Chapter 5. Orange Sea. sub-chapter 1.

...A flash flashed before my eyes. I shuddered and straightened up. I must have fallen asleep in the chair on my watch. I think I had a terrible dream - as if someone was chasing us and grabbing us in a force field. Brrr! I'm always dreaming of something stupid…

- Commander, we have crossed the gravitational boundary of the Pleiades star cluster, there are seven whole three hundredths of a parsecs left to the conditional edge.- informs the pilot. - At that moment, my sensors detected the targets accompanying us!

- I didn't understand...- I was still under the impression of the dream - What other goals? Maybe it's the colonists? Let me guess - they are slowly mastering this cluster, and nothing is reported about it in our media... Why?

- No, Commander,- Ariadna replied confidently. These are not colonists and most likely not people. Ten marks. The targets have not been identified. We're still in superluminal mode, we're starting to decelerate. I can only see their gravitational shadows. Neither the appearance, nor the exact mass, nor belonging to a species or state, we can not find out. There are no similar examples of a gravitational trace in my memory. However, the detected targets are very massive, and probably large in size.

- Are they bigger than us?

- They are much larger in size and mass than our board, - Ariadna confirmed.

On the light projection of the sector, the conventional signs of our location were indicated: a slowly floating white dot and a swarm of small red dust particles slightly behind and below.

- Are they definitely not ours? I asked. – Maybe it's... m.. local xenos? What if there is a highly developed race here? And here we are. What if they take us for trespassers?

-Unlikely,- Ariadna concluded. – If there was a developed race here, it would have been included in the catalogues of xenoras long ago. They are regularly updated, earlier, back on the planet Bryanskaya, I downloaded the latest versions of catalogs from galanet. In all of them, there is no information about the developed interstellar races in the galaxy satellite Pleiades. The gravitational shadows of these targets do not match the templates from the catalogs.

- Some kind of nonsense - I doubted. -If they're not humans, they're xenos. If not xenos, then surely humans. Who else? Not space whales, right?

- Living beings capable of surviving in outer space without artificial means have not been found. This is one of the patterns of old fiction that have not found confirmation.

- So maybe we saw them first? I suggested. That would be great.

- I do not rule out such a possibility, even if it is small. We are entering the braking distance, the speed is ten astronomical units per second. The targets are moving at a speed identical to ours. They are being intensively rebuilt. In fact, we are being escorted.

- This is serious. Whoever they are. Call everyone!

The alarm rang. A few seconds later, the alarmed crew flew into the control room.

- What happened?- almost everyone asked in unison.

- We have guests ... or we are visiting - I pointed to the light scheme. Some kind of UFO.

- Very strange indicators, - said the Elder. – I won't even tell you who it is. You look at how they move- by impulses. Jumping. Ada, any ideas?

-None,- Ariadna replied. – And that bothers me. Friends, our mission is under threat. We are faced with something completely unforeseen. We don't know who they are and what their abilities and intentions are. Maybe we should turn back.

-It's too late,- I shook my head. – We're already here. We've been spotted, and if we try to leave, they'll catch up. We need to solve the problem on the spot somehow. I want to note that they are walking at a distance, but they do not attack. And that's not bad. So, we have... some scope for action. Besides, I doubt they're hanging around on their own. If these are spaceships, they probably have bases here in the Pleiades. And it wouldn't hurt to find them. But we should not provoke them to aggression. You understand the reasons- we don't need an extra fight with strangers. Firstly, we do not know the true state of their forces, and secondly, it is quite possible that they do not want to reveal themselves, think that we do not see them, and will not interfere with us. Ariadna, for now move thirty degrees north relative to the Equator of the Galaxy into this diffuse cluster - I pointed my finger at a dark dust cloud in the center of the cluster between bright concentrated clusters of stars, on the edge of a long stellar "outgrowth" resembling a snake's tail. – And now - we need to hide somehow, or at least distract their attention. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Here the cyber-pilot proposed a simple, but moderately effective scheme:

- In order to avoid a possible conflict, I propose to go along a broken route in the mode of variable superluminal jumps to the other end of the cluster. If we go through the areas of contact of the fields of star systems, we should succeed. It will depend on the gravitational situation, but I will try to conduct the cosmobase on the best course.

