A grayish-blue light illuminated the faces of the Skaven at the work terminals, glinting in the lenses of their gas mask-helmets. Their flexible fingers, like пуков's paws, hammered command after command, striking the material-holographic keyboards. The brain matter of the intelligent rats processed the calculation of physical data, contributing their processing power to the AI's processor.
Scientists shared knowledge, guiding the process in the right direction, performing final data processing, and forming tasks for the assembly complex. Colossal machines majestically and unhurriedly completed the assembly of the huge hull, following the technical maps developed in this laboratory.
"Comrade coordinator-tor," the foreman of the laboratory workers addressed the scientific director of the project, stuttering slightly at the endings, according to protocol. "The hull-l-l is in the final stage-e-e."
The almost completely gray rat, of short stature, laughed unevenly, licking his impressive incisors protruding from his mouth with his tongue. The lenses of his mask could not hide the fanatical gleam of his scarlet eyes. In his entire hunched figure, from the tip of his nose to his tail, this devotion to the idea, bordering on madness, was visible.
"The automation will finish the rest for us, comrade foreman. Are the pyrotechnic charges armed?" unlike the intelligent rat, the human was businesslike and collected, but sparks of this unhealthy enthusiasm also flickered in his eyes.
"Yes-yes-yes-e-e-e!" the skaven could not contain himself. Even though he had died and been reborn twenty times while working on this project, it had not affected his nature, which almost deified explosions and recognized them as the only art, as fleeting as his life. Therefore, talk of explosives excited his mind, even though he had gathered his thoughts. "Just give the command, and upon completion of the work-k-k, haha-a, of the process-s, all data banks will be completely destroyed."
The foreman accompanied his report with nods of his head and nervous jerks, as if his distant ancestor had been caught red-handed plundering a grain barn. The tail of the intelligent rat tapped on the tile, only emphasizing the extreme degree of excitement and anticipation.
The scientific team exchanged glances. Each emitted a mental packet with an image of determination into the isolated space of the unified neural network. Seeing this, the comrade project leader gave his last order:
"Initiate protocol 'Inquisition'," he said dryly, creating a reinforcing mental packet.
The AI instantly took over control of all processes, taking the load upon itself. The machines shuddered, stopping, but after a second, they continued to work, albeit not as quickly as before.
The skaven rose from their workstations. Each of their tribe twitched, as they were now serving the Great Motherland in the most natural way for them.
"We are merely cogs in Her semi-divine mechanism! Our lives are nothing! Our bodies are steel for Her factories, and our minds are processors. Our duty is to perish for the good of the Mother, even if she did not ask for it! We will fulfill our duty!" was the brigadier's last thought-image before he, like his brigade, drew a pistol from his holster and blew his brains out.
Minds tuned to death in a world where death is merely a door to a new life or another existence, never awoke in the "Collective." The crypto-protection, activated by the "Inquisition" protocol, having captured their mental signals of "I," erased any data about them. The skaven did not even become an archive, settling in the boundless neural network as just a stack of data bits that no one could read anymore.
Somewhere far away, the collective consciousness of all citizens of the USSR, the Motherland, shuddered in the main array. Tears flowed from the eyes of her digital avatar, but the AI completed its part of the work, destroying the second part of the crypto-keys, completely erasing all data from the main cluster of arrays. A complex polymorphic algorithm erased any mention of these intelligent beings, as if they had never existed at all. Only dead shells were evidence of their existence... for now.
After a slight hesitation, the scientific personnel repeated the procedure, having previously tuned themselves to destruction with a special memetic symbol, which additionally burned out self-awareness at the moment of death, for greater reliability. And again, the Motherland could only wipe away tears, seeing off her children on their last journey, erasing their names from history itself.
Soon, the complex's AI would complete its algorithm and send the ark ship into flight, after which it would erase itself without pity or regret. The data banks of the artificial personality would turn into weightless dust, scattered by the explosion of an antimatter reactor, which, by its explosion, would further destabilize the already collapsing star.
For many millennia to come, the cloud of stellar gas would be a silent monument to all this, and the ark ship of the "Phoenix" project would disappear into the black abyss of space, making a blind warp jump. In its belly, in stasis pods, would be stored the sprouts from which a new USSR would rise, if civilization did not survive the end of the Cycle and lost the battle to the Reapers. Those born in artificial wombs would become those who would absorb the history of the communist state, to be ready in the future to strike at the horror from the depths of ages, machines that considered themselves gods, cruel slaves of the algorithm with all the proletarian might! But this would be only after millennia...
