Now, we were in a serious pile of trouble, but to escape it, we had to proceed step by step, working with stability. In short, I was entering one of the periods of my life I hated the most.
It seemed we had no better option than the Raiders for acquiring the necessary robots for our facility. A Weisshafen, even a fallen one, is still a Weisshafen. Therefore, secretly wandering cities, tracking trade networks, and covertly buying things was not a plausible option for me. Besides, we couldn't launch a spacecraft without the Agency's permission. And since the ship we would launch belonged to the Agency, roaming the illegal parts of the galaxy wasn't really an option either.
So, the Raiders were our only option. But how we were going to find them was another enigma. If you don't know, until the year 2648, there was a long-running war between the colony people and the Republic. Each colony community used a different excuse to wage this war. This conflict was named the Interstellar War.
The Colonies believed the Republic was rife with corruption and acted unjustly. Some thought they were hiding great secrets from the public, others believed they were agents of the Incompatibles. The SWR was never transparent with the Colonies, especially after the Incompatibles left this galaxy.
The Interstellar War between the Colonies and the Republic seemed to have ended, yet what truly ended was only the major colonies' power to fight. The large colonies were slowly switching sides to the Republic. The Republic appeared to be forgiving the major colonies' sins, but what they were actually doing was exploiting them, convincing the kings, presidents, and other big figures of those colonies with good treatment while exploiting their people. But the small colonies... they were worthless. They had no beautiful sub-surface resources, no money, and no importance whatsoever. Those small colonies, which had given everything they had to support the larger colonies during the war, had been betrayed by them. As the small colonies were struck one by one under the Republic's command, countless people came to the brink of death, begging for a treaty, begging for peace. Some, believing peace would never return, went outside the Republic Network. Others decided to live in the blind spots of the Republic Network, in the deep void of space. These former colonists living in the deep void were named the Raiders.
Because the only source of livelihood for these people, who lived on asteroids or other massive celestial fragments, was looting. Sometimes they visited ruined colonies, sometimes a spacecraft that had crashed in space. To survive in the deadly void of space, they started modifying their own bodies. Over time, their skin became translucent, their bones elongated, and only shadows of their humanity remained.
Finding a Raider group was quite difficult. Their population was quite small considering the size of the galaxy. But usually, some Raiders would establish small facilities that could be considered shops in this empty galaxy. These facilities were sometimes metallic, located inside the spine of a massive spacecraft, and sometimes situated on a small planetary moon. But I had no idea where these shops might be.
Because I was a damned noble. Trading with Raiders is illegal. If you are a noble, especially an unimportant one, it would be difficult to make such illegal contact. That is why I never had the opportunity to trade with a Raider, not even once. Besides, being the child of one of the Republic's wealthiest families, I never needed to shop with Raiders selling on the black market. Not even when I was captive.
"So, how exactly are we going to find the Raiders?" I asked Ilya.
Ilya had finally taken off her uniform. She had probably been working non-stop for days, and her fatigue was evident. Her wings were sprawled outside the tub as she took a bubbly bath in the corner of her library, illuminated by candlelight.
"Can you believe it?" she said, taking her hands out of the soapy water and moving them to her head: "The light has exhausted me so much... I truly hope you haven't come here to talk shop."
Meanwhile, she lay naked beneath the foamy water, and I had pulled up a chair and sat by the tub, listening to her.
"Yes, I know you're tired, but as a matter of fact, I came here precisely to talk shop."
"Ah… Please, let's keep it brief."
"I thought about what you said. The Raiders seem to be our best option."
"Wonderful," she said, pulling her legs out of the tub's edge and submerging herself completely back into the water. "...then you must be wondering what we need to do."
"You wouldn't have offered that option unless you knew how to find them, would you?"
"Actually, I don't know how to find the Raiders," she said. After a moment of silence, she continued: "But I know who can find them."
"Who?"
"You know we are outside the Republic. Most colonists tried to settle on planets outside the Network when fleeing the Republic."
"Meaning…"
"There are 19 planets, large and small, in the star system we are currently in. It's highly probable we can find a rebel colony on any of them. Just try to imagine how difficult it is to be a colony outside the Network... No internet, no help from the Agencies... You're trying to build a civilization from scratch in a primitive way, almost like people from the ancient era. Do you think it's possible that those rebels, in such a situation, wouldn't trade with the Raiders? I highly doubt it."
"You're going to work with colonists? And an off-Republic colony at that? They'll probably blow up our ship the moment they see the Agency logo."
