the patron saint of Japan.], not human, and not even similar to humans like the Faata… Sent a message to Father, begging for forgiveness. He almost went broke, but managed to buy out my contract. He begged on his knees to restore me at the school and not write a word about this shameful story into my file."
"Well, why shameful," Corcoran said. "Hundreds of thousands go to serve the Lo'ona Aeo, millions are moving to their worlds. The Chinese, Hindus, Arabs, the denizens of the Dark Africa, Brasil, Indonesia…"
Oki grimaced.
"Out of necessity, sir, out of necessity, but I went voluntarily, like a complete fool, defying the customs of my ancestors. What is necessity for others is shame for me!"
In a way, that was fair. The Lo'ona Aeo were the second highly-developed race after the Faata encountered by humanity in deep space, an ancient race, lacking any expansionist ambitions but possessing of great riches. They felt the need for allies and defenders, and Earth, with its excess of population, multiple war-like tribes, fit that role perfectly. A recruitment center was opened on Pluto, where the gravity of 0.25g did not cause discomfort to the aliens. They paid handsomely for service, whatever the mercenaries wanted: valuables familiar to humans, or pleasant worlds, where anyone could get a new homeland after completing their term of service. There was a definite use for that for the poor overpopulated nations, like China or India, but the Japanese were not among them. A proud people, Corcoran thought, habitually analyzing Oki's mental pulses, proud, independent, with a high sense of honor.
"There is nothing in my file about my service for the Lo'ona Aeo, sir," the second navigator said. "But I wanted you know about it."
"Let's assume that you've eased your conscience," Corcoran replied and touched his shoulder. "Go rest, Yamaguchi. We're jumping to Gondwana in five hours… You can get some sleep."
The navigator saluted and left. Without putting on the contact helmet, Corcoran tapped some keys on the panel, pulled up the necessary section from ANS memory, and ordered it to visualize the picture. The forward viewscreen seemed to expand in width and depth; the holographic image was so bright, voluminous, the translucent veil obscuring the walls and the ceiling of the bridge, the round gray eye of the radar, the pilot's console with rows of equipment, lit up by yellow and green lights. Corcoran sighed in admiration. The shining garden of the Galactic Ecumene opened up before him; a hundred billion stars, Cepheids and clouds of rarefied gas, nebulae and hot stars, blue, white, yellowish: Spica, Sirius, Procyon, yellow and orange: Sol and Tau Ceti, red and white dwarves, red and yellow giants: Capella, Arcturus, Aldebaran, monstrous supergiants: Rigel, Betelgeuse, whose luminosity was a hundred thousand times greater than that of the Sun. Stellar associations, the Magellanic Clouds, Hyades, Pleiades, ancient globular clusters, hovering above and below the Milky Way, and the galactic spiral itself: the Sagittarius Arm, nearest to the galactic core, the Orion Arm with the glittering spark of Sol, and, beyond the Void, a dark gloomy abyss four thousand parsecs wide, the outer Perseus Arm. It was from there, that unimaginable distance, that the Faata had come, and somewhere over there, as yet unreachable to the ships of Earth, was their homeworld, possibly the center of an expansive empire. But its border, three planets in two star systems, was much closer, on the edge of the Orion Arm: twenty-three parsecs to Baal, forty to Gondwana, and sixteen more to the New Worlds, as the Bino Faata called these colonies. Less than eighty parsecs, an insignificant distance, compared to the abyss between the Arms… Undoubtedly, Earth had more rights to this region. As the Lo'ona Aeo had explained, each starfaring race strove to expand its sector of influence to natural borders: a protostellar nebula, a hydrogen cloud, or a void in the galactic space, lacking stars, planets, and other objects that could become support bases for the expansion of its neighbors. These border areas usually stretched for three to five hundred parsecs, which was a quite acceptable guarantee against a sudden attack of an alien fleet or a cybernetic strike. From that viewpoint, the New Worlds were located in the area of Earth's strategic interests, but that was only the external reason for annexing them. The internal reason, not connected to galactic politics in any way, only having to do with the Faata and humankind, was much more significant: the destruction of Timokhin's flotilla, the ruins of Earth's cities, and forty-three million dead.
Corcoran's fingers once again touched the keys, and the globular clusters, the Magellanic Clouds, and, with them, the glowing center of the galaxy started to float away up and to the sides. It was as if he was flying in an invisible ship, not in the quantum foam of Limbo, but in real space, in a fraction of a second, passing dimly glowing nebulae, singularity points with the abysses of black holes and clusters of stars, moving aside before him and disappearing beyond the edge of the screen. This galactic chart, given to the humans by the envoys of the Lo'ona Aeo, was very ancient, put together during the time of the Daskins [The Daskins were one of the oldest races in the galaxy, scattering various artifacts throughout space, which were being actively studied by several modern starfaring races. The Daskins had disappeared over a million years ago. There is a hypothesis that the Great Red Spot on Jupiter is one of such artifacts.] and was, therefore, millions of years old. But it had both of the stars with the New Worlds, sticking out at the edge of the Void, like a pair of nails with orange and white heads, driven into the black marble of the everlasting darkness. Along with Alpha Malleus, they constituted a tiny star cluster, where the distances between the luminaries were about even, no more than half a parsec. That object was indistinguishable from Earth; Malleus was one of the constellations visible on Gondwana.