- Thought!- I supported her... Remembering one of the classes at the club, I added: - Here's another thing… Do we have spare probes with an EPE engine? At the turning points, reset them with the engine turned on at maximum speed. It will be a kind of trick. Everyone sit down, let's start!

- Understood, I support, - Ariadne approved.-Standard research probes are perfect for this task.

After waiting for everyone to sit in the chairs, I gave the signal:

- Go ahead!

The projection circuits in front of us disappeared for a second, and then flickered again. The gravpolar, operating at medium speed, buzzed at full power, so that we felt its vibration even with all the protections and layers. The cosmobase shot into the cloud with the maximum possible speed, exceeding the estimated one parsecs per minute. We entered the main zone of the cluster, without slowing down, rushed through the free interstellar spaces. The mysterious pursuers have gone out of sight of our gradar. We stared intently at the diagrams, waiting for the result. After half an hour of wild dancing, the cards on the projection calmed down. Following an unimaginable broken trajectory, we were transported to the other end of this relatively small star island in the middle of the extragalactic void. And, it seems, we were left alone. Numerous diffuse fields and clusters of stellar systems reliably block us from the opposite region of the cluster from which we came. We were lost to unknown ships for a while. Ariadne turned off all our active systems, and put the ship into full camouflage mode. Now we are hanging in the interstellar region at the very edge of the cluster and do not shine either in the gravitational or in the usual wave range. We can calm down and take a breath.

- Dodged! I whispered happily. – But, it's too early to relax! We remain vigilant. I propose, as planned, to conduct a detailed study of the Pleiades, if possible, to find the strongholds of unknown ships. And after that, we will pass the information to our Defense Council - they will figure out what to do with it. Ariadna?

- I agree with all of the above, and I will fulfill my duties,- the AI replied.

- Then it's time to do what we came here for. Ariadne, watch every rustle in the neighborhood - we must not get caught a second time - perhaps unknown ships are looking for us. If they show up again, repeat the maneuver, but in a different way. Leo, prepare the most complete file and database for the information you receive.

- No problem, - he scribbled his fingers on his personal onboard tablet with incredible speed.- When the information is received, transfer it to my terminal - I will arrange it properly.

- Paul, thou will take up the description of the biospheres of this corner of the universe, and the xenores, if we find them..

- Absolutely - our natural-blonde-guy smiled, taking out the same tablet from under the desk drawer.

-Vladik, thou will deal with me on the possibility of colonizing planets, especially those without atmosphere, Oleg- thou - watch out if we miss something - thou are good at it, and you will also deal with Senior military issues. The senior will write a general description and highlight the most interesting topics. I will deal with astronomical and navigational issues. We must compile a detailed, competent, interesting and maximally useful report on this cluster for future colonists.

- And what should I do? Ariadne asked, a little surprised.- I can do all this myself. And I can do it faster than you.

- No, Ariadna, - I refused, - As thou already said, this ship is made for people. And we also have to do targeted work on a par with thou, and not just stare at the diagrams and admire your performance. Despite your excellent abilities, the main thing for thou is the direct collection of information and the management of scientific equipment and continuous observation of the surroundings. And, thou will help us if we have difficulties in something. Let's start with a simple one - a topographic star map, a superficial description of the systems and a reconciliation with the data of those very previous unmanned expeditions. After that, we will move on to the difficult - we will highlight particularly outstanding objects, problems and other things that will be worthy of attention, and we will give a detailed explanation to that. In general, warm up the engines, prepare all the scanners - we will probe every interesting star system and fly around every star cloud.

