Cherreads

Chapter 21 - Chapter 21

They rolled out the red carpet for us. They gave us an unusual submarine, and a bathyscaphe, familiar to Katya and me from a polar expedition, brought us to the shoal. The underwater bathyscaphe of the "Malyshka" class was as comfortable as a government "Volga," and as easy to operate as a bicycle. The automation did everything itself, and you just set the direction of movement.

It was a bit cramped in the cabin with three of us, but bearable. It's been worse. I remember how they tested the layout of spacecraft descent modules on us... They practically crammed us in! We're not like willows in a field, but grew like ship pines, while the first batch for the space corps was selected for being miniature. The engineers and designers themselves were no longer happy with our mugs, but we were not only resilient, but could also tie ourselves into a knot. Literally. And they felt sorry for the normal testers in the cosmonaut corps, but...

But everything went without a hitch, and we've made so many accident-free flights. I should knock on wood, but there's nothing wooden at hand except my head, damn it. Cosmonauts are very superstitious people. An atheist is an atheist, but when there's a five-story barrel of kerosene under your ass, you'll do all sorts of nonsense to calm yourself down.

The same applies to the army. Now and then, you'll see some "lucky charm" on a private. When your life depends not only on you, but also on the whim of Chance, you can even dance naked on an oak tree to calm your nerves...

I'm a bit angry. I seem to have eaten normally... Aaaaaah! Exactly. We haven't slept for more than a day. We can go longer, but then it's better to approach us strictly from downwind and keep your hands in sight. A small side effect of improving the body according to the military modification project, which was deemed acceptable and not corrected. Like many things before, the mechanism was stolen from dolphins, so may those fish be fried with a soldering iron up their asses!

They look cute in pictures and aquariums! In reality, they are not cute at all, but crazy maniacs with a mind very far from human, if they are of wild "production." Those hatched from eggs in captivity are more sane and polite. And these aquatic creatures are also very susceptible to flattery... It was a terrible idea to send us to them after the trial activation of "The Collective 2.0." We hated the dolphin squad, and they found it funny, the bastards! They refused to do anything without mockery and showing off, doing nonsense under the sweet gazes of that fool.

It is said that these fish are used to treat children's psyches. Like: "Here you go, boy, an awesome fish!" I would have gone gray if someone had thrown my child into the aquarium with this creature!!! It's like sending demobilized soldiers after service in Kamchatka or a round-the-world trip on a ship into a train compartment with a girl on the Moscow-Vladivostok train. Without companions. Well, why not?! What could go wrong?! You'll see in nine months!!!

I hope (I really hope) that there are no intelligent species in space that evolved from these aquatic freaks! An intelligent, cynical species with the mannerisms of a maniac prostitute is not what the universe deserves.

But no matter how much we dislike these animals, they are useful, and very much so. If only society wasn't hypocritical towards them... They hate people from birth! These creatures are curious, playful, but they are animals, albeit intelligent ones. They suffer from the latter, I don't argue. I just find them repulsive, especially after interacting with them directly, in their own language. Dolphins are too much like humans...

Sharks, however, are just awesome! And they are somehow more honest than these half-intelligent chatterboxes in everything. From this relic animal, you immediately know what to expect. It makes you respect yourself. They are older than the entire human race and still reign in the ocean. And these whales... It's unclear what to expect from them. They can help you surface, drown you, and sometimes even have their way with you. A polite moose of the seas, as soon as it hears "bonjour" in the water, it will be too late to clench your buttocks...

As soon as I thought of sharks, they appeared, dear ones. The bathyscaphe interests them solely as an object, so they approach it head-on, not from below, as they do when hunting. They don't see very well, and they don't need to.

The marine fauna in the Azure has it easy. The water here is unlike anything you'll find in the wild on our planet. It has a complex composition dissolved in it, making it somewhat viscous and sweetish to the taste. Its main distinction is that it is suitable for both freshwater and saltwater fish simultaneously.