Aezat orbited Beta Malleus, a white dwarf, while Ro'on and T'har, the other two worlds settled by the Bino Faata, circled the orange Gamma. Naturally, they were absent from the Daskin chart, which contained only large objects, stars, black holes, nebulae; even such a wise ancient race would be incapable of counting up the myriad planets, comets, and asteroids. But humans, not all of them, of course, only those who needed to know, had become aware of the New Worlds prior to the contact with the Lo'ona Aeo and the examination of the galactic chart. Yo had mentioned these three planets at the very edge of the Void, and, while she had been unable to say much about them, the important facts were the very presence of these worlds, their proximity to Earth, their breathable air, their ecology, gravity, and energy balance, all quite suitable for humans.
The only thing Yo had known about Aezat was that it existed and that it was inhabited, but populated with a much lower density than the two Gamma Malleus planets. Actually, she had not known more about Ro'on, as she had been born on T'har and, after a period of incubation, had spent several years there. T'har was definitely not a world that appeared to Corcoran in the Dreams, for it lacked the enormous generous sun, violet skies, plains full of grass and trees. For the most part, T'har was covered in rocks, stones, and moss, but the equatorial belt with a cool but not very harsh climate had been settled by the Ein Sheaf, several thousand fully sentient Faata and three and a half million t'ho workers. Corcoran believed that his visions were more likely about Ro'on, a warmer and more fertile planet, which was located closer to the central star than T'har. Perhaps his biological father had been born on Ro'on or, having come on a starship, had lived there for a long time, far longer than Yo had been allotted. How long? A century or two? Maybe even three? That was possible; his Faata ancestor belonged to the higher caste, which was confirmed by the psychic abilities he had inherited from him.
Sighing, Corcoran removed the image of the galaxy and, like an imperceptible shadow, touched the minds of the crew. They were sleeping, some calmly, some tossing about in anxious oblivion; Selina Praagh appeared to be smiling, Oki was being tormented by a sense of guilt, the gunner Light Water, a Navajo, was seeing something pleasant. Their dreams were inaccessible to Corcoran, he could only catch a glint of the emotions generated by them, something like a mental echo that reverberated in the minds of the sleepers, gradually fading. The thoughts or images he could understand needed to be explicit, and, besides, he "heard" people differently; some were clearer, almost on the level of acoustic and visual perception, while other people's thoughts seemed blurred and vague, like a landscape covered by a thinning fog. Siebel's opinion was that it was determined by the mental potential of a particular brain, and the variations were fairly significant: besides the mass of people with average-level intelligence, both geniuses and morons continued to be born on Earth.
His crew was sleeping. Everyone slept, except for Klaus, who was either pretending to be asleep, was half-dozing, or was hiding in a shell impervious to telepathic communication. This had long ceased to surprise Corcoran, as Klaus Siebel, his closest friend, almost a brother, was a mysterious and strange persona. Undoubtedly, he thought with a rare logic and clarity, and his brain seemed to be open, but, at the same time, inaccessible to deeper penetration. Did that occur because of his activities as a USF Secret Service officer, was it a result of lengthy training or a unique property of his mind, capable of fencing itself off from another person's mental pulse?.. Either way, Corcoran never tried to punch through his barriers and touch the essence hidden behind them. Not out of fear to find something horrible, unexpected, unpleasant; it was simply that he, a keeper of his own mysteries, respected his friend's secrets. And Siebel was a true friend.
The crew woke up an hour before the end of the watch, and the bridge was soon filled with people. Corcoran moved to the captain's seat, Praagh, Tumanov, and Bai Ling, the on-duty pilot, took their places, Klaus settled in the cocoon by the hatch. Everything was going according to the routine, familiar and habitual for a warship: section reports, the dancing of glyphs above the pilot console, Selina Praagh's quiet voice, counting down the time to the jump, the outlines of the cruisers on the sensor screen, the scarlet stripe coming to life, leisurely crawling towards the pentalion… Also, calm inscrutable faces and a silent choir of prayers. They, these prayers, reminded him that a human was not what he seemed, that an external appearance was only a mask hiding the fear, alarm, uncertainty, and the passionate desire to overcome them, as befitted humans, warriors, and travelers through the universe.
Then came the sharp sound of the siren, muscles were permeated by tremors, Baal's faraway sun disappeared, and a small but bright disk flared in the upper-left corner of the viewscreen. A moment in Limbo, and forty parsecs were astern… Faster than light, faster than the solar wind, faster than cosmic background radiation… Faster than everything that could radiate and move, transfer vibration, propagate through real space…
They were in Gondwana's system.
There were five planets here and three asteroid belts: the ruins of worlds that had died so long ago that the times of these disasters were beyond calculation. The asteroids orbited between the fourth and fifth planets, two gas giants more massive than Jupiter; it was likely their pull that had ripped the heavenly bodies that were unfortunate enough to pass between them. Each of these protostars had a set of natural satellites of various shapes and sizes: over a hundred at the fifth world and eighteen at the fourth. The third planet, small, dry, and infertile, was reminiscent of Mars, the first, closest to the star, was being burned and melted by the solar storms, while the second, Gondwana, was habitable and was following the same evolutionary path as Earth. Currently, it was in the middle of the pleasant Miocene [Miocene started on Earth around 25 million years ago. During this epoch, there were plants and animals very similar to modern ones; there were even apes.]: the atmosphere was 24% oxygen, the day was 24 hours, a tropical climate, broadleaf forest, and a myriad of animals that could be, with a stretch, called mammals. Gonwana's land had already split into two enormous landmasses, but they were not being settled, for the issue of the protection of the local fauna and flora or global terraforming [Terraforming is the transformation of a planet to match terrestrial standards; first of all, the destruction or suppression of local species, a complete or partial biological sanitation, and then the propagation of terrestrial microbiota, plants, and animals.] was still up in the air. Human colonists and the USF base were located on an archipelago near the eastern landmass, and there was more than enough space there: three islands the size of Sicily and one as big as Madagascar surrounded the inner Turquoise Sea. Above that surface point was the orbital dock, there were also three large satellites and a pair of cruisers, joined into a defense system. Besides this military function, Gondwana had large tourist prospects: in time, it could turn into a resort or a game reserve.
