This is a fan translation of The Missing Link (Недостаяющее звено) 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 third book in a series called Trevelyan's Mission (Миссия Тревельяна), which is a spin-off from the author's Arrivals from the Dark (Пришедшие из мрака) six-book series.
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
Note: Footnotes can be found at the end of the chapter.
Chapter 4
Close World, Distant World
The sky split open. A monstrous crack cut through its bright blue depths from the northern horizon to the southern, revealing a bottomless pit without any stars. The sun was gone, and with it faded the lights of the orbital stations and ports, the planet's two moons—ghostly white crescents that could even be seen during the day—disappeared. The stations and moons held the Invasion Fleet, a myriad of large and small disks, transport ships with combat machines, walking and flying crushers, charges of poisonous mold, a suite of geoplanetary disasters, and mirrors capable of vaporizing oceans with a stream of reflected energy. An unbeatable power, the fruit of centuries of work! All that was now gone.
The edges of the crack were expanding and disappearing beyond the horizon, covering the planet in darkness, cutting it off from the universe, from life, light, and warmth, from thousands and close and distant stars. The sky looked like a giant black tunnel that had cut through the galaxy; it was a road to nowhere, a path of punishment, punishment that was cruel and eternal. The planet fell into this well for countless years that stacked together in towers of geological eras. Time was frozen, the world was bound in silence, terror was everywhere. Many died of fear, but their fate seemed a fortunate one in the coming bloody centuries. The wings of death had touched them mercifully, freeing them from torment and humiliation, from sickness, genetic degeneration, and loss of intelligence… Yes, they truly were the lucky ones!
But the seemingly bottomless tunnel (or well) did have a bottom after all. The fall ended, the darkness gave way to cloudy yellowness, the sky was once again the sky, although no longer transparent and blue as before. It was now pinkish-gray, like blood dissolving in a puddle of liquid mud. The sun was now dim and red, and a wide dark band spread across the night sky, pushing stars away; only along its edges one could see measly handfuls of lights, distant like memories of the past. The past had been full of grandeur and proud hopes, while the present was nothing but gloomy, deadly melancholy. A decrepit star and a solitary world before the cold face of the star… What depths had they been cast into? What fate had been prepared for them?
Vegetation, oblivion, decline… The Great Enemy hadn't destroyed them, instead throwing them into the dungeon. A prison that had empty space instead of walls and cold and darkness instead of guards…
Fardant VII awakened. His visions hadn't been dreams. Due to his nature, he couldn't dream and only saw what had really happened. The memories of his ancestors, the ones that had once joined their minds, were still there, hadn't fallen apart over the years, and their phantoms surfaced with regular consistency. Maybe it was necessary, an algorithm implanted in Fardant's brain to remind him of the purpose of his existence; maybe there was a hint of some kind in the images that came to him, something that could help in restoring sentient life or at least in fighting his rivals. Fardant didn't know that, but he didn't reject the mirages of the past that alternated between the greatness of a dead species and visions that were terrible, gloomy, and frightening. After all, they were his only form of entertainment.
He pulled out a mental probe, unfolded it into a wide fan, and touched the billions of creatures swarming under and on the surface of the continent. All of them were parts of him, a product of his efforts to spread to a larger territory and push his rivals away; some of them were executor offspring, while others were imitations of the life forms he remembered and had tried to reproduce. He monitored the latter only occasionally; there were too many of them, and they were almost brainless. They existed and reproduced on their own, requiring no care and not causing alarm when it was their time to die.
The executor workers were doing their jobs. An entire army was digging passages deep underground, following the curves of ore veins; the veins didn't produce much, but without that ore Fardant wouldn't be able to replenish the losses from battles with the Rotten Offshoot and Mataima. Guards remained vigilant at the defensive line, dug into screes, hidden in cracks and crevices; their highly-tuned sensors were being swayed by the wind, while the mirror flowers growing atop the cliffs fed them power. Between the outer defensive barrier and the inner border, there were fields of energy flowers and sanctuaries of the crushers; these parts of Fardant were slumbering. Their purpose when active was war. But the huge complex where his primary module was located was always alive. Worker offspring were busy in the complete silence and darkness of the remote galleries, light cutters were glowing over the biotanks, tiny shoots were forming biomass, crawled around in hypothermic pods, selecting sample cells. Preparations were ongoing for a new experiment, but Fardant VII wasn't in a hurry. After diving out of the dream world, he was reflecting on the possible mistake. His creations were incredible, but their minds were asleep… Why? He had no answer yet.