In freshwater, saltwater fish would swell from the water, bloat, and die from electrolyte imbalance, suddenly, while freshwater fish would shrivel from the abundance of salt and die of dehydration, swimming in the water. Osmosis, it's called. Something similar happens when salting bacon, when the meat absorbs the salty brine, drawing out moisture. But try to leave mushrooms in salted water and forget about them...

Therefore, the scientists at the Enterprise racked their brains, selecting the right electrolytes, creating a unique chemical composition, in addition to cultivating special cultures that the marine inhabitants would feed on, allowing all species to survive. Small fish eat algae, large fish eat small ones. As a result, a unique ecosystem was created.

Every time I descend beneath this water surface, I feel like I'm entering a completely different world. And beautiful, damn it, I must admit, but in which man is only a guest, if not an extraneous element. Since the lake is entirely artificial, and the ecosystem created, even if self-sustaining, then here, in addition to biologists and builders, architects and landscape specialists have worked.

There's something about the marine element. While sailing to the "Neptune" complex, I even rested my soul, piloting the bathyscaphe. Katya and Mario even dozed off, snatching a brief moment of peace. I, on the other hand, was captivated, gazing with all my eyes at the colorful schools of fish, glowing algae swaying like ancient trees in the water currents, and majestic predators patrolling closer to the surface. The bottom of the lake was also alive. "Rosy" and other biorobots crawled along it, scurrying about their own, known only to them, business.

All this instantly receded into the background as soon as I saw the underwater cluster of the Enterprise. The size of a city, it shimmered and pulsed with lights like a marine jewel, and its futuristic appearance only enhanced the feeling of another world, alien and unlike our cradle.

It seemed like an ancient monolith. The cluster was a triumph of human thought, a visible fruit of its ambitions and power. In a short time, ships will rush to other stars, and cities like the one I see will blossom beneath the surface of alien oceans. But before that, at the forefront of expansion, will be us.

After the world's unification, the army will not disappear, but it is foolish to leave such a tool solely for defense and the application of violence. Even the most unruly general or ensign will not argue with this. The army is a system. A mechanism, honed by the enemy and history. Order found by blood. This is what will pave the road to the stars. This does not mean that we will rush through thorns in the best traditions of history, treading fire and sword over everything we can get our hands on! If a diplomat's head ends up on a spear, only then will we get involved. Soldiers.

I no longer want to see bombs exploding over cities! Many do not want this. People are tired of blood and death, but this does not mean we will not respond blow for blow. Humanity will clench its fist and strike back! Only again, first the diplomats will come, then the economy, and only then us. Space is vast. If they don't bother us, we'll go our separate ways...

Mmm. I definitely need to sleep. Strange thoughts are coming to mind, and I'm feeling philosophical from lack of sleep. It's all the fish's fault! Exactly!!!

When it's all over, I'll take a vacation and go wild with Katya to Sochi! Or a tour of Europe. She's wanted to visit Paris for a long time. I'll even tolerate ballet... Well, I'll try not to snore too loudly so as not to spoil my wife's enjoyment.

"Malutka" smoothly entered the dock's airlock. The hermetic gates sealed behind us, and powerful pumps began to pump out the water.

"Wake up," I said quietly to my passengers. A soldier on combat duty needs nothing more to wake up. Otherwise, he's a bad soldier.

Katya yawned and stretched in the co-pilot's seat of the bathyscaphe, wincing from the dull pain. No matter how cool we are, even with our regeneration, wounds don't heal instantly. Lakmus will still limp for another hour with relative rest. And then it's better to eat, and not just any food, but army concentrate. You'd need too much of ordinary food. It has much less calories and nutrients than army or space rations.

Oh! The welcoming delegation is already heading over, with a familiar face at the head.

