This is a fan translation of Counterstrike (Ответныйудар) 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 5

Gamma Malleus

The Europe's observation room was huge. It was located on deck A, immediately aft of the bridge; it was the size of a soccer field, covered by a film screen, mirroring the shape of the outer hull. Currently, the room seemed like a window opened to space; alien constellations blazed in the depth of the screen, and it was difficult to believe that up there, above them, was not a transparent dome but the ship's indestructible armor with dozens of video sensors. Corcoran, having served on the Europe, remembered the room empty, if one didn't count the general crew line-ups, admiral parades, and other official events. But today, there was not a lot of available space. In the far end of the room, near the bulkhead separating it from the bridge, he saw lights blinking on the control panel for the SADs [SAD stands for "small autonomous drone", a tiny rocket with devices capable of scanning in the visual and radio bands.], or Owls, as they were called in the fleet; in the middle, there were hemispheres, mounted on brackets, used for visual observation, connected to telescopes, and other equipment used by the science team; there were two rows of desks along the walls, four food dispensers, a portable bathroom with a shower, and several couches. Someone was sleeping in one of them; the Research Corps specialists had been working here for days, and it didn't look like they came down to the living deck to rest.

A portion of the room, separated by large square screens, was equipped for meetings. There were hard plastic chairs, holoprojector columns, a portable terminal of the shipboard Ultranet, and Loudmouth Ben, a translation device designed to ease communications with the Faata. The whole area was covered by a sound absorbing field; Corcoran could watch the astrophysicists, xenologists, and linguists working their equipment, but not a word or a rustle passed through the invisible sound barrier. They were in plain sight here, but, at the same time, completely isolated. The Commodore sat, stretching out his long legs, Corcoran and Joaquin Ibáñez, the head of the Europe's scientific sector, stood, watching the screens, Asenov, the expert xenologist, was working his magic at the terminal.

"Continue, Dr. Ibáñez," Vrba said, nodding his head with blond cropped hair slightly. His hair shone gold, as if the commander of the expedition picked it out specifically to match the color of his chevrons and uniform clasps.

"Yes, my commodore. Please, diagram seven… yes, excellent… thank you, Señor Ivan." Ibáñez, a swarthy, dark-eyed Galician, had a distinct impeccable politeness of the old Spanish kind: he called his subordinates "señor" or "colleague", while his superiors were "dons" and "caballeros" to him. "And so, we are looking at the Gamma Malleus system, the result of three days of observation. An hour ago, we have received the most recent data from the Africa and the Asia from the SADs they had launched. I believe, caballeros, that all objects of interest have been detected and their trajectories clarified. Up to and including the asteroids that can be detected from so far away."

Three days!.. just three days! Corcoran thought. Well done! The expedition's scientific sector was, without a doubt, one of the best. Listening to Ibáñez's rapid-fire speech, he examined the diagrams, charts, and tables with the parameters of planetary orbits appearing on the screens. Upon exiting the timeless Limbo, the squadron was performing a reconnaissance of the Gamma Malleus neighborhood. The ships drifted in the condensations of the comet area, far from the inner planets; here, like in the Solar System, the distance between the central star and the Oort cloud was about one light month, but, instead of two large swarms, there were eight, presenting a lot of opportunities to hide quickly and securely. Comets, some dust and rocks, cemented by the frozen gases, were distributed unevenly in the cloud, and gaps between the swarms reached hundreds of billions of kilometers. However, there was no better chance to secretly monitor the system; this far away, through the swarm, no sensor would locate any alien ships. To speed up the work, the Asia and the Africa had jumped to two clusters on the other side of the local star, and SADs had been launched above and below the ecliptic to increase the accuracy of the results.

"Eight planets," Ibáñez said, demonstrating yet another diagram. "Eight, if we count the three stellar bodies very close to the star. Very small ones: their mass is two or three times less than Mercury's, while the distance to the sun is a quarter of an AU. This is the orbital radius of the third planetoid."

"I take it the two others are, obviously, invisible," Corcoran spoke.

"Let's say unobservable, Don Capitán. The first of them is nearly in the star's corona, while the other one is close to it and very small. Their orbits have been calculated based on the perturbations in the motion of the third planetoid. These bodies do not present any interest to us, given our mission. No water, no atmosphere, gravity approximately 0.1g, monstrous temperatures… 500 Celsius on the surface of the third planetoid… at least 500."

No interest, Corcoran agreed silently: any activity, base construction or ore mining, would be difficult and, therefore, unprofitable. Vrba, obviously, held to the same opinion; he waved his hand and spoke.

"Continue, Doctor."

"Then, caballeros, we have two Earth-like worlds with oxygen atmospheres. I believe that the fourth one, the warmer one, is Ro'on, while the fifth is T'har, but even its climate conditions are quite acceptable: the average temperature is above freezing. On Ro'on, it's 18°C… slightly warmer than on Earth… [The average temperature on Earth's surface is 15°C.] Distance to the star is 0.77 AU, gravity is 0.9g, period of rotation is 28.3 hours, and there are 320 days in a year."

"Artificial structures?" the Commodore asked curtly, turning his gaze towards Asenov.

The xenologist shrugged.

"Nothing, sir, that would be possible to detect from here within the cloud. No cities, no large orbital structures near the planet. And there is almost nothing on the radio bands."

"According to the available data," Corcoran said quietly, "the Bino Faata of the Third Phase have no cities. No entertainment familiar to us either. We can't expect to intercept some TV or radio transmissions with useful information."

"You ought to know, Captain. You're our expert in this."

Vrba turned to him, his stern face continuing to be imperturbable, but the corners of his lips twitched into a smile. Based on his experience with him, Corcoran knew that Karel Vrba did not give out smiles for naught. In fact, he did nothing for naught or just because, and even the psychic gift did not always allow him to catch his intentions, hints, or actions that would follow shortly. As befitted a good military commander, Karel Vrba was full of surprises.

