Chapter 5. Orange Sea. sub-chapter 2.

In the end, all parties agreed to act. It was decided to hold a demonstration demonstration. The Order of the Resurgence assembled the finest newly built combat starships, and the Council's colonists and fleets provided ships for supply and escort. The combined flotilla left cloud RT331 heading for the Old Area in the center of the Orion arm. Fleet formations took up position near a prominent red giant supergiant in the Steria star cluster and began to attract attention in every possible way, giving out crazy signals in the gravitational range. A hunter was quickly found for these signals - several Z.R. ships jumped out of superspace into a synchronous orbit at once, and at the speed of a machine gun they began to release their plasmabolides. In the meantime, the Ross activated a line of transport ships with grav-bombs, and on all nozzles they rushed out of the system. The bomb turned into a collapsar before Z.R. she was attacked. The effect was great. Ships Z.R. could not leave, neither into superspace, nor under their own power. Especially considering that they completely relied on interdimensional jumps, and apart from maneuvering, they had no sub-light engines. The gravity generators installed on them also did not help - the attraction of the artificial collapsar turned out to be stronger. All their ships quickly collapsed and irrevocably went beyond the horizon of the sublight world. The Commonwealth military fleet units, whose worlds were nearby, arrived in time, only managed to capture the entire process on their scanners from the edge of the Steria system.

The news spread like fire throughout the area. Imagine - some unknown created a temporary black hole in the star system, into which a whole fleet of divinely powerful aliens was dragged without a trace! Rumors spread from the plausible to the wildest. They were quickly dispelled.

Three months later, Alliance tracking equipment detected on grav-radar the approach of an unknown, but quite human fleet to the Iris system, sector 125-643. It was the Rosses again. This meeting gave rise to many feelings. Cultural and civilizational shock, fear, contempt, hatred… timid hope. Much was not said aloud, but everything became clear to everyone without further ado. The fateful meeting and negotiations between space fleets from the Council of Defense and a group of admirals of the Alliance Aerospace Forces were, on the whole, short and businesslike. The Atlantics did not play weird and agreed to the plan of action proposed by the dews. After a week of preparation, the Tri-Imperials, who until then had kept their forces dispersed and in constant movement between sectors, in order to quickly come to the aid of any attacked star system and not fall under the blow of Z.R., changed tactics.

They began concentrating large forces of thousands of ships in the Arm-to-Arm Void, a slightly scattered gas and dust cluster, rare for this region of the galaxy. The fleets were concentrated in an unnamed system with a long index, today known by the pathetic name of the Victory Star. No less representative forces Z.R. hundreds of large carrier ships were not long in coming. But the grav-bomb, activated by the Rosses lurking nearby in the rings of the gas giant, nullified the plans of the aliens. The collapsar quickly ate the gas giant, did not choke, licked his lips and took most of the ships of Z.R. and a considerable part of the fleet of the three empires, which have already managed to enter with the fleet of Z.R. into a fierce battle. At the same time, the Alliance space marines entered the game, moreover, they were warriors not from the state military space fleet, but from the corporate fleet of the ISCA shipbuilding corporation - corporate space marines by some miracle managed to infiltrate the immobilized a large alien ship, they gutted it from the inside, captured the crew and quickly flew away with the prisoners in their landing boats. And very timely, the self-destruction system, which worked belatedly due to a malfunction, nevertheless blew up the ship, turning it into a cloud of atomic dust. In a word, despite the heavy losses among the fleet of the Three Empires, people were able to jointly inflict Z.R. serious damage.

