The Cadet
Date: 2016-12-05 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: The near future. A UFO appears on Earth’s orbit. Ignoring all contact attempts, it showers the planet with priceless artifacts. Choose: perfect health, ten million dollars, or seven years in prison as per the new amendment. The night of the Meteor Shower, Paul and his friends run around the city, engaging in quick fights with citizens gone crazy, trying to obtain one of the artifacts. But is it really selfless help the mysterious aliens are offering? What awaits a human who holds a precious crystal in his hand? Where will he wake up tomorrow? What if the first thing he sees when he opens his e
Publisher: eBook (Kindle)

D. Rus

Squadcom-13. Book One. The Cadet.

Chapter One

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The loud fire of a rubber bullet gun pierced the ears of the angry mob, drowning out the sounds of the intense fight. The mob recoiled for a second, assessing the new threat and checking if anyone had gotten shot.

We had a difficult task at hand. The hateful faces of our enemies were covered with blood. Dead bodies littered the ground. Some survivors still crawled; others lay still, face-down in horrid-looking black puddles.

The dim streetlight near the nine-story building with a trashed entrance illuminated the faces on either side of us.

It had all started out as an “everyone vs. everyone” massacre. Just recently it had turned into an ungentlemanly brawl in which everyone collectively attacked certain impudent upstarts – more specifically, us, the four badly beaten fellows in worn, blood-stained camo.

We were up against thirty opponents who were trying their luck. That frosty night, everyone was out on the streets: ordinary workers, street thugs with lackluster eyes, women of all ages, and teen girls with no internal brakes. Because that night was the Night of the Meteor Shower…

Blue sparks flashed over the capital every 18 seconds, dropping a few precious artifacts into the city. You would get either 10 million dollars and perfect health for finding one, or seven years in jail according to the new amendment. It was a matter of choices and luck…

“Pasha, to the roof, hurry! We’ll cover you!” one of my friends told me.

For the thousandth time, I cursed our crazy idea to obtain the alien artifact. Helplessly grinding my teeth, I obeyed and instantly raced into the building so that my friends’ sacrifice would not be in vain.

I knew that the enraged mob would trample my friends into the dirt in less than a minute. They were my real friends, ones I could never replace, ones I could only lose. They always had my back, were always willing to do time and spill blood for me. Oh, if only I had time to heal…

Like a lame duck I wobbled into the dark jaws of the building's main entrance, banging my knee into Alex’s dented Toyota on the way. His chrome-plated pride and joy spewed steam from its broken radiator, its open hood flapping.

Yes, we had decided against driving straight through the crowd, although this would have enabled us to escape. But we were not animals. Everything has its price, and some prices are just too high.

We had also failed to block the building’s front entrance with the car; a swift old lady threw herself before the Toyota as we drove up, habitually asserting her right to receive service out of turn. Alex had to sharply turn right to avoid her and violently rammed the car into the concrete building.

Wheezing, spitting blood, and forcing my disobedient hands to hold on to the railing, I rushed up the first flight of stairs. My fingers were so numb that I could barely flex them. Although I had tried to avoid back injuries while fighting off the crowd, brawls tend to get out of hand; as we were beating some men, some crazy lady forced her way over to us and dealt me a mighty blow with a heavy clutch. My recently implanted artificial vertebrae survived the impact. This wasn’t true for the bundle of the thinnest optical fibers which more or less carried out the functions of my torn nerves.

And now, I could hardly move my hands. It was so difficult to breathe that I felt frightened. My cheap leg prostheses could barely handle the steep stairs. Once again, I was faced with the possibility of paralysis.

Swallowing with difficulty, I punched a wall on the way, smashing to pieces my medical monitoring bracelet which was howling like mad. It would have been one thing if that piece of crap merely beeped, but no, it howled. Moreover, it notified all possible emergency services of the situation while injecting me with sedatives and anti-shocks to stabilize me until the arrival of paramedics. I was very high on their radar given my three recorded suicide attempts. Waking up in a hospital as a motionless amputee is a terrifying experience. And the restoration of a contused spinal cord is a very painful procedure.

As I raced up the stairs, I needed every drop of adrenaline I could get. Finding peace on a comfy hospital bed was definitely not my goal. Too many things were at stake. And not just for me, but also for the boys from the Echo of War search club who had given me this invaluable head start. And I did get a “war” experience during my last artifact search attempt.

I still remembered the ringing sound of a shovel striking metal. It drew a spark from the ribbed side of the rusty explosive, then came the blinding flash, followed by darkness.

Me getting my legs blown off in an explosion had actually made it more convenient to transport me; I was several pounds lighter and twice as short as before. Perhaps this was what had saved my life; for the next twelve hours, the boys had carried me on a stretcher over wind-fallen trees until we reached the nearest road. Oh, medicine, where would we be without you? The boys had used everything in our first-aid field kit to keep me alive, and later, the public healthcare system had pulled me out of a coma, God knows what for.

The stairs were making me feel like I was conquering Mt. Everest. I bit my bloodied lip in anger; those local residents fought well, and they were merciless. Even the handicapped, even those on sick leave; one injury, and the morgues would reap their yearly harvest. Those who fought for the artifact fought for a mansion in the Rublevka neighborhood, or for guaranteed treatment of any disease and a life several decades longer than normal.

I smashed my battered fist into the burnt elevator button, praying to the gods, “Let the elevator be on the ground floor!” I had no time to wait, and I could not make it up the stairs on my stilts of legs.

The gods were gracious; the rusty doors slid apart with a rattling sound. I squeezed into the elevator through the narrow gap, then hit the “floor nine” button. Hurry, hurry! I thought. Surely everyone in the neighboring buildings has seen the tiny star fall on the roof of this squalid dump! Soon, the crowd will get even bigger.

The slow ascent gave me enough time to catch my breath and wipe the blood out of my eyes. Slashing open the skin on your head was always like that – trivial wounds, but so much blood you’d think a wild boar got slaughtered.

Finally, the elevator jerked and made a creaking sound as its peeling, scratched doors slowly pulled open. I had to sharply push them apart, leaving bloody fingerprints on them.

I could already hear the cursing of many different voices coming from the ground floor as the crowd stomped up the stairs. Did they really beat my friends? Oh, please be alive, boys!

The sounds of a fight came through the door that led out onto the roof Some bastards had beaten us to the artifact.

I raced up another flight of stairs, hitting my shoulder against the attic door. That was how badly I was reeling on my feet. I mentally apologized to the universe and put a knuckle-duster on my right hand with effort. I had to have some chance in the upcoming brawl.

Not that long ago, I had gone from having a 200-pound athletic body to being a semi-paralytic weighing a mere 135. I had toothpicks for legs now and a burning needle in my spine. My arms were numb.

To battle, Paul, to the final and deciding battle! I told myself. Should you lose, be ready to step down from the parapet; you’ll probably never get a second chance. A star falling from the sky right into your hands is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.

I raced out onto the roof. Another meteor flashed through the sky, illuminating the scene of the tragedy; two corpulent men were stomping on a skinny body writhing on the wet roofing felt. The third was breaking the victim’s fingers, trying to pull the glittering crystal out of the dirty little fist.

The artifact glowed brighter and brighter, slowly changing colors as it entered operating mode. Five more seconds, and the crystal would grant its power to the skinny fellow, turning forever into a trivial artificial diamond. It would still cost quite a bit, but would no longer possess magical qualities.

The man in the cheap Turkish down-padded coat breaking the skinny fellow’s fingers was aware of this, and was going crazy. Finally, he brought his heavy boot down on the fragile wrist, then again, ramming his heel repeatedly into the tightly clenched fist.

The victim groaned in pain. His crushed fingers opened, releasing the crystal. Quickly growing dim, the artifact rolled on the roof.

The man roared in triumph, drawing unwanted attention to himself. He got down on all fours like a dog and went after the crystal.

I raced toward him and knocked him out with a good kick to the head with my carbon fiber prosthetic leg. One down, two to go!

Bending over the artifact clumsily, I tried to pick it up, but one of the other two treasure hunters was already upon me. His knife cut open my pant leg and clanged against my titanium knee joint. He should not have done that.

Falling upon my attacker, I put out my elbow, ramming it into the back of his fat neck.

There was a crunch, and the man went limp. I really hoped I hadn’t killed him.

I heard the sound of flesh getting ripped apart behind me, accompanied by the terrified girly screams of the third man.

I spun around. The small battered figure of either a young woman or a teenager had returned to life. It was now on the opponent’s back, repeatedly stabbing him in the side with the broken neck of a bottle. The bottle gleamed with blood. The Indiana Jones wannabe squealed in fear as he tried to shake off the small yet deadly person tenaciously holding on to him.

It was all insane; all of that night’s events and that unidentified spaceship which had been orbiting Earth for the last month, showering the lands with wondrous gifts. We were becoming animals, murdering each other, while those strangers were enjoying themselves like money-bags throwing handfuls of silver into a crowd of beggars.

Bastards! Us and them!

Reflecting upon the matter and growing angry, I swiftly crawled forward on my elbows. A few more feet, and I scooped up a pile of trash off the roof, the dimly glowing artifact within it.

The crystal instantly came to life, its tender warm rays tickling my palm as it scanned its new owner and prepared to grant me its power.

I froze, unable to believe my luck and awaiting the miracle with awe. As practice had demonstrated, the swift regeneration capacity which this artifact granted could not only regrow new nerve fibers, but also lost limbs. No one knew how it worked.

The roof trembled as a heavy body fell behind me. Alarmed, I swiftly turned over onto my back, clutching the crystal to my breast, and saw what was going on. Oh, God, why?!

I assumed that what stood before me had once been a young woman, judging by the slender shoulders and the bra straps peeking out from under the torn T-shirt. But the creature had no face.

The men had torn off its hooded jacket during the fight. The wide scarf hung from its neck like a dirty collar. A band with a sonic depth-finder for the blind sat obliquely on its head. Its eyes were cloudy and looked like they had been boiled. The lachrymal glands were still intact by some miracle, and tears streamed down the bloodied cheeks which were a medley of deep scars and chemical burns. There was a deep hole in place of a nose, and the lips were completely gone.

I shuddered, my artificial legs scratching the wet roofing felt as I tried to crawl away from that charred stump of a human.

The girl tried to approach me, but when she was just a step away, her strength failed her. Groaning helplessly, she extended her hand with broken fingers to me. The bloodied mouth opened, baring the surprisingly white, beautiful teeth.

A barely audible, exhausted voice whispered hopelessly, “Give me… Please… I can’t live like this anymore…”

I shut my eyes and mentally cried out. I could have just pushed her away with my foot, then rolled up into a ball with the artifact, purring happily, feeling the new health pouring into me. Where do I draw the line, crossing which would make life meaningless and take away my right of calling myself human?

The crystal’s light throbbed brighter than before. The latter-day collection gurus recommended to store it in a resale container or swallow it if there was a risk of losing it. One move, and there would be no going back. As for my karma, I could probably clear it somehow. It was simple; we are all raised to justify our actions…

With a heavy sigh, I cast a melancholy glance at the roof's parapet; I would not survive the night either.

Groaning, I sat up and extended the crystal to the tearful, blood-stained creature, “Take it… and be happy. Don’t waste your second life on stupid things.”

The girl mistrustfully tilted her head one way, then the other. I realized that she simply couldn’t see anything. The sonic depth-finder on her forehead looked intact, but that didn't mean that its tender wires had survived the fight.

I looked at the artifact in alarm; its light throbbed faster and faster. Then, I listened to the noise coming from the staircase and could no longer conceal my nervousness.

“Hurry up and take it!” I yelled. I threw myself on the girl and rammed the red-hot crystal into her open palm.

“Ouch!”

We both arched our backs as if struck with an electric shock. I felt my muscles cramp. It was as if our touching hands turned to metal. The girl’s slim fingers crunched in my palm. The girl cried out in pain, and I just stared at the now translucent flesh of our fingers as if spellbound. The crystal shone bright as a supernova, and our puny hands could not conceal its light.

There was a flash. An electric shock followed. The artifact discharged its energy in one outrageously powerful burst. We were thrown aside like two unipolar magnets.

The girl mistrustfully touched her palm, tracing her finger along the edges of the glowing imprint of the 57-sided crystal. The imprint was slowly going out. I wondered if she could see it.

I stared at the identical imprint on my own palm. Could it be? Has the artifact endowed us both with its power?

“Both of us, yes?” the girl asked quietly.

So, it’s true that the other senses in the blind are ten times better developed, I observed and answered, “Looks like it… What’s your name, anyway?”

“Lina,” she whispered, alarmed by the sound of hurried footsteps on the stairs.

“Paul,” I said, looking at the staircase.

They would beat us to death. Simply out of disappointment. Although…

I looked at the huge diamond that lay at our feet; 256 carats of ideal clarity. Half a million bucks. A great starting capital for a new life.

Picking up the diamond, I waited until the first puffing and panting locals appeared in the doorway. With a crooked smile, I rolled the precious stone around in my palm, then flung it at the crowd, sending it right between someone’s legs. “Catch!”

The violent cursing, cries of joy, and punches that followed indicated that the diversion was successful. Getting on my feet with effort, I held my hand out to the girl, “Let’s go. We’ll try to get out through the other front door.”

Leaning heavily on each other, we took about ten steps, wobbling under our own weight and staggering in the wind.

Then, the rumbling of a helicopter rent the silence. The blinding searchlight fixed on us, and I saw figures in mat-black armor pouring out onto the roof.

Someone growled through a loudspeaker: “This is SWAT! On the ground, now!”

* * *

My hands were already swollen from the handcuffs. The bright table lamp made my eyes water. It was like a TV show in the best traditions of Lubyanka. The high-speed handling of thousands of detainees had its own specifics and required these cheap special effects.

But I did not hold to vain hope. This was a serious establishment, and I faced serious charges. If they couldn’t break me with a sudden attack, they would come at me hard, twist me into any shape they wanted, and make a door mat out of me.

A tired investigator paced the room in irritation. I must have fouled up the plans of his department by using the precious artifact. They probably had a special crowd lining up in cars with flashers to get a second life.

The government had been hastily preparing the citizens for the Night of the Meteor Shower. All media channels were busy convincing the average Joe how important it was to turn the crystal over to the authorities. According to the media, several professors, astronauts, secret service men, prominent statesmen, and other distinguished heroes were in desperate need of regeneration and longevity.

Perhaps it was so, although I had my doubts. Our country had at least 300 thousand millionaires, plus chief bureaucrats, their relatives, and entire regiments of military and departmental generals. They all wanted a long and fun life.

But there would never be enough crystals for all of them. Judging by the statistics in other countries, we would get one artifact per capita.

As the unknown ship with alien gifts drew closer to the Russian border, the news anchors on central television became more and more hysterical. The preventive nationalization of the crystals and attempts to warn the citizens of the crystals’ potential danger only angered the people. The announcement of a 100,000-ruble prize per crystal convinced everyone once and for all that they should keep the artifacts for themselves.

The investigator walked in circles around the office as he spoke, and I listened carefully to my body. My temperature was clearly higher than normal, and my injured areas felt hot. But the dried blood was already peeling off my knuckles, revealing fresh, healthy-colored skin. Whatever this alien treasure was, it surely worked.

“…therefore, you have three options,” continued the investigator’s voice. “The first is to voluntarily sign a 20-year contract to serve the Motherland. The country needs individuals with high chances of survival.”

I looked at my prosthetic legs sticking out of my dirty, rolled up pants, then shifted my gaze to the investigator and raised a brow questioningly.

But he merely waved his hand, “They’ll grow back! And don’t look so surprised; it’s what you were after. Anyway, option number two; you agree to a series of medical experiments aiming to study the alien phenomenon. Don’t worry, they’re not deadly, at least not for your new body.”

I frowned; that didn’t sound too inspiring. And neither did 20 years of military service. No, my dream was to enroll in the air force, to become a military pilot, and to cleave the skies in a fifth-generation fighter jet. But there was no way they would let me do that. They would make me some kind of diversionist, or a rescuer capable of surviving in a reactor core for 15 minutes. Scary stuff…

“And the third option,” the investigator gave me a carnivorous smile, making me feel sick in the stomach, “the main prize, the time you have earned in a special zone. I will say this now; it will not save you from the medical experiments. I don’t need a crystal ball to tell you that within the first month, you will get tuberculosis. By the time you recover from it, you will have breathed in too much mercury fumes, or whatever the second most popular substance among our scientists is.”

“This is illegal,” I breathed hopelessly.

The investigator's attitude instantly changed. Sharply leaning in, he hissed right into my face, “You should’ve thought about that before you broke the law and told your Motherland to go fuck herself! Think using a crystal once is okay? Do you have any idea what kind of people are currently dying without this magic artifact? You’re not worth their pinkie! The info on what they’ve done for their country will have to stay hidden in the secret archives for the next half a century!”

I took offense, obstinately gritting my teeth. I wasn’t sure about the distinguished seniors, but that mutilated girl back on the roof most certainly deserved to be happy.

The investigator looked me in the eyes intently, then softened a little, “I realize that you’re a decent fellow. You’re a former athlete and geologist, and you have my respect for that. You don’t smoke, you’re smart, you’ve been working on your aviation academy application. That’s exactly why I’m the one talking to you right now. Believe me, this night will spawn several legends about the murderous KGB. The highest authorities have authorized a zero-tolerance policy for those who hide alien artifacts or keep them for private use. You would have been better off trying to sell it; at least that way, we would’ve caught you immediately.”

I sighed heavily, then asked without much hope, “Will my personal career preferences be considered at all?”

He winked at me cheerfully, “Of course they will, of course! We’ll consider everything down to your teen sex fantasies. Have no fear, young man! We’ll send you on a space mission if you want.”

A damn oracle, he was. Who could have known back then that I would fly to space a lot sooner than the mighty bureau had predicted?

Chapter Two

Bang! Bang!

I heard two simultaneous shots and the sounds of bullets ripping through flesh.

A déjà vu? I wondered, stirring sluggishly as I tried to regain control of my body. I felt like I lay in a boxing ring after a heavy knock-out punch. My numb limbs would not obey. All I could do was toss my head.

Dear God, please, not this! raced through my mind. Am I paralyzed again? I knew I could not go through that hell again; I would bite my tongue off like a samurai and bleed to death, swallowing my own blood so that my enemies would not notice my suicide attempt.

Hmm, enemies? What’s this hustle and bustle around me?

Someone roughly turned me over, pulling me out of some narrow space filled with sharp corners and blocks of heated electronic equipment. Then, they easily took me by the arms, dragged me for about 30 feet, and threw me on the cold floor. Their steel grip left me hurting. The pain increased when my lips smashed on the floor. This cleared my mind a bit.

Sniffling, I drew air into my lungs. Whatever this place was, it smelled of ozone, slaughterhouse, and fresh blood. The ringing in my ears ceased, allowing to me to hear what was going on around me; the droning and trembling of various mechanisms, the weary sighing of pneumatic machinery, and the strained puffing of servo drives. I also discerned the echo of multiple footsteps; some were heavy, making the floor shake, others were light, audible only thanks to their rustling.

A beautiful female voice spoke monotonously somewhere far away: “Loot number 13-733. Female, biological age – 57. Low reproductive value. Combat potential – 11 points. Genome rarity is questionable as there are multiple faults in the DNA chains.”

A commander's voice easily drowned her out. It was a steel female voice reminiscent of the low rumble of a sleeping volcano, “Junk! Disassemble and to the bioreactor!”

Bang-bang! came the sound of an unknown firearm again.

I heard the rustling of feet again, this time closer.

“Loot number 13-734. Male, biological age – 74. No reproductive value. Genome purity – 91 percent. Combat potential – 5 points.”

“Trash! To the reactor!”

An old male voice replied: “Wait! I’m a valuable specialist, I’m skilled in—”

Bang-bang! the gunfire cut him off mid-sentence.

The beautiful voice confirmed, “Long-term memory and muscle operation dumps have been extracted from all delivered sentients. Uniqueness of knowledge – one to the negative fourteenth.”

“An old liar,” the commander woman stated with pleasure.

The footsteps drew closer.

I made every effort to fight paralysis. I did not want to die like this – a flaccid corpse, face-down in a pool of my own blood. My father, who had been a follower of General Margelov to his dying day, taught me: “If you fall, keep fighting on your knees.”

Oddly enough, my legs responded first. My real legs, made of flesh and blood; I could easily distinguish the sensation of numb muscles from the sluggish reaction of an optical fiber. Had the damn artifact actually made my legs grow back?

I could not remember anything. With an effort, I rolled over onto my side, brought my knees to my stomach, and froze in the in the posture of an embryo for a minute. Endorphins and serotonin pulsed through my veins, clashing with cortisol and adrenaline. The happiness over my newly acquired health conflicted with the uneasiness of the situation.

My sense of danger became more and more overwhelming as the heavy footsteps drew closer. Get up, I must get up!

“Loot number 13-735. Male, biological age – 34, peak reproductive value. Genome purity – 98.4 percent. Combat potential – 29 points.”

“Finally, something of value. We’ve received a truly pathetic batch this time. No wonder, it’s the thirteenth one. Complete crap, just like this whole idiotic time experiment… Put him in the pilot group! And give him no quarter! He's a hairy one, with a big dick. The gals in the training unit will be happy. Did you double-check the apparatus settings? Are you absolutely certain that we did not send a dozen leather punches to the australopithecines?”

“Hey, gorgeous, why hurt me, huh? I can get up myself.”

“Shut up, cannon fodder!”

Bang-bang! the unknown gun fired again, and something heavy fell on the floor.

I finally managed to open my eyes. My heart was racing, pumping blood through my veins insanely fast. Everything swam before my eyes. My mucous membranes had dried out, and I had to blink like a shell-shocked gunman.

My head was facing the right way, and I was able to make out the eccentric group as it slowly passed by, continuing their strange conversation.

It consisted of a young female lab assistant in a scanty nurse uniform like in pornos. She was missing the right half of her skull, and had an intricate metal design in its place. It could have been an ornament, or some device, or some fancy interfaces. She had a vacant gaze. Her plump lips kept moving as she monotonously read something visible to her alone.

The other was a gigantic female warrior with hypertrophied proportions. She was clad in a futuristic-looking exoskeleton-like-armor which made her 6-foot-something frame truly intimidating. Her armor was dotted with external weapon modules; a double barrel on her back and a tiny satellite spinning around her head. The latter resembled a miniature Death Star. It all looked very impressive and dangerous.

There were two female bodyguards accompanying her. They wore black spacesuits with reflective surfaces. Their helmets were open, revealing somewhat coarse yet feminine faces. They held odd-looking weapons; unknown short-barreled machine guns with active force fields and covered with a multitude of devices.

Overall, the entire interior looked like a sci-fi movie set. There were tight rows of sleek capsules everywhere. The people bustling around the equipment were opening these capsules one by one, extracting helpless earthmen from within. I saw big guys also clad in exoskeleton armor unceremoniously dragging the humans away to be sorted. They tossed the sluggishly stirring bodies in a giant line on the floor.

The fatal four walked along that line, passing and executing sentences:

“Deformation of identity during transfer.”

Bang-bang!

“Male, ideal genome, mutation of sexual orientation, atrophied reproductive functions. Ha, just like our aristo boys!”

“Compulsory hormonotherapy course, then to the milking. Once the resources are all used up – to the bioreactor. Next!”

Automated carts moved to and fro, transporting the corpses and the few lucky survivors. A disk-shaped vacuum cleaner greedily slurped up the blood, clearly glad to get its fill of free organic matter.

Get up… I must get up…

Pain twisted my limbs as my nerve endings slowly returned to action, recovering from shock and sending loads of signals to my brain. God, it hurt so much.

I was very familiar with phantom limb pain from personal experience; my missing legs had often itched and ached. Yet now, I was going through all sorts of awful sensations in my newly grown knees and feet, from the Spanish boot experience to the feeling that someone was driving needles underneath my toenails.

A nearly inaudible groan came from nearby. It instantly jogged my memory; the dirty roof, the slender figure on the wet concrete, and the huge drunk guy mercilessly stomping on it.

I looked to the side. A gorgeous girl lay at an arm’s length distance from me. She was biting her lip so hard that blood stood out on it, convulsions shaking her. She was naked like the rest of us, but there was no room for erotic feelings; in the face of death by gunfire, everyone was sexless, and womanizers did not exist.

The girl was arching her back, but swiftly touched her face, finding no traces of the familiar chemical burn scars.

“Lina?” I asked hoarsely, as if my vocal cords had atrophied after a thousand years of silence.

She opened her long lashes glistening with teardrops, and I looked into her eyes clouded with pain.

There was a whole world in her gaze, evoking a poem in my memory, Oh, depth, I am not yours…

She squinted, and her chapped lips moved, “Paul?”

I smiled the best I could, She recognized me! Judging by the puddle of blood growing beneath my face, I was not an attractive sight. But I tried to look as reassuring as I could.

“Yes, it’s me,” I replied. “How are you feeling?”

Lina closed her eyes for a second, then wet her dry lips, “Pretty bad… But my face is restored. Pure magic! Where are we?”

I was slowly regaining myself and started acting all macho. I could no longer ignore her full, firm breasts. And that cheerful tattoo of hers in such an interesting spot…

“You look great!” I said. “The artifact clearly did you good!”

The girl glanced down at her body, then brought her perfect knees up to her stomach with difficulty, and snapped with irritation: “Men! You only want one thing. I hate you creatures!”

Anger gave her strength; Lina swiftly rolled over onto her other side, and I got a good view of the curves of her waist and her velvety neck.

I must have bumped a really big skeleton in her closet. Who would burn the face of such a pretty girl and whatever for? And why does she hate the opposite sex so much?

Clearly, someone had broken this girl’s psyche, and now, some guy was in for a surprise; he would discover a practitioner of punitive psychiatry beneath the looks of Ms. Fitness.

The footsteps drew closer. The floor trembled beneath that mastodon of a woman. Her armor must have weighed over 200 pounds. I could hear the steel clanging on the concrete. The measured, dominant stride signaled for everyone to fear and tremble at the approach of the alpha female.

I wheezed as I forced myself to move. If a girl can do it, so can I! My joints creaked as I tried to bring my chaotic neural impulses under control; I had always trained hard and had a strong willpower because of it. Slowly, one inch at a time, I turned over onto my stomach. I tucked my legs up to my chest and straightened my back. I’m sitting! I was half-blind because of the burning pain in my spine, but still, I managed to sit up.

The stern voice kept stating verdicts nearby, “Satisfactory. To the Zed group, heavy infantry! Additional mark – class B donor… To the furnace! Total crap!”

Bang-bang!

“Rotten meat! How did these old farts manage to get their hands on the precious carbon crystals? According to our calculations, the strongest members of the species should have acquired the crystals. A gross error in choosing a chronoflow. The species is too well-developed; social status means more than individual strength in their time. To the bioreactor!”

Bang-bang!

“It would be a shame to lose this one on the second flight. A bear of a man! Put him in the Lupanar for the tribe’s enjoyment. Let the free townswomen have fun with this elite man meat.”

Clap-clap!

“Hmm, a double dose of drugs, yet he’s still moving!”

Clap!

“Conveniently satisfactory. To heavy infantry!”

Clap-clap!

I tensed up. As something stirred on the outskirts of my consciousness, I realized with surprise that the storm of emotions swirling around inside of me wasn’t even mine. My inner compass pointed to Lina.

Somehow, I knew where she was and what she was feeling: pain coursing through her body and willingness to fight to the end, to dig her fingernails into the enemies’ flesh. There was also a little bit of happiness and a trace of the universal melancholy; her newly acquired vision pumped her veins full of hormones, and her dead mask of scars was gone. She thirsted for life.

I shuddered. Even twins did not have such a connection. My soul was filled with the sensation of something awfully familiar and intimate. I felt as if I was a part of an ideal couple. The man is like a vessel which the woman fills with herself. The vessel’s exterior is the notorious stone walls that shield the other half from trouble. Within these walls is the fluffy, purring kitten who grants happiness and comfort.

To protect what was my own, I would tear anyone apart with my bare hands: a tank, or a pseudo-woman in a cocoon of steel armor.

My legs straightened, and I stood up to my full height. I felt goosebumps as the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My upper lip reflexively lifted up to reveal my non-existent fangs. My cramping muscles twitched as if I were on stage at a bodybuilding show. The alien artifact had not only fixed my body, but helped it achieve an ideal state. All my fat had been melted off, revealing washboard abs and huge pectoral muscles which safely shielded the vulnerable heart.

The four masters of destinies stopped in front of Lina. The leader stole an approving, greasy glance at me, but still continued to examine the humans in order.

The scantily-clad lab girl focused her gaze on some invisible interfaces again and started reading the data: “Loot number 13-776. Female, biological age – 22. Peak reproductive value. Genome purity – 99.9 percent. Combat potential – wow! – 40 points. Plenty enough to independently enroll in the colonial army, and with adequate preparation, she could win a seat in the Imperial Planetary!”

The leader woman pensively shifted her weight from toes to heels. The concrete creaked beneath her steel soles which crushed it like a tank chain. “And where can we put a pretty girl like you? In the infantry? Or in the breeding unit? You can bear boys for us every seven months since your genome hasn’t gotten ruined by chemical weapons, damn them to hell!”

Seeing how I flared my nostrils in rage, she smiled understandingly and announced vindictively, “Put her in the Incubator, for the whole tribe.”

Lina and I charged at the same time. We did not have to think to synchronize our motions; we felt each other like Siamese twins. Lina dealt a blow to the throat of the nearest bodyguard with her left hand while seizing the gun in the bodyguard’s open holster with her right.

I went for the leader. Dealing a shattering right hook in the jaw, I rammed my shoulder into her, hoping to knock the mastodon off her feet.

Our plan proved pathetic, its realization comical at best.

Lina got hit with a soundless paralyzing beam in midair. Instead of pouncing on the adversary, she fell on the floor like a tiny doubled up carcass, her eyes blazing with hatred.

The giantess caught my fist in her palm and crushed it, breaking my fingers. She didn’t bother to block my other blow. A force field appeared in front of her face for a second, and my fist bounced off it. My hand went numb with pain, my knuckles warping and twisting as if I had just punched a tank tower.

The leader seized me by the throat with her free hand and lifted me off the floor, appraising me as if I were a pure-bred birthday present kitten. Then, she whispered tenderly, “You’re a vicious one, 13-777. Like to show his claws. I’ll call you Lucky! Julia Minor, read the cover page.”

The lab girl nodded, savagely flaring her nostrils as she was forced to tear her hungry gaze away from my manhood, and stared into space again as she read, “Loot number 13-777. Male, biological age – 24, peak reproductive value with an extra bonus due to prolonged sexual continence. Genome purity – 99,7 percent. Combat potential – 62 points! Tactical AI recommends putting him in the pilot squad.”

The giantess grinned: “Of course! The space fighter ships are based a mere 190 miles away from us. Well, Lucky, don’t forget auntie Cornelia Prime now. Stop by sometime, won’t you? Deliver this kitten to my quarters tonight. I’ll play with him to instill a conditioned reflex.”

“Lieutenant colonel, we have a problem with these two!” the lab girl said worriedly. "Abnormal punch actuation; the artifact’s pseudo AI had failed to find more appropriate candidates and had divided the nano-worm colony into two parts. Lucky received part one, and 776 received part two.”

“So what?!” the leader snapped with irritation, taking pity on me and putting me down on the floor. I wheezed, trying to draw air into my lungs, and carefully pressed my broken arms to my chest.

“The undersized colony did not have enough working substance to build a quality turnover antenna. The AI had made a controversial decision; it united some of the resources of the two sentients. The chronoflow disturbance mixed their slender bodies, and now, they are connected in the psi range. In other words, their souls have grown together. If one dies or disappears for a long time, the other one will also perish.”

Cornelia cursed in irritation, “You can see yourself that the girl can’t be a pilot. She can be a navigator, gunsmith, or supercargo. But not a space fighter pilot! She doesn’t have suitable endocrine and emotional profiles, overload resistance, reaction rate, pain threshold, multitasking and team work capacities. Need I go on? Plus, a light Yak has no room for dead weight. Are you suggesting we attach her to the external store? She’ll die in a minute. Although… hmm… Maybe we can make a heavy fighter crew out of them? We have tons of spacecraft; the automatic factories deliver them to the surface ceaselessly, like they’re on the damn prewar schedule from one and a half century ago. And there’s no one to fly those spacecraft.”

“Due to the male genome saving efforts, use of two-seat vehicles in combat is forbidden, Department of Defense order number 51221, from the year 2715.”

Cornelia waved her hand, “A comet up their asses! There will be only one male aboard. The other crewmember will be this ragged cat! She has enough combat potential. What are her chances of surviving the surgical insertion of the implant?”

“The pilot implant - .002 percent. Navigator implant – 40 percent. Systems operator implant – 73 percent. Military officer unit – a negative 60 percent given her current physical condition. She needs to be overclocked, optimized, and have her flesh upgraded.”

The lieutenant colonel cast an annoyed glance at the gray-haired old man with noble features who was moving on the floor next to me. Then, she pulled out the dock-tailed, thick-barreled gun attached to the fasteners on her chest lightning-fast.

Bang! the poor guy’s skull was blown to pieces.

“Why would she need a military officer implant?” Cornelia asked.

Julia explained, “By the orders of AI Hannibal, the acting Minister of Defense of the Solar System, only military officers may become crewmembers of heavy fighters.”

Cornelia sighed and squatted down next to me. The servomotors of her exoskeleton armor droned quietly, hot air emanated from the grating of the heat exchanger, and the external sensors carefully rotated, analyzing her surroundings.

I tried to crawl away, but Cornelia easily reached me and patted me on the head, “As Juno is my witness, I’ve done everything I could. The orders of that senile Hannibal can’t be repealed. There’s no one to do it; everyone ranking higher than a colonel is dead. That cursed virus…”

She rose abruptly, waving to her escort, “Mandatory upgrading for both! And I want that clumsy doctor to do his best, else instead of fucking Lucky, I’ll be fucking his wrinkled ass!” She then turned to me, “Please survive, kitten.”

Chapter Three

Obeying direct orders, one of the bodyguards attended to us. I did not get a swelled head over this favor; I regretted it from the start.

The black figure with a closed helmet stepped forward, the whole room reflecting in her glossy armor. Grabbing my shoulder, the bodyguard tossed me onto a platform that had conveniently flown up to us. My collarbone crunched, pain flaming up. I actually gained a drop of knowledge that day; attacking a person in an armored spacesuit with bare fists is the pinnacle of idiocy.

Force field straps bound me from hand to foot, brutally deforming my broken bones and sending me back to blissful unconsciousness.

I wasn’t out for long. I came to my senses in that same place, still bound. Tears blurred my vision as I noisily gritted my teeth. Bastards! I could die from shock!

As if reading my mind, the platform transporting me gave a beep. A semi-transparent medical surveillance screen appeared over my head. The image of a male figure spinning on it glowed with yellow and orange injury markers.

The wise mechanism took a second to think, determining what was wrong with me and choosing the right treatment options in order to facilitate its task of delivering me to point X. Then, it gave a jingling sound and injected me with something freezing-cold. The unknown medication proved very efficient. My pain was gone, my exhausted body lost its sensitivity, and I drowned in a slight euphoria.

Heaving a sigh in bliss, I laughed, “Excellent cart! It transports you, cures you, and keeps you alive! We need these on Earth!”

“Shut up!” a voice boomed through loudspeakers.

I turned my head as far as I could; the intimidating bodyguard in polished armor was following the convoy of platforms.

“Don’t turn around!” the figure barked, and I received a painful electric shock in my poor spine.

I arched my back. The force field straps perceived my movement as an attempt to escape, and instantly wrapped around me even tighter, jerking me back down onto the platform. They knocked the wind out of me, cutting off my circulation.

I wheezed, gasping for air, writhing from the shock. Spectacular sensations! The anti-shock injection still worked; I felt no pain and was quite content while my body danced a jig, making me slowly slip into unconsciousness.

The bodyguard’s deep, raspy voice guffawed behind me, clearly enjoying the barrack-style prank. However, I had to be delivered alive, so someone gave a remote command, and the platform’s straps loosened their hold on me. It felt as though I was injected with more chemical crap.

The platform was obviously suited for various tasks; it was not so much a medical device as a prisoner handling apparatus.

I wondered how Lina was doing. Our spiritual connection was growing stronger by the minute, tightly binding our souls together. I had gotten but a brief glance at Lina’s platform, but the image soon resurfaced in my memory; the platform was at the end of the line, the paralyzed girl on it sloppily bound with force field straps across her chest and thighs. The cut on her brow bled, the scarlet drops accumulating in her eye as her head was firmly fixed in place.

Bastards, I thought. Man, where are we? What’s going on?

It looked like the KGB had placed us in a secret research institute where we underwent an experiment, then were preserved, placed in anabiosis, forced into cryogenic sleep – call it what you want. Maybe they were testing our psychological stability by placing us under stress in a simulated environment? Or had they actually sent us to the future?

The sci-fi surroundings were quite believable, as were the warlike female team referring to frightening dates and Roman names. The brains splattered on the floor looked very real as well. The fragments of my broken wrists kept drawing my gaze as if in reproach. This treatment was too merciless, traumatizing me severely.

I no longer smiled and refrained from joking. Putting my clear consciousness to use, I gaped at everything within my sight, analyzing all the details I could see or hear.

It did not surprise me that I knew their language. If that artifact had managed to grow back my limbs and create a portable time machine within my body, then clearly recording a few megabytes of information in my brain was a trivial task.

I still thought in Russian, but every time I opened my mouth, I spoke their foreign language. My throat was already smarting from producing sounds I was unaccustomed to. Interlingua, prompted my mind crammed with foreign knowledge.

So, they installed both a linguistic and an explanatory dictionary on me, I concluded as I scanned my surroundings in search of unfamiliar objects.

The ugly bumps on the ceiling were nanobot colonies. I had no clue which type though, as I had not been given knowledge of specifics – just general concepts. Various terms flashed across my mind; terror hives, counter-boarding bots, diversionist bots, multifrequency nanites… Replicators, refueling and recharging stations… Countless foreign words spun in my head, yet I could not have defined them at gunpoint.

Speaking of guns, I suddenly knew that the bodyguard’s short-barreled machine gun was a pulse gun, whatever that meant. I won’t go into detail describing its design and how it operated, but its basic shape and reference mark were perfectly recognizable.

Oh, my poor brain, they had picked you big time! I thought, shuddering at my suspicions, then tried to whisper a curse. I was relieved that I could still swear like a sailor, that they hadn’t taken away my native language.

The hovering platform slowly maneuvered through the hallways, emitting signals to warn any passers-by and make them step out of the way. The personnel in the hallways looked at us with an unfavorable eye. They were many: scientists, military officers, and several unknown folks. My new knowledge was of no help in identifying them; their uniforms, insignias, and shoulder straps all blended together. I couldn’t tell a plumber from a pilot, just like an alien wouldn’t be able to tell our generals from our doormen.

I tensed up as I realized that everyone was female. The women were of different ages. Some looked more worn out than others, some were more feminine, others – more masculine. They gazed at me so lustfully that I was really frightened. I felt like a naked virgin being taken through the first Georgian infantry regiment.

Where are all the men?! Hello?! I wondered if I had been forced to star in some adult movie for horny teens. Or perhaps this was a private party for pervy CEOs? No, of course not. What I saw around me was clearly not props, but real, fully functional technology: the hovering platforms, the invisible force field chains, and the heavy armor hugging the well-built bodies like an extra layer of skin.

The women in the hallways were not supporting actresses, but real people. The regiment of young women in camo who had just finished exercising smelled of genuine female sweat. Their bawdy glances indicated all the things they wanted to do to me in different positions, and their pheromones were like a drug, evoking my primal instincts.

I no longer feared or hated the platform carrying me, but became somewhat fond of it. Thrice it had shielded my body with force field domes, and one time, it even had to turn on its siren while passing a group of particularly cheeky she-warriors, tazing them as they tried to touch me.

The medical section of the base was easily recognizable, its entrance bearing the famous emblem consisting of a red cross and a snake drinking alcohol from a wine glass. Who would have thought that the Russian medical symbol would survive through the centuries?

The platform stopped for a second to identify itself before the security cameras. It swiftly sent them a few pass codes, and the massive door before me slid aside. The gun turret hanging on the ceiling turned away from me.

I saw doors flashing by and heard the chiming of other platforms moving to and fro, accompanied by the sounds of various robotized devices. The staff lazily moved around. Here, no one paid attention to me. Apparently, the doctor girls got to see guys a lot more often than the 6-foot-tall infantrywomen with bulging muscles.

Our line of platforms slowed down as it neared the sign “Upgrading Hall N1.” The platforms flew inside through a protective screen of a bluish tint, ignoring the menacingly bright marker that read “Do not enter! Surgery in progress!”

I was feeling really sick by that time; the accurately measured dose of anesthetics was beginning to wear off. My battered body reminded my nerve cells of the pain, and they obligingly forwarded the signals to the brain.

Being nearly unconscious, I still made out an irritated voice, “Why the hell did you bring this chunk of meat here?! Your dumbass AI is the one administering basic implant procedures! Don’t interrupt the creative process of a true sentient!”

A male voice! I realized in surprise. Distracted from the myriad of unpleasant bodily sensations, I opened my eyes and turned my cloudy eyes to the speaker.

I was right, it was a man. A skinny man of about 50, the nervous professor type. He had a golden socket in his right temple. His left eye was artificial, clearly capable of X-ray and ultrasound vision.

Behind the man, I saw the blinking lights of a transparent sarcophagus containing a partially disassembled human body. I could not determine its sex. The flesh of the face had been carefully cut off and rolled up over the crown. Robotic arms were swiftly working on it with their slender fingers. A laser scalpel would blaze up now and again as a 3D printer diligently applied a metal armor mesh to the exposed ribs.

The bodyguard accompanying us shrugged indifferently and returned her paralyzer to the fasteners on her hip, considering her delivery mission completed.

Assuming that we posed a threat, the gun turret on the ceiling pointed a barrel at us. Taking a second to choose a primary target, it fired a thin pulse beam into the bridge of my nose. How flattering!

“These are the orders of Cornelia Prime,” the she-warrior responded. “You are to install two military officer implants: a pilot and a weapon-smith one. Plus, additional modules that increase the chances of the subjects’ successful rehabilitation. The cover letter has all the info and the endorsed orders.”

I wondered if I had actually heard a note of jealousy in her voice. Was it really a good thing to be a powerless slave fully dependent on the government? Well, I suppose inmates do get free dental care and are offered fairly good living conditions, while a free man has to pay for everything out of pocket. What’s the matter, soldier girl, not enough savings for a military implant? I thought. Or are you lacking in seniority?

“That so?” the doctor replied with interest, finally deigning to rise from the operator panel.

The surgery on the poor fellow lying in pieces continued without him. In fact, finding itself unsupervised, the autodoc happily flashed its lights, and the robot arms started working even faster, swiftly taking apart the patient’s spine.

Approaching the platform, the doctor pulled a pictogram off the screen floating in midair and enlarged it on the tablet he was carrying. A sinister smile lit up his pale face as he quoted, “‘…survival is the top priority...’ I see! When will Cornelia learn to properly formulate her orders? She will always be a heavy infantry sergeant. If survival’s the top priority, I could simply transplant their brains into a defensive planetary unit; they’ll be working their asses off calculating the velocities of trash orbiting Earth and the range tables for the minor-caliber artillery. But hey, they’ll be alive!”