But this time his thought seemed understandable: he remembered shipyard DX-51, aboard the Europe, and a young Lieutenant Commander reporting to his quarters. "They have high expectations for you, Corcoran... When we head to the star systems, where the Faata colonies are located…"

Well, so we had! And we were here! Now what?

"We are listening, Ibáñez," came the Commodore's calm voice.

"The sixth and seventh satellites are Mars-type planets. No atmosphere, their mass is 20% of Earth's, rocks, sand, arid deserts, low temperatures… But they are suitable for setting up bases."

"An asteroid belt?"

"There is none here. There are separate asteroids, but none of them approaches the size of Hygiea or Psyche, much less Ceres or Pallas [Minor planets, also some of the largest asteroids in the Solar System: 1 Ceres (950 km in diameter), 2 Pallas (544 km), 10 Hygiea (380 km), 16 Psyche (240 km).] The largest… Señor Asenov, images, please… Here! This one has the diameter of 98 kilometers, and there are four more, between 50 and 70 kilometers in size. The others are smaller. No observable exact location in space, as for the quantity… well, from this distance, we have detected about a hundred. There are more massive bodies orbiting the eighth planet, but even here the scale is smaller than at home, nothing like Ganymede, Titan, Triton, or even Tethys. Several dozen irregular-shaped moons, with the sizes ranging from 20 to 180 kilometers. Señor Asenov… yes-yes, this image… the largest satellite against the backdrop of the planet… it masses 6 x 10-5, if we compare it to Luna… and here is another, 150 kilometers in diameter…"

"They appear to be the largest asteroids that have been captured from space, correct?" Vrba asked.

"Without a doubt, my commodore. The mass of the outer planet is thirty percent greater than Jupiter's, its pull is great… Gas giants, if they exist, clean up the garbage in any star system. And this is a typical gas giant: hydrogen, helium, methane, ammonia, and radio emissions at the wavelength of 3 centimeters [Jupiter's radio emissions at the wavelength of 3 cm were discovered in 1956; it is caused by the motion of charged particles in the planet's atmosphere.]. However, the atmosphere appears to be calmer than Jupiter's; it lacks any analogs to Io, and the largest moon orbits it a million kilometers away [A number of the turbulent effects in the Jovian atmosphere are caused by Jupiter's proximity to the massive satellite Io, which is larger and more massive than Earth's Moon (its mass is 1.2 times that of the Moon, its diameter is 3640 km, and the distance to Jupiter is 422,000 km).].

"The fourth," Asenov grunted, leaning over the terminal. "The fourth satellite, Joaquin."

"Yes-yes, of course, my colleague. Put the images on these screens, please. General view, then the area of the phenomenon, and the result of computer processing." Smoothing his dark hair, Ibáñez explained. "The fourth satellite of the gas giant, which we have named Obscurus, appears to be inhabited, and there is some meaningful activity taking place in the vicinity; unfortunately, caballeros, we don't know what it is. The distance is too great to distinguish tiny objects. We were able to increase the resolution with the use of interpolating software, but not by much. Here, look!"

A dark rock with a wrinkled, cracked surface was slowly spinning on the first screen. Obscurus's shape looked like a roughly carved tetrahedron, whose four vertices appeared to be smoothed out or cleaved, sinuous mountain ridges stretched along the edges, and the bases represented a semblance of triangular planes without any noticeable details. However, a series of shots at maximum magnification, which Asenov had pulled up on the second screen, showed that the impression of flatness and smoothness was illusive. In the weak light, streaming from the huge disc of the gas giant, dark shadows were visible; some were probably cast by hills, cliffs, and even mountains, others could have been chasms, large canyons, or craters, caused by meteorite impacts. One of these spots had the shape of a blurred ellipse. Based on the scale grid, overlaid on the image, it reached twenty kilometers in length and eight-and-a-half in width. This formation had some sort of internal structure: barely-noticeable points of light were visible in the darkness hiding it, and it seemed that the darkness was an enormous shaft or a tunnel, piercing the planetoid, and the sparks of light were the stars, hanging in the immeasurable distances. The interpolating software, possessing intuition and near-human imagination, cleared up the picture: the third screen showed that some of the dots were grouped along curved trajectories, while others were scattered in complete disarray.

"Some sort of astroenginering complex?" the Commodore asked.

"It's possible," Asenov replied; he had obviously been studying this phenomenon. "Unfortunately, sir, neither the Africa nor the Asia see the moons of the outer planet, as it's on the other side of the sun from them. Here," the xenologist nodded at the screens, "is the summary of the results of only our observations, and I can tell you that I have squeezed everything I could from the equipment and the software."

"Any hypotheses?"

The xenologist chuckled.

"A dozen or so. A space mine, a settlement, or an entire city, a penal colony, a processing plant, a station for monitoring the space beyond the outer planet, a military base, or all of the above."

"Perhaps the object has nothing to do with the Faata," Ibáñez added. "A strange natural phenomenon or a Daskin artifact… We'll find out when we get closer."

"We're not getting closer now." Vrba stood up. He was lean and very tall, a head taller than his subordinates. "Dr. Ibáñez, Dr. Asenov…" A slight nod. "Thank you. Joaquin, send all the results to the rest of the squadron. You are dismissed."

"Yes, sir."

Ibáñez and Asenov left the meeting area. Corcoran looked up; there, on the ceiling screen, the starry sky was spread out to its full width. The sight was not as impressive as it was on Earth or Gondwana, for the chasm separating the two galactic arms seemed to be a grim river that had swept away the faint sparks of the stars with its dark current. The orange sun of Ro'on and T'har, as yet nameless, looked to be the brightest flame among the glowing embers of this celestial bonfire. The outlines of three cruisers were visible against the dark background: the Australia was the closest, followed by the America and the Antarctica. The Litvin, docked to the Europe, remained out of sight.