Finally, we got down to business. Moving from one star system to another, we took readings from sensors and analyzers, collected and documented in the form of catalogs, references and presentations detailed and essential information about everything that we encountered on the way. Remote express analysis of the properties of cosmic bodies and regions took a few seconds in each system, the Photon equipment is perfectly adapted for this. We sent autonomous probes to the most interesting systems, each of them examined the star system at high sublight speed, dropped devices for soil sampling and comprehensive analysis on the planets, these devices returned back to the main probe, the probe returned with valuable scientific cargo to the outskirts of the system, after which we jumped up to it, entering sublight mode and we took the device on board and worked closely with the extracted data. And so over and over again. The only thing that upset us was that every time we went into superluminal mode and entered it, we were again overcome by "sublight sickness". In general, there are several official medical names for this syndrome, and even more unofficial ones, but none of them has become more popular than the rest. But we endured and did not complain. Of course, we didn't wait on the edge of the system for every device we sent. Gliding at superluminal between the systems, without slowing down, we dropped the probes, and they were already on their small but powerful EPE engines following inside the systems. And when they finished the task and went back to the edge of the system with the load, we took them back in exactly the opposite order. Naturally, we did not send probes to every system (there are tens of thousands of them here), otherwise we would have been stuck in the Outer Pleiades for many years, but only to the most interesting and promising for human exploration, in which terrestrial planets were viewed in potentially habitable zones. We scanned all other, less interesting systems with gravitational and wave means of long-range measurement from afar. With the help of automatic probes, we remotely collected samples of soil, water and gases, cosmic radiation and stellar matter, without entering the space base into the star systems. We studied and evaluated the conditions of the future stay of people, the extraction of minerals, the possibilities of navigation and the defense of the cluster in the event of an attack. All the information received was systematized and flocked to the archive, we did not leave the tablets, occasionally interrupting for the most basic needs. This star cluster turned out to be a real paradise island in the middle of a fierce intergalactic void. Actually, it is not one, but several small stellar clouds rotating mixed with fields of diffuse matter around a single gravitational center. Out of ten thousand different stars, most have planets, one tenth of them are fully or partially habitable. This star cluster turned out to be a real paradise island in the middle of a fierce intergalactic void. Actually, it is not one, but several small stellar clouds rotating mixed with fields of diffuse matter around a single gravitational center. Out of ten thousand different stars, most have planets, one tenth of them are fully or partially habitable. The result is higher than the average for the galaxy.

However, we have not found technically developed, and even more so, space civilizations. The "familiar strangers" who met us on the approach to the cluster also seemed to have disappeared in intergalactic space. Or, they secretly followed us, using some clever disguise - it's impossible to say for sure here. But, with the help of probes, we found several intelligent societies of psychogenic orientation, which at the dawn of their formation preferred spiritual progress to material progress - what we call extrasensory abilities. This phenomenon, if not studied purposefully and with scientific justification, is vanishingly rare, and among human communities it is mostly at the mercy of profane and fraudsters. But here we have found entire communities that are able to transmit thoughts at a distance in the form of quantum waves without any receivers, using only the capabilities of their thinking and communication organs, using the abilities of their bodies instead of technical devices. Most of these civilizations turned out to be very ancient, like the cluster itself, and they were very similar to insect-like hives that had evolved to the ideal, with an impeccable order, a clear division of beings of one species into hundreds of sub-races, each of which is designed for its own specific type of work. We analyzed some of the information received and came to the conclusion that the Outer Pleiades is a miraculously surviving piece of an ancient old galaxy that our native Milky Way captured and absorbed billions of years ago. All diagrams of the relative and absolute content and distribution of substances seriously differed from the typical data for the young central regions of the Milky Way. A similar version has been put forward for a long time. Some groups of scientists (and not only human ones) believed that this piece was torn out of the general array of the Milky Way by the passage of another galaxy of equal mass next to it billions of years ago, another group believed that it was a captured fragment of a long-destroyed galaxy. As a result, we are already in place, we have become the discoverers of a new, third version. Without hesitation, we named the local intelligent and unintelligent beings by the common name "Pleiadians", despite the fact that they turned out to be very different beings in the material sense - from humanoids to intelligent electromagnetic clouds in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant. With some of them, with the help of Ariadne, we established contacts, and received very useful confirmation of our hypotheses. And besides, vague and uncertain legends about the "huge danger lurking in this cluster, a merciless ghostly force that appears out of nowhere and disappears suddenly, capable of crushing worlds and scattering stars." This is already curious. A very familiar image. When we told how we could about the huge ships we found with strange pulsating motion, the inhabitants of the "hive planets" warned us to be careful. Most likely, it's THEM.

