Usually, Fry wasn't too bothered by crowds. But only when the air didn't become stuffy from the close proximity of a large number of people, and it became problematic to walk through the corridors.
On planets, crowds didn't scare her — she could easily spot a pickpocket and prevent a conflict with someone pushy.
Or, simply, she could always go aside and take another path.
Inside a spaceship, this was very, very problematic. But they had no other options.
She felt the deck tremble beneath her feet. The people near her, as usual, almost without looking, grabbed onto safety rails, continuing their movement through the compartments that had become narrow. Kaspar, though not thrilled about it, also pressed against the bulkhead, freeing up the central part of the corridor as much as possible for people rushing in both directions.
Judging by their dark brown uniforms, one could say that they were all part of the starship's crew. And that would be almost true.
From the perspective that on the Nomads' ship, even the youngest must be useful. No matter how much they loved their children, loved ones, and the elderly, when your life is spent in space, in an endless flight from one planet to another in search of resources and food, the issue of limited living space becomes... Important.
To the point that, with a heavy heart, they have to leave people on planets. They stopped promising those they dropped off that they would return for them as soon as things got better. They stopped because things didn't get better.
Kaspar felt her heart clench in her chest as a ten-year-old boy, puffing from exertion, passed by her. A bag of food, weighing almost as much as she did, was pushing the boy aside. Yes, she could easily help, carry the purchased groceries from the airlock to the cargo hold, so that this boy wouldn't strain himself.
Only compassion was not part of her people's philosophy. Especially that which can only harm.
Centuries in space teach a simple philosophy of life: either you do your job, or you stay on the planet. And the latter, as is known, is a direct path to becoming food for Wraiths.
It's a vicious circle that cannot be broken with a snap of the fingers. If there is a way out, it is only in that... That no one knows how to find it. And therefore, the ship captains continue to search among the stars for a way out.
Or a way to prolong the agony.
No matter how disgusting it was to admit, this is exactly what Kaspar was doing when she descended to the planets — acting so that her people, her ship's crew, could live a little longer.
And so that these youngsters, too small, and therefore useful for the ship's needs because they simply take up less space, continue to be loaders, welders, mechanics. While they could have had a different future.
Only scout Kaspar Fry didn't know what it could be.
And no one knew.
Kaspar Fry, Nomad (Traveler).
When the flow of cargo subsided, she walked quickly through the corridors before reaching an oval heavy hatch. The hermetic door gleamed in several places with recently cleaned rust — another reminder that the fleet was not getting any younger.
She spun the wheel, having knocked beforehand, though she knew it wasn't necessary. The boundaries had long since blurred, but she, like many others, clung to the remnants of discipline. As if that could save them.
"It's not locked!" a familiar captain's voice came from behind the door as Fry was already stepping over the coaming. "I thought you'd stay on the planet."
"And should I send you the information by birds?" Kaspar asked, plopping down on a small stool. Its legs were welded to the deck — as they always were on spaceships. In case of depressurization of the compartment (not the most unexpected option during the day, by the way), it's better for as few objects as possible to fly through the corridors.
"I doubt they can make hyperspace jumps," the commander of the ship chuckled dryly, tapping his fist against Fry's outstretched fist. "Glad you're still alive, Kaspar."
"Likewise, Asan," the scout replied in the same tone as her commander, glancing around quickly.
A tiny cabin, where instead of a pair of bunk beds there was a single one, a small table, a computer terminal, and a couple of welded chairs — that was all the living space the ship's commander could count on. But these ten square meters belonged only to him, not to half a dozen crew members.
At least a little personal space in a separate cabin — that's all that distinguished the commander's cabin from a standard sleeping compartment on board his own starship.
"News?" Asan asked at the moment the starship shook noticeably. "Looks like the inertial dampers are acting up again."
"But we always know that we've left the atmosphere, don't we?" Fry said in the same tone as the commander. "There is news. And I wouldn't say it's good, Asan."
"Have there been days when we had such news?" he asked. After thinking, Kaspar agreed with his reasoning and began her story.
Kaspar was ten years older than her commander, but this didn't prevent them from talking frankly with each other. On many ships, commanders demanded that their subordinates always add "Captain" before their name. Asan, however, did not request such demands for himself.
Although he could — after all, this starship was essentially a relic of his family. Before being left on the planet, his father commanded this vessel. And before him — his father. And before that — his father. As far as the ship's logbook could be traced back, the men of Asan's family had commanded this ship. Not that it was a rarity in their fleet.