Z.R. ceased any hostilities and lay low. It is clear that the Atlantics have not declassified everything from the reports on interrogation and research of captured aliens. But, they considered it possible to reveal the general essence to the general public. The Aliens are a wandering intergalactic civilization, one of the oldest in the Supercluster of Galaxies. Outwardly, they look like tall, thin, large-headed humanoids with matte gray skin. Quite a classic look. The captured creatures were all very old, genetically modified organisms - each over a billion years old. They achieved physical immortality even before the birth of the Milky Way. They do not know how to speak with sounds, they communicate mentally, and at any distance, the creatures are the strongest mentalists, and only the neuro-limiters taken in advance by the spacemarines in the raid did not allow the strangers to seize control over the consciousness of the surrounding "mindless walking bacteria" (yeah, that's what they called humans). As a space race, they have already achieved everything a long time ago, they managed to do everything and are in no hurry to go anywhere. Now their favorite entertainment is to check the surrounding galaxies for the presence of new developed civilizations once every few years, and destroy them for a simple and understandable reason - to avoid the appearance of dangerous competitors. This gray race categorically did not believe in peaceful coexistence and believed that there were only two options for being - to be a winner and live forever, or to be defeated, and therefore dead. They proved this by crushing on their way billions of civilizations of the past, including those who wanted to destroy them. All that they left of the destroyed races were technologies that they studied, saved and adapted to increase their own power. The Grays have faced serious opposition in the past, but this time was unlike anything else. For the first time, they met really strong and skillful opponents who can be perceived as almost equal. They proposed to the government bodies of human empires an agreement according to which they, the Gray Overseers, leave the Milky Way galaxy behind the people and get out of it forever - they will not be lost, there are many galaxies in the universe, especially those where black holes will not be thrown at them. It was not an easy matter, emergency commissions were urgently created, a bunch of new ministries and departments, the issue was settled for several years, but, one way or another, an agreement with the Gray Overseers was concluded. They took their bases and ships away from the zone of the gravitational action of the Milky Way, people in response pledged not to spread their expansion beyond that very gravitational field of the galaxy.

As for the relations between the three empires and Novorossia… it was not possible to finally reconcile. The Imperials blamed the Rosses for unjustifiably heavy losses from their grav-bomb, which, along with the ships of the Grays, hit several thousand ships of the Alliance, Commonwealth and Empire into the collapsar. The Rosses offered to consider this a partial retribution for the destruction of old Russia, and they did not hesitate to poke the Imperials into the fact that if it were not for them, the Rosses, then soon, thanks to the Grays, in the space of the Old Area it would be as empty and quiet as in the pre-cosmic era. In response, the Three-impires began to promote the idea that the help of the Rosses was by no means decisive, that they would have defeated the Grays themselves, "without these upstarts", it just happened faster together with them ... In general, as soon as the ultimatic threat that forced the recent mortal enemies to conclude a temporary union, went somewhere in the background, everyone again began to habitually scold each other. Fortunately, things did not come to a new war.

The Rosses proclaimed a policy of complete closure of their state, and warned that they now consider the entire Perseus arm to be their own, and any alien ship that flies there will be destroyed. The only thing they agreed to do was designate as an interzone a few dozen systems in the Interarm Void separating the arms of Perseus and Orion - these were the only places where Rosses, Three-imperials and any xenos could, if necessary, meet for business and embassy purposes. Well, more than eight hundred years have passed since then, since then the Grays have not bothered anymore. Although the imperials bothered the Rosses with reconnaissance raids (the Rosses did not remain in debt and also conducted reconnaissance in the Old Area), they did not enter into a full-scale conflict, and, it seems, they did not want this - if old Russia was a civilizational competitor for them in the struggle for the Area, then these "upstarts who put on the symbols of the Phoenix" were somewhere far away, did not influence the hegemony of the Alliance in any way, plus they played the role of a useful "human shield" from potentially dangerous transgalactic civilizations. And to attack them... you can casually share the fate of the Grays who disappeared in the collapsers - is it really necessary? Not at all.

This is such a difficult story. And now, there is some possibility that Z.R., they are the Gray Overseers, to put it mildly, violated the agreement, and use this satellite close to the galaxy as a base for tracking humanity. Moreover, they settled not over the Old, but precisely over the New Area, near the possessions of Novorossia. One way or another, this will definitely need to be reported to someone from the Defense Council, but for now ... we continued to examine the cluster.

