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

He had functioned on a survival level for far too long. He knew that humans were really bad and even disgusting creatures, but so what?

He had often tortured the soldiers with a caesarian ray that could burn through their groins and render them completely impotent. Not that it mattered, given that there were no women on Cerberus. But Brutus was long dead!

The psyche of a bully had provided him with Sikur, who would be his eyes and ears in the colony, a world Brutus did not rule because there were still valiant men like Jervond Om San.

Brutus's methodology was abhorrent, but before he died he had spent a full six months training Sikur in this and that against Earth Federation rules.

He had no remorse because Sikur would be his secret weapon to solve his problems if he accidentally fell into the grave.

Incidentally, Brutus himself had planned this on his own accord, as death had long been stalking him in various forms.

From a purely psychological point of view, our brain was playing pranks, refusing to accept and acknowledge death as something real, but the late Brutus' thoughts had often revolved around this "guest"!

After his return to Charon, Sikur was another, but in the bustle of survival of all those who had gathered to work in the greenhouses, he unnoticed joined in and got to work.

According to Brutus' instructions, he was not to give up his participation in Enbright's own band, for so there was a pretext for visits to Cerberus when the two of them were laundering his filthy earthen ents.

Yes, the late Enbright's plan was to settle on Earth! It sounded trite, but he was a traditionalist and had figured out that free-wheeling in Open Space and various colonies was time enough, and he didn't want his life to be at the whims and fancies of the new governor who succeeded Von Blask-whoever he was!

The land attracted him with its magnetism and its simplicity-a place for a new life! Enbright dreamed of light and of living space - he was sick of blackmailing all the workers of Charon through his perverted game, and smuggling was taking his strength! He believed that there lay the key to his future prosperity!

There was a song that was sung about this planet, and Enbright had heard it from the soldiers of Cerberus' outpost, where he had stayed for a time when he was under the tutelage of the infamous Brutus.

"There is hope lurking on Earth,

Korolan Bru on a new path leads us,

Someone may stay forever away from home,

But Earth we carry it with us in mind!"

The life of the scoundrel Enbright! But he was punished by his own people, who were called the Invisibles! The idea for this savagery was again Brutus', who wanted to keep his protégé Enbright in check, and Sikur would be his successor of sorts. But how had the two of them never run into each other on their trips to Cerberus?

Very simple - they were living in two different realities, or more accurately entering their bodies in different ways.

Enbright was heir to an old practice where the soul was inserted directly into the body, but in this in-between life on his journey between life and death, he had lost himself. Yes, that was the right word!

The Unseen had orchestrated his death in a very subtle way and he would never return to his current body. Thus, and only thus, could they accomplish what was really Brutus' idea, dictated to him by his masters, the Ervanans. Every life was a session subject to correction. And Enbright's had expired!

How had that happened?

The Ervanans had hacked into one of the programming stations and many of their signals were being intercepted by the hidden ships. Yes, that's right! These hidden ships acted as a special kind of hacking stations and that was why they were left where they were.

It sounded pretty stupid, but it was exactly right!

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR: THE BERIA CLISTE

When you get into the Hell of your own mind, you can see absolutely anything. It is not easy to fight your inner demons that are trying to destroy you. Beria Cliste stayed outside in the cold night of Charon - he felt alone, but he also felt a surge of energy like he had never felt before, as if an invisible hand was giving him the strength to guard this place!

- "Am I guarding a shrine! Cursed be I!," he growled, barely audibly, "Even though we're on this dead asteroid planet, who knows what might befall us - and right here in Mordor Macula! I must try not to fall asleep, for the nitrogen ice beneath my feet will see the bill if I so much as take a false step!"

Doubt seemed to creep slowly behind him. What was he looking for here? For whose interest was he fighting at all? Wasn't it rather strange that time seemed to be passing peculiarly-as if it had stopped altogether!

Beria Clistewas a very brutal son of a bitch, who would stop at nothing and no one, but suddenly doubts began to overwhelm him - they slowly crept up his back, like the subtle touch of the Imperceptibles!

- "But weren't we the Invisibles?," he asked, somewhat naively, "Weren't we doing the bidding of that psychopath Enbright, who had no scruples about indiscriminately destroying everything in his path, weren't we playing the part of Providence!"