"We'll remain here and wait," the Commodore spoke. "You will go to Ro'on. It's most likely a more populated world, the center of the local civilization… Then again, this is only a suggestion not an order. Talk it over with Siebel, Paul. T'har has its own advantages, since we have at least some data on it. We can guess what awaits you there."

Talk it over with Siebel… Pulling himself away from contemplating the starry sky, Corcoran looked at the Commodore's face. It was unmoved. Does he know?.. a thought came. Based on Vrba's mental pulses, which didn't contain any special emotions, he was not in on Siebel's secret. Something, maybe a sense of anticipation, which had awakened so suddenly on the Silmarri ship, told Corcoran that only he knew that secret. He did not wish to think about the reason for such trust. Siebel was his friend, of course, but…

"I will discuss the route with Siebel, but I think, sir, that your recommendation is correct," he said. "T'har has only one ruling Sheaf, while Ro'on, if Yo was not mistaken, has three. Three continents and three Pillars of Order. More possibilities, more information."

"Information, yes…" Vrba's eyes, sliding along Loudmouth's massive shape, became thoughtful. "Before we do anything, we need information, for we know too little. An enemy needs to be studied. What if, upon looking closer, the enemy becomes an ally or, at least, a neutral party, like the Lo'ona Aeo… So, let's not rush in with plasma throwers and annihilators. These are very powerful tools, Paul. I would say, irreversible."

He fell silent, staring at the screens, still displaying the dark, fuzzy outline of Obscurus. The thoughts going through his head were understandable to Corcoran: Vrba was remembering his brother and father, killed in the Battle of the Martian Orbit, the destroyed Prague, the millions of casualties, the dead and the mutilated; he remembered all that and fought his hatred. For him, the simplest decision would probably have been an annihilator, but he did not wish to invoke his right of vengeance. At least, not yet.

"Do you want me to land on the planet?" Corcoran asked after a long period of silence.

"Yes, if you deem it necessary. You have a week and the Faata module. Besides, you know their language and, in some respects, you yourself…" Vrba didn't finish. "You don't have to make contact with them, but we need intelligence and a geopolitical overview. They have no cities, but there must be industrial and control centers, defense nodes, astrodromes, gathering places for t'ho and members of the higher caste… If Ro'on has three Pillars of Order, then are there any disagreements between them? Perhaps, one of them is more peaceable than the others? More tolerant? More inclined to cooperate? After all, both of our races are humanoid."

"I understand, sir." Corcoran nodded, and his memory obligingly reminded him of another detail from their first meeting, there on shipyard DX-51. "What will I have to do?" "Whatever the situation demands…" It was possible that landing on Ro'on was a useless and suicidal task, but he needed to try. Vrba was right: an annihilator was an irreversible argument.

The Commodore turned to the screens, showing the lump that was Obscurus, and said, "One more thing: take a look at what they're building there. But carefully, without revealing your presence. Load up on a dozen Owls, and launch them if observation is necessary."

"Am I to communicate with the squadron using data probes?" Corcoran asked. "In case we are unable to return?"

"Yes. But I hope you'll be able to return." Vrba unclasped his breast pocket and took out a pouch with a tiny chip that looked like a golden scale. "Here, take this. It has a program for the cybersurgeon."

Corcoran grimaced.

"Will it give me implants? I'm afraid my wife won't like that!"

"No implants. You look like a Faata, except your hair is red, and the eyes are gray. That we will fix. You'll be a handsome dark-haired man like Ibáñez. Your wife won't mind."

"But my kids might not recognize me," Corcoran muttered, saluted, and left for his ship.

The outer planet was hovering in the viewscreen, like a cloudy sphere of frosted glass, touched by an artist's brush, which added a pink stroke here, a blue or brown one there. The Commodore Litvin, a tiny grasshopper, having jumped from the darkness of the comet cloud to the white opalescent sphere, was gaining on it with every passin hour, as if falling into the mouth of a giant shaft, filled with dim light and a chaotic movement of colored stripes and spots. It seemed as if the shaft was cut into the black obsidian of the cosmic darkness and led to such outskirts of the universe where even the ancient Daskins had never been.

It was Second Navigator Oki Yamaguchi's watch; Bai Ling was on the bridge with him. The two other pilots, Bo Santini and Yegor Seriy, were in the wardroom with the other senior officers, watching the white spot grow and gradually turn from a flat disk into something with volume, bulging, wrapped in a dense layer of atmosphere, and clouds of methane and ammonia. This world, related to Jupiter by mass, volume, and chemical composition, appeared different from it: this planet rotated slower, was not as flattened at the poles, and lacked anything similar to the Great Red Spot and the system of stripes parallel to the equator [Jupiter's period of rotation is about 10 hours (the shortest of all planets in the Solar System), and, due to the fast rotation of the powerful gaseous atmosphere, the planet is flattened at the poles. Its other special features include the Great Red Spots and stripes parallel to the equator.]. In his lifetime, Corcoran had seen a couple dozen such gas giants, failed stars, and all of them appeared somewhat defective to him: no heat or light, like from the Sun, no life or intelligence, like on Earth. But a rich supply of raw materials; almost unlimited, in fact.

Klaus Siebel, sitting under Commodore Litvin's portrait, stood up and started brewing coffee. He did it masterfully, obviously having practiced in the task for several centuries. Fragrant aroma flowed through the air, there was a subtle clinking of porcelain. Siebel, filling the cups, gave the first one to Selina with a bow. Then came the turn for Corcoran and the pilots. Tumanov, having refused coffee, got himself a glass of juice from the dispenser, downed it, and grunted into the intercom, "Oki! Are the moons visible yet?"

