Dawn was breaking. The sleepless spaceport buzzed with machinery, containers rumbled, and ship engines roared. In this noise, the incessant hubbub of hundreds of sentient voices drowned out. The smart artificial lighting gradually dimmed, giving way to the light of the local star, rising above the horizon. Its rays had already painted the green sea of the forest at the very edge of the sky in a delicate pink color.
View from the spaceport wall.
Lieutenant Colonel Artem Pastukhov, better known as Shep, slowly reached for cigarettes in his breast pocket. To do this, he had to feel for the pack through the neck of his light army spacesuit, which was quite an experience. Years of service and acquired paranoia had taught him not to part with his gear. To feel calm, he needed at least a pistol on his belt. Therefore, instead of showing off in just his uniform, like the local garrison, the lieutenant colonel contorted himself to get his smoke from under his armor.
Taking out the coveted stick, tightly packed with modified tobacco, Shep flicked his finger, struck a spark from his fingertip, shielding the flame with his palm from the wind, and lit up. Taking a deep drag, he grimaced, almost spitting out in annoyance, when a cloyingly minty aftertaste remained on his tongue. Here, in the spaceport staff shop, there was only harmless junk, not shag. Normal tobacco was impossible to find here.
Artyom, accustomed to the bitterness of "throat-rippers," found these newly cultivated varieties too mild. They did not bring the relaxation that cigarettes, aptly nicknamed "Mushrooms," provided. Even for an experienced smoker like him, they made his eyes go dark after the first drag. It was as if an Indian from the pack hit him on the back of the head with his tomahawk, making the light fade for a few moments before the smoke, whose smell rivaled the stench of burning, sweat-soaked, moldy footcloth, did its job, granting a state of true indifference.
Exhaling the bluish smoke "with sparks," not feeling the desired relaxation, Pastukhov extinguished the half-smoked butt against the wall, leaving a soot mark on it, and flicked it over the spaceport fence. Leaning against the bone-colored concrete wall, he tried to abstract himself from reality, going into meditation, but only felt someone else's nervousness. Apparently, the person (and it was definitely him, judging by the barely perceptible spectrum of colors in the "Collective") was trying to close himself off, but he wasn't doing a very good job, especially for those nearby.
Hearing the rustle of a lighter's flint and catching the scent of natural tobacco with his keen nose, the lieutenant colonel detached himself from the wall, deciding to combine pleasure with business. Coming out of the dimly lit nook, invisible from the outside, he saw a private trying to light a cigarette, but completely losing the battle. As soon as he saw Artem, he flinched, not knowing what to do: whether to put away the cigarette or stand at attention.
Stopping his hesitation with a gesture, Shep lit another spark on his hand. Jerking clumsily, the private nodded gratefully, lighting his cigarette, and, seeing Shep's gaze, offered him his half-smoked pack. Not wanting to refuse, he took one, lighting it from the flame, and feeling his mood slightly lift as his throat felt the familiar bitterness. Even this smoke was light for him, but at least it had good tobacco, albeit just as harmless, not this fashionable indulgence.
Enjoying the cigarette, smoking it halfway, the lieutenant colonel threw, as if into the void:
"First one?" he reinforced the word with a mental image, which mixed the rustle of papers, the clatter of boot heels on the parade ground, and the smell of new cotton.
"Yes, sir!" the young man even flinched when addressed by someone senior in rank and age. His "Thought" device's antenna even extended.
"No ranks or titles," Shep grimaced, rolling his eyes mentally, looking askance at the bunch of straight wires, unnaturally frozen near the private's device, attached to his temple. His own antennas were sensitively probing the space, helping to decipher the jumble instead of the image that his interlocutor had flashed. "In the smoking room, though…"
"They don't teach the right things in training… Although some people take a long time to grasp the obvious truths," a thought flashed through his mind, inspired by an associative chain of memories. He himself had been like that once…
"Yes," the young man finally gathered his thoughts.
"Just like me. Even the same expression on his face. So that the authorities would quickly mistake him for a piece of furniture."
"Who were you?" he asked again, as if into the void, putting into his words an image of civilian life, or rather, what he imagined it to be. He even briefly felt the taste of bread with sunflower oil, generously sprinkled with salt, which seemed so delicious in his childhood… from hunger. He ate his fill for the first time only in the barracks, regretting overeating when Argon got serious with him right away, without making allowances for his young age.
