The world almost stopped. For Artyom, reality became a kind of time-lapse, where every moment was a frame in an endless filmstrip of life. The frozen beings changed slowly, resembling this form of mass leisure even more.
All life is a choice. Two steps, you're alive, one step and a bullet will blow out your brains. Sometimes there's an obvious decision, and sometimes there's a choice without a choice, where every option leads to tragedy. As an operative of "Argentum," he knew that there were always at least three paths in any situation. Even when you're on your knees, and the cold muzzle of a pistol is pressed to the back of your head, you have the option to surrender, try, but die, or survive by knocking the weapon out of the enemy's hand. It all depends on you. The main thing is to be able to walk through the pattern of probabilities, as Soviet science said, without dying in the process.
There are also situations when this choice exists, but the path is chosen without hesitation, because other options, despite their logic and correctness, are unacceptable from a moral point of view or concepts of honor. Therefore, Ghost knew, before he voiced the obvious, what choice his former protégé would make... What he couldn't know was that, in addition to a rebellious spirit, Shep possessed simply impenetrable audacity, which, to the surprise of those around him, was combined with a phenomenal sense of tact, multiplied by a stubbornness that would make even a donkey choke with envy.
How many times had he gotten into trouble, how many toilets had he cleaned while on duty, acting against orders, succeeding where others would simply not have survived. So what makes this situation different from many others? "Argentum is always walking on a knife's edge, where one wrong step leads to the fall of you, your comrades, your unit, the entire Union. It's not for nothing that we were nicknamed the watchers of the Abyss. Witchers," Sergey once told him, giving him a universal answer.
"Why should I choose only one thing when I can take everything I need!" Shep decided in an instant of eternity, while his brain, thanks to the parallel computations of the neural network, surpassed its physical capabilities. He thought at such a speed that if his body had followed his thoughts, it would have simply disintegrated, despite all improvements.
A volitional effort, and time accelerated its pace. Still slow, but it was already possible to start acting, especially when your opponent lost patience. The muzzle of his former mentor's pistol began to glow with a blue light, preparing to spew a stream of plasma spheres. They would easily finish off his friends and comrades, who were currently unable to defend themselves...
A telekinetic impulse, despite the resistance, shifted the weapon. The plasma began its flight, going higher than the stunned comrades. It hadn't even reached the dungeon wall when Artyom had already taken three steps.
The operative fell into a slide, hitting Ghost's legs, knocking him off balance, slashing with his swords, which were immediately blocked, as he had expected. Thanks to the opponent's action, he shifted the vector of his movement and found himself behind him.
A harpoon shot from his glove, fulfilling a mental command, embedding itself in the ceiling. From the other hand, a stream of polymer erupted, hardening in the air. A wonderful composition, which became the crown of the creation of Soviet scientists, breaking or bypassing the laws of reality within reason, surged like a wave, only to freeze into a transparent wall. The soles of the armored boots of the spacesuit dug into the petrified, transparent mass, beginning their short, fleeting journey along the support.
Pushing off from the edge, Artyom soared upwards, using the polymer as a gymnastic apparatus. Twisting in a beautiful somersault, he flew backward, taking the plasma shot on his protesting, flashing shields.
In a blue flash, his weapon disappeared, the wall he had created in time returning to his spatial backpack. The first gett descended to the dungeon floor.
The operative's hands grabbed Katya and Sergey's armor, throwing their bodies towards their own, taking them out of the line of fire. Already feeling not just slight exhaustion, but a all-consuming hunger, Shep crouched, only to push off a moment later, shooting himself towards the beacon, feeling his leg muscles tear from the extreme loads.
"Destroy upon hitting the enemy's hands," the order sounded in his head. His hand swung for a throw...
"You surprised me," Ghost's calmly dead voice was accompanied by a terrible blow that knocked Shep off course. The shield collapsed with the alarming hum of the generator going into recharge. The flexible, segmented armor on his stomach bent dangerously. Some plates cracked with a ringing sound.
The operative, sparking his spacesuit, was dragged across the floor, flipping several times as he hit the unevenness of the floor. Tumbling once more, Artyom stopped a few meters from the Prothean beacon, which again showed signs of life, shining with green discharges again.
Above the crackling energy, the lieutenant colonel heard voices in his head, simultaneously with someone's attempt to break into his mind mentally. A series of mental images, like a kaleidoscope, flashed before his eyes. Pictures changed chaotically, as if someone was trying to push too large a layer of information through a channel not intended for it.