"Only the large ones. I am clarifying their trajectories."

"Do you need help?"

"I can manage. By the way, we have the results from the spectral analysis."

"I'd like to see them," Corcoran said, sipping his coffee.

"Yes, sir. Pulling them up on your screen."

A column of symbols and numbers appeared to the left of the planet, on the film screen set up in the wardroom. Hydrogen – 72%, helium – 25%, methane – 1.2%, ammonia – 0.7%... Then came ethane, acetylene, phosphine, ammonium sulfide, and water vapor, all in trace amounts.

"A lot more methane and ammonium than on Jupiter," Siebel said.

"Six or seven times more," the senior pilot Seriy confirmed. "I've flown near Papa Jove before, may it be damned! I still remember the atmospheric composition down to the thousandths." After a beat, he added. "I was almost crushed in a Peregrine there. Marinich's expedition, back in '17, when we were trying to get to the Red Spot."

"You flew with Marinich?" Praagh raised her thin eyebrows. "Wow! I had no idea!"

"Need to brush up on the crewmember files," Corcoran said. "It's a first officer's duty to know everything about everyone."

"Even you, sir?" Selina asked sarcastically.

"Naturally. But within the limits of the file."

Siebel looked at him with a smile. There were multiple versions of their personnel files: some were kept in the fleet archives, in the computers of the Europe and the Commodore Litvin, while others, ones closer to the truth, could be found in the USF Secret Service database. But even those, if one spoke of Siebel, contained about a penny's worth of truth.

"The information on the seven largest moons has been processed," Oki's voice was heard from the intercom. "I'm sending the orbital parameters."

The screen was covered by a ripple of numbers, labels, and symbols. Based on the clarified data, Obscurus, the fourth and most mysterious satellite, orbited the planet at a distance of half a million kilometers, but it wasn't the closest moon: there were two more, almost the same size but with smaller orbital radii. Besides the seven larger planetoids, there were other bodies spinning around the protostars, several dozen rocky, icy, or metallic boulders, which were being tracked by the frigate's video sensors, sending the information to the ANS. While the Litvin was extremely maneuverable, it was still dangerous to rush into the swarm of the giant's satellites without calculating their trajectories.

The enormous planet was already taking up half the screen, when the on-duty navigator announced, "I think that's everything, Captain. If something is omitted, then it's no larger than a pebble, on my honor as a samurai!" Then he added. "Thirteen minutes and forty seconds until the end of the watch."

He was tired, Corcoran realized, catching the mental vibes flowing from Yamaguchi. He touched the minds of his crew for a moment. They were all at their battle stations and at full readiness: Pelevich was manning the annihilator, the gunners were in the turrets, Hernandez was in engineering, Linder was in the med bay, and Communications Officer Dupressis was in his cubbyhole next to the wardroom. Then again, there was nothing for him to hear: no radio signals, except for the emissions in the 3-cm band.

"You'll be relieved shortly, Oki," Corcoran spoke and turned to Tumanov. The first navigator was eight years his senior and, besides his priceless experience, was known to be careful and composed. "Here's what we'll do: let's enter an orbit of five-six hundred megameters, but on the other side of the planet, outside of Obscurus's observation zone. We'll launch SADs; two should be enough, I think. We'll put one up as a repeater and send the other to the object. What do you say, Nikolay?"

"Sounds reasonable." Tumanov rubbed his balding scalp. "All right, I'll go crunch some numbers, Captain."

"A moment. Praagh, any thoughts? How about you pilots?"

Selina shook her head, Bo shrugged. Seriy made a suggestion, "Can't we do without the Owls? Boniface and I can take a look for ourselves in Peregrines."

"Too much risk," Tumanov objected. "A Peregrines is a lot bigger than a SAD. Also, its life support system would produce emissions, easier to detect… What's the benefit?"

"The benefit is in personal impressions. There's no substitute for them. When I was descending to Jove… or landing on Minerva at Arcturus… or…" The pilot waved his hand. "Anyway, I had plenty of impressions then."

"That's what we don't need." Corcoran stood up and pushed away his empty cup. Uncle Pavel was looking down at him from the wall with a strict expression, as if reminding him: your time has come, son. It's been a long time coming, a thought came, and he, frowning, continued. "All right, people: Tumanov is on the ANS, Seriy is at the controls, Praagh is on watch, keeping a data probe ready, Siebel and I are observing. Bo, you will remotely fly the Owls from the auxiliary bridge. Can you handle both?"

"I can handle four, Captain. Those birds are pretty obedient."

Saluting, Santini dashed into the narrow hallway. He was followed by Praagh, Tumanov, and the senior pilot. Siebel stayed behind.

"Attention, crew!" Corcoran said, leaning towards the communicator's vocoder. "The watch is being changed. Green Alert [Green Alert is the preparatory stage before the Red Alert.], all sections to report readiness in ten minutes."

"Do you feel anything?" Siebel asked. He was still standing on the threshold. He wagged his finger at his temple and asked again. "Right here? Anything at all?"

"No."

"Okay. We'll talk later."

Squeezing one after the other onto the bridge, they lowered into their seats, right into the tight embrace of their cocoons. All sections reported in due course: Tumanov, Hernandez, Pelevich, Praagh. Dupressis reported that no intelligent activity was being detected in space, no broadband radio signals, no coded pulses; only the cosmic background radiation and the 3 cm emissions. Bo Santini called out next: two Owls were already in the launch tubes. The ANS console winked red lights at Corcoran, then being replaced by green ones, and the pilot control panel was illuminated by a dim flash.

"Course plotted," Tumanov said.

"Course accepted."

