The Silence of Zegandaria by Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov (book recommendations website txt) 📕

Earthlings clearly had some respect for Charon, who was generally associated with death.

This was welcome news to Jervond and his group.

Lest they find out about their trip - at least not immediately, they changed the shifts of the workers and left them to routine activities that could not, and should not, be interrupted until they left the confines of the colony.

Enbright's men stuck to their word and did a brilliant job. These chiefs had a certain sense of honour which in this instance they really justified.

They had to determine the exact route, of which there was comparatively little information.

The fact was that they had to cross up and down the whole of Charon until they reached where they were bound for.

The Dark North Polar Region had been too well studied by Earth astronomers, but unfortunately I had not been able to get my hands on a single Earth map in all these long years.

It was getting harder and harder, and as we left I decided to tell them one last time:

- Guys, we're going to almost certain death. Remember, this decision was yours, I decided to remind them again.

Nobody said anything.

We set off slowly and must have been able to cope with the whole situation, because nobody said a word.

Charon, as mythologized as it was, wasn't exactly where I wanted to end my days. It was an abode of doom. Maybe Rento was completely right that we weren't sent here by accident, but there was a deeper design. Maybe the super-powered Ertol Gis and Korolan Bru had worked out this scenario long, long before. Things were really looking more and more interesting as time went on.

Enbright's chieftains clearly had some training after all, and were giving their best to catch up with the pace. We were wearing well-insulated spacesuits that protected us from the adverse temperatures. Our weaponry consisted mostly of Enbright laser cutters, but I'd tried and stocked up on something more serious. There might have been some sign of life on Charon, besides us of course - though that was unlikely.

Depth of perception depended on how you were used to seeing reality, and it could take too many forms depending on that.

Enbright's people had only lived in a violent world, and that could play them a bad joke if something went wrong in the end.

First we passed through some of the toughest areas of Charon, such as Oz Terra, to reach our destination, which incidentally was also known as Mordor Macula. This interesting place was definitely shrouded in mystery and its origins were not fully explained by Earth astronomers. Of course, we were coming from Zegandaria, but we were still sort of guests in this place.

Perhaps I hadn't mentioned yet that our colony was located in a huge plateau near the south pole, but let's not digress too much. After all, we had too much of a journey ahead of us.

Time was advancing, and all the crew members were becoming more and more mortified, though it didn't quite show through their spacesuits.

We passed the Sea of Stillness, if we could call it that, and tried to skirt around it in our attempts to avoid the rock climbing.

This, however, might have played us a bad joke.

The solar wind was a danger, but we moved as carefully as we could to avoid falling victim to it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: THE BLINDFOLD FALLS FROM THE EYES

At one point, Enbright's men apparently got loose and tried to attack me. It was a real travesty, as we could easily have flown off into open space if it hadn't been for the sturdy zeroth ropes holding us.

I fought off one or two, but there were fifteen of them and death was obviously going to find me in that place. Then I did something extremely sneaky - I hid a small rock in one of the compartments of my spacesuit. I pulled it out and hid it in my handful - when the first seeker approached, I clawed at him brutally and splashed his visor. Naturally, decompression ensued, which cost him his life. I didn't even look who I had hit. I knew the bastard was doomed and would be wiped from our final roster, which in that order of thought meant we'd screw up more.

- "Did you see where your reckless actions got you?," I roared at the cyclotron synthesizer. "You are to blame for your own downfall!"

- "You're leading us to certain death," McDougle's goons tried to justify, "And you don't know exactly where we're going yourself."

I figured it was pointless arguing with idiots, but that I should raise their fighting spirit at least a little - I couldn't go on completely alone.

- "If anyone dares such wilfulness again, they'll simply be left to their fate," I threatened them firmly, "That's my last word, and so it shall be."

Nobody made a sound. And we went calmly on. I'd like to share a bit about some of the geography of Charon, though. Though small, the planetoid was riddled with all sorts of craters and so on.

Eventually, Enbright's men realized they needed to tighten up. Lozur Bann was the one we needed, his brute strength a guarantee of safety.

He was definitely useful when it came to breaking someone's bones, but now a lot of other things needed to happen.

