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

But Rento snapped me out of my romantic thoughts. And brought me back here - to Charon, where we were up to our necks in shit.

- "Come to your senses," he hissed in my ear. "Von Blask brought you here not to save you, but to destroy you. That was his hidden goal. He actually created the City of Light to hide the truth from the eyes of the rest of us. He never managed to completely fool everyone. When the quarantine regime was still in effect and the great cosmic plague threatened to wipe us all out, he came to me and told me that there was nothing more holding him back from helping some snot-nosed people - even more so those who, in his opinion, were doomed to a real and imminent doom. Notice I use his words verbatim."

- And yet I do not fully understand why such a violent conflict has broken out between you? I was indignant. What is Hans's connection?

- "The problem was that Hans had a cloned mind," he hissed impatiently. "That consciousness had, linked to the virtual demons, much like Jonathan Sacklin's consciousness."

- "Okay, will you spit the pebble out finally?," I didn't flinch.

- "Well, to be honest, Hans knew he was going to die - his life was coming to an end," Rento muttered, "Von Blask decided he had a chance to deal with these demons and buried Hans for good."

- "But how?," I asked again.

- It's just that there was a small military base on Cerberus, a sort of outpost of the Earth Federation, and it made logical sense for something like this to be hidden there. It could create a link to the virtual demons buried deep in the bowels of Zegandaria.

- "Apparently the earthlings are seriously concerned about their own safety," I joked lightly, realizing my joke was inappropriate, "And they haven't the slightest idea about the Invisibles!"

- "You're quite right there," Rento interjected seriously, "That's true, but only to a point. - The problem was that Von Blask had asked to negotiate with the Earth Federation for the sale of the Hans Auslander virtual virus, which, he had been the one to convince them, would help them deal with the alien invaders who had established their colony in relative proximity to the Kuiper Belt."

- "Like father, like son," I said angrily, "so he really is a traitor! And what a traitor!"

Rento had serious damage to his suit. Apparently he and the old man had traded the most ruthless blows and youth had taken over old age. Not that Rento should have been proud of his deed. I had serious agents in the nearby asteroids around Charon, and from their data I had obtained a short ciphergram that implicated him in a number of maraudings, cock-raids, frauds, beatings, and so on. The list was endless. Rento was no role model. But he had done his best to survive somehow under the new conditions. He wasn't under Detective Boss's wing now.

He didn't need to describe all the hardships he'd gone through trying to survive. The Intergalactic Police had put a bounty on his head of as much as one hundred thousand ents, the third largest bounty ever put on an individual human or alien mind. Only the Ervanans, coming from a very distant system, were determined to be a greater threat. But that had happened a long, long time ago.

Rento was lucky they hadn't stopped him, because Earthlings still kept some traditions about the Holy Inquisition, but now they called it the Holy Space Inquisition, which punished any subject who disagreed with Earth's laws, and Rento was just that kind of criminal - and one with a lot of experience and solid combat training. The snarling bastard could snap the neck of any intruder, and with silent movements no matter how solid a combat suit he wore. Rento had gotten his skills when he was a ghost warrior on his home planet. And nobody, and I mean nobody, dared fuck with him. They'd even made up a nickname for him, "The Mad Dog".

Rento knew full well that his end was coming, but he hoped I could use my connections on Charon to get him some sort of indulgence[1] that would allow him to travel under a neutral space flag to some planets in the solar system, and even beyond.

I didn't ask him exactly what had happened to him in all the time we hadn't seen each other. I remember as a kid, and here I mean long before my friendship with Bendo, who by the way always wanted to be first in the games, my dad spoke with respect about Rento. He had helped him deal with some unbearable impositions of Zegandaria. I didn't know any better, I just saw before me an elderly and somewhat desperate man - but don't get me wrong, a man like Rento could never be completely broken. Rather, his inner demons gnawed at him for the deed of Von Blask, whom he considered his idol. That doubt might have driven him to the grave, but I still found some sort of somewhat acceptable solution that could benefit both sides. Rento, after all, still possessed qualities so rare that almost no one had. His eyesight was that of a falcon, or better, and his determination and wits could rival those of the late Detective Boss.

