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

Naturally, the manorium turbines provided them with an almost infinite supply of oxygen, but every four or five months their representatives had to return to Earth.

Yet how they had come by such advanced technology as the tachyon - well, very simply, they had bought it. And from where exactly - I had no idea!

Cerberus' outpost always included almost a hundred different platoons , which wasn't that many - between 3000 to 5000 soldiers and the accompanying personnel. It seemed very small to me, but I was later convinced that this was not the case at all.

By comparison, the translator stations on the surface of Mars had about two hundred to two hundred and fifty support personnel - who were engaged in a variety of tasks - not all of which were related to the translator stations. For example, a small group was busy mining minerals such as iron, magnesium, silicon, and aluminum.

Robot probes were digging into the planet's underbelly around the clock. It was cramped. Many friendships bound those working on Mars. They wanted a new life for themselves, but no one had ever told them they would never leave its surface. They were living and believing something false. Red Mars was going to become black for them, especially when they realized what was really in store for them. It was hard work and many were dying, hoping to return to their families on Earth. No one noticed their suffering, which was immense. We called them Hermoso[1] and frankly we were waiting for their deaths so we could take over Cerberus' sprawl.

From a military standpoint, a garrison deployment would have been far more far-reaching, but that was clearly not in the Earth Federation's power.

Rufus Ebendhaus had foreseen quite a few things about the terraforming process that helped their mineral yields, as mentioned. But the problem of cosmic radiation remained. Sometimes false reports were sent from Earth to send liaison ships to eventually bring them back, but they obligingly lingered to overrun the quarantine period so they could die a slow and painful death.

Ebendhaus was a dirty and nasty bastard of galactic proportions. Behind the mask of a scientist was a true beast who moved the pawns calculatingly.

[1] Hermoso - in Zegandarian dialect means "fools".

CHAPTER TWELVE: KOROLAN BRU CORPORATION

Korolan Bru was the most powerful and advanced space corporation, engaged in a wide range of activities. But somewhere in there a huge mistake had been made - and a completely deliberate one at that. They unexpectedly replaced the head of Cerberus' military divisions. That had never happened. And it hadn't caused much of a reaction on Earth, as the Earthlings were constantly bombarded with all sorts of nonsense to distract them.

Korolan Brew had been at the forefront of some of the most extensive research into not only the human genome, but various futuristic weapons.

For example, the ARG 143 plasma rifle was an interesting invention of hers. Or the neo-war robots that dug endlessly on Mars. There were definitely practitioners at work in it.

Korolan Bru tried to keep a certain distance from the civilian population, who wouldn't be aware of the exact extent of her interests.

In fact, the corporation was even a major sponsor of the Earth Federation itself, providing more than half of its budget. The rest came in the form of income from the various settlements on Cerberus and Mars, and also small mining colonies on the Moon.

Korolan Bru was one of the corporations shrouded in complete secrecy. There was one basic rule that governed this corporation. It was vengeance in its purest form.

There was no one who dared to say a word against this super-powerful interplanetary corporation and survive. Its management resembled not a pyramid, but rather a hydra with many heads, each of which was a different supervisor who was also interchangeable. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that many of them were liquidated rather brutally.

No one would ever know about the botched excavation of the lunar surface, which the corporation itself considered to be a big crock. The thing was, at one time one of its members had given the idea of mining HELIUM-3 , which would have provided inexhaustible energy for Earthlings.

In the past, earthlings had expected this isotope to completely replace their needs for various fuels such as oil and natural gas, but things didn't follow the script they wanted.

The yield on Earth was almost negligible, but the actual transportation from the Moon was a real challenge.

Of course, Korolan Brew decided to take it on and sent the best astronauts to do the job. Little by little, the earthlings realized they were being worked hard. Things hadn't improved significantly, and the prices of the new fuel had become astronomical. Not that that wasn't Korolan Brew's goal.

The procedure for extracting energy from this particular type of fuel was by what was called fusion, which involved an interaction between helium-3 and deuterium.

Thermonuclear fusion[1] was an inherently dangerous reaction in which the fusion of atomic nuclei formed heavier ones and energy was released. Things didn't go quite so smoothly at first, and one of the main labs was completely wiped out, along with all the adjacent infrastructure within a mile radius. But Korolan Bru immediately activated his powerful connections and everything went down quickly.