Seriy's hands danced over the panel, the planet's enormous sphere started slipping to the side, to the edge of the viewscreen, then there was a quiet click from the ANS, and numbers appeared in the light column next to his controls. Distance to the object, velocity components, linear and angular acceleration, position in space… Gravity aboard the ship remained normal; its fluctuations were compensated for by the artificial gravity generator. The sensor screen's round eye was calmly glowing; there were no rocks, no dust, no other space garbage ahead of the ship, and the same was true of artificial objects.

There was a sharp chord, and the pilot's hands came down. Now the ship was flying on automatic; its trajectory was gradually bending, twisting around the planetary sphere, sensitive video cameras were tracking this foggy world, sending the data to the onboard computer's memory. They were fifteen hundred megameters from the dense layers of the atmosphere. The side screens, showing maximum magnification, displayed monstrous flocks of clouds, glowing silver in the light of the distant sun.

"The turbulence here is not as noticeable," Tumanov said. "There are eddy currents and twisters, but…" Squinting, he stared at the analysis data running along the bottom of the screen. "But nothing comparable to Jupiter. Calm atmosphere."

"This is what the specialists on the Europe predicted," Corcoran noted. "The planetoid masses are negligible, and there are no noticeable tidal forces or other perturbations."

Siebel shifted in the tight embrace of his cocoon.

"And what follows from this?"

"It's possible to fly there," Seriy grunted. "Without descending too deep, but above, without any problems or risk. Easy!"

"Possible to fly," Siebel repeated. "Hydrogen, methane, helium, acetylene, even water, plenty of resources, plus minerals on the moons, all the sources necessary for chemical synthesis… And it's possible to fly! This suggests a thought."

"You think it's a factory with a transportation network?" Corcoran proposed. "They're scooping raw materials from the atmosphere, mining metal on the moons, ferry it to Obscurus, and produce something?"

"Vacuum toilets, for example," the pilot suggested.

"We'll see." Siebel chuckled vaguely. "Hydrocarbons are an amazing thing, Yegor, one can make anything from them, with appropriate knowledge, of course. Food, fabric, plastic… And if one adds mineral resources, the spectrum grows significantly. Basically, any of the excesses and luxuries that we know back on Earth."

"A transportation network requires communication. Traffic control, pilot commands, identification signals, etc. And we," Tumanov glanced at the silent intercom, "we hear absolutely nothing: neither conversations nor any other meaningful signals. Although, at such distance and with our equipment…"

Silence fell on the bridge. Corcoran kept glancing at his monitors and at the captain's control panel with the dark recess of the pentalion, trying to remember which methods of communication the Faata possessed. Uncle Pavel had spoken of the kaff, a telepathic amplifier, but he hadn't seemed to encounter any radio equipment. As for the experts, who had studied the Faata starship, they had found normal systems, oriented towards the radio contact with Earth and monitoring of TV and radio stations. There had been nothing of the sort in battle modules, and the question of how the ship had maintained communications with their pilots remained unanswered. It was obvious that it was not with the use of the means employed in the Solar System. No radio, no laser pulses, no other emissions within the known bands… Psychic technology? Possibly. Klaus would have to know that…

He attempted to touch Siebel's mind, hitting a strong barrier as usual. Then again, several thoughts slipped through this block: wait, my friend, don't rush.

Nearly an hour passed in the tense silence, occasionally interrupted by Siebel and Selina Praagh's remarks. The pilot and the navigator worked in silence, maneuvering above the planetary atmosphere and trying to move the frigate to some small satellite to give them a better hiding spot. Finally, Seriy sighed in relief, stretched as far as his cocoon cover would allow, and reported.

"We're in orbit, Captain. Five hundred and twenty megameters from the center of this bastardy star. The period of rotation is eighteen-point-three hours."

"The object is on the other side of the planet and is slowly gaining on us, but the speed of convergence is small," Tumanov added. "We don't have to worry about anything for three days."

"More than enough time," Corcoran spoke. "Selina, is the probe ready?"

"Yes, sir."

"Santini, what do you have?"

"I'm at full readiness. My button finger's itching," came from the intercom.

"Send the scouts."

The Commodore Litvin shuddered slightly. Two small cylinders flew out of the launch tubes, unfolded their twin antennae, making them really look like owls with large round eyes, and rapidly vanished into the darkness. Praagh immediately switched the image: now the left side screen was filled with the enormous disk of the planet, while the viewscreen and the right monitor, which were showing the signals coming from the SADs, displayed stars and the mournful ribbon of the Void between the galactic arms. The gravity drives accelerating the Owls were simultaneously supplying the sensor equipment and a tiny pulse transmitter with power. It was believed that it was impossible to detect it: the signal stream was tightly focused, the pulses were low-frequency, while the intermediate picture was being filled in by the interpolating program unit of the onboard computer.

These tiny scouts were moving at an incredible speed: flying in the same orbit as the Litvin and the six-kilometer rock, hiding the frigate, they were closing with Obscurus at the rate of ten megameters per minute. The distance was not small, though; it was another half hour before Santini reported.

"Owl-A is slowing down. A little more, and I will suspend it."

This SAD's role was to be a relay. Its companion Owl-B shot away on the same course, vanishing behind the planetary disk, but the image on the viewscreen continued to be stable. Two small moons and one larger one passed by several minutes apart, shapeless fragments, pockmarked by micrometeorite strikes; then there was a series of some elongated bubbles, rising out of the depths of the planet's atmosphere and gleaming in the sun, and, finally, the dark spot looming ahead started to grow, turning into a rough likeness of a triangular pyramid with chipped vertices. The Owl slowed down fast, the image on the screen started to shake, but this lasted less than a second; then the picture settled and cleared up.

"Obscurus, Captain," Bo Santini's voice sounded. "Forty-seven kilometers to the surface."

Tumanov snorted happily.

"We'll be able to spot a fly at this distance!"

