As soon as I and Trebal ran from around the corner of the corridor into the deep-sea spacesuit compartment, everything fell into place.
"Bitch!" I shouted in frustration, seeing four desiccated bodies. But my vigilance remained. As did the understanding that there was no one and nothing else to look for here. "She finished them off!"
Trebal, despite the fact that we were both protected by personal shields, moved cautiously, anticipating danger around every corner.
"Stop imitating 'Splinter Cell' already," I waved my hand, pointing to the wet tracks on the deck leading away from the compartment. "She drained these guys and left. The detector doesn't see her," I pointed to the Ancients' scanner monitor, which was in life signal search mode. Besides the two of us, there was no one else here. But even worse, we didn't detect the queen's movement as we approached here.
That damn thing moved very, very fast. And from here, into the depths of the station, there are at least five long corridors. And the blocking fields are not activated on the side closest to us. The bitch could have slipped into any of them and gotten lost.
The Dorandan looked at the tracks I indicated and relaxed a little, admitting my point. But she didn't take her eyes off the corpses, leaning over them in search of something.
"Tayla," I activated the radio. "In which other sectors are the blocking fields deactivated?"
"In the third and fifth corridors," she said. "You came through the third, and groups of Toran and Tirin were on duty in the fifth..."
Eight more people... Just great! Out of the fifteen Athosians we brought to the platform, twelve decided to show their character and hunt the queen, I guess! Four are already dead, another eight are in the zone where the fields between the queen and them are lowered!
Bitch!
And they opened the fifth corridor too!
The fifth is the main one, damn it! In the place where they disabled the blocking field, there is a fork to other sections. Tirin's group was on duty in one of those sections!
Bastards, damn them!
And I have every right to be angry!
The plan to neutralize the Queen of Death was ridiculously simple.
First, we arrived at the drill rig, studied it, launched it, and prepared the battlefield. In the events I knew, she came through the open lower hatch, but used Tayla to disable the tracking systems. To prevent this, Tayla did not establish mental contact with the source of her perception of the wraith's presence.
And she was in the wraith ability suppression zone, guarded by three Athosians and accompanied by a couple of Ancients technicians in the central control room. Only for a few moments, during the queen's awakening, Tayla disabled the device and gave Death a lure in the form of her mentality. Immediately after that, the suppressor was turned back on, and the Queen of Death could no longer reach her, at least from a distance.
She also couldn't launch any technology on board her starship – not only did we destroy the generator, but we also installed an electromagnetic field on the ship, placing the generator in the middle of the upper part of the cruiser. So that it was entirely within the EMP zone.
And, therefore, the Queen of Death couldn't pull off any canonical tricks like activating the self-destruct system when leaving the cruiser – she simply had no way to activate anything on board the downed starship.
But it looked like the problems were due to the impact on the ship's generator. So she realized that there was a ship nearby and a way to escape. Here, on the Ancients' drill rig.
All she had to do was reach us, go through the hospitably opened hatch, get outside, and... fall into a trap in that part of the station where the protective fields were already activated, and that damned hatch was also sealed! She had nowhere to run!
But I and Trebal, possessing the personal shields of the Ancients, armed with energy weapons, and being in the zone of suppression of the Queen's mental abilities, could easily track her by the single life signal mark in the enclosed area. At least she wouldn't be able to take control of both of us at once.
At least one of them would have shot her! Quickly, clearly, elegantly, and without any casualties on anyone's part!
But everything went awry.
We tracked the queen's arrival at the station using external sensors. She arrived a few minutes after us, which greatly surprised us with her speed of movement in the water at the ocean floor, and under such colossal pressure.
But, while we were running here, sending Iharr to the control room, the силовые поля had already been deactivated. And only the Athosians could have done it!
And, if you think about it, these fifteen people are the ones Tayla called her best warriors. They were trained by Alvar in the first batch of new Athosian warriors!
Oh, things are not good in New Athos.
But why the hell?! Why now?!
"Did they make contact?" I asked. Hope was still strong.
"No, Misha, their comms are offline... I don't understand what's happening," Tela's voice was filled with confusion. "A dozen of my people have stopped obeying me. I don't understand... Could the Queen have taken control of them?"