Even the fact that the crew members were treated like family members was not a rarity. Except, as Asan sometimes grumbled, considering centuries in space, it's unlikely there's anyone among them who doesn't have blood related to each other.
And that's also a problem.
One of many.
Blood, in general, was a big problem for their closed society. And for the commander of this ship, it was a familiar problem.
"Bastards," after listening to the end, Asan jumped up from the stool and began to pace the cabin. After a couple of minutes, he stopped at the open hatch, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked at his scout. "Are you absolutely sure it's Jenai?"
Asan, Nomad.
"I spent several weeks verifying this information," Kaspar justified her story. "And you know...
"You wouldn't give me unverified information," Asan winced. "And it's giving me a toothache."
"What's the problem?" Kaspar wondered. "Matyas is..."
"Grandpa Matyas has gone to a better world," Asan said grimly. "Eight days ago. We buried him with all honors in a yellow dwarf, a few light-years from here."
Funerals on ships were not uncommon. But for the most part, they involved wrapping the corpse in a bag and then ejecting it into space. No one enjoyed keeping corpses on board – there were other uses for the refrigeration units.
Only the most worthy were buried, their bodies launched into the stars. A small tribute to the person and the deeds they had accomplished in life. Such a decision was always a trial, as the Nomads and their ships did not often approach stars, preferring not to test the strength of their shields and hulls, which were long in need of good repair.
Matyas's girl, as he was known on board, had been "Grandpa" for as long as Kaspar could remember. A short, dry old man whose wrinkled face always wore an approving smile. Whether he was fixing teeth or wielding a torch to seal another breach.
But while there were always enough mechanics on board, a dental technician was a very valuable specialist. Like many other representatives of rare professions, especially those in medicine.
"You always know where there's another good dentist," Fry said innocently.
"I do," Asan admitted reluctantly. "And until you told me about the Jenai who started killing and robbing on other planets, I had no desire to go meet Larrin."
"You still haven't made up?" Fry asked.
"It's unlikely to be possible as long as I'm alive," the ship's commander said grimly.
The subtext, which neither of them voiced, was clear not only to the scout and his commander. And it wasn't about the fact that Asan and Larrin, the commander of another ship, which was often called the "flagship" among the Nomads, had disagreements.
They existed among everyone – not just between the commanders of different starships. Even within the same crew. But for the most part, they were not of a scale that would cause the commander of one ship to consciously avoid another Nomad starship.
Only if there were twin blood brothers on those ships, who had long since become strangers to each other. And their blood had cooled so much that it could have cooled an overheating reactor.
"I'm sorry you'll have to meet Nevik," Fry said. There was no chance that Larrin wouldn't call him to the rendezvous. And the negotiations would be overshadowed by the twins once again moving from business talk to personal insults.
"If the choice is between tolerating my capricious brother and informing the fleet that the Jenai might wipe out our trading partners, then I'll find the strength to put my pride aside and do what's necessary for the survival of all Travelers," Asan assured, with a crooked grin. "After all, you can always stun him with a frequency blaster."
The starship commander casually slapped his thigh, where the personal energy frequency blaster was holstered.
"Frequency blaster."
Fry chuckled at the joke.
The "frequency blaster" was a personal energy weapon that had come down to the current generation from other, more comfortable and less difficult times. Despite the fact that the Nomads could still produce "frequency blasters" and ammunition for them, albeit not on a scale that would allow them to equip all crew members on all ships, every adult carried one.
Fry had noticed their "frequency blasters" on planets more than once. Although they were incredibly rare compared to the same firearms that the Jenai produced and sold, disguising themselves as completely different people, they were in the hands of hundreds of people who had nothing to do with the Nomads. Tracing the path of each such weapon from its source to the seller or owner was hardly realistic, although, as Kaspar knew, some scouts, like him, were engaged in exactly that.
The Nomad fleet's Council of Captains disliked the fact that their personal weapons, the technology for which was kept a closely guarded secret, were falling into the hands of other people. There weren't enough "frequency blasters" for their own people, and here...
Nomads who owned such weapons did not die on the surface often enough for their "frequency blasters" to fall into the wrong hands. In the last five hundred years, this had happened at most a dozen times. And Fry, in the last twenty years alone, had seen over a hundred units of such weapons. And the samples clearly did not repeat – each time it was a new "gun."
The Council of Captains was beside themselves with rage, trying to figure out who among the fleet was engaged in underground trading, but the culprit could not be found. However, Kaspar could not recall a single instance where scouts had managed to find the source of Nomad technologies appearing among the planet's inhabitants.