Then he clearly felt that something seemed to crawl up his back.

- "Damn it!," he roared again. "And I thought the spacesuits were perfectly insulated, and on top of that I've got on an Ijen suit and an Ervanan uniform!"

The strange creeping seemed to have stopped!

Beria began to reason in his own way whether he was fooling himself and what he had to do to protect himself.

The isenium suit's setup was very specific, and it had to be noted that Charon's radiation background wasn't just caused by the so-called solar wind, but also by gas coming from Pluto, and trapped in Charon's cool north pole zone.

Beria had been standing here too long and it was stretching his nerves to the limit. He had no idea exactly what was going on inside the ship, and he hadn't picked up any signals from Sikur on the frequencies of his cyclotron synthesizer in a long time.

Beria Klyst couldn't deny that the beauty of the satellite was truly raw, but he couldn't even imagine the practically backwards path they'd take back to Semric Syn.

- "What if they've just decided to get rid of me!," a strange paranoia unexpectedly came over him.

Paranoid personality disorder was common and Beria was making no exception. Many had blown their brains out due to the complete impenetrable darkness and hellish cold of this Hell, and his psyche was simply more resilient, which was why Enbright had trusted him when he gathered the members of his gang.

Cleist respected Jervond's leadership, clearly seeing his qualities as an accomplished fighter and visionary in terms of where he wanted them to go, but that didn't mean he trusted him much. The primal instinct of adoration for a leader could easily be melted by some random event!

And then blood flowed from his mouth! It seemed to him that he was dreaming!

He checked his electronic pressure equalization valve - honestly, it was just fine and there was nothing suspicious about it. Even for a moment it seemed to him that he was about to fall into a dangerous slumber, which could have had a lethal end.

It wasn't long before he clearly felt the second drop of blood from his nose. Soon more and more began to drip from his mouth as well.

He tried to open his mouth, but began to drown, and then he realized that this was the end.

The Ervanan uniform was to blame - it was of biological origin and was designed to end the life of any wearer who was not of the biological species intended to wear it.

Beria slowly began to lose consciousness, but still managed to compose himself a little and make it seem like the last time. He knew that when Earth astronauts' space suits decompressed, if there was any oxygen left in their lungs, they could rupture, but in this case, the Ervanan uniform was designed to cause decompression of the alien spacesuit through its contact with the isenium matter, which in turn would then make contact and chemically react with the Hermosol spacesuits used on Charon.

Before the spacesuit was finally breached, Beria attempted to send a coded message over the internal frequency of his cyclotron synthesizer. The message, which he struggled to compose because one of his arms was brutally immobilized from the severe pain, read, in top or bottom, as follows.

"Eyes are blind, ears are deaf, and pulse is out of the norm. I'm dying... Beware the Ervanan plague like a cosmic plague. And don't wear their damn ..."

He couldn't finish the message, as his lungs simply burst due to the pressure differential, and the biological tissue of the uniform had long since done irreparable damage to the victim's head and face.

His lifeless body thudded against the nitrogen ice on Charon's surface, causing a small explosion in the contact zone. Still, the warm blood combined with the heated biomatter had had its say. The powerful shockwave nearly hermetically sealed the cockpit, and the others inside Lozur Ban, Jervond Om San and company felt it clearly.

Had this ship been constructed of any alloy other than neomon, which was extremely durable, they would likely have been dead, or at best inevitably buried under the wreckage of the ship. A huge space tomb in the middle of the lifeless territory of Mordor Macula!

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE: THE OTHER FACE OF THE ENEMY

We didn't know it then, but the true Invisibles were the Ervanans. Sikur had long been their man in the colony, and Clyst had to be killed lest he be an inconvenient witness. Unfortunately, Emborio had received the signal sent over the internal frequency, and our synthesizers were apparently jammed somehow.

He had been given the special skill of becoming invisible by the Ervanans. It was so strange that in the midst of this mortuary, the real carnage was just beginning!

I, Jervond Om San, was familiar with some of the Earthlings' hidden technologies, such as the so-called invisibility cloaks, which were mostly made of special metamaterials like ceramics and