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

It was too tempting to tell them the game and get away with the loot myself, but that wasn't going to save anyone. Who was I fooling - I had to try to open that door or we were badly written up!

Sometimes before we set off on this overlong expedition I wondered what my next target would be? That was too important! A destiny like that of Rento himself was perhaps in store for me! I wanted to prove myself and cheat the evil fate! No, don't get me wrong - I didn't see myself as some tragic hero, as that thought was too ridiculous, but that deceptive sense of calm could be like the last time we'd ever have one.

In the end, the solution came on its own! And we found the courage to try it!

By the way, I remembered an interesting quote that had been going around in my head for a long time, that we were only "temporary guests" and now, at this moment, I realized with bitter sadness all its truth.

We were temporary guests of our new life that had brought us together because of sheer unwillingness.

I didn't want to be dramatic, so I looked around and found that they were using an exavan torch that was one idea stronger than its earthly equivalent.

However, the door turned out to be stiff and started to give very slowly. After a while it became apparent through all the slag what secrets the ship was hiding! And my hair literally stood on end with horror.

Every ship had a command room and cargo quarters like our Zegandaria ships, but this ship didn't obey any such rules. It followed some logic of its own - as if it had a mind of its own.

But was it possible that such a thing could happen? That seemed ridiculous to me. We'd deconspired the Invisibles, so what was left for some Ervanans who'd abandoned their dead comrades in the middle of nowhere.

But what was the point of a place having a mind of its own that could change according to the situation?

We didn't doubt the immense intellectual power of our enemies, or indeed prey - look at it however you wish, but still.

And then I began to see some of my worst nightmares.

It took us a while to realize that this place was just materializing our memories against us. I had heard of such a thing, but had absolutely never witnessed it.

Our nightmares, however, were connected to the past - they revolved around the last moments of Von Blask himself, some moments of my taking over the leadership of the colony, and also my future role in this whole story. I was able to see that Rivinus Olk did not die by accident.

And this cosmic mind knew we were coming! And Enbright definitely had a hand in it.

The nightmare visions didn't have a completely precise shape, but I still managed to remember the most important things.

Then suddenly the door opened and we just entered another world.

There was a huge room in which they were assembling - yes, that's the right word, assembling, or at least the Ervanans had done it in the past.

- "What on earth is this?," I dared to ask.

- "This looks to me a lot like we're fighting some robots, not creatures made of biological tissue," called Lozur Ban, who could be a bully, but had helped out a lot in the colony infirmary in the early days of our arrival here.

- "So Rivinus Olk has seen something this cosmic mind didn't want him to, or maybe he was just bothered by it himself," I muttered under my breath.

- "He died, killed by the explosion," huffed Lozur Ban, who seemed to refuse to believe that his comrade had died so ridiculously to get rid of us.

I decided not to argue openly with one of my few remaining true allies. Now the entire team rested on my shoulders and those of Lozur Ban. And the situation could get worse. We decided to see what the Ervanans had come up with.

I made it clear to myself, however, that things could only get worse and that Rivinus possessed qualities that we obviously did not.

- "How little we actually knew each other," I concluded.

Entering the Ervanan ship's secret laboratory, we discovered that the body parts were deep frozen, but not because of Charon - the ship had special insulation against the very cold temperatures, as the neommonium alloy was coated with polymers of unknown origin, which we, try as we might, could not identify. I knew, however, that they were vastly superior to equivalents such as tantalum carbide and hafnium carbide that the earthlings had. However, they had to cope with high temperatures on the order of three to four thousand degrees Celsius. We were dealing with extremely low temperatures, and the calculus didn't add up - the best I could come up with was carbon steel, which could withstand down to minus a hundred degrees Celsius. How had the Ervanans achieved such preservation and why had they abandoned everything? Maybe something had gone wrong and we were going to find it!

FIFTY-ONE: THE BIONIC HANDS

Lozur Bann busied himself examining the remains with an attention that would have been the envy of any medical professional who would have given dearly to be here at this moment. Unfortunately, there wasn't one.

Let me describe to you a big, strong, powerful man like Lozur Ban who knew exactly what he wanted out of this life. So many had failed, but he held on in anticipation of some new beginning and had not lost his proverbial optimism.

I wondered what kept such a man in our situation? What gave him strength? I didn't have much time to think, but soon I had to focus on what my own eyes were seeing. Many arms and legs, wiggling, were immersed in some semblance of saline solution, and beanium fibers protruded from their ends. It was a little scary. And exciting! Now I understood why the Ervanans fought with such zest. They had enough spare parts to patch up their defeats and continue the war. It was simply unthinkable!

While the Earthlings considered printing a three-dimensional heart to be a sort of pinnacle in that regard, the Ervanans could quite easily even assemble a whole new Ervanan from the spare parts available.

But what literally amazed me was something completely different. The Earthlings had bred at least half a million clones with the clear idea that they would be undone in combat because they didn't want to give real human casualties. But there was definitely something wrong with their plan, and too much of it! The clones were dying too young and nothing could be done! They were also incapable of leaving offspring of their own. How many curses had the Earth engineers uttered in their attempts to solve the problem? It wasn't that Earthlings didn't have certain methods to sew limbs together or even to fit artificial prostheses, but the Ervanans had brought this technology to perfection - any part could be fitted and through a series of complicated procedures it could start functioning in a matter of minutes - it was downright admirable! It was damn strange how they had lost the war when they could have won it!

Then I wondered how much I actually knew of Earthlings myself - yes, Rento had told me quite a bit about them. And those stories of his had left deep marks in my mind. But this was about something radically different.

I remembered that he had told me interesting things about the human mind. The sense of reality was perhaps the result of a specific balance between neurons within the brain itself.

In a race like the Ervanans, brain activity was of a very different nature - they had two whole brains - each with specific functions, and this in turn gave rise to what is called dual consciousness. Apart from that, the calibration of Earth consciousness could also encounter some limitations, unlike the Ervanans who could reach much higher levels in this respect. Humans vibrated at levels where fear could overwhelm them, whereas the Ervanans were not capable of this - there was an innate empathy between members, like a giant swarm of ants.

Ervanans also didn't rely on collective action alone, as they could also act completely independently and even carry out serious missions without needing all their body parts, as was usually the case with humans and also their clones.

The problem was that when Earth scientists had tried to clone certain Earth donors, not all of them had good enough performance and despite some adjustments made, there were again some residual defects that caused a certain amount of worry, such as residual memories for example. Sometimes the clones couldn't cope with them and simply killed themselves as that of course didn't solve the problem in that regard.

We decided to take a look at their bionic arm prototypes - they were extremely interesting and the beonium fibres had the ability to fuse with the tissue and at a slightly later stage become an integral part of it. There was only one limitation - the limbs could not be changed indefinitely. Usually the maximum number of times allowed fluctuated around two or three changes otherwise there was a danger that the beonium fibres would not perform their function quite properly and the grafted limb would be of limited usability.

I was struck dumb and turned to Lozur Ban:

- What would you do if someone endowed you with such arms - so perfect and so strong?

- "I am satisfied with mine, too," he answered shortly. "It is human nature to want more and more. But we must live through this ordeal!" he finished thoughtfully."

As we continued to examine the ship, we found that Enbright may have been chipped by Commander Brutus himself, and there was probably a good reason for that. The Ervanans had wanted further assurance of contact with this superintelligence that was hidden somewhere around the ship.

We continued circling, but noticed nothing amiss - except for those brief flashes of nightmares that were already fading in my mind. Or maybe that's how it had seemed to me?

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO: THE