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

In the morning, when one of his jailers arrived, he earnestly asked him for a favour:

- Pass this to Vice Admiral Erdemon Bonks, who knows what to use it for, and hand him a small Narenzium chip. Everything is hidden here. I swear to you on all that is holy, the survival of our entire planet depends on it. Now, I'm gonna ask you for something personal. Have you found a zeret rope?

The warden looked at him with great curiosity but said nothing. He just scratched the back of his head. For the sake of all the kindnesses Rufus had done him, he did agree to help him and promised that chip would be delivered where it belonged.

The sufferer calmed down somewhat.

Minutes passed. Hours passed. And still the warden did not come. Rufus began to despair and just didn't know what to think. Who could have guessed that he had hidden the greatest treasure of the entire Earth Federation in certain parts of his body and subsequently the nanoscanner hadn't detected them at all.

The warder proved to be an honest man, and on the evening round opened the semaranium triple-insulated door that separated the convict's cell from the corridor to the general isolation ward.

- What you're doing and making me do is extremely dangerous, but remember, if you get the rope you want and you happen to be alive, I didn't give it to you. I brought you a genanium fiber that will melt after you hang yourself, and it also has the property of not leaving any scars. Here's a liquarian injection you can use to put oxygen in your veins and cause a cardiac embolism. It's too simple. It's also made up of a nanopolymer that after a while will melt and degrade leaving absolutely no residue!

Rufus went speechless and bowed his head. The overseer looked at him sympathetically for a moment, then spoke:

- I have done all I could for you, and now we are quits-you and I. Two lost souls in this hell. And now I really must go.

He turned and the door closed behind him almost silently. The Sufferer was left alone and had to make his choice. He chose the injection first and pumped more than twenty cc's of oxygen into his artery, waited a moment and slipped the rope around his neck and then hung himself.

In the morning they found him fallen on his eyes and registered that he had suffered a cardiac arrest of the myocardium. No one questioned exactly what had happened.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE: THE OVERSEER

The Overseer knew that it hadn't been easy at all to send that damn chip to Vice Admiral Erdemon Bonks, as the Cerberus colony was in an impressive mess. Everyone knew that Brutus was gone, and the rumors of shadows that had dogged him relentlessly in the past were becoming more and more daring.

At first, Erdemon Bonx was trying to beg a certain indulgence from the Earth Federation, which was not at all keen on dealing with Cerberus' outpost for a number of reasons, and on the other hand, was wondering if Bonx himself had staged a secret coup, thus seizing some of its functions.

In the end, the upper chamber of the Senate decided to leave him in power now-for the time being, replacing Brutus as it could compromise him at some later point.

Erdemon Bonks couldn't recognize the previous soldiers - they had changed so much, wondering what was going on, and there was a specific culprit for everything that the Vice Admiral had unwittingly guessed.

After rummaging through the electronic documents that Brutus hadn't managed to completely delete in his haste, he was able to piece together the puzzle and realize exactly what had happened.

One of the most trusted people he had logically contacted in the past on such occasions was the same Eberald Eziner who had long been on Nanjagar, where he led a relatively respectable and quiet life - as far as a man with his background could do so.

The signals he had received from the Martian broadcasting stations had been more than contradictory, and he realised quite clearly that Brutus had been lost, and for a more terrible reason than that of his half-hearted betrayal of the Earthmen.

Mars had been one of the former Chief Executioner's usual command bases in the past, and he went to Cerberus relatively rarely and only for exceptional occasions.

Erdemon Bonks tried to gather certain information that would help him with unraveling the case, but the soldiers avoided talking and ran from him like the plague.

Making contact with the higher echelon of the United Earth Fleet forces was equally foolhardy, and most unexpectedly he was contacted by a certain superintendent named Munger Kurzaile, who was only too interested to speak with him persoNaly and had flown all the way from the Lunar Spaceport, through the Mars Liaison Station, all the way to Charon.

Erdemon Bonks thought it was some sort of ill-conceived joke, but later took it completely seriously, realizing that if he was lucky enough, this would be his chance to accomplish something extraordinary!

She invited him into a soundproofed office and listened carefully to his speech, as well as his preliminary presentation.

- "I can't believe it!," gasped Bonks. "So the demon computer viruses are on Earth, and he sent those fools for green caviar. But why do you say he hanged himself? He had the resources to live for a while in isolation and then an escape attempt was organised."

- "It's impossible to get out of Ebendhouse, sir," objected the warden, "and no one ever tried!"

Bonks then slammed his hand against the helmet of his spacesuit and nearly sat up in surprise. He realized how brutally honest the mosaic before him had become.