At the edge of perception, his mental probe touched the minds of his rivals. The mind of Mataima, the abomination of the Unsociables, was cold like the ice in the polar oceans and inaccessible like the distant stars. Hiding behind an impenetrable barrier, he shoved Fardant away. He didn't want to talk to anyone, fearing that a rogue thought might reveal his plans. He was suspicious and careful — the oldest and weakest of the five immortals. Mataima's domain lay in the northern part of the continent, in an area poor in power and resources. He hadn't chosen that place. It was where Fardant and the Rotten Offshoot had pushed him out to.
The Offshoot, as usual, was a fountain of fury. Fury was a decent mental defense against external penetration, but Fardant would be able to overcome it. But why? Just to once again dive into the feeling of regret, experience the bitterness by running into a dark cloud of negative emotions?.. The Offshoot was his own creation, a branch split off from the trunk, which he'd sent southwest to protect the coast from Ter Abanta Krora's encroachment. It was a long time ago, back when Fardant had been trying to create other immortals by multiplying himself. But those plans had been a failure, as the Offshoot became a hated enemy rather than an ally.
The echoing pulse of Ter Abanta Krora was mocking. He was powerful, at least as powerful as Fardant himself, as his small continent had barely been touched by the destruction during the age of turmoil, and there were still mines in his mountainous regions. Besides, that continent was on the equator, receiving the most radiation of the star, and Krora's crushers were overflowing with power. But could've sent them by air to the coast, into the Offshoot's domain, and destroyed everything that moved on the surface and underground, but it was unlikely that he would ever do it. The Rotten Offshoot reminded Fardant of the failure, a sign of defeat, a symbol of unfulfilled hopes, and that amused his rival. What was pain for one was entertainment and joy for another… Krora had a vindictive disposition and a craving for malicious antics.
He did occasionally manage to converse with Dazz III. His continent, a little smaller than Ter Abanta Krora's, was located in the east among the ocean waters, in the other hemisphere, which made Dazz the safest rival. The strategic module claimed that, if he captured the central continent and Krora's domain, Dazz would become his junior partner and a reliable ally. But Fardant didn't look that far ahead.
May you be prosperous and eternal, Dazz greeted Fardant and added after a brief pause, It seems your latest experiments were not successful.
I keep producing only brainless creatures, Fardant admitted bitterly. Maybe the genetic material is defective, but there is none other on the planet. Unfortunately!
Unfortunately, Dazz agreed.
He couldn't help at all, and neither could any other immortal, as only Fardant's cryogenic pods held cells suitable for recreating living organics. There was no explanation for that fact. Fardant assumed that the planet's ancient inhabitants, who'd become his foundation, had a tendency to study their own bodies and intelligence. But this talent failed to manifest in the Rotten Offshoot.
Dazz's next thought slipped through his mental barrier, The beings from the Outer World… Do you know of them?
What beings? Fardant felt anxiety. Emissaries of the Enemy? Or?..
I was able to scan them. They don't look like the Enemy and differ from us, or who we used to be. They're very strange… Dazz III paused again. Strange, but alive.
The anxiety gripping Fardant grew, as no other space wanderer had approached their sun and world in a thousand Big Revolutions. But the world and its star were slowly drifting towards the edges of the abyss the Enemy had hurled them into, so it wasn't impossible that they had gotten close to interstellar routes and habitats of intelligent life. This life, despite being different from Fardant's kin, could serve as priceless aid in his experiments.
Did the beings come down in your lands? he asked with trepidation.
No. Their ship… something that looks like a ship but seemingly alive, hovered over the ocean near Ter Abanta Krora's domain. Krora ordered his crushers to vaporize it.
And did they? Fardant's thoughts were filled with bitterness.
No. The beings few away. Their ship is large, but even the most keen-sighted guards wouldn't be able to see it. It seems that its hull absorbs radiation. Only a tiny portion of my scanning beam was reflected.
The mental link dissipated.
Krora, the spawn of the Dark Lords! That damned Krora!
Hatred overcame Fardant. He spent some time wondering if he ought to send his crushers southwest to deal with Krora once and for all. But it wasn't a sensible thought, and the strategic module blocked it. More than likely, the battle would end with Fardant and Krora's power severely weakening, their offspring slaughtered, their underground shelters destroyed, and, as a result, their lands would be split up between Mataima and the Rotten Offspring. The optimal decision was still to wait, endure, hope, maintain the bance… Maybe someone from the Outer World would come again.
The huge silvery dish of the long-range comm antenna turned, directing its forked tip towards the Void. It was impossible to make out the Void from the orbit of the Kinnison FDAC base or anywhere else in the Solar System, as hundreds of bright and dim stars hid the large gap between the galactic arms. But the unseen line did exist, being more of a speculative but nevertheless important concept, demarcating the border of the Earth Federation. In that aspect, the Void was particularly suitable, as the borders of the sectors of influence [Footnote 1] typically ran along natural objects unsuitable for colonization. Many such formation existed in the galaxy: dark and light nebulae of low-density gas, vicinities of black holes and stars on the verge of becoming supernovae, regions poor in G- and K-type stars, and, finally, the Voids separating the branches of the galactic spiral. Over the thousand years of the space age, the Void closest to Earth hadn't so much been studied as become a familiar phenomenon. Ships never went deep into that icy emptiness, but there were dozens of prosperous colonies on its boundary, including the three oldest ones: T'har, Ro'on, and Aezat.