"At least one of them, for sure," Trebal drew my attention to the bullet wounds on three dead Athosians. "The fourth one's uniform is intact. That means he shot the others."
"Perhaps," I exhaled irritably, waving my hand towards the fifth corridor. "Let's go. Tela, do you see them on the scanners?"
"We see them," Ihaar replied for her. "Tirin's group is moving towards you... What is that? A signal overlap... Gone..."
Gunfire echoed in the corridor.
"Tirin's group has encountered a Wraith!" Ihaar shouted. "They've lost two, three..."
"Lock down the control room!" I ordered. "No one is to enter or leave, for any reason!"
"Mikhail!" Tela's voice cut in. "I have to go! My people are there and..."
"They aren't your people anymore!" I roared. "At best, they're under the Death Queen's control!"
Even though I don't believe it, the objective data can only be obtained after we finish this. In my head, I can build any theory and curse anyone I want. But the facts already speak for themselves.
The deactivation of the fields didn't happen for no reason.
The Athosians had preemptively opened the panels and removed the crystals. They never intended to follow the plan from the start.
As a result, the plan to trap the Death Queen and subsequently destroy her in compartments enclosed by force fields went to the dogs! Part of the defenses in two corridors have been compromised. The Queen has dozens of compartments and rooms at her disposal, which she shouldn't have had any access to! This is no longer an operation to corner her and fire a few shots. This is a damn cleanup! Especially since the Queen in the fifth corridor can reach...
More shots rang out.
And almost immediately, the rather bright lighting in the corridors switched to emergency mode.
"Ihaar?" I called the control room, already guessing what had happened. "What happened?"
"What shouldn't have happened if the Athosians hadn't disabled the fields!" the comm crackled with the engineer's voice. "The Queen knows the location of the power and control cables! She damaged them! We don't have access to the life signal tracking system, the auxiliary power system we've been using is damaged, and therefore we have energy problems. And, either we shut down the internal shields throughout the mobile drill, or in half an hour we'll start suffocating from lack of oxygen! We don't know where anyone is on the station, we can't raise the fields, we can't call for help... We're going to start suffocating here soon!"
"We won't," I countered. "The station is large, there's plenty of air. First, we kill the Queen, then you'll fix the station, and we'll wait for help."
"We can't contact Atlantis! I'm telling you – the wiring is damaged!"
"We don't need to contact them," Trebal reminded me. "They have a time gap, after which a support team will arrive here. They've already started the countdown and are undoubtedly heading this way. We just need to wait..."
"We don't have time to wait," I cut her off, stepping into a corridor that met another at a right angle. Four dried-out skeletons immediately caught my eye – all that remained of the second Athosian combat group. "Tirin's group has been wiped out. Four corpses, all sucked dry."
"And not one was shot," Trebal said. "Ihaar, Tela, the Death Queen can still control our people. She destroyed the first group by mentally controlling one of the squad members."
"And now she's playing with us," I came to this conclusion. "She's wrecking the station so we'll leave the control room and start repairs. Ihaar!"
"I remember. We're not leaving here!"
"That's great," I approved, crouching down and shining my light on the floor beneath my feet. "There are water droplets here. I suspect it's almost dried up or wiped away."
"Ah, so soon there will be no traces left," Trebal realized, obediently moving behind me. "I'll cover you from behind."
"Agreed. If you see her, shoot to kill."
"Understood," we moved forward like that. "Misha..."
"Yes?"
"I wanted to apologize. I thought you'd decide to capture her for interrogation or feed her to Koschei..."
"Koschei would never feed on his own queen," I cut her off. "But if they were near each other, and Death is clearly stronger than him mentally, since even the suppressor couldn't block all her abilities. Therefore, keeping her alive is extremely foolish."
"I'm glad we have common motives in such a situation. Let's find and kill her."
"I'm 'for' it with all my limbs. And then we'll find and finish off those bastards who arranged all this," I promised. "If, of course, the Death Queen didn't finish them off first."
"Then that would solve so many pressing problems," I lamented, scanning another room on our path. Empty. The manual scanner also shows "silence," only our two signatures...
The Death Queen is far ahead of us.
And that's bad.
"It... shouldn't... have... happened like this," croaked the old man lying on the floor, who just a few seconds ago had been a young human animal. Pathetic, cowardly, overconfident. It didn't help him – the Death Queen easily broke his spine and took almost all his life. "You... should have died..."