And the issue here was clearly not that the latter were reluctant to give valuable samples of weapons and technologies to outsiders. After all, it was a profitable commodity for exchange.
The real reason was that the Nomads themselves lacked the mechanisms and technologies that went to outsiders. Whoever among the crews was engaged in such activities, when found, would be held accountable for everything.
"Perhaps we should set the power to the green indicator?" Kaspar asked innocently.
The "frequency blaster" had three firing modes for its scarlet energy charges. The switch was located on the barrel just before the cylinder, and above it were three colored indicators showing the weapon's settings: orange for stun, red for kill, and green for incinerate.
In general, the weapon, as they say, was based on the design of long-barreled revolvers favored by the Nomads' ancestors. However, in space, it was not very convenient to have only six, albeit heavy, bullets. Some ingenious ancestor had found a way to combine the beloved design with acceptable technology.
Now, instead of a cylinder with heavy cartridges, the central cylinder housed a capsule with a power source. The cell had a limited amount of energy, but it could be removed for recharging or replacement. The pistol barrel had three small crystals of increasing size from bottom to top – and each was responsible for the selected firing mode.
When set to stun, the "frequency blaster" could incapacitate a target for several hours with a single shot, making it much more powerful than a Wraith stunner.
Set to kill, the "frequency blaster" could cause death to a human or a Wraith with one hit to vital parts of the body or organs.
But the last, and most energy-consuming mode for the power cell, "Incinerate," was powerful enough to blast a hole a quarter of a meter in diameter in almost any solid material. However, it should only be used in the most extreme cases – there was not much free energy on Nomad ships to quickly recharge depleted power cells. An economy that was visible everywhere.
"I don't dislike him enough to have someone blow his head off," Asan shook his head. "Those bo... You know. If Nevik and Larrin succeed in their project, it will benefit all of us. It would be foolish to kill such a smart bastard when he could provide a home for several thousand of our people."
"If," Kaspar emphasized, "he can."
Some time ago, Larrin's ship had dropped out of hyperspace due to another breakdown. The crew was supposed to get a good tan near a dwarf star... But, as it turned out, not everything was as bad as it seemed at first.
No, the hyperdrive had burned out then, and Larrin had to use all her charm, blackmail, and feminine wiles to get spare parts. But that was later. Significantly after her people discovered an Ancestor ship drifting in an elliptical orbit.
A warship larger than several Nomad starships if they were lined up. Formidable and monumental on the outside, comfortable and beautiful in its own way on the inside, it had drifted for ten thousand years before being discovered.
And yet, it had barely fallen apart.
Apart from very serious hyperdrive malfunctions, the starship was almost intact. Nothing that thousands of Nomads, who could find their home there, couldn't adapt to.
Except for one thing.
They couldn't move it, except by towing.
The starship's systems were dormant, and even Nevik, considered one of the smartest, if not the smartest, among the Nomads, couldn't awaken them.
All he had managed in many months of work was to start one of the ship's reactors at minimal power. According to the latest news, the life support system on the ancient dreadnought had also started working. But so weakly that even ten people would be uncomfortable staying there. Let alone a larger number.
But the entire Nomad fleet believed in Nevik's victory over the stubborn technology they barely understood. Because it was another way to prolong their people's agony.
A chance worth grabbing.
"Yes, one more thing," Kaspar remembered. "Do you remember what I told you about the Athosians?"
"Are those the ones whose leader is a cute lady with a nice backside?" Asan clarified.
"I can name five races that fit that description," Kaspar grinned. "But the one I'm talking about is called Teyla Emmagan."
Asan frowned.
"Is she the one they say can sense the approach of Wraiths?" he asked cautiously.
"She and a few other people from her people," Fry confirmed his guess.
"We buy something from them. Goat milk, meat, right?" Considering that the Nomads traded with over three hundred small and large nations through their scouts, it was surprising that Asan remembered exactly what.
"Correct. And recently, they've started trading tawa beans," Fry said. "And a dozen other crops that they shouldn't have at this time of year."
"Tawa..." Asan said slowly. "May I be struck by vacuum-induced oxygen deprivation! Those are Jenai beans!"
"Exactly."
"And the Jenai are going to punish those who grow and sell their crops, aren't they?" the commander clarified. "So, soon Kowan's people will come for Emma'gan and her tribe?"
"According to my information, they've been trying to send their thug Koli to Athos for three days now," Fry said. "And before that, they spent two weeks trying to contact their lackeys on some other planet. The name couldn't be found out, nor the reason why it was so important. But the fact remains."