But the antenna wasn't directed at them. The Kinnison's AI aimed the tip towards another spot, at a binary system whose stars were marked in the human catalogs as Hindu demons. A world called Ravana circled around the huge red Asura, while the other star, the white Rakshasa [Footnote 2], stared at it with its hot furious eye. Not the most prosperous of galactic worlds, whose fierce name Ravana eventually gave way to the derogatory Inferno… Then again, what was prosperity? By universal standards, Ravana had gotten very lucky, as there was life on it, and not just any life, but intelligent life. Maybe those intelligent beings didn't find the deserts, giant mountains, and flaming volcanoes pleasant, but it had only been three millennia since the start of their civilization when fortune smiled on them again. And it was a generous smile, as a human expeditionary ship reached Ravana, and the younger humanoids found themselves under the care of their older cousins. Then again, no one was feeling fortunate by that for now.
For now, Consul Sokolsky repeated, peering into the screens, where a silvery structure glinted in the darkness, eclipsing the stars. For now, as the mills of history did their work slowly, and the first bread that was baked in its crucible was always mixed with blood. It wasn't a particularly cheerful bit of wisdom, but humanoids didn't know any other: not Bino Faata or humans, not Teruxi or Kni'lina, not Osierans or Haptors. Maybe it was their signature recipe for progress.
"At full readiness," a voice rang out from the ceiling of the comm room. The consul was here alone; the Kinnison's AI didn't need human assistance to aim the antenna.
"Send the message," he said.
The antenna's emitter was veiled in a bright haze, then a blinding flash leapt off its sharpened tips. This brief moment could barely be registered by the eyes, as sending a packet of compressed information took only a hundredth of a second. A powerful pulse of energy cut through space, and the flash disappeared. Slipping through the timeless Limbo, it would be reborn many parsecs away from the Kinnison, where a communication satellite was orbiting Asura. Its orbit had been synchronized with Ravana's, so both celestial objects—one artificial and one natural—were always located on the same side of the star. The computer controlling the satellite received the message, decoded it, and relayed it to the planetary base. Then it sent a reply, and the echo pulse once again made the Kinnison's antenna flare.
"We have confirmation, Consul Sokolsky," the AI reported. "Awaiting transmission from Ravana."
Sokolsky nodded silently. Real-time interstellar communication was not a simple task, considering the complexity of calculations involved in targeting the antenna and the huge amounts of energy used up by the emitter. Still, he could contact the worlds where the teams under his purview were at any moment, receive their reports, and immediately send his advice and instructions. It was a consul's privilege, one Sokolsky rarely abused, remembering the needs of his colleagues and the cost of long-distance communication. But it was a special case this time.
A pale glow enveloped the antenna. The silvery dish seemed to be sucking in the fog shimmering over it. The fog alternated between flaring and fading, and this game of lights and shadows continued for over four minutes. A lot of information, Sokolsky thought. The team on Ravana was probably sending over the results of their visual observations.
The glow faded.
"Decoding the message," the Kinnison's AI informed him.
"Any requests for long-range comms?" the consul inquired.
"You have forty minutes, Consul. The antenna will remain targeted."
"Thank you."
The console, the screens, and a part of the acradeit bulkhead suddenly disappeared, as if the compartment opened up into space. The image quivered, floated, and Sokolsky saw a planet. But it wasn't the green and blue Earth with the Kinnison floating nearby, it was a gray-yellow sphere, occasionally cut through by occasional clouds. The yellow deserts and ochre plateaus occasionally transitioned into dark-purple and black shades of seas and straights that looked like shapeless blobs connected by thin strands; a dirty haze of dust and ash floated over the peaks of the ridges that crossed the continents, crimson lava flows came down the slopes, and fountains of steam rose where the hot stone met water. Sokolsky was familiar with this view of Inferno from the orbiting satellite and didn't result in any pleasant memories.
"This is a visual recording," the Kinnison said. "Seven minutes and thirty-two seconds long."