The research turned out to be incredibly interesting and fruitful. Future colonists will know everything they can about this place. We did not begin to give names to any cosmic body - we only assigned code designations according to the general galactic standard. Three days later, we did everything we wanted, and the gigantic report was almost ready to be sent to any sector of Novorossia. But, we still had a considerable load of material samples, which it made no sense for us to store, but for the laboratories of the Colonization Society they will be priceless. Almost a ton of soil and samples packed in sealed ampoules in the cargo hold. But, if we first transfer the information archive to scientists through a gravitational communication session, we will have problems with the transfer of the sample - we will reveal ourselves prematurely, and they will look for us. As unknown ships (probably Greys) as well as Defense Council forces. Consequently, both must be carried out simultaneously, and not here, but in the main disk of the galaxy. And we, having done the job in a couple of weeks of hard work, boldly prepared to go back.

Unfortunately, time, as if giving us a chance to do something, hastened to bring us back to reality. Suddenly, Photon's sensors showed how a whole swarm of large ships emerged from the star-gas cloud, designated by us as number five. Judging by the direction, they are heading for cloud number six. They go imposingly and sluggishly, as if bypassing the boundaries of their possessions. Like at home, so that a comet hits their engine!

Ariadna brought the ship to a halt in the middle of the interstellar void with the greatest speed possible and brought all active systems to a halt. The spacebase went into complete silence and invisibility. Now the alien fleet could come across us only by accident.

-It's easy to hide in dense gas and dust clouds,- the AI reminded. -Most likely, they temporarily hid, turning off the plasma hulls. Having lost sight of us, they perked up again. We'd better wait until they're gone and then carefully start moving out of the cluster.

-So there can be as many of them as you like?- Oleg asked anxiously.

-Unfortunately, yes,- Ariadne confirmed. They could lay low and reduce activity to a minimum as soon as we arrived.

-After all, ships don't come to visit them every day,- said the Elder. According to the hints of the Pleiadians, we are the first people here, and these worlds have not yet seen either modern or pre-war spaceships of earthlings.

-Do they see us?- I ask.

-That's unlikely,- the cyberpilot replies.

-How many are there?

-About thirty magistral ships,- Ariadna counted. –There is a lot of interference in this subsector due to nearby star formation zones. There may be more. I think we should wait out their activity and move back to the Perseus Arm. We've done our job. I understand how you feel, and perhaps if they attack, we can drive them away. Our station is very resistant to high temperatures and plasma. And under the skin and on board the fireballs there are fragmentation rockets and solid-state cannons with a supply of shells. But, they can call for reinforcements, and then we are unlikely to cope.

I was deep in thought, peering into a swarm of sparkling ruby dust particles between two star-lit diffuse clouds. And I don't want to get into someone else's business, and what's there, it's scary, and ... I didn't skip history classes. These creatures turned to dust a great many civilizations of the past only because of their bestial principle "I will kill everyone, I will remain alone." And they almost did the same with humanity, until one fine century they were finally kicked out of the galaxy. Here we are - a group that has gathered in the future to become a thunderstorm of pirates, bandits and other aggressors, collects exoplanetary soil in test tubes, and hides from the Grays ... But, on the other hand, since those times people have learned a lot of new things, and I calmed down, remembering the main thing:

-We need to act wisely. Samples and the archive must be delivered to one of the planets or stations of Novorossia with a developed scientific base. And let the military deal with the Grays - if it is necessary to arrange a ship graveyard here, they will cope with it much better than we do.

-So we're leaving?- the AI asked, somewhat disappointed. -I thought you would insist otherwise.

-Yes,- I confirmed. -Moreover, we need to leave unnoticed and quickly. It is possible that they will not want to part with us ... What is this!?