As soon as we climbed out of the "Malutka's" belly and stepped onto "Neptune," breathing in its humid air, we were met with a gaze from the Hunter – a legendary guy who is no less cool and brutal than Argon. And it's no wonder. That commander was driven hard in training after he was made an offer he couldn't refuse, being a student at the institute. True, Argon didn't elaborate much on what happened there, not even to us. He just let slip a couple of times, and that he ended up at our enterprise.

"Argentum..." the man, about fifty years old, who could be put on a poster right now for the brutality he exuded, drawled monosyllabically and unequivocally. "Did you come to pick up the Moscow brat or for your own business?"

"What brat?" I asked, surprised.

"So, for your own business," the Hunter cut him off, turning his back to us to meet the senior researcher running towards us on high heels.

The prim woman, slightly over thirty, caught her breath wearily. Taking a deep breath, she tried to unleash on the Hunter:

"How dare you..."

"I can and I will," he interrupted her, not letting the reactive turbine of accusations gain momentum.

"But your paranoia..." the lady, blushing, almost shrieked, holding her glasses with a trembling hand of rage.

"If it weren't for my paranoia, you wouldn't be here," the man cut her off again, folding his arms across his chest and looking at the white coat as if it were empty space. "Or you wouldn't have been shrieking when 'Vovchik' got you by the... "

"I understand," the lady said monumentally, turning to us, completely ignoring her opponent. "I was only informed ten minutes ago that you would be arriving at the facility and for what purpose... Welcome to the 'Neptune' complex. We're a bit untidy after the incident... Please, come in. And we'll talk about your weapon caches later!"

It happened. There was even a whole scandal in certain circles, which turned both the office and the army security upside down... But our strange escort, though all scientists are like that.

"So, what brat?" I ask, to break the awkward silence.

We had been walking through the underwater galleries for five minutes. This whole tangle of glass tubes and the bluish glow with views of the underwater world was simply mesmerizing. It was truly beautiful to see all these hammerhead sharks, which seemed to be soaring somewhere in the air. The water here was special, clear as enlightened optics. The glass galleries further enhanced the sense of magic, and the Hellenistic motifs in the complex's interior created a sense of an era of myths.

In short, it moved even a cynical soldier like me to the very core.

"He was delivered from Moscow in a sealed train car, along with his machine," replied the Hunter, who seemed barely touched by the local scenery. His face in the bluish light seemed to belong to a monument rather than a living person. I didn't understand his emotions, which made me tense up internally. I was too used to reading people, and the memories of the ease of understanding others when connected to the "Collective" were still fresh. Even a brief contact with this technology had changed us. "He's too noisy and funny. He's also hovering around Comrade Nazarova like a puppy. He doesn't even look into her mouth or blow dust off her.

"Soldier!" the senior researcher snapped, so hard that her hair, tied in a ponytail, bounced. Her indignation was so strong! "You don't understand what romance is! Love. Soulful impulses..."

"Soldiers are these young people," the man said, nodding his head towards us. "People like them push forward, headlong. 'The Red Army follows the path of least resistance.' That's about them."

I burned him with my gaze. It's not that the Hunter was wrong...

"What?" as if reading me (though he could easily, with his experience), the man asked. "I know about you. Your friend brings many interesting things in his beak. You two were put back together piece by piece. More metal than flesh, but you didn't calm down. You barely recovered, and you're marching in formation again. And you could have been discharged after all that, and no one would have said a word. About you, the Italian avenger, it's a different story, but also an interesting one. You should also be sitting in Florence, eating pasta. The mayor of your village polishes your monument in the central square with a rag every day. You could have lived peacefully too... But you'll all leave service feet first, no matter what you say. I've seen many like you as an instructor. You push like a drill and die."

The former instructor's words stung more than a whip. Now he was right. I really can't imagine life without a uniform. Damn it! It wasn't the meaning of his words that got to me, but how he said them. There was simply the coldness of stating a fact in his words. As if everything was predetermined and unchangeable...

