Today, the entire expedition had a day off. Everyone should be happy about the unplanned rest after productive work, but I just wanted to die! The reason wasn't even the hysteria that stirred up the "Collective" like pebbles thrown into a swamp, but the wave of suicides.
When the neural network was turned on and people recovered from the revolutionary fervor, about a month later, people started ending their lives—en masse and individually. Just imagine: you live your whole life with someone, love them, thinking they love you back, and then the truth is revealed, hitting not the brain, but somewhere into the unknown distance.
There were those who ended their lives due to faith. There were those who found out how others really felt about them. Some simply gave up, having learned the truth about the world. And each such death struck the nerves like a red-hot iron.
If death in battle or by natural causes caused mere sadness, then suicides generated waves of pain. The person understood everything and wanted to die. Then we were saved by the fact that real miracles of bright feelings balanced the deaths. The love of two lovers. The courage of soldiers. The impulses of scientists. A mother's care for her child. Light was able to absorb dark emotions.
Now there was no such protection. You couldn't escape from this. Every death was a part of you! This intensified the panic and generated new deaths. I just wanted to curl up and howl. Even alcohol and drugs didn't help! Your mind felt, despite intoxication.
Even sleeping was impossible! You were pulled out of bed as soon as a group of people decided to commit suicide somewhere.
And at the hour when darkness enveloped us, the military and scientists said: "Enough!" Deaths also struck us, but we found the strength to stand up and say: "Enough! Death, final, when your personality simply becomes a set of knowledge, because suicides do not wake up in the afterlife, it's not a way out!"
We have a choice: disappear, live in fear, or try to fight back. And bleeding humanity chose the third option.
Black stars of suicide tormented the collective mind. An unconnected person cannot understand what it's like when the general artificial intelligence screams and cries in pain with every death! There are no words in any language that could convey the horror.
But we did not give up. Humanity did not give up. We were helped by... an even greater darkness.
The next stage of the "New Dawn" project was mapping nearby star systems. With a warp drive, it took forty-eight minutes to fly to the nearest system. To cross the Solar System—about the same amount of time. Why? Gravitational shadows were to blame for everything!
A warp bubble—this fragile cocoon of distorted space—is sensitive to the gravity of massive objects. Any sufficiently massive body leaves a distortion in space, resembling a shadow. Upon entering it, the bubble simply burst, as if against an ocean reef. Thus, one of the probes was lost. The apparatus simply entered a small clump of dark matter. It was smeared when the bubble collapsed. As scientists said—as if it were put through a meat grinder.
A system was hastily developed that was supposed to interrupt the flight in case of critical bubble distortion. The jump itself was made only after moving away from the planet, gaining the necessary speed, and waiting for this. A warp bubble simply couldn't form in a gravitational shadow properly. Two space distortions overlapped, destroying the warp drive components.
Why such a long preamble and where is the darkness? One of the probes was sent to the Barnard star system, but did not reach it. An artificial object stood in its way.
The apparatus emerged from warp with severe damage and, before completely disintegrating, transmitted several frames. It was a ship the size of a small moon. Even from the blurred images, it was clear that there was nothing intact. The only thing that worked was the communication system, transmitting an audio packet and fragments of a cipher that scientists were able to understand.
"Run! They are coming! The stars are extinguished before their power! They... chab-chabz..." The end of the recording was damaged, as if someone had deliberately erased it.
After all that horror, the new discovery was supposed to finish us off. If such a ship, destroyed, moving solely by inertia, arrived in our system, we wouldn't be able to even scratch it now!
We should have retreated back to cozy Earth. Left our cities, gone underground, and lived there in fear of seeing the night sky again. But it turned out differently.
I lay there counting all these deaths, losing count at the twentieth thousand, feeling a timid flame of anger breaking through the sorrow. My mind echoed millions of others. The network space slowly but surely turned the color of the Soviet flag—the color of blood and fury that breaks chains!
Fear gave rise to apathy. Apathy burned on the embers of anger. Reason fanned it into a flame of rage. New "we" were forged in it. It's simple.
I and others understood that, venturing to the stars, we wanted to bring only good there, leaving the past behind. Reality, however, showed the cruelty of this universe. We will survive, even if we become the most terrifying dragon in this stellar forest.
At that moment, everything became unimportant. Humanity was tired of being afraid. Someone plays with planets? Approach us with the intention of harming our home—they will regret it! If we are knocked down and brought to our knees, we will get up and rush again. They knock out our weapons? We have fists and teeth, and we can always hit them over the head with a stone! A pistol to the temple? We'll blow up our killer along with ourselves! Communists don't surrender, even when they die!