As if in confirmation of my words, on the cluster diagram, red lights began to light up in various places. We looked at each other, and judging by the far from happy faces, we quickly realized what was happening. Before we had time to breathe twice, dozens of large ships jumped out of subspace with breathtaking superluminal speed, shaped like a flattened long cylinder. Like my commander's key, only enlarged by a million times that way... Another second, and each of them was enveloped in a dense fiery cloud of small plasma fireballs. They hovered in front of us in a semicircle at a distance of one astronomical unit, and froze, stopped all movement. I don't know about the rest of the group, but I clearly understood how badly we got ourselves into trouble! And it is not known how we will get out of this ...

- Ariadna, what the... We've gone into stealth mode, haven't we? Why do they see us?!

- The voice of the pilot was extremely surprised:

- Yes, Commander, they must not see us... We practically do not emit radiation outside, and there is a lot of interference here, but... I can't explain it.

-Secret mode is useless. Turn it off - now it only worsens the visibility. Activate all systems, keep weapons at full readiness. It's not yet clear what they want, but get the ship ready for battle. Just in case.

-Why are they silent?- Leo asked. -Their connection is incompatible with ours?"

-They're trying to tune in to our frequency,- Elder suggested. -Ada, do we have a radio?

-Of course,- Ariadna replied. And not just the radio. The Photon has a multi-band, all-wave communication system. As well as the gravitational connection tied to our gravpolar. But, my sensors do not observe any activity from their side.

-Since we have already met and we can't just leave-connecting us up, - I decided. -Find out what they need and what they forgot here. Next is how it goes. I hope the conversation will be constructive.

-What do you mean?- Vlad asked.

-We will not start firing at each other after the fifth word,- Oleg explained briefly and intelligibly.

-I give a request for communication, - cyber warned. -Searching frequencies...

-Ariadna, only sound, no video,- I warned.

-Understood. There is a connection! Signal reception. Hologram with soundtrack. Translation is not required. Accept?

-Accept.

A three-dimensional light video hovered in the air behind the table. A gray humanoid creature, very tall, extremely frail, over two meters tall. Large egg-shaped head with giant, faceted insect-like eyes. The head is covered with many crevices and bumps. On the narrow upper limbs, there are four very long, thin fingers. Shines like glass, motionless like a statue. In principle, there was nothing terrible in his appearance - no fangs, no claws, no huge muscles, on the contrary, it is not clear how such a husk kept on his feet at all, unless, of course, he had weightlessness on board. But, nevertheless, at the level of instincts, he evoked a thin cold horror from the depths of the unconscious.

I'm sitting in a chair, I still can't be seen. Inhaling and exhaling, I bring myself to relative calmness.

- Reception!

There was no answer.

-Reception. Can you hear me?

-We hear thou, human,- whispered a vast, disembodied voice that made it feel like the brain was vibrating from within. -And we want to see!

Horror ... Before connecting, I had to ask Ariadne not to receive even sound, but to play everything in text mode. But it's too late, I'll have to say it like it is.

-The commander of the spacecraft "Photon" of the Scientific and Technical Fleet of Novorossia is talking to you.- I began. -We flew here on a research mission. You are representatives of the Wandering Civilization known as the Gray Overseers- I tried to say this not as a question, but as a statement.

-Yes, unexpectedly for me answered gray. - You recognized us.

I decided to get straight to the point, as there is not much more to say.

-Perhaps you have a reason to be here, but you violated the defeat agreement concluded with Novorossia, the Atlantic Alliance, the Star Celestial Empire and the Heartland Commonwealth. This treaty forbids you from appearing within the gravity of the Milky Way Galaxy. You have invaded deep into the magnetic field and illegally occupied a galactic satellite. As a representative of Novorossia, one of the parties to that treaty on our side, I want to know what purpose you are here for, and why you are violating the treaty.

-We flew by - answered the gray one. - Necessity.

-What were you flying past, may I ask?

A three-dimensional map of the Metagalaxy, drawn with index lines, lit up on the side of it. I know a little about the map, and have examined it carefully.