Three members of Corcoran's crew had already been there, and when Red Alert was canceled, gathered in the wardroom, informing the newbies about the coming pleasures, swimming in the sea, dancing and flirting with the local nymphs, horseback riding, and the amazing wine made from blackcurrant mutated to the size of a pear. Corcoran didn't bother them, leaving Praagh and Bai Ling at the console; communication, a cup of coffee, laughter, and light chatter relieved the recent tension. The squadron, appearing out of nothingness beyond the fifth planet's orbit, was moving towards Gondwana, where they would spend a week or more, drop off the cargo meant for the base and transfer a hundred Peregrines to the satellites. Gondwana was the endpoint on the way to the alien and hostile worlds, and Vrba, as instructed, was supposed to reinforce the line of defense with people and equipment. No one knew if Special Task Force 37 would return or be destroyed, and what the Faata would do in the latter case; would they attack Earth again or strike at its colonies? But the determination of these circumstances was a matter for the future, and now, peace, serenity, and anticipation of a brief rest on the warm, hospitable Gondwana reigned aboard the ships.
Sending Selina to relax in the wardroom, Corcoran relaxed his cocoon's embrace, stretched out in the chair, and closed his eyes. The Captain's watch would end in seventeen minutes, there had been no orders from above, and he could relax a little. The gravity drives were quietly singing, Bai Ling was humming something in Chinese with a playful voice, the sounds of conversations, clinking cups, and the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee were coming from the wardroom. Corcoran knew that they wouldn't forget the pilot or him, they would bring some, and it would be either Selina or Klaus Siebel. But not now. Right now, they were busy with one another: Praagh was telling something funny to Siebel, and Corcoran felt the line connecting them becoming more noticeable and stronger.
He was happy for Klaus. That one didn't appear to show any interest in women, or that part of his life was safely hidden from prying eyes, but one thing Corcoran was sure of – Klaus Siebel was lonely. Time passed, though, and a person's opinions changed, even if his heart was made of steel, and his soul was as dry as Martian sands. When a person was pushing sixty, he realized that any change and any gift of fate was now the last one; if he didn't use it, he would eke out the old age alone, not living, merely existing without kindness and warmth.
Maybe they would work out together?.. Corcoran thought without opening his eyes. Klaus was, of course, twenty-five years her senior and not at all a handsome man, but these trifles wouldn't stop a woman, especially one like Selina. That was obvious to anyone who glanced at her file. A stubborn person! An impoverished childhood in Singapore, seven attempts to get to the local USF base, an unbeatable attraction to the stars, and…
"Message from the flagship, Captain," Communications Officer Dupressis's voice came. "It sounds like the Commodore wants to speak with you. Should I switch to the bridge?"
"Go ahead, Camille."
Bai Ling immediately stopped his vocal exercises, sat up straight and pulled himself up, the noise in the wardroom died down. A window opened in the viewscreen, right under the Malleus constellation, and Karel Vrba's cold eyes stared at Corcoran.
"Sir," he said, half-rising and saluting.
"Captain," Vrba nodded slightly in greeting. Then he wondered, "Dreaming of swimming in the Turquoise Sea? You'll have to postpone that this time. There is an assignment. A small one."
The wardroom became very quiet. They're disappointed, Corcoran thought. He had been down to Gondwana twice already, and Eden wasn't pulling him a third time; he was used to vacationing with Vera and the girls. It would be better to do something useful now… On the other hand, after serving seven years aboard the Europe under Vrba, he knew that his "small assignments" were pretty labor intensive and, for the most part, dangerous.
"Yes, sir."
"Commodore Dixon has a problem." Dixon was the head of the USF base on Gondwana, basically, the local chief of administration. "They've detected an alien ship. Recently."
Bai Ling started. Dead silence came from the wardroom.
"The Faata, sir?"
"No. Probably, not… A very strange vessel. It appears to be in power conservation mode. It's drifting in the second asteroid belt and not responding to attempts at contacting it." Pausing, the Commodore continued, "I've just had a talk with Dixon. He could have destroyed that ship… at least, he thinks he could have, but he decided to do the smart thing and wait for us. Our task force has competent experts. I am sending Asenov and Helga Swahn to you. Two experienced xenologists plus Siebel… I hope they can figure it out."
"The time of completion and instructions?" Corcoran asked.
"No more than two weeks. While we're near Gondwana." Vrba turned his head, listening to one of his officers, and a bright dot separated from the Europe on the sensor screen. "The experts have already departed, keep their shuttle, you'll find it useful. Go see what's going on there, but carefully. We don't want carnage. As for instructions… Well, you know about DPT."