"Did you feel it?" Ghost asked, kicking him into the air and flipping him onto his back. "That's what the getts are for. Only the beacon can't affect them to its full extent."
With a jerk, he lifted Shep, grabbing him by the neck. Dead fingers squeezed the gorget of the spacesuit, deforming it. The lieutenant colonel grabbed the hand strangling him, simultaneously striking with the other, amplifying it with telekinesis, sending a Spark through his body.
Ghost's head jerked from the blow. The flesh on his cheek burst, revealing the electronics hidden beneath, and had no further effect on the dead man. The reanimated corpse only tightened its grip.
"At any cost..." the lieutenant colonel, whose vision was beginning to darken, said with his lips alone.
The dead man frowned, easily reading his lips, trying to understand why his opponent, on the verge of death, was smiling. Only then did he see the pin of a grenade on the operative's finger and hear the metallic clatter of the cylinder falling to the floor.
Ghost instantly realized the danger, throwing the half-defeated Shep away, kicking the grenade aside, and retreating backward, turning so as to minimize the possible zone of destruction. Artyom, now free, expecting something like this in one of the scenarios, twisted in the air, summoning a sword into his hand. The blade that emerged from his backpack grazed the dead man's leg with its very tip, cutting through the upper layer of armor.
The explosion scattered the opponents to different sides of the devastated dungeon. The shrapnel penetrated both their defenses, embedding themselves with metal. If they had been at the epicenter of the explosion, no regeneration or extreme reaction would have helped. The grenade, created specifically to destroy supersoldiers, would have torn them to shreds, even if Ghost had covered himself with Artyom, using him as an improvised shield.
The lieutenant colonel was less affected than his opponent. He managed to create a polymer film under his armor, preventing the fragments from penetrating too deeply. Ghost received the lion's share of the shrapnel. Several fragments also struck the beacon, causing the artifact to puff out branching green lightning with displeasure, but the structure, which had survived for millennia, withstood this test with honor. Despite being damaged, the ancient device remained functional.
"Pat," Shep thought. Even without the armor's sensors, he understood that the close explosion had turned him into a good cutlet. Moreover, the amplification mode had finally made itself known. The muscles of his arms and legs were burning with fire, though still bearable. "Enough for five seconds of fighting."
Ghost lost his polish. The grenade exposed the crude mechanics and electronics hidden from prying eyes, further spoiling his former mentor's face, but he, as if mocking, radiated the same hidden threat...
A green beam flashed dangerously close to the lieutenant colonel's head. The heretic getts had pushed back two of his comrades, overwhelming the USSR special forces unit with their numbers. This finally tipped the scales in favor of the dead man. Perhaps, though the colonel doubted it, he could have defeated him now, but along with the synthetics... Artyom wouldn't even be able to destroy the beacon. They would shoot him faster. "If plan A and plan B have failed, there are plans C and X left, but first I need to get out to..."
"Retreat!" Shep mentally transmitted to his comrades, decapitating the most agile synthetic. The pistol, instantly drawn from his spatial backpack directly into his hand, hissed, filling the operative with the smell of ozone, spitting out a burst of deadly plasma balls.
Making himself light with telekinesis, he pushed off, soaring into the gap in the vault, scattering more grenades in a fan pattern on his way out, arming them with pulses of invisible energy. Ghost easily intercepted all the ammunition with his telekinesis, squeezing them with invisible vises, so that instead of explosions, there was a fizz and a not very bright flash.
"It would be surprising if it worked," the lieutenant colonel thought, shrugging mentally, who himself wouldn't fall for the same trick twice, and certainly wouldn't relax even when the enemy was in his hands. "You can only exhale when you've personally buried the corpse with a bullet hole in the head from a kill shot. Until you pick up a shovel, consider the enemy alive and pretending... You were right, Argon, only Ghost is far from you, but merely the one who doesn't let your body rest in peace."
From his last thought, rage flared up in his soul again, heating his blood, making him shine like a rusty, crimson star in the "Collective." Today, he couldn't fulfill his mentor's last request...
Landing, extinguishing the remaining momentum with a roll, Shep, raising a cloud of dust, looked around. The extinguished battle had flared up with renewed vigor. Although the mercenaries were retreating, the heretic getts had intensified their assault and had no intention of fleeing in panic. Moreover, a ship was slowly and majestically descending towards the spaceport, located to the operative's right, projecting terror with its very appearance, pressing on the psyche with its unreality. The enormous hull, resembling a shrimp and a squid simultaneously, settled on its steel leg-tentacles.
