The Wars of Zegandaria by Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov (find a book to read .txt) 📕

^^^

Dislan pretended to be distracted and unprepared expertly, though he was perfectly aware of what he had to do. It was part of his repertoire as a high level artist. It was how he survived among the mass of people. But of course that would only be until he was discovered. And that was inevitably going to happen. So he had to play his cards right.

After they parted with Mieru, he pretended to sleep and slept like a bath. He had to be fresh for the next day. Then he would go through a series of short training sessions and be inducted among the technicians as a senior technician first rank.

He realized that Mieru had helped him get where he was going. That simple truth burned his brain. A woman who had helped him before she even saw the benefit of her assistance was an invaluable ally, but an even more formidable potential enemy.

The technician cringed at the thought that time was passing in some very strange way. In his thoughts, everything seemed to be a mess. One big mess.

Ennio Hammer greeted him at morning ops with a pleasant expression on his face and no particular worries. Everything was as it should be. No better - no worse. But Dislan secretly felt lost.

Hammer introduced the techs to their new boss. Dislan was going to be in charge of everything with only six people plus two support staff. He'd handle it naturally. There wasn't an ounce of doubt. But somewhere in the back of his mind a strange reasoning was processing. What would happen if someone just pulled the coordinates and mixed them with fake ones? That would cause tremendous damage to everyone. Irreparable damage!

He started to explore this possibility of sabotaging their activities as well, as he wanted to get in Mieru's eyes that he might as well act in a self-syndicated manner. For better or worse.

Hammer kept explaining to the technicians about his vast experience, his many qualifications, and on and on. He just couldn't shut up.

- Take a good look at him. This is the best technician on the planet Zegandaria. A natural talent. I'm just flattered that he even stopped by. Isn't that right?

- 'Hurrah,' the technicians roared, like a military unit on a physical exercise.

Only now did Dislan feel in his own waters. And he stopped caring about everything. He just really stopped caring. The people's speech was like a buzzing sound to him, crashing against the sides of his helmet. He felt like a drunk, or more like a slightly sleep-deprived person. The sound was practically transmitted on the suits internal frequencies, but it struck Dislan that somewhere in there something had broken. It was that something that made him ready to learn and evolve again.

The following days passed in training and drills. Some of them were not to the liking of Dislan, who had a very different routine in the past. Even the crew of barely a dozen or so seemed like a crowd to him. But with time he was able to get to know them and even grow attached to most of them. They had quite similar interests, but what set them apart from Dislan was the respect and love they had for their home planet. It united them and was completely understandable. Somewhere out there in all the complex tangle of social interrelationship he was having a hard time finding his true place. Too complicated even. A lot had been left unsaid between them all this time. Not that Dislan was some kind of a temerut who couldn't win people over. But he had a rather selective strategy in his choice of friends. It defined him as an individual.

It was their custom to get together and get drunk while Hammer wasn't looking. Interestingly, they brewed a special distillate that contained zombie salts and combined with a few other ingredients could make them explode. But they never abused the amount of this drink. They were very careful. Still, they enjoyed themselves to the fullest.

Dislan pretended to drink, and poured the distillate into a special sponge under his spacesuit. That way he could observe and appreciate the various foibles of his so-called 'friends'. And they had them in abundance.

One of the technicians even had a habit of pissing himself, something that genuinely amused the others.

He became an unwitting witness to their gloating against Hammer. Of their latent hatred against him. When they made him join in, he always deflected their suggestions in a way that didn't malign him in their eyes or turn them against him.

He had to do Mieru's bidding. This woman knew what she wanted. She also knew how to achieve it. She knew so much. And she was so indispensable. He was aware of the well-known tendency of men to put the woman they admired on a pedestal. But in this case, Dislan viewed her merely as a step or link in his own development.

Dislan was only waiting for the opportune moment to get at the machine again. He'd hidden the drained information in a very Tarkathian way. He'd anticipated all of this in advance. Even if they did make a check, as he had already undergone at Urus Onx, he would not be stopped.

But then something unexpected happened.

^^^

In the morning the technicians started to change. They suspected nothing of Dislan's night adventure. Nothing could even hint what was going to happen too soon. First they performed the standard facility check. They checked all the frequencies. They even checked for tachyon-detecting micro-detectors. Everything looked more than fine. No problems were being reported. But there was something in there somewhere that was disturbing. Throughout the night shift, no one remembered exactly what had happened. Looked at from the side, it wasn't much. There happened to be some people asleep on watch, as the Space Second Ring was basically a stationary spaceship with very special functions. The culprits usually received rather harsh punishments. Some of them even got their heads split off. No burial capsules were wasted on them. Absolutely none. Because it just wasn't necessary. The facility was brought into readiness step by step. Some of the frequencies at first refused. But a little while later, everything seemed perfectly fine. Now the tests could begin.

