What is a de-energized ship, especially one that has "breathed" vacuum? It's darkness, silence, and danger. Only your own breathing, audible only to you, drowns out your rapid pulse in your ears as you try to squeeze your spacesuit through the dead steel intestines of a once majestic cosmic wanderer.
Even if the reactor is functional or not shut down, depressurized compartments will be de-energized. A single drop of water, freezing and damaging the wiring, would be enough to cause a tragedy when power is restored. In the best-case scenario, it would only lead to the failure of vital equipment. Therefore, the cosmonaut's companion in the dark corridors will be the dim light of emergency chemical lighting, gradually fading from a saturated yellow to an coal-red light.
Now, there was none of that on the "Normandy." The ship was as dead as it was possible to be. Even the chemical reaction that produced light had ended irrevocably, consuming all its working substance. Darkness, cold, and silence, only slightly broken by your flashlight and your sounds, with rare insertions from the radio tuned to the squad's frequency. Most often, the helmet speakers spewed only static. A uniform crackle, the scream of space, as astronauts call it, will be your companion in the final moments of life on a crippled ship...
Risa shivered, feeling her fur stand on end under the insulated lining of her spacesuit. The sentient cat twitched slightly, suppressing the urge to nervously lick herself, as her non-sentient brethren would.
"I need to stop watching horror movies at night! It's not fitting for a perfect creature to be scared of its own tail!" the cat reassured herself. "One good thing, my sister has already signed her 'discharge.' Now she's happy with her Fyodor, I bet... A house, kittens... Everything she dreamed of. She's lucky, not everyone finds their soulmate a second time. And this rascal is hard to kill. Not only is he a cat, but he's from 'Argentum.' Nine lives in a body that can only be taken down with an anti-tank gun... Iriska is normal, but I'm drawn to adventure!"
No matter how much she grumbled about Fyodor, she fully approved of her sister's choice. This half-breed manul didn't have any refined charm, but he was as reliable as an AK. Although in the hospital, she called him nothing but a "blockhead," showing a pound of contempt and ignoring him, as only cats can.
Mechanically, she touched her leg. "Bone, joint, most of the muscles, skin – a small price for life. Thanks to this idiot, the captain. He almost died himself, but he saved me, the fool. And thanks to Miranda..."
The cat glanced at the back of the girl moving ahead, snorting. Whatever contradictory feelings she had towards her, the fact that she defended the captain when he was unconscious, along with her, as a bonus, already made those prejudices completely absurd.
"Pride is pride... but I'm ashamed," Risa twitched an ear. "I should have apologized sooner."
Sighing, the felinid decided to start from afar, combining the session of trampling on her pride with a literacy lesson:
"And what is protocol 'Cedar,' lieutenant?" Risa began from afar, not knowing how to apologize, let alone start a conversation differently. Because of this, her mental image was slightly blurred, but quite understandable, revealing her excitement.
"Protocol of the special units of CERBERUS," Miranda replied with a dry mental response.
"And more precisely? I'm a senior sergeant in the army, not CERBERUS. I'm an attachment to a rifle, so that it shoots. I don't think!" This is how her sent symbol could be deciphered.
From under the girl's icy shell of indifference, a spark flashed for a moment, but then disappeared, crushed by self-discipline.
"I told you, you by-the-book soul, that cats know how to get attention!" Risa caught a little courage. Just as she had wanted to annoy Miranda recently, now she wanted to make her talk. In a word – cats.
"Mockery of the charter's wording is a violation of the Charter," the coldness in the mental message was so palpable that even a blind person wouldn't have missed it, but to the felinid's surprise, the lieutenant wasn't stopping. "If you put an object in a box, put it away, and it easily breaks free, then it must be a 'Cedar,' as stated in the CERBERUS manual for personnel from junior lieutenant and above. In other words, 'Cedar' is an anomalous, alien object of high danger. For comparison, the 'Argentum' operative fits within these parameters."
"Anomalous?" the cat, having composed herself instantly, sent the question.
"Operating on unknown principles," the lieutenant explained, a little warmer. "Surprised that you, a senior sergeant, don't know about this. Usually, after two decades of expeditions, you've encountered an object of this category."
"We were mostly sent to 'younger worlds.' Jungles, forests, swamps..." Risa replied mentally, a little embarrassed. "My sister and I specialize in 'tracking.'"
"I know that," came the curt, official-sounding image in response. "I've read your personal files as part of my duty."
Risa inwardly smiled slyly, sensing the mouse had made her first mistake.