"At the College of Arts. A glassblower," the private replied shyly, who was clearly older than the teenagers who had finished school and undergone training in the Aspect of Defense, and later sorted into units.
"Just as I thought. He changed his path. And you can see the artist. Long, nimble fingers, and very smooth movements… He'd better have kept blowing bottles. Such people almost always die in the first battle," Shep concluded.
"And why?" suppressing the desire to ask about the groundhog, which, the monster, hid so well that no one saw it, Artem asked. Although he was itching to make a joke to make this young man spit out the lozenge he had swallowed. He didn't like brewing serious trouble unnecessarily. If it weren't for the normal cigarette… He wanted to smoke more than he didn't want to talk, and his innate tact couldn't accept this cigarette just like that. So he seized the opportunity to get normal tobacco, now paying for it.
"A girl," his interlocutor replied, blushing even more. Artem even snorted, assessing the image of the object of his admiration, involuntarily projected by the guy. There was something to suffer for. He himself would gladly… inspect the upper and lower "ninety" of this lady.
"He'll definitely die," the officer added to his conclusion.
"It happens," what else could he say?
"He decided to change everything… otherwise he would have made a lot of trouble. And she found her own love," his remark surprised him, and pleasantly so.
"And maybe not. To step on your own throat… Everyone knows that nowadays people mostly love only once, but to realize it when you've been sent away… If he doesn't find a bullet, then there will be some use."
"That's right."
"Only in the army, even in peacetime, it's easy to try on a zinc suit. And such people usually don't want to live if they don't get a kick in time. Or a new woman… But it depends on luck and what he finds faster."
The conversation about important matters was interrupted by a garrison announcement, which stirred the mental sphere. The perimeter sensor in the southeast had malfunctioned. A common occurrence on this planet.
The private, who was on duty, snapped to attention, rushing down from the wall into the guardhouse – for the laser emitter.
"He's already settled in. In armor only because he's on duty, but he left his service weapon and went for a smoke. A klutz!" Shep condemned the young man. Even if he hadn't violated the regulations, his shift was clearly resting in the recreation room, otherwise he wouldn't have been smoking, but he should have used his head sometimes.
Finishing his cigarette, the officer rolled the thought that came to him in his head. "Why not? I'll stretch my legs."
Sending a mental message to headquarters, he slowly walked towards the guardhouse. It was a lousy job for a special forces operative to run through the woods with a rookie, but as long as his boots were treading the ground, his head would rest from the arrival of the начальство. What could be more routine than installing a new sensor? Everything will definitely go according to plan here!
The TSh-26, also known as "Shesterochka," strode majestically, weaving between the trees. The six-legged walking transport had been the workhorse of the USSR army for thirty years. A simple, reliable machine, produced in millions, repairable with a crowbar and a couple of logs in field conditions, even by one person, it trudged across the most difficult landscapes of thousands of planets.
TSh-26, also known as "Shesterochka."
Assault modification.
Only the armored personnel carrier, which rolled off the assembly lines of the Martian Automotive Design Bureau (MAKO), with the index M-35, was more "popular." A small vehicle with dimensions that allowed it to be placed even on a shuttle, with a durable and reliable transmission and engine, it was synonymous with expeditions, surpassing the ShT-26 in speed, but significantly inferior in control and maneuverability, so much so that it became a common saying...
M-35, also known as MAKO, legendary and beautiful.
Only today, Shep would have preferred to weave between the trunks of ancient trees on a high-speed wheeled vehicle than to trudge on an armored, walking behemoth with an open-type troop compartment! Even though the walker was accompanied by four ST-69 "Raptor" walking robots, along with a swarm of regular drones controlled from the spaceport's control panel, his intuition was screaming like a cut throat, warning him of impending trouble.
ST-69 "Raptor."
"Maybe it's all because of Academician Lebedev's visit to the excavations? Seryoga said that he finally matured and deigned to tell what bullshit he saw two hundred years ago. And the bullshit must be significant if he insisted on the presence of the commander of 'Argentum' and his deputy at the site. Gray even pulled a whole company of ours here! I don't know what they're planning here, but knowing his dislike for documents, to prepare a pile of paper in case of the elimination of the senior command staff... If he, like an eternal bastard, is over-cautious, considering the possibility of his death... Maybe he's a strange person, but after your brain was reassembled after an injury, you wouldn't be normal, but as a commander and a fighter, Seryoga won't put you in a tight spot for no reason!"