- We need an exact route - continued gray. -A rogue star cluster blocked our path. We cannot leave. We have to wait until the big star leaves.

Еhe map is lying! More precisely, the map is accurate, but only an idiot could lay such a route. It turns out that their path lay close to the border with the Outer Space, straight through the Big Cloud of Matter - a formation in the center of the Metagalaxy, from which all transgalactic civilizations prefer to stay away. And through a couple of world diffuse clusters. And… Stop. The Grays use the warp! Tunnel convolution of space. They don't need to move in a linear fashion as shown on the map - it's us humans who are forced to fly, albeit quickly, in the normal way, and the Grays are free from such problems. Yes, they probably cannot immediately lay a subspace tunnel to an intergalactic distance, and are forced to make stops along the way - their engines probably also have restrictions on the maximum length of the transition. And yet... They could have come up with a more convincing lie. This lie of geared towards kids. With very expressive and precise signs, I made it clear to my friends that I think about such werid navigation.

-You are using the warp, and you are not threatened by any objects on the way. You will have to look for another route - no matter what you say, you are illegally, with military personnel, in the galaxy that you pledged to leave forever. And I wonder why. Don't take it for being rude, but it will be even more interesting for the Novorossiya MSF. And unless you have a very good excuse, you must leave immediately.

It seems that I was a little carried away, but I realized that now we can't just leave anyway, and it's better to try to take a more psychologically advantageous position of the right accuser in the conversation. Moreover, formally I'm right.

-No. We will not leave, said gray.

-You must leave.

-We don't owe anything to anyone.

-You are an ancient, advanced race, not some uncouth savages,- I squeezed out the last motive. -Agreements must be respected.

- Nonsense! - his operatic whisper resounded with pain in his head. - Stupid conventions of naive people. Treaties are respected if they are fixed by deed and backed up by force. We were weakened. And we were driven away. But nothing lasts forever... You saw us. And detection by your country is unacceptable for us. But. I have no desire to kill other sentient beings for no reason. We offer you the opportunity to stay alive. You turn off your force field and let us into your ship. We will erase your memory of our meeting. And after your earthly hour, you will calmly fly home, forgetting about what happened.

No, this is overkill. I wanted to say a few more words, not at all polite but honest, but then my father spoke:

-Don't overestimate your strength. We are not weaker than you. Our ship is resistant to your plasma. And our weapons will be enough for all of you. Leave yourself and let us go. Everyone will remain at his own and no one will suffer.

-You think so. But it's not.

The diagram showed a picture that made my hair stand on end - next to the semicircle of huge carrier ships, new ships emerge from overspace. Many, many new ships. Within half a minute, the cluster was filled with hundreds of mainships, long, steel-gray "rounded cylinders," swirling around us like a flock of hungry sharks in the thin clouds of primordial hydrogen blasted from overspace as they emerged. I broke out in a cold sweat. And probably not just me. My stomach clenched uncomfortably, and his legs trembled in an illusory way. Of course, I assumed that it would not do without difficulties ... But that THIS SUDDENLY would suddenly fall on us, no one could predict.

The ships threw out countless swarms of small fireballs from their insides, they surrounded us from all sides with countless luminous swarms, and formed a huge disparate sphere, smoothly moving around us along its axis. Panoramic scanners perfectly conveyed the natural look from the outside. From this enchanting spectacle my eyes blurred, I shook my head sharply. The sphere was slowly but surely shrinking, leaving less and less space. To my horror, I realized that we do not have more or less ready-made tactical recipes against this lightning-fast structure, united by a common superintelligence. It never occurred to anyone to teach us in the club of young space pilots the war against Z.R., which we had already safely forgotten. Such incredible situations are studied, perhaps, in the highest military space academies, to the level of training in which we are very far away.