The doctor laughed, tweaking my cheek as he looked into my watering eyes, “Hey, you! Wanna be a particle of a mighty intelligence?... Come again?”

The Doc started back and addressed the bodyguard with annoyance, “Why is he conscious? Are you aware that there are rules regarding the transportation of wild chrono-objects? He’s still missing both the insurance and the external control loop! And these platforms are all glitchy; their force field generators fail all the time.”

The bodyguard nodded at my platform’s diagnostic screen, “Multiple limb injuries and medicamental blockage of the spinal column. He isn’t a threat. But if you want to be such a bureaucrat, Doc, no problem.”

She took out a stun gun and aimed carefully, choosing the most vulnerable areas on my body.

The Doc waved his hand indignantly, “Whoa! Hold your fire! Imbeciles! Who’s going to remove the toxin from his body afterward? That’s it, get outta here, brainless infantry, I’ll handle this myself!”

The girl sneered, turned around obediently, and headed to the exit. Of course, she had the last word: “Cornelia Prime says ‘hi’ and intends to check on you personally if her orders aren’t carried out and this specimen dies.”

The doctor shuddered. His clean-shaven cheek twitched. He reached into the breast pocket of his one-piece suit with his sinewy hand adorned with either a glowing tattoo or the mesh of an implanted optical fiber. Pulling out an unmarked inhaler, he drew on it greedily with one nostril.

The effect of the unknown medication was instantaneous. The doctor went from a timid hare to an angry lion. Turning to the bodyguard, he snapped, “Get the hell outta here! I’ll leave you to rot in the syphilitic isolation ward! Pump you full of estrogen, raise your reproductive potential, and make you a sow for breeding tribesmen! You’ll be giving birth until your gut is covered with scars or till you’re honored with a boy, which won’t happen! Out!”

The girl went pale and clearly lost courage as she stood at attention, hit her fist to her chest, and hastily dove into the doorway.

The doctor laughed happily, “Those XX-chromosomed dogs are afraid!”

Noticing that I was looking at his inhaler, he quickly put it back in his pocket, then winked at me and lowered his voice, “Berserk 6, a BWA cocktail. This is good stuff, completely wipes out self-restraint. But you have to hit the regeneration capsule later for half an hour, else you’ll go cold turkey, and a panic attack will seem like a bedtime story. But what choice do we have? There are only 17 of us males in the entire base. If you fail to establish yourself as tough, they’ll be putting the moves on you all the time, pinching your ass. Or, they’ll even drag you to the heavy infantry barracks, pump you full of stimulants, and screw you till your manhood falls off. The inspectors had found Quintus Serf only four days later, as the girls had hid him in a reserve depot under piles of disposable sanitary liners for CAS -combat armored spacesuits. Good thing they stuffed him in a powered-down armored spacesuit; there were enough diapers for an entire battalion in there!”

The Doc waved his hand in front of my face, and burst into laughter again, “Hey, whatsyourname… Lucky! What a silly name. Would you want to die under a heap of women’s underwear? Wow, you’re boring company… All right, what do we have on the screen here? Ah, pain impulse down in the red. No implant, nothing to put out the body’s chemicals. Sucks, right? That’s all right, hang in there, slave, you’ll be an overseer yet!”

He turned away and clearly enunciated: “Pharmacist, three boilers of formula number 741, from my personal list.”

A pleasant automated female voice instantly responded, “Processing. Three boilers, 741, private list. Synthesizing formula, ready in seven, six, five seconds. Formula is unstable, expires in: two minutes.”

“Shut up, I know!” the Doc held his hand out to the dispenser window, and a dimly glowing syringe dropped into his palm.

He smiled endearingly and brought the syringe to my shoulder. I felt the needle sink into my arm. A pain grew in my muscle, then gave way to a torpor. My hearing rapidly dulled, and tingling sensations developed in my weary head.

The Doc cooed like a drug dealer praising the first gratuitous dose, “An evacuator can’t inject you with something this good; it doesn’t have such synthesizers, just a field set and some light stuff. But my cocktail – mmm! Complete relaxation. Removes stress and activates the mind. You feel it, don’t you? It’s like deep anesthesia; you won’t notice a thing if they weave a rug out of your nervous tissue! Yet your mind is burning with ideas. The most important thing is to avoid a burn out… Why am I so nice to you? A single dose of this stuff costs 20 credits! Unless you’re the base’s chief doctor that is, ha-ha!”

I would have nodded or cursed at him, but my body was in a coma. My vision grew sharper, and my mind analyzed everything; the Doc’s mimicry, his gestures, his tone of voice.

The Doc was lost in thought for a second, nervously biting his lip, then resolutely gave an order to the ceiling, “Full airproofing of the interior, endorsed by my personal signature! Class ‘A’ surgery in progress.”

The screen covering the doorway grew denser, going from blue to crimson. The droning of the air-conditioners became louder, and additional lighting turned on. The walls came apart, changing their design and the laboratory devices. Medical servers protruded from the recesses and froze, ready to start.

The Doc turned to me and winked, “Morph plastic: one of the latest inventions of the improved humanity. The compound contains 6 percent nanobots. Fifty credits for a single cubic decimeter! But, since this is the military, all you need is a well-written request. No way a woman can contend with the genius of the male brain, eh? Oh, I wish our supercargo, Appius Quintus, were alive… How we used to fight over every position! Our memos were a collection of poems! Perhaps I should publish it and live happily on the royalties. Wonderful dreams.”

I drearily closed my eyes for a second; my operating surgeon was a half-mad chauvinist junkie. I’m fucked.

The Doc sat his skinny behind down in an ergonomic operator seat and spread his arms wide as he opened projected screen panels. His long, deft fingers raced over the touch interfaces. Like most solitary individuals, he continued mumbling under his breath, “We’re old-school, everything by hand. No traces in the personal implant logs. Those dummies from the security council will never figure this one out, ha-ha!”

The Doc worked too fast. I was barely able to read the random fragments of what he typed: “Warehouse record,” “Closed end fund,” “Experimental models…”

I had a bad feeling. What is this pseudo-scientist up to? I just needed a regular pilot implant and a military officer implant with two lieutenant’s stars. I really wanted to fly a military spacecraft; it sounded much better than that mysterious “milking,” or the bioreactor.

“What’s our goal?” the Doc went on. “Maximum survival potential. The budget and materials haven’t been specified. And what does that mean? It means that it’s time for creative improvisation! This is a rare opportunity. I’ll show you the difference between homo sapiens and homo artificialis! This is not the same as sewing in infantry implants, a dozen a day, damn autosurgeons. You think you can implant the module, inject the subject with a gallon of basic nanobots, and voila, you have a first-rate doctor-AI? I had to study for 12 years before I performed my first surgery! And I studied with Manius Prime himself, may he rest in peace.”

Invisible gripping devices placed me into a transparent surgical box. A scanner moved over my head as thin robotic arms flashed around me, inserting IV needles into me, preparing the surgical site, and performing several other tasks that were unknown to me. Blue and green laser dots flickered over the box’s surface.

The doctor gave me a stern glance, “Don’t blink so often! The laser’s cutting your skull open. We can’t deviate from the error margin by more than a few angstroms, so let’s avoid micro concussions. I’d put you all the way under, but I need your brain’s reactions for detailed optimization. I’ll leave default settings to AI-Pirogoff. A true artist relies on intuition alone, ha-ha!”

I barely understood his words; the smell of scorched bone and the hissing of flesh being cut by a laser both hypnotized me and drove me crazy. A transparent mask was lowered onto my face. An oxygen-rich mixture with some sedative chemicals flowed into my lungs.

In a minute, I felt much better. I could hear the Doc’s voice again over the drumming in my ears, “All right, let’s sort by years… Hmm… A big shot indeed! Doesn’t even have drivers. A trophy, or certified back when Queen Anne was alive? Hey, cowboy, what do you prefer? An experimental implant for space fleet senior management manufactured in the Russian Empire, with an alpha-prime reliability index? It’s never been approved though… Or the rich kid Volant 9 for the spoiled aristobrats who’ve laundered enough money for an intersystem yacht? It will keep you alive during implantation, to be sure, but you'll be a rotten space fighter pilot, doomed to go down in the first battle… Personally, I like them both. I have never worked with either one, and the top priority order allows me to use anything I want. Oh, how tempting!”

The doctor jumped to his feet and started nervously pacing the room, fingering his bony chin.

I lay in silence like a fatalist, watching my reflection in the glassy surface as the autosurgeon cautiously cut me in layers. A large X-shaped incision appeared on my body, with the two lines running from shoulder to opposite heel. Clamps held my skin apart as the robotic arms carefully unraveled my muscles fiber by fiber, exposing the snow-white bones, the sinews, and the pulsating veins. Although my body felt no pain, it clearly did not like the procedure.

The mad scientist sighed, “Oh, Cornelia… I value science more than my own ass. All right, what did those imperials do here? Wow! The Kovrov lab, group number 000, special order for the Higher Military Command School in Stellar Ryazan! Impressive. Is there a hit for the serial number in the database? Attaboys! What did the legendary AI-Mordor used to say? ‘Russian Empire Communism is all about control and record keeping.' Now, the cover letter: minor specifications, rough surgery sketches, nanobot formula for the synthesizer… Holy Asclepius! Twenty-seven pounds of nano-mass of perfect purity and density! They used to be rich until the Hive got them… Whatever. What’s our closest match? Star dust at an adamantine lattice site? Dream on… Hmm, why don't I take some equipment from admiral implant kits? Those have been lying around unused for 60 years. Quantity can make up for quality. This will make it more interesting. Let's introduce a fresh, innovative idea into this closed cycle of projects.”

The autosurgeon which had been drying my involuntary tears with a stream of warm air grew tired of fighting the weakness of the human body; it sprayed my mucous membranes with yet another medicinal concoction that instantly paralyzed my eyelids. A dense, transparent film covered my eyes as if I were a dragon.

The Doc punched a whole series of commands into the projected screen, then spent a while dealing with the multiple service AIs: accounting, warehouse, courier service, and so on. He even had to make a few phone calls, putting forth Cornelia’s authorization as his strongest argument. Everyone feared her enough to perform a few minor infractions, break into a few storage cells in the dusty warehouses, and supply the needed chemicals.

I imagined such an order back in the hard 1939: “Provide the petitioner with everything he needs to complete the task at hand!” signed “L.P. Beria, Head of State Security.” Or perhaps, “G.K. Zhukov.” They say he too had one hell of a temper and could send anyone to face the firing squad.

My mind wandered from time to time, trying to escape the horror of a live vivisection. The smart technology vigilantly monitored my state. If I started to drift off, my mask would instantly fill with a mist of stimulating chemicals with a poignant smell. It was as if someone slapped my brain awake. My eyes would involuntarily refocus on the outside world, and the quiet muttering would once again reach my ears, “…a double layer of composite on his bones, and a cushion damper in his skull. A hormone synthesizer and a cardiostimulator which we will plant close to the main blood vessels, right next to the last resort autodoc. You’ll survive a 30-fold speed increase and a bullet in your heart. You should be able to survive, that is, he-he… How’s our budget looking so far? Ouch, 30,000 credits. You should be proud, little sucker. Your innards are already worth as much as a suburban house in New Rome! But even impudence has limits. I can’t draw any more from the lab funds, else I could be tried by a military tribunal… Mm… Should I leave you half-finished? What if you’ll die by morning? Here, why don’t you just stay here like that, cut apart, or better yet, sleep for 20 hours. I’ll deal with your teammate. She’s a very, very interesting case. Siamese souls of different sexes in my bestiary; who would have thought? You’ll have fun together. Not for long, but still… Hmm, but what if we go cowboy and unite the individual resources of both parties into a single core? You’ll be stuck with each other either way… What an unconventional procedure! All right, let’s get started.”

Lina was floating in her personal zero gravity capsule. She couldn’t move. Only her eyes actively surveyed the space around her through the pink amniotic fluid. She had to breathe it like a fetus. It wasn’t comfortable. On the contrary, it revived an old phobia of hers which she had developed during a vacation on a seashore. A wave once sucked her in, dragging her down and throwing her against the rocks on the shingle beach. She would have drowned, but she was lucky; the lifeguard on duty happened to be enjoying himself, watching her pretty body…

The post-surgical capsule could offer no rich experiences. There was nothing to look at in the sterile room except for the medical server rack and four other expensive cylindrical regeneration capsules. They weren’t the army versions with minimum functions enabled, but the pretty decent Asclepius 9.2 systems. A fine set of hardware for a mediocre orbital hospital.

Lina did not know how the answers came to her mind, but nothing could surprise her anymore. Since the mad doctor yanked her out of the depths of blissful oblivion, she had had enough time to study her surroundings. She saw the autosurgeon working on Paul’s brain, spraying long-term memory blocks onto the inner surface of his dissected skull.

Paul… Her rescuer, a fellow victim, and the partner imposed upon her for life. The first she could have loved, the second she could have pitied, and the third she could have come to hate.

The ability to love had long ago burned away just like the flesh on her face upon coming in contact with acid. The only one whom she could pity was herself. As for hatred, she had enough of it for an entire regiment of men. For it was they who had caused this pain and deformity.

What was Lina to do now? The screen of her autodoc would emit a beep once in a while, removing the foreign salty fluid from her capsule; the tears growing in her eyes disrupted the delicate chemical balance of the amniotic fluid.

Lina blinked away another tear and shifted her gaze back to the young man’s bare body suspended in the capsule next to hers. How do you go on as a part of such an idiotic artificial duo?

By the slips of the Doc’s tongue, I knew that Lina and I had spent a week in the regeneration capsules. We were discharged along with the other poor devils from group 13. We had been the only ones to receive personal capsules. The rest had to be regenerated like back in the old days; floating in a jelly of recreation gel. It was a cheap and brutal method, considering the post-operational mortality rate. Because of it, our group lost another man.

We fought for our lives. My body rejected the lavish medical gifts and kept slipping into comas and clinical death. The advanced technology brought me back every time, but retained my soul with great difficulty. According to the present-day notions, the soul was almost like any other organ, subject to disease, atrophy, and even transplantation.

Lina was my only saving anchor. To tear apart our astral connection wasn’t easy, and I couldn’t and didn’t want to drag an innocent soul to the “other side” with me. Besides, every death of mine was very painful for the girl. Even in her artificial sleep she would shudder, asking me to stay and crying quietly. It is infinitely frightening to lose a part of yourself.

The pendulum shrank as the higher planes of being rejected my defective soul and cast me back into the physical world, right into Lina’s mental embrace. We felt embarrassed every time like two passengers on public transit accidentally pressed against each other, one wearing a summer dress, the other – nothing but shorts. We could neither turn our backs, nor look away. All we could do was blush, our desire stronger than the thirst for life itself, and fall in love forever…

There were only 73 of us left out of a thousand. I had neither the strength nor the desire to think about where the others had gone. I hoped that most of them survived, but my imagination, stimulated by the high temperature, conjured up the pipes of a crematorium… err… a bioreactor…

We staggered along the hallways of the base like a line of war prisoners dragging their feet along the streets of a conquered city. The bodyguards and our gray featureless uniforms nicely complemented the scene.

Just like before, a medical bracelet showed up white on my wrist. Our implants did not yet function routinely, and external devices were required to monitor our condition.

I walked right behind a thickset young man. He was one of the few who still retained the sparkle of life in their eyes. He kept looking around, his gaze fastening on random technical devices. He would state their names and specifications under his breath. At times, he would wrinkle his brow in a funny way when he saw something unfamiliar.

Despite the fact that our bodies were battered and that we had no clue what awaited us in the future, Lina and I were hopeful about our futures.

First of all, I had legs, and she had eyes now. Those who had never been in a wheelchair, who never had to heave their stump of a body into the bathtub cannot understand our joy. As for Lina’s happiness, I absorbed every drop of it with my heightened senses. To see! To be able to perceive everything around me! Simply amazing!

Do you want to know what it was like? Blindfold yourself for 24 hours, or better yet, for a week. Try to live without one of your sensory organs. You’ll learn many new things about yourself and come to value your health and will want to preserve it. It doesn’t last forever and can fail you any day. Boom, and you’re in total darkness. Forever…

They took us to a spacious hangar and lined us up. We kept looking around warily, studying our surroundings and each other. The brutal selection process had served its purpose; we were mostly very troubled characters. Short-tempered, aggressive, and, most importantly, intelligent. We would find it hard to get along…

The clanging sound of footsteps warned us that the higher-ups were here. Cornelia Prime, the lieutenant colonel, for offences unknown had been demoted to the leader of the fleet’s research base which performed quite successful experiments for the Chronos project. This information may have been classified, but he who hath ears to hear will hear. The female division’s discipline was far from perfect. Even the sentries on watch would always chat, even in the presence of the feared Cornelia. I was scared to even think what was going on in the ordinary garrisons…

The lieutenant colonel eyed our diverse group with disgust. We were all between ages 17 and 50, all of different weights and heights, one woman for every eight men.

Spitting on the sterile floor, Cornelia spoke, the loudspeakers on her armor relaying her words in a bass, almost infrasound voice, “Group 13! You may yet live up to your incompetence, as 93 percent of you were waste products. Have mercy on the bioreactor! The protoplasm tanks are jam-packed. Oh, well, you are your own wooden robots… You’ll have a tough time in the virtual academy. Gods favor large battalions. And you’re barely a half company. A heavy infantry platoon, a pilot platoon, and the rest are a useless burden. May a battle cruiser make an emergency landing on your heads, group 13! Better endorse your will with a digital signature. But wait, you don’t own any property. Your asses belong to the government, to which you are heavily indebted. A 100,000 credits per each ugly, hairy ass – that's your average debt! And some of you had managed to stuff your worthless selves with so much nanotech that you will have a cast-iron bolt from the space dross collection waiting for you within the next 100 years instead of demobilization. Oh, well, everything has its upsides.”

Cornelia gave me a challenging look, her heavily scarred face breaking into a poor excuse for a smile. Her right pupil dilated as it zoomed in on me and traveled over my body independently of the other eye, searching for my hottest spots.

I shuddered and tried to disappear in the folds of my uniform. Lina instantly received my feelings, flared her nostrils, and even slightly leaned forward, trying to shield me from the lustful gaze. The girl would go from one extreme to another; from pure rage to a subconscious yet powerful longing to hug me, cling to me, and purr like a happy kitten.

Cornelia smiled sarcastically. Our aggression amused her. She did not care that we didn’t want to be touched.

Stepping closer to me, she said in a whisper that the entire group could hear, “Lucky, don’t think that a nap in the regeneration capsule is all it takes to get away from sweet Aunt Cornelia. Every time you are on leave, you are to come to me, promptly, like the clockwork of a high efficiency antenna. I will make this easy for you by passing an order to certain channels, ha-ha!”

Guffawing, she gestured at the round-bellied spacecraft with massive atmospheric nozzles and rudimentary wings, “Get on board, ya walking dicks! The Coliseum isn’t the most prestigious college of the Russian Space Forces, but you’re no third generation aristos yourselves. Study like fleet officers should, and be so kind as to die heroic deaths in your first battle. Perhaps it’ll get this shady establishment shut down, and I’ll be transferred to regulars… So long, woodbots!”

Chapter Four

Earth. Russia. The Kremlin. An excerpt from a top-secret report:

“…final activity of the sower ship observed on April 18. After dropping the artifacts on Japanese territory, the UFO entered a geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific Ocean.

Sixty-four hours later, the ship sent an encrypted radio signal in a nonstandard frequency range.

Right after, all the bearers of the alien artifact instantly lost their minds. Those crystals that had not yet attached to a specific owner immediately discharged all of their power, transforming into trivial diamonds and sending the person nearest to them into a vegetative state. They seemed to be able to do this from almost 400 feet away.

That was how the battalion guarding the special storage room number 52 lost over 70 percent of its personnel. All the medical tests show that the victims have zero brain activity. The explanations provided by psychics and true ecclesiastics are strikingly similar; they claim that the victims are missing a very complex astral body – a soul…”

We were put in the hold and left there. Our only visitor was a pert girl in a one-piece flight personnel uniform, her head shaven in stripes which glistened with the golden circuits of brain implants.

With a frightening predatory smile, she showed us how to use the seat belts on the wide, hard, tiltable operator seats designed for warriors in heavy CAS. Her hands moved like they had a mind of their own; as they snapped our belt buckles shut, we could feel warm palms over our bodies.

She was with us for only two minutes, yet managed to paw half the guys in our “Baker’s Dozen” group. They exchanged perplexed glances, then looked away in embarrassment. The girls in our group could barely suppress laughter and furtively wiped away their tears; this was their first laugh since the transfer.

After warning us that the flight would be rough, the pilot advised us to be on our best behavior as she pointed a finger up at the watchful gun turret mounted on the ceiling.

I nodded understandingly. It would take the two pulse guns mere seconds to shoot the hold full of soft traumatic shells, knocking all the trouble makers off their feet and leaving them with moderate lung injuries.

Actually, my new artificial associative memory was slowly restoring my neural connections and supplying me with more and more information. For instance, I was pretty sure that the shuttle itself was a multipurpose landing bot, class “Hamster.” What gave it away were the multiple slots on its armor and the short, rudimentary wings – also known as cheeks in pilot slang – designed not for flying within atmospheres, but for equipping standard weapon modules which changed a ship’s configuration from a heavy attack spacecraft to a stationary defense center tower.

The growing rumbling of the thrusters reached our ears. The shuttle’s sturdy exterior stated to vibrate as did the armored passenger compartment. The group hurried to take their seats along the walls, putting on their seat belts. The Hamster was raised on the hangar’s grippers and noticeably shook as it was pulled out of the gate by the invisible magnetic field cables. The on-board siren gave a signal, warning the passengers of something unpleasant and saying "goodbye" to the losers who did not have time to fasten their seat belts. After that, the shuttle shot into the sky.

All seventy passengers grunted in unison; the insane acceleration of gravity knocked the air out of us. It was like getting kicked in the chest by a mighty horse. We couldn’t even draw a breath as if a heavy weight had crushed our chests, testing the strength of our ribcages.

Everyone’s medical bracelet beeped, and we all felt the needle of our personal injectors sink into our wrists. Because of the extreme physical overload, our dormant implants activated. Various check lists and the long columns of quick tests flashed on the periphery of my vision. The clever device determined the source and degree of danger and displayed a complex 3D visual with sections such as “situation forecast,” “recommended courses of action,” “possible outcome,” etc.

Either the ascent phase was over, or the onboard monitoring system kicked in, but the physical stress suddenly abated, and the shuttle smoothly flew along its course, no longer trying to impress us with aerial stunts.

The pilots were lucky because personal implants did not shun from suggesting the most inhumane methods of dealing with those who posed a threat to their bearers. These relatively harmless suggestions included: “generating and forwarding a report regarding the disruption of flight mode during the transportation of non-combatants,” or “imposition of (verbal/written/with entry into account) (fine/punishment) in accordance with offender’s rank.” The more severe ones were: “open the dividing plate in the marked area and sever the energy controller’s optic fiber block,” or “render the passenger to your left unconscious, use his body to shield yourself from the fire of the IMP-K-1x2, then open the hatch to the cockpit. The exhaustive code search script is attached. Recognition frequency carrier detected.”

After the threat disappeared, each implant monitored its bearer’s surroundings for a few more seconds, then briefly displayed the current module statuses, and turned off. I barely had time to skim an excerpt from my system log:

Blood filters. Status: OK. Resources: 99%. Workload: 27%.

Nanofactory. Status: OK. Resources: 96%. Workload: 99%. Reaction mass supply: 72%.

Neuronet. Status: acclimatization 14% complete. Resources: 100%. Workload: 0%.

Reserve nervous system. Status: sprouting 9% complete. Resources: 100%. Workload: 0%.

ROM unit. Status: phased data archive extraction. Resources: 99%. Workload: 46%.

RAM unit. Status: Yellow. Failed self-test EK81XX3, technical assistance required. Resources: 99%. Workload: 3%...

While I analyzed what I saw and realized to what extent I was now a cyborg, the others slowly came to. I heard constrained swearing as the guys made some serious threats directed at the pilots. The few girls we had in our group – about ten, all trying to stick together - also did not hold back from cursing.

“I’d tear those bitches’ manicured hands off!” whispered Lina who sat to my right.

Her baggy one-piece suit completely concealed the curves of her athletic body, saving her from having aggressive outbursts. Every time she caught someone looking at her appraisingly, her blue eyes filled with cold plasma as she was seized with the desire to incinerate the lewd boor.

I had no choice but to experience her rage, and, frankly speaking, I was sick of falling victim to the illogical female hormonal storm. My hands started to shake, while my mind egged me to give her a left hook to stop all this. Lina also caught my emotions, and, guided by the location of Sirius in the constellation Virgo, would either flare her nostrils in indignation, or guiltily drop her suspiciously shining eyes and bat her eyelashes.

We were playing ping-pong with our feelings. The Doc was right; we would have a lot fun together.

A force field suddenly appeared in the hold; a handsome Georgian had left his chair, deciding to play the tough guy, and attempted to break into the cockpit in order to give the impudent pilots what for.

The gun turret on the ceiling did not open fire; the force field it had activated was enough to stop him. He was put in his place quite mercilessly; the force field dealt him a punch, and he flew back, slammed into the closed loading ramp, then soundlessly slipped down to the deck floor. K.O.

The descent had been rough, although without counter-air defense maneuvers. It had shaken up my stomach, and I tasted sour bile. My esophagus was sterile as we had been fed intravenously all last week.

I didn’t feel anything when the landing probes touched the ground. The passenger seats were firmly attached to the inner armored compartment for protection in the event of nearby explosions and emergency landings.

Our pilot girls obviously showed us mercy this time. Usually during landing, the shuttle would enter a free fall plunge, or even turn on its cruise engines to propel itself downward and slow down a mere thousand feet away from the landing site.

The ramp instantly dropped. The siren barked, its red light blinking, and urged us forward with a splash of subsonic sounds: Get off, meatballs!

Group 13 rushed outside. I had to get in front of Lina so that the more high-strung of the troops wouldn’t accidentally trample down my master-gunsmith. Those bustlers went flying as they crashed into me. I was always a big guy, but now I must’ve been way over 200 pounds. Armored bones, artificial joints, multiple modules, and a bucketful of super-heavy nanobots made of rare earth elements found at the bottom of the periodic table – all this added at least 70 pounds of high-tech alloys to my body.

“Ouch!” came the cry of yet another oblivious fellow as he bounced off me. It was that shortish guy who had been in front of me back in the hangar, the one that wouldn’t stop staring at the high-tech wonders.

Barely suppressing my desire to kick his plump behind, I grabbed the chubby youth by the collar of his uniform, lifted him off the ground, and shook him, “Watch where you’re going!”

He cast a nervous look at the sound emitter. “I got scared… That sound hit me over the head like a baseball bat. Nearly blew my brains out.”

I nodded at the crowd by the hatch. We could hear content female laughter outside as another female battalion brightened up their dull working day by making flat jokes about the new recruits.

“Steer clear of them unless you want to be trampled,” I warned the guy. “And have some pride. Stay ahead of me; that siren doesn’t bark at me for some reason. What’s your name?”

The young man wrinkled his freckled nose, “Name’s Macarius. They signed me up to be a mechanic. Said I’d rotate fighter tails for a few years, complete a personal hormone therapy course, then do a year of “milking,” and then I could be a pilot myself! What’s milking, by the way? My head is in a muddle… I know for a fact that in pilot slang, it's what they call the mandatory draining of fire units and reactor waste from holding cells. But something smells fishy… Will I have to sit in a hot zone for a year? What did I do wrong?”

I exchanged glances with Lina and shook my head, “I don’t think so, Mac… We’ll see. Maybe you won’t have to be on that farm. Judging by the artificial meteor shower, Earth’s inhabitants stole quite a lot. Why don’t you become our mechanic? I got a glimpse of my job stats, and apparently heavy fighters require personal mechanics. The hawks need just one mechanic per team, but military crews get private babysitters.”

The youth, who looked no older than 16, filled with indignation, “But the servobots usually work fighters, and I can control three at a time by the way! Well… if they’re all of the same type, that is…”

He stopped short, realizing that this was a thinly veiled offer of a future high rank pilot. His eyes lit up with hope: “Oh, of course I want to work on a heavy space fighter! Which model do you have? Wasp? Or bumblebee? I hope it’s a bumblebee! Bumblebees have active shields in addition to the passive force fields. They’re energy hogs and don’t have the highest force vector, but they're still sick. Their survival rate is one third higher than that of spacecraft of comparable class. Maintainability, versatility… Space Volga-Don Shipyard says it all! Quality mark!”

I looked at Lina again. She smiled and nodded. First, the young man didn’t give her obscene glances. And second, he seemed to be fertile ground for the ROM archive extraction process, meaning he would make a great mechanic. I understood very little from his hasty speech.

Most of the group had gotten off by then, and we saw a formidable figure in lightweight field armor and a Corinthian tactical helmet appear in the open hatch. She bellowed through her helmet’s loudspeakers: “Do you need a personal invitation from the Dictator? Move it! You have seven seconds to get in formation, starting now!”

The girl reinforced her order by brandishing a sparking stun gun.

We raced toward the hatch. Judging by the sound of a smack and another “ouch,” Macarius got slapped on the behind.

The group squinted under the bright sun, shifting their feet as they stood on the huge runway field. The camouflaged airport with a two-mile-long radius was studded with scorched spots created by plasma exhausts. It looked like some pilots have had to take off and land using cruise engines only, without the aid of the force fields of spacecraft catapults.

Ten female sergeants circled group 13 like herding dogs. Trying to get the group into formation, the sergeants did not shun from kicking and using shockers on the newcomers. Slowly, the group formed a straight line; none of us were masochists or retards.

A drone hovered over our heads. It was a tiny thing the size of a soccer ball, yet it had enough arms to take out a modern rifle company.

We slipped to the very end of the line, which earned us a discontent glance from this… what should I call him… Terminator? The senior officer standing aloof had obviously been a man once. Now, all that was left of him was the head and a stump of his spine. Steel and high-strength composites replaced everything else. His ammo belt did not cover much, and his artificial body glistened in the sun.

The cyborg clearly read Lina’s and my stats and made a peremptory gesture to the formation’s right flank, “You two! To the start of the line, move!”

We had no choice but to obey. I felt someone’s angry eyes upon me again. This time, it was the big, sullen guy who had been in the first position before we arrived. Hmm, someone’s already eager to make their way up.

Putting on a gloomy look, I returned his angry stare to let him know that I was not about to take any crap from him. The ones who would had been left on Earth, or sent to the bioreactor.

“Group 13, attention!” barked a girl standing to the side, covered with moving tattoos. Her light, wide-open toga revealed her alluring body. But the spectral pattern gliding over her skin gave me a headache, and I had no desire to study her succulent flesh.

Her telepathy was so strong that everyone instantly stood at attention, wide-eyed, spines crunching from the effort.

“A psi-mod,” a warrior from the second row said hoarsely.

The second row consisted of our “trash” or “makeweight” as Cornelia Prime had maliciously termed them: paramedics, supercargoes, supporting bot drivers, heavy weapon operators, all sorts of mechanics, and god knows who else. They had all retained their reproductive functions and evaded the bioreactor. A fellow victim of the transfer – a former programmer, now a heavy infantry cyber-mod – called it “being conditionally suitable for genome diversification.” They had given him a year-long extension to replenish the sperm bank of Fifth Rome. After that, an AI would add up his points on his record card and decide if the army needed his contribution.

“At ease!” the cyborg waved his hand.

The telekinetic grip of steel relaxed. The group shuddered and wheezed. The Terminator smiled disdainfully and resumed speaking, “Welcome to the Coliseum, a virtual space force academy. I’m Captain Lucius Romanoff, curator of the Chronos experiment at this establishment. You will spend the next 15 years here. You will not leave here without 10,000 flight hours and a virtual ace silver star. If you do, it’ll be as fuel bricks.”

The thunderstruck group began to vociferate, looking at each other in search of support. Fifteen years of training?! Some of us would be sent to retirement by then, or fed to the bioreactor.

Lucius gave us a crooked smile again, “Relax your asses, warmbloods! Less than a year will have passed in the real world; the virtual world time passes 16 times faster; 16.3, to be precise. And don’t ask where this coefficient came from; no one understands the time string theory in our space sector except for ten AIs and two or three scientist elders.”

The group heaved a collective sigh of relief and surveyed the cyborg. We were no longer completely human ourselves; a significant part of our bodies was now steel. Nevertheless, there is a chasm between a cyber-mod and a true cyborg. In fact, they two are more different than a human and a banana; at least humans and bananas share50 percent of their DNA.

I was surprised as I listened to my body. It turned out that in addition to abstract language concepts, I had also received certain emotions. I knew not whose knowledge I had been imbued with, but its original bearer clearly had a dislike for terminators, feared women in armor, and fervently worshipped space fighters.

The captain kept talking. He obviously had no lungs, and did not need to open his mouth to speak; his steely, harsh voice came through external loudspeakers: “…the alpha-modernization you have been subjected to is practically useless without proper unification with your psychomotor systems and the merging of your minds with the implants’ functions and capacities. Essentially, you have been given a seed which you still have to grow. You must do so laboriously, with great care, fertilizing it with your own sweat and blood. The degree of your own 'overclocking' depends entirely on your faith and diligence. Solve a thousand integrals in your head, and the nanites will reinforce the newly formed neural connections, mark them with pointer addresses, and enter them into the resource worksheet. After that, the given brain sector will become available for active and background tasks, and your intellectual and mnemonic abilities will increase.”

The cyborg gently tapped his purple armored temple with his steel finger right next to the peripheral radar incision. “Shoot, improve you sniper skill; you will never forget any skill that you master. It’ll always be available to you, amplified by your parameters of high-level characteristics and abilities. Accuracy, mastery of a certain type of weapon, perceptivity, modifiers of your personal achievement-faith combos – all this will affect whether you hit the target or miss. Fly and sleep in a CAS, pump kilotons of iron in the gym. The implant won’t let your hard work go to waste. It will stimulate the proper areas of your muscles, soften them, then reinforce the effects of tactical exercise.”

Some of the young men anxiously rubbed their hands together, finding the game-like system of leveling up much to their taste. I raised a brow. I had played games on several occasions, and way more than I should have after I had been confined to the wheelchair. So, the years I’ve wasted gaming will now become my strategical advantage? I thought.

“Some time ago, to fully level up a warrior would have taken at least ten years of intense training that pushed you to the limit. Millions of credits, several cubic feet of ammo, thousands of hours of motor operating time, and the priceless years of life, the most productive and fearless years! The years when you still believe in your own immortality, when you have no wife and kids binding you to Earth, and need money only for legal drugs and girls in the Lupanar.”

More cheering from our ranks. A thousand years into the future, the base values of idiot playboys were still the same. Several of us started their day with a triple dose of drugs – a coffee with cognac and a cigarette. As for girls, how could we pass that up?

Lina snorted indignantly, and I hurriedly looked away from the chiseled body of the she-warrior standing next to the cyborg and tapping herself on the hip with a swagger-stick. Hmm, I thought, is she even allowed to wear such a translucent silk military jacket?

“The virtual world has solved most of these problems,” continued the cyborg. “In year of real world time, most of you will become veterans of online battles. The virtual world is practically identical to the real one, and forgives many mistakes, even ones made midflight.”

One particularly brave – or perhaps stupid – youth raised his hand to ask a question. I glanced at the wacko. He was an ordinary, frail young man who still habitually squinted as if he could not see well.

Lucius chuckled, then nodded favorably, “Go ahead.”

The youth tried to readjust his now non-existent glasses, wrinkled his nose as someone behind him called him a “geek,” then voiced an abstruse inquiry with a soft burr: “Is it possible that after 15 years of in-game immortality, we will have acquired a detrimental self-confidence as well as completely lost our self-preservation instincts? Of course, if you need kamikazes to blindly ram their fighters into Death Stars, then that doesn’t hurt.”

I found this question quite sensible and gave my full attention to the cyborg, awaiting an answer.

The cyborg abruptly waved his hand, interrupting the philosophical fellow. “I understand your concern. And no, it isn’t possible for two reasons. First, death in the virtual world does not happen often, and when it does, it is extremely painful. I mean EXTREMELY painful! Second, you can die in the real world. Not always; in fact, it happens quite rarely, but it does happen. I’ll demonstrate.”

A laser gun turret sprang from Lucius’s back over his right shoulder. A green crosshair appeared on the Geek’s forehead. That same instant, the gun gave a whistling sound.

Boom! Instantly, the Geek’s blood reached boiling temperature, and his skull exploded like a ripe watermelon struck by an explosive bullet.

“Halt!” bawled the psionic girl as her telekinesis paralyzed our limbs, riveting us to the spot.

We stood under the hot sun, stunned and stained with a grayish-brown mush. Those nearest to the Geek were throwing up even as they stood at attention.

The laser emitter on the cyborg’s shoulder shifted its lens, seeking out rioters. It turned to me for an instant, and in its mirrorlike pupil, I saw my own frightened face.

Lina turned out to have a more robust nervous system than me. Almost immediately, I felt her support; a soothing whisper in my mental channel helped me overcome my Charley horses and breathe deeply. I relaxed and looked at the curator with more confidence. He made a wry face in disgust. Clearly, he despised our vomiting army.

Finally, the laser emitter folded away, and we heard a quiet click as it retracted into its slot behind the captain.

Lucius greedily inhaled the smell of blood and scorched flesh, and a huge smile appeared on his face, a genuine one this time. “Don’t piss yourselves, rookies! It’s quite difficult to die in Fifth Rome. I’m willing to bet the Japanese battleship Yamato against the one-seat Mosquito that the soul of that smartass has already been caught by the Reincarnation Service effectors. They have a genome sample, and they grow a single clone of every officer beforehand, which swims around in the storage-womb, awaiting its time. They’ll extract it, wash it off, upload the individual's memory dump, which has been copied from you the moment you arrived, then transplant the soul from the crystal, and voila! This luxury costs 40 kilotons of money, but it brings you back. The government pays for stuffing your bodies with implants, for you are its property and its avenging sword. New Rome is always zealous about keeping its sword sharp. Especially now, when the Hive’s spores are slowly ripening.”

We regained our composure. It didn’t matter to us that the immortality we were promised was flawed and expensive. We wanted it.

“…and speaking of funds. You didn’t start off so well, burdened with personal debts. But on the other hand, you should rejoice that you have no family debts. Most of us have to pay off loans taken out by our great-grandfathers, may the gods deny them a nice afterlife! Student salary is 300 credits per month. Just enough for ten restaurant dinners. However, the girls from upper classes will buy you dinner. Once you’re immersed into the virtual world, your salary triples. That way, you’ll get about a grand per month. That’s not so bad, close to the salary of common laborers from the slums after a mandatory two-year public school. The only difference is that you’ll have no expenses, as room and board are all paid for.”

I couldn’t help it and shook my head accusingly. Apparently, Lucius had just added a hefty amount to the Geek’s debt. This demonstration of immortality would cost him four years of immaculate service.

“…when you graduate, your salary soars. The space force’s accounting AI calculates the new coefficient. It considers everything: your rank, service and battle hours, efficiency, trophies, and space knows what else. Two infantrymen in the same squad can have vastly different incomes. One receives many times more than the other. Always remember; service is duty! The fleet is family! Death is honor! Follow these rules, and your resume will shine with trophies and rewards.”

The cyborg made a pause to stress the importance of these words, then continued, “And now, you will have 24 hours for meet and greet and settling in. Then, you’ll be fully immersed into the virtual world and will be kept there for the entire first semester. The duration is two weeks in real world time, or 200 days in simulated world time; count as you please. Kick back, satisfy your sexual desires, if you have any energy left, that is. They collect your sperm even when you’re in your capsules, but that’s irrelevant.”

Lucius pulled out a pointing device and aimed it at the buildings in the distance, “Group, about face! To your permanent stations, forward sprint!”

Chapter Five

The futuristic-looking barracks matched the era. They closely resembled the capsule hotels of modern airports, having elongated interiors with elastic floors of a sterile white color and a lined, runway-style central aisle where we could get in formations.

The shorter sides of the barracks contained racks for personal weapons, protected by soapy-looking force fields. The firearms were mostly pulse guns plus a few light railguns serving as platoon machine-guns. Next to the racks stood a few awkwardly-positioned, middle class CAS, reminding me of ceremonial armor in the depths of an ancient castle. They looked frivolous with their backs to us and bent over, presenting us with the folded-back inner access plate. It enabled the operator to put on the suit in mere seconds if ever the need arose.

I barely had any idea regarding the available power of this armor, but I had no doubt that a single storm trooper wearing one of these could smash a 21st century tank battalion. The technological chasm between these two was akin to the chasm between a tank and thirty royal musketeers.

To each side of this armory pyramid were three-level stacks of transparent capsules. The capsules were numbered, each associated with a specific owner. Inside each capsule was a narrow bed with a ductile gravity mattress and configurable furniture for daytime breaks and self-preparation. Even in comparison to my one-bedroom apartment in Moscow, these living quarters were quite austere: a tiny table, a low, semi- recumbent armchair, screen holoprojectors, and an openwork panel for media center access.

The young woman on duty with mischievous eyes and a promising smile never explained to us how to use the panel; she assured us that we would not have time for entertainment. And even if we did have a minute free, we were expected to go to the upper story where the valiant college girls of the psi-sniper group were lodged. These girls had been in service for a while; three virtual world years, or five real world months.

She also told us that we shouldn’t bother filing complaints, that we were “debtor slaves with no citizenship” and not some pompous aristos. That we should be happy and respond to the advances of the future elite space infantrywomen by welcomingly wagging our, ahem… let’s pretend she said “tails.” And the girl on duty herself – the “valiant sergeant Livia Cruise,” as she referred to herself – had two dozen virtual access points to “the field” and 1,500 confirmed targets on her RC, eight of which were light infantry backup bots seized with nothing but an ancient ballistic rifle.

I stood to the side, beyond the range of the passive sensors of this veteran of online battles, and smiled as I realized that she was just a girl. Seventeen years old at most.

Livia kept talking, heatedly persuading us that we simply had to give ourselves precisely to her squad. According to an off-the-record lottery and the internal tables of student ranks, her heroic seventh company was the one who had “gotten” us. Apparently, the upperclassmen had subjugated all the previous “government serfs,” which was a grave injustice because “battlefield psionics are the worthiest of all.”

Our guys looked completely dispirited; their personal first-aid kits injected them with lots of sedatives, saving them from hysterics and mental issues. The fact that we had been transported to the future was not even the worst of it. Fuck the adaptation process! Improved health and the promised superhero abilities smoothed over our transition, warming our souls raised by Hollywood. Plus, we could potentially achieve a high status and become important. There was also the future salary increase along with vague promises to return us home if we so desired, as soon as our debts were paid off and our contracts were up.