The lieutenant colonel listened to his feelings again, turning his head from side to side so that the "Thought" antennae could pick up negative emotions. Even if weak, this ability to sense emotional impulses directed at you from unconnected individuals had saved him and his comrades from certain death more than once.
The same was done by another veteran, Petrovich. The veteran of the airborne troops was not joking, as usually happened during transfers, but was also scanning the area, holding his trusty, time-tested Kalashnikov assault rifle, modernized to the standards of the Citadel's security corps, at hand. The paratrooper hadn't even managed to erase the insignia of belonging to the defenders' corps, stenciled on his shoulder pad under the USSR star. After the arrival of an important guest, the garrison had switched to an enhanced service mode. He simply didn't have time to bring the insignia into compliance.
By silent agreement, they divided the sectors among themselves to cover the largest area. Even though Shep hadn't personally served with the paratrooper, he didn't need to for mutual understanding with the twice Hero of the Union. The two veterans understood each other even without transmitting mental images.
"Besides, sending a motorized rifle platoon without a good reason to repair a sensor... The charter is the charter, but usually three soldiers are sent with robots... No... It would have been easier to order a dispersal, withdrawing personnel from the zone of possible orbital strike!"
Suddenly, there was a flash above their heads. The experienced operative immediately recognized the flash as the result of a reactor detonation of a "frigate" class vessel, of Soviet construction.
"Fuck..." Petrovich voiced the lieutenant colonel's thought. For such an explosion, the frigate must have been unprepared for combat, with its shields in standby mode. This meant it was destroyed with a single blow, and only planetary defense guns or battleships could do that.
"Plutonium – to 'Argentum' – the commander of the detachment's mental message reached his soldiers. Shep, who knew him better than anyone, added a couple of levels to the troubles, deepening the mess they had gotten into. Sergey's images were too colorful.
"Protect the archaeologists, ensure the safety of Lebedev and the artifact, escort to the spaceport and evacuate. In case of falling into enemy hands, eliminate by any means" – was Plutonium's order.
"Shep – to Plutonium! Order received!" – the lieutenant colonel sent him a reply, mentally attaching a map with his coordinates and an image of the armored vehicle, for which he received permission to act according to his plan.
Their group was further from the excavations than other units, not counting the detachment commander, his wife, and a company of Red Army soldiers guarding the site. But at least he had armor under his ass, and the terrain favored an accelerated march. The sensor was on an elevation, while the excavations were in a lowland, which allowed the walker to reach the object faster.
Having received a mental order from the operative, the mekhvod changed direction. Shep himself concentrated, forming a tactical network, connecting himself and the soldiers, enhancing their reflexes and skills, with the right to take control of any private, simply by reacting to the threat before him. In an instant, the squad of recruits and two veterans turned into a single organism, with many eyes, hands, and bodies. The "Collective" connection gave them unity, ready to connect hundreds, thousands, and billions of other minds to them if necessary.
The world became brighter. Time slowed down. At the same time, a feeling of slight hunger appeared. The brain began to consume more of the body's resources, coping with the load.
The walker seemed unbearably slow.
Meanwhile, events were escalating. The sky was filled with flashes of new explosions. The space battle was fierce. The wail of anti-space defense sirens hung over the forest, intermittently drowned out by heavy volleys from the PKO guns. A flight of fighters flew by, breaking into pairs and releasing wingman drones, and immediately fired missiles at someone. The enemy was already in the atmosphere.
Flames erupted from the spaceport. A red-orange beam swept across the space harbor a few more times. The lieutenant colonel couldn't see the damage it caused, but the unified neural network was shaken by many close deaths, spreading in black waves and adding to the deaths of cosmonauts in orbit, which until then had sounded only as an unpleasant, repeated echo for ground forces.
With the roar of engines, a shuttle built by Citadel Space, painted with gaudy mercenary emblems, descended for landing, heading straight for the excavation.