"Using your official position to understand who you're serving with?" The image practically dripped with ironic venom.
Miranda turned to her before sending a mental image.
"Those are just your assumptions, senior sergeant," she telegraphed, continuing to carefully make her way through the belly of the dead ship.
"Then you wouldn't have barged into Shep's cabin," the cat retorted, enjoying the moment.
The girl faltered, having ill-timedly stepped on the deck with her magnetic boots. For a moment, she flared with slight irritation mixed with something spicy that Risa couldn't understand.
Realizing she had made a mistake, the cat hastily blurted out:
"I wanted to apologize for my behavior towards you! That's why I started... and then it just happened on its own," her image shone with shame and sincerity.
"Don't you think this is the worst time and place?" For the first time in Risa's memory, Miranda addressed her not according to regulations. Her image also carried a hint of embarrassment.
"It should have been done earlier, and around the next corner, it might be too late," the cat observed philosophically. "So it's better now than after a bullet."
"Logical. Apologies accepted. Shall we talk about the rest later?" the girl's mental message sounded somehow freer in the felinid's head...
"Okay!" Risa nodded.
The cat wanted to say something, but the forming thought-image dissipated as soon as her peripheral vision caught movement. Something small slithered along the pipes, almost blending with the projected interface of the spacesuit. The readings displayed on the visor almost obscured... a mouse?!
The felinid twisted her torso along with the submachine gun clutched in her paws in the direction of the movement. In the flashlight beam, there was only an interweaving of pipes and emptiness, but the cat's senses screamed of a trap.
Without showing that she was wound up to the limit, Risa, as if nothing had happened, sent an image:
"Hmm... Our conversation is very similar to one from that new horror movie. 'Guest from the Future'... when that song started playing... 'I hear a voice from the beautiful far away...'. And in the background, a destroyed metropolis and Zhora Kornev..." The mental message winked like an eye.
"I don't understand..." Miranda exclaimed aloud, transmitting a silent question, unable to decipher the images.
"No way?! She hasn't seen it?! It's a classic!!!" the cat howled mentally, realizing she had overdone the allegories in an attempt to keep the conversation natural.
Shaking her head, she again caught movement in her peripheral vision behind the girl. Realizing she hadn't imagined it the first time, she squeezed the trigger of her submachine gun.
A sharp burst of sunset-colored fire tore through the darkness. Laser beams dug into the wall, tearing apart a pipe, missing the target but throwing off her aim.
Instead of hitting Miranda's head, the creature merely slashed the emptiness with its claws. The CERBERUS investigator herself didn't allow a second strike. Without seeing the enemy, she clenched the area with telekinetic force, turning not only part of the ship's structures to dust but also the attacker.
An invisible press literally crushed half of the creature's body, causing purple blood to spurt from its wounds, but no. In a cloud of instantly frozen bloody debris, it tried to strike again.
The girl easily dodged, letting the limb pass over her, orienting herself by the slightest movement of ice crystals, instinctively covering her eyes as a stinging flash finished off the opponent. Risa didn't hesitate either.
"Not good!" Seeing that the human still couldn't see the attacker, a thought flashed through the cat's mind. It flashed and died out because her eyes caught... a rat? Without thinking, the felinid shifted, anticipating, and fired a fan. Only one laser beam hit the target. Anticipating, Risa fired again.
This time, the beams landed more successfully, outlining the enemy's form, which Miranda used to her advantage, striking blindly with telekinesis at the area where the monster's head was presumably located.
The felinid, no longer seeing a rat, and having seen the true face of the enemy, dodged the decapitated body, which didn't prevent her from seeing a small flock of mice running towards them across the decks of the abandoned ghost cruiser, frozen by the vacuum.
She raised her submachine gun, and its power cables followed, pressing against the collimator sight... and the mice disappeared!
"The enemy can deceive technology!"
"Turn off the electronics in your helmet!" the cat shouted aloud, understanding this.
"Contact. Enemy is a mimic," the girl sent a thought-image to everyone, duplicating it via the polymer transmitter...
"Received. Two minutes. Hold on," Shep accepted the report.
It took him a fraction of a second to decipher the mental image. Extracting the main point, he issued a mental command. The operatives of "Argentum" and their support groups, linked in a tactical network, synchronously responded with the image "received."
Like a single organism, the squad changed tactics. Those with too many electronic enhancements retreated to the second line, supporting fire against the "highlighted" enemies. The robots were completely withdrawn, as their sharp optics instantly became their Achilles' heel.