All this helped us overcome the shock of the transition. But the reversal of the traditional gender roles was something we could not wrap our brains around. We would get pressed into corners, grabbed by the ass, and receive insistent invitations into capsule number 7-114 in order to “take a look at the mineral collection from Novea 4,” or “listen to a contraband white gun purring away.” Judging by the meaningful smiles accompanying such invitations, these activities were in some way sacral.

The ISS girl – the scantily clad young psi-mod – quickly grew tired of the thick fog of fluid spread through two of the barracks and the continuous gasps of admiration coming from the dimmed capsules. Soon, the doctors issued an order to our personal autodocs, and wrist injections decreased our libido, rendering us shamefully impotent. A cry of rage from both sexes rang out in the northern wing of the university.

This medical blockage, however, did not hold off the resourceful girls from the seventh company. Now, during the “accidental” meetings in the maintenance hallways and common shower cubicles, the girls would show us two pills in their palms, a red and a blue one, allowing us a cursory glance.

Those of us who fell for it and tried a pill took a while to come back. When asked about their experience, the guys would shake their heads in exhaustion and share their knowledge in a brotherly manner, “If you decide to do it, take the blue one. The red one is rough.” However, those who took the advice of their amigos returned later that evening with the same exhausted faces, recommending the opposite.

As I watched this mess, I would sigh heavily and cast glances at Lina, who would curl her lips in disgust. I am no hypocrite, and I had not held a woman in my arms for the last two years. My blood was boiling with testosterone, clouding my mind. Plus, those upper-class girls were experts at provoking males.

Any man in their position would walk around shirtless, square his shoulders, and subtly flex his biceps. Well, the psi-sniper girls were even more straightforward; the amount of bare flesh around us was beyond all reasonable limits.

Plus, they had already learned a few professional tricks; we felt significant pressure in the psi range. Each of us burned with the desire to wag his tail and follow yet another girl who had suddenly decided to take a short cut to the solarium through our barracks.

Lina grew furious, often snapped at me, and demanded that I stop drooling over those girls. One day, she said that my dirty thoughts made her want to throw up, and if I continued gaping at the firm behinds of the snipers, she would definitely vomit all over my back.

To avoid trouble, I retreated to my plastic capsule and spent the rest of the evening wrestling with the smart-home interface of the capsule. I felt like a caveman who had been given a remote control for a home theater system and told that he could watch “live pictures” with it.

There were three control channels: mental, psi, and voice with imaging for the mentally disabled. I had to accept my flaws and talk to the interface. It was much like the anecdotal series: “Phone, phone, Chukchi want food!”

I was able to accomplish something. The interior dry cleaning function resisted my commands at first, refusing to activate as long as I was inside the capsule. But I managed to push my wish through by dragging the blinking red “parasitic infection” cursor to the green outline of a human body, then confirming the availability of personal defense means not registered by the system.

Now, I would have known better, but back then, when I heard the magnetic latch of the capsule click shut and saw the disinfector protrude from the ceiling, I nearly crapped my pants. Beating the capsule walls like a fly against glass, I witnessed a practically fair fight between the capsule and my first aid kit: the former would poison me – quite successfully – and the latter would resuscitate me.

I cannot say who would have won; probably whichever one ran out of reagents last. The girl on duty, however, became alarmed when her advanced mind sensed the emanations of death on her territory, and interrupted the process. I was saved from suicide and an extra debt of forty tons of energy credits. It looked like I owed the gorgeous Livia big-time. Judging by her hungry gaze, she was going to accept the payment here and now, and it had to be payment in kind. Wow…

Soon, a mechanic arrived. He was a wrinkled old man, his cheap cyber-implants creaking as he walked, and kept coughing and complaining about the high prices of pulmonary filters for an old Mitsumi Air respiratory apparatus. He shook his head in surprise, giving me respectful looks as he installed a program patch for the fool-proof protection which I had so easily bypassed.

At 10 p.m., invisible speakers bellowed a loud bravura lights-out march. The seventh company girls quickly dispersed despite the lust and sadness in their eyes. It turned out that discipline was more important than sexual drive, and this frightened me. Do they get savagely thrashed here? I wondered.

There was no need for a roll call; the system knew exactly where each soldier was. They had inserted so much tech in us that it was foolish to hope that we did not have the simplest tracking devices in our bodies.

They also did not want to pressure the new recruits. Perhaps they were afraid to go too far and damage the frail psyches of those who had become students involuntarily. Even though we had medical support and had spent all last week napping in gel bathtubs, our stress hormone levels were at an all-time high. No one wanted to put unnecessary stress on our blood filters. The implants were not eternal, and we belonged to the government.

Or could it be that they tried to relax our anxious minds with their fake smiles while hiding a fist with knuckledusters behind their backs? If you so much as timidly open your mouth to answer – whack, and your frail teeth will go flying.

We reluctantly went back to our capsules to the brusque Fifth Rome system march. The omnipresent sergeants used their shockers to speed up the daydreamers. Orders had to be obeyed on reflex.

The capsule greeted me with a countdown timer that read: Time remaining until forced sleep mode: 9…8…7….

I barely managed to plop down on the bunk when all the lights except the safety lights went out, and the smart house whispered in my ear in a sugary baritone, “To the glory of Rome! Pleasant dreams. Wake-up call in 7:99:99… 7:99:98…”

Alas, I woke before the alarm went off. My implant activated and its alert signal interrupted my sleep. Colorful interface markers rippled before my eyes. My hearing heightened and the extra layer around my adrenal glands quickly pumped my blood full of adrenaline and cortisol.

My cot jerked. Although my capsule was completely sound-proof, the echo of a loud explosion reached my ears. My cot jerked again. The long, narrow night lamp over my head went out. The red emergency lights instantly activated. Through the translucent plastic walls of my capsule, I could see colorful laser dots dancing everywhere. A flame raged nearby. My fellow recruits beat their fists against the walls of their capsules, getting baked alive inside them.

Lina’s emotions flooded my defenseless nervous system the moment she woke up: panic, fear, and scorching pain. It was like a red-hot needle pierced her spine from the tailbone to the base of the skull. I wheezed and grinded my teeth, completely oblivious to the fact that I was chewing up my tongue into bits. Lina’s pain was stronger.

I rammed my bare heel into the exit hatch. Open up, you piece of crap! The strained howl of an engine followed. I was now isolated in my capsule surrounded by fire, reading a jittering sign projected in midair: “Exit point failure. Channels of communication with repair and emergency services are either blocked or unavailable. Emergency protocol activated. Take measures to protect yourself from your environment. Temperature: +123F, CO2 levels: 6%. Skirmish in progress, using light ballistic and plasma weapons. Loss of capsule pressure in: 3…2…1…”

Kaboom!

The blow-out charge shot off the surprisingly thick hatch. Pungent smoke burst through the gap. I heard the agonizing screams of the dying and the sounds of a futuristic battle, incomparable to anything else. Pulse gun shells whistled through the air at 16,500 feet per second to the howling of hot plasma and the blasting of assault rifles.

I wouldn’t have made out anything around me if it hadn’t been for my implant; it made sense of this symphony of chaos, detecting individual shots and highlighting potential enemies and their arsenal in my field of vision. It also used colorful spots to mark dangerous sectors and optimal routes to all nearby shelters.

Alas, I was a complete noob. System logs flashed before my eyes as if stuck in scroll lock. Status glyphs rushed like a waterfall from the upper right-hand corner and piled up in huge stacks on the periphery of my vision. The 3D database map spun every which way like a Rubik's cube gone berserk, various markers appearing on it which I could not decipher.

Perhaps one day I would know my way around high-tech battle interfaces, but at that moment, I couldn’t even turn off the messages blocking my vision.

My capsule’s activity drew the attention of an unknown enemy. Thud-thud-thud-thud, came the noise of plastic getting shot. Tiny openings dotted the capsule.

Inside my head, I could hear my implant commenting with its usual irrational tranquility, “Handheld infantry railgun, 2.5mm caliber, ammo type: ceramic balls, 86 percent likelihood.”

Another motion vector was marked red. The stack of glyphs depicting the enemy’s fire weapons increased by one.

I doubled over, feeling pangs of another’s pain. Wheezing, I saw blood pouring out of my mouth, but did not try to tune out Lina’s emotions. I feel, I know. I didn’t just mirror what she felt, but took on a part of her physical sensations so that she could feel a little better.

Lina tried to shut me out, not wanting to pass me her pain. For a second, I felt happy, thinking that she actually cared about me. But I was distracted by her telepathy: “Two invalids are useless! Preserve your mobility and kill the enemies!”

The implant noted, “Friendly target located: wounded combatant. If possible, administer first aid. In the event of absence of an evacubot, or if target is at risk of being taken hostage, euthanize the target. Optional (recommended): arm yourself with the casualty’s weapons.”

I didn’t have to search far for Lina; the interface before my eyes obligingly highlighted her doubled-over frame. Her HP bar was frighteningly short and of a dark-orange color, indicating that she was in critical condition.

At least now I had a goal amidst this madness. Coughing, I ran through the smoke. Surprisingly, this time I managed to react to the tactical network’s hint and followed the suggested motion vector that lit up before my eyes. I dove down on reflex as I approached a red line indicating a possible danger zone.

A white-hot blob of plasma whooshed over me, burning the hair on back of my head. I did an awkward summersault and stretched in a leap as I dodged another dotted line.

But I failed to fit through the narrow space between two high-speed ceramic balls. I felt as though two angry cobras bit into my thigh. The implant marked the wounded limb a yellow color and advised: “Double injury. Damage: light. Performing quarantine, arrest of bleeding, limb operability assurance. Regeneration systems workload: 58 percent.”

I was no longer slipping on the blood-stained floor, and my half-mad laughter stopped. I was injected with a cocktail of combat drugs, their effects coinciding with those of the anti-shockers and pain-killers. I felt dizzy from the rush.

The sight of the girl on watch crawling on the aisle floor sobered me up. She was nearly unrecognizable; my gaze involuntarily slipped from her distorted face to the long trail of innards she left behind. The girl was missing her legs and pelvis. Her implant was the only thing keeping her alive.

This implant, this creation of mankind nearly as ingenious as divine inspiration itself, was patching up her damaged blood vessels, compensating blood loss, stimulating the cardiac muscle, pumping drugs into her bloodstream in a hurry.

I froze, completely clueless as to what could be done given such injuries. She wasn’t bleeding at this point, and bleeding was the only thing I could treat with amateurish bandages and a few kind words.

Our eyes met. Her pupils were so dilated that they concealed the irises.

Seizing her bloody fingers, I muttered foolishly, “Just… hang on!”

The girl gave me a crooked smile: “It’s you who must hang on. I’m finished… It’s the terror group of the Hive, damn it thrice! The accursed seed must have sprouted somewhere. So many years have passed, and they still awaken… Listen, student!” The girl’s breathing became jerky, and black, oily foam stood out on her lips – a clear indication that her internal nanobot hive had gotten damaged. “…do me an honor, give me an easy death. I could stop my heart, and the temple priest would absolve me of the sin of suicide, but that would be bad. I shouldn’t leave my brains unscathed for the techno-sentients. Who knows what they could do with them.”

The psi-sniper had been dragging her pulse gun along all this time. Grabbing it by the acceleration block barrel, she pushed the gun toward my feet. “Help me leave. Become my blood brother!”

Unthinking, I picked up the gun by its ergonomic stock. The weapon vibrated violently in my hands and displayed a warning sign on its sensor panel: “Unauthorized user! Granting guest access to aiming systems, ammo, and external devices. Firing and disassembly options blocked.”

My implant joined the crazy electronic conversation: “Personalized ‘Scorpion’ pulse gun with the ‘Psionic-plus’ modification. Caliber: 1 mm, firing rate: variable, up to 1800 shots per minute. Condition: good.”

“Hacking: impossible. Missing Brute Force module.”

“Hardware tampering: impossible. Missing toolbox and master- gunsmith skill.”

“Technical imitation: impossible. Missing Chameleon block.”

“Recommendations: to gain access, use verbal communication and social engineering methods.”

I heaved a sigh of relief, realizing that I wouldn’t have to kill the girl. My lungs ached as I inhaled; the smoke grew thicker, the temperature in the barracks increased, and my hair began to crackle from the heat.

Spitting viscous drool, I looked around in search of a safe spot where I could drag this dying stump of a human. The sniper shivered, her eyes racing over the smoke, her chapped lips hurriedly whispering a prayer.

The cries around us started to die down, and the shooting ceased almost completely. We would hear an occasional blast, as if the enemies were busy finishing the wounded. I didn’t like it at all.

I felt Lina’s emotions traveling from the far corner of the barracks. That was where the fire blazed the brightest. The girl was weighing me down with fear and the dull pain of burns. One of her implants was clearly suppressing the more severe pain spikes.

Concentrating, I tried to send her the most calming thoughts I could muster: Hold on, sweetheart, just a minute. I’ll help this girl, then crawl over to you. Soon, the cavalry will arrive and give these bullies hell! Indeed, you couldn’t just raid the barracks unnoticed given the multitude of the surveillance systems. A prolonged skirmish simply wasn’t possible.

Seizing the evacuation hinge on the nearest armored spacesuit, I dragged the psi-girl to the armory. The CAS’s force field had lost the former shine, but still glimmered. Perhaps it’ll recognize us as friendly subjects and let us in? I wondered. If not, I’ll stuff the girl into the CAS. I couldn’t use it myself, lacking access rights and the necessary skill, but its armor would shield the psi-girl. Should the gods be favorable, the suit’s first aid kit would activate and help the sniper survive.

I ran in awkward dashes, as the girl still weighed quite a bit even being halved, and the external devices of the battle suit weren’t exactly aerodynamic. My jerky movements made the sniper come to her senses.

Looking around, she made out the useless pulse gun in my hand and, cringing in pain, uttered in a surprisingly clear voice: “Attention PG-7381901! Code 09, at the risk of Sergeant Livia Cruise!”

The touchscreen displayed a dim green sign for a second: “All blocks removed. Ready to use. Battery remaining: 92%. Select ammo type. Available ammo: flash balls – 250, ceramic bullets – 150, tungsten bullets – 100.”

“Stars,” the girl whispered wearily, hanging by a thread.

“Ceramic bullets selected. Recommended target filtering: class 2 armor at most.”

“That’ll do… Shoot me in the head,” Livia told me.

I shook my head, Damn suicide! Slinging the PG over my shoulder, I continued dragging the sniper to the armory.

I had to hurry; something huge and black flashed behind the smoke, alarming me. The implant couldn’t highlight the unidentified entity and sadly summed up the situation: “Directional jamming resistance. Detecting an active camouflage module.”

“Fool…” I heard Livia’s whisper behind my back, followed by the click of a blasting cap and the subtle high-pitched sound of the acoustic alarm.

Wheeling around, I stared at the pin of a plasma grenade slowly growing scarlet. The sniper promptly rammed her fist clutching the grenade underneath the one-piece bullet-proof vest of her suit. Her pale lips spread in a crooked smile. Her mind was already on the other side, but she took a second to utter a considerate: “Run, handsome, run.”

I took to my heels, already knowing that I wouldn’t make it. My implant painted a 17-foot-wide circle around us as a lethal radius for exposed targets.

Red… Orange… Yellow zone.

Kaboom!!!

The shock wave hit me in the back, sending my charred body flying. A prominence of the swelling plasma cloud reached me, incinerating my clothes, skin, and even muscles.

I hit the once-white floor in a completely hopeless condition. The pain was excruciating. I felt as though I had reached the very peak of all theoretically possible human suffering. Did I scream? Give me a break! You can only scream if you have the strength to draw breath. If you are still able to breathe, you are not in pain.

Lina whimpered in a faraway corner in chorus with me. The echo of my pain consumed her. My implant huffed and puffed, the first aid kits frantically pricking me with needles, hurriedly injecting me with lethal doses of various drugs. The implant’s main objective was to keep me alive here and now. Soon, an evacubot would arrive and dump us in an autodoc. The autodoc would take apart our flesh fiber by fiber, thoroughly cleansing and reviving each individual cell. Soon… Provided, of course, that the higher-ups deemed such expenses necessary.

The drugs helped temporarily. The floor shook under heavy footsteps, distracting me from the painful sensations. I shifted my gaze to the approaching enemy.

A techno-sentient.

My implant’s interface explained: “Hive storm-trooper. Imperial classification: a light infantry support bot, class Rat. Mass: 1,700 lbs. Armament: twin switch railgun, 3 mm caliber. Standard-frequency generator launcher. Close combat froster. May have passive shield.”

As I looked at the armored mug towering over me and at the flexible probing rod sliding out from underneath the chest plate, I deeply regretted not having stayed with the sniper.

With a movement of my wrist, I raised the PG and pulled the trigger with all my might. The PG switched to its maximum firing rate, spitting out 50 units of fire in five seconds.

The monster started back, wrapping itself in a glowing force field. The brittle ceramic ammo was just the right thing for overloading a passive shield. The last few bullets in the round pierced the extinguished film and crashed into the monster’s armored chest, spilling their contents.

A utility notice distracted me: “Changing ammo. Emergency autos election: tungsten bullets.” I still kept the trigger pressed all the way in, paralyzed by the lingering pain and fear.

The armor-piercing needle-shaped bullets capable of going right through a roboplatform punched several holes in the pseudo-sentient Rat. Its system modules were damaged badly enough. The monster’s entire body shuddered and fell with a crash on my poor legs.

I merely grunted. The pain was a ghost. The medicinal defense was absolute.

“Changing ammo. Last option: flash balls. Right magazine is empty, reload.”

Again, the floor trembled as I heard the drumroll of heavy footsteps. Now it was my turn to smile crookedly and bring the overheated barrel to my mouth. My lips cracked and burned with a hissing sound.

My implant supported me in my decision, “Detecting carrier frequency of Reincarnation Service. Happy regeneration, soldier!”

Forgive me, Lina…

Bang-bang-bang!

Darkness…

Darkness…

Darkness…

And the gleaming system logs:

“Test run of personal virtual module completed. System status: green.”

“Degree of immersion: Alpha Plus.”

“Depth of immersion: Alpha.”

“Personal adjustment: completed.”

“Examination battle results entered into record card (RC).”

“Points gained: 118. Out of these, bonus points for best result in the group and destruction of bot, not covered in the script: 102.”

“Status alert: attained required quantity of points for achievement of new rank: Corporal. Communicating with low-order stream of the AI Hannibal. Confirmation received, new rank approved.”

“Congratulations on your first patch! Many annulets to you, Corporal!”

“Unloading consciousness from personal virtual space sector, connecting to academy’s public cluster.”

“Loading local sub-level: Briefing Hall.”

The image blinked, and I found myself in a dazzlingly white sterile hall. The rest of the group materialized next to me. They were coughing, grunting, clawing at their chests, and looking with surprise at their newly grown arms, legs, or whatever they had lost.

The cyber-mod’s voice thundered in the hall: “Congratulations! You have completed your trial immersion. Your group has made the academy’s top list: worst performance of the year, ya clumsy asses!”

Chapter Six

The hubbub died down. Our group slowly and warily looked around, growing accustomed to the new reality and recovering from the persistent flashbacks of the recently experienced nightmare. I saw dozens of eyes filled with horror, pain, and fury. I surmised that each one of them had gotten their fair share of plasma and the raging flames.

Sergeants rapidly passed by the ranks, violently slapping those who had been too deeply affected by their virtual death to get them to pay attention. Macarius, who stood near me, stared at his hands in fear as he watched burn blisters swelling up on his skin.

One of the sergeant girls waved her hand, “Stigmata. It’ll go away. Fall in, crustacean!”

I tossed my head as if shaking off the shroud of afterlife. The horror of the impending nonexistence slowly subsided, allowing me to think clearly. My mind protested; this was no game. This virtual reality was identical to actual reality, except for the pain, which was too intense and consuming. I had never experienced such pain in real life.

The freshman record table caught my attention. As the cyber-mod had said, group thirteen was in the last place. We had scored less than 2,000 points during the game event. This put us more than twice below the lowest all-female team.

I assessed the group’s battle results in my head; it looked like my record 100 bonus points hardly improved the situation. After all, we were about 70 people. The bonus was practically unnoticeable, yielding a mere extra point per every clumsy fellow.

It’s a well-known fact that individual heroism doesn’t win wars. Most of the combat jobs fall on the faceless average masses. The space fighter statistics were ruthless; three flights, then, if you got lucky, you’d earn one star on your fuselage. And then, you too would get blasted out of the sky, and your weary friends standing at your pyramidal, veneer grave would fire a scanty farewell salute out of their personal weapons.

Although… perhaps things were simpler? Perhaps we weren’t all thumbs? It could be that the local psychologists had simply picked out a particular pressure system that lowered our self-esteem and provoked us to be zealous in training. No one wants to be a loser, especially when it comes to questions of life and death. I bet that in the age of duels, people would learn fencing of their own free will and with great assiduity.

The cyborg continued: “Everyone get a taste of ‘game’ death? Do we have any masochists left? Anyone wants to die a few more times? Because I can boost your level of pain perception from the current 200 percent to an anguishing 300 percent. Volunteers? Didn’t think so, dumbasses! I’ll teach you to hold on to life! Never forget: space force soldiers do not have personal destructors. The ship AI makes decisions regarding group euthanasia; he blasts the reactor. The soldiers fight to the end, often to the ticking of a bomb's countdown timer. And, in some cases, when a fighter returns on autopilot, they go in the cockpit and bring out a baked head in a tactical helmet, bundles of life support wires dragging after it. The rest is ashes and mince meant, and I'm a living example of such an instance.”

The captain paused for a second, remembering the past, and I saw him in a new way. So, that’s why he’s mostly steel! I concluded. But why didn’t they transplant the rescued mind into a clone? Wasn’t it a common procedure in these times?

The cyborg answered this unasked yet predictable question, “The Reincarnation Services didn’t exist back then. And now, I’m used to what I have. Besides, a complete external cyber suit is much cheaper than implants, and much more functional than the delicate implant parts. Plus, the soul doesn’t like excessive cyber-modification, the shell wears thin, and the chances of a successful merging grow slimmer every year. But don’t be tempted! We keep very careful records of our fleet officers, he-he. The planetaries can die three times a day as long as there are spare bodies. The steradian antenna fields on both poles of Fifth Rome will catch the soul, guaranteed. But in the space force, everything’s different. Cadets, what’s the average battle contact distance in outer space?”

The relevant knowledge had already been unpacked and mastered by my brain. I answered, “Around 3,100 miles.”

The captain grinned, revealing his last chance weapon – adamantine cutters instead of teeth. “That’s right, but only for space fighters. The Fleet’s main forces rarely ever get locked in a clinch. In most cases, it only comes to heroic hand-to-hand combat if someone makes a huge mistake.”

The cyborg scowled in anger, then sharply turned to one of the soldiers: “Define Jupiter’s point!”

Stiff as a poker, the young man stated his answer. He sounded confident, but I could see the surprise in his eyes: “It's the maximum distance at which we can reach an enemy with a relative velocity of zero.”

“Specifically?”

“Specifically 93,205 miles for heavy ASMs, and twice that for multimission missiles. However, intercontinental cruise missiles are used solely for large planetary targets and orbital facilities: stationary defense centers, dockyards, zero circle factories, etc.”

The captain nodded, “Excellent! And now, attention, everyone! Not all space force convoys have a hospital ship. And even if there is one dragging itself along at the end of the line, obscuring half the skyline with its reflectors and hiding its precious self in the shadows of the heavy ships, this won’t help the fighters. In order to capture the physical component of the soul, which weighs three twentieths of an ounce, at a distance of 1,000 kilometers, or 621 miles, you need that many meters of antenna fields – a 1,000 meters. This is a linear dependence. Should the mosquito-fleet perform an interception or cover low-flying attack ships, no one will bother to make the reception surface area 20 times larger. And is it even feasible to build a platinum grid with an area of 100 square kilometers? Such luxury for a few suicide bomber squadrons? Don’t even dream about it! You’re on your own. The Fleet pilot position is a high risk one. Hence the coefficient of three prefixing our salaries, trophies, and service record sheet points.”

A stunned silence fell on group 13. The safe and honorable profession with guaranteed resurrection and ammo paid for by the government suddenly turned out to be a second-class death row ticket.

“Don’t shit yourselves, warmbloods,” the cyborg continued merrily. “You still have 15 years of virtual world ahead of you. Followed by the near space routine with its fearful pirates and the inert fragments of former empires. The Hive has really roughed up the inhabited human space sector, sowing bioterminator spores on every rock wider than 50 miles. At the time of the fourth and final epidemic outbreak, less than one and a half percent of males survived. Three generations later, we barely got that number up to six percent. The female genome is no better off; the chances of conceiving and bearing a son are nearing statistical error: 10 to the negative ninth power. You should’ve seen the solicitude and joy with which they greeted the returning Distant Reconnaissance ships. A few hundred men at once!”

The captain fell silent. I raised my hand, wanting to ask a question that was tormenting me. Of course, after seeingthat geek full of initiative get shot in the head, asking questions was quite frightening. But we’re in a virtual world, right? Or not?...

When the cyborg gave a nod of approval, I stood at attention and spoke: “We are in the virtual world since what time? Which events in our memories are real, and which are scripted?”

The group grew quiet, letting the question sink in and realizing the illusiveness of being.

The cyborg smiled encouragingly, his adamantine fangs glistening in the sun. “Good question, Corporal!”

A murmur passed through the line again, a mix of surprised and jealous statements.

“That’s right,” the captain continued, “the system has panned three bricks out of this pile of dung. Although, if you ask me, there clearly has been a technical error. The technicians are currently overloading the virtual server with equipment tests and are upping neurohub firmware. At least you’re of some use; they’ll upgrade the academy’s hardware by a few microns at the expense of the Ministry of Defense. Anyway, I liked how that frail girl promptly had euthanized half her team, including the crew commander herself.”

Lina, who stood next to me, instantly blushed. Noticing my surprised look, she told me via our mental connection that she was much better at euthanizing than I was: “I spoke with Livia Cruise. She explained to me that you can’t be taken alive by the technosentients. And you… you had gotten crushed by a collapsed wall. I couldn’t see anything except your head and shoulders... What?! I should’ve left you? You were hanging around like an old jerk in a brothel, and your implant was already alerting you that two assault bots were approaching!”

“Wow, thanks for the kind words,” I egged her on.

“You’re…” Lina began, then stopped short and snapped with irritation through our mental channel, “Go to hell! Dumbass!”

I felt like she punched me in the brain; pain shot through my head from temple to temple. Ouch! Was that what the Doc was talking about when he said we’d have a fun life together, albeit not for long?

Meanwhile, the captain continued, “Corporal Ilya had made a canonically correct decision. He euthanized a wounded soldier. He has shown keenness of wit by following the instructions of his implant and partially disassembling an unauthorized PG, then blowing up its working battery. By doing so, he destroyed himself and dealt minor damage to a Rat. Great work, Corporal!”

The huge man – the long-time candidate for the first place in formation – nodded gloomily.

“And to answer your question, Corporal Paul, no, you cannot know! That information is classified. Forget about games once and for all. Live every day like it’s your last. Be serious about everything. When you lose friends, cry. Fight even when you’re down on your knees. When you die, bid farewell.”

Our group was silent as they let his short yet chilling directives sink in and inspire them. Even the sergeant girls snapped to attention, their eyes shining with pride and triumph. They were a part of the Fleet, the uncompromising, self-sacrificing, and dutiful Fleet. Bone of bone, flesh of flesh. The elite of the elite.

Making a necessary pause, the captain resumed speaking, his voice dead serious, “Your first semester starts this instant. Listen to the historically accurate introductory story, group! The forces of the Second United Fleet of the Great Commonwealth once started a battle royal with the Ninth Wing of the Hive near the RE Groombridge star system. Military historians still haven’t reached a consensus regarding the results of the battle; was the conquering of a single Mass-Sower of the Hive enough to justify sacrificing the entire mosquito fleet? Was the breakthrough of the torpedo ships to the super-heavy cargo-carrier an act of heroism or stupidity? When the gunboat Helen rammed the techno-sentients’ counter-space defense cruiser, was that a technical error or self-sacrifice? In short, there are many unanswered questions. The survivors of the Second Fleet moved deep into the system and clung to New Sevastopol, either seeking to sit it out in the safety of planetary defenses, or trying to cover 700 million civilians.”

Constrained wheezing and the sound of fabric being ripped came from behind. Glancing back, I saw the big guy, Ilya, tearing up the collar of his suit which had suddenly become too tight. I wondered if he was Crimean. Why else would he be concerned about the fate of New Sevastopol?

“…I have to admit; the Second Fleet did have a chance. But during this battle, the techno-sentients had used heavy stealth torpedoes containing nanoworms for the first time. Upon approaching their target, these torpedoes split up into dozens of independent cysts which then bombarded battleships and the armor of the orbital strongholds. External counter-boarding clusters were not in use back then, and neither were the counter-subversive hives type Banshee and Poltergeist. Thus, the techno-virus easily infiltrated internal volumes, mastering communication lines and system nodes. Groombridge, its few terraformed planets, its RE fleet main base, and its largest shipyards of inhabited space – everything was doomed.”

The captain waived his hand and like a magician pulled a burnt sheet out of thin air. His voice rang with steely notes. “Group 13! Listen to the operational mission briefing! As you are part of the spacecraft carrier Marat’s backup crew, you have been assigned to deck seven, a free battle-for-survival interservice team. During battle, the carrier had gotten heavily damaged, fell out of formation, and is currently drifting on an unstable orbit around New Sevastopol. In two years, it will enter the dense beds of the atmosphere and burn up much to the joy of the few surviving natives. Because you had been wounded early in the battle, you’ve been confined to stasis in capsules where you’ve spent the last seven years till the spare batteries completely dried up. Your first and second course objective; reach the flight decks and abandon the doomed carrier before it leaves orbit. The carrier’s hull is in an emergency state, densely populated with parasitic xenofauna, servers, combat bots infected with the pseudo-intelligence virus, and aggressive groups of sentients who are battling for the scanty resources. Keep in mind that unfinished tasks will result points taken off your record cards. Success will get you hefty bonuses. That’s it. Good luck, 13! Don’t let me down.”

The light in the hall grew dim. We lost control of our limbs as if an invisible scythe had passed underneath us, slashing through our tendons. Bodies softly and slowly tumbled to the floor like after sustaining a blow to the jaw. Snap! Their gazes became vacant.

It is much harder to capsize a catamaran than a single boat; Lina and I remained standing an extra ten seconds, mentally clinging to each other and resisting the attempts to shut down our minds. The captain rewarded us with a close, pensive gaze.

Darkness…

Unloading consciousness from local sub-level: Briefing Hall.

Connecting to external neurogate. Authorizing via implant hub… Generating one-time dynamic password. Reception-response bundle – correct. Virtual military polygon access rights: received.

Confirm permission to install mental block "Virtual polygon Kubinka-Digital public use rules.” Digital hypnosis signature complies with standard ISSO-9734777.

Launching script: External Controls.

Thank you for confirming m-block installation. Remember, weapons created by the hands of united humanity are called upon to serve for humanity’s protection and prosperity.

Script fully executed: External Controls.

Current sub-location: Heavy spacecraft carrier Marat.

Technical and operating characteristics of Marat, project Diana technical committee (spacecraft carrier modification, order of RE Space Force), dockyards of Asteroid City, Odessa.

Hull type: spindle, reinforced primary structure.

Maximum length: 9514 feet.

Maximum diameter: 1345 feet (94 habitable and technical decks + hold space).

Useful capacity: normal – 2.1 megatons, afterburning mode – 3.3 megatons. Plasma jet range in combat mode (single-use focus jets included in basic supply) – 8699 miles.

Endurance: 14400 hours with fuel tanks 95% full and hold 25% full.

Travel range: 10 jumps in hyper-mode to a distance of 300 light years.

Jump engine type: gravity piercer Reproach-3.

Propulsion system type: plasma, mixed type Tornado Mk-21.

Available power: two universal reactor blocks (thermonuclear) Shine-M2. Individual block power: 40,000 megawatts.

Gravitational power: Grav-compensator Sisyphus, generating a stabilizing field of up to 75 megatons.

Peak acceleration: 4.5 G.

Crew: minimum personnel number to control ship: 411 personnel. Recommended personnel number: 1,920. Maximum personnel number (as per full endurance and habitability index of 0.7): 4400.

Flight deck: 8 launching pads. Hangar capacity: 72 spacecraft. Of them: space fighters: 32 (4 squadrons): attack planes: 16 (2 squadrons) torpedo bombers: 16: special-purpose spacecraft: 8. Air wing: 380 flight personnel and technical support group.

Infantry and counter-boarding section: barracks and armories to supply a heavy infantry company with reinforcement assets. Crew: 250 soldiers and weapon systems operators, 150 light bots, 50 medium bots.

Freight-carrying capacity: not designed for descent into gravitational wells.

Armament: main armament – 2 tunnel accelerators, 320 mm caliber, armory vault volume: 5085 cubic feet. Sixteen missile silos for heavy ASMs, four full salvoes worth of fire units.

Active defense systems: 48 Nemesis emergency valve clusters, 36 Pilum AD Weapon Systems, batch starters for small-caliber high-speed shells and rockets, 12 Defensive Space System artifact complexes, 40 mm caliber. Laser, plasma, and pulse turrets, automatic, in stock.

Force fields: double-layer passive Thor-2x8, active Petal.

Additional complexes: EW Shine, electronic camouflage Silence.

Armor set: modular composite 160-450 mm.

The carrier's battle characteristics flashed before my eyes, then went out. A current situation hint appeared and pulsated disturbingly: “Heavy Spacecraft Carrier Marat. Status: KIA. Lost 16% of structural weight. Depressurization: 21% of interior volume. Average habitability index: 0.34%.”

The electronics had a depressing effect on my mind, but a noticeable mental blow brought me back to my senses: “…unplanned awakening of operator. Reserve battery energy store: 5.00%. Organism status – somewhat healthy. Conditional HP: 41/70.”

Making the current status window go away, I looked around. I was lying in a capsule. Its lid was shaking, its servo drives droning weakly. I could see through the cloudy plastic that a half-melted girder had fallen on the stasis capsule.

A wave of panic hit me, making me press my hands into the translucent coffin lid and strain every muscle to open it. Apparently, I didn’t need to try so hard; the lid easily gave way, and the metal rails tumbled to the floor with a crashing sound. No, it was more like a clang, indicating that the carrier consisted mostly of titanium or aluminum, but certainly not iron.

It was humid outside the capsule. Water dripped from the ceiling. The air was cold, sending shivers down my back. Clouds of phosphorescent spores swirled all around, serving as the hall’s only light source.

I squinted, the annoying green dust irritating my eyes, and gave a few strained coughs. The conditions outside of the sterile capsule were substandard. It was hard to breathe, my eyes watered, and sleeping in such a refrigerator could very well be lethal.

As if affirming my sad thoughts, another system message popped up: “Hostile environment damage: - 1 (40/70). Given the current habitability index, you will lose 1 HP every 18 minutes. Abandon danger zone or see to your individual protection means.

After that, my implant notified me: “Total load on organism cleaning system: 62 percent. Guaranteed supply operability till routine technical service – 1712 hours.”

I shook my head, not even wanting to think how long I would have lasted inside that half-dead ship without the protection of my cyber-implant of class alpha-prime. But the outlook was grim enough as it were; it looked like I had only 12 hours left to live.

I need to move, I told myself, although it will be difficult!

My body memory retained my sensations from the previous mission; my thigh still hurt from getting shot, my burned back still itched, and I could barely move my feet which had gotten crushed by the techno-sentient I had defeated. I couldn’t tell whether this was a deferred reaction of the brain or post mortal debuffs designed to keep us on our toes and prevent us from using our imaginary immortality as a cheat.

Biting my lip in pain, I threw my legs over the short ledge of the capsule and jumped down on the deck. My bare feet sank ankle-deep into the soft carpet made of a multicolored moss. It was cold yet cushioned my feet nicely.

As soon as I took a step to the side, I cursed and started jumping on one foot. My interface blinked scarlet and took off two HP for a stab wound.

Hissing with pain – 200 percent sensitivity is good only for virtual sex – I pulled a long, jagged metal pin out of my heel. My blood clotted before my eyes, and the wound skinned over; the nanites earned their bread by fixing their hive carrier's body.

I felt hungry; the law of conservation of energy applied to the virtual world as well. The nanobot factory used the organism’s resources, extracting precious kilojoules out of everything it could reach: muscle glycogen, adipose tissue, old and transformed cells. In critical situations, it would turn to vital organs, including bone marrow and nervous tissue. This thought evoked the holographic images of dystrophic officers who had to keep going in a frantic rush to the very end; the safety procedure and implanted technology FAQ were the first info packets to unpack inside my brain.

Putting my weight on both feet again, I weighed up the metal pin in my hand. I could wrap the handle in some cloth and get a nice space Neanderthal blade. The pin was excellent quality, clearly a welcome present for whoever entered this noob location first. It was made of strong yet brittle steel. Something high-carbon, between cast and soft iron.

Without hesitation, I used the pin to cut the front side of my suit, the only thing I had on. I sliced off a long strip to make a sort of a cord, then quickly but carefully tightened the knots on my future weapon. My skill of weaving pseudo-cord had been leveled up during multiple reconnaissance expeditions. A 6-foot-long parachute cord is a versatile and oftentimes an irreplaceable thing.

I needed to hurry; things began to stir around me. A mass resurrection spell was activated inside the subsidiary morgue. Dozens of capsules all over the hall popped open, releasing their prisoners into the green haze. The rising of the dead, group 13 in all its pathetic grandeur.

Some climbed out on their own, others were crying out indistinctly, struggling behind the glass covered with scratches. A few of the capsules lay on the deck, buried under debris and wrapped in moss. Others had gotten burned or smashed by shards. The bones poking out of the holes indicated the grim fate of those who had been inside. I hoped that such capsules were merely part of the apocalyptic environment, and that all 73 of us were alive and in relatively good health.

As it turned out, I had the same idea of the concept of relativity as the virtual world programmers. Stasis capsules certainly weren’t medicinal regulation modules. Cheaply mass-produced, their sole purpose was to keep the soldiers alive until they could be transported to a hospital ship.

Some of those whom we took out of a few capsules were nearly dead. A third of us sustained massive injuries: severed limbs, shattered heads, faces caved into the skull, severe burns, and frostbite. The resurrection party in the morgue quickly turned into a visit to a medical battalion: groans, curses, tears, and fits of hysterics all around.

In the next half hour, as the most heavily injured died one by one, I had no time to even raise my head. I was busy dragging, laying out, bandaging as best as I could, and moistening the fellow soldiers’ lips with water. I had once been a helpless invalid, so I couldn’t just pass them by.

My implant jingled triumphantly a few times as the record card informed me of the bonuses I received: primitive weapon crafting, battlefield medicine, “making the final hours of my comrades easier, and, odd as it may seem, “euthanizing a soldier who couldn’t be saved.” It looked like not all of my efforts had actually helped…

In my lap, I held a girl whose entrails had gotten ripped out. Suddenly, she twitched, her last HP point leaving her, and bled to death.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice, “That’s the last one.”

I turned around. Lina stood near me with tearful eyes. Her developing psi ability enabled her to pick up the death emanations of others. Respawned former invalids crowded behind her. A dim flash, and that girl I had just held reappeared in her stasis capsule.

That was fast, I thought. Respawn only took a minute. At such rate, it was easy to conduct zerg rushes – attacks on a powerful enemy by a horde of inferior warriors. As you have probably guessed, group 13 would be the cannon fodder. We were probably the lamest soldiers around.

Looking around hesitantly, the respawned girl fixed her eyes on her own body which was already starting to shrivel up and reek. Quickly jumping down onto the deck, she ran up to us and, tearing a wide sheet of moss off the wall, used it to cover her awkwardly positioned corpse.

After hiding her innermost private parts (and what can be more private than the bowels that had fallen out of one's open belly?) the girl approached me and chastely kissed my cheek: “Thank you. When you stroked my hair, whispering soothing words in my ear, I felt much better… The bastards!” hatred distorted her face. “It was so painful. It's unfair!”

Ilya’s deep, rumbling voice came from behind: “Let’s not be shirkers, kamikazes! Have you never seen corpses before? There’ll be plenty of them, I guarantee it. Listen up! Women, you will be cutting and storing the moss. Build dry deck chairs and taste the moss while you're at it – I'm sure at least one type is edible. Men – get busy and clear the blockage! There’s no room to move in here. Drag your corpses aside; you can move only your own corpse. This has to be anti-looting defense, although we don’t have much loot on us. Well, don’t just stand there!”

While he spoke, I surveyed the group. Ilya had managed to subjugate the future infantrymen. Obeying his confident orders, they were already bustling about, rolling, dragging, and tearing the moss off the walls. Sickly-looking intellectual riffraff crowded around me. They would be the space force’s elite in the future – pilots and respawned cripples who were drawn to the places of their past deaths, a center of group crystallization.

Ilya and I looked each other in the eyes, and I understood that a fight was inevitable. The big guy’s gray, unemotional eyes promised that he would crush me if I didn’t yield and obey.

I raised my upper lip on reflex, baring my fangs. The virtual interface added fire to the conflict and raised the stakes: “Mission alert! Mandatory mission for corporal level. Establish group leader by any means necessary. Time to decide: 5 minutes.”

Contented, Ilya smiled and poked himself in the chest. “Me!” he said, and only the other two corporals in the group understood.

“No,” I replied, shaking my head. I wasn't eager to be the leader, although my old man had always taught me to be the best at whatever I chose to do. Pros are always in demand, whether you are a pro plumber, pro street vendor, or pro warrior.

Currently, I followed my emotions rather than my reason. I didn’t like it when people were pushed against the wall and left without a choice. And I didn’t want to become subordinate to a man toward whom I felt a strong antipathy and with whom I’d definitely have a bad relationship. We would get into a fight sooner or later either way, so there was no point in procrastinating.

Besides, Lina read me like an open book. So, I couldn’t just back off with an indifferent face, lazily surrendering the position of the leader as if I didn’t need it. She would instantly realize that I chickened out, caved in, showed weakness. And how could I live with a person who didn’t respect me? The answer is simple; I couldn’t. By the way, another lesson that my wise dad had taught me was that if your wife ever lost respect for you, you should file for divorce, because you can’t unmince meat; it’s over.

I stepped forward. Lina savagely bared her sharp teeth in satisfaction, also entering the invisible circle. She was on my side, the young battle axe.

Shaking my head, I whispered: “I got this.”

The girl frowned discontentedly, but stepped back. I noted that she wasn’t hopeless, as she let the man lead in a critical situation. At least this time. Until Akela misses, so to speak…

The group felt something. We were no longer the only ones who saw the battle arena; everyone stepped back, giving us room. The mossy carpet on the deck throbbed excitedly; time for bloodshed!

Before me were huge, aggressive men specially selected for heavy infantry. Alpha-males bursting with testosterone, rejected by the government and forced away from society, turned to alcohol, drugs, and crime. A few lucky devils had saved themselves and made their way into the appropriate adrenaline-stimulating niches: army, Interior Ministry troops, professional sports. The artifact distribution system wasn’t a complete failure after all; a few of the crystals had ended up in the hands of those who were the fittest physically and spiritually, not monetarily or in terms of status.