Ilya drew her legs into the tub. Then she rested her head on the edge of the tub and looked at me with hazy eyes. Her wet hair flowed down her shoulders. Her face was calm and slightly flushed from the heat of the water. "Does any colony really have the guts to blow up an Agency ship? I doubt it…"
"So, how will we convince them?"
"With whatever they need."
"How will we find them?"
"Only three planets in this star system are habitable. We will search those."
"They might be hiding. They will hide even more when they realize an Agency spaceship is hovering over their heads."
"Every hiding community has a weak spot... basic needs like food. We don't know how civilized the colony is or its technological level, but... people choose to take risks rather than starve. If hunger starts in a colony, anarchy and disorder start too. Even if we can't find the colony's settlement locations, we can find fertile soil by analyzing the ground."
"And what will we do when we find fertile soil?"
"We'll pretend we've decided to operate that fertile land for the Agency. We'll start working that land with a small swarm of robots. At first, they will try to figure out what we're doing. Then, when they realize we are working their fertile land, they will want to reveal themselves. They will either want to forcibly take that fertile land from us or they will want to make a deal."
"What if they do neither? What if they can already meet their food needs in a different way?"
"Then," Ilya said, rubbing her eyes with fatigue, "Phase Two of our plan kicks in."
"Phase Two? And what is that?"
"We'll make them need the food from the fertile land," she said in a sharp tone.
"That… that sounded distinctly threatening."
Ilya slowly rose from the wet floor and stood up naked in the tub. Using her wings to shield her private parts, she slowly stepped out of the tub. She had a towel and a closet in the corner of the room.
"I hope things are resolved before it comes to that."
"So we'll do this on all three planets?"
"No. Only one of the three planets has land fertile enough for agriculture. If there is a colonist, they must have invested in the future and settled on that planet. Otherwise, we wouldn't need the help of such a stupid colony anyway." She used her wings like a barrier as she put on her underwear. Her hair was tied up with a towel.
"Fantastic," I said, swallowing hard. Sometimes I forgot how beautiful Ilya was. Why? Because when she worked, I saw her as a constantly scolding boss, or more accurately, a husband who complains about everything. But whenever I saw her milk-white body in the dim light of the library, that was when I once again offered my gratitude to the professors of Mars University. I was grateful to them for creating such a creature. "...So, how will we explain to the Republic that we're doing agriculture on another planet? After all, we can't even fly a robot without their warning!"
After she put on her underwear, her wings were free. With her back to me, she brought her wings forward and began drying them with the towel she held. "We won't tell them we're going for a colony, idiot!" she said, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. I could see her curved nose and alluring lips. "The Agency already knows we have concerns about our data being stolen, right? We'll tell them we want to establish a system on another planet to audit our own network's cybersecurity."
She slipped the shoulders of her black dress on. Then, with her back still to me, she moved close. "Would you mind…" she said, gesturing to her wings. Whenever she wore a dress, her wings needed to be guided through the special cuts in the fabric. I took her wings in my hands and began threading them through the seams.
"It's truly unsettling how much you can think of all this, Ilya." What was truly attractive about Ilya was not her physical appeal. It was her terrifying intelligence, developed by working alone among books in a space facility. Such intelligence, perhaps, should be tested in laboratories. What kind of subject could be this much smarter than their boss, when they shouldn't be?
"Is that so?" After I finished setting her wings, I zipped up her dress. She pulled her hair out from the dress and suddenly turned to face me. "Do you know what really frightens me, Aldo?" she asked, pushing my head with her index finger. "Those things spinning around in this head of yours…"
"What things? I don't know what you're talking about." Ilya suddenly knelt down. Her posture was so delicate and affectionate, as if she had been waiting for the words to come out of my mouth for a long time. No, the emotion on her face was not curiosity. It was the compassion of a mother listening to her sick son. Despite her wide eyes, it felt momentarily imminent that those eyes would narrow and her brows would furrow after hearing what she heard. Or perhaps it resembled the look of a virgin lover listening to the tales of knights returning from campaign. It could be said to resemble those gazes, too.
As Ilya knelt, she took my right hand between both of hers and said: "When I first arrived here, all I saw was an alcoholic, drug-addicted, and fornication-dependent noble. The thing I was commanded to do the moment I stepped out of the experiment tube was to fulfill this man's wishes. Thank goodness the other toys were more interesting to you than I was. I… I was too simple, ordinary, or boring for you. Then I locked myself in this library. While in this library, I read, I researched."