The USSR rose from a week of panic, burning with righteous fury. Many people understood the meaning of "sacred struggle" and stood in one formation. Science could not unite people as much as rage and fear.
Our minds gave us a push, carrying us through centuries of natural evolution. Scientists worked on our bodies to catch up with our rapidly advancing minds. We will need everything for our light to shine forever!
The first thing done was that the expedition literally sifted through all the ruins and Martian sand in the vicinity. The country needed any scrap of information.
It became clear why this laboratory was used. It studied the substance that was stored in abundance in the warehouses.
Scientists who analyzed the samples called it the "Zero Element." When an electric charge was applied to it, it would lower or raise the mass of any object within its field, depending on the charge applied. It was astounding!
An unknown civilization had built interstellar engines on it and used it in almost all their equipment. After analysis, the engine technology was deemed unpromising. Not only did it produce parasitic radiation that needed to be discharged, but the source of raw material was unstable. The reserves would not last long, and the USSR needed spacecraft yesterday.
Paranoia also played an important role in abandoning this type of engine. After discovering traces of past catastrophes, the ruins of the laboratory looked like a trap. What would it cost a civilization that had rendered Mars and Venus uninhabitable to strike directly at the complex, vaporizing it?
While the technology was understood, there were still questions about the biological research. The council of scientists reached a dead end during the initial analysis, trying to understand what the aliens were trying to achieve. Only after studying the mummified bodies of test subjects did they manage to approximately understand the goal of the experiments.
Clusters of the zero element were found in human and alien nerve tissues. It was introduced by irradiating a living organism. Biologists hypothesized that by integrating into the nervous system, a living being could operate the mass effect.
It became clear that they were trying to create elite soldiers on Mars by crossbreeding flesh with a toxic substance. However, the research was not completed and was conducted in haste, as indicated by the disarray of the documentation, which was yet to be fully deciphered.
A severed hand, recovered from under the rubble, was a real gift. It clearly belonged to the owners of the laboratory. One didn't need to be a biologist to understand this, looking at the equipment left in the underground complex.
Unfortunately, the DNA of the sample could not be restored due to the complexity of the four-chain sequence. Even to read the surviving nucleotides would require years of scientific research. The research was not yet complete, but just six months of active work had given Soviet science food for thought.
A grand construction was underway on Earth and the Moon. The citizens of the USSR were not going to hide underground, but that didn't mean they wouldn't turn their home and its satellite into a mighty bastion.
In every settlement, shelters with well-echeloned defenses were being built, capable of housing the entire population for five years of autonomous existence. Air and missile defense batteries were being constructed everywhere, becoming nodes of fortified areas.
Observation stations were built, allowing them to monitor the entire celestial sphere. They became the eyes for the "Motherland Hammer" class guns.
Four-kilometer-long guns with a barrel diameter of thirty meters, assembled into batteries of three barrels, could fire seventy-ton shells, firing every three minutes.
Each shell was equipped with a warp drive, allowing it to hit targets even in Mars orbit. One such "gift" vaporized an iron-nickel asteroid twenty kilometers in diameter, turning the space within a seven-hundred-kilometer radius into a plasma vortex.
Calculations showed that if such a shell hit a planet, everything within a hundred and twenty-kilometer radius would instantly disappear, along with a piece of the atmosphere, leaving a giant crater of fused glass. All thanks to the zero element, which not only powered the guns but also multiplied the destructive power of the ammunition.
The limited supply of valuable raw material and its scarce and irregular extraction affected the ability to produce a large quantity of ammunition. Moreover, the warp drive itself was labor-intensive to produce. Graphene plates required not only perfect processing but also precise tolerances during assembly. Such valuable materials were used in industrial machines, which allowed the precision of part manufacturing to be raised to an unprecedented height.
The Soviet Union had obtained a means to combat large enemy ships and a tool to prevent space catastrophes. This was a weighty argument for any theoretical enemy fleet to think thrice before attacking the Solar System.
The construction of batteries and all infrastructure would be completed in five years. At the moment, only the shells had been prepared and tested, but not the gun itself.
The Solar System was being turned into a true fortress. The plan was not just to fill space with defensive means—passive and active. The system was being made echeloned. Even if one node was suppressed, the enemy would immediately come under fire from three others. The creation of bases for light aviation and the space fleet made the defense truly flexible.
The ordinary soldier was not forgotten either. After the activation of the "Collective," any soldier of the Defense Aspect was part of a single mechanism, but this was not enough. Human flesh was too weak to withstand the challenges of space. A modification program was initiated based on the model tested on the "Argentum" unit.