Where in jest where in truth the technicians wiped their sweaty brows. Metaphorically speaking, since in open space, their bodies did not sweat due to the presence of complex mechanisms in their spacesuits.

However, one of the recruits noticed something rather unusual. And called out to the others. Whatever else he might say, Dislan was a bit of a dilettante, and in that line of thought he had made a small but significant oversight. He could have prejudged quite a few of the ship's fates.

Since Mieru had lulled the guards to sleep with a special serum she had prepared herself and injected into the suit's emonathium air mixers, some of the recruits had bruised faces and looked as if they were dying.

Dislan had been forced to hurry and had forgotten to return the scanner's data history to the last blank entry. That was to say, there was exactly one blank record lurking somewhere in the vast database. A manually run check might have missed it. But when the machine check was run, it didn't.

This morning, however, the technicians were in a hurry because they had too many obligations and this omission went unnoticed. So far.

They should have started with the coded frequencies of the pilots who were taking off. They relied on that information too much. They had to get it on time and in the appropriate ready form. Then some of the well-trained experts could adjust to the situation and encrypt the frequencies further.

Ennio Hammer was darting this way and that like a hornet, ready to sting anyone who made even the slightest mistake. But everyone was doing their job perfectly. Somewhere in there something very unusual happened. One of the technicians with a slightly bruised face collapsed. Instantly they rushed to his aid. But he collapsed and gasped. Hammer ordered an instant investigation. The dying man's body would be released into open space, as was his order, but not before an autopsy was performed. The causes of death were to be worked out in minute detail.

On the Space Second Ring they had modern hospital equipment. There was what they usually called an Esonian scanner somewhere. It made it possible to pick up all sorts of deviations from the norm. Everything was slowly falling into place. But the scanner had malfunctioned two days ago and now they were fixing it. So the corpse just ended up in the ship's morgue.

Ennio Hammer was furious as he immediately suspected a conspiracy. And maybe even a leak of information related to the position of some of the crew. What could have caused it? He couldn't suspect Dislan, who had only arrived yesterday. He couldn't, and he shouldn't have. Mieru also seemed to trust him completely. Who, then, had stirred up the whole mess?

For an old dog like him, there was no doubt that such a thing was hardly the work of a lone man. It just wasn't possible. It wasn't too hard to guess that perhaps some of the equipment in the command room had been tampered with. But which one, exactly? And how?

He decided to conduct his own investigation, but one that wouldn't interfere with the official one. It would all come out sooner or later. He was astute enough in that respect. The stakes were enormous. But again, he didn't suspect Dislan, as it was too obvious. It just seemed ridiculous. Of course, Ennio was going to check out that version too though. But a little later.

After he finished the briefing, he decided to question the technicians about what they had seen or heard, but no one knew anything.

They reported to him that some of the ships had deployed in the higher and foggier layers of the atmosphere due to the pilots' temporary attempts to establish unsuccessful communication with the Space Second Ring's command center. If things weren't taken into consideration, it was highly likely that there would be casualties. And lots of them.

Hammer's responsibility was enormous. He had to do something. Immediately!

The first thing he did was go to the morgue and check the corpse. According to the readings of the nanoprobe as well as the quantum computer with medical functions, nothing special had happened except that the level of pentanol in the victim's system was only slightly higher than normal. Again, this was not evidence of an old hound like Hammer. Then suddenly he saw something strange. A small, barely noticeable hole on the victim's spacesuit.

- 'There, we've found something after all,' he muttered as if to himself.

He turned back and tried not to arouse any suspicions. He answered his subordinates' questions monosyllabically and looked distracted.

Mieru, however, did not lose sight of him. He appeared slightly tense to her, but his expression didn't suggest he suspected her, let alone Dislan. Still, Hammer could reveal them soon enough.

^^^

- 'They've attacked the refinery! It's all in flames!,' shouted someone on watch.

It had happened on the ninety-third day of Dislan's stay in the Space Second Ring, to be exact. He had already fully adapted to his new environment. No one had yet been able to discover what they had done, but Hammer was naturally still stewing, though not so openly. He knew that if he caught the culprit, he would kill him with