Suddenly, small arms fire erupted. Shep's ears instantly deciphered the sound, assigning the nomenclature of weapons to each note. Only Red Army soldiers were firing at first, but increasingly, distinct motifs of alien barrels, working on mass effect, crept into the general chorus.
With a single non-verbal command, he switched control of the drones to himself, sent the steel swarm forward, scattering it like a fan. "Thought," combined with a technical terminal and the qualifications of a cybernetic programmer, allowed him to simultaneously take full control of slightly more than two hundred such devices, making him the main node of the tactical network of any combined unit.
Reconnaissance-attack drone of the USSR.
UAV-125 "Shmel."
As a sound strategist, the operative did not intend to risk valuable mechanical units or his comrades; fortunately, there were drones created specifically for reconnaissance. Therefore, he exchanged them without hesitation for tactical situation data, and then proceeded to attack the landed mercenaries.
Cheap "meat," poorly trained and radiating fear, was easily detected by his intuition and drone lenses. Shep disdained exchanging mechanical units for them, acting much more rationally. Maximizing his perception, running video streams from a hundred scouts through himself, the operative, with the help of his hands, activated a polymer manipulator. Exactly sixty-seven mercenaries were lifted into the air, torn from the ground by the power of thought, unable to resist the invisible grips, their screams echoing through the surroundings.
The lieutenant colonel's palms seemed to grab someone's head, which he twisted with a movement of his hands, honed to automaticity. A vile crunch and death rattles momentarily drowned out the sounds of gunfire. Almost seventy bodies fell to the ground like dead dolls. The Batarians and Salarians covered the forest undergrowth, forming a horrifying carpet that covered one separate clearing.
Shep felt the alien deaths, albeit barely. The moment he ended dozens of lives, the operative experienced sadness and satisfaction from a job well done, and the usual adrenaline wave hit his blood.
Seizing the moment, Petrovich took control of the "Raptors" and led them to the point cleared of the enemy. The motorized riflemen, dismounting from the walker, dispersed.
The operative sent the drones further, directing his comrades and robots to targets. The Red Army soldiers were now facing not expendable material, but the true elite of the mercenary world. Turians, Krogan, Asari proved to be a serious force, skillfully pressing the positions. Salarians and Batarians, unlike the first rabble and made of different stuff, created a dangerous density of fire.
Drones were shot down one after another. Shots tested the durability of the soldiers' personal shields and the plasma screens of the equipment. Biotics among the mercenaries did not allow Shep to repeat the telekinetic trick, forcing him to change tactics and throw the drones themselves into the attack.
Meanwhile, Shep pulled his sniper rifle from his spatial backpack. Catching the moment between heartbeats, he smoothly pressed the trigger on an exhale. The reactive bullet, weaving through the branches, blew off the head of a carelessly exposed Turian.
"Sniper!" – came from the mercenaries' side, and mines from a hastily deployed mortar flew towards the lieutenant colonel.
Shooting down dangerously falling ammunition in mid-air, preferring not to risk his armor and shield, he slid through the fallen leaves, blurring into a shadow, freezing only to fire another bullet. Each one ended someone's life, but there were still many enemies, and the rage from each killed person only grew. This was exactly what he was aiming for. His sensitivity to the emotions of the unconnected, honed over years, helped him prepare a trap.
A thin stream of polymer drew an invisible pattern, seeping into the forest floor faster than the mercenaries could notice it. Shep gradually shifted to the side, moving further right with each shot, distancing himself from the detachment, luring the mercenaries.
"Time!" – he commanded himself. The polymer, drawn by his will, thinned, turning into a hundred barely visible threads that lashed out at the living targets. Seemingly weightless, glass-like cobwebs cut through armor and tore bodies, only to explode a moment later, throwing sharp crystal needles in all directions and finishing off those whom the threads had not reached.
A bloody clearing instantly formed in the battle lines of "Eclipse." The whirlwind of twisted threads, stained in different shades of alien blood, swayed further, but the most terrifying thing for the cutthroats was something else: these threads did not kill. They maimed – cut off pieces of flesh, severed limbs. In an instant, the most terrible nightmare for mercenaries came true: to become a cripple, howling from powerlessness.
But even that was not enough. The forest itself, groaning and creaking, came alive. Sensing blood, the consciousness of all the planet's vegetation awoke from its contemplative slumber, unleashing its wrath upon the enemy.
