"Alarm! Alarm! This is not a drill! Civilians, descend to the shelter!" the alarm siren wailed.
Flames lashed from orbit and the sky was falling. People ran through the streets in panic. The rifle did not tremble in my hands, even though I knew I would die for the Union now. I knew the order...
With fire and iron, hordes of husks, which had swept away the first wave of fortifications, advanced in a solid wall. The black wave engulfed all resistance in its path. The protective curtain of the capital, like an ancient battering ram, was struck by crimson rays of the Reapers, causing an unbearable ringing in the ears.
Somewhere out there, in the cascade of deaths, friends were gone. The detachment was melting away literally before our eyes, forcing them to pay for every lost life with hundreds, or even thousands, of these monsters.
"For the Motherland!!! The Union will be eternal!!! Hurrah-a-a-a-a!!!" the battle cry of the Red Army thundered, but the clatter of tracks and the firing of weapons increasingly drowned out the screams of the sentient beings turned into husks.
Our blood flowed through the corridors of the Palace of Soviets. The building's every intersection was littered with bodies. We melted away like candles in a fire, snapping back, retreating further and further inside, knowing that the Motherland was still alive - and therefore, there was no death!
The Red Banner rushes into battle! Knowing no fear, knowing no obstacles! The metal of the machinery groaned and burned, but the chorus of the crews, until death and after, shouted:
"For the Motherland!"
Somewhere above the Earth's sky, Shep fell in the Citadel. The sky wept with the debris of the station, but the memory of his feat will go into eternity!
Again two blades clashed, and the entire Galaxy seemed to shudder...
The Ghost stepped over the mutilated body of my husband, intensifying the darkness completely. The shields over Moscow could not withstand it and burst with a crystal ringing. Scarlet rays gnawed into the buildings, instantly suppressing anti-aircraft points and centers of resistance. The black sea, no longer held back by anything, flooded the streets.
We were pushed back to the very premises of the General Staff, the last seconds of our existence being counted down.
"For the Union!" I burst into the thick of the cybernetic bodies, crushing and maiming, paying no attention to the wounds received, no longer caring about my own safety. Nothing else mattered anymore...
As if in mockery, the cloud cover opened a breach in itself, illuminating the Palace of Soviets. The light of ruby stars flooded the panoramic windows...
The crunch of my own neck deafened me. My mind, like an eternal flame, poured into the "Collective." Though my eyes became dead, I could now see how the enemy would see the death of the USSR!
Towards the Sun, directly into its dazzlingly blazing crown, several dozen relays emerged from warp bubbles, exploding in a blue flash when two Citadels fell into the center of the parent star...
We stood to the end, turning our home into ashes, not surrendering! Now - we will take our enemy with us. The star instantly collapsed into a black hole, which, with tidal gravitational forces, generated a gigantic gravitational wave. The satellite swarm system created by Soviet genius around the newborn monster dispersed this gravitational storm faster than the speed of light.
In an instant, an entire arm of the galaxy flared up in a flash of light, only to extinguish completely. And only in the blackness of space, in the cosmic void, smoldered an ember of our legacy. It was destined to dimly shine for a hundred thousand years, to ignite and unleash our wrath upon the unsuspecting Reapers when they came for a new harvest...
I woke up in my own sweat, to the beeping of medical equipment, unable to push the air, which had become so cold, into my chest, air that was many times warmer than the irrational horror I had seen...
The USSR passenger ship rushed rapidly between the stars, heading like a polished spearhead towards a goal known only to itself. Terentiy, like a conductor, guided the flight. His hands fluttered over the cockpit consoles. Somewhere, the blood had not yet fully baked, which did not hinder the mechanical servant at all, nor the corpses themselves, lying in a row against the wall.
"Forgive me, Professor," the robot grumbled, adding an overtone of guilt to his words, pressing a hand to his bulky stomach.
"The demise of my body was only a matter of time," Lebedev replied to him, his voice coming from a crack in the machine's hull, left by his traitorous protégé, Conflux. "They would have eventually realized that flesh is just a dummy, designed to deceive the mechanical goddess and blind fools. It's surprising how the deception wasn't discovered earlier. They trust the network too much, my friend..."
A sigh of regret mingled with a sip of nutrient fluid, in which a human head, long severed from the body, floated.