The ship slipped into interstellar darkness, like dozens of similar ones, and no one knew if its hidden mechanisms would work, reviving the AI, or if they would leave it drifting in eternity. Now only fate knew not only about its place in the universe, but also about the fact that this project once existed. Necessary cruelty, needed only to stop the repeating slaughter of civilizations once and for all...
***
Fountains throughout the USSR in memory complexes began their solemn dance. The flame of the Eternal Fire soared upwards. The entire "Collective" was filled with a mournful chime. In a world where death is not the end, someone died definitively.
All citizens of the country stopped, frozen in a minute of silence. The misunderstanding of what had happened did not prevent them from mourning their comrades who had sacrificed their immortality. There was no black wave of logical connection rupture, as there was when Colonel Kuznetsov, a hero of the Union, fell. Only the quiet sadness of the Motherland, of which each was a part.
Factory whistles blew, glorifying the departed, and the ringing alarm bell beat and beat. Functions transmitted it to all connected users.
On the Citadel, citizens of space looked with incomprehension at the communists frozen where they stood, all of them dejected. Many had tears in their eyes.
The emotional shock destroyed the remaining, accidentally surviving logical chains, erasing even bits of data. Now, even if the Reapers captured and hacked the Motherland herself, they would never learn about the "Phoenix" project, only feeling the grief that the collective consciousness experienced when thousands of intelligent beings, men and women, voluntarily and decisively gave not even their lives, but much more, so that others could have a chance...
***
"Fucking pies..." was all I could manage when the feeling finally subsided a bit.
It wasn't fear, but a chilling dread! I, born in a world where death was a boundary, and having lived most of it in a world that made it the next step, felt this emptiness. A vacuum that search algorithms were pounding into, trying to restore connections, but there's nothing to restore an amputated limb!
It wasn't death itself that broke me; I had seen so much of it that it no longer surprised me. The damn emptiness made me feel the full charm of it. And I now understood Artyom, who cursed like a shoemaker. I'd like to rein him in, but I myself want to join my friend and subordinate.
"I've gotten out of the habit of this shit," I throw this phrase into the information space while my body at the communication node lights a cigarette, allowing my body to roam in digital distances. "Back in the Old Era, it felt different."
"Perhaps because we didn't know how else it could be," remarked the lieutenant colonel, who had pulled himself together. "Not even knowing that this was it."
"The threshold of complete disaster, which we are not supposed to know about," was my answer. "Therefore, we desperately need the information that is in the heads of this youngster and the fossil."
My friend's face contorted as if he had eaten a box of rotten lemons.
"In progress, but we need to start somewhere, not just with what we know, that the beacon was needed for something by the Reapers," Artyom stated.
"Knowing Argon, along with Lebedev, it's not for anything good. Our only advantage is that we know where they will strike," I grumble thoughtfully, recalling the facts. "But there are so many ships there that a mouse couldn't slip through. The Citadel, damn it..."
The lieutenant colonel nodded in agreement.
"It's not a herd of fanatics to throw in there in small groups. Moreover, as far as we know, the Reaper needs contact with the station..."
My friend's avatar tilted his head thoughtfully, something he did in reality when he was trying to remember something.
"Remember those Prothean corpses on the other station? How did they get there?" he asked after a few minutes of thought.
"You think so?" I feign skepticism on my face.
"What other options are there?" he replied with a question. "Besides, Lebedev was at the second facility."
"Then why the hell do they need a beacon?" I throw back at him.
"It seems the Protheans were overly cautious, and such a loophole wouldn't be easily exploited, even by such cunning individuals," I summarize the obvious. "We still have no other viable options. All hope is that these two comrades know at least something, and then the Motherland will calculate it. But you know yourself, even scanning their memories won't help if they don't figure it out themselves."
"Understood," my friend nodded. "Then I'm off to warm up the anal cryptanalyst."
"I recognize my mother-in-law's handwriting," I grin widely.
Even though the joke was idiotic in this situation, the mood was already bad enough to hang oneself.
"I learned from the best," Artyom's returning smile before disconnecting boded nothing good for the information sources...
***
Liara slowly sipped from a glass of clean water. After waking up, the young Asari feminist experienced an insatiable thirst, consuming liquid on an industrial scale, which, according to the ship's octopus doctor, was normal.
"Had a good time with friends," a thought flashed through her mind. The young Asari was missing a piece of memory the size of three years. The maiden vaguely remembered only a jumble of scenes, but that was all. Learning how much junk was in her blood, she was surprised that anything at all had stayed in her head, although she preferred not to remember it at all.
The entries from the network and her personal omni-tool made her cheeks blush. Liara was ashamed, very, very ashamed. Although she hadn't stopped being a feminist and an agent of the Shadow Broker, what she had done in her drug-induced delirium...
The maiden winced, placing a hand on her head. Headaches would accompany her for a long time, but the Asari considered them the least price for liberation.