"Can I use weapons?"
"Only in the most extreme case, taking the experts' opinions into account. Besides the experts, I want you to listen yourself. You can, after all, listen well… Isn't that right, Paul?"
Corcoran nodded silently. Karle Vrba was one of the few people who knew the secret of his origins and the gift he'd inherited from the Faata. It was possible that only two people in the whole squadron were in on the secret: the Commodore and Klaus Siebel.
"The coordinates have been transmitted to your ANS. Be careful. Good luck," Vrba said and disappeared from the screen. The senior officers, Selina Praagh and Tumanov, headed for the bridge, followed by Siebel, while the wardroom was once again full of noise. But Corcoran was no longer feeling the recent disappointment, which was easily explained; Gondwana, with all its delights, was not going anywhere, but it wasn't every day that one encountered an alien ship.
"A ship!" Selina's thin eyebrows went up. "In power conservation mode! What could this mean?"
"I think we'll find a ship whose crew has died or an automated probe whose power resources are depleted," Tumanov suggested.
"The probability of such a random encounter is extremely small," Cyberneticist Linder informed them, slipping onto the bridge. "It's most likely an already-activated detection device. It's playing possum, but is really monitoring the system where we appeared."
"What do we know about probabilities!" Siebel said. "The Daskin chart shows dozens of races, and, if each of them has a fleet with thousands of ships and unmanned probes, then–"
"Captain!" Kirill Pelevich's massive figure appeared in the hatch. "What should my section do? Warm up the annihilator?" He stepped over the threshold, and the bridge immediately became cramped.
"All right," Corcoran said, getting up. "I would ask all those who don't belong here to leave. Your watch, Nikolay. Plot the course, report the ETA to me. We'll follow instructions, taking opinions of the experts into account. Do you still remember the DPT protocol?"
This document, determining the order of the contact with aliens and unidentified ships, had a number and an official name, but all the fleets knew it under the acronym DPT. Don't Punch in the Teeth… at the very least, not right away. A contact was a delicate procedure, requiring mutual patience, tolerance, and at least a grain of trust. Trust was as rare a commodity in the galaxy as the benevolent wisdom of humanity's brethren. A fairy tale, nothing more! Especially if one was talking about the Haptors or the Dromi, whom the soldiers hired by the Lo'ona Aeo had already encountered. Which was why the main point of the DPT protocol was to determine the moment when one should open fire or flee.
The deck shuddered slightly under their feet.
"The shuttle with the experts has docked," Bai Ling reported.
"I'll go meet them." Corcoran headed for the hatch, glancing at the ship's chronometer. "You have the conn!"
"Aye-aye, sir," Tumanov shouted back, lowering himself into the seat by the ANS panel. "A few minutes, Captain. I'll plot the course now."
"I've never seen anything like this. Never and nothing," xenologist Ivan Asenov, a specialist in alien technology, muttered. "Doesn't look like Faata battle modules, and nothing similar to Lo'ona Aeo, Dromi, or Haptor ships."
"Just a pile of gray mud," Helga Swahn noted.
Both of the xenologists had fairly recently been Corcoran's colleagues, and he remembered well that Helga's specialty was Transinformatics. The deciphering of an alien language's signals and symbols.
"Never seen… A pile of gray mud…" Corcoran repeated slowly. "Well, experts, what other smart things will you tell us? Anything pleasant?"
There were five of them with Klaus Siebel and the pilot Seriy. Wearing vacuum suits, they were in the shuttle, under the transparent carapace of the cabin, cluttered by Swahn's equipment, decipherers, optical and acoustic sensors, and various signaling devices. A kilometer away from them, pointing her weapons at the alien, hung the Commodore Litvin, and dead ahead was that same pile of dust or mud that, most likely, was an alien ship or was hiding it under the gray skin with a multitude of outgrowths and wrinkles. If that was disguise, it was completely ridiculous; the object was noticeably different from the asteroids, stone and metallic rocks, its sharp edges gleaming in the light of the distant sun.
"Yegor," Corcoran said to the pilot, "let's fly around and record everything in detail. Just drop the floodlights… I think four will be enough."
Four pods flew out of the clip above the cabin, dispersed to the sides, and lit up, flooding the strange structure with bright beams. The boat started to slowly circle it, keeping several hundred meters away. Holocameras quietly chirred.
"Drive," Asenov spoke with obvious confusion. "Lord of Emptiness, where is the drive on this damn thing? It has to move somehow…"
"It's not reacting to signals," Helga Swahn said, hunching over her devices. "Silence on all frequencies, except the IR band [IR stands for infrared, or thermal, radiation.].
"Profile?"
"Normal distribution [Normal, or Gaussian, distribution is a bell-shaped curve. For example, this is the distribution of the speeds and kinetic energies of the air molecules, with the maximum of the curve (i.e. the most likely speed and energy) corresponding to the temperature.]. The temperature is about 120 Kelvin. Paul, maybe we should get closer, look for an airlock? I'll scan the surface with the intrascope, and then…"
"No need," Siebel suddenly spoke, having been quiet until this moment. "No need for an intrascope, my dear colleague. The ship in front of us is Silmarri, and that bulge that's facing away from the star is a docking port. If we raise the temperature a little, we'll be able to get inside."
"Open Sesame…" Asenov wanted to scratch his head, but his hand hit his helmet. "How do you know this, Klaus?"