"But first, let's get a long shot," Praagh said. "The probe is recording. Bo, get a shot of the whole thing from three or four angles, we'll build a hologram."

"Yes, ma'am. Glad to be of service, ma'am. Anything for your burning eyes and red lips." Bo, AKA Boniface Antonio Sergio Héctor Santini, was a humorist and a joker, but also an amazing pilot. Everything that could swim, drive, dive, or fly, obeyed him with special eagerness; perhaps it was because the six implants in Bo's body made him partly related to any machine with nozzles, propellers, or wheels.

The SAD started to move, choosing a better vantage point, and it seemed that the lump of Obscurus was rotating, as if wishing to demonstrate all its mysteries and secrets. The mountain ridge that was the tetrahedron's edge, slid smoothly off the screen, revealing a dark, gloomy surface, cut up by shadows and cracks, which snaked like black lace on the background of umber and ash. But black-gray-brown turned out to be not the only shade of this plain: at its very center, there was a dimly-glowing blue oval dome, and, in its depth, under the ephemeral shield, there were bright lights. The three identical circles delineated by them were visible clearly and distinctly.

"Landing pads?" Tumanov mused. "What do you think Yegor?"

"No, more likely…"

It was suddenly quiet on the bridge. Corcoran noticed his XO freeze, her mouth agape.

"Command, Selina. What's going on with the long shot? Is it done?"

Praagh jerked.

"Yes, Captain. Bo, show it to us closer now. Not vertically, but at a forty-fifty degree angle. I think there is a cavity… there, behind those lights…"

The image shifted and magnified. A blue haze flooded the screen, but it didn't hinder the view, just the opposite: its soft, even glow and the light revealed an enormous chasm, a shaft, or a natural elliptical cavern and the three cylindrical shapes in it. The lights were located on their ends, and smooth gleaming surfaces went down, gripped somewhere in the chasm's depths by a system of giant rings, connected to one another and to the walls of the shaft by beams, cables, and walkways. There, among these lattice and tubular structures, something was moving, crawling back and forth, appearing and disappearing in circular openings dotting the walls; there, flaming tongues glowed in rhythmical flares, fountains of orange sparks rained down, translucent outgrowths stretched, sometimes thin and long, and sometimes bulging with a foamy white mass. In all this bustle, chaotic and disorderly at first glance, there was still some kind of meaning and goal, as if in a strange disharmonic symphony, which, despite the wailing of the tubas and the rumbling of the tympani, progressed according to its creator's plan.

"This dome…" Praagh uttered. "A force field? A screen holding in the air?"

"Without a doubt," Tumanov agreed. It's holding the atmosphere and protects from meteorites. We are familiar with this Faata technology, it's already being used in Martian cities. To cover a settlement with such a screen, they need–"

"Not a settlement," Siebel's quiet voice came from behind. "Not a settlement, Nikolay, it's a shipyard. Or a dry dock, if you will. An enormous dry dock, where three starships are being put together. Like the one that came to us."

"By the Lord of Emptiness!.." Seriy muttered and squirmed in his chair, turning to look back at Corcoran. "Three of these things will smash us into dust and ash! Everything, from Pluto to Mercury! We should get closer, Captain, before they're finished, and hit them with all guns at full power!"

"The Commodore will make that decision. We are only here to observe."

Corcoran leaned towards the monitor, peering into the depth of the monstrous abyss under the force dome. He had been to orbital shipyards, both those near Earth and those that had been built on Ceres and Pallas within the last few decades, but the sight here was impressive. He realized that he was looking only at the tip of the iceberg: Obscurus was, mostly likely, full of passages and caves, and its bowels probably hid giant industrial facilities. Obviously, they were processing the raw materials retrieved from the planetary atmosphere and its moons into millions of tons of metal, ceramics, plastics, everything that was required for the outer hull, the bulkheads and decks, the acceleration shafts and gravity drives, thousands of battle modules, delicate and complicated equipment, mechanisms, weapons, field generators… And, of course, all this industry needed to be controlled, the efforts of the workers of all production units coordinated.

"Dupressis," Corcoran called, "what do you hear, Dupressis?"

"Silence, sir. Nothing that looks like coded signals. The ship is in the area of radio silence, but the Owl's antennae are pointing straight at the object. If they were talking, I would have caught the transmission."

"Do you see anything like a radar beam?"

"No, sir. No means of detection. They don't appear to be monitoring space."

"I see. Continue the search."

Meanwhile, Selina was giving instructions to Bo, and, as a result, the image on the screen started to grow; Santini was squeezing everything out of the SAD's sensitive optics. Now, Corcoran could see mechanisms looking like a starfish with many flexible outgrowths crawling among the interwoven cables and beams. They were very large; a tiny humanoid head was sticking out from the translucent center of each of them, no larger than a buckwheat grain on a platter. The bodies of the operators were barely visible through the vehicle substance and appeared to be motionless, but the machines themselves were working hard. Their flexible tentacles were constantly in motion, stretching out and contracting, reaching for some parts or nodes, putting them into place, then spraying them with foam or a viscous white liquid, dousing it in flaming fireworks. Assembly units, Corcoran thought. There were as many of them as there were termites in a mound: thousands, tens of thousands, but he focused on the figures of the workers. The first living Faata he had ever seen, not counting Yo, of course… But Yo was beautiful, and these guys did not look attractive. He was unable to make out their faces even at maximum magnification, but it seemed to him that their heads were hairless and strangely deformed: not a dome holding a mind, but something flattened.

"Look, look!" Tumanov suddenly cried out excitedly. "Transports! Maybe containers with raw materials… But how are they controlling them? Camille, do you hear anything?"

"No, sir," Dupressis replied guiltily.

