It was very strange to look at your surroundings and realize that you had no information about where you were, how you got here, for what purpose, and who brought you to this place.
Object-41 stood in the middle of the ruins of an unfamiliar city that had nothing in common with any typical or orderly construction on Salumai. Stone blocks instead of metal-concrete, low buildings instead of hundred-story skyscrapers, remains of cobblestones covered by years of soil accumulation that had given rise to grass growth.
This was not Salumai.
Definitely not.
No one would build so primitively.
Object-41 frowned, trying to understand why she had thought that. How did she know what was primitive and what wasn't? She was a soldier, a cyborg assassin, created to fight the enemies of Salumai. Not to analyze architecture.
But she could analyze something else.
The uniform she was wearing. Gray dense fabric with thread-type reinforcement elements. Polymer pads on limb joints to protect them during falls. Heavy military boots with high soles made of the same polymer. Considering its lightness and density — a perfectly reasonable choice for field footwear.
Unzipping her jacket, she bared her torso, examining the tight-fitting undershirt. Factory seams, elastic fabric that conformed to her figure. Figure...
The cyborg took off her undershirt, inspecting her own body. The organic part had undergone changes: increased subcutaneous fat, noticeable stabilization of muscle mass that had atrophied after cryo-sleep. The organic part of the platform looked different compared to what she remembered from the previous period of activity. So, someone had satisfied her nutritional needs.
And had also dressed her in a uniform that did not meet the requirements of the Salumai Military Corps. But it was factory-made, indicating the progress of those who made it.
Progress...
She remembered her last mission, surprised that she hadn't received the information immediately. Find and destroy the invasion forces at the laboratory complex. Execute the self-destruct plan due to database breach. Find and destroy...
The most common order she had ever carried out when the Wraiths attacked the planet.
But... Had she failed this time? Why? Was self-destruction compromised? Or had someone with command protocols canceled it, and she had been transported elsewhere after shutdown?
Perhaps she had been damaged in the fight against the invaders. After all, she had no choice but to go out to them and stall for time. She had asked them for "help" to delay them... And then she was shut down.
Object-41 closed her eyes, connecting to her cybernetic part. She needed to understand what she had at her disposal at the current moment.
And the check of her combat component puzzled her.
She felt implants in her body where they should be. But at the same time, just like with the additional camera equipment that had been there in the previous activation and was now gone, the augmented part of her body... had changed.
She couldn't find the words to describe it correctly, but it seemed that it had become even easier for her to think and control her body. Next-generation implants? Possibly. The most reasonable explanation for what was happening was that she was on a training ground where she was supposed to test upgrades.
But then... Why were the combat implants not connected? Why was the neurointerface working but not providing her with combat information? As if it had been wiped clean. Or a new one had been installed without loading the necessary data into it... However, what was the point of testing the platform if it couldn't fight?
"This place is called Athos," a voice sounded behind her. The cyborg turned to face the person who had spoken to her. Most likely this was her new instructor and had come to give her an assignment. A curious version of an instructor. "We are in the ruins of a place called the Old City. The ancient Athosians called it Emeg... Oh, my god, motherfucker, woman!" A skeptical expression appeared on one of the invaders' faces. "Do you have any sense of feminine modesty at all?"
Object-41 tilted her head to the side.
"Modesty?" she repeated.
The man averted his eyes from her.
He was dressed in the same uniform as hers and stood two meters behind the spot where she had regained consciousness.
There was nothing visible that would answer the question of how exactly he had approached her so closely without making a sound. And her auditory receptors were fine — she had checked that.
"Yes, it's a thing. It makes you feel awkward when you do something that society condemns... So, listen, can you just sheathe them, huh? They didn't give you clothes for nothing."
"Sheathe..." The cyborg assassin lowered her gaze to her body, examining it and not understanding the command. But the new neuroprocessor managed to analyze the situation, the human's behavior, and the subtext of his strange words. "You want me to put on the undershirt and hide my mammary glands?"
"I'm not a biologist, but I think the latter is inside those canisters you're flashing," the man said. "Come on, put on the undershirt before the tech crew guys hear the 'Hands on the table, hussars!' command."
"This command is unfamiliar to me," Object-41 said, putting on the undershirt. Apparently, her body embarrassed this invader. Embarrassment causes discomfort — that is registered. Embarrassment can be used for interrogation. "I need answers."
"Yes, of course," the man looked at her. "Well, that's better already. Although, you know, put your jacket back on too. Because these tight undershirts, they, well, you know..."
The cyborg put on her jacket and tidied her uniform to the state it was in at the moment of activation.
"So, let's get acquainted," the man suggested, extending his right palm edge-first to her. "My name is Mikhail."