"Many thought so," Death assured him, wiping the back of her hand across the man's face. "None succeeded. Why did you, unworthy animals, think you had a chance? Thousands of Lantians and Ancients tried to kill me. I killed or fed on all of them."
"I... had a vision..." the old man croaked. "The Ancestors... came to me in a dream... Told me how everything would be... Told me how to win..."
The Death Queen bared her teeth, sharp as dozens of daggers.
"Neither your Ancestors nor anyone else's can defeat me," she assured him. "You've already understood that by telling me everything I wanted to know."
"Mercy..." the old man croaked. "Please... You promised I wouldn't suffer... If I told you..."
"Exactly," the Death Queen's eyes gleamed ominously against the blue shadows as she placed her right hand on the wound on the man's chest again. "I promised... But I lied!"
Life left him in an instant. He didn't even have the strength to scream in pain or fear.
When the last of the twelve weak minds ceased to exist, bestowing her with strength and energy, the Death Queen felt two strong minds at the edge of her perception.
They were following her heels, pursuing and wanting to kill her. She had no doubt about that.
Just as she had made a mistake with at least one of them. It was a strong mind, clearly beyond what she had encountered in the younger races. Probably a descendant of the Lantians.
There would be problems with him; he might not succumb to her mental influence. Especially since it's weakened by some device – the Athosians told her this before they died, after she had drained them.
Just as they told her, clinging to the remnants of their existence, that the device was in the control room. Along with three armed Athosians, their leader, who can sense Wraiths, and three humans from Atlantis with Ancient genes.
One engineer and two technicians.
An excellent choice for her.
Four Athosians and five with Ancient genes.
Moreover, four of the latter are representatives of a younger race who were in stasis aboard a Lantian warship. And they were revived by a Wraith who spent ten thousand years on the second planet of this star system after his transport ship was shot down.
The picture of what was happening began to emerge.
She could easily kill eight out of the nine present on the mobile drill platform. One engineer would be enough for her to escape from here. According to the deceased, he is cowardly, afraid of her, having seen her in action.
This is just wonderful, because she won't need much strength to make him obey!
The Death Queen's mood improved with each human she drained.
Their plan was already known to her, and so she began to act.
She damaged the power lines hidden in the wall behind one of the decorative panels with a firearm. Now they are deaf, blind, and unlikely to activate the disabled shields. Even if they manage to restore the system, they now have major energy problems.
The main system – the geothermal generator – has not yet been tested and connected, so all hope rests on the energy reserves that have been here all along.
Help will arrive for the humans very soon, but it won't be easy for them to get inside – both docking bays are occupied by small ships. This means they can only come through the same hatch she used to enter.
And that can't be done easily; appropriate preparations are needed. Or she could use cunning and free up at least one of the docking slots.
So she has time to track them down and kill them one by one.
Unfortunately, no one left the control room when she disrupted the control and power systems. The seven people she felt through the last energy shield separating her and them were now swimming in contradictory emotions – from pity to anger.
But they didn't come out to repair the damage, nor to hunt her.
Obviously, they decided that those two would be excellent hunters and get rid of her.
But she wouldn't be the Death Queen, who united all the Wraith hives, if she gave up so easily.
The short-sighted animals who thought they could defeat her only played into her hands.
The Queen navigated this platform perfectly. Two of her pursuers were searching every nook and cranny, thinking she was hiding somewhere or had found a passage into the ventilation shaft (she gave them such ideas by tearing off decorative grilles in many compartments, for example, in the staff lounge of the mobile drill platform) and intended to bypass the still-functioning force fields with it.
While they followed her tracks, real and imaginary, finding one corpse after another – where the Death had caught these fleeing animals, the Queen was busy with a more pressing matter.
Staff lounges aboard the Ancients' mobile drill platform.
From the animals, she already knew that these two – Mikhail and Trebal – had Lantian firearms. And their personal shields as well.
And that's a problem.
The animals had prepared well.
Lantian pulse weapons could tear her to pieces with a single hit. A personal shield protects its wearer from any injury or impact – explosions, shots, punches, blades. It doesn't allow the wearer to be grabbed, or attacked with any kind of energy or radiation.
