The journey through the realm of Morpheus ended the moment the jacket from the mercenary uniform, riddled with traces of fire, acid, and other damage, covered the mirages of dreams.
Grimly rolling over to the other side, I kicked the wardrobe item away, but the golden glow put a cross on further rest, forcing awakening to become the ultimate basis of behavior.
"Slept so well... Well, did you really need it so early…"
"Get up, Captain! Show me your tub." Mako sat on the bed nearby in just a shirt and smiled ear to ear.
"Can't it wait? I was just dreaming an erotic dream with you in the lead role..." gazing at the newfound treasure, I contentedly threw my hands behind my head.
The counterattack was a pillow that Mako aimed at my face:
"All right, all right! Get ready to see this engineering marvel... in person... but... first..." reluctantly switching from horizontal to vertical, I settled next to the first officer.
"We need to talk about something... important..."
"By the way, yes. I wanted to discuss one topic too, but you first!"
"Fine... Ahem... You see, when I talked about the "reasons"... well... why I was hiding... agh... and this is harder than it seems... ahem... As soon as the corporation fell apart, I thought: losing the thread of common interests, people forget each other... It's like living on different planets, then meeting and realizing you no longer know this person..."
"Get to the point!" the first officer frowned displeasedly, assuming a seiza pose.
"Before coming, I thought... why would an elite commander deal with a dirty ragamuffin? Maybe it's fleeting, and over time, when we start a relationship, the flame will fade? Like it happens with everyone..." grimacing at the sight of the V.A.N.G.U.A.R.D.-patched jacket, I decided to stay in what I slept in; pants and shirt.
"After all, to maintain, believe, love... you need a core... a foundation... and if it's rudimentary instincts, or a common cause, then why need it?!"
"Trite truths..." Mako yawned tiredly.
"Perhaps, but what if I say I'm not who I want to be? Out of stupidity, people see light where there's impenetrable shadow. You see, from my side there won't be jealousy, or assumptions... no... I'll believe, sincerely... but when I learn of betrayal..."
The gazes of two golds synchronously turned like age-old ice.
"Instead of hysterics and interrogations... I'll just gut you with that expensive dagger no one should know about?" the first officer continued dryly, glancing at the mercenary jacket.
"..." at that moment I jerked aside, but something stopped me...
"You won't gut! Because... I'll kill you first... especially after what happened yesterday." the girl's slyness knew no bounds, the corners of her lips stretched into a grimace, "Surprised, huh? Before you is a real psychopath. Just like you, my dear Yu! Isn't it obvious? Haha! And say you're not ready to live with a sight at your temple?!"
"Ready from the moment I crossed the threshold..."
I don't know why, but the demon inside felt sudden excitement, making me smirk.
"Then I see no problem!" the first officer moved closer.
"Sure? I'm also terribly boring, squeamish, and rigid in views..." an affirmative nod answered my words, "Well... Then it's decided, this is my final capitulation... From this moment, a double-edged pact is concluded between us!"
"In which there will be no "I", only "we"!" Mako contentedly leaned back.
"By the way, about "us"... and what's the name of that very "engineering marvel"?"
"Haven't decided yet, any ideas?" holy Iliad, how to think about business at all when naked beauty looms on the horizon...
"You were given it, you name it..." biting her lip, the first officer made the "cleavage" of her shirt so wide that it disappeared... completely... as a phenomenon...
"And I will!" I drawled displeasedly, and... ahem...
It became obvious that we wouldn't fly anywhere like this, unless, of course, we resolved certain problems as soon as possible...
*
[Unknown Sector, Shipyard Station: "Arcturus" – Construction Docks R561]
The steel angel named "Glimpse" performed a warp into the greenish nebula on the border of explored space, straight to the domain of the lord of all stars, the crimson supergiant – VY "Almagest".
Cautiously docking to the huge dreadnought, the assault fighter flew through the already familiar force field and took its pre-marked slot.
Mako and I tumbled out of the cramped cockpit.
Around, as yesterday, it was deserted, no ships, no people... only the local attraction patiently standing in the middle of the hangar and polishing glasses.
Mako grabbed the case and quickly walked forward somewhere, mouth agape, examining the innards of the solid-metal colossus.
And while my girl was busy with her affairs, the scientist approached me and slapped my back:
"Buddy! I asked you to bring a team... not your girl!" his face was so carefree, but his eyes... Now I understood why those gopniks shit their pants.
"Um... Don't worry. She's well familiar with the structure of large-tonnage ships, since she was captain of the battleship "Retribution."" I folded my hands behind my back, watching the girl in the distance run around the hangar, trying to create the strongest possible echo.
"That one the pirates shot down?" Thomas unceremoniously propped me up.
"Uh-uh-uh... Hm... Y-y-yes?.."
"Fine! Okay! I handed you the ship, so go ahead, knight of the sad countenance. Just... Why is she alone? I have doubts that three people will raise a dreadnought..."