It was immediately enveloped in explosions and flashes of laser and plasma light. All this power proved powerless to penetrate its shield, and, judging by the rising columns of smoke, the ship had managed to suppress the Planetary Defense batteries. As if confirming its power, it spewed an orange-red beam that cut a swathe through the forest, sweeping away trees like toothpicks, instantly engulfing several dozen kilometers in flames.
"Reaper!" flashed through Artyom's mind, who couldn't tear his gaze away from the ancient machine, both terrible and graceful. Its presence made the "Collective" waver, like a stone thrown into water. All who saw it and were weak of will projected a viscous, tar-like, oppressive horror, spreading in waves and simultaneously emitting black light into the emotional space, but at the same time making the minds of all the soldiers burn with barely suppressed rage.
Here it is, the hidden enemy! One of them. A Reaper! Hundreds of years of preparation, blood, sweat, intrigue... The USSR had done everything to ensure the galaxy was ready for their arrival. All that remained was to meet the guest as an irreconcilable enemy should be met – to flatten them with artillery, bomb them with the space fleet, and trample them with infantry boots, to the roar of heavy machinery tracks!
Although the "Motherland Hammer" guns couldn't fire along the surface due to their size, and the nearest battery had been destroyed, forcing a high price for its demise, the Red Army had something to respond with, since the fleet, tied up in battle, couldn't stop the ancient mechanism.
The salvo from the hidden skaven batteries, although it didn't penetrate the robotic squid's shield, made the steel monster sway on its legs. The surviving trees even in the excavation area, a dozen kilometers from the cannons' location, swayed from the wave generated by the shot...
"Shep calling 'Normandy'!" the lieutenant colonel mentally appealed to his ship, seeing the machine's response.
"On the line!" Miranda replied, reinforcing it with a questioning image.
Without beating around the bush, Artyom dropped the image from his eyes, which had captured the final destruction of the spaceport, attaching an image of a map with new evacuation coordinates.
Miranda replied with a general symbol of acceptance, with the number seven. "Seven minutes. We'll make it," the operative broke into a run, trying to catch up with the mechanized column, counting down the remaining time in the background. Affecting himself with telekinesis, he again reduced his body weight, thereby increasing his running speed at the expense of stability. If a bullet were to hit him at this speed, even if it didn't penetrate his armor, it would knock him ten to twenty meters to the side.
On the run, he sent an image to Petrovich, asking him to turn the vehicles in the right direction. He caught up with the walking machine in exactly one minute and forty-five seconds. Pushing off the ground, he jumped onto the "Raptor" and from there onto the "six," knocking on the armored plate of the cabin, signaling that he was one of them. To his surprise, sitting in the blood-soaked seat behind the controls was a private he had been smoking with about forty minutes ago, before all the chaos began.
The guy's black face was pale, and his eyes were wide, like saucers. Seeing the mechanical nature of his movements, Shep determined that although he had passed general military courses in operating ground vehicles, this was clearly his first time driving such a machine, and this had to be taken into account. Knowing the entire local landscape for official reasons, the lieutenant colonel sent the guy a mental image with a map, correcting his course. The operative decided to risk taking the open terrain, a good road, considering this decision safer than the probability of the machine overturning due to an inexperienced pilot trying to overcome an obstacle.
Clinging better to the bracket welded to the armor, Shep withdrew into himself, concentrating to find the echo of the control program of at least one drone. Sending one of the two surviving "Raptors" forward meant practically losing the robot. Besides, his squad mates were needed to protect civilians, like a security company mounted on two MAKO vehicles. Overloaded to the point where the suspension sometimes creaked, the wheeled transporters, covered with infantry sitting on the armor, had lost their main trump card – mobility, which spelled the end of their use as scouts.
Having found the desired apparatus, the lieutenant colonel sent it forward to scout the road. The battle was gaining momentum again. The getts were throwing themselves at the Union unit like possessed beings, sometimes covering the Reaper with their ships with their own hulls. "Now it's clear how it landed," Artyom noted to himself.
Chaos reigned in the air of the atmospheric and orbital battle. An armada of mercenaries and getts had penetrated the system, exceeding the size of the standard USSR fleet by a third, while the approaches to the planet were guarded by a combined squadron, diluted with ships from the Citadel Space, providing support for the archaeological expedition as important for the two states.
