This is a fan translation of The Black Relay Race (Чёрная эстафета) by Vladimir Vasilyev. This is the second book in the Death or Glory (Смерть или слава) series. I strongly recommend that you read the novel Death or Glory first. Its fan translation is available on this website.
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
Time-Out
Ángel María de Roberto, Human, Morita Griffin. A year and two Earth month before the detection of the failed soloists at Van Treya
The boat came out of pulsation within point-two light minutes of Morita Griffin. The hot white sun was licking at the void with its unbearable radiation; it was so scorching that the surface of the closest planet to it, which was about as far as Jupiter was from Sol, was hotter on its day side than Mercury was at midday. It was as if most of the energy in the galaxy was concentrated in this blindingly bright spot.
As soon as Ángel walked into the cockpit, the external screens were immediately veiled in the ghostly haze of filters.
This was it. He was here. All he had to do was calculate and find that damned asteroid. Just like Ángel's boat, the asteroid had arrived outside the ecliptic. Which made sense, considering the power of its drive.
A few months ago, the border monitoring service of the peripheral human colony of Botafogo had picked up the arrival of a large celestial body in the neighboring star system two and a half light years away. Based on the residual wave, the jump involved a giant x-drive of the sort only used by a few galactic races. In fact, it was only used on either celestial bodies or supercruisers.
Botafogo authorities decided to shell out for an instant call to Earth, just in case, and learned that none of the allied armadas was officially planning to transit through the parts of space adjacent to Botafogo. The monitors shrugged and decided to wait.
Meanwhile, the celestial body clearly had no intention of leaving the neighboring system. Making us of emergency automated beacons, they were able to narrow down the approximate arrival spot to slightly "above" the ecliptic of Morita Griffin, right above the continuous asteroid ring. And it wasn't a supercruiser.
The Botafogo monitors breathed out a sigh of relief. No one was apparently trying to attack their tiny colony.
Afterwards, they decided to get a closer look at the unexpected guest, especially since they weren't observing any activity around it. The guest turned out to be an asteroid that once had an ovoid shape, but for some reason no longer did. The ovoid now utterly lacked a sharp "end," as if it had been chipped off by a giant hammer. Upon arrival, the asteroid's speed approximately matched that of Morita Griffin's asteroid ring with a slight drift towards the ecliptic.
The Botafogo monitors scratched their heads and decided to wait a little longer. But no one was in a hurry to lay claim to the unexpected guest, and there was still no visible activity.
Then the Botafogans started to wonder. What was the asteroid doing in the Morita Griffin system? Maybe one of the rich and powerful races wanted to study the neighboring system for the presence of… let's say mineral resources. But for that one didn't need to send an asteroid with a giant x-drive, an ordinary research ship would be enough. An automated scout with hundreds of spider-bots in its belly. It could get close to planets, moons, or large asteroids, drop off its load, gather the data, and leave. Depending on the results, one could then send miners there.
It could be the miliary for some mysterious purpose. But the militaries of the higher races typically respected each other's interests, and Botafogo was a human colony. Maybe it was the youngest higher race in the galaxy, but it was probably the most influential by now. It was unlikely the allies would dare to rattle their sabers only two and a half light years from the human frontier. No that anyone was doing any saber-rattling — the visiting asteroid was quiet and calm, like a model celestial body.
In the end, the Botafogans couldn't come up with any explanation. All they knew was that there was a derelict x-drive in the neighboring system, and no one was laying any claims to it. The treasure had been floating in their godforsaken corner of the galaxy for a month, and no one was bothered by it. Except such a colossal and expensive structure was always at the epicenter of activity, with tons of people always around it… A giant x-drive in action wasn't exactly unnoticeable.
Botafogo had a single mid-sized drive on the cruiser Puerto Branco, four small ones, and several hundred extra small. Naturally, the Botafogo authorities were looking at the asteroid in the neighboring star system like a cat at a canary and were building ever crazier plans.
By the end of the second Earth month—and Botafogo traditionally used the homeworld's calendar despite the fact that it was very different from the local one, plus the planet Botafogo had no moon—they decided to act. Although very carefully because such a tasty morsel as a giant x-drive rarely lay around just like that.
So they sent a scout boat of the planetary armed forces with Lieutenant Ángel María de Roberto on board to Morita Griffin. The Lieutenant had orders to fly around in the immediate vicinity of the asteroid, and if he really didn't find anyone near it, he was to land on the surface and look for traces of any technology. The Puerto Branco and two destroyers were hanging back at a distance, while the boat, which had spent half a day calculating the three-light-month jump, dashed towards the drifting guest.
Lieutenant de Roberto spent some time next to the calculator and the mass detector. Soon, the guest was probed by the boat's sensitive equipment, the course to the target was laid in with the scrupulousness of a boring machine, and the singularity drives were engaged. Some time later (approximately two Earth days), the guest became visible on the screens.