"Researched what?"
"You, Aldo. In all the novels, all the research, all the historical fiction I read, there was only one you. A noble man who has lost everything. Who indulged in bad habits to fill the void in his heart. You look like you've jumped right out of the works of Lord Byron or like Vicomte de Valmont. You're like the Bohemian Nobles in post-Napoleonic Europe, and I could give many more examples."
"Europe? Napoleon? What are those?" I said, pulling my hand away suddenly. "I have no idea what nonsense you're babbling."
"I think you have an undisclosed ailment."
"An ailment?" I suddenly stood up, took a few steps, and started pacing with my face turned towards the library. It was impossible not to be drawn into the theatrical atmosphere of this room, like the main characters in the old movies I watched while speaking. "What is this thing you call an ailment? Is it my past?"
Ilya rose from her knees, took one step with her bare foot, and with a graceful movement of her wrist, she bowed and curtsied. "I apologize if I've peeled open the wound of your past. Forgive me!" Even her speech had the aesthetics of a theater. It was as if we had both noticed the game the other was playing and had started to play along. After completing her curtsy, Ilya slowly straightened up, with both a challenge and a deep worry in her eyes. In the dim light of the room, her expression took on the stillness of an actress after delivering her final line on stage.
"Forgiveness?" The stage was mine now. I ran my hand over the bookshelf, took a book, and showed it to Ilya. "Forgiveness is just a word that passes in the books you read. Wounded pasts or fallen heroes are all just fictional tales. The devil never fell from heaven. The princess in the tower was kidnapped not by a handsome prince but by a greedy, rapist barbarian. Snow White has a different child born from each dwarf, and many more examples like that." Then I tossed the book aside.
"I thought so too," Ilya said, and poured her red wine into the glasses resting on the table by the tub. She took the glasses, came to me, and put one glass in my hand. "Until I saw one of them right in front of me."
"What a grand title you are bestowing upon me," I said, taking the wine glass.
"It's not a title," she said, her voice low as a whisper, yet clear enough to fill every corner of the room. "It's a diagnosis. You can dismiss it as 'fictional tales.' But why do you think tales exist? To adorn the real fears that humans cannot comprehend, and the wounds they cannot wrap, so they can watch them from behind a curtain. You, too, hide your own reality behind a curtain. This theater, this alcohol, this carefree noble attitude... it's all the curtain. You're hiding the things that woke you up from your sleep. The things that turned you into a womanizer and a money-chaser. If you won't share this with us, why did you create us?"
I brought the glass to my lips. As the drink slid down my throat like a warm rush of courage, I countered, "Well, what if I lift the curtain? What will you see then? The ashes of a destroyed noble honor? The shame of a dishonorable surrender? The helpless life of a nobleman who lost everything? Which one do you desire to witness?"
"I want to see whichever is real," she said, grasping my hand. Then she brought my wine glass to her lips and took a sip.
"Real?" I said, leaving the glass in Ilya's hand and beginning to walk. As I quickened my steps to disappear among the bookshelves, Ilya placed the glasses on the table. "Reality is just a painful memory! Such a memory that…" I dove between the bookshelves and tried to lose myself. Ilya's shadow leaked through the books, sometimes falling at my feet. "But none of this matters, does it? Why? Because this galaxy is a dead galaxy! And we are the ghosts wandering this dead galaxy! Do you think I haven't cried out the agony of my suffering? Do you think I haven't screamed next to the ears of my family and friends?" The theatrical atmosphere began to vanish from within me. It was as if... this flirtatious theater we were performing with Ilya was gradually disappearing.
Then I suddenly stopped walking. "I don't have time for such things, Ilya. I'm sorry," I said. I brought my hand to my face and rubbed my temples. "I've been thinking, even if the past won't leave you, you have to leave the past, so... it's best not to think about it."
Ilya was behind me. She had taken off her dress and stood completely naked, with wine and glasses in one hand, waiting for me. She clinked the glasses together.
"You mean what?" she said, her wings shaking with surprise.
"My mood is ruined, Ilya. I normally had the idea of making insane love to you, but... you dug up the past, said a few things that cleared the head, and now my entire mood is gone." As I walked away with heavy steps, Ilya was frozen, her mouth agape in shock. "Good night, then."
"Are you sure, Aldo?" she whispered, her voice unusually soft, almost wet and inviting. But I didn't answer. I just slowly left the room.