We are noticeably depressed. These descriptions are too much like Gray Overseers. Who are they? It's hard for me to say it in a couple of words. We'll have to dive into the depths of history again.

As soon as people got the opportunity to travel on gravpolar interstellar ships, a very strange circumstance became more and more obvious every year. People assumed that the galaxy was inhabited by millions of different intelligent species, including very ancient ones, millions and billions of years old, compared to which we are small children. But, nothing like this was found. All the xenos encountered thousands of light-years away turned out to be either savages or stuck in the early stages of space exploration. Many of them could potentially become space races, but they did not begin expansion in accordance with their social structure and traditions. Ironically, humanity, which recently went into deep space, turned out to be the oldest and most developed race in the Area. There were exceptions, but they did not affect the general rule. The star pioneers of that era found several worlds that were analogs of the famous concept of the "circum-solar sphere", or Dyson Sphere, and any attempts to contact their inhabitants ended in a fierce reluctance on the part of the inhabitants of the spheres to establish any relationship. It was as if the inhabitants of these mega-fortresses had closed themselves in and did not want to know anything that was happening outside their spheres. At the same time, xenoarchaeologists found rare traces of the presence of those most advanced space civilizations in the distant past. And mostly not on planets, but on small, lost objects anywhere- asteroids in brown dwarfs, nebulae, etc. Shortly before the Great Interstellar War, xenoarchaeologist Anton Steklov and his team found on a Venus-like planet a city of a very ancient and advanced civilization, buried for kilometers under an all-planetary lava layer. The catastrophe on this planet happened when civilization was in its prime. After that, similar "space super-Pompeii" began to be found on other similar planets. Many developed civilizations throughout the Area once upon a time, at different times, were destroyed in such a brutal way - the temperature on the planet jumped to thousands of degrees and it was covered with a solid lava field, burying the previous relief and all the buildings of intelligent beings. Scientists of the four leading space empires then argued for a long time what it was. The versions were very different - from the self-destruction of these civilizations in wars with the use of weapons that cause hypervulcanism, to the natural processes of the evolution of planets, from which the inhabitants could not escape. Anton Steklov himself and his followers put forward a theory about the existence in the past of a kind of super-civilization of liquidators who, like locusts, swept through the galaxy at different times and destroyed in this way all the civilizations encountered and traces of their presence. Then almost no one took these arguments seriously. Steklov was ridiculed, squeezed out of the official scientific community, declared a pseudo-scientist and deprived of the opportunity to assemble official expeditions. The famous xenoarchaeologist himself soon died under very strange circumstances. But his faithful followers did not give up, they were able to attract private investors and conducted another series of expeditions, as a result of which they found indisputable evidence of the existence of that very "civilization of liquidators" in the past. Alas, the scientific community did not want to get out of the usual comfort zone and continued to ignore the arguments of xenoarchaeologists. That's when a quiet and unannounced, but very large-scale work on deepening this topic unfolded, the Russian special services took up Steklov's followers closely, they later oversaw the work of finding liquidators for some time. The specialists saw a real potential threat in these "fairy tales" and decided to check it just in case. They tried to search for traces of ancient civilizations even on Venus, in the Solar System, but they did not have enough time - a war broke out between RUIR and the three empires, and everyone abruptly and for a long time was not up to archaeology. After the war, about a century later, when everyone had calmed down and decided that life was a success (for those who survived), countless armadas of unknown ships invaded the Old Area. The Great Interstellar War did not pass without a trace. All this fuss of thousands of gravpolars, randomly scurrying back and forth, attracted the attention of an ancient something. Liquidators, sleeping for the time being in inaccessible areas of space, woke up from a sharply increased, atypical for natural cosmic bodies, fussy gravitational activity, like a sleeping dog wakes up