The Ervanans wanted the demonic computer viruses because he himself...

- "But how had he managed to outwit the Light creatures? Did they really exist?," spoke Bonks incredulously, who for all his superiority was a bit superstitious.

- "There must be something else here, sir," said the Warden, humbly handing him the Narenzian chip, which actually contained a hidden map to the location of the sarcophagus.

- "Which would mean?," he scratched the back of Bonks' head.

- Which is to say that by his very secret arrival on Zegandaria, the legendary Doctor Gad ‘Di Enn brought it with him, and in turn shared so much knowledge with the Earthlings that they simply turned their search in another direction. In this way, Korolan Bru received a vast resource in the form of know-how from Erthol Gis, and apparently didn't even fully know why she was receiving it.

- "I mean, no one has found them yet!," the overseer, Erdemon Bonks, turned to her with ominous triumph. "They stand buried in perpetuity under the noses of the handful of fools in the Senate who can only hold their meaningless speeches of prosperity and well-being and sink in wealth! And the Ervanans and their helpers, who apparently call themselves Zegandarians and whose colony on Charon we destroyed, have gone for green caviar. But..." he paused briefly, "on the other hand, it is unknown exactly where they will choose to build their settlement, which is their first priority."

Bonks ordered the superintendent to keep complete secrecy and go away, giving him the hefty sum of fifty thousand ents for the information and covering the cost of the entire interplanetary flight out of his own pocket.

The superintendent hesitated, but Bonks sent him away with a magnanimous gesture, giving him the right to choose whichever speeder he wanted for his flight in the opposite direction.

While the conversation lasted the superintendent did not fail to glance at Bonks's strange expression and his flushed face. He looked like a walking corpse and if it weren't for his spacesuit he would have looked like a skeleton.

But there was something else. The warden was under no illusion that he would be let go just like that. He knew from the start that he was dooming himself to doom, but because he was an honest man he accepted to go willingly to the slaughter.

Bonks didn't pay much attention to his reaction because he was already thinking about how to find the location of the hidden viruses.

- "It's clearly marked here," he scratched at his helmet again. "Apparently they're buried deep near Ensanor, which is one of the main military bases in Veoria, but something doesn't add up. How did Doctor Gad ‘Di Ennmanage to hide them without being noticed by the staff in the first place?"

When he looked up, the superintendent was still standing across from him. He was surprised, and maybe he was going to insult him, but then he remembered something.

- "Don't you understand now, Munger?," he turned to him, "He only knew how to activate them, and the secret was passed to him by the late Doctor Gad 'Di Enn. But just so you know, those will surely return, and the combined forces of the Earth Federation will not stop them."

As if on command, one of his soldiers brought an alarming signal that the Ervanans, led by one of Charon's survivors, were returning to strike and settle scores with the Earthmen.

Bonx started to give the order, but the warden stopped him:

Rufus mentioned that the Ervanans had a force stationed on Haumea as well - most likely hidden cruisers. We can use them and fight off the invaders!

- "Most likely they've blown too," Erdemon would scold him, "And if they've gone to Nanjagar, it'll take them a while to return!

- I don't think so sir, I may be a simple overseer, but if they really are using quantum teleportation they won't be carrying out the pair entanglement in an area where there is military conflict or an increased Intergalactic Police presence.

- "But Charon is a huge distance away," Bonks tried to object.

- "Not exactly," Munger contradicted him. "If their ships are here, we can easily capture them, and the demonic computer viruses must be destroyed. It's the only way all of humanity will get a break."

Suddenly, Erdemon bayoneted him with a single bolt rifle that burst his suit's visor and caused decompression. The unfortunate's head burst open like a ripe watermelon, and he himself didn't even have enough time to feel his eyes pop out of their orbits and thud hilariously into his blood-filled helmet, pieces of his shattered skull now a mere grotesque semblance of a head.

- I hold the trump cards now, fool, if I master the Ervanan ships and get the demonic computer viruses, I'll be able to control everyone through my so-called implanted virtual reality consciousness and they'll be my slaves! I, Erdemon Bonx, will be able to shed my own skin, or sooner or later the Earth Federation leadership will purge me, as they did the late Evason Cawrn, who was my commander before Brutus.

Erdemon Bonks shot the other soldier who had entered by mistake in a flash. The entire isolated office was covered in blood - the blood of two innocents, but the psychopath Bonks knew no measure - he was going to get his and succeed!

When asked what happened within the colony, he replied that it was nothing special and he just had to defend himself since the messenger was a traitor. But the soldiers remained somewhat suspicious and