But it doesn't protect against mental influence. Except that it's weakened by a device...
And it also doesn't generate oxygen for breathing. And that's good, because it's a great opportunity. For now, her main goal is to deal with these two. Then – to get rid of the rest.
Except for the engineer, of course. He will help her escape, and, at the same time, share his secrets about Lantian technologies. And, if successful, the Death Queen might even gain control of Atlantis.
But first, she needs to finish her business here, on the mobile drill platform.
And she had already figured out how to do it. And, at the same time, prevent the rushing support group from boarding the mobile drill installation too easily. And by "easily" she meant – do it before the Death Queen implements all her plans.
Gathering the crystals from the control panels of the force fields, which had been preliminarily removed by the failed animals from their pockets, the Death Queen replaced the depleted weapon of the last corpse with a charged one and bared her teeth menacingly.
It was time to make her pursuers feel like they had caught her.
"She's moving through the ventilation shafts!" I shouted on the run.
"Are you sure?" Trebal asked. "She's tricked us like this ten times already!"
"Either that, or she's moving straight through that wall!" I pointed to the right side of the corridor. "And straight through!"
We had no way to shoot the Queen through the wall – not only was it made of the notorious concrete-811, but it also contained a huge amount of Lantian technology behind it. Lantian, specifically – at the stage of studying the platform, Ihaar categorically stated: he had no idea what we would do if any of our devices malfunctioned. There were no spare parts, no specifications either, and the mobile drill platform systems were as different from the geothermal generator he had dealt with as moccasins are from "brogues."
That is, they seemed to have the same purpose, but there were nuances... Ihaar, and Chaya too, know how to fix only a part of the existing equipment. Given that the platform is intended for use, making extra holes in it would be foolish.
"Why did she appear only now?" Trebal suddenly asked. "We lost her for almost fifteen minutes! Why did she suddenly decide to run in this direction⁈ She won't be able to use our 'jumpers'! Especially since they are separated from the corridors by shields!"
"No idea," I stated. "When we catch her, we'll ask! She's getting away!"
"How is she doing it⁈" Trebal gritted through her teeth. "You can't even turn around there, and the ventilation ducts go at an incline – from the center of the platform to its outer parts..."
She fell silent, pointing a finger at the streams of water flowing from the ventilation grille we had just run past.
It seemed we had guessed simultaneously.
"There's water in the ventilation shaft!" Trebal voiced the obvious. "The Queen is reducing friction with its help!"
"That bitch is sliding through them!" I shouted. "She's made herself water slides, damn her!"
"Misha, Trebal, I don't know what you're doing," a voice came from the comm, "but we have big problems!"
"Where's the leak⁈" I asked, turning a corner on the run.
"Where are you?!." Ihaar exclaimed in surprise. "Someone damaged the lubrication system of the main units. We're losing a very rare substance that ensures absolute slippage..."
"It's not water in the ventilation," I told Trebal.
"I already understood," the Ancient grumbled.
"...we have no replacement for it!" Ihaar continued. "If we lose another ton, we can forget about this platform ever working!"
"Can you shut off the supply of the substance from the control room?" I asked.
"If I could, I would have already done it!" the engineer said with offense in his voice. "We need to go out into the middle zone, get to the technical niche, and patch the pipe. The sooner the better!"
"Act!" I ordered. "We're chasing the Queen to the docking node, which is on the opposite side from you. Get out quickly, patch it up, and back to the control room, understood⁉"
"It won't be quick! The damage is in the middle zone! Where there are no internal shields and sensors right now!"
"Damn your prayer," I think I bit my cheek in anger. "Do what you need to do! Take guards just in case!"
"I'll send Tela to the backup control panel to shut off the supply of lubricating substance from there," it can't be done from the control room due to power and control damage..."
"Do it!" I roared, realizing that with a couple more turns, we'd be there. "Faster! We're almost on her!"
In reality, the Death Queen was ahead of us. We still had a minute to run, and she was already in one of the docking bays. And what she's doing there, practically cornered and with no way to get away, only the Ascended knows!
"The bitch bypassed our force fields," Trebal grimaced, pointing to the pale white energy curtain separating us and the docking bay. "Ihaar, can you disable the shield in docking bay number two?"