The well-oiled gears turned. Tactics were developed. Everyone was part of the "Collective." He was the hand that pulled the trigger, the vigilant eye watching over a comrade, and the relay, diligently transmitting all telemetry to the collective mind of the USSR.
The fighters didn't think; they acted. Thanks to hundreds of training sessions and complete trust in those standing with them, they had become not just a semblance of a single organism, but were one. Anyone could correct another's movement or help in a difficult moment. Everyone could see with others' eyes and hear with others' ears, sharing the pain among all. And the more they fought together, the stronger the algorithms bound them, establishing logical connections, increasing the effectiveness of their unity.
Shep was at the center of the squad network, becoming its processor. At a certain stage, he no longer even needed mental commands for most things. Bypassing consciousness, the subconscious developed tactics on the fly and issued orders faster than a thought could flash through the brain. But nothing came from nothing. The sharper and more synchronized the fighters acted, the greater the load on their bodies.
In the digital space, the system formed more and more communication channels. For the fighters in their heads, the "Collective" was not a digital augmented reality interface and lines of machine code. The collective mind drew familiar images, creating a convenient graphical interface.
To an outside observer, the fighters in the network, now engaged in battle, were frozen in a meditative pose, with their hands on each other's shoulders. Thus, the group formed its own subnet, which was as strong as a crystal lattice, simple and reliable. Even the loss of one unit would not diminish its strength. Ordinary network construction algorithms – and no mysticism, just a convenient graphical shell.
First, the digital reality forms the connection, then each person changes the interface to their liking, making the final adjustments. The better you know a comrade, the more logical connections there are between you, and the better the neural network binds you together. Training, friendship, even conversation – these are ports through which a connection is established. More ports mean greater bandwidth and efficiency, but also greater risk.
Death is the rupture of connections. The system automatically stops supporting the connection. If there is only one such connection, it's not a big deal, but if there are many... The death of a factory worker, the life of the party, or a hero whose name will be written in textbooks – it will cause a wave, but of different strength. Connections will collapse, data-memory that hasn't made it into long-term memory will inevitably be lost, even if the sentient being awakens in the network after death. Death is not the end, but it has its price. Therefore, friendship is a risk. Love is a risk squared. Because with the rupture of connections, a part of you will also die. Forever.
The battle was not long, but for every fighter, a countdown had already begun in their heads. Data streams ran faster and faster, overloading the brain. The brain consumed more oxygen and nutrients. Even after the shortest battle, mild hunger and fatigue are normal. For a trained fighter, these are the trifles of war.
One can fight for days, weeks, but the body will need resources and rest with emotional release. Crossing the line, a soldier's body will begin to consume itself, having depleted its nutrient reserves.
Therefore, a commander in modern warfare must rotate his subordinates in time, distributing the load. Even high-ranking officers take turns, assuming different roles, as the system is maximally decentralized. There is no physical headquarters; it exists only in the digital space. Generals fight side-by-side with their soldiers again, like warriors of antiquity.
But this was not the reason Shep was at the forefront. He despised danger, leading his soldiers forward because he was not a "staff rat." Gone are the days when an officer could sit in the rear and be considered an officer. In the modern Red Army, as in any structure of the Aspect of Protection, there was one rule: "Everyone goes on the attack: from private to marshal." But even this was not the main thing for the captain...
Shep fought his way through the whirlwinds of war because he valued his own life less than the lives of his comrades. It was easier for him to corner the enemy himself, to defeat him alone, risking even more, but not to force another to risk.
Hiding from death, the hunt for Batarian pirates, war, his own injury – made him look at things differently. Everything was банально simple. Where he went, his friends could die. It was this that made him strain himself, thinking about every next step of the detachment, weighing all the risks, throwing himself into the very meat grinder.
And the combined detachment followed him, perfectly sensing his emotions and paying for it with their strength, giving their all. Creatures capable of wiping out a small district of a metropolis alone faltered under disciplined steel.
Monster hunters suppressed them with coordinated fire, developing strategies to counter their camouflage on the fly. It was not immediately established that the mimics tried to extract from the victim's memory something familiar to the surroundings. Therefore, mice, rats, and other creatures appeared on the abandoned cruiser. It was important for the enemy that the copied object could move independently.
The monsters deceived any optics with their skin, which worked better than any camouflage, making them ideal hunters for robots or cyborgs. However, if it was damaged, the effect was lost. Moreover, it was fragile in itself. If the ship wasn't needed intact, good old flamethrowers would have been used, for which vacuum would not have been an obstacle. The oxidizer was included in the kit according to GOST standards.