Behind me were the pilots and the team of cripples – the remainder of the human trash. These were slightly more intelligent, had will power, and boasted a pure, desired chromosome set. These were our only assets.

Ilya and I looked about evenly matched. He was like a Russian epos hero. You couldn’t really see his muscles underneath his thick hide, yet sheer size bespoke his true strength. His thighs were like logs, his biceps like Rugby balls. An old bear who had fattened up for winter.

I hadn’t really matured yet, still being lithe and sinewy like a young man. Veins bulged on my steel muscles, and I had practically no fat. I resembled one of those beach athlete types, the one that girls like. They would have been all over me if I had all my limbs.

I had fought before, and quite often. I was raised a man, and that had implications. My folks had never extinguished my aggression and the need to compete. I was taught that if I like a girl in a miniskirt walking toward me, I should confidently look her up and down; she had put those clothes on for me, because she seeks male attention, not because it’s hot outside.

She may snort in indignation, but she will fall out of step and get butterflies in her stomach, thinking, There he is! He isn’t one of those infantile men suppressed by the civilization of the 21st century, but one of those who still retain the spirit of the warrior. He will take me if he wants! He will kill if there’s a threat! It’s safe with him. He can protect me. The future is secure.

That's the type of guy girls seek. Their reason chooses successful managers, but they fall in love with thugs, alcoholics, and men of foreign nationalities, because those men are the alphas.

I shook my head, driving off irrelevant thoughts and the memories of my old man’s words, and fixed my eyes on my opponent.

Ilya limped a bit on both legs; he had probably already taken a stroll over the prickly dross covering the deck. I wondered if shrapnel had blown up in this location.

His entire back was frostbitten. Most likely, according to the game legend, his spacesuit had gotten damaged during the transfer of the capsule to the ship, and was therefore no longer airtight. He retained a little over half his HP, but his numerical HP parameter was twice as big as mine. Well, he was a tough guy, I agreed with the system on that. The HP points were very reasonable.

My implant outlined my opponent in an orange color, monitored the direction of his gaze, deciphered the fine motor movements of his muscles, and painted the space before me with glowing vectors of potential attacks.

It was TMI, to be honest, and nothing practical. Had I had 100 hours of serious sparring, I would have been able to use the vectors to beat higher-level enemies. But at that point, all this info was a stupid distraction.

We closed the distance between us, sidestepping a bit, not too eager to move in a spiral; neither of us could make the other go counterclockwise, and neither wanted to turn their back to his opponent’s support group.

What does Ilya see? I wondered. What’s his common infantry implant drawing out for him? I doubted that his implant was smarter than my space fleet one.

A piece of my uniform was still wrapped around my left wrist, concealing the homemade knife like a pocket. Its blade was short, four inches of notched steel. But humans are frail creatures. How much does he need?

I was in no hurry to produce the knife. All knives have a golden rule; once it’s out, strike. If you aren’t ready to use it, forget that you have it. But it wasn’t laws or the fear of killing that held me back. The knife was simply a trump card up my sleeve, and I didn’t want to resort to it prematurely.

I became even more careful; Ilya was within pouncing distance. Despite his wounds and huge size, he was quick as a bear that sprinted fast that enough to catch a horse and break its back. And he was probably even quicker now, after his organism had been purified and given a basic cyber-modification.

Street fight wisdom says, if you can’t avoid conflict, strike first. If you’re no martial arts master, strike first. If you’re facing more than one attacker, strike first. If your opponent enters your personal space, again, strike first. It is better to be judged than to be carried out.

But this situation was different. I couldn’t manage an unexpected blow to the chin as I had only one opponent. I was self-confident enough to believe that I was a bit faster than he was; I hoped to catch Ilya off-guard by dealing a counter blow.

Alas, I failed to take into account the specifics of infantry implants. Boy, had our heavy infantrymen been upgraded big time! We flimsy pilots were no match for them.

I saw Ilya’s blurred form rush at me. I greeted him with a right hook to the jaw amplified by his momentum. Judging by the crunch, I managed to break something. But after that, I was knocked off my feet. I spun through the air and landed on Ilya’s knee that he had considerately put out.

I was very agile and a fast thinker. But my body’s inertia and poor leg control let me down. I turned the best I could midflight so that my side hit Ilya’s pointy knee instead of my back. My reinforced ribcage withstood the impact; it was both a miracle and my implant’s accomplishment. My implant had calculated the impact point and mustered up as much dampener nanite mass as it could.

Ilya wrapped his mighty, tenacious paws around me like a currier. Falling on top of me, he immediately rammed his elbow into my head. Then again and again. The skin on my head easily burst due to its peculiar properties. Blood gushed like mad out of my body bursting with adrenaline. The scratches were nothing; the important thing was not to get scared.

And I wasn’t scared. Time after time I dove under the blows to evade a deadly direct hit. I struggled underneath that huge guy, lifting up my pelvis until my spine crunched in an attempt to throw him off. But all in vain. The bastard was heavy and agile.

Ilya worked on me like a real hammerer, dealing many hefty blows. I lost my breath, my eyes filled with blood, and my mind was in a haze.

Spirally turning, I buried my nose in the moss, leaving my back defenseless. I covered my head with my hands.

Ilya gave an unintelligible howl – I did break his jaw after all – and jumped on top of me. For someone who wasn’t learned in Brazilian jujitsu, my position was disastrous. But I knew a few moves. My dad had signed me up for a club, saying encouragingly, “In a one-on-one fight, a wrestler will almost always beat a hand-to-hand fighter. Go on, son. Protect your ears.”

I grabbed Ilya’s fist flying toward my ear, jerked his wrist under me, making both of us fall on our sides, and utilized the classical painful hold.

I pressed my opponent’s wrist to my chest like a treasure. Seizing Ilya’s torso with my legs, I arched my back. His elbow creaked, his sinews quivered like harp strings, and his muscles swelled up, turning blue.

I instantly realized that I couldn’t break his arm. I had done everything right, but this wrestling technique wasn’t meant for opponents with armored bones, double ligaments, and conscious pain threshold control.

I was out of ideas. I had spent my last strength following the useless plan and hoping for a miracle. I pressed down on his arm with all my might, but felt the triumphantly grinning Ilya slowly unbending his arm, freeing himself, and pulling me closer.

I was granted a miracle. A stream of enormous power flowed into my body from a clearly discernable vector. I instantly found the shaking Lina with my eyes. I saw a thin line of black blood running from her nostril. She gave me everything she had, pouring her energy into the channel connecting us.

The coefficient of converting psi energy into muscular force was huge. We must have paid ten times the normal rate, and the higher powers certainly laughed their asses off over our stupidity. But I got what I needed.

With a jerk, I broke Ilya’s elbow joint. He arched his back, letting out a cry of pain.

I released the injured limb. Ilya instantly curled up into a fetal position, fondling his new epicenter of the universe. Universe of pain.

I couldn’t pity him, and I had no right to. The quest timer was approaching zero, yet my opponent still had plenty of HP left.

I jumped to my feet. This was no place for athletic extravagance. Soccer is our whole world! I thought as I dealt him a kick in the head, penalty shot style.

Crack! Ilya was thrown over onto his side, his temple bent inwards at a frightening angle. My implant came to my aid, making my sole’s impact surface denser by sending a few billion nanites into it.

Ilya was still conscious. The infantryman implant was tougher than your traditional piece of cotton wool with ammonium chloride. It made it hard for its bearer to get knocked out.

I stood over him, not knowing what to do next. There was still some civilization left in me, and bringing myself to finish off a cripple was incredibly difficult.

Noticing the hint on my interface, I said with relief, “As the senior officer among those still standing and relatively battleworthy, I accept the position of group leader.”

Lina sniffled with a victorious smile and nodded, “No objections. I do not claim leadership.”

Ding! Buzzed the system, recording the completion of the quest. It didn’t care about Ilya’s opinion; the ritual duel counted as a loss in his stats.

Status alert! Mission successfully completed on lowest difficulty setting: “The strongest wins.”

Command interface unlocked. Thirty points added to your record card. Bonus points: 0. Junior leader coefficient factored into calculations: 1.05.

“Finish me…”

Withdrawing my eyes from the list, I focused on Ilya. He was in terrible pain and terribly humiliated; to look up at someone whom you have already written off as a subordinate, to feel the moss digging into your wounds, biting into your bloodstream…

“Finish me… I’ll get resurrected with full HP. I’ll recognize you as the leader. Besides, it’s too late to fight… I’ve missed the quest boat.”

I nodded understandingly. There was no point in making him squirm in the dirt another half hour and bleed, slowly losing HP.

I shook my left wrist. My homemade knife fell into my palm. A whisper rippled over the crowd. Ilya curled his lip in surprise. “I’ve underestimated you. Maybe you’ll go far, Corporal.”

My implant highlighted the mesocardiac stab point on his body. I squatted down next to my former opponent: “An easy death to you, Corporal!”

I brought the knife down. The sternum crunched, and I heard Ilya exhale in relief.

Status alert! XP received for killing enemy. Record card balance: +1.

Chapter Seven

Ilya respawned the next minute – the standard time interval. All this time, the two groups on either side of the battle arena had stayed separate. They gave each other hostile looks as they felt the moss for heavy objects, anticipating the outcome of the spontaneous conflict. Battle implants whispered insults, urging the group members to deal a warning blow.

The people were wary of Lina and me. They perceived us as aliens imposed upon them by the higher-ups because we haven’t languished in the recreation gel pool like the rest, nor had we slept around in the barracks – yes, girls were also in demand. We stayed close to each other while remaining separate. Because we had conversed with the monstrous Cornelia, the others had no doubt that we had achieved the Corporal rank through the back door. No one likes such upstarts.

The infantry was ready to support one of their own, especially considering that I could probably be finished off with a single stab at that moment. My HP was down in the red, my face was busted and bleeding severely, my nose twisted to one side. I could barely inhale. I had to breathe like a fish out of water, gulping moist air through my mouth.

I looked every bit like an assault and battery victim, a visual example of how to beat someone to death with a hundred non-deadly blows. I had no deep wounds, but my whole body was like minced meat, my insides injured.

Should I do as Ilya had and ask Lina to grant me a quick respawn? I wondered. I was in so much pain that tears streamed down my face. The phlegmatic implant was ready to shut down my nerves, warning me of the sluggishness and subsidence of reflexes that such a solution entailed. The drug effect would last for eight hours. The physical limitation of the spinal column would make that 16. After that, I was on my own. Suck it up, freeman, else you’re in for a heavy overdose or fatal tissue necrosis.

The saddest part was that the body’s regeneration speed was almost equal to the rate of HP loss due to the corrosive environment. The seesaw of life; tic – one way, tic – the other…

Thus, I was stuck with the swollen face of a beekeeper until my next death; we simply had no medicine available.

“Need help?” Lina had crept up behind me.

She was having an adrenaline rush and therefore slightly inadequate. Her male had won the ritual fight for leadership, and a good portion of my hormonal agitation passed to her through the channel connecting us.

She held a bent pipe in her hand, a piece of what used to be a rackmount cabinet. The broken fixture could still be seen on one end.

The group bustled around us, digging through the moss and arming themselves with pieces of porcelain insulators, strips of jagged metal, and other such junk which was abundant in our starting location.

I paused to think, assessing Lina’s offer to kill me. But I didn’t have much of a say; a cold war is possible only when the opposing sides are more or less equal in strength. And I was definitely in a bad shape.

Ilya’s voice broke off my thoughts, “Don’t, sugar.” He drew her hand aside slowly and carefully to avoid being perceived as an aggressor. Then, he announced, “The system message displayed upon respawning read that only the first three deaths won’t be penalized. After that, RC points will be deducted, respawn time will increase, and we will be forced to endure pain. So, don’t hurry, hold on to life with all your might. I have a gut feeling that that’s one of the most important factors on our record cards.”

I nodded gratefully, holding out my hand, “Happy respawn. No hard feelings?”

The big fellow looked at me intently, then carefully shook my hand with his mighty paw. “Yeah, forget it. I’m with you as long as you don’t do anything stupid. I’m not after power, I just want this group to succeed, and giving the reins to an internet geek proficient at camping bots in shooter games isn’t the way to go."

I smiled, “That terminology sounds familiar. Former Counter-Strike player?”

Ilya merely chuckled, “We were all children once… Well, Corporal, what are your orders?”

I assessed how much work lay ahead of us, estimated the modest manpower, quickly exchanged some mental images with Lina, then gave myself the go-ahead: Let’s start from the beginning.

Raising my voice like a commander, I rattled off orders: “Corporal Ilya, your new nickname is Muromets, your combat call sign is Mur!”

Someone in the group suppressed a chuckle and hurriedly retreated to the back of the crowd, hiding behind those with more self-control.

Following the blond jokester with a stern gaze, I continued: “You will be in charge of the infantry section. Twenty heavy infantry officers, four bot masters, a work team of technicians, gunsmiths, and the currently useless male nurse. A total of 32 persons against the list.”

Ilya squinted, looking me in the eyes intently and assessing his options. I had given him real power and confirmed his rank by appointing him a commander. He tried to determine whether I was weak, blindly self-confident, or truly so strong that I feared no competition.

Think, Muromets, think, I thought. I’ve managed to surprise you once. You’ll be observing for some time. If I don’t mess up, you’ll become my right-hand man one day. You’re very strong, but strength isn’t always the deciding factor.

In order to understand that, one has to go through an experience like mine and lose everything in a blink: his health, mobility, he girlfriend, and future. The loss has to be instantaneous so as to leave the patient no time to prepare emotionally as soon as doctors state the diagnosis.

You would just have to wake up one night in a hospital bed, when your amputated legs are already buried in a numbered container with a plate that reads “surgical waste.” The last thing you would remember doing would be digging up grass with a shovel on the breastwork of an old trench. After that, provided that you manage to preserve your sanity, you’ll start using your head more and more without relying on primitive strength.

Taking advantage of the short pause, I made modifications in personal RCs and granted limited rights via the commander panel on my interface.

Corporal was no officer, not even a sergeant. According to the local table of ranks, a corporal was a senior soldier, a private first class, or a Pfc. A single modest dot on the shoulder strap. Or, as I saw on my avatar, a single annulet on the chevron. You had to collect the entire Olympic set of five annulets to climb to the top of the sergeant hierarchy and achieve the senior sergeant rank. The senior sergeant was our leader.

“Corporal Lina, your call sign is Levant Viper,” I announced, instantly getting a furious gaze of her green eyes. A wave of mental indignation and a deadly dose of poison swept over me from head to toe.

I'll live, I thought. I had to lower her sense of self-importance from time to time, else she quickly went wild or started playing princess. Already I noticed an alarming sign; none of the men dared to laugh as I announced her new nickname. Lina had already established a certain reputation for herself with her venomous tongue and painful psi-blows.

I continued, “You’ll be in charge of… hmm… the female unit.”

Now the guys smiled, lustfully studying the girls from group 13 huddled together. Lina alone towered over them like an indestructible breakwater despite her small height.

But what else could I call a dozen girls imposed on us with questionable intentions? Fine, there were a few quality professionals among them: two mechanics, a battalion-level staff analyst, and expert servobot driver, and even an air squadron navigator. But the rest, their palms pressed together, practically had “stress relief officer” written on their foreheads.

Lina corrected acridly: “Logistic services unit. That’ll be our title. Why the hell are you grinning, you dogs? The sniper girls didn't give you enough up the ass? Let me know if you want more. There are 15 snipers on staff in the squad, vacancies available. I’ll order your transfer!”

A most epic fail for the guys; they immediately lost their grins and tried to hide, diving behind each other’s backs.

I hurriedly took back the reins of conversation and accepted the suggested title without reservations, “Right! Peacetime logistic unit. You are responsible for the everyday life needs of group 13. In the event of training or a skirmish, all female soldiers must join their groups as per the staff list. Including you, Lina. You still have the duties of my second pilot.”

“Yessir!” Lina stood to attention in a sarcastic manner, clearly copying the girls from porn movies: chest and butt stuck out, her eyes digging into mine, betraying the willingness to carry out any order, even the most inappropriate one.

I shook my head disapprovingly, although my gaze wandered over her attractive body. Her short doctor-style tank top, which was really no more than a wide ribbon, barely concealed her full breasts, which made them seductively bulge out on the bottom, enticing with their prominent curves.

Lina snorted, turned away from me, and clapped loudly, summoning her overly intimidated fledglings: “Logistics officers, group meeting by burned capsule number 8144! What’re you gawking at? Don’t look at me, look at the map. Azimuth 240. Buncha dimwits! That far corner, over there, covered in purple mold. Look where I’m pointing my finger. Dammit, Paul, what kind of soldiers are they?”

I smiled gloatingly. Eat, sweetie, eat the bitter bread of leadership. The corporal rank added a scanty coefficient to the record card points, yet gave you a huge pain in the rear.

Well, that was everybody. It was time for me to introduce myself. I had been putting off this moment after what that damn Cornelia had said…

Spitting out another lump of blood, I looked with hatred at my own marker on the mini map and finished establishing the chain of command: “I, Paul, will have the call sign… ahem… Lucky. Your primary leader and squadron commander. Pilots, you obey me directly. The rest obey their group leaders.”

Looking around, I saw everyone looking at me intently. I noticed no hatred in their eyes, but no respect either. I would have to conquer authority.

My victory over Muromets had given me some credibility, but the group would still talk a lot behind my back. We had a general and a national soccer team offense player in every kitchen. But few were the wild types, as the immortal Vysotsky used to say. Mostly goody-two-shoes. None of them would jump out of the trench to attack. They felt safer in the third row, behind the backs of their comrades. Not in the first.

It was all right though, as the commander interface provided me with certain tools; more specifically, whips and freebies. The group wasn’t aware of that yet…

Cyber-mods, digital record cards, external controls, and internal tabs – all this turned sentients into tiny, easily-controlled elements of a harsh totalitarian system. All dissidents were ostracized and cut off from government benefitssuch as commodity-money relations, education, healthcare, and law and order services. Dig into your freedom! Just don’t whine and complain.

I chuckled. The knowledge that entered my head was part of an officer course titled “Real history for citizens with an alpha-prime level of trustworthiness.” I wondered if this was one of the perks of an imperial implant or an authorized data packet for guard crew corporals. Either way, it was elite. It made me one of the blue bloods bearing the best devices of inhabited space. Be proud, suicide bombers! I thought. Life for us is like the flight of a meteor through a planet’s atmosphere – short and beautiful. Our ultimate goal is to go out with the loudest bang possible.

Oh, the evil statistics of war. Everything has its price. For example, a heavy Botfly with top external gear and a commissioned human crew was priced at 40 million credits. No one would exchange it for a production version gunboat worth 16 million. But many would consider trading it for a destroyer, depending on the situation displayed on the strategic map. And of course, anybody would trade a Botfly for a ship of a higher class without a second thought, and would drink to the great bargain afterward.

My interface buzzer went off, distracting me from my thoughts. I read the message; my body temperature had dropped even lower. Blood loss and overcooling went hand in hand; we were ankle-deep in freezing water like Vietnamese peasants in a rice field during a rain season. Water also trickled off the ceiling, huge drops occasionally splattering against our shoulders. Water streamed down the walls blackened with smoke and the bloated blanking plates. The dying Marat was crying. On the ship’s every turn, the approaching surface of New Sevastopol could be seen through the broken portholes.

The heat insulation system had clearly malfunctioned somewhere. The oxygen-filled rooms were freezing one by one. The ice spread to the above-zero temperature objects, and voila – those on the lower decks were in for an unpleasant surprise. It was time to get that barn of a ship in order.

“Ilya!” I called. “I approve your rough plan. Get your group clearing the premises. Drag the capsules over here.” I put a marker on the map, forwarding its coordinates to Ilya’s group, then proceeded to add other markers, explaining, “This will be the storage space for any loot we find. And this spot seems to be elevated, so it must be a bit drier. Let’s make it a rest zone and a working place for our crafters. We’ll put a mechanic there to handle iron and plastic. We need everything, especially weapons and tools. My group will strip moss off the walls and taste it. We’re mighty hungry.”

Twelve hours later…

“Blechhh!” a shortish pilot threw up, doubling over and convulsing. His stomach was empty. An odd-looking gray foam came out of his mouth.

“Minus six HP per minute,” said the male nurse phlegmatically, standing by him. “Let's record this; blue moss with yellow streaks is moderately toxic with no established positive effects.”

Blue with cold, the nurse squinted for a second, entering the data into the virtual herbarium. He barely forced his eyes open again; we were all getting pulled into salutary sleep that would restore our strength.

The male nurse wearily said to the sufferer, “Why are you writhing, bud? Look at your logs; what does it say? Something odd happening?”

Our next moss tester who was in line right behind him shifted from foot to foot and said compassionately, “Come on, Alex, eat another one, that black, slippery one. You can do it! You’re dying anyway, right? I will eat something for you afterward, I swear!”

The male nurse immediately cut off the enterprising fellow, “I forbid it! No jeopardizing the validity of the experiment! We will test mixtures after classifying primary specimen.”

I stepped aside, shaking my head. We were out of luck in regards to food, having found only two types of relatively edible plants. One tasted like hay, merely dulling hunger. The second had a ginger aftertaste and restored 2 HP per serving. Our other nurse was working with it, trying to increase the efficiency of the medicinal herb. He dried it, ground it, steamed it, made tea out of it. Judging by the maniacal look in his eyes, the poor fellow had already inhaled plenty of lab fumes. Or maybe the process itself made him high? Perhaps he had always dreamed of becoming an alchemist?

The problem was that our raw materials were extremely limited. We had enough for three to four days of rations, depending on our appetite and the moss’s growth rate. After that, we’d start dying of starvation. And that wasn’t cool; our death counters were already on the third round for some. The heavy infantryman who lay on a platform had already tasted his fourth death. Now, he was recovering from pain shock and a post mortal debuff.

A girl from the psychological support group was massaging his cramped shoulders. Nothing sexual that time, but a real, professional massage, a light hypnosis, and aura restoration using psi-abilities.

Those girls weren’t so simple; psychology skills, Tantric and Buddhist knowledge, empathy, and psychic abilities were quickly being extracted from the archives in their brains.

I was satisfied to see the infantryman’s HP increase by a point; the logistics unit could prove much more useful than we had initially thought.

Macarius, who sat nearby, kept stealing glances at the girl’s curves with a childlike curiosity. The future mechanic was sorting the junk dragged to him from all around, fishing out the more interesting loot.

He was getting creative. He wasn’t churning out wide-brimmed hats, nor weaving ropes out of optical fibers, nor taking apart random components to obtain thin strips with sharp edges for cutting. He was making tools.

So far, he had a few hammers for the crafters. Not combat sledgehammers for bringing down walls, but rather elegant instruments indicative of fine craftsmanship. Macarius had also made neat scalpels and clamps for first aid kits to help extract shards from flesh without enlarging the exit perforations. Blood loss increased HP loss significantly.

But his best creation – what he called “like, pliers” – was an all-purpose tool designed on the basis of something completely incomprehensible. Everyone lined up to get these pliers. We lived a communal life now; most things were collectively owned.

I splashed unhurriedly through the shallow water. I wore plastic wraps on my feet bound with optical fibers – a homemade invention of our crafters, already being mass produced, so to speak. It had an armor class of one, absorbing any damage of up to three HP. Pitiful, no doubt, but better than tearing shrapnel shards out of your soles.

“Whoa!” I froze with one foot raised, wondering what was that unfamiliar herb that tried to crawl away from under my heel.

I poked the swift thing with a finger, very cautiously, as it was easy to get poisoned. Sometimes, all it took was breathing in toxic spores.

The plant felt my touch. It closed its tiny leaves and played dead by floating in the black water like a dry tree branch.

Well, well, I thought. I had no game inventory; they didn’t want us getting used to magical perks and made our training conditions as realistic as possible. So, I called over a tester, showed him the herb that was to be “number 19” in our space herbarium, and resumed walking.

I heard the tester muttering sweetly. The next second, he gave a cry of pain, and the sound of a body splashing in the water reached my ears.

I looked back. He was in a death agony, his HP bar melting away. It turned out that the crafty plant had a second passive defense method, which consisted of spikes that looked transparent in water and a capsule filled with poison growing along its main stem.

I pitied the tester, but the discovery was vital. We were now in possession of an effective means of taking out biological objects. At least humanoid ones.

I proceeded with great caution, watching where I put my feet and closely studying the mossy carpet.

Moss was everywhere. According to the knowledge extracted from the archive, the ship almost certainly contained damaged recreation area greenhouses and breached biological treatment tanks. The spores of the modified plants had spread everywhere and successfully adapted to the space aboard the carrier. They sprouted abundantly, crossbreeding uncontrollably and giving rise to the most savage offspring with completely unpredictable properties.

Our main problem was that there was very little room available. The stasis hall was tightly sealed off with emergency and counter-boarding bulkhead gates. Breaking them was possible, but incredibly difficult. Bare hands and the brave heart of a Komsomol member were definitely not enough.

Boom! Boom! Boom! came the deafening noise as if in response to my thoughts. The resting soldiers stirred in their capsules.

I listened, trying to determine whether this was the pounding coming from my left or right. If this was the left-side pounding, that meant that it was Ilya’s group persistently pounding a crooked girder on the wall next to the gateway. Our mechanics had estimated that the bulkhead gates were not as strong as the ductile armor of the air-tight door.

However, there was also a pounding on my right; someone was trying to break into our hall. It was either a non-sentient or someone ill-disposed toward us. The unknown entity neglected all our communication attempts whether we knocked or talked to it. It kept hammering on the gate doors, leaving large, whitish bumps in the composite. We could only guess what kind of creature it was. A heavy stormbot with an upgraded controller? An armored xenomorph? A repair servobot gone haywire?

The group was nervous. I found consolation in the fact that this event was probably scripted to keep us on our toes. I doubted that the designers of our location intended to feed us to some monster in our first 24 hours on site. Most likely, this pounding was a very straightforward hint that we really needed to hurry up and find a way out of this trap. If we took too long, then the creature would surely break in.

We piled all the large junk we could find in front of the gateway. Even if it wouldn’t slow down the intruder, it would reduce the noise, of which we were already sick.

It turned out the really loud pounding came from the left. With a sigh of relief, I headed there. Thankfully, I didn’t have to walk far. Everything was close in that hall, 40 seconds being enough to get anywhere.

Stacks of stripped-off moss had faded slightly and shone with less intensity, but still gave enough light to make out what was happening in that corner; a furious Ilya was busy dipping one of his soldiers into the slush beneath his feet, yelling, “The order applies to everybody in the group! Piss in capsule number 288. What do you think you’re doing, shithead? This is our drinking water!”

Shit, I thought, barely refraining from spitting. Hygiene was our current religion. We were allowed to sweat, blow our noses, and defecate in limited amounts, only in the specially designated spots. The hall’s environmental conditions had their own specifics. And the “virtual Amazonian reality” was incredibly lifelike. The soldiers who had caught a strain of the dysenteric virus and now sat like sad eagles atop the toilet capsules were living proof of that.

The fellow in Ilya’s grip gave me the guilty, pleading look of a kitten being stuck in its own fresh droppings as punishment. I decided to cheat a little and seize this opportunity to win easy popularity. The soldier had already learned his lesson anyway, it seemed.

“As you were, Corporal!” I ordered. “We don’t want to drink his drool either. Send the violator to the logistics unit to filter water. He can press it out of the moss, then let it stand.”

Ilya made a wry face: “That’s a job for a legless cripple! He can carry dead capsules instead. Oops, sorry about the cripple thing, Commander.”

He must have played poker like an expert, for he instantly took notice of how I curled my lip unwittingly. There was also the fact that I currently hobbled around on frozen legs, plus the large number of ex-cripples among our ranks. He could easily reach the correct conclusion.

Oh, boy. I tried to fight off the thoughts of my past. They could break me. I knew my own psyche very well, for I have stood on the edge already. But I couldn’t help wondering how my friends were doing: Kama, Alex, and Yarik. Those boys had risked going to jail and had taken a firm stand against that crowd, giving me a slight head start without dwelling on whether the puny chance of restoring my health was worth their precious hides.

I swear, boys, I thought, if I make it out of this shitty future, I will be in your debt for the rest of my life! Call me, and I will climb down from my deathbed and crawl to your aid, digging my nails into the morgue floor.

My friends and those 140 square feet on the cemetery where the white obelisk of my father’s grave shows against the chamomiles – these were the most precious things I had. And also Lina, who had become a piece of my soul in an instant. I couldn’t cut her off, couldn’t simply cast her out of my mind. I knew all of her feelings, trembled in her fears, and merrily closed my eyes every time she laughed. It probably wasn’t love, but rather… hmm… fusion? A simultaneous orgasm stretching into forever? Weakened by the stretch yet retaining its essence – absolute unity.

I closed my eyes for a second, inhaling slowly, unwinding and putting myself in a calm state of mind. I was my own therapist.

“Doesn’t matter,” I replied, “all in the past. And to answer your question, no, let the girls carry the capsules. This guy will be pressing.” I turned to the soldier, “You still here, kitty cat? Need I kick your ass? Move!”

The soldier took off, splashing through the water and practically slipping instead of running. I waited until he was far away, then lowered my voice and nodded at the four groaning girls lugging a super-heavy stasis capsule. I could feel the fury of the fair sex rolling off them in waves. I was certainly losing popularity with them.

“Ilya, remind me the objective of our first course? We’re space fighter pilots and CAS operators. So why are we digging through shit instead of mastering the technology of hell knows which century?”

Ilya shrugged with irritation. He wasn’t fond of silly rhetorical questions. “They said we’re upping our physical stats. By sweat and blood, with perfect faith, understanding why muscle size and strength increase.”

“Indeed, smart. Then why are you preventing the girls from increasing their strength? This isn’t the real world; they shouldn’t be protected from hard manual labor. You’re harming them personally, or the entire group if it turns out that the weakest group members decrease our cumulative points.”

Ilya scratched his head pensively, then agreed reluctantly, “Makes sense. You know… I’ve remained inactive too long. I should go hammer away at the wall myself. Or else those weaklings will level up to be like Valuev and drown me in the can.”

I kept walking to the measured pounding, slowly passing our group’s modest possessions.

One of our mechanics was bustling on the ground by a wall with the diligence of a prisoner doing life. He was using a crooked piece of iron to grind off the tricky bracketry of a service hatch. We didn’t know what was behind it. Perhaps a simple outlet tester. Or perhaps a refueling station for nanobot cysts. Yet we personally hoped for a toolbox or the hangar of an operable servobot. We would know as soon as we opened it.

A few gatherers were pinching off the tips of orange moss. This moss was a sure method to stop bleeding and also a nice strength buff, albeit with twice the rollback time and a random special effect. Last chance homeopathy, all-in-all.

Seven neurotics rocked in a trance, listening to the monotonous whisper of the psych support group girl as if enchanted. Despite the drugs, not everyone could refrain from panicking or getting depressed after realizing what was going on. Traveling to the future, cyber-modernization, and a two-year imprisonment in the cold post-apocalyptic world.

The group members were flat and dizzy. They would go from a state of euphoria to profound melancholy. Their efficiency and motivation were almost zero. We corporals could see more stats on our interfaces. Underneath the green HP bar, each soldier had a blue morale bar. For some of us, this bar was suspiciously short and of a grayish-black color.

We sent the affected to our best therapist, Kate, to reboot their emotions. Kate, or Kat, was a huge cat person. She claimed that she could find a common language with any animal and reach a mutual understanding with it. I believed her now. A human being in critical circumstances is like a primate, guided mostly by reflexes.

Kat handled everybody. A one-hour session restored soldiers' morale by a third, enabling them to make it until the next session.

A few group members were subject to exclusive control. Withdrawn, they shrank into themselves, becoming insusceptible of therapy. Even Katie gave up on them, saying that they needed professional treatment by a psi-master, a mentat, or a fully functional 6th generation “purgatory” medical complex. According to her, it would have been ideal to pass their souls through astral filters, restore default settings, correct their life traumas, null their anchored states, and clear out any other psychological junk.

There was nothing we could do. Just cheer them up a bit, pat them on the shoulder, have the group’s most gorgeous girl give them a kiss... and, of course, to watch them closely with mixed feelings and to see what exactly the complete depletion of the morale bar entailed.

In case they went berserk, we left a couple soldiers with simple weapons to watch the “depressed.” It was a cynical, yet rational move. Plus, it gave idle minds something to do. We had many people and not enough work. Group members were tapping on the walls out of boredom. Actually, their efforts were not in vain. They found the slim outlines of several sliding doors concealed beneath mud and rot.

With a group effort, they had already cracked open two tiny rooms. Probably not janitorial closets, but rooms of a similar layout. The first was a former recharging and self-service station for medical servobots. The purpose of the second room was hard to determine; it had been reduced to ashes by a hollow-charge projectile or a plasma beam that had gotten through the bulkhead gate. The smart morphing composite had fixed the shot hole, leaving us nothing to peak through.

As leader, I claimed a sooty cabin for my office space. It had a slightly higher habitability index than the other rooms. Plus, it was dry and moss-free. Apparently, the moss couldn’t strike root in this sterile compartment.

Lina also moved in there by unauthorized acquisition. Clearly, she had wanted for personal living space in the past, and instantly entered nesting mode. She removed the dislocated door, made it into a crooked table top, and hung a curtain weaved out of dried moss stalks at the entrance.

Molten blobs on the walls concealed the amazing holopictures of a brochure advertising the ruby beaches of New Guinea – God knows where that came from. Personal numbered capsules served as beds. To my great chagrin, they wouldn’t transform into double family beds. Hand-picked combinations of colored moss pressed into containers of different sizes illuminated the cabin with their iridescent lights.

The system rewarded our efforts; Lina gained points for “Directing field camp beautification,” and everyone else received a congratulatory message informing them that they completed the optional mission of creating a minor recreation area. HP points restored 10 percent faster inside our little cabin. The family nest quickly turned into an overcrowded government-financed resort of sorts.

Lina hissed and cursed under her breath, accumulating fury and irritation just like a woman. A few times a day, she would unleash her emotional tsunami, chasing everyone out of the cabin so that she and I could rest in solitude which we were so unaccustomed to.

The second cabin was less lucky. Because it was the only closed space, the group reached a unanimous, unspoken decision, and made it a dating room. The HSC Marat would now often shake to rhythmical moans…

I’m obviously exaggerating, but the psych support group girls turned out be swell geishas. They could keep the ball rolling, relieve the tension with a joke, and take the soothing conversation into the horizontal plane.

I didn’t know if these were their natural talents, or if the pragmatic Amazonians had touched up their instincts. But the moment you looked one of these psych support group girls in the eye and winked at her with a smile, she would blush and raise an eyebrow. Yet these girls always chose the therapy method themselves. A soldier wouldn’t always get sex. The girls would simply pat him on the head encouragingly, or chastely kiss him on the cheek. Such was their hypertrophied maternal instinct that held the entire group together.

The military profession girls were in no rush to sleep with anyone. They would curl their lips in disgust and take a good look around themselves; they had plenty of quality males to choose from, males who had passed the toughest bioreactor selection.

A few couples formed. A self-confident miniature brunette – the former teacher Tatyana, the only heavy infantrywoman in our group – lay claim on Ilya. I had no idea what qualities she possessed that merited the status of a CAS operator, but her cold gaze could make even the sauciest macho fall out of step, including the loquacious Aru who had lost some of his charm after complete epilation.

Two infantry support bot drivers, Nika and Nick, got together almost from the start. Their fates were as similar as their names. They could read each other’s thoughts without any psi connections.

Their memories mixed together, forming an odd medley. They couldn’t even remember anymore which one of them used to train dogs in the shelter, and which one used to play a pet controller in online games; which one loved to tinker with broken gadgets, which one could return a heavily lagging printer into service with a single gentle slap. It made me think about the fictitious memories that the cunning Amazonians had installed on a couple suitable minds.

Having made a full circle to make sure that no one shirked work, I attended to my own duties. Just like Ilya, I wasn’t about to fall behind my soldiers in levels.

With an effort, I picked up of one of the building blocks of our spacious prison – a broken capsule. Dragging it to the spot I had in mind, I placed it securely and proudly observed that I was perfectly capable of hauling a 220-pound object all by myself.

After a few more trips, my improvised staircase rose to five feet. Now I could easily reach the ceiling.

As I carefully climbed on the capsules, I winked at a mummified skull staring at me through the dull plastic of a capsule lid. I was indifferent to such scenery. Well, almost indifferent, for it stank.

I studied the tiny bumps forming a dotted line which could be seen underneath the moss draping down from the ceiling. There was definitely something there.

With difficulty, I cut off a thick layer of yellow moss. We hadn’t encountered this type of moss before. It could at least serve as bedsheets if dried a little.

I called a soldier over and tossed him the moss so that it would be tasted and cataloged, then dried, ground, steamed, distilled, and God knows what else – the goal was to squeeze out every plant’s full potential.

I discovered a sensor on the once-white ceiling. The knowledge uploaded into my brain had no references. Either the sensor was ancient technology, or simply manufactured in the Russian Empire, not by the wannabe legionaries, the descendants of Europeans.

Upon a closer look, I saw that the bracketry was simple, with six bolts and an unusual design. It would take some work, but at least there weren’t any sci-fi gizmos such as magnetized clutches, nanoglue, smart welding, voice interfaces, and so on. It was simple and straightforward, just like in our time; get a screwdriver and go for it.

However, a simple X-shaped screwdriver wouldn’t do; I needed a sloping solstice one. So, I jumped down and, ignoring the curious looks of the group, unhurriedly splashed over to our workshop. I wasn’t trying to look imposing, but simply tried to save energy. You really have to economize your body’s resources down when your diet consists entirely of grass.

I was glad to step onto dry land and took my time digging through the chunks of iron that made up our tool shop. Picking out a handful of fragments, I returned to my capsule ladder. Sighing, I started the long, boring task.

In ten minutes, I was pulling out the last screw with a happy grin. The sensor had clearly been changed since the carrier left its launching slipway. And the one who had installed it was definitely not a meticulous servobot by corporation RoboBosh, but some goofy Joe Six-pack; one screw was crooked, and two were loose.

Thank you, clumsy mounter, from the bottom of my heart, I thought as I tumbled down; a jet of hot water knocked the sensor out of the weakened bracketry and pushed me off the unsteady platform.

The crashing sound of my fall and the rumbling of the waterfall attracted half the group.

Ilya carefully put his hand under the steaming jet and grinned with satisfaction, “It’s warm! We’ll live, gang! No more freezing to death!”

The group raised in a happy clamor. Everyone had grown sick of shivering and having blue skin and goosebumps.

Lina, feeling my mood, taunted me: “What are we waiting for? Let’s take a shower.”

Rubbing my side, I shot her an irritated look. But she looked so breathtaking from below that I instantly forgave her. As Lina could easily feel my desires, she blushed and grew furious at once.

I had to look away and distract myself by reciting a kid’s poem in my head: Mom sewed some pants for me, made of bark from a birch tree…

Then my eyes caught something new in the already familiar environment. I grabbed a fairly large, glowing slug and ripped it out of the moss’s grip. There were five more fat slugs rolling up in the freezing water.

I wondered if they were edible and hopefully protein rich. Showing the slug to the group, I announced, “Caught some fish!” Then, before I could change my mind, I quickly shoved the slug in my mouth and bit into it.

Pop! Its tough skin split, and a dense, lumpy substance filled my mouth. My brain lagged for a second as it analyzed the information coming from my taste buds and tried to determine whether I should continue eating or spit the slug out.

The question resolved itself when a message popped up: “Received 7.2 grams of protein, 0.4 grams of fat, and 0.7 grams of silicon. Harmful substances filtered out. Life-support system load: 8%. Item recognized as relatively edible. Satiation: 19 minutes. HP: +2.”

“Make an effort to increase your rations and to obtain less carcinogenic foods. Don’t eat too much xenofauna. This may entail unknown long-term effects.”

I nodded with satisfaction, trying to hold down my food. The taste wasn’t great, like a limp worm soaked in vinegar.

I reached for the next glowing slug. The group raised a joyful clamor and rushed into the warm shower, fishing out the slugs tumbling into the hall from the deck above us. In a few seconds, the cries of joy turned into curses and the sounds of vomiting. Not everyone found the slugs to their taste.

Chapter Eight

Heavy Spacecraft Carrier Marat. Alternate Control Center (system efficiency: 3.6%, habitability index: 42%). Seventh company psi snipers’ capture flag mounted.

Sergeant Livia Cruise had won the duel and assumed the commander’s post. She was furiously polishing the contact block of her pulse gun with a relatively clean cloth.

Everything had gone wrong. Livia wondered what idiot had come up with the idea to place over 50 males under the wing of their seventh company. She would spend a third of the ammo in her magazine to draw the company’s monogram on that idiot’s forehead by shooting holes in him.

During the leveling-up stage, a psi sniper is as defenseless as the partner of a mod-dog from group K-9; wearing her heart on her sleeve, the sensitivity of all her organs artificially increased by 300 percent, and completely lacking any and all abilities to block or filter out emotions. Her implant easily arrests her hormonal surges, but the warrior is still responsible for her own mental state.

This was pure sabotage; three years of training wasted in a 24-hour period. After something like this, you can’t think about trance, about the “delicate adjustment to the universe,” or about shooting at the “point of expected enemy appearance.”

The seventh company had already lost three quarters of its combat potential and the ability to force their way to the upper decks. Moreover, they controlled less territory now, sliding down in rank at an accelerating rate. Points were deducted from their RCs. They could expect to be given bolted-type rifles like first-year students and sent to the colonial infantry.

Even “merging” no longer helped. Combining their potentials, the girls failed to merge together like they usually could in order to receive appreciable boost bonuses for their stats. It was the other way around; the only thing their minds could feel was the males that had imprinted themselves on their souls. The psi snipers felt the boys’ pain, frequent deaths, or even worse – the passion aroused by mating with prostitutes.

The girls grew furious. They couldn’t concentrate, and their shooting accuracy diminished to the point that they became as efficient as 3rd generation cyber turrets, firing chaotically in all directions, hitting random targets. This was pardonable for the six-barreled CT-3s with their endless munitions supply, but absolutely unacceptable for psi snipers, for whom the peak of style was to start a mission with a pulse gun on a single battery.

As Livia unwittingly slipped into a meditative trance, she suddenly jerked. Her aura, wide open like a sail, once again picked up the death emanations of a familiar male. She mentally cursed at Corporal Lucky.

Group 13 was depressed. For a reason.

Last night, we had lost two people: a female mechanic from the logistics unit who had been having frequent bouts of hysteria, and a pilot with permanently sad eyes. Both had gone to bed in capsules with welcomingly blinking green lights, and in the morning, we found that the capsules’ power had been cut off. They were now steel coffins with decomposing bodies inside.

Now, the group developed a phobia. We were scared to sleep in the comfy capsules. We knew that the capsules weren’t to blame, that the two had died due to negative balances on their record cards, as the higher-ups purged the emotionally broken from our ranks. The morale bars of the two had long ago fallen into the black sector. Maybe the permanently banned servicemen had a problem with their brain devices, or perhaps their bodies rejected the implant, rendering it unable to perform its duty and control stress levels. Or maybe their virtual world phobia went beyond the limit. We all suffered from that phobia to varying degrees.