This was why the ground contingent had been reinforced before the arrival of Academician Lebedev and additional Planetary Defense guns had been added. Although the Union advisor was present on the Citadel, and the races themselves were dependent on the military might of the Red Army, this did not mean that they could simply trust the capitalists completely. "Somehow the mercenary fleet entered the system without raising an alarm."
Wiggling along the road, the lieutenant colonel saw that the bridge leading to a convenient clearing, marked by him as an evacuation point, had been destroyed by orbital fire, judging by the smoking wrecks of its supports.
"Petrovich, the bridge!" he sent an image of the destroyed infrastructure facility to the paratrooper.
"Damn it! And what am I supposed to use instead of the road surface?! Your dick is clearly too short, and I feel sorry for mine!" the mental response could be approximately translated in the most censored way, without descending into complete obscenity, of the paratrooper engineer, rich in vocabulary and imagination, with a big heart.
"You and you! Drag the logs! We'll build a bridge out of shit and branches! As if it's the first time, damn it..." the veteran's loud, hoarse voice rang out over the column.
The "Argentum" fighters he called out rushed from their places towards the forest, each quickly dragging two logs. Grunting, spitting on their hands for better grip, the paratrooper took a special sticky fastener from his pouch, and began to work...
"Contact at three o'clock!" Shep warned the combined detachment as soon as the transport crossed the bridge. A detachment of half-defeated warriors of fortune, startled from their hiding places, opened fire on the column. The "Raptors" instantly bypassed the column, opening fire with fragmentation rounds, distracting attention, allowing the Red Army soldiers to dismount from the wheeled vehicles. The operatives began to work from a distance, not seeking hand-to-hand combat, simply not knowing the enemy's strength.
The mechanized group continued its movement with fighting. Although the rabble hired for a couple of credits was not particularly combat-capable, a bullet is a selective lady. Here one Red Army soldier embraced the earth, here another froze on the enemy's body, as death leveled them. Exhausted Shep could not intervene directly, carrying out reconnaissance and helping the soldiers, sharing his experience.
"To the side!" the operative sent a mental image to one of the motorized riflemen, but instead of taking cover behind the armor, the soldier jumped to the other side, exposing himself directly to a burst of fire, getting tangled in his own and others' sensations in the heat of battle.
Meanwhile, the transport moved more briskly. Looking through the cabin window and seeing a slightly detached gaze, the lieutenant colonel saw that the private had allowed an experienced driver to connect to him.
Below, under his right foot, a wulfhednar reared up, apparently deflecting an attempt at assistance, only to be hit in the head a moment later. A felinid immediately rushed towards him, and judging by its broken movements, a human or elf medic was controlling it, correcting its actions.
"Yee-haw! Cavalry on zebras – arrived! Beware!" Joker's voice, the chief pilot of the "Normandy," sounded over the radio. He was piloting the nine-hundred-meter reconnaissance cruiser like a fighter, flying at supersonic speed over the enemy forces, knocking them to the ground with the shockwave from passing the barrier. "The shuttle will go to its final destination, so let's load up at a waltz pace, comrades, because one lady is starting to get nervous..."
"I'll pour kerosene in your nostril, dear, for the lady!" the ship's AI did not appreciate the pilot's politeness.
"Oh, we're on 'you'?" Joker rejoiced.
"On 'you,' I'll be with your grave, pervert!" If I had hands, and there was no prohibition against harming the crew, I would let you go for a walk in the vacuum, forgetting to give you a spacesuit!" the artificial intelligence was gaining momentum.
"Will this be a date?" the reckless slacker inquired, bringing the "Normandy" to a clearing where it could lower its landing ramp and not be like a pillar in the middle of a clear field, protected by the terrain.
"I'll block your access to the online cinema and that website..." the synthesized personality said threateningly, knowing where to press.
"Eeeeh!" Shep didn't listen further. The pilot and the ship could argue like this for hours, deriving undisguised pleasure from playing on each other's nerves. Jumping off the armor, he pressed the detonator button with undisguised pleasure. "When you kick, watch out, lest the beaten one throws something unexpected at you!" Artyom thought maliciously, receiving confirmation of the device's activation. The infernal machine created by Xenos was as reliable as Tula watches, completely surpassing them in destructive power. A small pea could make a fist-sized hole even in a cruiser's armor. He even regretted that he only had two left now.
"Even if the beacon is not completely destroyed, it is substantially damaged. I don't know what they need it for, but now they won't be able to do much with it," the operative stated, turning to the walker. "And now it's time to talk to an old scientist, asking what, how, and why this happened!"