"Object-41," Object-41 introduced herself.
"I thought we agreed that your name is Saya," said the Mikhail-invader. "During our first meeting. You remember that, don't you?"
"I remember," the cyborg confirmed. "You invaded the laboratory. I was supposed to stop you."
"And you honestly fulfilled your duty..."
"No. The task was not completed — you are still alive."
"You know," the man scratched his nose. "It's not that bad, actually. I'm alive, my friends are alive, you're alive... Do you like being alive?"
"Like?" the cyborg asked.
"Yes, that's what people say about something you love."
"Love?" she tilted her head to the side.
"Yes," Mikhail nodded. "To feel affection, attachment to something or someone. To be pleased with something or someone. For example, you, as I see, like tilting your head when you ask questions about things you don't know. So in practice, you understand what's what."
Strange. She really did that. Such a defect had not been noticed before. A malfunction of the organic part?
"Why can't I attack you?" she asked.
"Well, I'm not an idiot to meet you when you're a killing machine," the self-satisfied man chuckled. "Your combat part is disabled until we come to an agreement."
"Come to an agreement about what?" Object-41 asked, beginning to act. She squared her shoulders so that the part of her platform that had embarrassed the man would be prominent even under her outer clothing.
"About cooperation," he noticed her actions. But didn't see the other thing. Embarrassment was a good weapon.
"Unacceptable. You and your people invaded the laboratory."
"Yes, that's true. But, believe me, if we had known that your pseudo-intelligence was completely insane, we wouldn't have behaved so barbarically. Everything that happened — to you, the laboratory, and your planet — was nothing more than an accident. A very sad, unfortunate, but still an accident."
"Accident?" she caught herself tilting her head again.
"What the hell?!" the man blurted out, glancing again at her chest under her jacket. "Do you even know the meaning of words? Something must have stayed in your brain?"
"It should have," Object-41 confirmed. "I know how to inflict pain and conduct field interrogation."
"Useful knowledge," Mikhail smirked. "You know, you don't need to..."
"I do," Object-41 replied, delivering a kick.
Letting out something between a quiet cry and the sound of air escaping a cylinder, the invader grabbed the part of his body most vulnerable in men not wearing full armor and fell to his knees.
Object-41 approached him closely. Now he wasn't embarrassed and should have noticed that, while she was distracting him with her mammary glands, she had taken several steps closer. Enough to strike his genitals. Which, in fact, she had done.
Approaching the man and locking his neck in the crook of her arm, she grabbed his hair with the other, inflicting not strong but uncomfortable pain.
"The interrogation begins," she announced. "Speak, or I will apply the first degree of force."
"My bells..." the man whispered. And disappeared.
Object-41 noted with surprise that she no longer felt Mikhail's body in her hands. As if he had become both invisible and incorporeal simultaneously.
Looking at the place where he had just been, the cyborg scanned her surroundings for additional information.
* * *
The opening of the lid and the appearance of the familiar interiors of the laboratory on Athos were pleasing. But the terrible pain from the cyborg assassin's swift kick to the most intimate part — not so much.
"Diplomacy and Mikhail — 1–0," commented Alvar, standing nearby, glancing at the monitor next to the capsule. There, in the virtual copy of Emeg, the cyborg assassin had started examining the ruins.
"Having fun?" I groaned, overcoming the pain in my lower body. Damn, it had been about fifteen years since I'd last gotten injured that way.
"At least it wasn't me who got hit," the Ermen grinned, casting a glance at Chaya sitting at the control console. Sitting down next to my capsule, Jensen said quietly:
"Do you need some advice?"
"More like an ice pack," I admitted.
"Don't stare at her like that," Alvar advised. "Trebal even ran out of the lab. She's jealous, you know. Hers are smaller, after all..."
"Listen, young naturalist, why don't you go," I suggested, turning my head toward the man in charge of the virtual environment. "Couldn't you turn off the pain sensations?"
"The sensory program is unified, and it'll take a few days to sort out what each part does," the Proculusian replied without looking at me. "You asked for speed. I used the work files from the Aurora's onboard computer."
"And you can't dampen it somehow?"
"Give me twelve hours." Chaya shot me a look full of mixed feelings. "This is Lantian technology. I don't understand its finer points."
"Got it," I forced out. Okay, it seemed a little better now.
"You realize she's getting revenge?" Alvar asked, just as quietly.
"Only if there's something to revenge for," I replied at the same volume.
"So there is something," the Ermen assured me. "Just don't let the cyborg get close to you. Run, for crying out loud."
"Yeah," I winced, throwing an angry glance at the adjacent pod, where Object-41 sat with a serene expression. "And I suppose I should do squats on my heels too."