The central landmass's mountain ridge rapidly grew closer, its tips pierced the pink dome of the sky, disappearing along with the suns, the huge red and the one that looked like a white-hot coin, then the mouth of a gorge that came out onto a gentle slope opened up between two spurs. This large wasteland, overgrown with tall yellow grass and skeleton-like bushes, was swarming with animals and people. Closer to the gorge stood hundreds of carts with huge wheels and tall wicker sides; some held bales, baskets, sheafs of spears and arrows, others were covered with canopies made of leather and colorful fabric. In front of them stood row upon row of cone-shaped tents, and the southern wind was waving bundles of hair on tall poles with copper balls and disks woven into them. Herds of horned mounts were grazing along the outskirts of the wasteland, humanoid figures were moving, cutting the grass with long, wide blades or digging ditches and deep wells, cookfires were burning, and something was bubbling in a thousand cauldrons. Warriors, half-naked or in leather armor, mounted or on foot, were moving among the carts and the tents, dragging something, stocking up on water and grass, eating after hiding from the heat under the carts or in the shade of the cliffs, moving in a closed formation with pikes sticking out, or dancing at the burning flames. Shouting and pounding of feet, the clanging of copper and the roar of the animals, the crackling of burning firewood and the crunching of grass being cut were hanging over the camp like a thundercloud.
"There are the White Cloaks," Sokolsky muttered, examining the nomadic horde, "Sand People, Creek People, Teeth Out, Arrivals from the Edge, and ten to fifteen other Hearths… The entire northern steppe, by the Lord of Emptiness! How many of them are there?!"
"Thirty-two thousand, with a margin of error of one and a half percent," the AI noted. "Would you like a more precise number, Consul?"
"No. The precision is sufficient."
The consul wiped the sweat off his brow. By the standard of Earth's antiquity, an army of thirty thousand wasn't particularly large, as the Romans, Huns, Persians, Mongols, and Arabs had gathered much larger ones, to say nothing of the Chinese. But for the sparsely populated planet of deserts and mountains, it was a huge force, capable of destroying settlements and fortresses, eating their inhabitants, and flush the work of dozens of generations down the toilet. After the invasion of the barbarians, the oases of Kyoll would be dead, nothing but ruins would remain of the trade cities, contact with the south of the continent would be cut off, domestic animals would run wild or end up in cookpots, fields would end up overgrown with grass, and ships would burn in the fires of the nomads. Everything would burn down to ashes, and the ashes would be scattered to the wind… To Sokolsky, who'd invested decades of his life into Ravana, such a thought was unbearable.
The image zoomed in. Now the consul was looking at a burning campfire with warriors dancing around it, swaying rhythmically and pulling their knees up almost to their chins. Their arms were muscular and long, almost reaching their knees, their fingernails were sharpened and curved, making their hands look like the talon of a bird of prey. Their faces—narrow like an axe blade, with yellowish pigment spots on the forehead—were frozen in detached expressions, long mops of dark hair were hanging down to their chests and streamed down their backs in locks, their greased-up skins were glistening, bronze axes were swaying in their hands. On Inferno, a hot and dry planet poor in wood, fires were burned to prepare food, not for warmth, and those fires were small. But for this fire they hadn't spared any oil or fuel, and the man-sized flame was raging and roaring. A ritual fire, Sokolsky thought, and asked, "The Hunger Dance, right?"
"Correct, Consul. According to fragmentary observations of the nomads, this appears to be the Hunger Dance. The dancing indicates—"
Sokolsky waved the explanation off, "I know, I know! A big slaughter, meat in the cookpots, and piles of bones… Not going to forget a thing like that!"
Abruptly, the warriors lifted their weapons, struck them together, and the bronze rang out.
"Shas-ga!" the dancers exhaled as one. "Shas-ga! Rrit, Rrit!"
Rrit was the great God of Hunger, and the dance in his honor seemed appropriate, judging by the gaunt appearance of the northerners. The skin stretched their fatless bodies, their muscles and bones could easily be made out, their pupils glinted hungrily, their predatory grins and elongated jaws gave their faces a wolflike appearance. This race of Inferno's natives had short lips that didn't cover their teeth, which made it seem as if they were constantly grinning. And it was a carnivorous grin.
"End of transmission," the AI informed him, and the image vanished. But the holoprojector didn't turn off, and a part of the wall was still veiled in a shimmering fog.
"Something else?" Sokolsky asked, closing his eyes wearily.
"Yes. Coordinator Angela Preston is requesting clarification on Expert Trevelyan's estimated time of arrival to Inferno."
"Seven or eight days, I think. Check his flight schedule."
"Checking." There was a pause, followed by, "Seven days, Consul. According to the schedule, he will arrive to Ravana at 12:50 base time."
"Relay that to Preston. No, wait!" Sokolsky opened his eyes. "Send this instead: Trevelyan will be there in seven days, barring something unexpected."
Footnotes
1) A sector of influence is a part of the galaxy dominated by a particular starfaring race.
2) Rakshasas are demons in Hindu mythology. Asuras, originally older gods or titans, also became demonic beings in time. Ravana is a powerful and evil rakshasa, the hero of a number of Hindu legends.