"Me too, but Mako is the only one I can trust. I promise... together with her, we'll definitely solve this issue..." I frowned and made a very deliberate face.
"Excellent! Knew you wouldn't let me down!!! You have six quads for everything, in that time we need to assemble a crew and find suppliers of technical equipment... I'll handle the calibration myself, so don't freak." releasing the pressure, Gabriel went his way.
Honestly, next to Thomas I felt strange...
Eternally cheerful, but at the same time predatory nature of the scientist instilled horror, reminiscent of how shadows from old fairy tales behaved... shadows of demons as old as the world...
*
Mako slammed the case onto the double bed with a crash, dumping spare clothes, various devices like a hairdryer, and a very beautiful black swimsuit there.
"Home, sweet home!" the grinning girl flopped down next to her belongings.
"And where will I sleep?" I sat next to her and began examining the things covering the bed with lively interest, including a burgundy set of lace lingerie woven from translucent silk...
"Are you kidding right now? Here's your rightful place." Mako patted the bed next to her, watching how certain attributes were intently studied by the inexperienced romantic...
"Want me to try them on?.."
And here I fell out of reality, slowly lowering the piece of fabric...
*
The construction site had transformed, the scaffolding and drones disappeared, and the spires dimmed and fell silent.
The experimental vessel flared with a dull yellow glow that spread through the hull's channels like veins of mercury, awakening the god of death from the world of machines.
Everyone on the bridge tried to complete the task on time, recalibrating consoles, diagnosing equipment, or writing new lines of code. The combatants feared the solid-metal beast, feared mistakes and the future, but I didn't share these emotions.
"Capacitors purged?" the first officer eyed the team like a steel guard.
"Yes, ma'am!" the helmsman replied, surrounded by continuously updating omni-panels, while his hands rested inside the mechanized thrust control cylinders.
"Checked the information-guided algorithms?"
"All guns are receiving cooling and ready for tests!" the gunner replied on demand. Despite the sloppy appearance, the guy with the red headband knew his job.
"In that case, we can proceed. Awaiting only the Captain's order..." Mako grinned, – all gazes, including hers, converged on me.
Breathing in the atmosphere of what was happening, I commanded:
"Attention all personnel!!! Clear the observation decks and take positions according to combat protocol! Close hangar bulkheads! Bring squadron units to inertial catapults!"
This was it... The indescribable feeling that made the blood boil... Boundless euphoria, available only to those who reached the sought peak... constant... destiny...
"Helmsman, ship to cruising speed! First officer, prepare the gates! I need detailed logs at most in twenty seconds!"
"Aye, cruising speed!" the helmsman pulled the thrust cylinders, summoning the power of twelve ruddy plasma torches.
The ship undocked from the emergency-lit gangways and gained speed, leaving the gravitational well of the mechanized shipyard.
"Singularity Generator charged and awaiting final report!" Mako redirected the spiral reactor's energy to the bow armor plates.
"Acknowledged, crew prepare for subspace shift!!!"
At the Captain's word, the dreadnought emitted a pair of psionic beams ahead, the world horizon gates flung open their valves, appearing as a colorless funnel of spherical form.
"3, 2, 1, WARP!!!"
Trusting the master's voice, the man-made god flashed an energy nimbus and plunged into the bottomless maw of the rainbow bridge.
[Sector: "Alpha", Subsector: H102]
After a zero moment, the halls of that side were traversed, the giant "shook off" the firefly photons and smoothly flew through the icy-colored asteroid nebula.
Almost all the "small" rocks around were skeletons of themselves – hollow inside.
Traces of decade-long processing by miners caught the eye as strongly as the fresh hulks of several Imperial Ordinatum transports.
"Transition successful, no damage detected!" the first officer focused on the command console.
"Haha... Couldn't be otherwise..." nodding, I lowered my gaze to the holo-map.
Gabriel gave us coordinates of a settlement of out-of-control mining drones, which instead of minerals began extracting resources from prospector barges and the workers themselves.
Survivors were evacuated, but the complex's artificial intelligence was beyond recalibration, only reset.
As if embodying the course of my thoughts, the edge of the psi-sonar rippled in waves.
"Captain, three hundred clicks from us detected a cluster of thirty hostile units! Enemy is on sextant-axis X and already converging on target!" the gloomy gunner tightened the red headband.
Ahead, blocking the light of the local star with shadow, a three-kilometer asteroid drifted.
The irregularly shaped object rotated on an invisible axis, and on its surface were visible dead mining golems and a multi-level station resembling a small town.
"Excellent! Initialize transition to offensive mode! Time to find out what this beast is capable of... time to hear its roar..." my lips twisted into a smirk.
"Switch propulsion block to follow mode, turn bow sixty-five degrees left! Remove safeties from artillery tower boosters! Train main caliber guns one through three on the station and ready to fire! Wings one through eight stand by for further orders!"
The huge artillery howitzers began turning according to parameters, the enemy outpost responded accordingly.