The soil, saturated with polymer for a good few kilometers deep, turned into a viscous swamp, pulling in no worse than quicksand. Solid rock instantly crumbled into sand that stripped flesh no worse than an abrasive.
Even the most peaceful animals abandoned their affairs, rushing to the sounds of battle, eager to taste the flesh of the working people's enemies. Birds took to the wing, diving in their last flight towards the engines and triplexes of enemy ship cabins. Swarms of midges blinded them, seeping even into the smallest gaps in the armor, stinging and biting relentlessly. Rodents tried to bite off fingers or pull out shiny rings from grenades. Predators, gathering in packs, instantly coordinated with the Red Army forces, trapping the mercenaries, dying, but trying to get them with fangs or claws. Even peacefully grazing cows wanted to gore the enemy, and mammoths turned into woolly tanks, surprisingly quietly sneaking up for such a behemoth.
The planet, which had entered a military mode, realizing itself thanks to the power of Soviet science, did not appreciate the orbital bombardment at all, becoming more ferocious with every broken bush or trampled clearing. Having drunk the blood of its enemies, the biosphere began to generate toxins designed to kill the threat.
Finally, the USSR ships managed to regroup under the attacks of the mercenary fleet, which included heretical Geth ships that had not followed the majority, allowing the PKO guns to speak. Eight "Motherland Hammer" guns fired a coordinated salvo into the center of the largest enemy concentration, simultaneously destroying or damaging a dozen large spacecraft. Soviet fighters rushed into the breach, paving the way for bombers carrying anti-ship torpedoes on their pylons.
Seeing this, the mercenary commander spat on the client's wishes and gave the order to open fire on the communists with all guns. Following this, several cruisers struck the excavation area with heavy caliber...
Soviet satellites, having recorded this attack, instantly transmitted the information to the surface, outpacing the mass-effect projectiles. Shep, having received the mental image, reacted in a couple of moments. Summoning the assault shield from his backpack, he activated its reinforced protective field generators, simultaneously pulling his comrades towards him telekinetically, before the bluish streak hit the ground, creating a shock wave.
Petrovich, thanks to his engineering skills, managed to create a grid of foamed army polymer under the thin film of the field, reinforcing the defense. Although the veteran was inferior to the operative in reaction speed, he had plenty of experience.
No one else had time to do anything; the compressed air wave hit the defense, bombarding it with small debris like shrapnel. The shield, designed to counter heavy handheld weapons, surrendered after a couple of moments of hell. The grid helped the defense last a little longer.
Stones, branches, sand hit the armor plates of the equipment, leaving silvery scratches on the protective-colored metal. The "Collective" swayed from nearby deaths. The garrison soldiers, who were serving lightly equipped, were now paying for their laxity. A body armor from a light spacesuit, with bracers and greaves, a light helmet, and a weak field generator could only save from light weapons and shrapnel, but not from the consequences of an orbital strike. The overly idyllic landscapes of this world contributed to relaxation.
When the wave passed, only three survivors remained: Shep, Petrovich, and a recruit, from whom the lieutenant colonel had bummed a cigarette an hour ago, who was lucky enough to be behind the veterans, who took the secondary damaging factors. The paratrooper and the operative only suffered ringing in their ears and a couple of dozen scratches. The walker took most of the impact, serving as a wave breaker, which did not save most of the detachment, nor one walking robot, whose leg joint was broken by a boulder.
"Lieutenant Colonel..." – a familiar voice shouted to the officer through the ringing.
"Miranda," – the image was a bit loud. "Status of the 'Normandy'!"
Major of CERBERUS, comrade Miranda Kholmogorova.
On the bridge of the "Normandy" before modernization.
With a slight hesitation, the woman replied: "We are engaged in combat. Light hull damage," – a projection of the hull and systems of the reconnaissance cruiser flashed before the lieutenant colonel's eyes. Again with a slight hesitation, which indicated that the CERBERUS officer was communicating with someone else, the investigator formed a new image. "Three enemy cruisers are moving towards the excavation zone. The PKO and fleet forces will not be able to destroy them quickly."
Holographic projection of the reconnaissance cruiser
"Normandy."