from a rustle somewhere in distant bushes… They did not enter into negotiations, did not make demands, just methodically smashed into dust everything that resembled technical buildings, turned the planets mastered by humans and developed xenos into venomous poisonous deserts. The method of devastation turned out to be both extremely simple and infinitely complex.Several dozen large aggressor ships surrounded the planet and with their super-powerful gravity generators slowed its rotation to a minimum. Because of this, the planet was losing most of its gravitational power, and before that, the magmatic layers compressed inside it by monstrous pressure were coming out. The result varied - from the rupture of the planet into fragments, after which they scattered in orbit in the form of a belt of asteroids and comets, to the flooding of the surface with a multi-kilometer layer of lava and the creation of a dense poisonous atmosphere from liberated mantle gases. The rulers and ordinary residents of the three empires panicked. Even the most powerful at that time and the military fleet of the three empires, which had grown to an incredible number and power, could not qualitatively resist the aliens. The large ships of the aggressors possessed warp technology- the folding of space, a method that at one time people could not develop for a separate ship. Enemy ships could escape from under attack at any moment, which they regularly did. They did not need braking at the system boundaries and switching to the sublight mode of travel, and could appear absolutely anywhere in space. In addition, the big ships themselves did not differ in any superpowers, and in other characteristics - weapons, protection, were not much better than human ones. But, each of them carried thousands of small aircraft, which immediately surrounded themselves with a plasma shell at the exit of the ship. They moved by simply amplifying the plasma flow in the right direction, and therefore had phenomenal, absolute maneuverability and speed up to one-third of the light. They fired plasma clots of high temperature, and if necessary, they exploded themselves no worse than a heavy space torpedo. Their favorite tactic was to surround a human spaceship, cover it with a glowing plasma shell and, shrinking inside, melt it to the core. If necessary, they exploded, leaving the ship no chance. The method of communication used by the aliens has remained unclear. They did not use gradars and gravpolar engines. The method of influencing gravity also remained unknown. Attempts to capture these ships for study failed - their self-destruction system worked flawlessly. The piles of sprayed substance that remained after the explosion were of little use. The alien ships were not invulnerable - they did not succumb to lasers and plasma, but they were quite successfully destroyed by the concentrated fire of kinetic weapons - solid-state cannons, railguns and missiles with shrapnel. The command of the combined fleet of the three powers hastily began to re-equip all warships to confront the new enemy. Huge aircraft-carrying battleships with hundreds of combat bolides, which the Alliance and its vassals were so proud of, were replaced by light and maneuverable corvettes, dotted from bow to stern with a hedgehog of solid-state railguns and short-range rocket launchers. Relatively inexpensive, numerous and often unmanned. In dense battle formations, covering each other with heavy crossfire, these new fleets stood up to defend the attacked star systems. Albeit with huge losses, but it was with such tactics that they managed to win the first victories, and for the first time repel attacks on important and densely populated systems. Fleets of large ships moved into the category of mobile repair docks, mobile supply bases and command strongholds. The inhabitants of the Three Empires recovered from the shocks of the first months and prepared for a long protracted war with the aggressors. There was an illusion of the ability to repel this terrible invasion. But, the number of enemy plasma-bolides, the almost invulnerability of carriers, and the phenomenal speed of the replenishment of their losses then put the military space fleets of the three empires, and in general, their existence in a very precarious, fragile position. The Alliance, Empire and Commonwealth, gaining local victories at certain points, lost one star sector after another in less important parts of the Old Area. The existing forces of the protso were not enough to repel the attack on all fronts, which the aggressors changed and reshaped with mocking speed. By the way, then they called the new threat briefly and ominously - Z.R. Abbreviated from the Zeta Rialis system in the 1245-922 Rialis sector, on the edge of the Area where people had the misfortune to meet the first armada of unknown aggressors for the first time.