But it wasn't just biology that was to strengthen the warriors of humanity. Soviet science had proven the power of cybernetics more than once. Therefore, alongside gene therapy and the implantation of bio-implants, cybernetic enhancements were also being installed, replacing bones with those made from modern alloys.
Thousands of robots stood shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers of the people's army. Many metal bodies carried either artificial intelligence or the minds of deceased people who had decided to exchange comfortable immortality for another chance to serve the Fatherland. Their determination in the face of final death boosted the morale of the living soldiers.
A veto was placed on the project of implanting the zero element into the human body. Similar, and even greater, results could be achieved with polymer manipulators. When an amplifier made from the zero element was added to a technical device, the fighter would gain power that "natural" biotics—as scientists called people who theoretically underwent the zero element radiation procedure, gaining abilities—could only dream of.
The home front workers were also included in the achievements of modern science. The polymerization of the population itself increased life expectancy, preventing brain regression. Even without any further intervention, an ordinary person could live for two hundred years without losing mental acuity thanks to neuro-polymers.
All connected citizens received their modifications. The sins of evolution were corrected. Damaged genes were repaired. Humans became faster, stronger. Their immunity became capable of dealing with most diseases, and those like cancer and AIDS were completely defeated.
Life expectancy increased even further and theoretically could reach six hundred years. The USSR simply could not afford to lose citizens to old age! There was a catastrophic shortage of people. Seeing this, the Coordinating Council initiated a universal vote, after which the moratorium on cloning was lifted.
Copies of people could not be made, but ordinary children could be created from genetic material. Future defenders and workers of Earth began to mature in artificial wombs and under the hearts of volunteer women.
The "Collective" itself was updated, receiving patch 2.4 on New Year's Eve. A special neuro-polymer was dispersed. Within twenty-four hours, most of the planet's fauna was connected to the neural network. Animals became the eyes and ears of the Motherland, another line of defense. But this was not the main thing. The introduction of neuro-polymers allowed the "Ascension" project to begin, capable of giving animals intelligence similar to humans. Every creature had the right to stand beside us in formation, to be able to defend its home and contribute to it with its labor.
The world was changing once again. People themselves were changing. Morality was melting and being reforged into something new. What was a horrific taboo was becoming a reality. In the face of threat, all superficiality was being shed, but people themselves vigilantly ensured that they remained human.
Humanity was becoming different. Fashion and culture changed. Hundreds of customs and cultural peculiarities merged into new ones.
Pomposity gave way to simple beauty and practicality. Clothing became practical, functional, but beauty was not forgotten. Although everyone was preparing for war, no one forgot about comfort. The meaning of life in a trench? War is just a moment, but it determines whether you live or not. You will fight better knowing that a warm home awaits you behind your back, and your loved ones are clothed and fed.
Reason and care for one's neighbor became virtues of society. A woman could walk naked at night in the most terrifying alley and no one would touch her; on the contrary, they would ask if she needed help. People changed when they learned to feel the pain and emotions of others. The number of divorces decreased to isolated cases, as it was so easy to hear the ardent fire of another's love.
The seeds sown in blood sprouted. People remembered what it cost them to cast off their shackles and would never forget. After all, the memory of those who did not live to see it would live forever.
The Hegemon was deep in thought, seated on a massive chair that boasted the opulence of his study, unable to choose: a Quarian or an Asari? Women of their own kind held little interest for the ruler of the Batarian people. Though their eyes were captivating, every high-ranking lady knew her worth and had plans to increase that very worth, making it easier to buy a dozen exquisite slaves than to court one of these ladies.
The portly Batarian licked his juice-covered fingers, swallowing a piece of the most tender fillet. After taking a sip from a golden goblet, produced on Rannoch before the Morning War, and rinsing his mouth with noble wine as if it were water, the ruler pushed the dish of lukewarm food away from him. It had already cooled—therefore, it was worthy only of the trash heap.
Wiping his lips, shiny with fat, with a lace napkin made of Asari silk, after moistening it with water flavored with Palaven flowers, he began his dessert, continuing to ponder.
Such connections were dangerous for the ruler's power, who had not only brought order with an iron fist but had also multiplied the glory of the Batarian people! From the union of a Batarian with a Batarian, children could usually be born! Though he had managed to flood the slave markets with new slaves, peck at the Republic, and spit on the cries from the distant Citadel, one small child could become a threat to his power.
Most of all, Batarians valued their position in society. A position could be bought or rented. But position could be achieved not only with money. Intrigue, alliances, betrayal—all means were good. The main thing was not to get caught. Mention of a position being bought or earned in any other way displeased Khar'shan's children.