Even through the filters Ángel was able to make out the surface of the rogue asteroid. A pockmarked hulk, utterly lacking in atmosphere. It was exactly the place for alien to run their strange experiments at…
Botafogo was a remote and backward colony. Technologically, it lagged behind Earth and the leading worlds of the human sector by twenty or twenty-five years. Naturally, Botafogo authorities were fighting this situation as hard as they could but without anything to show for it.
After entering operational distance and matching the boat's speed with the asteroid, Lieutenant de Roberto initiated cross scanning. Almost immediately he picked up artificial structures not far from the "amputated" sharp end of the ex-ovoid. Ángel didn't need to be an alien expert to recognize the typical trusses and dome of an x-drive inside a cavity under the asteroid's surface, as well as a habitation module buried in the rock. De Roberto estimated the personnel to be between four and ten people, either Svaigh or Zoopht; if the base belonged to the Aczanny, then a few more, up to sixteen individuals. Based on certain design elements, he could confidently exclude the Swarm and the Ayeshi from the list of the structure's owners. The latter's modules looked very different, while the former didn't build module at all. Ángel María de Roberto wasn't really thinking about any of the other races of the galaxy, as only the giants could afford a giant x-drive.
In the meantime, the results of the bioscan came in. With a lively interest, Ángel noted a small cluster of nonliving organic matter some depth under the surface. Slightly further away were another five pinpoint clusters and a separate bright signal of a living biological object, although it had an indeterminate cycle and a number of oddities Ángel was unable to comment on due to his lack of qualifications.
The equipment found no other organic matter on the asteroid.
Lieutenant Ángel María de Roberto reported everything in detail to the Puerto Branco and awaited reply. It would be no more than a day to get the reply on lightspeed comms. But even the stars had no idea how long the admiral aboard the Puerto Branco would take to make a decision.
Then again, the admiral turned out to be a decisive man and wasn't afraid of taking on the responsibility of a siege. He immediately ordered Lieutenant de Roberto to land near the drive and to scout out the cavities under the asteroid's surface. A quickly put together research team was to prepare to work in an airless environment and reduced gravity.
Naturally, Lieutenant de Roberto didn't even consider delaying and immediately initiated the landing. The Puerto Branco and both destroyers also engaged their singularity drives and set course for the visitor.
The space in the vicinity of Morita Griffin still remained empty. No one's presence violated the void, except, of course, for the alien asteroid and the small squadron from Botafogo.
Ángel landed not far from where one of the underground chambers came out nearly to the surface. According to the scans, the chamber was empty, and it was separated from the chamber with nonliving organic matter by approximately three kilometers; but that was in a straight line, and if he followed a winding tunnel (and Ángel would have to), it would add another kilometer to the trip.
Ángel had a lot of experience in planetary exploration, which was why he'd been the one sent on this mission. He habitually prepared his gear, put on the vest suit, armed himself, hung a pulse flashlight but also put on night vision goggles, and went outside. Jumping like a kangaroo, he once again checked the scan data, placed an explosive, and leapt away to a safe distance. The soundless blast scattered rocks for nearly half a kilometer. The slow and majestic fall of stones took several minutes.
A single explosion turned out to be insufficient, so he ended up placing another charge in order to expose the underground cavity. But after the second explosion, he didn't even have to clean up anything. The chamber ceiling collapsed in a neat conical pile, and the low gravity made it easy to get down into the half-collapsed former cave. It was noticeably darker here than on the surface, but even at this distance Morita Griffin provided enough light to see.
Ángel got down and walked around the perimeter of the chamber. It branched off into three corridors, one of which led in the direction he was interested in — towards the cavity with organic matter and the habitation module.
Leaving a radio beacon behind, Ángel turned on the goggles and entered the dark passage without hesitation.
The first suspicious appeared almost immediately. The tunnel's floor, walls, and ceiling were far too smooth to be natural and far too rough to have been cut with mechanical tools. Ángel only knew of one race in the galaxy that could've dug such a passage in the thick untouched rock.
The Swarm. A community of selectively intelligent superinsects. They rarely employed mechanical implements, preferring to grow specialized drones capable of performing various tasks, even extremely complicated ones. Ángel wasn't a Swarm specialist, but, like everyone in the military, he'd gone through basic training.
The last suspicions faded in the next chamber. The cluster of nonliving organic matter turned out to be a mummy of a Swarm queen. Its huge body that was seven meters in height, four in width, and twenty in length took up most of the available space, leaving only narrow passages along the walls. Ángel couldn't determine how this being had died, as his light field equipment couldn't provide that answer. He decided not to linger, leaving behind another beacon and continuing on. There were also three passages branching out of this chamber. The Lieutenant had come in through one of them, the second clearly led to the habitation module, and the third towards the chamber where scanning data indicated held the single living object.
Ángel María de Roberto headed towards the living object.
After walking a few kilometers down the empty, as if swept, corridors and just as empty chambers, he reached his destination. Up ahead, the goggles were showing a dim spot — the entrance to another chamber. It was denser, which was why the darker rock broke off into an oval opening into the emptiness of the underground cavity. Ángel adjusted the goggles, took his rifle off the safety, and carefully approached the entrance.