The elongated bubbles they had seen earlier appeared above the mountain ridge, surrounding the plain. There was no longer any doubt about their artificial origin, nor the fact that they were similar in appearance to the Faata battle modules, but larger and not as angular. Each of the machines made a graceful curve above the dark peaks of the mountains and disappeared at the edge of the defense field, seemingly sinking into the ground. There was obviously an airlock there, but it seemed as if the very surface of Obscurus was swiftly and greedily swallowing the transport ships along with their cargo. They stretched in an endless line; a minute, five minutes, ten, fifteen, as if space itself was shooting them out from some inexhaustible warehouse.

Their stream ended on the seventeenth minute.

"How many of them are there?" Tumanov whispered in confusion. "A thousand? More?"

"Praagh, give me an exact number," Corcoran demanded.

"Eight hundred and thirty-two, sir." Her voice cracked. "The fleets of all the terrestrial companies put together consist of more transport vessels, but these are so huge! At least half a kilometer, according to preliminary estimates."

Corcoran nodded, figuring that any surprises were possible here, which meant that it would be prudent to continue observing the shipyard. The value of these observations grew with the increase in duration and detail, and, if the Faata did not monitor the surrounding space, he could hover near the rock covering them for a whole week. Then he thought that there were all sorts of surprises, including the lethal kind, and it would be a good idea to add some insurance against them, especially since they had half-a-dozen data probes aboard, and there was no reason to spare them.

"Cancel the Green Alert," he spoke, opening up his cocoon. "All those not on watch can rest. Bo, set the Owls to automatic. Selina, what is the state of the data probe? Is it loaded?"

"Yes, Captain."

"Add commentary to the video recordings and include a message that we're going to be here for two days. Send the first probe, and we'll send the second one in forty-eight hours with the results of follow-up observations."

"We could send everything in one package," Selina said. "In two days, I mean."

"No. The information must not be lost, and Lord of Emptiness only knows what will happen to us in two days," Corcoran said and left the bridge.

Nothing had changed in Siebel's quarters, only the cap with the octopus-like trinket was covered by an opaque plastic bag. Despite this, it drew Corcoran in like a magnet; he had to make an effort to pull his eyes away and not reach for the strange thing with his hands. Its vague shape, a bunch of colored spots, barely visible under the cap's matte surface, was firmly entrenched in his subconscious.

"The shipyard," Klaus said, "the shipyard and these ships under construction… Have you seen anything like it in your Dreams?"

Corcoran shook his head.

"Definitely not. You're familiar with my Dreams, I tell them to you… I have not yet seen images like that." He furrowed his brow and stared at the floor, to avoid looking at the black plastic bag. "It doesn't look like there have been astronauts among my Faata ancestors."

"There must have been. Our service believes that you come from a Bino Faata, a member of the upper caste, rather than a lowly t'ho worker. They're all descendants of the star wanderers who had returned home during the Second Eclipse… Then again, it's one thing to fly on a ship and another to build it. I don't think there are many fully sentient beings on this shipyard; two-three tops, and all of them are Keepers of Communications.

"Keepers of Communications?" Corcoran frowned. "You mean specialists in the psychic contact with a quasi-mind? Those who maintain its psychological stability? Not engineers, not designers, not technologists? That's unlikely, Klaus. There are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of workers, complex mechanisms, a transportation network, and powerful, and therefore dangerous, weapons… Who is in charge of the construction then? And how does that happen, by the way? We haven't detected any radio signals, and this giant complex requires control."

The floor shuddered under him; Selina had probably launched the data probe. This machine was larger than a SAD; a two-meter long cylinder with a contour drive, capable of throwing it to the edge of the universe, but only once: transitions to Limbo and back with such a small acceleration shaft destroyed the drive. It didn't look like the Faata had solved this problem, as their battle modules with gravity propulsion were not meant for interstellar flights.

"Captain, the probe has been launched," Praagh's voice came from the intercom.

"Thank you." Corcoran estimated that their report would be in the Europe's computer in several milliseconds, and raised his eyes at Siebel once again.

Siebel was smiling, and that smile made him look younger. Or did he really decide to make himself younger for Selina?.. Corcoran thought.

"You want to know who's in charge of the construction? A Daskin creature, what else! It's on one of the ships, and it doesn't need engineers, only t'ho effectors of the workers caste. It communicates telepathically with them, as for the Keepers… The Keepers are there only as a precaution, for monitoring."

A shiver ran down Corcoran's spine. He suddenly recalled the stories told by Mother and Uncle Pavel, and he could almost see the cramped pentagonal chamber in the depths of an alien ship, at the center of which was a slowly pulsing brown mass. Then a silent explosion, shaking the air, and a man's figure appeared out of nowhere, tall and thin, with disheveled blond hair. Gunther Voss, as Pavel Litvin had remembered him… Voss, and at his feet was the heavy, quietly humming container of the sigga… Voss, the Exile, a Protector, the being sitting right next to him, a Metamorph wearing the mask of Klaus Siebel!

The realization of this incredible situation momentarily pierced Corcoran. He leaned towards Siebel and spoke slowly.

"So, here, on one of the ships, is a quasi-sentient… The same sort of beast you and Litvin killed… And you could teleport me to it?"

"No. You should've been paying more attention to my story; I can teleport you twenty-thirty thousand kilometers, but it's over a million to Obscurus."

"All right… I understand, the distance is too great… But what if we close to the shipyard to within the diameter of Earth? How about then?"

"Then, no problem." Siebel grinned. "But why? Do you want to destroy this creature or subjugate it? But I have neither a sigga nor a psychic amplifier! And you, my friend, have no need to play hero. It's not the year of the Invasion, and your cruisers are not helpless eggshells. It's been over a third of a century, and you have different ships, different weapons, colonies at all the nearby stars… You are a galactic race!"

"What about it?" Corcoran asked, looking at his friend with great suspicion.