"I don't understand much yet. Why can't they contact the planets they need?"
"Because as soon as they establish a hyper-tunnel to the world they need, for example, Athos, when they pass through the gate, they end up not where they planned."
"How so?" Asan wondered. "Are the gates broken?"
"But the Athosians, without any problems, dial the address of Athos, leave, and return," Kaspar continued. "I spoke with Teyla about it. She pretended there was nothing to talk about."
"Whatever protection they've come up with, we could use something like that," the ship's captain's eyes lit up. "Imagine, we could protect our gates on the planet from Wraith invasion! We could establish a colony on land! Land our ships to repair them properly! Let the children breathe clean air, drink water from rivers, not our own recycled fluids! Live and not fear attack!"
"That's exactly what I told Teyla. Not directly, but hinting," Kaspar explained. "And I've already told you her answer."
"Do you think she's lying?"
"I'm more than sure. Just as I'm sure that the Athosians themselves would never have come up with something like this. Their metal smelting isn't even as good as a dozen other races. What can be said about organizing such protection? No, the gate technology is so complex that even your brother couldn't figure it out. How could the Athosians compare to him?"
Asan's face darkened.
"But the Wraiths understand all this perfectly," he said. "The millions of people they've gathered with their 'arrows' won't lie."
"But the Athosians would gut you with a bone needle for such words," Fry assured. "Working for the Wraiths, cooperating with them, or worshipping them is worse than death for these collectors. I admit that some part of their people might do that. But not all. Especially since it doesn't fit with other information."
"Increased harvest?"
"And not only that. I've been to several planets where they trade. They've started spending goods to find more profitable locations. They still travel in small groups. But they have so much merchandise with them that even if each of them carried three bags, they couldn't carry it all."
"Warehouses?"
"They don't rent them. They sell them off or trade what they have, and then leave. At the same time, which is also strange, they've started quoting prices a little lower than usual. And where the volume of production depends on the number of workers and not the mildest climate, they don't haggle much. And they've acquired firearms. They wear them under their clothes, but if you look closely, you can see that they're not of Jenai design. I haven't seen anything like it anywhere."
"Strange behavior, a strange situation," Asan agreed. "Unexplained protection on the gates, a harvest they shouldn't have at this time of year, large volumes of products they can't carry themselves, weapons... They don't use carts and wagons either?"
"No. One of my agents once noticed as if they were pulling their bags out of thin air."
"Was he drunk or had he chewed some hallucinogenic herbs?" the commander shook his head.
"He's not the most sober person, but he assures me he was clean of drugs then," Fry said. "So I thought... What if the Athosians have access to some technologies we don't know about? Remember Larrin once said that there are small ships on board the Ancestor warship? And Nevik claims they have something like a cloaking field."
"And Nevik also keeps quiet about having to open those ships with an oxy-acetylene torch and a crowbar," Asan winced. "I've known him my whole life. He's not a liar, but... No, are you seriously believing that someone invented invisible ships?"
"We're talking about the Ancients," Kaspar reminded. "The Ancestors flew into cities, built gates across the galaxy. Who knows what else they can do?"
"Could," Asan corrected. "They died long ago at the hands of the Wraiths."
"And what if they didn't?" Kaspar asked. "What if they survived?"
"I also believe in the greatness of the Ancestors, but to live for ten thousand years?" the Nomad starship commander shook his head skeptically.
"Perhaps their descendants returned? We only know from their stories that the Ancestors' capital, Atlantis, was destroyed. And the Wraiths, as you know, are not the most reliable source. We need to find out everything."
"So that's it," Asan narrowed his eyes. "That's why you returned to the ship. You want me to give you a ride to Athos?"
"I wouldn't mind," Kaspar said. "I'll hang around there for a couple of days, maybe a week or two. If the Athosians have anything, it's clearly there. Or it was. And since you can't get to them through the gates..."
Asan thought for a few seconds.
"All right," he declared. "We'll make a detour and drop you off on Athos. The Council will grumble, of course, but I'll figure out what to tell them."
"How about the truth?"
"When we know it, we'll tell it. I don't want our guesses and the strange behavior of the Athosians to make the Council panic and pull Nevik away from working on the Ancestor ship," Asan stated. "For now, he's the best our people have."
"And you can't argue with that," Kaspar agreed, watching as the commander informed the helmsman of the course change via intercom.
A mission awaited him behind the lines of the collector tribe, who had become too bold.
Bold... The Jenai had also become bolder lately. Was there any connection?