"From Commodore Litvin's report and the transcripts of conversations with Yo. Why didn't you familiarize yourself with them, Ivan? You have top clearance!"
"Of course I looked at them." Aksenov looked a little dumbfounded. "I looked, but I don't remember…"
"You should have read it, thoroughly, not merely looked. The Faata are quarreling with the Silmarri and have gathered plenty of information on them," Siebel noted dryly. "With your permission, Paul… If we approach that bulge that looks like a Japanese hat and illuminate it with a floodlight or, better yet, two, then the airlock will open, and we'll be able to enter the ship. I think it's completely safe."
Corcoran hesitated for a second, then nodded to the pilot.
"Do it, Yegor. Put all the floodlights there."
The boat moved to the conical protrusion. Two glowing balls floated behind it, two in front, lighting up the gray uneven surface, as if cobbled together from lumps of clay.
"What about the defense systems of these Silmarri?" Helga Swahn asked with a nervous smile. "Do they have some sort of automated defenses? Sentry computers, robots, or something else?"
"The ship has powerful weapons, but, if I'm not mistaken, it lacks any methods of defense familiar to us."
"Why?"
"Because, my dear, the Silmarri are not human, they think differently and don't require computers or robots. The ship's defense is its crew… well, to be more precise, its inhabitants' collective mind."
A pair of light pods moved to the top of the airlock. This part of the ship was in the shade; its massive hull, half a kilometer across, blocked the sunlight, and that made the stars seem especially bright.
Corcoran leaned over the panel, clicking the intercom key.
"Praagh? This is the Captain. We're attempting to get inside their ship."
"Understood, sir. We're at combat readiness."
The cone's shape suddenly changed, it started to stretch up and bend, becoming similar to a bird-of-prey's beak. Waves rolled through the ship's hull, the cone, as if absorbing them, was growing before their eyes, becoming wider and longer, the nits surface on both sides from the top came apart, as if a jaw suspended on hinges, and the beams of the floodlights illuminated the spacious chamber. The shuttle could have fit in the airlock, but Corcoran, catching the pilot's questioning look, shook his head.
"No. Stay here, Yegor. If anything happens, you will cover us."
The transparent cover above the cabin slid open. Now the only things separating them from the emptiness were their helmets and the thin, durable fabric of their work suits. Unlike combat suits, they were not as bulky, lacked an exoskeleton, and did not require special skills. Probably only Corcoran would have been able to move normally in a combat suit, maybe Siebel as well. But he rarely let others know about his skills.
Strapping a holocamera to his shoulder, Corcoran pushed away and flew into the open maw of the airlock. His movements were confident, graceful, and precise, like that of any astronaut used to weightlessness, where one didn't walk or run but jumped and flew. One of the floodlights hovering astern of the boat, dimmed its bright glow and followed him, obeying his command.
Siebel jumped, then Asenov. Helga Swahn, gripping the back of the pilot seat, looked as they disappeared in the airlock of an alien ship. Fear paralyzed her; Corcoran felt it as clearly as Siebel's unshakable calm and Asenov's curiosity. He remembered Uncle Pavel's tales, the sparse information about the Silmarri given to Litvin by the quasi-living mechanism or, perhaps, the creature that controlled the starship that had arrived from the New Worlds. According to this information, the Silmarri were a strange race: giant worms, possessing neither individuality, nor eyes, limbs, lungs, or a stomach. But, despite that, they traveled through space and were far from harmless, which could be evidenced by few, including Faata pilots; those who survived an encounter with them.
"Helga, if you don't want to, you don't have to come with us," Corcoran said softly. "Stay in the boat with Yegor."
"I'll go."
As if diving into a swamp, she quickly slipped through the space separating them. Now all four of them were standing in the airlock, a wide cylindrical compartment, stretching forty-fifty paces into the ship. Six wide gutters twisted in a spiral along its walls, coming together in the far end at the circular valve that looked like tightly clenched meaty lips.
"The locking sphincter," Siebel said. "I think we need to shine a light on it."
The ball of light moved towards the valve, flaring up.
"No need to raise the temperature too much. Like that, it's enough… There are very sensitive mechanisms here."
"Gutters," Asenov spoke, looking around. "If they move in these gutters, then their body mass is higher than a human's. I would say, significantly, an order of magnitude higher."
"It's possible." Siebel watched the meaty mouth, as it was slowly opening, stretching into a ring. "Commodore Litvin, who saw the recordings on the Faata ship, estimated their size at six meters in length and a meter and a half in diameter. But their bodies can stretch, reaching–"
"Huge snakes!" Helga Swahn interrupted him, shuddering. "They'll swallow any of us like a rabbit!"
"Nonsense," Siebel grunted. "How can they swallow, if they don't have a throat or an esophagus? They feed through their skin."
Corcoran did not participate in this discussion, instead, focusing his internal hearing, tried to catch at least an echo of a mental wave. Alas! No visual or auditory information, not even a sense of warmth that was always brought by touching another being's mind… He could have sworn that the ship was empty or was drifting among these asteroids with a dead crew.