The entire group started beating up Alex with great satisfaction to avenge themselves and to relieve tension. Alex was a former gamer with an odd sense of humor; he would try to frighten us with stories of system glitches, avatars getting permanently stuck, and other hellish aspects of the first MMOGs.

The group slept only on the moss now. The overall mood grew considerably worse. We had just begun getting accustomed to this world, thinking the damp rooms of Marat to be our home. But now, we once again felt the presence of some god who with a single snap of his fingers could rip you out of your comfy everyday life and cast you into the unknown, or into the bioreactor.

Our fear of capsules contributed to our second problem. The group peeled off too much moss to make beds, and punitive measures were taken too late. Our moss food supplies dwindled as did the oxygen concentration. Carbon dioxide levels kept growing. The habitability index steadily decreased along with the duration of our active periods. Thirty to forty hours without medicinal herbs or protein could turn you into a quickly rotting corpse to be dragged into the far corner.

Third, the warm shower and slug cheat wasn’t permanent. They indulged us for only a day. Some of us had even managed to overcome our aversion to the silicon doughnuts, but the all-seeing admins started slowly increasing the waterfall’s temperature.

It was already steaming, steadily turning the small noob location into a sauna. The water wasn’t boiling quite yet, but within 48 hours or so, we would have a critical problem on our hands.

Our fourth problem was that the unknown enemy trying to break in through the gateway turned out to be more persistent than we had hoped. The ductile armor on the doors was now covered in ugly bumps. The Kevlar composite cords gave way, bursting one by one like rotten nanocables. We would have to fight the enemy sooner or later, whether we wanted to or not.

I sat on a relatively dry island of useless junk, my legs tucked up beneath me. My feet were swollen due to constantly being in hot water.

I stared pensively into the darkness of the new hall. We had managed to knock out the steel bulkhead gate by pounding on the welding.

At first, we received bonuses. My messages read: “Potential accessible habitat area increased: +3 RC points. (To set up group property marker, remain in the room for ten minutes in non-combat mode.)

“Current inhabited area is receiving 12,000 cubic feet of fresh air. Habitability index temporarily increased by 0.14. Corresponding bonus boost applied to base characteristics.”

“Group’s average progress rate: 0.67 above normal. Double your efforts to migrate to key directions.”

I cursed, having read the messages. Those bastards threw us in here, making us struggle like blind kittens in a lake, and still they dare wave a timer at us and accuse us of being disorganized?

A worn-down sanitary cordon droid stood in the new hall’s doorway, the serial number on its side half-erased. It kept repeating, “… risk of contagion by nanoterminator. Enter only in spacesuits with defense class 5 and up. Do not approach! Permission received to utilize passive and non-lethal deterrents. Attention! Risk of contagion by…”

“Shut up!” Muromets growled at the droid.

I looked at the Corporal. My interface highlighted him with the pink aura of a team’s killer, as it did me.

We broke the droid’s force field within ten hours; its ancient reactor had been in need of cell replacement for a while, and the reserve accumulators weren’t eternal either. The boys even entertained themselves by jumping on the force field and getting softly thrown back.

Soon, the force field started to blink, then finally shut off. The group cheerfully raced inside to get to the loot obscured by the darkness of the room. However, the droid still had some fight in it left. Pushing out the socket of its broadband paralyzer, it made the entire crowd fall down on the deck within seconds. For some, this turned out to be lethal as they fell face down into the warm water and drowned.

As far as I could tell, this daunted the droid and even made it mutter something like “Oops.” But it didn’t become any more humane and kept firing at the lone warriors that Muromets sent, knocking them out.

We would drag our paralyzed aside, giving them time to recover and also timing their paralysis: 20, 15, 9, 3 minutes… At last, the droid weakened. One soldier rose on his own, gnashed his teeth when the droid shot him a second time, stepped forward, and dealt the droid a hearty blow on its bottom left vision sensor.

It was pointless. The soldier merely broke his fist. But getting the personal bonus “Persistence will be rewarded” felt relieving and pleasant.

Despite Muromets’s order telling them to freeze, they rushed into the room again. It was dry with relatively fresh air and a few bodies almost reduced to dust along the walls. The rich gear on them enticed our group.

But the group didn’t get far. The mechanics were the first to collapse; the combat nanites in the room almost instantly took control of their semi-military implants.

The heavy infantrymen, on the contrary, had time to realize what was going on. The firewalls of their systems held up long enough to inform them of the attack, assess the threat level, and come to a sad conclusion. The implants then burned the weapon control circuitry and erased the databases.

Reeling, our group ran back, saving themselves from this plague. The droid squealed, trying to block their way and spreading its broken arms wide apart: “Sterile zone in danger of being infiltrated by nanoterminator carriers! Take preventative measures. Highest-grade threat. Mobilizing all reserves. Permissions confirmed by order of the Council. Digital signature forwarded to all devices via emergency channel. Confirmed reception for 409 devices.”

The fleeting alarm quest window confirmed the droid’s warning. It made the group act on their feet as did the unwillingness to allow the hall to be turned into a cemetery of infected corpses.

“Stop! Freeze! Do not spread the infection!” I ordered.

But all in vain. Common sense had left these boys. Their eyes filled with the terror of creatures being eaten from inside. It must have been really frightening.

Muromets, Lina, and I along with three of the more disciplined soldiers were now pitted against twenty berserk heavy infantrymen. We clashed in the doorway of the new room. We barely held back the first wave of panicked warriors, chopping them up on the narrow entryway platform.

The droid did everything it could to help. It knocked the panicking soldiers off their feet, mercilessly crushing and mangling their fragile bodies.

I tried not to look the boys in the eyes, fearing that I would see confusion and pain in them. Instead, I dealt as many blows as I could.

The implant painted the space before me with strokes indicating the most efficient punches along with the soldiers’ weakest points. It told me how to hammer the bridge of someone’s nose into their brain, to break a larynx with spiked fingers, and to ram my foot into the base of the skull of a fallen soldier.

This creation of the unknown engineers of the RE boasted an astounding computing velocity. Not only did it guide my actions, but it also monitored my surroundings down to the trajectories of falling bodies, making recommendations on how to adjust these vectors; a light push in the back to send a clumsy heavy infantryman falling face down on a shard of jagged steel; a kick in the leg to send another one to the floor to be crushed by the droid's all-purpose running gear.

Crunch! Hot blood jetted forth. The invisible admin umpire gave me a bonus point for a “skillful tactical group interaction.”

The quest timer counted down the seconds we had left until the danger level would increase and we would fail the mission. The nanoworm needed time to master the resources of its host and accumulate the critical assault mass in order to spread to a new victim.

We managed to neutralize the threat in time, mangling our comrades’ faces and receiving questionable points for “winning unfair fights.” The battle concluded with Lina dealing a headshot with a steel pipe.

Wiping brains off my face, I watched as the quarantine droid hurriedly dragged the last body into the depths of the new room.

I heard a reward alert jingle as I surveyed my small army. It was quite a sight. The remaining soldiers of group 13 were nervously squeezing primitive tools in their hands, ready to fight for their lives.

No wonder; they had just seen their raging leaders waste the rest of the unit. They were sure that they would be next.

I wearily sat down on a pile of junk and lowered my shaking, bleeding hands into the water. My implant slowly eliminated adrenaline from my bloodstream, trying not to overstress the filters. It was in no hurry to lower the threat level of the environment.

“At ease, everyone,” I said. “You should’ve fought with your leaders when they stood in that doorway like Spartans, keeping the infected fools out of your cozy shithole. Shame on all of you! Split your demerit points for lack of initiative amongst yourselves as you see fit.”

This was the lash of the commander’s interface. I could punish or reward them. Minimally, of course, with super-mellow methods, but it was enough to reinforce my status.

Muromets growled: “What’re you waiting for? To your service stations, about face, forward march! And keep it down; we need to think, right, Commander?”

He meant me as if saying, Adjust to the situation since you’re so smart. Look how nervous the boys are. They could overthrow you. What’s one company commander? Who will notice?

I grinned in response. Don’t get brave, deputy, Akela hasn’t missed yet.

The group, looking around, attended to the top-priority projects: sawing the hinges of maintenance hatches, picking gratings with wires, building levers for cracking yet another micro-cabin, watering the moss we were cultivating, and carrying out other necessary household duties.

I spoke with the droid. It trusted us a little more now, but could offer us no help, being nothing more than a talking fence with a nuclear reactor.

I asked it how to destroy the lethal nanites. The droid listed 47 methods, out of which only exposure to outrageously high temperatures was feasible. We could make the room a vacuum or burn it with plasma. The droid was willing to use its own reactor. However, the quarantined room would become inaccessible for nine years after the nuclear fission began.

I wasn’t a fan of that option. I like long-term planning, but not when it involves being locked up in a jail cell.

My next question was regarding the purpose of the room. The droid’s reply was obscure: “It’s the seventh radial evacuation hallway of deck 93. It is currently sealed off with counter-boarding bulkhead gates.” The droid went on to state its cubic capacity, system status, and adjoining rooms.

I couldn’t understand the terminology the droid used, and sighed, sad that I had failed to display a leader’s genius. We would have to put our faith in the invincibility of Russian military equipment.

Muromets gave me an ironic look. I rose and slowly approached the dark doorway.

The droid cackled in alarm once again, “Danger!”

“Shut up!” Muromets and I barked in unison. I added reassuringly, “Senior officer inspection in order to determine threat level.”

This did not save me from getting shot with a paralyzer in my solar plexus. The droid’s accumulator had had time to recharge, and the short-barreled weapon jerkily followed my every move.

I took a step. Then another. The frame of my interface turned a warning red. The implant surveyed the situation and found it bad.

The analyzing module Cassandra droned on persistently, “Implicit signs of nanoterminator deployment. Incoming signal on emergency channel. Distinctive signature: medical servobot number… Allotting closed cluster for data exchange… You are banned from visiting the infected hall. Overriding; the servobot has no legal status in Fifth Rome Space Forces. Ban reduced to recommendation. Acquiring access rights to droid's remote sensing channels… Indirect confirmation of nanoterminator colony contamination: Assault-hive – two active cysts, Nomad – one cyst, Varangian – six cysts… Shutting down remote sensing… Breaking off communication channel… Formatting dedicated cluster…”

I froze, letting it all sink in. Muromets and the servobot were silent too, awaiting further developments. By now, we were able to tell an ordinary stupor from a pause taken to work with the implant’s interface. We had had our fill of pulling silly pranks on each other’s tuned-out bodies and now considered them not funny. They could earn you a beating. By the whole group. We had to relieve the tension somehow. So, it was best to stay in line.

I strained my brain; direct communication with a pseudo-intelligence wasn’t my strong suit. I made a direct-response inquiry: “Can my Alpha-prime withstand the aforementioned nanites?”

I received a dense reply: “In the event of a coordinated attack, the implant’s firewall guarantees 72 or more seconds of full-fledged defense given a three percent loss of the defenders’ active mass. After that, expect a snowballing increase of the probability of losing control over the modules.”

I found this satisfactory. Peering into the darkness, I mapped out an initial familiarization route – a sort of a victory lap inside the small hall. Jogging for 20 seconds, looting for 30, and escaping in the remaining 20.”

I closed my eyes, resting them and maxing out their photosensitivity. I was no cyborg, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve.

Muromets understood and straightened himself up, preparing to either help me out or finish me off. A myriad of orders flowed down the commander interface as he called upon the weakened and slightly offended heavy infantrymen to provide backup. Their postmortal debuffs had tied their hands in a way, but a dozen against one was a pretty safe bet. Math rules, and gods love big battalions.

Keeping my eyes closed, I quietly related my plan, “I’m going in. The implant guarantees me 72 seconds of invincibility. After that, things get risky. If I catch the worm, I won’t bring it back here. But if my defenses win, don’t keep me out, have a little bit of faith in me.”

Muromets hesitated for an unbearably long time, then briefly responded in glyphs. “Ok.” He grumbled, “Look at me before you go. I want to see reason in your eyes, not panic.”

I replied in glyphs: “Ok, Roger that.”

I opened my eyes, staring straight ahead like a predator. Bending down a bit, I started at a light jog.

The hall was carpeted with an unknown species of moss. Multiple berries got squashed under my feet, exploding with blue juice. I picked up a few of them on the way, popping them in my mouth. I ignored the taste and system logs – I had no time.

I tripped over the railway in the center. Apparently, a spacious magnetic levitation wagon used to run up and down this hall back in the day.

To prevent myself from falling, I shamefully ran on all fours for a second before getting back up. Yet every cloud has a silver lining; the handful of moss that I had ripped out while picking berries was sent to the crooked loot-pouch hanging on my belt.

I held my breath as my interface advised against inhaling too much contaminated air. Of course, the nanoterminators would find a way into my organism anyway. I itched and felt twinges in the most inconvenient areas of my body, trying not to think about the battles raging there.

The guaranteed protection timer bounced around as it accounted for victories and losses, either scaring me or giving me hope.

The location was mostly empty, being a hallway. I saw three dead bodies by the walls and a dead xenomorph form droid overgrown with moss. There was a reach-through hole the size of a fist in its head. Half of the droid had been melted to be unnaturally smooth. Its loot was probably scanty.

I was behind schedule a bit, having 23 seconds left. Curiosity killed more than just a cat.

I bent over the first corpse, feeling my comrades’ heavy stares. Lina was alarmed. The younger boys and girls looked at me with admiration. I also felt jealous thoughts coming from the group: May your leg get stuck in a crack. Indeed, several of the group harbored ill will toward me.

My implant dedicated a few percent of its resources to scan the corpse. The interface highlighted the badges of rank and the membership emblem on the dead man’s uniform jacket along with his more valuable gear. It displayed hints regarding the fastest way to break the fasteners and loot the body.

The corpse was identified as an onboard security officer. In his open holster was a heavy replica of a TT-plasma gun featuring a more ergonomic design. The extra battery slots were empty, just like the magazines for the reaction mass which generated plasma currents.

Apparently, this officer had to do a lot of shooting. He had been under fire; the hungry flora had picked him to the bone, and I saw ten tiny holes in his skeleton. The railgun – whether a stationary model or not – still worked.

Sorry, buddy, I thought as I broke his spine with a sharp kick and tore off his belt containing all the goodies: an “unbreakable” tablet in sleep mode, a stack-shocker, a smart-first-AID kit, and the holster with the TT.

I then tore the universal access badge off his jacket. It probably wouldn’t work without a two-level authentication, but I couldn’t leave it.

I also snatched various sundries out of his pockets: stimulants “Taiga Wind” and “Nocturnal Power” and a pack of cigarettes “Cronus is ours!” The latter – judging by the orange sticker – were loaded with heavy, semi-legal substances.

A buzzer went off in my head; I had five seconds left for the current stage.

Making a wry face, I mentally apologized to the dead man again, then shook his bones out of his soft, well-preserved boots. They had class 3 armor, an upgradable size of 38-44, six programmed color modes, morphing soles, resistance to rupture and pressure of up to 1500 pounds, and breathable bactericidal material.

A thing-in-itself! I thought, A rare artifact! With these, I could run on lava like a lizard, leaving footprints in it. Not that such a run would last long.

I darted back. As had been agreed, I winked at Muromets, barely refraining from sticking my tongue out at him. One must not flaunt his success. Success must be logical, firm, and expected. That’s what makes it success.

I nodded in response to the approving cheers, ignoring the comments of the smooth-tongued and the fake smiles. Sitting down on a hummock, I kicked off the foot wraps that we all wore and put on my trophy boots. The deceased officer had been a fop; to pay a two weeks’ salary for boots seemed almost pathological. In any case, I was most grateful to him. I owed him a comfy grave facing East.

Rising, I put on his belt, ignoring the jealous looks. Those who wanted to could go in and get their own. On the other hand, sharing was the most important part of leading a group. I had to give out a part of my loot.

So, I pulled out the pack of smokes and with a flick of my fingers extracted a thin, brown cigarette. “Well, boys, let’s light up,” I offered indifferently.

Chapter Nine

The group smoked with great enthusiasm. The unknown weed produced an insidious high, shutting off our locomotor systems and allowing us to think incredibly clearly – something we could rarely do in this hot, poisonous, low-oxygen noob location. Anyone who has climbed the world’s tallest mountains or used to wake up with hangovers is familiar with this heavy head feeling that this environment gave us.

Chilling in a comfy capsule, I angrily refused my implant’s offer to clean my blood. I realized how many mistakes we had made because we were just so groggy.

Such was the effect of a low habitability index; fatigue, a dulled brain, wearing down of life support modules, a short lifespan. We died nearly every 24 hours.

I grinded my teeth, Thanks, lesson learned. Increasing the HI was now a top-priority task, just like the primary goals of this training; survival, self-development, and constantly moving forward and up, to the flight decks.

Lina threw up. The effects of carbon dioxide poisoning such as brain fog and unhealthy excitation had temporarily subsided. I could see some of the images surfacing in the girl’s mind: skulls broken with a metal pipe, mangled faces, blows to the back of the head sending eyeballs flying out of their sockets.

Ouch. I felt nauseous myself. Of course, we were inside a game. But this fact was becoming harder and harder to believe. Our feelings were completely real. This virtual reality was flawless, ideal, and too painful. I sarcastically thanked it for the 300 percent nerve conduction increase. To squeeze a pimple was a heroic feat under such conditions.

Also, thanks to the Amazonians’ cruel humor, we could never know for sure where and who we were. The cynical mind games had gone too far.

The soldiers wept and sniveled. The sudden psychological relief and the lifting of the drug-induced veil off our minds made us once again realize the utter horror of our situation, reminding us of the families and loved ones we no longer had, and of our infinitely faraway homes…

Taking advantage of the temporary lucid interval, I passed on all these thoughts and considered all possible further developments. Only a small part of my consciousness was focused on the personal, on Lina.

Who was she to me? A half-mad man-hater? Or just a crew member who had gotten tied to my aura against her will, yet was willing to give her life for me? I could feel that she would if she had to. But then, I myself was willing to cross that line for the sake of my other half. You simply couldn’t avoid a fight when that meant leaving half of yourself for the enemy.

We were two captains on one ship. A patriarchal wolf cub raised by a pack leader and a loner feminist female cruelly hurt by jackals. Where would we sail our ship? Oh, you lonely rock in the middle of an ocean, we won’t escape you! Sharpen your fangs on the salty waves; we’re coming!

Again, the age-old question plagued my thoughts, Who’s at fault and what to do? Obviously, accusing someone was pointless. I had made this decision myself, consciously accepting the risks. To blame some mythical personage was stupid, unproductive, and unmanly.

As for what course of action to take, I had infinitely many options. Judging by the slowly appearing new locations and loot, the virtual training ground had retained the structure of ancient RPG games.

The leveling-up methods were the same, only made more realistic. Gathering, for example, was the first step for noobs and a mandatory stage in crafters’ development. The location provided all the things necessary: the moss, the technical junk, and the opportunity to disassemble solid objects.

The monotonous farming consisted of routine, hours-long activities with predictable outcomes: sawing away hatch locks, breaking doors, punching through walls. The math was simple; hours of work times a malicious random coefficient.

Keenness of observation and nonstandard actions were the secret bonuses of different levels. A good example was that hole in the heat exchanger area with its slugs and the comfortable warmth it brought. Temporarily brought, that is.

Quests entailed communication with various characters. The droid with its missions is a good illustration. The droid, however, agreed to communicate only out of hopelessness, after its batteries had died. So far, it was the only semi-living creature who could more or less provide some answers. I had already completed one of the droid’s missions, receiving fair points for it. I would have to talk to it some more. I was sure that the droid would be more than happy to generate quests to clean up the nanoterminator. But we would need more than just firepower to win them.

Combat, of course, played a key role. The harder the fight, the richer the rewards. Judging by how our barricade by the faraway bulkhead gate was steadily falling apart, we wouldn’t have to wait long until our first skirmish. That meant we needed weapons. Immediately.

My TT-plasma gun with a washed-out star on its handle had an almost full cartridge of condensed gas – the reaction mass necessary for plasma cloud formation. The gun’s battery, however, was dead, its slot half-melted.

I had plucked it out, of course. Now, our mechanics were hurriedly taking apart any and all technology we had in order to come up with some sort of battery replacement. Good thing the space force had standard batteries; a battery of any voltage and capacity could be assembled from basic parts. The TT featured an assemblage of 24 kilovolt sheets fastened with a sturdy latch.

My firewall recovery timer hit zero. It was time for me to go in again, to loot and make more soldiers envious of me. The loot was the reason the group had tried to run into the new hall all at once. Death was painful, but virtual, whereas the loot was tangible and improved one’s status.

I wondered why the heavy infantrymen’s implants lasted for mere seconds. Of course, they were no match for my Alpha-prime, but to break instantly like a TV remote control was ridiculous.

I asked my symbiont this. Hearing the answer, I froze for a moment, then burst out laughing, unintentionally alarming and insulting the weeping group members in the nearby capsules.

My implant explained: “Group recommendations. Change default passwords on heavy infantry implants’ admin panels to unique passwords. Factory password ‘user:123456’ is unsafe.”

Having laughed to my heart’s content, I checked my own password. The Russian mechanic had a sense of humor; the modest password ‘GO_tO_HeLl_wiTH_UR_Brutef0rce!!!111’ would definitely never be cracked with an exhaustive search in a thousand years.

I added a few more digits just in case, and activated the three-step authentication module by giving the mental go-ahead and giving it a random sequence from my password. The module added a number to the sequence – my birth year divided by that day’s date.

My cigarette went out. I pensively twirled the stub in my fingers, looking at the tempting sign on it that read “Eat me! Taiga dust content – 318 mg. Double your income!”

The implant barked out at that, bringing the disciplinary regulations articles to the front. I itched to break every single one to see what would happen, but these were the regulations of the Russian Empire, after all…

So, my implant retained at least a portion of the native firmware? I thought. Why thank you, Kind Doctor. It was like wearing the striped vest of a Russian sailor and a fur cap with ear flaps among the valiant American marines. An utter set-up.

I hurriedly pulled up the settings of my unlicensed symbiont. At first glance, things weren’t so bad. The Alpha-prime was recognized as a friendly device by all systems capable of running the ‘friend-or-foe’ check. According to the logs, 49 years ago, the implant had accepted a service information batch and had passed all the certificate tests with flying colors. It was subjected to a routine checkup once a year. Two weeks ago, right before being installed on me, it had received a 1TB update patch.

However, the mechanic who performed the integration of the implant into the Fifth Rome Space Force did a poor job. Or maybe he just didn’t see any other way to complete the given task. In any case, when he received admin access to the implant, he simply switched the system status to “ally,” then changed the bearer’s duty site to the Eternal City. A thickheaded strategy, like changing the time zone on a Windows.

Everything was tiptop in appearance. But in reality, the implant’s core processor still considered itself and its bearer to be a warrior of the Russian Empire Space Force. That meant I was in for all sorts of surprises…

The invisible arbiter decided that we had rested enough. Our interface buzzers went off in alarm, alerting us to the points we lost for smoking in closed spaces. The habitability index had dropped again, and by much more than one might expect from 20 cigarettes. To make their point, the invisible arbiters made a part of our already sprouting moss plantations turn black and wither, as if the delicate weed just couldn’t survive the turquoise smoke of modified cedar cones. The bastards!

With a loud alarm signal, I yanked the group out of their sentimental visions. Rise and shine, soldiers! Step-motherland needs your feats of arms!

I had to kick the slow and the more rebellious group members. Sometimes, you must rule with actions, not just words. No wonder that in all the ancient armies, the hunting crop was the most valuable instrument among officers; the organism perceives pain receptor signals much better than the signals from auditory receptors.

I assembled a corporal team, taking a few smarter boys and one girl with me to be the future nucleus of our communication staff. While everyone’s heads were more or less clear, I put them on the top priority task – to develop a way to defeat the monster that was trying to break in.

It was self-evident that the monster’s each blow was deadly. The creaking of the armor composite dispelled all doubts. We estimated the assailant’s height based on the height of the dents. The dents that appeared simultaneously indicated the reach of the monster’s chelae or whatever it used to pound on the bulkhead gate.

We pensively scratched our heads. The girls disliked that our hair had been shaved off, as not everyone enjoyed looking like G.I. Jane. Those of us who had been bald in our past lives were glad that there was now anything to shave off at all.

The strength and size of the unknown monster made us tense. What is behind that gate? A T-90 tank? A rabid mithril mammoth? A crazy morph made of a hundred bodies?

“Put a lookout at the bulkhead gate,” I ordered. “Take that barricade down, it’s a waste of supplies. Wait until the monster makes the first hole. I’ll make a second trip to Skynet Central Core. Be back in three minutes. Meanwhile, think, heathen tribe.”

The second time was much easier. The implant managed to create a 3D map of the hallway. The interface graphics completed the darker areas, labeling walls, corners, sparking cables, and the sharp edges of titanium accessories.

The amount of time I could spend in the hot zone increased. First, all the outgrowths containing the more aggressive cysts were now marked on the map along with the oval space that the worms could access. The assault nanites covered a 16-foot area with the diversionist nests. The latter, in turn, could attack anything with 30 paces. But beyond that distance, the threat was much lower. The orange highlights turned yellow, indicating that any attacks would definitely be deflected.

The implant sent me on a complex route, estimating the total density of the nanotrap as “sufficient for peripheral class B objects.”

The implant prudently kept me out of areas where three or more colonies overlapped, highlighting the Assault-hive cysts with a crimson color. I could hear it droning quietly: “…strong and durable… old masters’ work, no doubt. They don’t make them anymore, the technologies are lost… they churn out the cheap Poltergeists and Banshees by the kiloton, but those are no good… All right, maybe they are… but they are second-rate. But back in the day, a ball of cysts could be the size of a fist! It dealt as much damage as a direct hit with a highest-caliber hard steel plug of the battleship Armavir. And that means a 200-kiloton equivalent.”

I spent 10 seconds by a wall which my interface had marked. According to my implant, the wall contained an emergency supply box for individual rescue. It was mandatory that such boxes were available in all modules on RE ships; a standard kit for all of the module’s inhabitants plus 30 percent reserves. A hallway like this was by no means as loot-rich as barracks, but I was sure that this box contained at least something.

My Alpha-prime had already discerned the shape of the moss around the box and outlined the box itself in green. As ill luck would have it, an all-purpose Varangian cyst was attached to the wall right next to it. It could attack and hold off an opponent more powerful than itself, although not a way much more powerful one, and usually only one time. It had no recharging systems, no nano-factories, no camouflage – basically none of that extra stuff for losers. It relied on a single strike of utter devastation, a kamikaze worm designed to sacrifice itself to deal extreme damage to the enemy. Like a shell does to a tank. A plane to a battleship. A missile to a city of millions.

I was lucky; the Varangian wasn’t capable of long-term off-line operation. Its worms were an instrument for swift impact on enemy communications.

Of course, the military had also provided it adequate resources for dealing with low batteries; the worm could connect to the ship's power system and even attach its reserve power cord to the connection terminals of the still-warm batteries of a technosentient bot. It could unarchive the matrices of the required forms and elements to assemble a pretty accurate energy converter from its nanites and thereby extend its off-line life span by a significant amount. However, this led to the decrease of its assault mass.

My Alpha-prime cautiously beat off the Varangian’s first attack, then the second, gaining confidence. It repelled the third attack like it was nothing.

“Everything’s going according to the plan,” my implant told me in a message of a calming green color.

I nodded. It was still better to refrain from inhaling the unfiltered air. I tore the moss off the wall in layers, tossing it on the deck, revealing the meager contents of the emergency box. I grabbed the loot and shoved it into my pouch without even looking.

It included several things; regenerative cartridges that filtered out carbon dioxide and generated oxygen – a very useful item for increasing HI; a couple of personal force field harnesses capable of wrapping up their wearer in a vacuum-sealed cocoon impenetrable to fire for some time; an all-purpose first-aid kit – a very beneficial find, capable of reviving even a seriously wounded person a few times; a dead communication console; and a tiny output device for a remote control to the module survival control system.

I held back a sigh of disappointment. No weapons, no batteries, no quality spacesuits. I suppose I should have been grateful that the loot was real, and not a bunch of props like the foam plastic spears and spades on the fire shields of certain military units of my time. It looked like they had a way of keeping the shrewd warrant officers in check in the future.

I kept running, swiftly moving my feet and scooping up a few berry clusters on the way. They were both tasty – seriously, the first edible thing in that rusty old tub of a ship – and healthy. They increased one’s adaptability to the environment by four percent.

I carefully dumped the berries into the breast pocket of my open poncho jacket. This article of bush-league workmanship was a gift from Lina. She had timidly presented it to me with a red face, angry at herself for blushing. She had even embroidered corporal spheres with colored wire on the chevron. What a clever girl! When did she even find the time? I wondered.

I would repay her with a kiss on the cheek and some sweet berries. I would have liked to kiss her more intimately, but I couldn’t; my hormones were raging, and Lina could feel everything. Turning away in time or sitting down and crossing my legs would not save me.

My second target was the corpse doubled up by the far wall. My implant beeped as it swiftly scanned the spacesuit covered with moss, collecting information and determining the location of the loot.

I pulled off this corpse’s boots as well. We were in desperate need of footwear. All we had were wet puttee imitations held together with twisted optical fiber strips. It was pitiful; a unique combination of the urban and rural.

These boots were rather ordinary one-size-fits-all shitkickers for a technical character – disposable, intended for work in an aggressive or radioactive environment. On the battleship Marat, that meant nearly every cabin.

After that, I strictly traced my Alpha-prime’s instructions as I was short on time. I took the corpse’s belt with an all-purpose multitool, a slot for tiny test servobots aka “roaches,” their work readiness marker coal-black, a civilian neurogun, and a non-statutory wide-screen tablet.

My implant enviously displayed the optional device info: “Imperial Fox-4.7-bravo with a pseudo-AI with a programmed framework. Features 256 12th generation coprocessors, user memory integration, and passive defense system. Part of a limited edition, only 9 million copies in all of space. The reproduction technique has been lost. The orbital factory on Juno has been destroyed by the Hive’s second wave. Cracking the device with the tools on hand is impossible.”

That last phrase made me stop drooling and concentrate on looting. This corpse also belonged to someone who had been on stimulants. There was enough to throw a party in his pockets and first-aid kit: mind boosters, stress killers, night-time spray “Horsepower,” and the mysterious pills called “Uncle Basil's Punchfest.” These future folks had a way of stimulating any physical or mental feature. Those who couldn’t afford a quality implant quickly got addicted to the various creations of the pharmaceutical industry.

I imagined for a second what would happen if these pills were introduced on Earth. Everyone would want to boost their mind prior to an exam, increase their reaction time and muscle strength upon running into gangsters, or to impress a girl in bed without the adverse side effects. Unless, of course, they developed a tolerance to these drugs or went broke.

If the Amazonians weren’t lying and really would return us home, I would definitely pack a hundred kilotons of stimulants into an intersystem truck and make the Earth a happier place with this questionable gift.

I raced back. Suddenly, I yelped in pain, jumping nearly to the ceiling. I felt as though I had just gotten stabbed in the thigh with red-hot steel.

My implant informed me: “Reactor flea bite. A19 percent HP loss. Paralysis of nerve fibers and irreversible muscle cramps in the neurotoxin injection area. Take immediate measures to remove the embedded larva.”

The implant’s log exploded with panicked reports: “Critical load on survival control systems. Injecting maximum dose of drugs number… Neural network of damaged limb is not responding… Backup path… Negative.”

Dragging my stiff leg, I swiftly limped to the exit. I swore loudly so that the group would recognize me; there was no time to play hide-and-seek.

I barked at the soldiers on watch at station three: “Step aside! I need a ski track! Fuck the damn Amazonians far and wide with all their fleas and special effects!”

I plopped down onto a dry spot, shook the loot out of my pouch, and grabbed the multi-tool that my Alpha-prime highlighted. Tapping on the blade of the “eternal” knife, I expressed my gratitude to my implant; it had already imprinted an image on my retina detailing my thigh with a snowflake-shaped web of virtual lines. In order to remove the quickly developing larva, I had to cut my flesh open following these lines exactly.

I was scared to death. But I did not allow myself to be injected with sedatives. I’m a human, not a robot. I also forbade the implant to control the fine motor skills of my hands. I will do this myself! I thought. Should I make too deep of a cut and puncture my own artery, so be it, it’s my fault!

The knife was outstandingly sharp. It cut my flesh in layers like foam in a bathtub. I felt no pain; the leg was no longer mine, but the rightful meal of that foul creature.

My blood got in the way, pouring all over the surgical site. Lina, who didn’t understand my actions but sensed that they were necessary, sat down next to me, carefully hugged me by the shoulders, and, pulling off her shirt, started sponging my wound.

I was no longer the only one who was nervous, missing the mark now and then and cutting flesh for nothing. Lina wept soundlessly. The blood-soaked shirt in her hands would brush against the wrong areas.

My heart missed a beat. My implant promptly loaded the artificial pacemaker module to the RAM. But I merely waved it away, happily narrowing my eyes; the girl’s touch was tender and caring. Waves of empathy and panic swept over me. Bingo! This is the componentry of love, no? She loves me. Subconsciously, perhaps? And do I love her?

Something really firm suddenly crunched under the sharp blade. It couldn’t have been a bone as the knife could easily slice through bones.

My Alpha-prime highlighted the target in red. It was the larva. Using my thumb, I drew a pictogram of magnetic tweezers on the multi-tool’s touchscreen. Touchscreens were archaic, but comfortable. The intricate combination of force fields enabled me to firmly grasp the half-inch-long insect. The reactor flea could survive in the most extreme environments; it had such armor that a volcanic vent was like a health resort for it.

I increased pressure on the touchscreen, turning the tweezers into clamps. The tool’s two-foot-long battery beeped warningly; it was almost dead. Yet it carried out my order, quickly increasing pressure on the work surface; 220 pounds per one tenth of a square inch… 660… 1,500… 2,200…

Squelch! The larva popped. A green mist hung in the air. Those who came in contact with it had a look of surprise on their faces as they read the message on their interfaces: “Constant buff received: +1% to poison resistance. Cumulative up to +15%. Risk; random intoxication is possible.”

At the same time, my RC symbol lit up: “Self-administered field surgery completed. Score: satisfactory. Reward: +5 RC points as well as one credit toward the ‘Battlefield medicine’ subject area.”

Lina, who leaned on my shoulder in exhaustion, shuddered; she also received a reward for assistance and an honorable stripe for helping a wounded comrade.

Our phlegmatic doctor powdered my wound with ground moss. As we had established by trial and error, this moss had zero regenerative effect, but stopped bleeding almost instantaneously.

I rose, putting my weight on my good leg and trying not to lean too much on Lina, and related what had happened: “Aggressive morph-fauna. We desperately need CASs. Even the simplest spacesuits, the light ones. I assume that things will get more difficult.”

I surveyed the soldiers. They were slowly getting accustomed to discipline. Only ten of those around me were out of bounds. They tried to stay out of my sight, lurking in the light mist of the stripped moss. Seeing a part of the action and catching a freebie buff was enough to make them happy.

My nerve fibers slowly recovered, contorting my body with pain. I allowed my implant to dull these sensations until they matched the normal human pain threshold. I didn’t need those extra 200 percent, but I was intent on keeping what was mine.

Pursing my lips, I said through gritted teeth, “I’ll take a break before going in again. Muromets will distribute the loot. All the meds go to the Doc, against receipt.”

Dumping the rest of the goodies out of my pouch, I limped to my cabin. Lina squeezed in under my shoulder, not wanting to break off the comfy embrace. Hidden loot weighed down the inside pocket of my trousers. As the commander, I absolutely had to have my own reserve fund.

Ah, and here it is, the long-awaited bunk. Lina, halt!

Chapter Ten

The persistent knocking on the cabin door woke me up. I glanced at the virtual interface clock – a habitual motion by now. What the hell?!

Instead of the appointed half an hour of rest, I had slept for four hours. My alarm clock icon had been deactivated, its current status showing up as the aggressive statement, “Do not disturb, will tear your throat out!”

Damn! I thought. Did I do this, by reflex, wanting to preserve the beauty of the moment? Or did the implant assume high responsibilities and concern itself with providing me with much-needed rest? My nerves certainly weren’t paid for by the government, and were already like overstretched violin strings.

This sleep turned out to be very therapeutic. I felt like I had been woken up by a pleasant ray of sunlight on a Sunday morning. My mood was wonderful. Why? Because I found Lina resting her fair-haired head on my chest. She had fallen asleep as if she had nothing to care about. This was probably the first time she had slept like that; like a kitten curled up in a ball, its warmth a source of pure joy.

I couldn’t hold back and carefully touched my lips to her velvety cheek. She smiled in her sleep and leaned closer, trustingly offering her face to be caressed and cuddling up to my side.

The wolf pup in me stirred dangerously. It sniffed the air greedily, relishing the scent of the chaste female body, then curiously leaned forward…

Lina gave a start, clearly discerning this image, and recoiled, nearly falling off the narrow bunk.

I had the response time of Bruce Lee times two by now. I wrapped an arm around the girl’s tiny waist, preventing her fall, and gave her a reassuring smile. I thought my hand would catch fire; Lina was still shirtless, and the heat of her bare body drove me outright crazy.

My primal instincts made me suppress her conscious attempts to resist. I brought her close with confidence, reaching for her moist, open lips like a boss…

Boom! Boom! Boom! came the knocking again. I heard Muromets’s voice, “Wake the hell up, Commander! The monster broke through the gateway’s armor. We can see it through the hole. Take a look, you won’t believe your eyes!”

A plasma grenade up your ass, Muromets! I thought. To ruin such a moment!

Lina shrank back and instantly covered herself with mental shields. I was able to take her by surprise only because she had slept without worry on my strong shoulder, her guard down. Her primal instincts had taken over, untrammeled by the extraneous trash of reason. She was immersed in a sense of complete safety, believed in the correctness of the situation, and had complete confidence in the future.

You can jingle your imaginary balls all you want, girl, but you’re still an ordinary woman inside, desperately in need of a man with whom you’ll finally be able to relax and feel like a weak woman under secure protection.

I rose off the bunk, releasing her slender frame – I couldn’t call her fragile as she was pure cyber-modified muscle with a virtually non-existent fat layer, just enough for a little emergency fuel for the body.

“It’s open, Murom, come in already,” I said.

“Sure you won’t rip my throat out?” the big guy asked sarcastically, squeezing inside and curiously staring at Lina, who instantly blushed.

The tiny cabin became crowded.

“I haven’t decided yet,” I replied, not so kind anymore.

Why is the world constantly checking me for weaknesses? I wondered. Perhaps this was the leader’s lot, to constantly prove your status, keep the bullies in line, and always be prepared to defend your principles and worldviews by words and actions. Or perhaps all ways of life are similar? Is it just that most other people are more resourceful and flexible than me? They adapt, compromise, smooth over the differences, and avoid conflicts. Father, you have left me too soon, giving me your main lesson in conclusion…

Annoyed, I decided to try something out and ordered my implant, “Remote access to implant EK531245-t. Tighten the nano-armor layer in the collar area by 300 percent. That’s right, by narrowing the neck diameter. He’ll know better than to grin next time!”

“Access denied. Confirm command with an admin’s signature.”

“As you were,” I whispered aloud, enjoying the alarmed look on Muromets’s face.

His firewall probably informed him of my creative remote strangulation attempt. He’ll know better!

“Let’s go already, ya loudmouthed alarm clock. Show me your monster.”

The built-in interface radar alerted the group that the leader was approaching, so I didn’t catch anyone shirking their duties this time. They pretended to be working away, casting glances at the now significantly weakened bulkhead gate.

The armor clearly wouldn’t last very long. The composite fibers slid apart like rotten sackcloth. The overstretched layers rocked like waves, partially absorbing the mighty blows.

My implant instantly calculated the material’s rupture point: two-three hours under current stress. I cursed, angry that I had slept for so long when there were so many things to do.

Muromets understood and gave me a report, “Mud bath’s ready. We’re still weaving the net, making it bigger and increasing knot size. We’re trying to sharpen the impact girder, but it’s going to give after a while. The ropes are ready; we’re just tinkering with the ceiling fasteners. We’re also upgrading personal weapons. Retreat paths… None. The group is ready to fight, although no one wants to die. It’s too painful.”

I nodded. Everything was going according to plan. But it wasn’t enough.

The lookout at the bulkhead gate recoiled from one of the holes. The next instant, the gate shook under a powerful blow and trembled like a giant membrane, emitting a disgusting sound.

Pressing his hands to his ears, the lookout cried, “Nineteen seconds till next kick. The bastard’s saving up strength.”

We hurriedly pressed our eyes to the tears in the gate. The broken Kevlar fibers pricked and burned our cheeks; due to various internal tension points, the material had warmed up to about 160 degrees.

“A huge thing,” Murom whispered to me. “What sort of creature have the gods sent us?”

I looked at him in surprise. Clearly his implant couldn’t identify the monster, while mine did so immediately. I’d have to admit to it…

I read aloud the reference my Alpha-prime displayed, “A heavy counter-boarding bot Crab, manufactured in the Russian Empire, at the full-service factory of New Kharkov. Class: surface. Purpose: mobile short-range counter-air defense, destruction of enemy targets that land on the ship’s exterior: landing parties, diversionists, nano-cysts, induction- suppression modules. Most likely, the Crab picked up a xeno-virus, or is externally controlled by a parasite. Now, it’s armament…”

“Time!” the lookout cried, pulling me away by the shoulders.

Boom! The armor shook again.

Nodding my thanks to him, I readjusted the collar of my poncho and looked through the hole again. “Armament…” I continued, studying the combat drone’s stocky frame while Muromets listened to me like I were a messiah – with suspicious eyes yet believing every word. “Counter-air defense/anti-missile defense cartridges. Their status is unclear, but they are not a threat. The double railgun has a deformed set of barrels. The pulse gun is busted; most of its front half is gutted. I’ve no idea how it can even find targets… Next; the right flank defense turret has been destroyed. The left one is still working. I can’t make out the rear one. Let’s consider it functioning. Armor status…”

“Time!”

This time, I jumped back on my own. After a short pause, I resumed my inspection. This bot had really gotten roughed up good.

“Force field reflectors and the Umbrella module all look damaged. No active or add-on armor installed. Anti-laser coating is 90 percent burned. Factory composite kit – significantly damaged. The most vulnerable areas: right flank for two and five hours. Front - homemade armoring with random materials. The bitch wants to live; it’s no use to attack the front.”

Muromets scratched his crew cut, thinking. We weren’t allowed to have hair in other places; the roots had been removed. Things with head hair weren’t simple either. I was sure that our hair would only grow to whatever the maximum length the rules allowed.

“We’ve less than a two percent chance of winning,” the corporal observed, checking his claim against his implant’s analytical conclusions.

“A little over seven percent,” I corrected. My Alpha was a little more creative and had better knowledge of the Crab’s weak spots. “But it’s still low. That thing will paint the walls with us. It won’t even notice our clubs and homemade knives. How are the batteries?”

The batteries were of critical importance; if we could revive the TT gun I had salvaged, we could increase our chance of winning by nine percent.