"I'm still making a point that there is no need for heroics from you; Commodore Vrba can deal with the shipyard without our help. Trust me on this! A shipyard is not a planet; it's a localized and very vulnerable object. A sudden strike at the moon, and this entire rock will be vaporized along with the unfinished ships, thousands of t'ho, and the Daskin beastie. You understand that, right?"

"Naturally." Corcoran started to cool down. Klaus is right, he thought, yesterday's feat need not be repeated. He made several deep breaths and spoke. "Let's get back to our situation. You're insisting that there is a quasi-sentient on one of the ships. Is that an assumption or an exact knowledge?"

"You can check for yourself."

"How?"

"Psychic probing. You can do it."

"No, I can't," Corcoran said angrily. "I receive emotions and thought only from people nearby, not at cosmic distances. Besides, we're on the other side of the planet, and it blocks telepathic fields."

Siebel looked at him with a slight sneer, the way a wise mentor, who had lived for millennia, looked at his young pupil.

"What do you know of telepathic fields? Of course, their intensity decreases with distance, but gravitating masses are not barriers for them. And what do you know about yourself? You're changing, Paul, your powers are growing, and you need to get used to that. Today, you can do a little more than yesterday, tomorrow, you'll be able to do more than today… Try it! Take a step in a direction you haven't gone before. You can! You can!"

Leaning against the bulkhead, Corcoran closed his eyes and touched the minds of his crew. It was a familiar sensation, like looking at bright flames nearby, almost next to him, he could feel their warmth and hear the crackling of the firewood. Beyond this circle of the familiar and strong connection was darkness, which he was used to considering a psychics barrier or something limiting his capabilities; occasionally, he would try to pierce the dark space, but the attempts always ended in failure; the thought got bogged down in it like a fly in hardening amber. He understood that the darkness was an illusion, that there were other mind flames burning somewhere in it, but reaching them seemed a daunting task. However… Take a step in a direction you haven't gone before. You can! You can!

He got a feeling that out there, in the cosmic distance, was something gigantic, like a web of thin intersecting lines, dark and, at the same time, different from the surrounding darkness. Corcoran reached towards this mind with all his strength, and the nodes of the web suddenly flared, but not with a bright, clean flame, but like crimson ash-covered embers. Thousands of images spun around in his head: he seemed to be piloting a space transport through the atmosphere of an enormous planet, filling the reservoirs with its gases, cutting through the unyielding mountains of an asteroid, grinding the rock into dust, commanding semi-sentient machines, a strange symbiosis of human beings and organosilicon pseudoflesh, looking through a countless number of eyes at a myriad of other devices and assemblies, just as strange, connecting people with artificial muscles, laser beams, sensors, regenerators producing food and air, growing embryos, which were making the structure more complicated and turning into something similar to familiar devices. By some strange means, he realized that the being on the other side of the darkness hadn't noticed him: either because it was too busy or for some other unexplained reason. It seemed that, despite its enormity and power, it was incapable of penetrating the dark barriers separating it from the human frigate and her crew.

Exhaling sharply, Corcoran broke contact and opened his eyes. Siebel's face loomed as a white spot, his eyesight returning slowly, and, for the next several seconds, the walls of the cabin, the cot, and the desk with holoprojectors and books swayed like on an ancient sailboat caught in a storm. This dance soon stopped, and the world of the ship, familiar and stable, closed in around Corcoran.

Siebel reached out and gripped his wrist, either calming him down or getting his pulse.

"It's difficult at first, but it will get easier each time… easier and easier, and you will learn to quench the psychic resonance… but for now, think of something nice… think of Vera and the girls, imagine your garden in the Holmy, the blossoming cherries and plums, the rose bush by the porch… this is reality, Paul, your reality… come back, enter it…"

"That's also reality." Corcoran nodded towards the hatch, as if the dark rock of Obscurus floated in the darkness and the cold behind it. "I'm okay, Klaus. This… this was educational. I had no idea I was capable of that!"

"You are," Siebel said. He said it firmly, as if hammering a nail into a board. Then he inquired, "Well, did you hear it? What are your impressions?"

"That thing is diabolical! Are you sure that there's only one… only one creature there?"

"Yes. One is enough for now, but, when the ships are ready, there will be one beast like that in each of them. We… I mean, my people… we have rarely encountered them, but we know that the Faata grow them. Here, in the New Worlds, there is also a nursery, on Ro'on or T'har. Probably on Ro'on, these creatures like warmth and require water. A lot of water."

"A nursery…" Corcoran mused. "Yo was from T'har, and she never told me about that… You must be right, the nursery is on Ro'on. I think the first thing I need to do is find it."

"The first thing we need to do," Siebel responded, emphasizing the pronoun. "We! Do you really think I'm going to stay here and not go with you? That I would let you go alone? What would I tell your mother if you did not come back? What about your wife and daughters?" His face suddenly started to change, his hair and eyes grew dark, his chin and cheekbones narrowed, his skull elongated, and his skin became milky white. "Faata m'regi?" he spoke with a question mark and attempted to form a smile with his tiny mouth. "Am I not a Faata? And are we not a beautiful pair? A ruler and his faithful genie, ready to take his master to the end of the world, if danger presents itself…"

Corcoran, looking at this metamorphosis with surprise and delight, brightened.

"Are you offering yourself as transportation? Really, I didn't think… A living teleporter! What could be more reliable! We can take a combat robot with us. You carry us, and we protect you."

"That's not necessary. I'm not helpless."

"But you don't have a sigga! And no psychic amplifier either! Or did you keep something over the centuries?"

"Maybe I did," Siebel said with dignity, restoring his usual appearance. "I also could've acquired something new. Progress does continue, Paul, on Earth and on other worlds, and its results can be so amazing…"

He looked at the small object, covered by dark plastic, and chuckled.