"A child is a blood heir. He will have a part of his glory. He can be used to gain a position bypassing him. His mother can scheme behind his back. And it's not certain that the threat can be eliminated. The Hegemon knew: today you are at the top, and tomorrow your corpse in a gutter will feed scavengers. Glory favors not only the lucky but also the strong. And if you add brains to strength, you will become invincible.
So the ruler of the great state pondered with whom to spend the night, but could not choose, occasionally popping fruits from Thessia into his mouth, which cost a fortune even for Asari. The choice was very difficult. The opinion of a slave? Ha! She should be glad for the opportunity to spend a night with the Hegemon, even if that night would be her last. The ruler sometimes got too carried away, but for him, slaves were just accessories that emphasized his status. If one got spoiled, he could always buy another.
The Hegemon bit into another fruit, splattering pulp all around, and grunted contentedly, lifting his heavy body from the chair. Walking unhurriedly, he approached the window, the glass of which could withstand a direct hit from a grenade launcher. The ruler of the greatest and smartest people smiled, indulging his gaze, watching countless slaves build a new wing of his palace.
Even now, it was evident that it would become the pearl of the capital. It couldn't be otherwise, as slaves were building it with all their effort. If the Hegemon didn't like it, he could order it demolished, buried in the foundation pit, and started anew while they were still alive.
A separate cause for pride for the brilliant ruler was the realization that not a single Batarian had soiled their hands with dirt in this construction. All the dirty work was done by slaves.
"Machines. They are sometimes more expensive than the most expensive slave, but hundreds of times less reliable. No matter how much you program them, they will eventually rebel. They don't fear death—meaning they cannot be broken and molded into what the strong need. It's easier with slaves. Pain, fear, and a drop of drugs—that's the recipe for obedience!" the Hegemon thought. "We are the best people. We were gifted with four eyes. Our merchants win every argument, and our privateers always return with loot. It is in our markets that you can buy anything. How good it is that I didn't follow the lead of the clergymen, as my grandfather loved to do. Batarians are not slaves. We were born to rule!"
The people loved their Hegemon. At his word, pirates went on raids that filled the markets with slaves. He did not allow society to stratify into castes, as it was in ancient times. The ruler modernized the fleet with an iron fist and managed to capture a colony from the Asari Republic. His troops captured and chained an entire squadron of Quarians, mockingly forcing their Migrant Fleet to watch as their women and children were put in shackles. The pathetic environmental suits from a dozen ships became excellent goods on the slave markets. If not for the...
The only ones the ruler of the greatest country respected were the Turians... and at the same time, he felt pity for them. To be strong enough to be feared even by Krogans, and yet sit castrated on an Asari chain—it was humiliating.
The ruler closed all four eyes with satisfaction, finally making an important choice. His bed tonight would be warmed by a blue-skinned whore. He knew that Asari were proud only until the first acquaintance with a whip, and then their pride disappeared somewhere... As for the women in environmental suits, they kicked and struggled to the last, which only excited a true man!
Then the Hegemon caught himself on a thought as brilliant in its simplicity: "Why limit myself in anything when I can combine?!"—and burst out laughing, amazed by the depth of his intellect.
Citadel Space seemed insignificant. He played with it as he pleased, because the ruler of all Batarians knew a little secret about the blue-skinned whores. He didn't care why the Matriarchs bought everything even remotely related to the Protheans, but he saw the fear on the faces of their envoys every time they handed over carriers with information about the precursor race. And there was nothing preventing the Batarians from trading artifacts. For this, the Asari paid simply gigantic sums, so why not sell?
Khar'shan's children could not understand such fear. They, unlike these hypocrites, did not receive everything on a silver platter. Though their technology was only slightly behind, the Batarians had something others lacked—the desire to take everything from this life! Yes, their ships were weaker than the Turians', but they had a different weapon—money. If they lacked strength, they would always hire mercenaries. The Krogans themselves would be happy to cut down Asari, especially if they were paid for it. Not to mention, even some from the Hierarchy would agree!
And his duty, as ruler, was to ensure that less noble blood of his people was shed! Let the sentient perish, but the Hegemony would exist forever!
"I'll have to give the 'spoiled' slaves to one of the oligarchs on the council. I know that he knows that he will take the bribe. This is normal! Corruption is also a tool for controlling society, because you can give a bribe in such a way that the recipient feels spat upon, but can do nothing about it. You need to remind upstarts of their place periodically. Buying a post is not enough. It must be held," the Hegemon thought, smiling.