"You're right," Katya's clear voice pulled me out of my stupor. Mario, also loaded by the Hunter to the brim, flinched involuntarily nearby. "Only we're not holding onto our epaulets. Not at all. Seeing what happened after the Plague, the wars, and in India, I don't want it to happen in my home. That's why I'll butt my head against the wall and shoot anyone who has the idea to just wave their weapon around. Maybe I won't be able to create a masterpiece of art, but I'll smack anyone who dares to raise a gun at an artist and a scientist who doesn't even know how to kill, let alone has never held anything heavier than an umbrella in their hand. And I'm also tired of someone constantly prying into my husband's and my friends' souls, digging around. Especially if it's an unfamiliar bastard like you, with your own opinion!"

"Good, if that's the case," the Hunter stated, still without emotion, shrugging his shoulders. "Then I wasn't mistaken about Alexander back then, since he got this basic truth into your heads."

"This is all very interesting, of course, but let's do what we're all here for! I still need to control the restart of the synthesis," the lady, who had been silent until then, chimed in. "And let's drop the subject..."

"Actually, you're the one who brought it up," the man remarked.

"Rude!" was his reply.

And we proceeded in complete silence into the "Triton" complex, using the railway line as the most convenient mode of transport. It's faster than rowing in a bathyscaphe.

The underwater cluster was not significantly damaged by the incident. There weren't many robots here in proportion to the personnel, let alone the area of the premises. The laboratories had more bio-constructs or hybridized animals. Biomechanical mechanisms are better adapted for working underwater and in extreme conditions. "Rosy" and "Murena" are proof of this.

Because we raised the alarm in time, the cluster only suffered a minor scare. Even the Hunter thanked us dryly for it. Only three died within these walls. The robots ambushed one of the bathyscaphes in the airlock and opened it like a tin can, drowning the crew. That, essentially, was it.

The machines are now performing the work for which they were designed. While we were sailing, all the necessary data was extracted from Petrov's head, and most of the mechanisms were calmed down, not all of them, but those in the complexes and laboratories. A signal for the activation of martial law was still coming from one training ground, but the problem there was also being resolved. The commander won't be slow. Especially when he's not alone.

And here's "Triton" with its laboratory with damn dolphins. And of course, where there were dolphins, there was Nastya Nazarova! It was hard to call this girl Anastasia, especially for those who had dealt with her for a long time. A fanatical, passionate about her work... child.

As the Hunter said, a clear city slicker was hanging around her. He was smiling with all thirty-two teeth, blinding with his whitened fangs like a ship's searchlight, not forgetting to make stupid jokes and just chat up the girl, who giggled into her fist at his pearls, blushing. Or maybe it was the polar jacket she always wore, even indoors? I hope it's the jacket – otherwise, I'll puke from the cloying sweetness spread around.

"This reminds me of something," Katya said, looking at me slyly after a minute of observing the young male human's courtship in the laboratory.

"No-o-o-o!" Lakmus exclaimed, holding his hands forward in denial. "The commander's jokes are funny and his look isn't dashingly idiotic!"

"And how do you know that?!" I exclaimed, seeing with horror the similarity between me and the city slicker. "You weren't in the detachment then!"

"Krypton showed me the camera recordings, like all the recruits. Mamma mia, you were so cute, and your passion practically oozed from the celluloid film..."

"At least someone isn't immune to soulful impulses," grumbled the lady accompanying us. "Let's not embarrass the young ones..."

"And the fact that we've been staring at them through the laboratory's observation window for a minute – that's nothing?" remarked the Hunter, who was watching the mating rituals with a stony face.

"You don't understand! Although... who am I trying to explain this to," the escort rolled her eyes, knocking on the door.