I didn't put my hopes on looting the third corpse in that hall. My implant had identified the corpse’s chevrons and gear, and it wasn’t promising; it was a tiny female skeleton wrapped in a white robe typically worn by junior medical staff. She had a lightpen in her pocket, and on her chest was an active pheromone generator. Her rucksack contained instant make-up, a few video crystals that lacked serials numbers – that was illegal, by the way, - and other such female sundries. Should we defeat the bot, our girls would be squeaking with joy upon finding these Christmas gifts in this gray, post-apocalyptic world.

Muromets shook his head: “All the batteries we have are dead. It looks like someone had passed a beam of intense electromagnetic radiation through this place. Only the capsules survived; they have decent shielding and an additional external power source. A cordless one. Who would’ve ever expected it? An electrician’s dream come true.”

I pulled a face. “I see. So, there’s but one option left…”

Muromets raised a brow: “Which is?”

I didn’t answer and headed to the quarantined hallway. The bot guarding the entrance opened its paralyzer shutter, but didn’t aim at us – guess we were making progress.

“Servobot! As your senior, I demand you follow my orders!”

Muromets chuckled in surprise. He followed me like an inquisitor.

The bot replied indifferently: “Denied. Conflict with priority task.”

“Your priority task?”

“Prevent dissemination of nanoterminator.”

I nodded with satisfaction, “Can you take on a heavy cyber-bot, type Crab?”

“Object’s combat readiness?” inquired the quarantine bot.

I snapped in irritation, “What’s the difference?! It can move, control its arms, and is out for scalps!” But then I calmed down, having read the information supplied by my implant, and answered the question, “Over 23 percent. Can you handle it?”

“Negative.”

I collected all the analytical and factual data and sent it to the bot: “Accept this packet via open channel. A hacked Crab is going to burst in here in two hours. Question: what will it do after crushing us?”

The bot didn’t take long to answer, “There’s a 70 probability that it will infect me with a virus of the technosentients; a 19 percent probability that it will destroy me; a six percent probability that it will ignore me…”

I bared my teeth: “Don’t even count on it! At least one of us will try to hide in your hallway. And the Crab has at least a dozen sensors for locating living flesh. He will definitely find you. Need I go on?”

“…probability that it will…”

“Shut up! Now, there’s almost a 100 percent chance that the Crab will invade the quarantined sector. The worm will spread and the technosentient population will increase. What will you do?”

The droid fell silent for at least a minute. The blinking info exchange glyph on my interface indicated that my implant sent the droid the open access info that the droid had requested.

Finally, the bot came to. Its voice was almost completely unemotional. It was preparing to die. And any individual, even a programmed one, wants to live just like any one of us…

“Granting limited energy cell access. Purpose: to charge Corporal Lucky’s personal weapon. Mandatory condition: destroy the nanoworm colony before engaging in combat with the Crab. At least 10 maximum density plasma impulses are required to eliminate a single cyst.”

The corresponding mission popped up before my eyes. Considering my Alpha-prime implant ad my TT gun, the message window had a green border, signifying an easy difficulty level and a minimal reward – improved relationship with the medical droid and complete access to its gear.

I accepted.

A service port popped open with a barely audible click on the once-white body of the droid. “A single block with 48 elements,” the bot warned coldly. “Maintain smoothness of movements and carefully follow the instructions sent to you. I’m warning you that in the event of aggressive or unauthorized action, I will be forced to drive my reactor to a state of uncontrolled nuclear fission chain reaction.”

Muromets, who was reaching for the open port, froze halfway. Wiping sweat off his brow, he cautiously stepped back. “Paul, you do it… all these instructions… bureaucracy isn't my strong suit.”

I nodded silently, opening the file the droid had sent. It was a puny picture with two lines of text. And the bot had made it sound like I was about to receive a physics textbook. The important part was not to take anything else besides the block from the droid, who was clearly nervous.

Extraction of the block went smoothly. The servobot suffered, my implant sympathized with it, and Murom and I perspired.

Muromets kept whispering annoyingly, “You’re a risk taker, Squadron Commander! Do you even realize the droid could’ve wasted us all? If there’s no one here, the Crab has no reason to invade this place anymore.”

“We would’ve respawned in five minutes,” I replied in a constrained voice, carefully releasingthe bracketry clamps.

“Just to die again! You really are a lucky guy, evading death time after time, healing yourself with herbs and mollusks. Else you would’ve remembered that dying twice in 24 hours doubles your respawn time. And don’t get me started about the side effects! Your droid would've twisted our timers big time! We would’ve respawned once a week, on Wednesdays, spending the rest of our time in the virtual purgatory. You should know that it’s a place of great sadness and pain.”

My cheek twitched. I had really walked into that one. “But the droid did no such thing, did he?” I parried. “And do we have a choice? If not the droid, then the Crab. We don't stand a chance against a heavy drone with such pathetic armament. You said yourself, two percent chance of winning.”

“And you said seven!”

“Same thing! Buzz off already! And stay out of my way. If I brush the sockets, there’ll be nothing but boots left of us. My boots. As for your plastic footwraps, they’ll laminate your scorched soles.”

Carefully disassembling the block, I surveyed its contents. The batteries were enough for two energy clips for my TT. The reaction mass vessel contained enough for four. Barrel life was ten times higher, even when firing at full power.

I spent the next half hour burning the nanoworm colonies with plasma. At first, everything went smoothly, like boring routine. But I had to assume a more stable position; the TT gun was like a pulse engine, overwhelming me with recoil. I aimed from 20 paces away, pulled the trigger all the way in, and fired blinding beams at the center of the pyramid of cysts.

The first two leaked off the wall like liquid metal, losing their structure and molecular memory in the outrageously high temperatures. The next three managed to team up and attack. As I soon realized, their attempt was hopeless. As I incinerated the aggressive nanites suspended in the air, an infected servobot appeared out of nowhere. It dragged the precious Nomad colony out of the hallway.

Alarmed, my Alpha-prime told me to fire at the bot’s technical tunnel. I did, sealing it off, then spent ten minutes chasing the swift servobot. I really didn’t want to waste the limited ammo or break a working bot.

When I finally cornered it, I broke off its arm holding a plasma burner and stepped on the bot, as it was shaped like a thin pancake. Then, I carefully burned the Nomad colony which contained a nano replication factory. After that, I opened the cover of the bot’s external dashboard and, flipping the archaic toggle switch, cut off the infected robot’s power.

I wearily squatted down next to the 16-inch-diameter bot and viewed my current status. I had lost 40 percent of my peripheral protective layer nanites and spent nine percent of the all-purpose nanomass. That was a lot.

If I could just find an iridium nail and chew it up, that would help a bit. Even a bundle of cords made of rare-earth elements would suffice, but I would never find one. There was nothing but fourth generation optical fibers and immaterial air-wiring around me.

I pensively chewed the colorful berries. The yellow, heart-shaped ones – which we had aptly named “valentines” – were great for burns. The servobot had dealt me a few blows on the limbs with its plasma burner. My wonder-boots sealed their holes with difficulty, their resources down by a third.

The red, bead-shaped berries were essentially seedless “cranberries.” They regenerated HP, but made your jaw cramp like hell; a blend of unripe persimmon and wasabi. Life was a pain. Even healing made you cry.

As I repaired the damage, I ignored the alarmed looks of fellow group members and waited for the territory acquisition timer to count down.

The rapid trumpets playing a Roman march on the public channel signaled the expansion of our habitat. Everyone received a little bonus, and our group finally climbed up on the list a little, out of its usual location at the very bottom.

I personally heard bells as I received 40 points on my RC along with a luxurious badge “One can conquer alone.” Nothing to be proud of. As the psi-sniper girls had said, a good soldier received about 50 achievements in one year of service.

I gave the loot team the go-ahead. The team included our most sharp-eyed, most observant, and most dexterous pickpockets. More than half of them were girls. They must’ve had an inherent eye for freebies.

The rest of the group continued preparing for battle. Lina tugged at my sleeve, inquiring with ingenuous female curiosity, “What did you get for territory acquisition? Spill it!”

I sent her a screenshot. She wrinkled her nose jealously with the exigent look of a child relieved of candy. “I don’t have that badge.”

I waved her away. “You’ll get one eventually. You’re young.”

Apparently, that wasn’t the correct answer; I felt resentment sweep over me, distracting me from the tasks at hand. I put up a weak shield and instantly felt her surprise. That’s right, I thought. I’m no weakling either! I’m learning too.

The medical droid was satisfied with the disinfection. No longer saving battery life, it spoke in a triumphant, ringing voice, “My perimeter defense mission is complete, just like your mission to eliminate the technosentient infection! Upon completion of my primary task, I must either go back to the place of registration, or, in case that withdrawal becomes impossible, join the nearest unit of allies. At your command, Corporal Paul Lucky!”

The group enlivened. Everyone was excited to have received our first battle unit. My implant already displayed the most rational way of using the new resource. Our chance of winning increased by an entire 19 percent. But something didn’t feel right…

I explored other options: “How do you suggest we use you in the coming battle with the Crab?”

After a second’s hesitation, the droid replied reluctantly, “I have no means of firing at the heavy military bot. My only option is to self-detonate my reactor. Or, if you wish to preserve the lives of all the sentients within a 160-foot radius, a misapplication of energy circuit elements is also possible. The output of annihilating a single battery plate equals the output of detonating a quarter ounce of an all-purpose blasting powder. I have 512 such plates. It’s not much, but enough for a few warheads.”

“Can you function on your reactor alone?”

“No. External boundary needs a battery as a medium.”

I nodded understandingly. Even in my days several devices could be charged via power outlets, but couldn’t be made to run on a power outlet without a battery. There was a difference in force, power, and frequency.

“You have already given us 48 elements,” I noted. “Means you have a power reserve. How many more can we extract without impairing your functioning?”

The robot gazed at me mistrustfully with its optical sensor. Then it put some device out of its trunk and conducted a more detailed scan. I wondered if it was checking me for idiocy.

My implant didn’t favor excessive humanism either. With a hint, it displayed the diagram of the group’s combat efficiency, preparing to recalculate our current value based on the droid’s response.

“Double margin of safety, true of all Russian Empire technology… It is possible to extract 208 more back-up elements from the edge. Do you… do you want to retain me as a combat unit? I am honored by your offer, but I have to warn you that I can last mere seconds against the Crab.”

“I won’t let you fight. We need you. You have the power of a dump truck. And my boys are sick of sawing fixtures with pieces of iron and removing rusty screws and tearing composites with their bare hands.”

An approving murmur of many voices rose behind me. We really were tired. Like damn destroyers we worked 20 hours a day, tearing our muscle fibers and overwhelming our nervous systems. Just exercising, right.

The next two hours went by quickly. The productivity of group 13, aided by the loyal, motivated servobot, increased tenfold. The bot hauled and lifted heavy items, sharpened weapons, forced in the doors of the cabins we hadn’t yet broken into. It did all this slowly, like a toy with dying batteries, but still.

Terrific prospects opened up for us; we received another neurogun, a vintage broadsword from the Space War One era, a dozen first-aid kits, and a large box of field rations for planetary troops. These blocks had a peculiar taste, but we found them to be sweeter than ambrosia. The other loot was mainly domestic junk. But a plastic chair was like a king’s throne for us.

The dull, post-apocalyptic life suddenly acquired the colors of hope. Our group’s rating increased, moving us closer to the second-to-last space on the list. We could almost eat mercuric chloride and rejoice. But the soldiers looked tense; we still had to battle the Crab. Many would die. Some would die more than once. Our boys had a strong dislike of death. The Virtual Purgatory went beyond the physics of reality; it made you experience all the degrees of pain which numbered far more than 50…

The group’s crafters rolled copper into optimally-shaped cones. We tried to ensure that the demolition charge would have cumulative properties.

I stuffed my pockets with two extra TT cartridges and checked the force field spacesuit’s status again. We had reconfigured it into a front shield mode the best we could. The force field’s density had grown over five times its initial value. It would now cover the more vulnerable areas in a head-on encounter – limbs didn’t count.

This defense was a joke, but better than nothing. If the Crab focused even a single turret on me, my shield would be gone after three seconds. During that time, I would be able to fire six maximally pumped shots.

Was six enough? At surprise close-range fire distance, plasma cloud could burn through a steel sheet a third of an inch thick. But armor composite was no ordinary steel. Firing a hand-held weapon at it made sense only if you aimed for external sensors, or areas with already damaged coating.

That was our plan. Four bomber kamikazes, one gunner, passive traps, and a crowd armed with pieces of iron. We looked like we were hunting a mammoth in the bowels of a spaceship. I would definitely order the group to create cave paintings on the ship’s bulkheads.

The lookout on station four made an alarm go off in the public channel. It was time. The gate would be destroyed within minutes.

"In positions!” I commanded as I activated the encrypted Plan A glyph.

The pre-written orders were sent out to everyone in my subdivision. Such is the headquarters’ job; prepare a scenario for the upcoming battle, taking into consideration all the reserve, optional, and retaliatory actions.

The privates’ implants displayed readiness icons. The tactical map gave me full control of the situation, but would only hinder me now.

I closed all irrelevant windows, leaving only the sighting grid and ten service screens on the very edges of my interface. Then, I dove into my trench on the right flank. My number two – Lina – covered me with a strip of moss, then hid nearby. We had no noncombatant troops; the more targets the Crab faced, the more chances we had of dealing it damage. Although my implant was skeptical; the Crab’s target designation system easily sorted enemies by threat level.

We had come up with a way to get around that; our girls held weapon props constructed of mud, wire, pipes, metal, and a few live batteries. The Crab wouldn’t fall for anything more primitive.

Our plan was very rational; our weakest would play false targets, giving our strongest a chance to run up to the monster and beat it with sticks, and our fastest and nimblest – a chance to plant the adhesive explosives on the Crab's armored body.

As the leader of an authoritarian society, I took upon myself the most important and dangerous mission – firing the only weapon.

Crack! After enduring several thousand blows, the heavy gate in the bulkhead wall finally cracked. The Crab hadn’t just randomly pounded on the gate, but had calculated its every strike to wear down the composite.

“To battle!” a psychologist-engineered glyph appeared on the public channel, instantly activating our bodies’ stress modes.

The Crab sent the deformed hatch flying. It clanged across the hall like the lid of a giant cauldron, knocking down a few unlucky fellows and crushing one soldier lying in ambush. The first markers went out on my commander interface.

I lay, holding my breath and keeping my head down, my body slowly cooking in the nearly boiling water covering the hall floor. I watched the situation through the privates’ implants.

The Crab made a swift and majestic entrance. It scanned the area, freezing for a second as if flaunting its perfect combat design. Why are things made to kill always beautiful? The knives, swords, burnished steel barrels, sublime armor, and the deceptive frailty of space fighters. Why?

The Crab looked damaged, which made sense. To take on an intact droid, we would have needed a fully equipped infantry section. Equipped not with some ancient junk, but standard military CASs or something analogous that was at most two generations older.

Smashed, burned, partially melted, and studded with holes, the Crab horrified us, literally. The Crab had preserved its infrasound generators, but not its upper hemisphere sensors.

Due to that, the tub of slimy mud that crashed down on the monster took it completely by surprise. However, the Crab was very quick to react. Tucking up its front arms, it raced forward, scraping the deck with its belly, its sensors cleaving the water.

The Crab ignored the net; it only took its pseudo-intelligence a few milliseconds to solve a few simple equations and establish that the material strength of the obstacle wasn’t enough to restrain its arms and hinder its mobility.

The girder affixed to the ceiling broke off the locking device and flew at the Crab. With a flick of one of its chelae, the Crab batted the girder away, upsetting yet another one of our plans.

“Charge!” appeared a stylized tsunami glyph, and the soldiers rushed into battle.

The fun began.

The Crab’s reaction rate was phenomenal. It didn’t lag at all, its movements a perfect pattern. It fired its left flank turret sparingly, activating its localizer laser which I hadn’t noticed.

The heavy bot shot forward, clearing a path for itself, easily outrunning the slow humans and reconfiguring the battle positions to its own advantage.

The crowd boldly pressed on, attacking the Crab's most intact side which it had intentionally turned toward them. They drew the bot’s fire, surveillance devices, and processor capacity.

For an instant, one of the Crab’s titanium paws was a few feet away from a camouflaged soldier with an explosive device. The boy was full of initiative and beat the public tactical interface’s recommendation by jumping into action.

Lunging forward, he slapped the crumpled homemade cone right on the bot’s armored joint. Smeared with a sticky substance, the mine firmly attached to the surface. Thanks to our alchemist experimenters, the glue created by boiling down the slugs had turned out wonderfully.

The Crab twitched and knocked the brave fellow’s head off with its other paw. But it had no time to retract its limb, having put all of its multi-toned weight on it.

Kaboom! Came the suppressed explosion. A bright flash followed, and a jet of molten copper burned a hole in the Crab’s arm.

The bot quickly put down its other arm, compensating the loss of its limb and engaging an alternative motion driver. The Crab lost in speed, but gained in rage.

Feeling threatened, the heavy bot no longer tried to save its limited resources. It activated its frontal shield. Its pulse gun turret increased its firing rate until the blinding flashes of laser blended into one deadly beam. The Crab was prepared to let the barrel melt, using up its precious cooling agent and quickly draining its batteries.

We were eight seconds into the battle. Less than half of us were still standing. The Crab’s combat efficiency had decreased by four percent, mostly because of fire unit loss, power circuit load, and barrels overheating.

My implant scrupulously counted the megawatts of energy spent, monitored the Crab’s temperature to the hundredth decimal place, and outlined the damaged armor areas on the 3D diagram of the Crab.

Another soldier rose from underneath the mud with an adhesive mine. His head was bleeding; it looked like he had gotten hit with a metal object by one of us.

The Crab reacted instantly. The cone-shaped mines had already been entered into its primary target register. The heavy bot turned around clumsily, hiding behind its frontal shield and slicing the air with its laser.

The soldier was protected by the force field of his emergency spacesuit. This lengthened his life by several seconds and served as a serious distraction for the Crab. The young man raced forward, pushing out of the way his burning comrades set on fire by the wide-beam laser.

The bot wasn’t used to giving up the initiative to its enemy. Its high-performance AI enabled it to play its own game, to pursue a preemptive tactic and to react more quickly to changes in the situation.

The Crab dealt a blow with its front arm faster than the eye could see. The soldier’s force field gave in and went out. The steel arm impaled him. It was a phantasmagoric sight, a bug sticking an entomologist on a pin.

The soldier’s partner rushed to pick up the mine that had fallen into the water. He didn’t stand a chance, but I was practically indifferent; I was too focused on carrying out my own mission, letting my Alpha-prime manage the battle.

I jumped to my feet. Dirty, bloody water streamed down my body. The moss strip draped from my shoulders like a cape. I had tunnel vision like an attacking predator. I didn’t need a 280-degree field of vision because there was no one to fear around me; I needed only to clearly see my target.

The aiming grid conveniently appeared before my eyes. The Crab’s most damaged flank was facing me. There were hardly any survivors in my area, and the bot had marked it as a “provisional home front.”

The implant highlighted the most vulnerable points where the factory armor was damaged. My primary target – a crumbled armor composite plate covered with tiny cracks – flared brightly before my eyes. This spot must have taken a “froster” beam, followed by a kinetic blow from the pulse gun that fired that beam. It could’ve also been a bullet rotor.

I was safe as a plant in a hothouse while firing the first three shots. The plasma steadily cleaved and melted the defective plate. Feeling the new threat, the bot started turning in my direction, hiding its vulnerable flank and trying to get me in its sights.

I moved with the bot, but in the reverse direction and in a spiral, keeping the damaged flank in view. My implant tried to prolong my life by as many seconds as it could. Its top priority orders cascaded over my interface.

I saw Ilya dangle from the Crab’s arm, delaying the bot by a heartbeat. Lina shot forward like a young she-wolf pouncing on her prey. She jumped and jammed her body between the barrels of the dual pulse guns. The turret's servo drives whirred violently, but couldn’t move carrying an extra 100 pounds. The Crab abandoned its primary trajectory again in order to brush off the bodies with its arms.

My heart missed a beat. I heard the sound of mournful bells. No one knew of this, but I received personal notifications regarding Lina’s every condition, including death.

Vroom-vroom-vroom! My TT worked like clockwork. Twice per second it turned its reaction mass into white-hot plasma and fired it wherever I pointed the barrel.

The beams dove into the Crab’s glowing, crimson interior, drawing geysers of smoke and steam, making molten metal shoot out, and mutilating the bot’s delicate electronic innards.

My implant checked the shots against its diagram of the Crab and attempted to create a current damage model. The reserve power circuit, the left flank fire unit box, and the munitions supply system had almost certainly failed. Most likely, the technical tunnels, the self-repair servers, the defense and active camouflage blocks, the middle connection system, and the waste fuel containers were also damaged. If the fuel containers weren’t empty, then it would soon get extremely hot in our little “haven.” I mean meat-melting-off-the-bones hot. Death by radiation damage is not a pretty one.

Vroom-vroom-vroom! My implant marked the plasma paths. They slowly went from yellow to dark red. The darker they got, the less shots the TT had left. With some practice, I would be able to determine the exact number of firing units left just by these colors, and even the type of ammo that needed replacement.

The Crab was clearly struggling. It moved jerkily, its body quivered, and it emitted pungent smoke. I saw a life support system alert through the pile of combat log messages; the local habitability index had fallen below the critical 15 points.

Nevertheless, the Crab was still fast. It finally moved its most heavily damaged flank out of my firing range, and I opened fire on the next marker. Five shots went to waste; the bot covered the gap in its armor with its upper arm which was designed for close combat and other humanoid actions.

I shot the vulnerable joints lacking force field cover. My last few shots hit a mash of boiling metal and ceramics.

My TT-plasma vibrated, indicating that it needed recharging. I hurriedly began the two-second procedure; gripped the handle, making the empty energy cell pop out. I slipped in the new cell, the last one.

Meanwhile, the Crab surprised me with its maneuver. Unable to handle the close quarter fire, it took a risk; tucked up its left paws and rolled over, moving its mutilated side out of line of fire. Or so I thought.

Aiming at the rolling bot in perplexity, I didn’t immediately realize what was happening. However, the joyous cries of the survivors helped me understand that this tricky breakdancing wasn’t an evasion move, but ordinary agony. The Crab was dying. The plasma inside it had reached the system units and did its dirty work.

Slowly lowering the gun, I looked around. Only four survivors stood amidst the chaos and the piles of dead bodies. Five, including me. Five out of seventy. We had barely made it…

Chapter Eleven

Alarmed voices and beeping came from the area where we had hidden our personal capsules – the perished were respawning. Not everyone came back within a minute, however. Some would have to spend five, ten, or even twenty minutes in the virtual purgatory. That would hurt… a lot. They taught us to protect our lives in the toughest yet most rational manner.

Macarius was the first to run out into the main hall. He looked at me with admiration. Clearly, he hadn’t doubted for a second that I would beat the Crab with one hand tied behind my back.

Macarius rushed over to the vanquished bot. Ignoring the fact that the Crab was still clawing the floor, he jumped on the bot’s back and started dexterously opening all sorts of operational hatches and cracking boxes containing mounted equipment and SPTA sets. He kept looking around thievishly as he swiftly hid various gear in his stretchy pockets.

Smiling, I nodded encouragingly. Mac would neither take too much nor trade anything for vodka. If he withheld anything, it was for a good purpose.

A thin electronic surveillance probe emerged from around a corner. The quarantine bot who had been hiding in our depot decided to assess the battlefield for itself. It didn’t trust the victorious cries on the public channels.

After a few seconds of observing, the droid gave an alarmed squeak, then turned on its blinker and raced toward us. It stopped next to a badly beaten soldier who was critically wounded and already written off by the tactical calculator as “reversibly incapacitated.” We didn’t have the resources to provide him medical care.

But the medbot believed otherwise. It changed its frontal shield configuration, turning it into tender force field hands. Lifting the wheezing man off the ground, careful not to brush against his chest which had gotten pressed into his spine, the droid lay him on the unfolded cloth that was our surgical site. Tucking up its running gear, the bot let its belly sink into the shallow water, then transformed into an immobile device.

“A company-level PSH,” whispered our male nurse enthusiastically. God knows how he had survived the global massacre.

“A portable surgical hospital?” I clarified, quickly uploading the performance characteristics of RE’s auxiliary detachments to my RAM.

“Exactly. All of the Russian Empire technology of certain classes is dual-purpose. In times of a big war, each unit was subject to draft for reinforcement of irregular troops. Therefore, a peacetime quarantine bot is fully capable of providing medical support to at least one company of citizen soldiers during mobilization. When conflicts aren’t so intense, it can serve a whole battalion. You just have to change its supply cartridges and the fuel elements in its reactor block.”

As if confirming his words, an entire wreath of info glyphs lit up above the PSH’s glassy tent: Surgery in progress. Warning. Noncombatants. Energy deficit. Missing warehouse connection link.

A tiny nursebot came out through the force field. The medbot had kept it safely concealed within its belly all this time. The nursebot was like a steel spider with a blinking red-green medical service beacon. It scanned the space around it with its sensors.

Lifting up its limbs, it scurried from body to body, diagnosing each as either dead or in critical condition and ranking them in order from least to most heavily injured.

Twice came the hiss of its pneumo-needle injector – the nursebot euthanized the hopelessly wounded.

Such humaneness made me wince. I quickly shifted my gaze to my internal interface. The system message icon blinked, begging me to open the mailbox and delight in the rewards.

Swiping my eyes over the message pictogram, I strained my brain just a bit, generating a mental command: Open. The interface was intuitive. Most functions could be carried out by simply wishing: delete, copy, view, or listen. Entertain me also worked. The implant knew its bearer well and would offer the most relevant forms of entertainment: online chess, call girls, legal nonsense, or a ticket to a new production of the naked theater.

I couldn’t help but smile; the system had marked our battle a dark red, signifying the difficulty level “nightmare,” and multiplied our reward points by a bonus coefficient.

Status and message windows swiftly obscured my view. Going by memory, I felt for a lump of moss that had been prepared for drying and sat down. Working with the interface was best done while lying or sitting, otherwise I could fall down at some point; my brain lost the coordinates of the space around me. Either my implant hadn’t gotten fully integrated yet, or this was a side effect of being in outer space with Marat's artificial gravity. Or maybe it was just a matter of time and practice.

I skimmed the system logs: “Commander’s burden: you’ve pulled your division into a hopeless battle. Chances of winning - 1:12. If you lose, you will receive demerit points calculated by the simplified lowest-ranking space staff formula: 10% of the group's aggregate sanctions (114 points will be taken off your RC if the entire division is killed).

My heart missed a beat. My health monitor squeaked in alarm, highlighting the rising blood adrenaline level.

I wouldn’t be wearing corporal stripes anymore if we had lost. I would’ve become the lowest-ranking group member, the assistant janitor.

The Amazonians sure had a rough way of weaning us from thoughtless frontal attacks. Those of us who were no good at quick, tactical thinking would never see an officer’s comet on their chevrons. Those without strategic planning skills would never become part of the senior space staff.

As my implant kindly explained, eight out of ten missions had to be successful in order to stay above zero. Otherwise, you would go down in rank due to “being inadequate at your current post.” Naturally, the main military AI took into account more than just victories and all-on-one attacks.

The brave soldiers who had covered the main unit as it retreated received mission credit despite their KIA (killed in action) status and the seemingly crazy one-to-a-hundred ratio. The goal was to help the common cause.

I shook my head. I was lucky this time, but had to be more careful in the future. I went back to flipping the virtual pages.

“Credit received for secondary subject: ‘basic skill in handling hand-held plasma weapons.” Qualities entered into RC. Standard points for secondary basic level subject: +60.”

“Credit received for primary subject of alternative development track: ‘Commanding interservice team in real combat conditions.’ Qualities entered into RC. Standard points for primary basic level subject: +120.”

“Status alert! Enough points gained for promotion: Master Corporal. Connecting to low-order stream of the AI Hannibal. Confirmation received, new rank approved.”

“Congratulations on your new patch! Many annulets to you, Master Corporal!”

“Single-stage personnel losses have exceeded 25% - it is recommended to withdraw from battle to restore the group’s morale and strength.”

“Single-stage personnel losses have exceeded 50% - group rated unfit for action! Mandatory order: ‘Withdraw unit from battle. Permitted further losses – up to 10% of remaining personnel.’”

“Single-stage personnel losses have exceeded 90% - group virtually destroyed. Group leader’s demerit points: -114. Other commanding officers’ demerit points: -25.”

“You have failed to withdraw unit from battle. Demerit points issued to your RC: -30.”

“Status alert! Insufficient proficiency level to maintain current rank: Master Corporal. Automatic demotion, personal XP coefficient: 0.9.”

I merely shrugged. I didn’t get a chance to get used to my new rank, therefore this didn’t feel like a loss.

Honestly, I was impressed by the event density and the rate of change of situational factors. We 21st century people had naïvely considered ourselves overburdened by mass media, ads, internet, and other junk that we were constantly bombarded with.

But this general trend had survived into the future – every century, the amount of information only increased. Now, in the 28th century, it had reached the maximum daily amount allowed by the public health ministry - five terabytes per day for category C and D citizens.

We had an awfully difficult time getting used to it. Our implants were our crutches. By default, we accepted whatever courses of action they generated. It was simply impossible to process the incoming information without them.

For instance, the simplest action was conversing with a subordinate. During such a conversation, the implant monitored dozens of factors, such as the subordinate’s body temperature, respiration rate, blood pressure, and pulse. It watched the direction of his gaze, determining which part of his brain was currently activated. It interpreted his fine motor movements, analyzing his tone of voice and checking his claims against personal and public databases.

The implant did all this in order to highlight the dialogue window with the appropriate color every time. The color was determined by the validity of the information, its level of importance for the implant bearer, the speaker’s attitude toward the bearer and toward what the bearer said…

And there were many more parallel processes. They generated reports and required the bearer’s response. There were countermeasures for the conversation: disabling facial muscles, flattening of emotions, etc.

In short, this future world was a cesspool of information.

Lina distracted me from my thoughts. She was squinting happily, her night vision slightly illuminating her eyes from beneath.

“Two medals just like that!” she said. “A ‘David and Goliath’ for the mission victory, and ‘Sergeant Sailor’ for my self-sacrifice that enabled us to complete the mission. What did you get?”

I checked my personal record tab. “‘Sun Tzu,’ same thing as your Goliath but for the subdivision commander, plus an honorable distinction for the most efficient shooting in the unit.”

Lina smiled encouragingly, passing a hand over my cheek. As if to wipe some dirt off, right. I could feel all of her emotions. She was a storm on a tight leash. Do we have a parlor around here?

“You’re my commander,” Lina whispered with a hint of pride, then looked to the side and immediately changed her attitude.

A worried-looking Murom was hurrying toward us, raising a wave.

Pouting her little lips, Lina complained fretfully: “I already have 240 Corporal points! When am I going to get promoted?”

I firmly shook Murom’s hand, nodding in response to her statement, “You need 210 more to become a master corporal. And don’t look at me like that! I haven’t received that promotion either. I mean I did, but instantly lost it. A commander’s responsible for his unit – you take the tops, and I take the roots of the crops. And it won’t always be carrots.”

Murom nodded understandingly. He too had gotten penalized for infantry losses. Wrinkling his nose, he rubbed a huge crimson spot on his chest – the stigma from the pulse gun that had killed him – and asked, “Paul, we need to capture new premises. It’s getting impossible to breathe in here: there’s a smokescreen, oxygen combustion, and hardly any moss left. The oxygen is disappearing faster than it’s being restored.”

When he said that, I finally noticed the strain on my lungs. They worked like forge bellows in a frantic rush, trying to process the maximum possible amount of air in order to acquire life-giving oxygen.

My implant warned me that I had a little over three hours before losing consciousness. We needed to hurry as the others surely had less time.

Lina frowned in perplexity: “But the bulkhead gate is open. Why’s there no oxygen inflow? Is that another stupid game abstraction?”

Murom shook his head, nodding at the gate, “Take a closer look. There's a light heat haze distorting the objects; means there’s a force field. An emergency pressurization backup system has turned on because the habitability index of our quarters is lower than on the other side.”

I rubbed my hands together with delight. A high HI, working systems – all this made the new room even more exciting. I doubted that it was another stump of a reserve hallway for technical servobots.”

I nodded to Muromets, “Put your men on it. Take some girders and squeeze the shit out of that shield. Macarius!”

“Yup?” the messy-haired technician dove out from under a huge hatch in the Crab’s rear.

Brightly colored stains covered his hands. I couldn’t tell if it was oil, hydraulic liquids, refrigerating fluid, or nanite compound.

I snapped my fingers, “We need weapons and power. What can you get from that junk?”

Macarius scratched his dirty nose, then enumerated with a serious look, “The Crab has a standard wartime design; 40-megawatt battery kit made of 1,500 elements. I checked, and some are beyond repair as they have exceeded the number of maximum recharge cycles. But most are usable. We have all the power we need. As for weapons, the localizer laser’s inaccessible because of its non-standard unprofessional design; it’s simply welded up. The right-flank turret looks repairable, but I don’t know how long the repairing will take. The back turret is gone; the barrel bundle’s melted. The one on the left flank is fine. It was the one firing at us, and when the Crab rolled over, the turret assumed its resting position to avoid damage.”

I smiled, We’ll kick the enemies’ asses! Having rapid-firing pulse guns of company caliber – one tenth of an inch – was a serious advantage. We could even waste someone in a combat armored spacesuit. It would take an outrageous amount of firing units, but still.

I asked, “How long will it take to reconfigure the pulse guns to hand-held weapons?”

Raising a brow, Macarius kept reflexively removing screw bolts from the Crab and hiding them in his pocket. “Hand-held? Well, the total weight of two pulse guns is about 90 pounds. We’d need to put it on wheels, a tripod, or even a flat-bottom boat. But other than that, to extract the main block and the munitions supply system, unplug it from the onboard circuit, and connect it to a local power circuit… I’d say I can do it in about three to four hours. If…” Macarius paused as he cast an unkind look at the group’s other mechanics creeping up to the Crab. “If I’m not interrupted. They’ve extracted only six percent of the archives, and already they have swelled heads like they’re experts! Buncha clumsy beavers!”

I smiled, “All right, chill. No one will get in your way. On the contrary, take anyone you need as your assistant. Just get it done asap.”

“That’s exactly what I want. My lifecycle in this environment is 32 minutes, and getting lower still. Wanna let me get to work, Commander?”

Swallowing hard, I nodded. I kept forgetting about how elite my implant was. I alone had three hours of life left. The rest would go to the purgatory a lot sooner, and for a much longer period of time.

To boost the group’s morale, I allowed them to open ten food rations ancient as dinosaur eggs, but not any less tasty because of it. For the next five minutes, the group was extremely excited as they traded and raffled off the food items: jam for stewed meat, chocolate for creamy chicken soup. We had taken out the cigarettes and vitamins beforehand and distributed them between the leader’s reserve stocks and the meager pharmacy goods.

A heavy infantry work team squeezed by, heading to the large girder that had utterly failed as a trap. We would use it as a battering ram again.

In a minute, the boys started rhythmically pounding away at the soft force field. It was an amusing sight; my implant assessed the situation, measuring the force of the blows and adorning the view with a game-like interface.

The force field slowly faded as the girder knocked virtual HP points out of it. A shirker was highlighted with a low productivity marker. My combat Alpha-prime implant was any foreman's dream come true.

I looked around. The group was becoming better organized. Everyone knew their places and no one tried to take a vote regarding orders. The group has accepted the hierarchy, at least temporarily.

The girls quickly and skillfully sorted out the mess the Crab had made. Each one tried to get the heaviest possible chunk in order to improve her stats at least a little. Even those most unfamiliar with online games and futuristic nano-medicine understood the leveling up system.

The mechanics wrinkled their noses and grumbled, but nevertheless obeyed Macarius’s orders. With ten mechanics, things went faster. I could already see a pile of composite armor units growing next to the Crab. The mechanics disemboweled the munitions supply assembly belt line, loading the pulse gun with fresh balls.

Macarius looked unwell, his face turning green as he greedily sucked in air to no avail. He had either breathed in too much chemicals while inside the Crab, or he was just a weak fellow.

Without hesitation, I gave the go-ahead to use the emergency oxygen cartridges. The group really needed them, and this was no time to be greedy. I used to finish videogames with a bag full of elixirs and scrolls, wondering afterward why I had been so frugal, obsessing over every vial.

Explosive expansion, swiftly moving toward better loot, rooms with higher HIs, battling real enemies. Could we not handle a face-off with the first-year cyber-infantry girls? Were we men of the primitive 21st century or trembling stinkers?

The brainwashing on this matter was conducted as regularly as possible. The soldiers weren’t very fond of the Amazonians to begin with, and their desire to put the gender pyramid in its correct position comforted them.

The 7th group psi-sniper girls were the only ones whom the boys felt affection for. It was nearly impossible not to fall in love with someone who has transmitted their first orgasm ever into your brain along with the excitement of possessing a man's body.

Only those whose brains could generate epsilon waves were recruited as snipers. Aristos weren’t admitted on principle, and the subsidized housing girls would never be able to afford a real man from the Lupanar.

My interface gave a ring, distracting me from my thoughts. It informed me that our quarters had expanded a little, which resulted in a few points added to my record card. Apparently, a work team of ours had successfully finished the quarantine bot’s work– breaking the door of another cabin.

I hurried over to the cabin. New rooms were like a lottery. You could get an indestructible virus and take eight hours to die of a terrible diarrhea, or win a jackpot and find wonder boots and a TT gun and defeat a Crab.

Judging by the enthusiastic gasps of the crowd and the sunlight seeping into the dead ship’s morbidly dark interior, this new cabin was very valuable and unusual. The boys were disciplined enough to stay out of the cabin until I gave an order. But it was still hard to force my way through the crowd in the doorway.

Once I reached the doorway, a rapturous gasp escaped me. The system was clearly responding to our group’s increased rating and improving our chances of finding new “drop” items as the former gamers termed it.

It looked like we had found the medical module's recreational area. The expensive synthesis panels on the ceiling still emitted a soft, calming light. The walls and floor were overgrown with verdure. It wasn’t that annoying moss this time, but a mix of grapevines, flowers, and even a tiny yet wide birch tree. Judging by the sniffling, some of the soldiers felt a little nostalgic.

The soft couch and lordly armchairs were most enticing, promising heavenly pleasure and zero-gravity awesomeness. Holopictures adorned the walls, emitting sounds of rustling grass, breaking waves, and majestic waterfalls.

There was also a small bar, meaning we would have a drunk party soon. We drooled at the sight of the class “deluxe-limited” food synthesizer.

“We’ll live, boys!” someone behind me whispered enthusiastically.

Our Medic replied condescendingly, with irony and his usual skepticism which made him quite intolerable; “We have invaded a closed ecosystem. Look; the habitability index of our old quarters rose by four percent just now. Now think how much the HI of this paradise has dropped. It surely had a model 21 percent oxygen before. So, we better make a salad out of these plants at once before they wilt away.”

I frowned. The Medic was a huge pessimist, but he was right this time.

I took off my boots, not wanting to bring dirt into the recreational area. Taking a step forward, I waved a message off my interface, which notified me of a “newly located increased regeneration point.”

Surveying the area, I took a note of all the goodies and small items, including a porn mag on the couch. The naked beauties no longer moved, nor whispered invitingly, and had ceased to produce large doses of pheromones. The disposable battery sticker on the mag had died after the first two years of continuous use.

I looked behind the bar, took five alcohol bottles and ten pouches of nuts off the shelves, and passed them along through the doorway. I added a chocolate bar to the holiday basket to make the girls happy. Then, I carefully returned using the exact same route - treading on the still unripe grapevines would have been utterly barbaric.

I ordered in a dictatorial tone of voice: “Give me a large oxygen cartridge. Calculate the delivery volume taking the area’s cubic capacity into account. Temporarily seal the recreational area. Use plastic, mud, anything. We can’t let these plants die. Move! We’ll celebrate our victory in the evening.”

Chapter Twelve

Two hours later, I stood in the middle of the main hall with my foot on the armored mug of the Crab. I looked like an ancient hero worthy of a statue. Judging by Lina’s proud and approving looks, she agreed.

Mechanics bustled nearby, attaching the heavy pulse gun bundle to an improvised sled. The sled consisted of a capsule lid, pipes for runners, optical fiber traction belts, and a camouflage woven out of moss and mud. Our available tools and materials were limited, but we compensated for it with our enthusiasm and our Russian keenness of wit.

The rest were jealous of the mechanics; the latter worked in the very center of the hall where the ribbed regenerative cartridge consumed carbon dioxide and produced oxygen. They could breathe easily, almost comfortably.

The habitability index rose by nine points, but the cartridge burned away incredibly fast, lasting only two hours.

The rest of the group had a more difficult time. Even moss died in the most faraway corners, peeling off in layers, rolling up into airtight tubes and hibernating until better times. Our alchemist was already studying this new lifeform, admiringly cutting the colorful tubes and stuffing them with any and all available ingredients.

It turned out that the pupated moss was edible. Moreover, it had a rather pleasant flavor reminiscent of lightly-salted raw potatoes. It was delicious given our circumstances. The girls carried rolls of moss and plastic on trays to all the working soldiers.

The group cast greedy looks at the improvised minibar as they chewed. There were five round-bellied bottles comfortably hiding inside the safest niches. Two contained whisky, the rest contained cognac, vodka, and something called “Martian Elitic.” I had no idea what that thick blue liquid was, but I saw the percent on the label and the ad slogan proudly stating that the liquor is produced from real Martian dry field and that its surrogate mass percentage is no more than 98 percent.

The 3D quality mark spun in circles, occasionally unfolding into an ad window and promising a lifetime discount on all of the brand’s products for those who voluntarily installed a third-degree hypnotic suggestion for “slight cravings for all things MarEli.”

One soldier sat under a wall with a glassy stare. He had carelessly connected to the dangerous label and downloaded the “cravings” script. By law, voluntary downloading was considered consenting to the installation. Now, the soldier’s military firewall was barely holding back the onset of the commercial mnemoprogram. Corporations were able to hire the best psi-programmers, so the threat level of ads couldn't be overestimated.

The girls hammered away on the leftovers of the emergency pressurization force field. The guys had been dictatorially relieved of the ram girder. Now, the heavy infantrymen exchanged puzzled looks while the logistics girls carried armature to and fro in an orderly fashion. No one wanted to fall behind in leveling up.

The force field had mere minutes left. My implant measured the force field’s strength in key points and quite accurately assessed the effector overload along with the generator failure during the next ten minutes.

Boom... Boom… Boom…

Wiping sweat off their brows, the girls blew their bangs out of their eyes, and charged again and again, ignoring the men sitting by the walls.

Finally, the force field blinked and vanished. The girls didn’t slow down in time and tumbled into the new hall illuminated with red emergency lights.

Rat-tat-tat! came the sound of a rapid-fire plasma gun, creating a bloody haze and sending lumps of charred flesh flying back into our hall.

The logistics unit status markers all went out, except for one which now had a WIA (wounded in action) glyph blinking over it.

Bang! went the sighting shot, putting an end to our female unit.

The girls received five to forty minutes of respawn time. Boy, was this their unlucky day.