Through the circular valve, they entered into the next compartment. It turned out to be enormous, probably taking up virtually the entire volume of the ship, stretching for hundreds of meters up, down, and to the sides. Thin, transparent, crystal-clear plates of various shapes, glowing in the floodlight's beam, were connected into a chaotic, incredible for human logic structure; they intersected and joined one another at acute or obtuse angles, forming a three-dimensional maze out of hundreds or, possibly, thousands of chambers. These cells did not have a floor, walls, or a ceiling, only framing surfaces, dotted by a multitude of holes: round, even, about a meter in diameter. Here and there, flexible hoses or cables of some darker matter stretched from the outer hull along the joins of the plates, opening into wide, deep bowls at the end, looking like enormous tulips or lilies with round petals and several tendrils. Through this volume-filling structure, seemingly endless, fragile, and ghostly, like an astral vision, a central core, massive, long, seemingly cast from black faceted glass that absorbed light, shone through. It likely pierced the ship from the bow to the stern, if such concepts even applied here.
"You wanted to look at the drive?" Siebel touched Asenov's elbow. "I believe this is it. That black pipe."
The xenologist nodded.
"I agree. A pipe means a contour drive, which means that they move through Limbo. But how do they calculate the direction and the length of the jump? I don't see–"
"Screens, molecular circuits, detectors, sensors, and so forth?" Siebel interrupted him with a grin. "There's no set table either, or fanfare in honor of our arrival. They're not human, Ivan, don't forget that! Not human, but creatures of some other nature."
"You're telling this to me? A xenologist?" Chuckling in turn, Asenov tilted his head and stared at the crystal plates. "Stretching their bodies, they can, obviously, move through these openings… but, naturally, in weightlessness… and the hemispherical structures at the dark cables or veins look like control organs… What do you think, Captain?"
"I don't. I'm merely recording the situation and the conclusions of the specialists."
Corcoran touched the camera on his shoulder. But, unwillingly, a clear picture formed in his consciousness: enormous worms quickly and smoothly glided in the crystal maze, either squeezing into a white clump or stretching to ten-fifteen meters, bent over the tulip bowls, stuck their eyeless heads, or maybe tails, in them, and froze, becoming a single sentient being, capable of action. He was almost certain that this wasn't a figment of his imagination, but an echo of reality; his certainty was supported by the fact that the vision was similar to a Dream, except that it was happening while he was awake. Then again, there was no and couldn't have been any basis for it in his genetic memory; it was difficult to believe that one of his ancestors could have watched live Silmarri, especially on their ship. It was more likely that his hereditary gift was not limited to Dreams and telepathic perception, being capable of something more…
The analyzer in Helga Swahn's hands started clicking.
"There is an atmosphere here, but it's thin," she said. "Nitrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, inert gases, and organics… strange organics, the device can't determine it… Their food?"
She looked at Siebel, but he only shrugged.
"Possibly. I don't know. We don't have a lot of information, only from the sources I mentioned. We don't know much about the Silmarri at all. For example, the Lo'ona Aeo, our dear friends, know nothing about them and don't wish to find anything out. They just let them pass through their sector and never feud with the worms."
"So, we got lucky," Asenov said. "We have a lot of material for study: a whole ship, likely abandoned."
Klaus Siebel chuckled, glancing at Corcoran, but he shook his head slightly, indicating that he couldn't sense or feel anything.
"A mistaken conclusion, Ivan. Silmarri don't abandon their ships, for they have no other worlds, no other refuge. They are galactic wanderers… Each ship has a family unit, and if we look for it properly, we'll find it."
"I don't really want to look for them," Helga Swahn forced out, turning pale. "I think I'll bring my equipment from the boat and start on my analyses."
"That's reasonable. As for us, I think we will look for them, after all."
Siebel pushed away with the toe of his boot and slipped into an opening in an obliquely-hanging panel. Corcoran and Asenov floated behind him, holding the rims of the holes, or jumping off the transparent plates, which turned out to be not hard at all but flexible and springy, like the surface of a trampoline. They kept rising and falling, passing chamber after chamber, tracing the direction of the dark cables, peering into the hemispherical alcoves covered in suckers: maybe they were contact devices. Siebel appeared to know where to lead them, and, following him, Corcoran suddenly started to realize that these chambers and sections of various shapes and sizes, small as the wardroom aboard the Litvin or as large as a hold, were not really local habitats, rooms, or quarters, where someone worked or lived, like it was on human ships. The ship itself was such a space, and these transparent elastic surfaces had the same purpose as threads of a spider web, providing support for the bodies of the beings living in it, and communication lines, connecting them with one another and, probably, with the ship's surface, drive, airlocks, and other machinery. The insight came to him suddenly, as did the thought that this whole vessel, and the web filling it, and the shaft of the hyperlight drive, and the flower-like bowls, were more like biological objects, not metallic, ceramic, or plastic devices.
How did he know this? Not an idle question, but it remained unanswered. Knowledge could not explain itself.
They had moved about two hundred meters from the airlock, when Siebel stopped and raised his hand, calling for attention. The flexible plate under their feet connected to five or six others; they were slanted, forming something similar to a pyramid three times the height of a human; the neighboring chambers had the same size and featured open lily bowls at the ends of dark cables, and the faceted surface of the acceleration shaft was above them; in Corcoran's opinion, it was the most interesting object in the vicinity. But Siebel was looking down, where there was an extensive cavity, whose bottom was covered by a white fog. Looking closer, Corcoran noticed that this cloudy mass seemed to be made up of separate fragments, either stretched out or curled into rings, as if the veil was grainy, consisting of separate, fairly large particles. All three of them were floating in zero-g above this formation, like passengers of an airplane soaring above the clouds.