"If you have to, then do it," Alvar chuckled. "But seriously, run from her if you can't win."
"A 'top-tier' level of advice," I rated, closing my eyes.
Well, here we go, let's do this again. Only this time, I won't forget that I can control the virtual environment with my thoughts.
* * *
Strange behavior from the Athosians, huh? Three black holes against a quasar — it doesn't add up!
Kaspar spent a week on Athos. In three days, Asan was supposed to pick him up. That gave him two days to flesh out his reconnaissance information. Another day's march at a fast pace to cross two rivers and a mountain range and reach the landing site.
This spot wasn't chosen so far out on a whim, but out of necessity. The Athosian settlement was inside a gigantic supervolcano that, thank all the Ascended, seemed to have been dormant for a very long time. So the caldera's rim wasn't an impassable mountain range, as it could have been...
At first, he really was worried about how to hide on this planet, inside the caldera of a supervolcano, where the locals cultivated fields, grazed cattle, and simply gathered mushrooms and berries in the forests...
But on the second day of his stay on the planet, he realized things weren't as he'd imagined. He'd formed a mental picture of the Athosians having found some device or some smart one who'd cooked up an elaborate scheme to protect the planet.
In reality, though...
Stationing himself in the ruins of Emeg, the Old City, which the Athosians were afraid to enter, thinking it would trigger a Wraith raid, Kaspar spent several days watching the unthinkable unfold before his eyes.
First, he noticed that one of the relatively well-preserved buildings had been reinforced with fresh construction materials. Not logs or stone blocks gathered on the spot.
The material looked something like what scouts encountered when they stumbled upon destroyed Ancient outposts. And the Nomad scientists unanimously declared that it was impossible to recreate this sturdiest of materials, which surpassed the hull strength of their own ships. And they'd really wanted to, considering it was radiation-proof and resistant to stress, including weapons fire...
The Ancients certainly knew how to build.
He saw a couple of men in uniforms — too high-quality and well-designed to be made by a primitive society — chatting in some strange language, treating the building's exterior with a solution of this substance. They were using something that looked like a homemade sprayer assembled from scrap metal. But Kaspar had never seen a homemade sprayer that could project liquid building material under such pressure that it reached from one end of the roof to the other. That was, without exaggeration, a hundred meters in a straight line.
How powerful did a compact compressor have to be to deliver a building mass clearly heavier than water over that kind of distance?
But the oddities didn't end there.
The building these people were clearly reinforcing with the Ancient solution wasn't actually their base. The large structure, obviously a warehouse type, turned out to be little more than a parking spot for flying vehicles. And they seemed to live in a small annex attached to this warehouse. It looked like it should have a continuation, but no — the annex, more like a corridor, simply ended in empty space.
And that's when Fry tensed up noticeably.
In his five days at Emeg and six days on Athos, he'd only seen these two. Rarely, they'd come outside, walk around with devices that looked like portable computers, dig in the ground, or dismantle buildings, finding something underground and carrying it into their annex through the warehouse.
Completely incomprehensible people, incomprehensible actions, and an incomprehensible reason for their being here.
But he also figured something else out — they'd set up signal sensors a hundred meters from their dwelling. And there was hardly any chance of getting close to their home to understand what was what.
There were almost no animals or birds here that could serve as a distraction. Or that these two might suspect as perimeter intruders. A bad setup.
But on the other hand, their warehouse was visible from one side, where the previously existing doors were now missing. He could take a look inside. Which Kaspar did.
But disappointment awaited him there — a dozen unmarked crates and emptiness. The question was, why reinforce such an old building, spending resources on it, if this warehouse was unlikely ever to be filled to even a tenth of its capacity?
It seemed he'd stumbled upon scavengers, who sometimes showed up on planets searching for ancient artifacts. That would explain the makeshift construction tool and the technique with the building compound, similar to what the Ancients had used.
The scavengers had come to plunder the ruins, thinking they'd find something valuable here, but in reality, they were just sitting around with nothing to do. But even so, getting a pair of such scavengers to come with him and share information would be a priority. They clearly had some Ancient secrets in their arsenal. It couldn't be otherwise.
Things got clearer and more alarming at the same time the next day.
From the position he'd taken, on the fragile roof of one of the tallest ruined buildings, he could observe a clearing separated from the site where the Athosian camp had previously been. The camp was currently abandoned, but Emeg wasn't all that far from it.
And seeing the Stargate activate wasn't all that hard. Kaspar prepared to see another group of scavengers.
But what he saw... he barely had the strength to breathe.
A small Lantian ship flew through the gate. Spreading its engines, it set course for the warehouse and the annex.
A working Ancient ship!