Murom peeked inside the new space by sticking a chunk of polished metal on a bent handle through the doorway – an improvised mirror. “Counter-boarding turret,” he noted. “Four barrels, the lower left one is warped. No force field. Armor significantly damaged. In the far corner, there’s a service drone holding some short-barreled weapon. Its running gear is melted; it’s completely immobile. I think that’s it.”

He gave me an inquiring look, expecting orders. I had gained a certain authority among the group. Receiving the screenshots Muromets sent me, I ran them through my implant’s analytical module and became thoughtful.

My Alpha-prime brushed aside the plan that involved storming the place while using emergency spacesuits as CASs; the three plasma barrels would shoot through the suits’ force fields in a second. Loss of soldiers, gear, and weapons was guaranteed, and there was practically zero chance of suppressing the turret.

My implant recommended to close the PSH and hide behind the quarantine bot’s passive shield to destroy the enemy’s defense weapons. The firing effect time of the plasma gun was “gun2x0.25” – two to four seconds.

I looked at the field hospital tent, and just in time; Nika, our bot driver, exited through the force field. She had lost both legs in the battle with the Crab. My implant’s tactical module had deemed her injury critical at that time, written her off as a loss, and put up a timer that counted down how many minutes she had left to live “2:46…45…44…” We had absolutely no means of treating such wounds.

But the droid came to her aid, saving her from suffering in the purgatory. She thus retained the small amount of points she had on her RC. Pet controllers had a hard time leveling up without pets.

A green number seven indicated the hospital’s current patient count. Virtually clicking the seven pulled up a more detailed report: names of those in recovery, injury facts, and full recovery times. The last was the most important factor at the moment.

The PSH wasn’t nearly as high-level as a military planetary hospital. Most tasks took it ten times longer. The PSH had approximately 17 more hours of work left. We had neither the time nor the desire to wait that long.

We were running out of oxygen cartridges. The moss degenerated, turning into much-needed food, but not giving us anything to breathe. The waterfall kept getting hotter; the poor slugs fell from the ceiling like gifts from heaven, their shells red like those of boiled crawfish. But it was hard collecting them as they floated around. The water literally boiled by the waterfall. However, this made the slugs more flavorful and improved their healing properties. The group jokingly demanded beer and dill.

The overall situation led me to conclude that we were being squeezed out of this “nursery” noob location and encouraged to travel to upper decks. Amenities, comfort, and sedentism were out of question. We had to keep moving like nomads with minimal belongings and maximum self-sufficiency.

With mixed feelings, I refused my Alpha-prime’s rational plan and announced my decision. It involved using the Crab’s factory plates as armor for our pulse gun sled, turning the sled into a variant of the 45 mm anti-aircraft gun – a lowcannon with an anti- shrapnel shield. This weapon was notoriously known as “Goodbye, Motherland,” its title hinting at the sad fate of its crew.

My implant quickly assessed the shield along with the most reasonable armoring angles, multiplied the modest physical stats by the disorderliness of our untrained soldiers, and displayed the most likely outcome of the battle: a three-to-one chance of winning.

This was a good number, but too small. I requested volunteers for diversionary tactics. They would almost surely die, but could receive bonus points and the elite “Sergeant Sailor” chevron.

Curiously enough, over a dozen guys and almost all the girls volunteered. What motivated them – the passion for collecting medals, the desire to level up at any cost, or simply boredom – I don’t know. I entered them into the battle equation and was satisfied with the new prediction: an 89 percent chance of victory.

Lina worked well with Mac. As the hardware operator, she would be firing the pulse gun in manual mode, aiming the two heavy barrels without the help of servo drives fine-tuned to the last micron. Her slim frame allowed us to significantly decrease the shield area and keep the sled light.

The girl examined the control handles and familiarized herself with the aiming mirror; we hadn’t made holes for sights because plasma tended to spill over any kind of barriers and penetrate all sorts of openings.

Macarius spun around the sled, letting his eyes linger on the girl’s curves as he daydreamed. Being part of a mixed crew devoid of moral standards did its part. Besides, who knows what drugs they had injected the boy with in the virtual capsule. It was hard to forget the “yearly milking” clause…

I wasn’t jealous. Jealousy is weakness, when a better, worthier man lacks of self-confidence. Women instantly feel it, especially Lina. The best response was a condescending smile and reciprocal provocative actions. Your partner must never be sure that you won’t leave. It keeps both sides energetic, leaving no room for old track pants or dressing gowns with missing buttons.

After a half hour of an all-out effort, the sled was combat-ready. Pulling off my face the cowboy handkerchief that protected my lungs from steam and spores, I addressed our striking force with a speech: “Soldiers! For the loot, living space, and rare stripes on personal records! Many points to your RCs! To battle!”

And the group charged. Like mad hares they jumped into the ominous red gateway and dashed around the cabin, taking unpredictable turns as they evaded the deadly plasma shower. Their dance of death could have looked chaotic only to an outside observer. Their implants were united, successfully taking them in different directions to divert the aiming and focus systems’ attention away from the sled.

We pushed the sled in the cabin last. The enemy gun was in the most inconvenient position at that moment – busy finishing off the soldier in the far corner of the hall.

When the pulse turret finally opened close-quarter concentrated fire on the sled, it took a quarter of a second to find the target, evaluate the threat level, and change the target designation. It then took one more second to turn its barrels while going through its mandatory refrigerating fluid cooling cycle. During this time, our gun fired around 40 hard core balls, destroying the enemy’s already damaged armor. The watered-down uranium greedily sunk its teeth into the delicate electronic innards of the plasma gun.

Vrooom! the shells traveling with supersonic speed hissed like bumblebees. They chopped the electronics, smashing the servo drives and making the metal parts spark.

Ding! my implant gave a tinkle, notifying me of the destruction of the target which the system had marked as “very difficult.”

Bang! Bang! Bang! I fired into the dark gateway, hurrying to shoot off the service droid’s arm holding the ancient laser gun. If Lina switched to the droid, she would make mincemeat of it. No “Lego” fan would ever put it back together after that.

Ding! My interface gave a tinkle again, indicating that the hall was all clear and suggesting that we plant our flag.

Lowering the still-hot TT gun, I found Murom looking at me inquiringly. He had prudently stayed out of the battle; if he died in the next 24 hours, his stay in the purgatory would last 20 minutes. And who would want to have to live through 1,200 seconds of having your teeth grinded off with a rusty file and red-hot needles driven under your fingernails? And this allegory doesn’t accurately portray what we had to endure in the virtual dump. Three hundred percent of pain was “actually overboard,” as our inveterate gamer Alex Bubna liked to say. Even now he spent most of his free time crafting, making a deck of cards out of plastic sheets.

I shook my head in response to Murom’s look: “We wait until our fallen warriors respawn. They will plant the flag with us officers. They’ve earned it, and it’s important to level up your top soldiers first – those who stand out from the crowd in terms of spirit, body, or rank.”

Murom nodded in accord. We were the generation raised by smartphones. We have first-hand knowledge of what is a clan tank, a raid damager, and what role a guild’s top officers play.

Disobeying my orders, the PSH search beetle dove into the gateway. The next second, it peeped in alarm, locating a critically wounded soldier, then gave a droning sound as it activated its force field generator, forming a stretcher and preparing to transport the new patient.

In a minute, the beetle came back, dragging a cocoon containing the soldier. I could see the frightened Ara gaping at us from within the turbid, bloody bubble. The black foam from his busted nanobank bubbled on his stomach. There was an open-end hole in the right side of his chest. Our hero had apparently thrown himself under the laser fire.

Following the cocoon with my eyes, I scratched my brow with a dirty finger. I wasn’t used to this priority system for ranking the wounded. We 21st century humans usually left the lightly wounded to take care of themselves, had the surgeons working on those with medium wounds, and gave the heavily wounded to the junior medical staff to basically play the roulette with fate. The painful truth of statistics dictated this system. If you spent too much time on a heavily injured patient, half of your medium injury patients would themselves slip into the heavily injured category.

But here, it was the other way around. If a wound wasn’t critical, the individual’s implant would take care of it, or keep its bearer alive for long enough. Therefore, those requiring professional assistance were primarily the ones whose life support system was powerless and desperately sent SOS signals via the broadband medical channel.

As we awaited our diversionists’ respawn, we studied their logs. The HI indices screamed out at us – an entire 39 percent! We also carefully studied the loot: layers of precious moss, eight corpses of various ranks, and unknown mechanisms in the center of the hall. And for dessert, there were large safe-like cells dotting three of the four walls like honeycombs.

Alexander Alexandrovich, our supercargo – God knows why they had stuck him in our motley crew of pilots and heavy infantry – easily recognized the module's purpose: “Main caliber ammo chamber. I swear on my foot wraps, they’ve shoved a tunneler of at least a 300-millimeter caliber in here!”

I frowned, “Yeah, shoved. And more than one; the barrels’ channels pass through the ship’s central axis. Marat’s specs are free access. Tell me this; is this cellar adjacent to the medical module? What about detonations?”

Alex dismissed the matter, “What’s to detonate? There’s nothing there but solid transuranium projectile shells. At magnetic accelerator speeds, the shell’s mass is what determines the outcome, not the explosive materials. The energy emitted in the event of colliding with an enemy ship equals that released in a nuclear explosion. E = mc2 is my guess.”

Alex had recently turned 50 years old, therefore his familiarity made me knit my brow. Nevertheless, I continued to press him for information: “Decipher this screenshot. What do you see? What’s this mechanism in the center, and those cells in the walls?”

“It’s simple. In the center are the force field clutches, the lifter carousel, and the high-speed loading drums. The cells are ammo storage, highly radioactive. In the event of nearby explosions or module damage, I wouldn’t allow them to become compressed into a single bundle. It would be much more than their critical mass.”

I nodded. It was clear to me that this chamber would be a pain in the ass. Its benefits were questionable, and if its air-tightness failed, we would all die. Not very quickly, but very painfully.

In terms of loot, the corpses underneath the moss were our best bet. Judging by their huge size, they wore hollow spacesuits. We were in desperate need of such gear.

I could hear Macarius swearing nearby. The turret had damaged his creation; the plasma that had gotten on the front plate of the sled had made the right barrel so hot that it turned white. This rendered the weapon asymmetric. It no longer passed the internal self-test, displaying a whole page of errors and asking to be connected to a fully equipped repair stand.

Scowling, Macarius promised to bypass the factory settings by replacing the damaged barrel with the spare one from the Crab’s second weapon emplacement. By now, the Crab looked like a half-eaten carcass with is open belly, supporting girders sticking out like ribs, and tight coils of many-colored innards soaked in technical fluids.

It was easier to breathe now. The oxygen circulated, raising the HI to a bearable 24 percent and lowering the temperature from that of a killer Russian bathhouse to that of low-power Turkish hammams.

The layers of luxurious moss that had been breeding uncontrollably in our hall swiftly converted carbon dioxide into much-needed oxygen. Having mutated because of background radiation, the plants now bent to the floor under the weight of their black berries.

Our hall gained new scents and colors: ozone, bright mold, and nacreous pollen granting cheerfulness and rendering our fields of vision dangerously narrow. Our most advanced economic executives named the pollen “pure native coffee” and filled all available containers with it.

Finally, the last of our group respawned. The boys and girls looked unwell. Even the last minute before their reincarnation didn’t help. The rapid relaxation only partially revived the mind and hardly washed away the memories of the purgatory. It thus upheld the main guideline; dying without orders is allowed, but extremely scary.

Some of the respawned kept their chin up, however. Those who had received the status “death for the good of the Empire” saw the new side of the purgatory, which was almost like heaven. They enjoyed a 40-minute vacation by a tropical lagoon with warm white sand and fast native women who could’ve made the grade as Miss Universe.

I could only shake my head disapprovingly. We were being trained like Japanese kamikazes: to display implicit obedience, to be an organized team in battle, and to sacrifice ourselves if needed or if ordered to do so. All out of anti-ship missiles? Ram the enemy! You’re riding a hundred tons of composite material traveling at one hundredth of the speed of light. Giving a Bumblebee and a single pilot to vanquish a first-line ship with a crew of 2,000 is always acceptable for a naval commander.

Picking out all the chosen ones, I gave the go-ahead; It’s looting time, gang! They’ve earned it: another honorary stripe, a handful of points added to their RCs, and setting an example for the passive and the weak-willed.

We entered the bunker, trying to step only on those patches of floor which the plasma hadn’t reached. For some time now, we had been careful not to tread on any flora or organic matter, thus protecting our limbs from poisonous thorns and carnivorous plants. Getting a few million spores of the scarlet moss in a trivial scratch on your ankle was a most exotic way to die.

The boys and girls sat in a circle in the center. They carefully tried the berries from the mossy raspberry canes, then started swiftly popping them in their mouths.

My implant factored in the group head count and promised to plant our flag within six minutes. I walked around the massive reloading machine and found a panel for the officer on duty behind it. In the lopsided operator chair sat a senior lieutenant gunner in a perfectly white hollow spacesuit.

He had no visible wounds. Most likely, this officer had been killed with something subtler than steel: a nanite attack via communication systems, a remote hacking of his implant’s life-support modules, or a beam of intense radiation that instantly fried his flesh and made his blood boil.

The deadman’s spacesuit was in pristine condition. A lettuce green marker glimmered on his status chevron, depicting diagrams pleasant to the eye. The microreactor was turned down and barely smoldered. The supply barrels were almost full; the dead man had never taxed his life-support systems. The lettuce green external cleaning nanite patch still crawled over the composite, thoroughly polishing the anti-laser coating.

There was a heavy military “Falcon” in the sturdy holster on his thigh. Although this short-barreled firearm was quite useless in a modern-day battle with a storm trooper in a CAS or an army drone, it still gave its owner a chance.

The thick corrugated handle contained a screened magazine that held only four very expensive bullets created at the peak of technological progress. This tandem-type ammo boasted tips sharp enough to penetrate a force field. The gun’s hollow charge was capable of burning through a standard armor plate with a five-foot thickness. The Falcon’s performance characteristics looked more modest when measured against a composite kit; a few holes in the abdomen wouldn’t stop a cyber-mod, but still…

Unable to resist the temptation, I looked around thievishly, took the holster off the corpse, and pulled out the massive Falcon. It was fully loaded, with no spare clip. No identification was needed to use it.

Let the group complain all they want. The Falcon wasn’t for common battles or chaotic fire on swift janitor servobots. It was a last-chance trump card for a soldier with nerves of steel.

I pressed the holster to my thigh, feeling the force field belts wrap around my leg. I slowly moved my leg, allowing the belts to adjust to my movements and assume a secure position on my body. At last, all mine!

My interface gave a quiet tinkle, indicating that the chamber had been seized. My RC manager erupted with the triumphant ringing of virtual coins, awarding me bonus points for everything: the HI increase, area growth, leading a successful operation, completing a mandatory and an optional tactical mission, and finishing the side quest “Seaman gunner fate.” I received a load of chevrons of all three levels.

The admins awarded the group members a separate promotional booster: ten points per student, and a disgraceful, mandatory sticker on the shoulder, which we aptly nicknamed “Bilge.”

The group chat filled with unusually many voices; the group compared their rewards. I sensed that there would be more volunteers for the next operation. Leveling up was everything in the Amazonians' world. Your level would determine your rank and physical stats by the time you completed your courses. Everyone created their own starting position in the army.

If you shirked your work, you would end up a private with a negative balance on your RC and get the most beat up old fighter to go on a one-way mission. And you would have no one to blame but yourself. You would be your own wooden robot.

The group was getting more and more disciplined; no one wanted to get punished for stealing. The soldiers slowly and carefully inspected the chamber, staying out of the trophy team’s way as the latter collected loot and made an inventory of the items found. The most distinguished members would get first priority in choosing trophies during our evening get-together. I, by the way, had already used up my “first night right;” the Falcon’s weight felt good on my leg.

I nodded to a group of official looters, giving them permission to drag the body off the operator seat. The deadman’s hands were slightly raised, his fingers wide apart as if he were a pianist playing allegro.

To faster process the array of incoming information, the gunner activated all possible interfaces, including gesture links and a virtual keyboard.

The panel didn’t notice that it had lost its operator. The 3D screen effectors remained minimized. The protective layer merely blinked, trying to cover the extrahazardous sensory fields.

Alex Alexandrovich came up from behind and said sympathetically, “It’s out of power. Should I turn around its generator?”

I raised a brow in surprise, “For real? Where would you insert a crank handle?”

With his usual groaning, our supercargo squatted down next to the side panel and probed the intricate pattern of system ports and flaps.

Clank-clank… The “eternal” latches easily gave in, moving aside the phosphor plate marked with a “power” pictogram.

Even a 21st century person could recognize the contents: a heavy handwheel for starting the dynamo with an incredible output-input ratio.

After fifty revolutions, the accumulator’s charge bar climbed to a modest two percent. That was just enough to fully activate the panel. The effect exceeded our expectations by far.

The cube-shaped 3D screens opened soundlessly. The emergency lighting came on. A niche flew open, revealing a stirring service droid barely recognizable underneath a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.

On my interface, a detection signal blinked, announcing the discovery of a new carrier frequency. “Software AI of subsidiary main caliber casemate of HSC Marat. System in battle alarm state! Command status: KIA. Searching for connection links with higher posts: ‘standby time limit exceeded…’”

I heard the warriors of group 13 rejoice over every loot item: ZIG-plasma – “Hooray!” A light CAS Arctic fox – “Praise the gods!” An officer’s dirk with anon-statutory monocrystal blade – now that made the mechanics fight with the heavy infantrymen. They couldn’t come to an agreement whether the dirk was a tool for shaving steel, or a weapon capable of piercing the joints of a medium-grade armored spacesuit.

Murom launched a tirade of obscene language. He sounded convincing, and I decided to let them handle loot distribution on their own. The commander panel was most enticing with its many-colored lights, endless possibilities, operator’s seat, and insistent ringing signal: “Attention all servicemen of the Empire fleet and full citizens of RE! Top-priority order; mandatory mobilization!”

“Squadron’s mission – escort the New Sevastopol evacuees. Status: failed.”

“HSC Marat’s mission - mop-up of space sector Q-19. Status: in progress, 311 hostile purposes detected.”

“Casemate-2’s mission - uninterruptedly supply ammunition to carrier’s main caliber weapons. Status: delayed! Last incoming order from the reserve Fire Control Center: ‘ship the rapid load drum with the unit of six guided missiles: americium(AP) - americium(HEA) - americium(API) - hassium(ADM) - hassium(ADM)- hassium(ADM).’”

I looked at the storage cells in alarm. A transuranic super-heavy hassium nuclear landmine was a deadly weapon.

I bit my lip as I pondered the matter: Should I take the risk and show the Amazonians my true RE serviceman status? That was how my Alpha-prime identified itself, insistently demanding that I assume the duty officer’s position and take control of the module.

I shrugged, Some open secret. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

With a directed thought- impulse, I informed the operator seat that I wished to sit down. The seat read my anthropometric data off my open profile and swelled up a bit, changing its shape and adjusting to my every single bone and pimple. It then obligingly turned to me, inviting me to make myself comfortable and warming itself up to 96 degrees.

Nodding gratefully, I sat down. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the flow of information between my implant and the combat control panel. They swiftly negotiated information exchange protocols, performed an express-test of stats and abilities, and bargained for clearance levels and starting rank.

Most likely, the particularly smart first-year girls usually failed this stage, having decided to turn the pile of metal into their subsidiary complex. I was lucky, however. Reluctantly, the AI acknowledged my current corporal stripes. Despite the size of our group, I was the AI’s only option. I imagined that I was the only Russian Empire citizen within a few-thousand-mile radius.

The protective layer soundlessly slipped off the manual interfaces. The self-destruct timer that had been counting down during my negotiations with the AI finally stopped giving off alarming signals.

The AI, deciding that it had cleverly bypassed the inhibitors installed on it and found a puppet, gave a series of orders:

“Check the main and reserve power circuits, promptly restore all three types of power supply in afterburning mode.”

“Continue recruiting soldiers and mobilize all available servobots. Repair modules in the following order: charging apparatus, force field clutches gamma and delta, counter-boarding defense facilities…”

And so on and so forth.

I was outraged at the impudence of the barbarous AI, barely able to read the logs and reports as they flickered by. My slightly dumbfounded implant highlighted the key points. A line of text caught my eye: “Module is in battle alarm status. In order to maintain survivability, a vacuum will be created aboard. Crew must immediately carry out protocol 19-prime. Commander panel operator – forced activation of rescue kit.”

I lost it and barked, “Belay that! I’m taking charge. I demand that any of the AI's orders be authorized by the signature of an officer on duty!”

Then, I turned to the group who froze in surprise. They had already assembled around the panel blooming with lights, whichwas wrapped in a last-chance barrier – a four megawatt force field.

“Listen up, group!” I commanded. “We are being mobilized for actual service in the RE fleet, retaining our current ranks and simultaneously leveling up according to the Russian Empire’s table of ranks. Let’s serve our perished Motherland, what say you, bros? How would you like to be our great country’s last subdivision?”

Chapter Thirteen

Local network of the virtual college Coliseum.

Sublevel: top-secret conference hall.

Channel’s level of protection: Absolute- delta.

“Captain, what the hell’s going on? What’s this Russian Empire fragment brought back from hell?!”

Lucius Romanoff remained steel-faced and completely indifferent, and the virtual reality was not to blame. “Address your complaints to the docs from project Chronos. An RE experimental implant class Alpha-prime has been installed on object 13-777. It’s designed exclusively for top commanding officers and students at the academy in Stellar Ryazan. That means only for nobles of a colonel’s rank or higher. The approximate price of such a set is almost the same as manufacturing a XII-series destroyer with all the extras and a close-cover drone-wing.

“Good gods, Lyssa made them lose their minds!”

The captain shrugged indifferently, “The goddess of insanity has nothing to do with it. They’re just science fanatics. This incident has already been registered and a report was sent to higher authorities. I assume that after the investigation, the number of low-grade laying hens in the Incubator will increase significantly.”

The other one, a blurred shadow – clearly preferring anonymity even in the virtual world – swayed indignantly, “They can all go to Thanatos! What do we do? Group 13 fits no pattern. The rate at which points get added to their RCs is ten times higher than any conceivable norm! Damn Hannibal took them outside of our jurisdiction and enlisted them in Marat's crew. Right now, we’re still able to keep this secret by manually editing the school’s rank table. But we have no control over the live data which goes straight to the Ministry of Defense!”

Romanoff's eyes flashed with barely perceptible triumph: “We don’t do anything. Just because it’s not possible.”

The shadow turned purple with rage and cried in an almost hysterical voice, “Disconnect them from the system!”

The captain shook his head: “Impossible. Our ancestors created an ideal, completely automated training system with snow-white sower-ships, replicators, cargo carriers, and heavy close defense drones that scour space in search of local military conflicts. They possess the techniques of high-speed body cloning, atomic teleportation, soul essence capture, and binding souls to fresh clones. This technology is absolute! And here we are, no more than a forgotten fragment of the colonial Empire who have learned to push ten buttons at once, aping the wise ones and giving ourselves airs.”

“Captain!” the shadow’s voice was seething with rage. “You’re becoming oblivious! The Great Rome has never submitted to the Bear! There was an honorary union of two equal world powers. And don’t you dare grin! Those adamantine teeth of yours are dentures, by the way, financed by our taxpayers! Anyway, do what you want, but group 13 must disappear. Even if it takes this rusty tub Marat with it! That’s an order; carry it out!”

The shadow disappeared in a blinding flash, burning Lucius Romanoff's virtual avatar.

The cyborg pulled a face and spat, then gently rubbed the soot off his forearm and switched his vision to “black light” – the electromagnetic spectrum of ultraviolet radiation used for mutual identification within a very narrow circle of devotees.

Feasting his eyes upon the image of the wide two-headed eagle on his arm – the emblem of the powers oppressing 19 stellar systems – he saluted and said in a barely audible whisper: “An empire lives until the death of its last soldier!”

“Move, you clumsy asses!” I barked hoarsely.

The three-ton projectile shell of the ships’ main caliber was completely unsuited for manual transportation. It had a perfectly smooth body covered with a thin layer of anti-radiation coating. God forbid we scratched the delicate dusting of precious morph-graphite!

“One, two, lift!” a logistics unit girl pressured our minds, trying to use her budding psi-abilities to coordinate the actions of 15 men.

Three hours for each projectile shell, and 18 for a full drum, I estimated. So, by 7 p.m., we would complete this random quest of getting weapons ready for battle. I didn’t know what that would get us, but unique quests implied substantial bonuses.

The casemate’s AI cheered us on and hurried us the best it could, at the same time controlling ten re-activated repaid bots and getting the chamber in order. Again, our precious moss was getting destroyed as temporary optical fiber cabling coiled on the floor. A mobile storehouse drone exerted itself in the corner, forming a part on the AI’s orders from the scant supply of all-purpose matter.

Fix the force field lifter instead, you son-of-a-bitch! I thought. But no, it set out to restore communication systems.

I knew that communication during wartime is the most important thing. But we were sick of turning over these unwieldy transuranium giants in quantities no 21st century human could ever think possible.

Moreover, the system had heavily penalized us for yesterday’s gathering which had quickly turned into a funeral wake. The respawn-capsule of one of the infantrymen was damaged during our battle with the Crab. The bitch stats gave us the finger; the dense pulse round of the counter-boarding gun knocked out one of the panels on the hall’s inner wall. The panel fell and turned the capsule behind it into a pile of broken parts.

The infantryman assigned to the capsule never got respawned, and we received yet another quest; find the backup capsule and reprogram it to the infantryman’s individual code. The program script was attached, and the ownerless capsule could have been anywhere. Alternatively, we could use the capsule of a less needed member of the group. How do you like that?

So, we drank to an easy post-mortal existence for Nicholas “Crookshanks.” He was an unbelievably strong fellow, but quiet and always sleepy like a cat in the winter, hence the nickname.

We didn’t even notice as we nearly emptied the minibar and ruined the air in the main hall. We didn’t get to smoke or drink very often, and those cigarettes with orange stickers made you addicted almost instantly, on your third puff. Our male nurse dismissed the issue, promising to cure the addiction in two minutes after he himself will have finished smoking. He smoked more than anybody and was the first to reach nirvana, where he continued watching cartoons.

In short, group 13 was a mess. There was nothing I could do. When I tore myself away from merging feelings with Lina, the group had already outraged all decency.

Any commander’s worst nightmare is to find his company drunk and armed. If you can’t prevent it, you have to take charge.

So, I had to give the event an official status, and for this I was bathed in everyone’s adoration and penalized by the system with a considerable 50 demerit points. “For violating seven clauses of disciplinary regulations and three clauses of ship regulations,” it explained.

I would remain a Corporal forever if things continued like this…

The group settled down quite late. But the moment I lay down to sleep, the damn casemate AI woke me with a statutory hypno-order: “Quick awakening in combat operations zone.” It looked like one of us had a faulty onboard time clock.

The snob AI insisted that its processor couldn’t be wrong, and that I should address my complaints to the default settings of my implant and to Fifth Rome’s colonial administration who had too high an opinion of themselves.

All of progressive humanity had learned long ago that days aboard RE ships are synchronized according to an ancient artifact: the Savior Tower clock that had by some miracle survived the Global Peace Enforcement and still calculated grand-Moscow time.

But the news the AI brought to my attention could not be ignored. The air poisoned by the drug cigarettes and the drop in personal stats due to the drunken feast utterly ruined my mood.

“Rise and shine, soldiers!” I bawled angrily and resorted to unsportsmanlike commander methods ten seconds earlier than the regulations allowed.

Upon my mental command, the soldiers’ implants stimulated their ganglia with light electric currents, contorting their bodies and nipping cursing and stupid questions in the bud.

After the mandatory wash-up and a scanty breakfast consisting of pseudo-dry goods and salad-like leaves of different-colored moss, the group sullenly but quickly got to work.

Our living quarters grew, and there were enough tasks for everyone. When possible, we reinforced and armored the respawn hall. We now looked after the capsules better than after ourselves. No one wanted to get stuck in the purgatory for an indefinite period of time. How to survive in it for a day and remain sane was a mystery for even the most strong-willed and insensitive to pain.

The dual pulse gun now towered menacingly by the hall’s entrance, watchfully stirring the thin probes on its barrels. There were always two men on duty by it, one of them in a light CAS.

Two heavy infantrymen clad in armor we had seized were leveling up basic skills through monotonous farming; by shooting with handheld firearms the spawning service droids infected with the technosentient virus. That was what we called the hunting of drones which would dive out of service tunnels and try to sneak into the ship’s other modules.

The scanty loot barely made up for the ammo we spent. The group didn’t get anything. But the infantrymen needed training to perfect their motor function and weapon handling skills.

Our mechanics fought with the repair bots in the casemate chamber, as the latter started actively participating in disassembling the vanquished Crab. The worst part was that those bots stole a few precious fuel-cell units. The group now faced another power shortage.

The PSH hibernated, demanding a link to a power circuit with a capacity of at least two megawatts. We had 30 clips left for our six barrels, which was barely enough for a single skirmish.

We needed to expand again. The limited resources of the dying ship in no way promoted sedentism. So, we had to finish all of the location’s quests and move on, preferably to the upper decks which contained the more dangerous monsters and richer loot.

But the former gamers’ opinions differed on this matter; some demanded that we level up as much as possible, mop up all the module’s cabins, and collect all the freebies in the noob location. The “nursery” was customized just for that; to teach us the first steps in the new world and to supply us with motivating gifts and loot.

The discovery of a secret compartment supported this theory. This compartment had an external hub with eight links and 16 small zerg-drones – swift creatures the size of rats, with sharp, poisonous fangs and one hundredth of an ounce of unstable explosives for self-destruction. We didn’t expect much from them, but they could easily deal as much damage as a mobile antipersonnel mine.

Nika, our bot driver, was beside herself with delight. At last she would be of great use to the group.

The other approach required that we do the impossible. It entailed forcing our way up at all costs, receiving boost bonuses and rapidly equipping with top or at least medium-grade sets.

This was a risky strategy, but we had to move up on the college rank table. Standard actions and keeping to the beaten tracks would never help us win the jack-pot and stand out from the average masses.

“Move up!” Murom said hoarsely next to me, leaning his back against the projectile shell and demanding that the AI activated the magnetic clasps of the charging drum.

“Five hundredths of an inch higher and two degrees more parallel to the normal line,” the pseudo-AI imperturbably adjusted the projectile’s position.

“Fuck you in your microcircuit chip…” Ara squirmed under the outrageous weight, serving as our freelance hoisting jack.

“Shit!” Oksana cried, feeling that after the movers’ final effort, the projectile pinned down her slowly regrowing hair. “Lift it up for a second!”

“Yeah, right,” the men dropped on the deck, exhausted.

We overstrained ourselves moving yet another projectile shell. The hassium turned out to be a lot heavier and uncomfortable to handle than americium. The isotope’s short life required additional screening and dividing all non-critical mass into clusters.

One of the more warm-hearted and cheerful warriors tossed Oksana a custom blade. Our homemade product department now had a decent production line, and we no longer had a critical shortage of knives.

“Cut it,” said the man. “Your hair will grow out soon, our regeneration rates could make anyone jealous. Arty is probably tired of taking your virginity every night. We’ve offered to help him so many times!”

The blond Artyom jumped to his feet in fury, intent on shutting up the vulgar fellow.

I stepped in, telling the joker where to get off: “Belay that! Cracking jokes again, Luke? Your tongue gets in your way? I’ll find a decent use for it. You’re on new moss combination testing duty, out of turn! And you, Artyom, sit down and don’t fret, or you’ll join Luke, to lovingly hold him by the shoulder while the wisecracker pukes.”

I then turned to the furious girl: “Cut it, Oksana,” I affirmed. “The clutches are locked. We won’t be able to move the projectile shell.”

So, I stretched the truth, but what choice did I have? Perhaps an asymmetric haircut would get the girl down from the clouds, and she would cease to perceive herself as the hottest chick in town? To be honest, her constant desire to dazzle all the men along with Lina’s painful jealousy were starting to make my life quite miserable.

Oksana tugged her hair for another minute, then started sawing the flyaway locks, choking back angry tears and casting challenging looks at us.

“Rise and shine!” I ordered to avoid further trouble. “Let’s haul the second to last projectile shell! By the way, where’s Macarius? I remember him swearing that he could assemble a transportation cart.”

Eight hours and three injured soldiers later, we had finally crammed the last projectile shell in its armored slot. The latches clanked loudly, and the alarm gave a triumphant bark, driving us delicate humans away from the mechanism’s moving parts.

In an instant, the twenty-ton drum disappeared inside the bottomless belly of the charging machine. We exchanged impatient glances, shifting our eyes from each other to our logs and expecting pleasant chiming that signaled points being added to our RCs. We also hoped to receive an additional comet on our chevrons. A unique mission and twelve hours of Stakhanovite effort is no joke.

A sound did come, but it wasn’t chiming. The ship jerked so sharply that the deck flew out from under us for an instant. Then, it slammed into our feet with such force that it broke the bones in our soles.

My wonder boots absorbed the impact. But three other boys were less lucky. They fell on the deck as if cut down, their cries of pain and cursing filling the hall.

A myriad of messages flickered on my interface, but I had no time for them. The half-dead cruiser’s thrusters activated, turning the ship towards an unknown destination, then went off with a bang, firing two main caliber shots.

The deck jerked again. The recoil of the projectiles restrained the ship like tight reins a swift horse. However, if expected, this recoil was no more shocking than jumping down from a height of three feet. You could break your legs, but it wasn’t difficult. The most important thing was to jump like you normally would, without trying to land on your heels, or the balls of your feet, or whatever.

Suddenly, the module’s communication loudspeakers came to life. A hoarse, weary voice filled with joy cried desperately: “Casemate two! There’s a backup fire control center here! Whoever you are, I need one more projectile shell on the lifter! Come on, my dear friends, you can do it! There’s an almost completely regenerated heavy cargo carrier of the technosentients abeam. Come on, comrades! Ten more projectile shells, and I’ll blow it off the orbit. I’ve been watching that bastard for seven years now through my visor. Let me at least die with company.”

The AI, receiving new instructions, beeped in alarm and opened yet another projectile shell cell without orders. Murom raced to the cell, jumping over the wounded writhing on the deck. Wheezing under the strain, Lina was already dragging the hoisting tackles. The logistics unit girls quickly grabbed the heavy rollers’ bars. They were nearly tearing out their fingernails in a hurry to help the unknown gunner. He was full of hope and faith. And, most importantly, although he had an accent and used confusing words, he spoke the great and mighty Russian language.

I became stone-faced. We’re not abandoning one of our own!

I punched an order into the group’s public chat: “All hands free from high-priority tasks, head to Casemate two; help loading shells needed.”

I then activated the icon with the image of a sad child with the eyes of an old man. That was the avatar that the AI had chosen for itself. “AI!” I cried, “Get the reserve fire control center on the line!”

The AI spoke with a sorrow it could not possibly have felt: “Missing connection link. The FCC activated alternative wire circuits. I have no access to them. There's a three percent chance that the center's systems can only receive signals, not send them. Should I continue executing the order?”

“Affirmative!”

“Ready to transmit over the emergency and public channels.”

Waving my hands and directing the group crowded inside the chamber, I dictated a message: “FCC, Casemate two here! We’re ready to supply firing units. Until further instructions, we will provide single projectile shells according to the last order. Loading cycle…” I stopped short for a second, then bitterly said, “At least two hours. We’re working manually.”

The heavy footsteps behind me made me turn around. The quarantine droid was struggling to squeeze through the gateway. The droid had closed the PSH and was now mobile again.

Macarius followed it proudly. His eyes shone with triumph; the promised transportation cart he had assembled was beyond praise.

The droid surveyed its surroundings, assessing the work front, then shook its arms and reported: “Ready to speed up the loading cycle by a factor of a hundred. Warning: in accelerated mode, I can work no longer than an hour given my accumulated energy.”

I broke into an involuntary smile. Barely refraining from smothering the droid’s dirty armor with kisses, I added to the message: “FCC, Casemate two here. Correction: one projectile shell every one and a half minute.”

Murom intruded the channel: “Kick their asses for Sevastopol! Waste them, bro!”

No answer followed. Perhaps the gunner had simply spent the last bits of the archaic personal communicator’s power. Or perhaps he was taken under return fire by the technosentients.

The silence motivated the boys. “Grab, lift!” they cried.

Now, three independent groups stubborn as ants dragged the projectile shells to the loading mechanism. Compared to the quarantine bot, our efforts were laughable, but none of us wanted to just sit around.

Everyone stopped when the droid placed the first projectile shell on the lifter's sliding carriage, wondering if the shell would arrive at the proper destination.

The silent mechanism finally gave a rapacious noise. The transuranic projectile shell disappeared in the breech block. In a fraction of a second, it traveled to the zero mark of the mile-long acceleration tunnel.

“Fire!” a morbidly thin man cried hoarsely with joy. He was dressed in a worn-out yet clean uniform of an RE fleet gunner.

Over five years ago, he had awakened in a permanently sealed reserve deckhouse. His stasis capsule had done everything in its power and loyally awaited a rescue team while preserving the man in time. Due to the partial damage of the memory modules, the system errors snowballed. The capsule would restart, received software updates from the built-in backup, but red error messages kept piling up in the system logs.

At some point, the capsule estimated that the next restart could be fatal because the boot-up sector crystals had also deteriorated. And so, the system awoke Marat’s last surviving crew member.

Odd as it may seem, the man facing death inside the isolated deckhouse survived. He had received superb training in Stellar Ryazan – long, comprehensive, and imaginative training. He licked drops of condensation off the walls, then built his own little version of the Tear Fountain. He raised a slug colony whose members multiplied abnormally fast to his luck.

He crossbred and vaccinated mosses until he had an incredibly fertile albeit carnivorous species. He could now sleep no more than two hours in a row, else his dietary supplement could very likely eat him.

The man watched outer space very closely for a long time. With hopeless hatred, he looked on as the self-repair systems restored the broken ships of the technosentients, the seeds of death that were about to give rise to a new wing of the Hive.

Time and again, he would find the black, ribbed bodies through his aiming grid and powerlessly pull the sensor trigger. But no miracle happened; the counter of the ship’s various types of ammo displayed a series of desolate zeroes. But one day… one day, everything changed.

The gods of space took pity on him, awakening him at the start of the third cycle of his 24-hour-long sleep. The almost-forgotten buzzer of the loading device emitted a combination of signals the gunner knew by heart: a triple Alpha signal and a triple Tango signal. It meant that three shield-piercing, americium sharp-nosed projectiles and three fougasses of unstable hassium had been placed on the suddenly-recovered drum.

The gunner leapt off his bed. Reflexively tearing off the moss stems reaching for him, he ran to the pristinely clean control panel.

A second signal came, confirming that this was not just another dream, but reality.

The gunner did everything mechanically. He had thought this through to the last detail long ago and learned the enemy ships’ orbits by heart. His only regret was that the torpedo-boat spacecraft carrier with the damaged engines was currently on the other side of the planet. The carrier was always the top-priority target for Marat which had been put in the battleship formation out of a dire need.

Starting the control panel and running the express test of readiness took five seconds. Then, a minute to pump energy into the bottomless reactors of the acceleration tunnel.

The target designation systems had already located the huge sluggish cargo-carrier of the technosentients. Work was in full swing around the ship. For the entire last year, drones had been dragging to the carrier all the broken steel within their reach.

The first shot was a ranging one. The optical range finders had been destroyed during that horrible battle a while back. Only two unmanned scout ships were responsive, and each sent the FCS completely different numbers.

For outer space, it was a small error; a difference of 100 miles. And although the cargo-carrier was huge, almost four miles in diameter, the gunner had little hope of hitting it given such inaccuracies.

Another shot. A miss, of course. But the fire control system instantly made the necessary adjustments and recommended to “shoot to kill from both barrels.”

The technosentients were already responding to the threat. The cargo-carrier wrapped itself in petal-shaped force-field segments. The empire knew not of this technology; humans had AM-shields of a different construction. In any case, two projectile shells of Marat’s main caliber could easily break through this type of defense.

Boom-boom!!! The inertial impulse of the double shot made Marat shudder. The gunner listened in alarm to the hull’s muffled creaking. Marat’s primary structure was damaged, and the recoil could easily make the ship fall apart.

The three-ton projectiles traveling at a speed of 1,250 miles per second had enough kinetic energy to destroy two thirds of the enemy ship’s shield.

Given standard space battle conditions, when the projectiles’ traveling time equals roughly 30 seconds, and when the target is actively maneuvering in all directions while also creating obstructions and being engaged in counterbattery fire, hitting the same spot twice is unlikely.

Now, however, it was very likely, given the pathetically short firing distance of 4,300 miles and a target that stayed still, its anti-spacecraft defense systems damaged. The gunner had much choice which part to shoot: the wide-open flight deck, or the vulnerable underbelly, where the projectile shell would burst through the bulkheads and eventually reach the cargo-carrier’s armored heart.

The two sharp-nosed projectiles broke through the shield over the external station hangars covered with clusters of immediate defense drones. The most urgent objective was to deal with the threat to Marat.

Once inside the enemy ship, the nuclear hassium fougasses swelled up like balloons, becoming over 300 feet in diameter. A buzzer went off, signaling depleted projectile supply and tearing the gunner out of his battle trance.

Casting a furious glance at the firing unit counter, he stared at the scattered lights on his panel, and instantly it dawned on him. He slammed his fist into the “last chance connection” button, activating the reserve wire communication channels that connected Marat’s main units. Triple duplication was a law in the RE fleet.

“Casemate two! There’s a backup fire control center here!” he cried. “Whoever you are, I need one more projectile shell on the lifter!”

Chapter Fourteen

Kaboom! The deck jerked again, absorbing the impact of the projectile leaving the acceleration tunnel.

Each of us heard the ringing of two accounts this time: the first was our Fifth Rome account and the second was our Russian Empire Space Force military personnel account which had opened for us for the first time.

Ding! My Fifth Rome record card received a fair share of virtual prizes: “Participation in space battle. Secondary support role in the destruction of a sixth rank enemy ship. Points received: +41.”

“Leading interservice team in battle. Coordinating with allied subdivision. Using off-design weapon systems. Commander points received: 239.”

“Status alert: attained required quantity of points for achievement of new rank: Sergeant. Communicating with low-order stream of the AI Hannibal. Confirmation received, new rank approved.”

“Congratulations on your new patch! Many annulets to you, Sergeant!”

I wiped the sweat off my brow and grinned; this was my second promotion during a six-hour-long battle. No, not a battle, a slaughter; a wounded wolf awakened in the middle of a sheep herd, quickly licked his wounds clean, and started killing, and killing, and killing…

I heard triumphant chiming as my implant continued: “Target destroyed: technosentient gun boat, complexity index: 48 percent. Assessed value: 4.419.811 energy rubles. Crew bonus for destruction: 1 percent. Sergeant coefficient: 1.05. Personal share less taxes and compulsory payments: 542 ER. Current account balance: 12.891 ER.”

These prizes were the result of changing our subdivision’s jurisdiction. We weren’t just Fifth Rome cadets anymore, but mobilized Russian Empire regular military staff.