Though its face had decayed, the brain was reliably preserved in gray polymer and mechanics, implanted directly into the nerve tissues. The machine's body, with its shape and machinery, allowed it to deceive sensitive sensors, while Terentiy's proximity to the decoy prevented the Motherland from precisely tracking the origin of the academic's brainwave signature, which was impossible to fake.
"It was only a matter of technique to create a connection to ensure the doll's memory upload and a control channel. The only problem was that I had to act too roughly and quickly to finish before the 'Collective' was activated. But I had to go through the inconvenience to save the country!" thought the head of Academician Lebedev.
"It was very difficult to create a buffer separating my memory from the doll's memory, but Academician Zakharov's developments helped me out perfectly. Sometimes I even regret that I had to contribute to the destruction of CHAR-les."
"Still, I'm very sorry, master. You cherished your old body..." the robot continued to insist on its guilt.
"We all have to sacrifice something," Lebedev remarked philosophically. "Some pay with time, and some with their humanity. If I had managed to undergo polymerization then, I wouldn't have been able to save the USSR today. You yourself remember, Terentiy, how one thing led to another, as if the universe itself wanted our mission to succeed. Even old Shtokhauzen's immorality with his passion for carnal pleasures played into our hands. He never understood who helped him hide Filatova's infection, and to whom he gave just one head."
"You risked your incognito very much. CHAR-les almost realized it was talking to a dummy," the robot reminded him. "And now too. If you die, where will I go without you, master?"
"I'm not going to die when only two steps remain until salvation," the academic reassured him. "I haven't been imprisoned in your belly all these years, unable to even taste food, for nothing. The survival of the proletarian people was more important than these inconveniences! All that remains is to complete what was planned. They won't wait..."
The Migrant Fleet ship emerged from hyperspace in an uninhabited system. Orienting itself in space, it headed towards a gas giant, which had served more than once for discharging its core.
The Soviet-designed frigate, built specifically for the ally's needs, could cover the same distance with a smaller core than usual for its class, which had forced the Admiral's Collegium to purchase a large number of such ships. Forced to economize on many things, the admirals seized upon the lifeline offered by the Union.
Even though this type of ship, fresh from the shipyards, was not originally designed for fierce battles and was not heavily armed. Their silhouettes were more adapted for patrolling and transport than for breaking enemy lines.
The Quarians, this resilient people of engineers and mechanics, whose lives were spent in the metal labyrinths of the flotilla, were accustomed to modifying and modernizing literally everything that fell into their hands. Years of wandering had taught them to get the most out of any available resource.
This time, the task was significantly simplified by two key factors. Firstly, the hulls of the new ships were not yet worn and battered by the merciless cosmic trails; their armor shone with a uniform matte luster, and the docking nodes and power conduits were not twisted by years of repairs. It was a clean slate, an ideal foundation for transformation.
Secondly, their modular design, resembling a child's construction set, allowed for the dismantling of the standard weak POISK laser installations with minimal time and cost, and the installation of formidable accelerator arrays or reinforced kinetic barrier circuits in their place.
For a certain, and not the largest, fee, all these works could be performed with jeweler's precision at the Union's shipyards, where in sterile hangars, robotic manipulators would carry out the alignment with micron accuracy.
The ordinary sailors, whose fingers were perpetually scratched and covered in machine oil, unexpectedly agreed with their eternally stingy captains and admirals, who had ultimately made such a decision. The Quarians, accustomed to relying only on themselves and their comrades, understood this logic - every credit saved at the shipyards was a credit invested in the future.
But what the rank and file categorically disagreed with was the frantic, almost desperate desire of the high command to quickly throw the fleet into a slaughter. Only a handful of the most desperate fanatics on the Heavy Fleet ships dared to call the planned operation the return to Rannoch. During modest dinners in the wardrooms, it was called differently - "a dash into hell," "a desperate gamble," or simply "a meat grinder." But the Collegium had no other choice, so they lobbied for the operation to begin as soon as possible. Increasingly, ship captains allowed themselves to argue or even criticize the admirals' opinions.
The roots of this dangerous state of affairs went back to recent past, to the events on Ekuna. The failed colonization attempt and the subsequent humiliating conflict with the Hierarchy, which almost turned into a full-scale open confrontation, hung over the Flotilla like a heavy burden.