And then those who, it would seem, had long been written off and forgotten somewhere in the landfill of history intervened in the situation - the Rosses, descendants of the Founders in the person of Novorossia and the Order of the Renaissance. All this time, they did not sit idly by, but on the contrary, in the mode of a frenzied comet, they invented a super-weapon that, in the event of a repeat of the conflict with the Three Empires, would allow the Rosses to win this time despite their small numbers and weak, in comparison with the three-imperial, space fleet. And, under the guidance of the Order's scientists, it was created. It became a gravity bomb. The conventional name, in fact, this complex super-machine is not a bomb at all, but a huge towed group of special gravpolars coupled with modified installations resembling reduced ancient hyper-gates. When activated, they combined, mutually enhanced the effect of each individual element, and gained monstrous gravitational power, transforming a material object into a powerful local collapsar, operating for several days. Any matter falling into the formed collapsar prolonged and strengthened the duration of its life. Of course, such a large toy was disposable, and by that time the Order had managed to build only a few units of these monsters. And then they heard terrible news about the events in the Old Area. The three empires of the Old Area did not create anything like the new Ross superweapon. And, most likely, not because of a lack of opportunities. The Three Empires had enough scientific and technical capabilities to build such a structure. Probably, it was the strategic thinking of the largest interstellar states of the Old Area. At all times, attempts to create a superweapon that will bring enemies to their knees by the mere fact of its existence have been considered the way of weaklings, when due to the inability to build a normal powerful armed forces, laggards build a military doctrine around something the most important. The three empires reasonably relied on the ultimate power and number of their warships, the training of spacemen, tactics, logistics built as an impeccable mechanism, and a strong economy and a huge population capable of providing all this pleasure. They thought that they could cope with any enemy with one left hand, after the defeat of RUIR, they only strengthened in this opinion and even considered the very concept of a certain super-weapon ... as shameful and unworthy, or something. And so, the unlucky day came for the three empires, when other, stronger enemy armadas appeared against their armada of ships, and something that could devour space for parsecs or turn stars into supernovae was not at hand, as luck would have it. Meanwhile, in the neighboring galactic arm, serious disputes broke out in the Defense Council of Novorossia and the Directorate of the Order. On the one hand, the three empires found themselves in exactly the same position of the weak and beaten, in which old Russia found itself a hundred years ago. Fate itself gave Rosses the opportunity to gloat from afar, from the side, as yesterday's proud winners, who have already signed themselves up as the masters of the galaxy, are rolled into a thin pancake by new unknown aggressors. Many people from the time of the great interstellar war were still alive, even though they were over a century old, they remembered everything perfectly. And they had something to say. The desire for any help to the "relatives" in trouble was completely absent from them. The "kindest" wishes were "burn in hell, you bastards", "that's what the goats need", "maybe, on the contrary, we'd better help those who beat them, otherwise they mess around for too long", and so on in the same non-constructive, but quite understandable style. Fortunately, smart and visionary people prevailed in this dispute, who reminded that the new aggressors are destroying everyone indiscriminately, they don't care who lives in what state and under what flags. Having finished with the three empires, sooner or later the new aggressors will take on the Rosses. And everyone will have to postpone all grievances until better times, try to come to an agreement and try to solve this problem together.