"One moment! I'm not in the control room anymore! Technicians... Okay, hold on, I'm near the damaged main line, I'll restore control of the shields now... One moment," the engineer mumbled into the comm.
Approaching the field, I saw a black shadow flickering in the cargo bay of the first "jumper." Judging by its characteristic movements, she was clearly tampering with the consoles. And that's bad – with enough skill, some systems can be activated without the Ancient gene.
In the known events, Koschei managed to switch the camouflage screen to a shield.
"Ihaar!"
"Done!" he replied. "Control room, deactivate the shield in the second docking bay!"
With a crackle and a flash of white light, the energy curtain in front of us went out. Trebal and I, activating our shields on the move, raised our weapons, approaching the "jumper" and aiming at the only exit from the ship.
Unlike the docking node on the same satellite, on the platform, this mechanism was more like a sealed ring, through which the rear of the "jumper" was inside the platform, and the front half – outside, in the water. The separation was approximately at the level of the bulkhead between the cockpit and the cargo bay.
Curious mechanics, actually. All control systems are outside the platform, and weapons and engines are inside. In a folded state, of course.
"Quickly remove your hands from the crystals!" I ordered, stepping onto the ramp and taking aim at the Death Queen. "Or I'll shoot you on the spot."
The Wraith woman stood before me, holding a crystal slightly pulled out of its slot. Unfortunately, they all look the same to me, so I couldn't tell which system she was currently using.
Trebal, mirroring my actions, stood next to me, aiming at Death.
"I'll count to three," I announced.
"Don't scare the one whose name generations of humans in this galaxy have been scared by," Death scoffed. "You won't shoot."
"Why do you think so?" Trebal asked. "I'd be happy to burn your insolent face!"
"I second that," I said.
"Wraiths are faster than humans," the Death Queen snarled. "Better in every way. And your weapons, though destructive, are slow. If you shoot, I'll dodge," she warned. "And the charges will fly into the viewport. It will be destroyed, and you will be flooded with water. I can survive in it, but you won't."
"You're bluffing," Trebal said. "Just move the engine control crystal another millimeter, and I'll finish you."
"Just try to step aside even half a step – I'll return the crystal to its place, the engines will start forcibly, and this entire compartment will have a torn-up wall," the Queen warned. "Water will flood the platform, you'll suffocate. And I'll sail away on my cruiser, as planned."
A stalemate, you can't say anything else.
It's infuriating. This bitch is simply playing us. It seems she planned from the very beginning to come here, to the most vulnerable spot on the platform, to bargain for her escape. But we can't allow that – soon the EMP generator will be finished. And the technology on the Wraith cruiser will start working.
"I just need to get out of here," the Queen laughed, as if scraping a knife across glass. "Your pathetic fellow animals have already told me that my cruiser is fine. And your generator doesn't have much time left to work. I think I'll take it with me to the cruiser and use it as a power source."
"No deal," I cut her off.
"It's a shame, human," she said seriously. "I just want to return to my people. Help me leave, and I swear, Wraiths and Atlantis will never be enemies again."
"Even I doubt that," Trebal said. "You're not to be trusted! You're a murderer!"
"And don't you kill livestock for food?" the Death Queen laughed. "The Lantians are dead. My revenge is fulfilled. I haven't quarreled with you. Especially since you already have experience cooperating with Wraiths."
"They told her everything," the Dorandan lamented.
"We trust Koschei a little, but not you," I said. At the same time, I think everyone understood that both she and we were just stalling for time to figure out a way out of this stalemate.
And at that very moment, Ihaar's voice rang out.
"Misha, we've shut off the supply of lubricating substance. Keep her there, we're coming now..."
I looked away for exactly a tenth of a second, listening to the engineer's voice.
And that was enough.
Everything happened simultaneously.
The Queen pushed the crystal back into place, Trebal fired.
As if in slow motion, I watched the blue-white energy charge move too slowly towards the Queen.
Death, contorting in an unimaginable way that even the most seasoned gymnasts would envy, lunged forward. A giant, swift leap, in which neither I nor Trebal managed to shoot her, ended for the Death Queen at the exit of the compartment.
A moment, and she disappeared from view.
And at that time, streams of water poured down on us from a huge breach in the hull of the mobile drill platform.