This incident did not just cause political damage - it burned from within the already shaky morale of the entire nomadic people. A particularly heavy blow was the fact that among the rank and file, through the filter of official reports and classified protocols, horrifying details of that tragedy, made possible only by outright betrayal, began to slowly surface, like bloodstains on fabric.
It was then that the return to their historical homeland, from a distant dream, turned into almost the only desperate option for the proud people to survive and preserve themselves. Everyone, from the engineer in the hold to the captain on the bridge, understood the simple and brutal arithmetic of their existence. Sooner or later, the resources of the giant ark ships would run out. The days of their flotilla were numbered. And then, moored forever to a foreign planet, they would have to settle down, dissolve, become mercenaries or laborers for stronger races, which no one wanted.
"And then there will be no talk of independence," this phrase sounded like a funeral bell. Admirals loved to boast about this grim maxim in their pompous speeches, emphasizing national pride. The idea of starting the operation as soon as possible, which in the cubicles was called nothing less than "idiocy" - a blind and fanatical faith in a miracle, at the cost of which could be the death of all, was sincerely supported by a few.
At the same time, the crews understood that too many ships would burn in the crucible of this dash, and without a rear base, the losses would not just be large - simply catastrophic, because all ships would go into battle, even those with children...
It was not surprising that there was a general despondency on the Fleet recently.
"Ship on the leader!" the duty operator broke the viscous grayness of existence, pulling the captain out of his melancholy. Bringing the scanner readings to his chair, the Quarian frowned. "A Soviet passenger ship? What is it doing here?" he thought, examining the ship's projection. "Reconnaissance? Unlikely. Diplomatic? Where is the escort squadron? Communists are very protective of their diplomats. Unclear..."
The captain sent a signal to establish communication. Who knows... Space is a place where almost no one will help you, as the Quarians experienced firsthand, remembering this lesson, so most of them were very sensitive to distress signals, even from other ships.
The small passenger ship completely ignored the communication attempt, immediately jumping into warp as soon as it received the communication request. "So, it was fine... Unlike us. I wonder what it needs on the Hierarchy's side, but it doesn't matter. I have enough problems of my own!" the captain decided not to show curiosity, and certainly not to report it anywhere higher.
"...our intelligence managed to provoke the Migrant Fleet into decisive action. They began to convene all their ships. Within a year, they will launch an attack beyond the Veil," the Turian admiral continued his report, pointing a laser pointer at the hologram. "Having assembled a strike force, they will attack in three directions, hoping to break through the synthetic defense here and here, opening a direct path to the mother planet."
"This is good news," the Primarch commented thoughtfully on the news, clarifying. "According to staff forecasts, how much strength will the enemy have left?"
"Even if the nomads can defeat the synthetics, they will only have a quarter of the ships left, with which our fleet will cope, suffering moderate losses."
"And what if the USSR intervenes?" the ruler of the Hierarchy clarified.
"We have prepared fleet exercises for the period of the attack, and our intelligence managed to incite fanatics to provocation, thereby creating a dangerous situation at their borders. At such a distance, their warp drive will not play a significant role. They simply won't have time to rotate."
"And won't the Republic decide to intervene?" the Primarch asked another clarifying question.
"The Republic will not allow communist military squadrons through, and they themselves will not dare to interfere with us, even though they understand the danger to themselves of our reinforcement. Our allies, the Salarians, guarantee this."
"These reptiles are asking too much for their services," sighed the Turian, who was not eager to give up two whole star systems of former Quarian territories, but admitted such an exchange to be profitable. "But they are giving a lot. Let them be such allies, rather than a fictitious helping hand from these blue-skinned ones."
"Moreover, the loss of these systems will be temporary. Having obtained the production base of the former Quarian territories, mastered by the Geth, we will be able to achieve parity with the communists, outplaying their warp drive with the quantity and quality of our pennants," the general seconded his leader.
"Only the troublemakers do not share your optimism. Why have the members of this order not been caught and shot yet?" the Primarch asked his council a rhetorical question.
"My Primarch, you know yourself that there are too many sympathizers for these deserters among the senior officer staff. More decisive actions could provoke a civil war."
"That is precisely why you are all still in your posts!" the ruler of the Hierarchy said, clicking his mandibles threateningly...