The youngsters jumped, blushing as if we had caught them red-handed, and hastily began to pretend they were working. The dolphin swimming in the aquarium behind them roared with laughter. These bastards love to put people in awkward positions. There was a howl to the heavens when one of them beat a grandmaster in chess. The fish found it funny, but the human didn't. I wouldn't be surprised if they later mock Nastya about sex, which doesn't exist in the USSR, but children appear from somewhere. Apparently, they find them in cabbage...

Did I say they were smug bastards with a superiority complex? I hope no intelligent species of anything similar inhabits the depths of space. Any sane person has reverence for these fish only until they talk to them. Everyone loves dolphins until they talk to them...

It's simpler with cats. Experiments were also conducted on them. And as scientists found out, they are smarter than some people, but they just live on their own wavelength. You can go crazy begging a fluffy one, but if he's not in the mood, he won't even lift a paw, refusing to do anything. And he'll send you away immediately and directly, without mocking you. Even three of them are quite functional at the Enterprise. They entertain children and assist scientists.

"And hello to you too, fish," you can play this game together.

"Stupid human! A dolphin is not a fish!" it declared.

"Please stop," Nastya intervened. "You know they don't understand the concept of jokes well."

"They understand everything..." Lakmus said, piercing the animal with his gaze. His eyes burned so intensely that it seemed the water in the impudent fish's habitat was about to boil.

"And the little funny human has arrived!" the fish declared enthusiastically, showing that it understood perfectly, it was just teasing. At one time, the pod had a good laugh about Lakmus's height. He's the shortest in the detachment, and Nastya herself is slightly taller than him.

"Agreed," Katya seconded him, doing breathing exercises to calm down. Despite all her composure, these comrades had gotten to her too, but, to be fair, she treated Nastya much more easily than many of ours. "She's just a young fool. She'll grow up," Katya used to say about her.

"We need the help of your wards. We need to find one thing in your warehouse-settlement. And as you told us, no one can do it better than them," I decided to start and finish faster.

"I knew you listened to the introductory briefing," the scientist smiled. We had to listen to it, fool, and memorize all the romantic nonsense you were spouting like the Charter! "I see no problem helping you."

"That's good to know," I replied in a maximally neutral voice. "We have only one hope in your whales."

"Dolphins are not whales! Whales are show-offs!" the dolphin did not leave without comment. "I'll help! I'll help! But first, let's play! The striker is going for a record!"

I roll my eyes. How their feigned spontaneity pisses me off! Already doing breathing exercises, I ask my wife:

"Katya, play with him, okay?" I'll kill him with this same ball now, shoving it in so deep that this bitch can quench her thirst when it passes through her body! My nerves are shot from fatigue.

"Okay," she nodded, closing her eyelids.

"Excuse me for interrupting," the unshaven city slicker said, immediately faltering when we gave him an displeased look. "You are Agent Blesna and Plutonium, right? I saw your photos in the order."

After receiving an affirmative nod, he continued:

"Allow me to introduce myself – Nikolai Kholmetsky," and seeing our incomprehension, he explained: "One of the three people in the Union capable of working with 'SMD KIN'. I am to be assigned to you!"

"Really?" skepticism oozed from my lips. "And no one told us anything like that."

"Didn't you receive Protocol 'Igla'?" the slicker frowned.

"First time we've heard of it," I answered honestly. "And who ordered you?"

"I was sent at the request of Academician Lebedev. Without the protocol, I won't be able to activate the machine."

"Strange..." Katya drawled. "Not the Wizard, but Lebedev? Very strange. And we don't need any machine for now."

"And I still think we've just signed up for some shit," I voiced all my thoughts.

"No," the Hunter said. "You're already in it up to your necks. As for the machine, you weren't supposed to know about it, as far as I know, if everything had gone well. And I won't tell you any more. I don't know myself."

"M-yeah... It's not relevant now, but we'll ask later, and maybe they'll even answer us. Katya..."

"Coming..." she moaned and, with exaggeratedly cheerful and kind voice, exclaimed, "Well, champion? Ready for the match?"

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