Taking another sip of the pleasantly icy water, she lifted her eyes from the table, looking at the other person sitting at it. The living Prothean evoked no response in her; the very fact seemed too incredible, but her historian's nature began to take over.
"I apologize for wanting to kill you. I was somewhat out of my mind," she said, feeling the blush spread further across her cheeks.
Javik, sitting opposite her, merely grunted. His entire posture projected skepticism and irony. The Prothean, recently a prisoner and only recovering from beatings and a shattered worldview, remained the same fragment of his proud empire.
"But that doesn't mean I've forgiven what your race did to my people!" she declared loudly. The maiden simply couldn't help but say it.
"Now that I believe more, primitive," the warrior snarled. "I wouldn't forgive that either. You've grown since our last meeting."
"Honestly, I wish you had remained just mummies and bones. It was much more pleasant to dig in the ruins of your empire," Liara tried to provoke him, surprised by her own tongue. "I wouldn't have to rein myself in and suppress my bias. It would have been easier to work with data alone. But still, I am grateful to you for everything you have done for us, as a species, if we set aside emotions, of course."
"It's a shame the USSR didn't exist in my cycle," the Prothean grunted again, leaning back in his chair, looking down at the blue-skinned maiden with superiority. "These intelligent beings know how to convey obvious things and have flexible morals to do so..."
"Are you done talking?" the lieutenant colonel, wound up to the limit, lost patience, so much so that Miranda had to place a hand on his shoulder, sending a calming mental message. "Excuse me for interrupting, but we are almost out of time and need to know how to save the galaxy."
"If only I knew how I could help you..." Javik said too thoughtfully.
Waving his hand vaguely, trying to catch a thought, he added, "I am a warrior, and although I know a lot, I can only advise on tactics at the moment, but you yourselves will figure it out much better. Those like you have a plan for a plan if the main plan fails. It wounds my pride, but it does not diminish my readiness to rush into battle with the Reapers."
"I agree..." the maiden took another sip of water.
She was glad to do at least something so as not to think about the entire information bomb that had fallen on her. Liara did not yet fully understand that her mother was no more, and the galaxy had only a few more relatively peaceful hours left.
"No, I want to help you, at least as a token of gratitude for saving me, but I don't know how..."
Artyom, after thinking for a moment, took his officer's tablet from his belt and, after finding what he needed, handed it to the two experts.
"We know that at the end of the war, the Prothean empire tried to do something with the Citadel. A sabotage group was sent at the very end, but we don't know what they wanted to do. That Citadel was too damaged," the lieutenant colonel explained.
"We don't even know how they got onto the station," Miranda added. "When we reached it, there were only time-dried bodies around the relay statue."
"I can help with that," Javik said, somewhat reluctantly, struggling with his feelings. "At the beginning of the war, there was a project called 'Channel.' The command wanted to reach the Citadel with its help, thinking that the Reapers were using it as a command center... This is not a relay statue, but a fully functional specimen. More precisely, a receiving node, useless without the main one. Our scientists could not fully replicate the technology by which the relays were built, so they invented it from scratch. Resource-intensive and useless in war. Apparently, they used it."
"Oh, really," Artyom was surprised.
"We simply couldn't realize all its advantages," the Prothean said bitterly. "Only the main node had a mass core, allowing the receiving node to be sent, in theory, anywhere within range, providing a one-way corridor. It seems the Reapers managed to substitute the correct coordinates, as the group ended up on the wrong Citadel."
"This explains why there were no other monuments at other sites," the investigator remarked dryly. "But this does not make the task easier. Even if we take measures, we need to intercept the enemy. We need the coordinates."
"You need not only coordinates but also access codes," the warrior noted. "I can give you the name of the planet where the installation is located, and even indicate the approximate area, but not the exact location..."
"I can help with that," Liara said modestly, raising her hand. "If, of course, you provide access to your intelligence data on the borders of the Prothean empire and a couple of scientific works by my colleagues from the USSR. Even for a matriarch's daughter, there is classified information."
"There will be full cooperation from our side," the lieutenant colonel said, forming red polymer on his glove.
"And maybe we shouldn't?!" the slightly frightened maiden asked, stuttering a little, who, although young, understood what this terrible man intended to do.
"Unlike your 'embrace'," Miranda said, putting quotation marks around the word with her voice. "You won't burst like a balloon from the information flow. It will be painless for you, unlike us..."
The girl also began to form the necessary structure, turning to Javik.
"Will you do us the honor?" she asked. "After all, something tells me you don't want to connect to our 'Collective' either?"
"Definitely not now," the last fragment of his empire, who still had much to think about, nodded resolutely...