Asenov's exhale was audible in the helmet radio.
"So that's what they're like... a whole flock or a herd... at least several hundred..."
"Not a flock and not a herd, it's a family unit," Klaus Siebel countered. "This is a sentient being, my friends. Intelligent enough to move to space at the time when the Cro-Magnons were tracking mammoths at the foot of the Würm glaciers [Würm glaciation took place 30,000-40,000 years ago.]. Creatures who rejected the planetary surface and created their world as they wished." Siebel turned around and waved smoothly. "Not seeking contact with other races, not aggressive, not warlike, if one doesn't bother them. But if someone does infringe on them, destroy their ships, or block their movement... Let's just say it's best not to do that."
"Rejected the planetary surface..." Asenov repeated thoughtfully. "Well, they're not original in that respect; the Lo'ona Aeo also, for the most part, live in space. Of course, Lo'ona Aeo settlements that this caterpillar rookery..." He stared down, then threw a worried glance at Corcoran. "Paul! Are you filming, Paul?"
"Every detail," Corcoran reassured him, looking at the owners of the ship, huddled in a huge pile. "I'd like to know what's with them. Completely motionless, inert, no connection with the outside world, no feelings, no thoughts, no reaction to our invasion... Are they asleep? Hibernating? Or dead?"
"They are busy doing an important and urgent task: expecting progeny," Siebel explained. "They're very vulnerable at such times. But, as I said, it's best not to bother them. When the reproductive stage will end, they will disappear, leave quietly, not disturbing anyone. You can report that to Vrba and Dixon."
"Is that all?"
"No, not all... Now we know a little more about them: your recordings, Helga's analyses, and our observations. Humans are newcomers to the galaxy, one could say cheechako, and our main problem is to figure out who poses a threat and who doesn't. Whatever the Silmarri meaning of life is, they aren't interested in humans. I am fully confident in this."
"They are at fighting the Faata," Corcoran noted.
"They are. And who do you think started it?" The edge of Siebel's mouth rose. It was not a smile but a hint of one. "All right, friends, let's get out of here. It's not nice to peek into other people's bedrooms."
They floated to Helga Swahn and the floodlight by the airlock through the endless series of openings.
The Commodore Litvin was awaiting the squadron beyond the fifth planet's orbit. It was a waste of time to head for Gondwana; the cruisers, free from their cargo, were moving towards the system's periphery, to make the final jump of this expedition. Any place could be used to submerge into Limbo, but the start point was always chosen far from a star: strong gravity fields blurred the arrival point. The art of navigation involved getting to the edge of a star system and ensuring that the group of ships, jumping simultaneously, did not end up scattered over several light months. The contour drive made flights over very long distances possible, but targeting required precise calculations, taking all confounding factors into account. The problem was simplified by moving the jump point farther from central star and the planets, somewhere in the Oort cloud.
And so, the Litvin waited, hanging in the cold dark emptiness, the crew was holding watches, the specialists—Siebel, Asenov, and Helga Swahn—were examining the recordings made on the Silmarri ship, and the Captain was indulging in reflections. Something was happening to him, some walls in his consciousness were collapsing, barriers were falling, doors were opening; an unseen mental stream was washing away the remained of the obstacles and pulling him along, farther and father, faster and faster, but where?.. He did not know that, but he also did not fear the ongoing changes. It had happened to him before, when he was little, when he started to catch thought fragments, perceive feelings, empathize, get into metapsychic resonance with other people's minds against his will. He had gotten scared then, and, if not for Klaus Siebel, he would have spent many long months in terror, maybe even years... That had been then, during childhood! But he was a grown man now, and the changes no longer caused fright or horror but curiosity.
What was their cause? Perhaps, he had reached an appropriate age, at which a new mutation became unavoidable; perhaps, this flight to the New Worlds was something like a trigger: the flight itself or the unusual, strange things he had seen on the Silmarri ship. His ability to perceive mental images didn't appear to get stronger, and the Dreams continued to visit him with the same regularity, but a new gift had begun to show itself: objects, things, the environment had suddenly started talking to him. Their voices were quiet, the visions either vague or clear but brief like the flash of lightning at night. The first time, he had seen the crystal maze and the flexible Silmarri bodies, sliding in the gloomy space, then there had been other mirages, showing either Mom, or Yo, or Uncle Pavel, but they had not appeared as they did on portraits and photographs, but in scenes and situations that were not and could not be in Corcoran's memories. For example, a dark cramped chamber: Mom was leaning against a wall, Yo was bent over her, and Uncle Pavel, as if defending them both, was standing clad in a combat suit. All of them were young, as if clocks had been turned back, making them captives aboard the Faata starship once again...
The squadron passed the third asteroid belt and was due to arrive in a day. Selina Praagh had the morning watch; inviolable calm stood on the ship and in the surrounding space. Corcoran, having been relieved from watch, was sitting in Siebel's quarters, his eyes half-closed and his legs outstretched. It was as tiny as his own captain's quarters, but, instead of auxiliary controls, there was a long, narrow desk with a pair of holographic projectors, a pile of books, a pocketpute, and a film screen stretched above it. The desk was decorated by some kind of trinket that looked like a tiny octopus made of multicolored plastic or glass. It seemed this souvenir was dear to Klaus, as it was protected by a translucent cap, which was dulling the colors and blurring the outlines.