-I think your opinion… has changed.- said the gray one. -Don't try to resist. I see right through you. There are seven of you. Five youths and one adults. Of course, for me you are all children of brief moments ... And you are here just as illegally as we are. Your flying home does not belong to you. You are one of those who hindered us in the past... Descendants of fugitives from a senseless war between different factions of your race. You are not scientists, but adventurers. And thou, commander, are still young and inexperienced.

A thousand black holes!!!!!

I could not believe my ears, jumping up in my chair in amazement and closing my eyes so that it could be heard. But it's hard not to believe the obvious. This long gray bastard is a telepath! There is no point in hiding anything. And the feeling that the secret of thought is no longer a secret is not the most pleasant.

-Almost so,- I whispered, stunned. -Who are you? How did you know about it?

-My name sounds imperceptible to your senses, but it can be translated as "Piercing Thought All That Is." And, as you can see, my name has a meaning, unlike your empty nicknames given by your parents. You are surprised and so are your companions, right?

-Yes! - I answered honestly. -Very impressive! .. But, this does not negate the essence - you still have to leave sooner or later. Not from us, but from forces more serious that can crush you.

-Thou proud and don't like to retreat, baby,- hissed the gray one. In this thou are like me. But you are bound by useless principles, many unsystematic internal rules, you hate to lose and are very, very vulnerable. It's very easy to crush you. You left your little green planet for nothing.

I turned white, ready to fail. He didn't lie about seeing through. Out of anger, I wanted to shout out a couple of space fleet obscene cascades ... but, at the last moment, I changed my mind, deciding that these cheap emotions would only make things worse. We can be saved only by cosmic calmness and deliberation of actions.

-Ariadna, you said that the habitable capsule protects from mental influence,- I remembered. -But I don't see any protection. He reads us like a bulletin board!

-Commander, each thoughtphone, like any fundamental influence, has a certain frequency of operation. There is no protection from this type of protection, the mental strength and intellect of this creature is too strong... If you haven't understood yet, he is playing with us,- the AI said briefly and to the point with such an expression, as if spoken by Gray, her words that were very compromising us don't care at all. However, it seems that Ariadna did not care about other people's opinions - fortunately, she always supports us unconditionally.

-What a smart pilot,- the gray hissed thoughtfully. -Unique artificial intelligence. I even mistook her for a living being. So, you have a choice - go through the erasure of memory and return to the way back, or ... Reinforcements from neighboring star clusters are approaching us.

-What if... No! Never! I'm not scared enough yet to fall for this obvious lie. Why all of a sudden the creatures, who once killed entire civilizations, will spare us? I see no justification for this position. And if such a thought occurs to me again, I will drive it out with a blow of the unlucky head on the table. And fortunately, such thoughts did not visit me anymore ...

-Your quantity will not change our decision.- I answered categorically. - Ariadna, cut off the connection, shields to the maximum, weapons at the ready! This fuss will be noticed in the New Area, and you will still be kicked out of the Pleiades!..

Instead of the usual affirmative answer, I received silence.

We looked at each other anxiously.

-Ariadna!

Silence. A long pause in dead silence.

-Commander… Invaded my consciousness matrix!!!" her voice began to change dramatically from squeak to bass. The overview screen indicators remain the same - shields are at a minimum, weapons are hidden. Communication on video with gray was not interrupted. The circuits began to shake and flicker chaotically.

Suddenly the light faded before my eyes. Such a terrible pain fell upon my poor head that it seemed that my head would burst! In the eyes swam, the mind refused to think, torn apart. Psy-strike! Defense is useless. The sensation of an explosion was replaced by another sensation, as if the head was being drilled from the inside. I tried to resist, but it was all to no avail. Tossing about in his chair, he almost shook his comrades sitting next to him. They were shouting something, trying to do something, but I did not hear them. Breathless. There was not enough air ... Suddenly I remembered how, as a child, I almost drowned while swimming in the river. The sensations were so similar that this memory, which I once wanted to forget, became a turning point: it gathered my will into a fist and returned my mind. The retaliatory moral internal explosion broke the stranglehold of the mentat.