But the ship was needed, so trained will and imagination went into battle. Knowing the principles of camouflage, the operatives forced themselves to believe that... a life-sized target on wheels fits perfectly into the ship! A mentally trained mind, capable of communicating with images, could easily imagine even more. Something like this was in the mental card game "Believe – Don't Believe," only on a smaller scale.
And it worked. When the camouflage faltered, for a moment, something appeared – black, viscous, with trembling contours like mercury. By reading and deciphering the electromagnetic radiation of the brain, the mimics, having no real form, trapped themselves...
The cleanup began. The ship needed to be completely cleared before restarting its AI. The Soviet people needed answers to their questions, and they would find them. It couldn't be otherwise...
"...So what are you saying?" a solid-looking man in a business suit exclaimed, throwing up his hands.
"I agree with the honorable Mr. Ro," the Turian's voice was velvety and inviting, despite the second tone, not rough like his kin. "Having studied all available information about you... we did not expect to see such an intelligent being... close to us. You have pleasantly surprised us, Comrade Tarasevich."
"Oh, come on," the man pretended to be slightly offended. "Just because we don't throw money around doesn't mean we don't know how to make a profit! There are many ways to make a deal in this world."
He took off his pince-nez, which miraculously stayed on, and, once again wiping the polished lenses with a special cloth he took from a special pocket, prudently did not stop this fascinating activity. Having finished the ritual, the businessman from the USSR added:
"Not everything is measured by money. Money is just a wrapper if you don't know respected intelligent beings. They only warm the wallet pleasantly, serving as a delight solely for fools, but do not contribute to wealth and longevity. After all, without knowing the ford, you can stub your toe a couple of times, and in the morning discover that you are, suddenly, dead! A deal is like that – mutual benefit. If you love, then money will come to your hands on its own. You profit, we profit. Deal!"
"We see our benefit, unlike yours," the magnate from the Hierarchy voiced the general opinion. "I don't deny it, your offer is beneficial to us, even too much so, which is alarming. And your country has proven that it does nothing for free..."
"You wound me to my ailing heart, gentlemen!" Comrade Tarasevich exclaimed. "You have too low an opinion of us! Our benefit is obvious. By selling rations to you, and not to someone else, we will gain reputation and resolve a minor misunderstanding..."
"You elegantly described the civil war in the Hegemony," noted the representative of the Asari. "In my opinion, your benefit is obvious..."
"It's simpler than that, young lady," the businessman thought to himself, giving the alien a smile.
It was actually simpler. After the devastation of the Hegemony and its collapse as a unified state, the galactic market began to fluctuate. The stock market would have stabilized over time if not for the outbreak of civil war in the Batarian state.
The Hegemony was not the most developed, but it had a lot of practically free labor. Therefore, no one was surprised that a significant portion of its exports were cheap food products. Sometimes their quality raised questions, but a worker in a megacorporation's production had no choice. Hunger is not a relative. Whether you like it or not, you have to buy products in the corporation's stores, returning most of your salary.
With the start of the Union's punitive operation and the subsequent civil war in the Hegemony itself, food supplies decreased. The situation was not so dire as to cause famine, but the companies' costs inevitably increased.
This is where the USSR re-entered the picture. Not only was the Union ready to provide a much larger batch of food, but the price was much lower, making one look for a catch. "Isn't this dumping?"
The secret was simple. In reality, the rations cost, if you first convert social points into energy and then convert it into credits, several times less than the stated amount in currency. But this was not the main thing. The USSR was giving away long-term storage rations from the very first batches. They had been in warehouses for over fifty years, and would have lasted another three hundred, but why?
Technology does not stand still. All the rations, even if the entire population of the Union ate only them, would be consumed in twenty years. The people's government did not rely on chance, making provisions for a rainy day. Therefore, one of the benefits was the rotation of food products.
The second was the creation of an "insider" image. Confrontation was inevitable, but if your opponent is understandable, he is not so scary.
The third was increasing the loyalty of the enemy's population. By lowering food prices, flooding the market with quality food, it would be easy to hint at who the common person owes their full stomach to.
The fourth was the propaganda of "Soviet values." Even a banal package could become a tool to convey one's position in skillful hands.
And only in the fifth place were profit and the creation of a currency reserve. Moreover, as the businessman knew, these goals were only for the immediate future, and he could only guess about future dividends...