"Is that all?" Siebel asked.
Corcoran nodded. His eyes kept coming back to the trinket under the cap, bearing a momentary image: something wrapped in fabric in a four-fingered hand. A Lo'ona Aeo's hand, he noted automatically.
"You said some interesting things..." A deep wrinkle formed on the bridge of Siebel's nose. "In centuries past, it was called clairvoyance. Touching an object revealed the fate of its owner; for example, picking up a shoe taken from a corpse, a clairvoyant could unmask the killer. It was crap, of course, nonsense! But entertaining."
"I have no one to unmask," Corcoran said. "We're a little low on corpses at the moment, and this new ability of mine doesn't obey me."
"You mean you can't control it?"
"Yeah. There are flashes of some strange scenes, but only of their own will..." He reached for the object under the cap. "Looks like a cuttlefish or an octopus. Can I see?"
"No." Klaus moved the cap farther, behind a holoprojector. "Not a thing to be looked at. I'll tell you its secret someday, but for now, please repeat what you saw on the Silmarri ship. For the record, in detail."
Corcoran repeated. Then his eyes searched for the "octopus", and, when they confirmed that it was not visible behind the projector, he frowned and muttered, "Everything is mysterious about you, Klaus, even a piece of glass on the desk is a secret. I'm not even talking about yourself."
Siebel's thin lips quivered in a smile.
"Such is the service, Paul. Both of us, you and I, are mysterious personae. You are half-human, and I..." he smiled again, "I might not be human at all."
Corcoran was silent for a minute, thinking over this statement. A jest, a practical joke? But, despite Siebel's grin, this didn't feel like either a jest or a practical joke. Definitely not! On the contrary, he sensed a firm determination, as if his friend was tired of pretending. It seemed that the masks, hiding the face, soul, and mind of Klaus Siebel, were ready to come down.
A thought kept beating in Corcoran's consciousness, as if he was beginning to see the essence hiding under all these masks clearly.
"The Silmarri," he spoke slowly, "Silmarri... you know too much about the Silmarri. How, Klaus? Yo definitely hadn't spoken about them. All the information is in Litvin's reports, and I remember it well, unlike Asenov. It talks about the collective mind, about their quarrel with the Faata, and the ship destroyed near Jupiter. There is also a description of its external appearance without dimensions... Nothing more."
"Really?" Siebel raised his eyebrows ironically. "Well, what's not there?"
"Not a word about how to get inside their ship, about the devices sensitive to heat, about the Silmarri feeding through their skin, about their reproduction and wandering through the galaxy," Corcoran listed. "Don't try to put one over me, Klaus, I'm not as simple-minded as Asenov! This is not and could not be in the reports, probably because no Faata has even seen a living Silmarri."
"No Faata has, but we, I mean the Secret Service, are far more curious. Are you taking that into account, Paul? Maybe this isn't the first time we have met the Silmarri, but not everyone know about that. Not every fleet officer, let's say."
"The xenologists would have to have known... and Vrba..." Corcoran stopped talking for a moment, then, smiling, touched his fingers to his temple. "Who are you trying to trick, Klaus? A telepath? You're closed, I can't perceive your thoughts, but your emotions are a different story, can't put a barrier around them... And, if we're being honest, I've never met anyone who could put up a mental block. No one ever, except for one Secret Service officer!"
Siebel laughed, but his eyes were serious, even sad.
"All right, let's assume you've unmasked me. Maybe not even today but long ago, and, if so, I value your sensitivity. But the world is moving forward, the wheels of fate are spinning, and, regardless of our wishes, they are pushing us to this or that... This conversation had to happen eventually, so why not now? The time is suitable, especially if we imagine what the Commodore needs."
"Vrba?"
"Yes. What he needs from you, why he put the module on your ship, and why you are on this expedition... Have you thought about it?"
"Actually, I'm a pretty quick-witted guy," Corcoran said.
"I have no doubt. Okay, look!"
Siebel rubbed his face with his hands, and his features suddenly started to blur, his forehead and cheeks turned dark, his nose grew wide, with thick nostrils, his lips bulged, and his dark as night hair twisted in tight coils. This was magic, devilry! The head of a giant black man stuck out of Siebel's puny shoulders: a large skull, chocolate skin, powerful brow, prominent cheekbones... This man was still young and surprisingly handsome, with that noble beauty given to its sons by Black Africa.
"Who?" Corcoran wheezed. "Who?"
"Umkhonto Tlume, diplomat, former representative of the Free Zulu Territory in the UN Security Council. That is what's written in Gunther Voss's file, secret document #112/56-AD... Would you like to see Voss? Or Roy Bunch, Liu Chang, Nikolay Krivin? There are other personae too... Shall I show them?"
Corcoran exhaled loudly.
"I think that's enough. I may not be entirely human, but this is a creepy sight for either of my halves. Can I ask... yeah, that's good. You're a good-looking black man, but I'm more used to Klaus."
"The part about you being half-human was a joke," Siebel said solemnly. "I'm sorry if this offended you. Both humans and Faata are people, and you are the best proof of that. And I... even I... sort-of, became a human. Almost."
They sat in the cramped quarters of a small ship, thrown to the edge of Gondwana's star system, looked at one another, and smiled. Then Corcoran asked, "Will you tell me, Klaus?"
"I will. This, Paul, is a long, very long story...