The main production facilities were concentrated within the confines of the UEN, which stood for United Earth Nations, or a supranational state operating as the face of the entire planet.

The Earth Federation ruled this super-powerful union, but in the shadows secretly stood Korolan Bru. And this went on long enough.

The corporation's strategy consisted of rather simple but effective ploys that definitely yielded results. Most of the senators on the Earth Federation's staff supported themselves on their salaries, but some of them were secret members of the Korolan Bru leadership. That was their real source of income.

Getting into the corporation itself was not easy and many had failed. One of the main criteria was that the candidate had to have a universal view of the events that were taking place and put the interests of the corporation first and foremost.

Rufus was spotted by the corporation early enough and managed to accomplish something unheard of - increasing its holdings by another planet. He was immoral and purposeful! And he got his way!

One time his superior asked him point blank:

- And just how far do you plan to go? He achieved much more than many of us.

I'd like to touch the stars on the other side of the Asteroid Belt. I'd like to make a sustainable settlement beyond the Kuiper Belt. Then I would die peacefully.

His tone was fairly neutral, but Rufus sensed the trap in it.

Earthlings generally showed no real need to resettle outside their own planet, which I persoNaly found odd. But that was their view of events.

The colonization process wasn't going particularly smoothly, but Rufus was doing his best in trying to solve the problem.

The Manorian Turbines were the real fruit of his immense efforts, but he knew that very soon he would not be able to pull the wool over the eyes of Korolan Bru's superiors.

He had to come up with something new and unheard of - something that would take his employers to the next level. Time was definitely not working in his favor. He had a feeling that soon he'd just fall into that interchangeable category and someone else would be setting the launch schedule for the Manorium turbines. And he would be lying deep underground. Lifeless!

[1] A type of nuclear reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei fuse to form a heavier nucleus.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE DEATH OF JAKE

- "Did you feel their touch?," asked Jake Enroad, who incidentally was one of the very few punctual people in the colony.

- "It was almost inaudible," I said, trying to calculate in my confused mind exactly what my chances were if I was spotted.

- "I don't think they're acting out of spite, they're looking for a specific person," my companion confidently suggested.

His answer intrigued me. The kid was beating himself up. He was cocky enough to be completely on his own, not someone wiping his snot, as Von Blask kept telling us. He was also one of the few who didn't care if they died in their sleep, strangled by the Unnoticeables.

- "Well, what the hell, you may be quite right," I replied calmly, "The important thing is to finish what one has started. Isn't it?"

- "But you're completely mad?," he said breathlessly. "They may not exactly be human."

- "I wonder more who they're looking for," I added quietly, "I doubt they're wasting their time. We've already lost Enbright and Cox. Who's going to be next? I'm bass fishing that the situation is going to get shitty. What do you think?"

We were both raised on Charon. And we didn't know any other place. We had heard of the planet Zegandaria from various legends and rumors of ghost warriors. But it was just words. Nothing more.

- "What did they sense, or did they need?," continued Enroad in his musings.

- "I think it's just time to sleep," I interrupted him, and fell asleep as if slaughtered.

In my dreams I kept seeing the same recurring visions. I couldn't transcend my level and kept spinning in the same circle surrounded by dark nothingness. My soul was destined to die in isolation. To melt away and feel immense suffering. To be stopped in its path of development. To be obliterated forever and ever! In my nightmares I could clearly sense that someone or something was watching me and that this something had a specific purpose. Clearly my presence did not fit into its plans. Even to Charon, our survival was not guaranteed by anything. Daily difficulties aside, I began to question how well I actually knew everyone. So we just got up, worked long fourteen-hour shifts, and went to sleep. No closeness, no warmth, no affection. Nobody cared about anybody. Everyone prayed he wasn't next. To wake up in the morning with cold eyes full of horror that would inevitably spread to our battered souls.

Many of my so-called friends were people who frankly knocked their board and didn't care if you got shot with a plasma weapon during the regular work shift. They lived in a very tiny and enclosed illusory world that, if shattered, would show them the