"Received," – was his reply, along with an image-request for evacuation on command, the point of which he marked with a cross on the map in the spaceport area.
"Understood. Good luck," – she wished him perfunctorily, breaking the connection.
The conversation took a little over a second, during which the operative came to his senses and tried to make out the situation through the dust raised by the impact. Realizing that normal vision was useless now, he switched to thermal vision, and immediately connected to a private, moving his head out of the trajectory of a heretical Geth's shot.
"What are you standing around for, damn it?!" – Petrovich slapped the former glassblower on the helmet, bringing him back to reality. "Grab your rifle and go! Forward, forward, forward!!!"
He accompanied his words with kicks, perfectly understanding the state of a person who had experienced an orbital strike for the first time, and thus knew how to cheer him up, reinforcing it with images of obscene content, where the enemy, in a particularly perverted form, did such things to the private...
The "Raptors," taken under the lieutenant colonel's control, rumbled, forming a wedge, forming the vanguard of their advance, firing unaimed fire at the synthetics on the move, thus making them cautious. The robots, moving about ten meters away from the group, completely dissolved in the thick red dust, in which flashes of ongoing combat flickered.
Sounds returned. The raised suspension slightly muffled any noise, making it impossible to determine exactly where it came from, only the direction. There was no need to talk about smells. The automatic systems of the army armor had long since activated forced air purification, pumping it through filters, only noticing dangerous impurities in the dust.
In these conditions, synthetics became a very dangerous opponent. Machines, devoid of emotions, armed with long-range handheld weapons and light firearms removed from equipment, took full advantage of their superiority over living beings. Their heavier counterparts were already storming the positions of the excavation guard company.
Mercenaries fired from behind them, trying not to expose themselves. Ordinary Red Army soldiers did not frighten them. But the sentient, genetically modified operatives of "Argentum," especially the unit commander, along with his wife...
Plutonium, in his heavy armor, acted straightforwardly, like a crowbar, crashing directly into the enemy's forehead, forcing him into hand-to-hand combat. Sergey was the embodiment of brute force. Shep clearly saw the flicker of his two-handed sword through the dust. The famous weapon, which had ended the life of the last ruler of the Hegemony in the First Contact war, blazed with blue light, gently howling with wind generators, bursting into a screech as the blade tore through metal and flesh.
A veteran of many battles, he deliberately attracted attention, diverting fire upon himself, acting as a battering ram for enemy positions, leading his soldiers behind him. His super-powerful shield flickered from numerous hits, but it didn't even think of going out, as if the warrior's stubbornness had been transferred to it.
The mercenaries, well aware of Plutonium's capabilities, who had single-handedly wiped out entire squads of mercenaries more than once with his "King Slayer," simply showered him with fire. It was not for nothing that he bore the nickname "Executor." If Sergey went into battle, then retribution inevitably found the enemies of the USSR...
Behind him, his wife danced. Her movements could not be called martial arts. A former ballerina in the distant past, she simply danced, but each step of the woman was as beautiful as it was deadly. The polymer ribbons in Katerina's hands turned her steps to the music of war into a bloody ball. Transparent cloths, flashing with liquid fire at the will of their mistress, like a ghostly whirlwind, cut through both sentient beings and synthetics, turning ordinary ribbon gymnastics into something terrifying...
Each "Argentum" fighter was a formidable opponent, but these two stood out from their subordinates, causing complete devastation in the enemy ranks, acting as a single, well-coordinated killing machine honed over centuries.
The lieutenant colonel, orienting himself by them, was already making his way through the ruins covered with earth and worn by time, when he felt the presence of someone who had disappeared years ago.
All the nearby operatives simultaneously turned their heads in one direction, sensing a monster wearing the guise of a hero. Slowly, as if on a promenade, not in the midst of battle, walked through the excavations the one whom the Citadel knew as the Ghost.
"Greetings, soldiers," – Argon, the former detachment commander, said in a dead voice, scanning his comrades with a cold gaze of muddy eyes, in which there was no hint of the warmth of a living being. The man's face seemed to be carved from metal. As if laughing, he appeared without his famous mask, and his appearance caused all the USSR citizens present to experience complex feelings.
"I'll kill you," – Sergey said, lunging at his former mentor, friend, and commander, while Shep pulled the trigger of his rifle, aiming at the heart...