The problem, as I said, was that the colony needed resupply. It was bloody difficult to build underground greenhouses that would be warm enough in a place where the average temperature hovered around minus 220 degrees Celsius, or 53 Kelvin, but we got the hang of it. See, digging out solid rock like this is not easy at all, but the boron probes did a pretty good job. We didn't have enough people to scoop out the broken rock and chunks of ice and clear the space for deeper digging. Other than that, the probes themselves couldn't reach too much depth. Sometimes they broke even though the element beronium possessed a hardness five times that of an Earth diamond. The more we picked up the pace, the further we fell behind. And I didn't like it. Then we decided to make some changes to the schedule. But that didn't really give a satisfactory result either. I was sure we could really do a lot more. I was just convinced!

During one of the many digs we discovered something strange. Rento had left a small box. I don't mean it was buried or anything, it just appeared out of nowhere. Inside he had put a special Narenzian chip full of instructions regarding exactly how to improve the properties of the probe and finish the greenhouses. I had forgotten that Rento was on the job as a mechanic in the War Corps. This was his way of thanking me for taking care of him.

He would travel and supply the colony with provisions and do espionage for free. He had pledged to do it for six whole months, and I didn't need any more to deal with all the simplicities we were mired in.

The laboratories were built on four levels below the surface. On the first level we stored the plants, on the second we had certain tools and implements, on the third were our water tanks, and on the fourth and final level was the compost needed to grow these plants. Even in space conditions we needed things like that.

We had heard from some of the smugglers, such as Rento by the way, that the earthlings use electrical pulse measurements by which they determine several important characteristics essential to the health of the plant[2].

Here on Charon, we proceeded in a different way - we were taught to value the simple things and thus gave all we had to the cause of common sustenance, which incidentally was growing in size. Many people resented having to literally sleep in greenhouses to monitor the life cycle of plants.

Then it occurred to me that we could apply technology similar to Earth's to help us deal with the trouble. After getting detailed blueprints from some trusted people who had contact with Cerberus' outpost, I decided to go it alone - as I said, the knowledge of any average Zegandarian rested on mechanics and quantum physics. In this case - it was more biology and some biochemistry. I didn't bother to predict the end result, but I finally did something similar - I decided to measure just two basic indicators, namely plant leaf thickness and environmental indicators. It took me quite a while to make a simple model, and I tried not to let others notice my failed attempts in this regard. Eventually, from a modified peos integrated circuit and some other circuit boards and wires, I put together a manageable model that could be applied to a plant. To build tolerably, we needed a lot more and then we solved the problem cardiNaly. We connected the livery panels to special artificial light devices that had to provide the required temperature and illumination. However, this only solved part of the problem. Later, with a friendly effort, we managed to provide similar conditions for all the plants. And you would not believe our agricultural yields almost tripled. I felt extremely proud of our achievement. The space plague was no longer attacking us. There were, of course, still isolated patients that nobody wanted to touch. There were some out there somewhere who were going to rot away ingloriously.

[1] Indulgence - exemption from ecclesiastical penalties imposed for the commission of a sin.

[2] The technology in question is called AgriHouse and is used by NASA.

CHAPTER TEN: THE EARTH FEDERATION

Earth had changed a great deal in the advanced future-it was not at all what people in previous ages had been used to seeing. And for good reason. Earthlings wanted to impose total control over their system, and also to spread their influence as far as stars like Proxima Centauri. Its far-sighted leadership had made an interesting decision - to harness all its resources into building outposts to protect against various dangers. It wasn't so simple to solve such a problem, as opinions were all over the place and everyone was pulling the rug towards themselves. No matter how much they calculated - the nearest economically viable space outpost they had to form was Cerberus' outpost, which to them was something like the entrance to the solar system. And he had saved them more than once from malicious intruders. There were, for example, various alien races that were trying to contact the Earthlings in their attempts to colonize planet Earth.

Even in the very distant future, the colonization of New Earth did not go as its inhabitants expected. Humans had long since become slaves to the notion that nearby