Boy, did this make the group happy. Our eyes burned. We proudly straightened our shoulders and kept glancing at our interfaces; an emblem consisting of a golden eagle trampling constellations now shone in one of the corners of each interface.

The gunner’s hurried, hoarse voice boomed across the chamber’s loudspeakers again: “Belay projectile shells; get me the segmental ones! Hurry, don’t stand there like a buncha capsule-fuckers! The mothership will leave the planet’s shadow any second now. It has more drones than a corncob has seeds; three layers of them!”

Murom’s division swore, carefully setting down the projectile shell they had already carried halfway. They shouldn’t have complained; the segmented projectiles were capable of splitting up into one and a half million tungsten pins tied to the solar system. The enemy mosquito fleet were a lot closer than the projectile shells. This was logical, as even milliseconds mattered in close-range combat.

I heard the quarantine bot’s heavy tread as he passed us by. He was our record-setter in work productivity, having done most of the dragging. The drone was still capable of working; for the sake of the common cause, the module’s AI had allowed him to take power and equipment from the local servos.

The Hive was functional and tolerated no delays. The heavily damaged technology remained on its orbit around the planet when it realized it had a tiny chance to survive and turn into a new Wing.

Overall, the technosentients did have a chance. In one or two centuries, they would have mastered the millions of tons of scrap metal drifting all over the star system. One more century, and their first ore ships would approach the asteroid belt, plotting force field traps around the star. One more millennium, and a renewed Hive blooming with its own technical solutions and designs would take wing, setting out with a great mission – to free the Universe from the biological intelligence polluting it.

But the technosentients didn’t know that the graveyard of steel housing the warmbloods’ fleet would come to life, sending forth a crumpled raider which bore an imperial flag. Like the technosentients’ greatest terror, the echo of the Big Bang, Marat slowly and methodically destroyed everything within its main caliber weapons’ firing range. This range was quite large.

“Segmented shell!” the gunner's voice came across again. “The mothership had released drones before it even exited the shadow. A sub-hive half as big as the mothership at a distance of 2,000 astronomical units. Six minutes until they open fire. Time until sub-hive reaches certain kill distance and becomes a code orange threat to Marat’s load-carrying structures: 23 minutes. Bust your asses, move like comets, but give me two drums of segmented projectiles for each barrel!”

And we did bust our asses, driven by the gunner’s motivation and swearing and the stimulants from the group’s reserve supply. And also by the sweet jingling of energy rubles being added to our accounts, of course.

The Amazonians gave us no bonuses, considering the current battle either a cheat or a bug. Somehow, a rumor spread among us about what exactly we could buy from our descendants for a thousand e-rubles. This included a budget BMW & Komarovs flyer. And if the budget was tripled, it would be enough for a prestigious Lada Galaxy deluxe with an “eternal” Drexler-900 reactor capable of entering outer space.

Shooting down drones hardly earned us any bonuses, even though our points were divided among 70 individuals instead of a two-thousand-member crew. We received but a few gold and silver cards each with agrain of a berkelium isotope encapsulated inside. That was barely enough for a dinner with an undemanding lady. However, our fierce gunner burned the enemy devices by the hundreds, leaving deadly tungsten clouds in the technosentients’ way.

Soon, we had enough e-rubles for an elite cruise, then for studio apartments near industrial districts, then for quite decent three-bedroom apartments in so-so neighborhoods.

We wished we knew whether or not New Moscow still existed. It was an incredible blue planet with purple clouds and an elite habitability index of a 114 percent.

By the time stipulated, we had sent 27 segmentedprojectiles to the surface. After that, the short-range space combat siren barked. My implant felt the micro vibrations as the missiles launched. I head the crackling of rapid-fire AA guns and the active shields getting pierced and shut down. The remainder of the enemy’s defensive space systems went out with ringing sounds interspersed with the low growls of the main caliber cannons.

After 20 seconds of one-way shooting, a sound-and-light signal howled, warning everyone on board to prepare for enemy fire. The old Marat jerked as if in a seizure under the technosentients’ frequent hits.

Kaboom! The left-over projectiles went flying through our chamber. The three-ton shells crushed some of us, shattered the equipment, and mangled the bulkheads.

Kaboom! The loading mechanism got torn off its mount and slid into a far corner.

Kaboom! The clumsily dodging quarantine drone didn’t see the projectile flying at it from behind and was pressed into the deck.

All I could do was howl as I held on to a bulkhead girder with effort, watching group members’ and equipment’s markers go out. I didn’t know which were worse to lose; the soldiers would be resurrected, but the droid was only good for parts now.

After a minute of enemy fire, a welcome silence fell. Then, hissing came across the loudspeakers, followed by heavy breathing and a hacking cough with alarming gurgling sounds. We heard the gunner’s dead-beat voice, “Attack repulsed. A total of 470 heavy and light enemy platforms has been disabled. We have lost another 11 percent of Marat’s mass. Our orbit has changed; impact with New Sevastopol in three weeks. Write off Marat’s DSS and main caliber as salvage. Save yourselves if you can. Thank you, friends! Guards officer Vladimir Pologov out.”

Crestfallen after what I had just seen and heard, I tore myself away from the girder and jumped down. I searched myself for injuries. My head bled, one of my thumbs was bent at an awkward angle, and I was covered with bruises and scratches. In short, I got off cheaply.

Something rustled overhead. Jerking my head up, I saw Lina clinging to that same girder like a cat. We were like animals during an earthquake; our instincts drove us to escape, yet we still ended up near each other.

I held my arms out for her: “Jump, hon, I’ll catch you.”

The girl sniffed in a deprecating way: “Fix your thumb first, hero!”

With that, she easily jumped down. Notwithstanding her sarcastic tone, she walked over to me and gazed into my eyes with sympathy, “Wait, I’ll do it myself.”

I nodded. Sometimes, it’s good to have a mental connection. Some men just walk around and silently endure horrible pain because their pride or stupidity stops them from asking for help. No one appreciates a man’s firmness. But with Lina, I’ve never concealed anything. Whenever I smashed my pinkie on metal, Lina would cry out and shake a fist at me.

While my implant’s field medicine handled the “multiple internal injuries,” I quickly skimmed the logs. We had lost 19 percent of the group. The rest had injuries of varying severity. The droid was done for, irreparable, its cost subtracted from Marat. Our double-pulse-gun turret was intact, praised be the saints. It was suspended on service hoists and rocked like swings with Macarius clinging to it.

Other losses included capsules 0841 and 1179. We considered their owners condemned, and they sure looked like it, being pale and shocked as if they had crawled into the very depths of an enemy dungeon and suddenly realized that they had only one life remaining. No saving, no restarting.

I marked their personal files; protect the boys, keep them off the front lines. Then, I sent them a message informing them of their temporary transfer to the logistics unit. Now, we needed three new regeneration capsules. No one knew where to get them.

The university logs were surpassingly few and uninformative. Perhaps the system had been suppressed by the forcefully downloaded update that was mandatory for all mobilized RE fleet soldiers.

The RE record card delved into every detail, on the contrary. It offered terabytes of statistics, graphics, video systems for both external and internal surveillance, and other such junk. The Fifth Rome’s ISS would study all of it under a microscope if one of us committed an infraction or were even suspected of it. The infraction could be anything from abandoning one’s post to stealing condoms from a neighboring unit’s stock. The digital world of the future had no privacy, and we just had to accept it.

Not that we had any privacy back in the 21st century. It’s just that very few realized it. Security cameras filmed you both indoors and outdoors, internet search engines knew you better than even you yourself, your credit card company kept track of your shopping habits, and your smartphone retrieved your location and contacts. Social network users created highly detailed profiles complete with their photos and a full account of their personal and professional contacts. Everyone who needed this info knew about it and used it skillfully.

I didn’t bother going through the multimedia mess and switched to the account homepage. It read:

RE Space Force Senior Sergeant “Lucky” Paul.

Primary specialty: space fighter pilot.

Post: interservice team commander.

Points on record card: 4199.

Salary: 240 e-rubles per week. Battle coefficient: + 200%.

RusArmyBank personal account balance: 37.413 e-rubles.

Home port: Fifth Rome, Coliseum College.

Home ship: HSC Marat.

I smiled, content. It was very fortunate that we had dived under the mighty wing of the perished empire. Although… was it really perished? If the Amazonians had managed to survive, surely our people had too, being tougher than the overprotected pseudo-Europeans. Our people were okay even if the Hive had passed through the heart of RE, that horde of a squadron occupying nearly a million miles and thinned out by allied fleets and imperial vassals.

The group began to bustle: I heard the survivors laughing nervously and the wounded groaning and swearing. Any implant was capable of a novocaine block, but to hold your own guts falling out of your abdomen is not very pleasant.

Our male nurse fidgeted. He was wounded, but wouldn’t die. He was the second in our group who had never experienced the delights of the virtual post-mortal existence. I had a feeling that this whole time, our quack doctor had been secretly injecting himself with medicines he had found in various first aid kits, thereby drastically increasing his vitality. Or maybe he was just one of those careful, calculating lucky fellows who always hide from danger behind the backs of fools and daredevils.

Negative selection; too many careful cowards come home from wars. Heroes and brave soldiers always die in the front lines.

I gave the group permission to use any and all of our medicines. I had grown tired of moans and death, and the group deserved fair treatment. Enough manufacturing for stock! I decided.

We passed out food rations, bags of dried berries, bundles of medicinal moss, and pills of various colors. We will survive, friends!

Everything in the casemate was turned upside down. Projectiles were scattered about, the loading mechanism’s base unit was torn out, and the walls were pressed in and filled with holes. At least there was no radiation; the shells’ feedback controller coating boasted an amazing safety factor.

I sent reconnaissance parties into the gaps in the walls. Macarius wept by the remains of the crushed quarantine droid. I stopped for a second to ruffle his hair and grieve for the poor old droid.

Sniffling, Macarius hurriedly dug through the pile of scrap metal. He gave a cry of joy as he pulled out a small orange box with optical fiber cords dangling from it: “Its personality crystal and memory units! They seem to be intact, although the box’s armor is a mere one tenth of an inch thick. I’ll find him a new body, may I, Commander?”

I nodded as I hurriedly turned away, feeling that I was about to shed a few tears. Why amidst all this death and post-apocalyptic depression was I so touched by the boy’s affection for the droid?

The reconnaissance parties started to report back; the new areas were very small. We now had access to the personal cabins of the casemate team and the technical service module of ammo supply systems. As for loot, a few insignificant freebies awaited us, but nothing interesting, as one might expect from a noob location. Dozens if not hundreds of decks separated us from armories, storehouses, and heavy infantryman barracks.

I squinted as I studied the new hole in the ceiling. Because the loading mechanism’s base unit had gotten ripped out, we now had access to the bore shaft. Its width was impressive. Fortunately, the caliber was determined not by a shell’s physical size, but by its magnetic field generated by its giant rings of rare-earth metals. Therefore, the shaft’s cross-section measured at least three feet.

Murom sat down next to me, pale as a sheet. He had also gotten promoted to sergeant and was now holding his broken arm. The wound was bad; the bones stuck out, and the soft tissues were a mess. But I knew that his implant could handle it.

The sweat on Murom’s brow indicated that he didn’t allow his implant to fully block his pain. He wanted to be fully conscious, which was worthy of respect.

Looking up at that same hole, he gave me a mistrustful look, “I don't even want to know what you have in mind.”

I smiled crookedly: “But you will. The situation has changed. Marat will fall into a gravity well in three weeks. Don’t ask me how it’s freaking possible; the university’s first course is supposed to last a year and a half. Let’s just work with what we have. We need to reach the flight deck asap!”

Murom wiped sweat off his brow and uttered through is teeth, “Where will this tunnel lead us? Directly to the hangars? Could it be?”

“No, that would’ve been too simple. The shaft passes right through the ship’s central axis and is part of the primary structure. In theory, it could provide access to ten internal modules at most, each being 30 decks apart. It’s protection from wise guys like us. To jump from level one to level 30 is nothing more than fancy suicide. It’s not even a cheat, it’s just stupid.”

Murom only shook his head: “So are we wise or stupid?”

I didn’t answer right away, passing my vacant gaze over the group – possibly the Russian Empire’s last warriors. Finally, I replied, my voice so menacing that Murom raised a brow, “They shouldn’t have driven us into a corner. Even a rat can kill a human under such circumstances. And we’re men of the 21st century, direct descendants and heirs of the Great Empire. Not some overprotected gay aristos from a faraway colony, and not some wretched girls pumped with artificial testosterone playing badass infantrymen. Besides, we don’t have a choice. Seventy decks separate us from the hangars. At first, we were given three days per deck, which is already awfully little. Only half the units pass on the first try. But now, we most certainly need unconventional moves.”

Murom shrugged, “Doesn’t hurt to try. Worst case scenario, we’ll make a gun-port in the shaft and shoot anyone we see with our dual plasma gun. We’ll get hefty bonuses for our insolence, then return to our level of competency.”

“OK. We’ll develop this plan further. We, the staff, together with our implants will fine-tune the details. Today, we rest, remove postmortal debugs, scour the adjacent locations for loot, and burn our bridges. I’m granting permission to open tactical supplies of tasty snacks and give everyone a commissary shot of vodka. Get to it!”

In 12 hours, our best soldiers stood before a homemade access ramp which led to the shaft. We had given our storm troopers the best gear, not stinting on anything. That way, instead of giving everyone a tiny bit, we had concentrated all the armor and weapons into a single striking force.

It was more than enough for a noob location. The warriors were in spacesuits or light CASs covered with additional shields. Everyone had a light firearm and steampunk-style blades. We also had additional protection in the form of ugly patches of armor plates which we had taken off the crushed droids. With a little luck, they could easily save us. They did, however, adversely affect our mobility. But I was the only one sort of capable of dodging plasma beams given my special Alpha-prime implant, and flaunting this ability would’ve been unwise. Who knows if I would yet have to duel someone or get forcefully demoted? I like to surprise my enemies and have some trump cards up my sleeve.

Although I went with them as the commander, Murom led the formation. He had already gone more than 24 hours without dying and looked philosophically upon a minute in the virtual purgatory. I was second to last in the formation; the leader had to be preserved till the last moment.

We were followed by Nika, our outsentry. She drove eight zerg drones.

Two gunners, Nicholas and Cat, covered Nika. They, in turn, were followed by the heavy arms group – Lina and Macarius who dragged the double PG on special hardware. Their assistant was loaded with heaps of ammo; a mix of 15,000 different balls. He also carried a portable armored shield in case the PGs would have to be used in a stationary position.

The young man groaned but said nothing, not wanting to waste time on complaints. His 150-pound burden pulled him down toward the center of Marat’s artificial gravity. And we still had to go up the shaft some 160 feet. That’s like climbing a 16-story building. A ladder of neodymium rings is no elevator shaft. Falling off is super easy. Thus, I gave an order; if you fall, do it quietly so as not to betray the group as we stole through foreign territory. The group weren’t crazy about my order.

We set off. Our mechanics had woven ladder steps for us out of the magnetic coils they had cut open. It was super-hard work for which they were rewarded with extra points on their RCs and my personal gratitude recorded into their accounts. A commander’s gratitude was not some useless scrap of paper, but a significant bonus.

Slowly yet persistently we crawled upward. It wasn’t easy in spacesuits; we were far from having maximum physical stats. Our muscles grew slowly, adding only half an inch per week to our biceps. The maximum weight we could lift increased by one percent every 24 hours.

The zerg bots clattered quietly over our heads. They scanned all available frequency ranges. Occasionally, their keen sensors detected the vibrations of faraway shooting and the echo of explosions. But I wasn’t worried. The supporting structures of the mile-long Marat were so thick that it was practically impossible to break into a shaft without heavy armament.

Although, there were spots where the construction workers had done a botchy job or used materials sparingly, covering the shaft with nothing but the armor of adjacent special modules.

And our destination was precisely one such module. The ACC, alternate control center. It was an armored cocoon with a double sluicing system and a suspiciously convenient hidden service hatch to the accelerator shaft.

Could it be that it wasn’t a designer's mistake, but a hidden evacuation and transportation means for high-ranking officers in the event of boarding or mutiny? Alas, we had no access to any officer documents or learning guides, so we could only guess.

Nika stopped abruptly, secured both legs and an arm in the ladder’s loops, and pointed up with her free hand: “There’s a skirmish in the ACC. It’s a dense battle, almost critically dense. Their barrels are even melting. Oh, and, Sir, I’m picking this up via the bots’ mics. Judging by the orders they’re giving, one of the battling parties are our old acquaintances, the seventh company psi-snipers. I would recognize Livia Cruise’s husky porn-star voice anywhere.”

Chapter Fifteen

Heavy Spacecraft Carrier Marat. Alternate Control Center (system efficiency: 3.6%, habitability index: 42%). Seventh company psi snipers’ capture flag mounted.

Junior sergeant Livia Cruise, recently demoted because of the disastrous decline of her unit’s rank, wiped the blood out of her eye and, checking her tactical map, hurriedly whispered an order into the seventh company’s local chat: “Epsilon squad, take the last roboturret and run to the radial hall! Platoon two is used up. Delta squad, entrench the chart house! Platoon three will retreat through there. Intercept the pursuit and hang on as long as you can. Use all the mines you have. Alpha will respawn in two hours and help you.”

Livia helplessly leaned back in her chair by the control panel. That was it, she had no more reserves. The wretched aristos from the Personnel Reserve College had really taken off the gloves. The jet set, all of whom received officer ranks only to confirm their nobility certificates, had already failed twice at setting course, and were now back in the noob locations for the third time.

As Livia correctly suspected, they had failed on purpose. Why work your ass off and storm Marat’s upper decks? It’s easier to learn the first 50 levels and find all the secret spots. Besides, everyone was already aware of the undocumented bug in the virtual training ground; the stashes and hideouts created by the students during the previous conquest attempts remained in the game.

That’s why the aristos always had a great, fast start. They had off-design implants from the planet’s best hospitals and rich stashes and knew the locations perfectly.

They would wipe out their unfortunate neighbors almost instantly, screwing them over big-time; respawning took 24 hours, and the stasis capsules would be destroyed. Then, a bloodbath for the lower levels. Aristos satisfied their unhealthy instincts and scored thousands of achievements, turning their record cards into heroic iconostases and automatically being awarded lieutenant licenses. This was simpler and more interesting.

“Bastards,” Livia whispered, smashing her fist into the wall. “Platoon six, reduce the front lines, retreat to the deckhouse!”

Tears of anger and resentment stood out on her eyes. It was all useless. They wouldn’t make it. The current situation was nothing more than agony. In a half hour, platoon six would get pushed into the respawn hall in the deckhouse where she sat, surrounded by empty capsules and moaning, heavily-injured soldiers. The minor PSH used a 100 percent of its resources, but this clearly wasn’t enough.

Her interface once again flooded with her soldiers’ statuses: all KIA and WIA.

Livia looked at the tactical monitor and said wearily: “Platoon nine, retreat. Pick up 9-4, she’s still alive.”

She sat for a minute longer, watching as the seventh company’s territory rapidly shrank. Then, sighing, Livia shrugged and reached for her PG.

As a leader, she was now useless. As a sniper, she was worth nothing due to the malfunction of her psi-setting and her lack of the necessary equipment which she had left on her death sites, all on enemy territory now. She couldn’t spare a single infantryman.

One hour later, Livia Cruise once again found herself in the deckhouse. Only now, she had a gaping wound on her head, treated slightly with “freeze” and hurriedly stitched with silver staples from a medical staple gun. The junior sergeant stood on her knees, her forehead pressed against a wall. Her hands were tied behind her back, and the remnants of her armor had been cut off her body.

The enemy didn’t bother to remove her hardware as they didn’t want to stumble upon some intricate surprise weapon in the form of a few ounces of explosives or a capsule with poisonous spray. They had thoroughly perfected their prisoner handling methods.

Thirty more wounded sniper girls were on their knees by the wall along with a dozen girls who had just respawned and were instantly captured.

Standing next to the prisoners, the master hacker was busy overloading their implants’ command chains and blocking any and all suicide attempts. His military silencer seemed out of place in a lower level setting. It belonged on decks 100 and up.

“Fat cat brats,” Livia whispered as she felt the space around her with her psi-ability which she had just regained.

The deckhouse was crowded. Fifty soldiers in medium, heavy, and custom armor took up all the space.

Livia’s busted lips broke into a satisfied smile. Fortunately, as she was facing the wall, no one noticed this. “Either way, we did kill 15 men."

She didn’t consider losing 10 soldiers per a single killed enemy shameful, even though her company was on the defensive. Snipers weren’t made for close combat with noble cybernetic heavy infantry, especially in the narrow halls of an ancient carrier.

A sniper’s element was ambush and a single shot, preferably from a distance of two to three miles. It wasn’t Livia’s fault that the university’s first course was mandatory for everyone.

The K-9 guys were happy to pass on the third try. They had even developed a special strategy that took into account two reboots.

Livia heard armor and ammo being dumped on the floor with a clatter. The aristos had hermetically sealed the module and put drones on exterior guard duty. Now, they were undressing, preparing for the ritual victory celebration.

Livia shuddered and bit her lip. I’ll survive! she told herself.

It’s possible to live through any day from dawn to dusk. The aristos would rape the snipers even though the latter were commoners. Then, they would torture the prisoners until reality and the virtual purgatory became one and the same for them. After they will have played with each prisoner to their heart's content, breaking them like dolls, the aristos would simply kill them. And this would go on and on until the respawn timer reached 24 hours.

The arbiter would register the complete destruction of the seventh company. The aristos would receive yet another four-digit bonus and continue roaming the lower decks, looking for new victims.

Through the heavy air of the aristos drunk on blood and anticipation, Livia’s psi-ability detected a fresh wave of male aura. It was painfully familiar, evoking a yearning in her for the beloved man with whom she was once close.

Lucky? Group 13? But how?! flashed across Livia’s mind.

Livia wasn’t the only one to feel the new aura. The other snipers started looking around. Two guards raised their mass-neuroguns in alarm. Livia was forced to snap at her snipers via their mental channel, demanding that they stay still, listen to the astral plane, and be ready for action.

“Eleven,” Livia whispered, having counted the number of mind energy lights.

They posed almost no threat, still being rookies even though they had gained some experience in Marat's bilge. Livia wondered if they had already acquired their first gun, or if they still ran around with sticks like her seventh company had during their first month in the virtual world.

She told herself that these rookies wouldn’t help, that they would at most have fun looking at the aristos dissecting the sniper girls.

To the aristos’ loud laughter, the pretty Victoria, the commander of platoon 2, was dragged into the middle of the group. Her blood purity was questionable, but not her beauty. The rapists weren’t even turned off by the fact that she was missing her right hand.

Behind the surprisingly thin interior bulkhead wall, the astral plane boiled with hatred. It was a wonder how anyone could’ve climbed in there given the ship’s monolithic bearing structure.

The hatred was understandable. No normal person would have liked the “conversation” the aristos were starting with Victoria.

The clang of iron sounded behind the wall, and some small items fell. Livia frowned; the rookies really sucked at keeping quiet. But the aristos, carried away by the activity forbidden in the virtual world, ignored their implants’ alarms. They decided it was the creaking of rusty hinges. Only one of the guards stared at the bulkhead wall in perplexity, slowly raising his gun.

Thanks to their highly developed intuition, the snipers hit the deck a mere half a second before a hail of supersonic balls literally knocked down the bulkhead wall.

The shells quickly took out the guards who had thoughtlessly opened their helmets. They were still in armor and posing the biggest threat. Half a second per guard, and the balls flew crosswise through the hall, drawing spurts of blood from the dumbfounded skinny aristos.

Livia rolled on the floor, easily guessing the inexperienced PG operator’s actions. Her psi-spark flared brighter than ever before. She could see two seconds ahead into the future, as per the household troops standard.

Judging by how her subordinates also danced with death, they too had suddenly developed a perfect skill of adjusting to the astral.

In short lunges, Livia moved toward a plasma gun left on the deck. She could think very clearly: The rookies have a heavy company PG. Or two PGs, most likely. Set to maximum fire rate, 50 shells per second. Holy Juno, where did they get such guns?!

Her level of control over her psi-energy was amazing. Picking up the PG, Livia started firing short double shots at the aristos shrinking into the corners. At the same time, she felt her friends’ minds, synchronized thought processes and built a perfect twelve-edged psi-star. It was practically a single organism, accessible only to experts and grand masters.

This hell lasted twenty seconds. The double PGs emptied their thousand-shell mags into the enemies. The dancing psi-star finished off the wounded and those who pretended to be wounded. Even though all bodies looked alike when seen through a gun’s thermal imager, you couldn’t hide a living brain’s energy by simply not moving.

Livia sent thought glyphs to the unknown PG operator: “Friends! Cease fire!”

Once the fire stopped, she rose and looked at the blood-stained deck. She saw 56 aristo corpses and seven dead snipers, he latter being either friendly fire or ricochet victims. It was a great victory that would surely become the university’s most discussed legendarium.

The thin PG barrels disappeared back into the hidden passage. Judging by the distinctive oblique cutoffs on the barrels, Livia identified a Dual Stationary Droid PGx2. How did they modify it to be a handheld weapon? she wondered. It has electronic controls, completely lacks human engineering and any homing-guidance systems. Did they really shoot using the open barrel sight, like in the ancient times of continental wars?

Tearing down the rest of the wall panel, a tall, broad-shouldered warrior clad in a regular spacesuit burst into the hall. Livia’s heart beat faster. Her implant informed her of a myriad of different hormones released into her blood.

Lucky stopped for a second, surveyed the neat piles of gear left by the aristos, and rubbed his hands together. This was excellent loot.

Tearing his burning eyes away from the epic spoils, the commander glanced over the girls who stood in the middle of the hall full of corpses. They didn’t feel threatened. On the contrary, they smiled timidly yet invitingly, daunted by the gazes of true men. Primeval, aggressive men who retained an ideal genome and hadn’t gotten damaged by centuries of skillful brainwashing by politicians, sociologists, image-makers, and other such parties that loved to tell people what they should buy, love, and value, and where and with whom they should live.

Recognizing his old acquaintance, Lucky rushed over to Livia, hugged her, and showered her cheeks with kisses.

The girl moaned softly as something stirred in her lower abdomen. A storm of psi-energy expanded an entire 100 feet as if Livia were an expert preparing to become a grand master.

She barely perceived Lucky’s words: “Hey, Livia! Have we made it on time?”

Regaining control of her limp limbs, the junior sergeant gave a forced smile. Catching the ironic, jealous gaze of the girl who stood behind Lucky, Livia straightened her back with an effort and nodded gratefully, “You have indeed. I’ll transfer the entire reserve pool of leader prize points to your account. It’s not much, around 2,000, but still. And the loot is yours, of course. I will request the right to barter for a part of our gear…” Livia blushed and added quietly, “On credit, with interest.”

Seeing that Lucky pulled a face, the junior sergeant tightly clutched her PG to her chest and started jabbering, “We’ll certainly find something you guys need. You had a boarding platoon? I know a repair complex on deck 43 where they used to service heavy CASs. Just give us a little time to recover, and we’ll get them for you.”

“Livia,” Victoria interrupted quietly. “They don’t need interest rates. They’ll let us have our gear back for free, right, guys?”

Livia frowned knitted her brow with a puzzled look, and only then remembered about her talents. An impermissible negligence.

Pulling a psi-layer over her eyes, she took another look at the warriors before her. She felt joy, sympathy, a desire to protect, passion, power, confidence…

Her belly started to ache again as she gasped for air. Lucky smiled amicably and nodded: “Sure we’ll let you keep your gear. A soldier won’t hurt a child. And maybe…” he looked at his friend, exchanging a dozen thoughtforms with her.

Despite their low level, they had amazing mental power and private channel shielding degree. Livia even sighed, feeling jealous. Her whole life, she relied only on her psi-mastery, as her own astral reservoir was quite modest, barely enough to get accepted into a second-rate college.

Although now, surrounded by wild male energy, she felt that she was truly a mighty psionic, the legendary Lera from the popular virtual show, the one that allowed the viewers to enter it and influence its events.

Lost in thought, Livia habitually decreased her perception range. She wished she hadn’t done that, as Victoria got brazen.

Lucky’s girl replied to him, “No ‘maybes!’ Definitely yes!”

Instantly, the miniature, fair-haired Victoria slung the trophy batch shotgun on her back and decidedly approached the short young man huddled up to the dual PG. Standing on tiptoe, she threw her arms around his neck and awkwardly yet passionately pressed her lips to his.

Victoria said, making the young man blush and proudly straighten his shoulders, “With this hunk as my number three, I’ll be able to crush a heavy storm-drone with a single mediocre psi-wave.”

Livia tensed up. Victoria was violating all social norms. Men set aside for fornication were priceless, usually couldn’t be touched, and were almost never ownerless. Refusing to take mandatory drugs that suppressed the menstrual cycle and obeying your own lust could lead to quite a few bad consequences: the imposing of a monetary and social fine, revocation of certain rights, or even being summoned to a duel.

But the men only smiled, said “ooh la la,” and applauded. They liked what they saw and approved of it. Livia couldn’t believe it. To her, it was like a bedtime story about the distant past; a dozen males oozing testosterone and free energy.

More warriors stepped out of the chasm in the wall. They looked around like they owned the place, choosing firearms from the ones on the floor, and reflexively cast eager looks at the slender sniper girls in nothing but cut-up underwear.

May Juno have mercy on all of us, what’s going on with my girls? Livia wondered. They sucked in their stomachs, threw out their chests, made eyes at the men, and assumed sexy poses as if they had been practicing in front of mirrors in the barracks bathrooms.

Lucky approached Livia and held out his hand to her, puzzling her. “My group doesn’t mind,” he said. “We won’t survive on our own in here. We’re very low on time, and still infinitely far from our goal. So, partners?”

The standard one-year contract form appeared before Livia’s eyes:

“Status alert! Group 13 is offering to temporarily unite.”

“Accept or decline?”

Livia heard Lucky’s voice over the pounding of her heart in her ears: “And what did you say about military CASs? We could really use those. We also need clear stasis capsules, controllable drone stacks, heavy and stationary weapons…”

Seventeen days later.

HSC Marat. Flight deck 190. Alliance flag: technosentients; threat level: red.”

“Omega in position,” I heard formation 13-7 report in my head.

I mechanically sent them the “OK” glyph and continued surveying the giant hangar’s territory. The staff had the perfect location, atop the technical gallery, right under the ceiling, 100 feet above the deck.

The rare module Chameleon covered us on almost all the frequency ranges, including the entire light spectrum. But getting too comfortable was unwise, so we communicated via the psi-channel only.

We were too few. Our target was so powerful that my implant saw no chances of winning unless we utilized a heavy infantry battalion. Even after two weeks, the stupid thing still didn’t understand the full potential of psi-snipers united with a male division with perfect genes.

We weren’t about to put down our guns. We had multiplied in numbers. The girls bloomed, hormones raged, the storm of energy was strong enough to tear down the bulkhead gates.

As Livia said, her company would go like hot cakes not just when applying to a guard division, but even to the Imperial Safety SWAT. It was odd that they hadn’t been disconnected from the simulator yet.

The girls refused to part with their men even if that meant getting themselves fired. Firing the seventh company girls, however, would have been difficult; after our groups united, the snipers too were transferred under the Russian Empire Space Force jurisdiction. The girls’ faces filled with shock and awe once the golden eagle stretched its wings on their virtual profiles.

By now, they had gotten used to it and were secretly proud. As group leader and officer implant bearer, I saw all the inquiry stats and time spent by each member admiring their avatar.

“Group Sigma, fall in!” another order came in.

I hit OK again. Our circle around the flight deck shrank slowly, one foot at a time. We utilized all the camouflage available to us. Not without reason we had surrounded the EW storages on deck 112 and taken out the third-year operators stationed there. It was a marvelous fight. The all-female operator team defeated all stereotypes. They were no four-eye staff officers with fat mugs, but seasoned she-wolves who had seen life. If I ever meet them in the real world, I will gladly shake their hands and have a beer with them.

Ahead of the sniper trios were the Poltergeist and Banshee terror hives. They spied on enemy communications and switched security systems data. At any moment, they were ready to falsify our location and make the enemy headquarters fall into chaos.

Nika and Stella, our bot masters, kept their pack of elite drones on a tight leash. These drones could initiate a deadly dummy attack to distract the enemy. Alas, we had not been able to obtain heavy bots despite our huge potential; we were simply low on time.

We were already exceeding all expectations, attacking uncategorical targets and swiftly making our way a few decks up at a time. Even the fifteenth-year students couldn’t contend with 50 psi-trios of levels expert or grand master. Honestly, our unit was of a divisional, or even a military level.

Murom’s group followed the snipers. The active stealth units “Snowie” on their CASs turned them into some sort of alien predators. They looked like blurred, nearly transparent shadows that clung to the ceiling, waiting in the wings.

The third wave was our mechanics. They were mining everything, including lateral passageways and service and technical tunnels. The robot turrets that we had seized in the old counter-boarding divisions’ barracks were set up to point in the most dangerous directions.

That was it. We had no more reserves left, except for a few minor trump cards: small cannons, major devices, and the large RE eagle on our armor, the eagle that stupefied the enemies, instilling a superstitious fear in them. A living legend.

“Time,” I heard Lina’s hot mental whisper in my head.

Silently nodding, I sent a wave of warmth in response to my dear other half. Then, I activated the operation script.

During the first few seconds, everything went according to plan. The enemies would soon put up a resistance. We would reach a fork in our reality, our amateurish framework turning into a retaliatory system.

In a minute, I would have to interfere to efficiently respond to the new situation. In two minutes, nothing would be left of our original plan except our intentions and lines of advance.

“Worms launched,” the tactical AI reported. It was one of our most cherished treasures. We had saved it from Marat’s smashed server farm.

“Set up active interference along the dummy attack vector.”

“Reserve surveillance, homing devices, and neutralization devices activation detected… Working… working… working … Blinding of enemy systems chance – 84 percent... 85 percent...86 percent...”

“Drones launched.”

I could distinctly hear Nika crying as she sent the elite of our industrial park into their last battle. They were carefully selected and thoroughly upgraded bots with additional weapons systems, extra armor units, shielding, and self-destruction kits.

Fifteen glyphs dropped into the right-hand corner of my interface: “Ave Caesar!” Quite symbolic.

The last drone, lovingly painted Khokhloma style, stayed with the bot drivers to protect their delicate behinds and the precious control multi-hubs.

“Fire!”

The fun began. Glyphs poured, piling into sorted stacks: enemy manpower, destroyed units, losses. The stacks grew, changed color, and accumulated new figures, becoming a visual of the battlefield layout.

At first, the number of detected enemies snowballed. The technosentients crawled out of the woodwork. Their first wave consisted of small high-speed units. Then came the stronger bots of average means: storm bots, direct support drones, mobile shield originators, and other products of the alien mind.

Our large cannon surprise worked; accelerator HVPs flashed over the storming bots. We had acquired HVPs in a nearby fighter maintenance hangar.

We didn’t have any control systems for these supersonic missiles. We had manually positioned the starter units beforehand to fire at random. Good thing the missiles were many. Sadly, the enemies were even more.

The good old Russian concept of drawing lots came to mind. The lots were the lead case shots rammed into the cannons. Fire into a crowd, and everyone gets different lots. No hard feelings.

We slaughtered the small units, as the self-guided HVPs had suitable, segmented payload. The other adverse factors of explosions weren’t as effective; the xenosentients had created a vacuum in the module. Therefore, blast waves and fires couldn’t occur.

The medium-size bots received less damage. The segmented self-guided HVPs were air-defense-type projectiles, designed to create a cloud of shards in the way of delicate, unarmored targets like heavy torpedoes or anti-ship missiles.

Our drones had already incurred losses. Even though the enemy fired small-caliber shells at them, the fire was very dense.

Nika led her wards in broken lines, simultaneously trying to achieve two incompatible goals; to not lose a single robot and break through the enemy lines as quickly as possible.

“Snipers in action.”

While the dummy attack was being carried out, our girls opened flank fire. Theirs seconds highlighted and labeled targets in order of decreasing priority. The gunners fired from heavy sniper systems at the soft spots of the exposed xenosentients: the joints, heat sink gratings, delicate sensors, and poorly armored underbellies.

The thirds, group 13 soldiers, were the permanent partners in the trios. The girls’ psi-abilities were maxed out in their presence, and the men themselves served as “last chance batteries.”

“Seven droids have closed with the enemy. Eight are out of action, three of them are still online… We’re moving deeper into the enemy formation… Two more down, only one left for remote sensing. Optimum conditions for self-destruction. Detonating!”

Synchronized explosions followed by blinding flashes wiped out the enemy’s counter-attacking lines. The cold plasma burned away the stationary firing points and flattened the area. Everything that could melt it temperatures of a million Kelvin streamed down onto the deck’s ceramic coating designed to withstand the exhausts of fighters taking off with afterburners.

“Zerg rush!” Murom cried over the public channel, signaling everyone to attack.

Our elite troops, the heavy infantry in top gear, hit the dumbfounded enemy from the flanks and the rear. The deck shook under our feet, but the battle was surprisingly quiet. Sounds couldn’t travel in the vacuum; this virtual world wasn’t some Star Wars movie where you could hear spaceship engines howling.

The heavy infantrymen spent ammo astoundingly fast. Whatever ammo we had collected, seized, or traded for, was now used up in a single attack.

They went for maximum firing rate and density of fire, bringing down walls. Fifty supporting gunners were shooting away behind them. The never-missing sniper girls were in a trance, firing with their eyes closed, on instinct, intuition, and a miracle.

The enemies winced and tightened their ranks, most likely to lessen the battle contact line and cover the more important areas of the location: the full-cycle factory, raw store, obscure steel pyramids, and the partially assembled framework of something huge asa gunboat.

Heavy drones moved back, sparking due to frequent hits. They lost external equipment such as optical devices and weapon cells.

The few medium-size bots writhed on the deck. They lacked the armor needed to survive such a dense battle. The fire was too accurate, coming from all sides, no longer stopped by flank or rear units. The external target designation systems were crushed. The headquarters’ communications channel was noisy. The direct vision sensors had been destroyed.

“Heavy infantry losses – 42 percent. Sniper losses – 9 percent. Mechanics – 38 percent. Remaining ammo: Heavies – one quarter, no reserves. Snipers: 30 percent, no stock resources.”

“Forecast?!” I nearly yelled out the most important question.

“There's a 77 percent... 78 percent... 79 percent chance that victory will be ours. Tentative forecast of subsequent events; formation will be destroyed in 24 hours due to lack of ammo for main firearms. Suggestion: tactical withdrawal to the lower levels.”

“Fuck you,” I smiled.

We had planned to spend the night in the real world, partying hard to celebrate our early completion of the course. At least that’s what the more experienced girls from the seventh company promised would happen.

You were free to go once you completed the mission. It didn’t matter if you wasted the boss with your last bullet with a hundred hungry beasts behind you. Rules of the game, c'est la vie. Sorry, little monsters, he-he…

After an hour, our respawned, battered warriors of formation 13-7 assembled in the center of the blackened hall. Their gazes were fixed on the countdown timer, their lips moving soundlessly as they mouthed the final seconds.

“Group flag will be planted in: 8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…0.”

“Congratulations! Flight deck conquered by composite formation 13-7.”

Even the tamed Amazonians joined in the loud hooraying. We were still rejoicing when bewilderment came over the sniper girls’ faces, followed by alarm.

“What’s wrong?” I asked my vice-commander, Senior Sergeant Livia Cruise.

“The university’s interface. It’s silent… And inaccessible! What the fuck?! They should already be pulling us out of the capsules!”

We heard the ringing chimes of the Russian Empire record card:

“Congratulations with early completion of your first course.”

“Your formation’s final result in the RE Space Force university rank table – 1 out of 1. In accordance with the rule 78233-11-prime, the year’s most successful group of students is awarded with special ranks.”

“Status alert! Special rank received: lieutenant. new rank: Corporal. Communicating with low-order stream of the AI Hannibal. Wait… Wait… Wait… Confirmation received, new rank approved.”

“Congratulations on your first patch! Many annulets to you, Master Corporal!”

“Officer interface activation… Unlocking hidden options… Extracting password-protected blocks from the archive.”

“Current status:”

“Post: leader of formation 13-7.”

“Salary: 450 e-rubles per week. Battle coefficient: + 200 percent.”

“RusArmyBank personal account balance: 51.445 e-rubles.”

“Home port: Fifth Rome, Coliseum College.”

“Home ship: HSC Marat.”

Status update!

“As the highest-ranking officer aboard, you are temporarily appointed acting commander of HSC Marat.”

“Salary: 3450 e-rubles per week. Battle coefficient: + 300 percent.”

“Establishing private communication channel to upload control keys and renew digital signature… Wait… Wait… Wait… Confirmation received, information updated.”

I smiled with content and flared my nostrils. Our Motherland approved of our accomplishments, and we were ready for war. We just needed to rest a little to start fresh. We would master our trophies and the fighter ships. Or maybe we would even bring back to life the dying Marat and fly to the stars. The second course objectives had loose rules, and we could choose completion methods: a certain number of hours, a minimum battle coefficient, etc.

I activated the officer interface, winking at the alarmed boys and girls. I entered the captain’s code and the command: “Exit virtual world.”

As I read the answer, my smile faded.

“Impossible to carry out order. You’re already in the real world.”

The cursor blinked for a few more seconds, then an unexpected message appeared: “Good luck, son.”

It was signed: “Russian Empire Secretary of Defense, Main Stream of the AI Hannibal.”

End of Book One.

Hi! This is D.Rus.
Sorry for my bad English, writing without translators help

Now you finished reading my new book. I hope you liked it!

Its translated book – so there WILL BE some bugs But anyway – I did mybest

If you have any comments – you can leave them on my Facebook page:

Also, you can write a review on Amazon:

Check my other series: “Play to Live”! First book is FREE!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LYJOII6

We want you!

If you love "Play to Live" and "Squadcom-13" Series, then sign up for my newsletter and get a chance to get a free Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) to review or be my beta reader!
I only send emails  when I have a new release, which is generally no more than few times in year. I can't write any faster than that. :)

I hate spam with a fiery passion, so I'll never spam you or share your email.
Hope you'll join us!

D.Rus

http://eepurl.com/ZT2wv

Dmitri Rus

Heh – be ready….

And my final recommendation!))

From Terry Schott, Author of The Game is Life series – “After reading, 'The Land: Founding', you will either want to call up your friends and re-subscribe to your MMORPG, or rush to create an account and begin playing for the first time!”

I hope you enjoyed my story!  I would like to recommend the #1 Best Selling series, The Land, by Aleron Kong.  In his own words it’s like “Warcraft, DnD and Sword Art Online had a sexy baby!”  Full humor, action and epic loot, I know you’ll love it!  Click here!

King "Of LitRPG" Kong!  5/5 Stars!  “Loved it! Wish I didn't remember it so I could read it again right now!” - Justin Barber

Great start by the father of American LitRPG! 5/5 Stars!  “The author does a nice job of melding roleplaying game mechanics in with an excellent story.” - Matthew R.Waugh

An Adult Version of Sword Art Online if it was a Book!  5/5 Stars!
“Dr. Kong (for lack of better phrasing) writes his @$$ off!”