Lozur Ban didn't talk much, but unlike the rest of Enbright's men, he could listen and handle trouble on his own.

The implications for others who were unwilling to listen were all too clear - I could use him to impose my own will.

Rivinus Olk was still steady and willing to take the lead, so I decided not to ignore him and make him my deputy. I explained to him that we could split into smaller groups, which would make us a harder target. He agreed with my reasoning.

After we regrouped, we moved on. This helped us a lot.

It took us a long time to get out of Oz Terra, but we still made it in the end.

We had taken special ATVs that Rento had brought from somewhere, and I had paid him with changed IDs that would keep him safe for a while.

Rivinus Olk knew how to take the initiative the right way and even save the whole group, so I put him in charge of the first squad.

The strongest were moving behind, and so were the ones in front. We had borrowed this principle from the wolf pack, which had developed this strategy to protect its weaker members.

Not all members of Enbright's gang were of equal strength though.

The smaller ones were engaged in scouting and reconnaissance and marking the route for the others.

Suddenly, however, Rivinus stopped and approached me, saying sympathetically:

- What are we looking for anyway?

- Well, I think there may be Ervanan ships hidden out there. They may have suffered a shipwreck of sorts.

- "A shipwreck?," he looked at me uncomprehendingly.

- "They may have crashed on hard landing," I replied simply.

He nodded in understanding.

- And how are we going to use their weapons?

That was a really good question - we had never used weapons in the colony. I'd heard that on Zegandaria they'd made use of a variety of weapons like plasma rifles and so on, but we had no real idea how advanced the Ervanans were, and that might have failed us.

I'll also spare you many of the minor and annoying details, like the fact that some team members almost died from a rockfall.

I may have failed to say that in our journey so far we had explored the Sea of Tranquility, albeit briefly. We didn't want to waste unnecessary time because our oxygen was extremely limited.

As we began to enter Mordor Macula, I noticed that the surrounding darkness that was already abundant on Charon was just beginning to take a serious toll on the psyches of the others.

I didn't fear riots, but nothing was known all the same.

- "Try to stay closer," I ordered, relying on Rivinus Olk and Lozur Ban to be a deterrent to any possible accidents.

Mordor Macula had been formed, according to some theories, when hydrogen and methane had separated from Pluto and then layered on Charon's surface.

Yes, this particular spot was hardly the most convenient for landing, but there were certainly plenty of convenient places around where this aggressive race might have stationed their ships.

Rivinus Olk, Lozur Ban and I - Jervond Om San - looked into the distance - there was the reddish colour of that area. It seemed that this race, had chosen the right place for themselves. The place from where it could observe the Earth Federation covertly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: THE ERVANANS

Many races were too aggressive, but none were as brutal as the Ervanans - they were simply the top of the predator pyramid. They were trying to gain the upper hand, but they couldn't win that crucial battle.

Admiral Or Suv Res had not forgiven the brutal loss that had set them back too far. They had prepared and missed a chance to impose themselves on the Galactic Federation, where Earth was an active member.

By some vast and inexplicable miracle, the Admiral had escaped the brutal punishment. But it made him all the more ambitious to just go back and get revenge.

He decided to hide some Charon ships - near the outpost of the humans, so he could secretly spy on them. The location was, in his opinion, downright perfect. Just perfect!

He was able to make amends for some of the losses his fleet had suffered, and that way the hidden ships wouldn't arouse anyone's suspicions.

He wished he had deployed many more, but he only managed to hide ten.

There was one important thing that had always affected the psyche of any commander, and that was the number of dead - in the case of Or Suv Res, it was truly enormous, even too much.

Few had any real chance of dealing with the scourge that the Ervanans had gradually become.

With the passage of time, they had conquered territories too vast - they were like locusts that left no room for the rest to live.

There were so many worlds beyond the Cloud of Oort, unknown to humans. Their engines could not make up for many of the shortcomings that were overcome by us Zegandarians.

There were many planetoids in the sparse belt beyond the Kuiper Belt that might have allowed for their displacement, but they were not under Galactic Federation jurisdiction either.

The Ervanans really wondered what to do - it