Kaspar gasped. Yes, he hadn't made much progress in investigating the reasons for the Athosians' disappearance from their home planet. He hadn't found the gate's defense system he'd intended to find.
But his reconnaissance had still paid off.
Among these people, who'd left their ship in the repaired warehouse, there was clearly someone who could operate Ancient technology. And if that was the case, he could start a military ship too!
That alone was worth the risk.
He hadn't seen how many people had arrived on the small ship, but he suspected at least one. More was unlikely, as the annex was tiny and could barely fit three people comfortably. And there was no one in the warehouse except the left-behind ship.
He had to act.
The scavengers' accomplice had probably come to pick up those crates. But while Kaspar had watched the warehouse for a day after the ship's arrival, he hadn't caught the scavengers doing any loading. They seemed to have vanished somewhere. Probably doing something in the annex.
And if that were the case, he had a chance to sneak into the warehouse. Yes, it was risky, but if the scavengers had some hybrid control, or if they were drunk, for example, he could take the pilot and everything they'd found prisoner.
When Asan returned, they could take both the ship, the pilot, and everything the scavengers had.
It took him a day to find the camouflaged motion sensors. The devices weren't elegant and were clearly far from factory-made. They used the metal insulated wires familiar to the Nomads, which weren't used in Ancient technology.
So these scavengers had nothing to do with the Ancients — why would the Progenitors create such primitive devices? Right, they wouldn't.
On the ninth day of his stay, with not much time left before Asan's arrival, Kaspar began his infiltration.
Exercising caution and all possible attentiveness, armed with the "frequency gun," he started making his way through the ruins. Passing through the line of sensors, he froze momentarily in cover, expecting an alarm signal. Or for the scavengers to start moving, searching for the intruder.
But no, nothing.
Either their security alarm was a bluff, or Kaspar had managed to bypass it without being detected.
From there, it was easier.
He approached the warehouse, assessed the situation.
The door to the annex was closed, and the improvised hangar was completely empty. Things were shaping up nicely, actually.
Slipping inside, he crept over to the abandoned ship and peered into the open aft hatch. Inside — no one.
Fry crept to the front of the ship, where the pilot's cockpit was. And here, theoretically, should be the hybrid control device. If it existed, of course.
But his hope didn't pay off. The instrument panel was just as neat and showed no signs of tampering as those on the small ships the Nomads had found aboard an Ancient military vessel.
So his best guess was confirmed — among the scavengers, there was someone capable of piloting an Ancient ship. And that was a huge stroke of luck!
He just needed to capture the scavengers and rendezvous with his ship. On board, they'd certainly start talking. And they'd provide all the information he needed.
When he left the ship, heading for the annex door, he immediately realized something was wrong. The door was slightly ajar, but not how he remembered it. A draft? Or had someone come out?
If so, then...
"Seen everything you wanted to see?" a female voice sounded behind him.
Kaspar raised the "frequency gun," aiming it at a young girl. Long curly hair, a dark leather jacket, pants that emphasized the slenderness of her figure.
And a cold expression on her face.
Oh, and... a weapon aimed at him. A massive, clearly energy-based pistol, similar to his "frequency gun." But its design very strongly resembled Ancient technology.
Most likely, that's what it was.
"Less than I needed," Kaspar said cautiously, moving his thumb to switch the "frequency gun" to stun mode. "Put the weapon on the ground and take two steps to the side."
"Don't steal my words," she smirked. Fry thought it strange that the turquoise ornament on her chest glowed suspiciously. Or had it been like that from the start? "Who are you, and why were you stalking our people for a week?"
A week? They'd known about him for a whole week? How was that possible?!
"You have an Ancient ship," he explained.
"The ship, the weapons, the technology, and the right to use them as we see fit," the stranger replied laconically. "That's not an answer to my question."
"Who's piloting it?" Fry asked.
"Ah," the girl smiled mockingly. "Dictating your will to me. Fine," to his surprise, she tossed her weapon aside. "Let's do this: you answer my question, and I don't break anything on you. My mood is ruined today."
The girl began to approach.
"One more step, and I'll shoot," Kaspar warned, raising the "frequency gun."
"I need answers," the stranger stated categorically, stopping just a few centimeters from the "frequency gun's" barrel. "So don't drag it out. Make your choice..."
Kaspar pulled the trigger.
A crimson energy charge spread across a previously invisible bluish glow that surrounded the girl. It dissipated without causing her the slightest harm.
Kaspar fired again, but with the same result.
"Nice try." He looked at the smiling girl. "But you picked the wrong option."
Despite managing to block the strike her arm aimed at his head, within a second he was knocked off his feet and began to fall into a merciless darkness.