Against expectations, he found nothing of note in the chamber. For some reason, Ángel had thought that there had to be either a crashed spacer or a lone alien researcher. And if it was the latter, then it would be unlikely a Swarm member or an Ayeshi. Swarm members never worked alone, having too much in them from social insects. Plus the specialized nature of each drone only allows the community to survive in sufficiently large groups — such was the Swarm, and it didn't particularly suffer for it, as even that approach to life had its advantages. The confidence that he wasn't going to run into a Zoopht technocrat or an Ayeshi smuggler was based on Lieutenant Ángel María de Roberto's personal experience.
The Lieutenant's gut didn't fail him — he really didn't see either a Swarm drone or an Ayeshi in any activity phase. The Lieutenant just saw a massive elongated box that he oddly wanted to call a sarcophagus right away. And even though the sarcophagus wasn't made of transparent crystallite in accordance with the Selentinian Awakened and wasn't suspended on monomolecular braids, which was a custom of the Rateo Sleepers, Ángel felt that someone was hiding inside it, motionless and slumbering. Maybe some crazy rich hermit, who has decided to live in another era and had themselves placed into suspended animation for an indeterminate period.
Botafogo would actually be fine with that option. If the "sleeping beauty" hadn't prepared any nasty surprises, they could move the sarcophagus to any local asteroid and even monitor it, while making off with the drive and using it for their own purposes. If the hermit was an important individual in the galaxy, then they could even return the drive after they woke up. Or they could even destroy the sarcophagus in the nearest furnace. "The dead do not cause trouble," was a popular human proverb.
Then again, Lieutenant Ángel María de Roberto understood that the proverb, just like any other truth, wasn't absolute. At times, it was the dead who were causing all the trouble.
So he wasn't deluding himself about Botafogo's chances and wasn't jumping to conclusions.
He examined the find carefully, confirmed that the analysis equipment he had on hand was insufficient for studying it, and decided to leave cracking that nut for later. Leaving yet another beacon behind him, he headed for the habitation module, which was very close to the chamber.
At about the same time, a tiny spherical ship surfaced from beyond the Barrier catastrophically close to the asteroid. It was tiny compared to the asteroid or even the cruiser Puerto Branco. If Lieutenant de Roberto had so much as glanced at the tiny ship, he would've immediately recognized it as a Swarm microscout.
But Lieutenant de Roberto couldn't see it. He was below, under the asteroid's surface.
And the Puerto Branco and the two Botafogan destroyers didn't pick up the ship because it was using a state-of-the-art Swarm drive that didn't produce any residual gravitational disturbances when coming out from beyond the Barrier. Visually, the ship selected tiny part of space extremely close to the asteroid that couldn't be probed by any of Botafogo's ships because the asteroid itself was in the way to jump in. Plus there was still the distance to consider: the squadron was close to the asteroid only on a cosmic scale. In fact, the tiny ship and the squadron were still a light minute and a half away; although that distance was quickly getting smaller.
The tiny ship was moving with a purpose, as if it knew what it was doing and what it was looking there.
It descended very quickly and with g-forces that would've been significant by human standards, made a mad dash over the asteroid's surface—just over six hundred and twenty kilometers at the altitude of only half a kilometer—and rapidly came down close to the dome of the asteroid's x-drive. Near a small but noticeable fault. The same one where the frontal airlock into the Shat-Tzoor habitation module was hidden.
By that point, Ángel María de Roberto had crossed half the distance from the chamber with the sarcophagus to the back airlock of the same module. Along the way, he ran into the mummies of Swarm drones, primarily workers, that had been brought together by someone. He had no doubt that they'd been brought there, as they were lying in neat rows, like at a cemetery. This was the cluster of nonliving organic matter he'd picked up in orbit.
Here Lieutenant de Robert didn't linger any longer than it took to set up a beacon. He'd already come to the conclusion that the habitation module was the place where he'd be able to gather as much information as possible. And then he could rack his brain on the dead Swarm drones: the workers and the queen.
Soon he reached the back airlock, and realized at first glance that the airlock was defended. Grooves of the protective emitters were hidden along both sides. Any unexpected guest would've run into a solid wall of death.
It took Lieutenant Ángel María de Roberto nearly twenty minutes to get through it. When the problem was resolved, the emitters locked down, and the outer airlock doors open, he was filled with pride for the successful and masterful work. Even an amateur would be able to easily open the inner doors. That was probably why the Lieutenant relaxed for a moment and dropped his guard. Because of that, and also because he'd been completely certain that there was no one alive inside the module. And maybe also because the doors gave in sooner than expected.
His rifle was lowered when the two gray vertical planes parted, and Ángel María de Roberto saw a man standing right behind them. The man was holding a powerful plasma pistol in an outstretched hand, and the Lieutenant's head was only a few centimeters from it.
"Yovasi!" the man said and fired.
Lieutenant Ángel María de Roberto died before he had a chance to realize that he one killing him wasn't human. Humanoid, but not human. And, naturally, he hadn't had a chance to realize that he was yet another victim of the black relay race.