Slowly opening the mutilated, overgrown with bizarre crystals docks, the boulder spewed hitherto hidden ships.
Interceptors with blue-green trails rushed at us, but without formation, as if it wasn't a squadron of machines, but something... wild, like a enraged swarm of insectoids, though... the drones more resembled ragiformes (rhomb-ray) with two needle fins, between which was located a crystalline core.
"Some weird drones... Well, doesn't matter! In death all are equal! Order: reinforce the barrier!!!"
The ship was immediately enveloped in the edge of the phase matrix, and very timely.
The station's guns targeted us and opened fire. Kilometer-long strings of light clashed with the dreadnought's protective veil and shattered like waves against a coastal outpost.
"Status!" I watched the beams vanish into the void.
"Shields at 97% power, artillery guns one through three charged and ready!" Mako had already coordinated systems by groups and kept her hand on the panel.
"Acknowledged, main caliber! FIRE!!!"
In the same second, inside the energy capacitors a power surge occurred, igniting the metal with gray glow.
The superheavy artillery installations – "Tachyon Splitters" created a space curvature field around themselves, their gun barrels split into two parts, stabilizing energy in the lens, and the dim targeting beam stretched from each barrel to the enemy station.
Space darkened, but only for one instant.
When exactly twelve snow-white sights converged, the projector maws howled in unison with the all-devouring hum not of a machine, but of a beast that knew no compassion.
Gusts of radiance became phantoms of the tachyon symphony and rushed along spatial funnels, piercing shields, armor, and mountain rock, removing the target from this world.
One mere moment, and holes formed in the mining complex, cut so filigreed that they could be mistaken for part of the design.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to admire the cosmos through the holed station.
A flaming nimbus of explosion blocked the light of observable stars, thousands of thousands of fragments rushed in different directions from the epicenter, accompanied by a growing ring of light, gradually vanishing amid soul-chilling lightning.
"Confirm direct hit, station destroyed!" Mako smiled contentedly.
"Haha! If I know the principle of communication systems well, destroying its center will interrupt command transmission and the drones should shut down..." but my expectations weren't met, the interceptors continued rushing toward us.
"Strange... very strange... so either they're not drones, or their center isn't here... Prepare Pyro-Vertex Guns!"
Executing the new order, dozens of rocket installations class: "Alia" flung open square valves and summoned a myriad of metallic spears.
The guided cascade became an unbreakable wall along the entire right side, and when the time came, an impenetrable fiery storm blazed in the void, whose peals took seven of the twenty green-tailed machines into the maw of non-being.
"..." watching the AA chop the rays, I thoughtfully stroked my beard while the combatants ran diagnostics on all systems.
Literally a minute later, the last spark was torn apart on approach to us, crystalline shards and black "blood" flooded the entire vicinity. The mission was complete.
"Holy shit!!! EBAMATS pierced the upper layer of mechalith nano-corpustite! The new proton cores didn't disappoint either, nothing left of the "Lictors"!" Thomas nearly rolled onto the bridge, shaking personnel and hindering work.
"I managed to make candy out of shit! I DID IT!!! Ha-ha!!!"
"What did you manage?" the first officer leaned her elbow on the console.
"You said something about nano-corpustite, what the hell is that? Aren't drones made of regular iridosmine?.." I raised my left eyebrow.
Realizing he'd blabbed too much, Thomas immediately deflated:
"Sigh... fine!.. Can't wriggle out now…" he adjusted his glasses and sighed heavily.
"Those weren't quite drones!"
"THEN WHO?!" Mako and I said in chorus, glancing at each other.
"How to explain..." he scratched the back of his head.
"When I worked in the scientific department of "Watchman," we found an "asteroid"... On it were mechanisms we thought... they... like… regenerate... and... um... Fuck, damn!.. Whatever!.. In short... I can't explain simply!" Thomas sighed languidly.
"These bastards consist of nanites whose bilocation cores feed on energy via quantum strings! Plus they actively react to certain psi-signals, and if desired can use any fermionic matter as building material for their... reincarnations! But their adaptive null-extractors perform only one-way conversion by templates." the scientist crossed his arms over his chest, nodding to himself.
"During conversion through quark-plasma compression, the nano-mechanisms also receive a signal, based on which they shift the "product of activity" state from fibrous to crystalline." Gabriel's speech caused a storm of emotions in the crew.
"The nanomolecular lattice of such armor has simply phenomenal density... surpassing even Adamantide! But I know what you're thinking and will say right away, that thanks to graviton fields, the corpustite isn't heavier than polymers! Such a thing."
When he said that, I wanted to slap my cheeks.
"From the looks, you think I'm bullshitting! But it's normal, no one believes at first. Even our... "investor" thought it was some joke." Thomas sat on the holo-map, swinging his legs.
"The Imperial pigs dubbed the project "unpromising" and handed it to another department. But I shat on their wants, so I went AWOL! And yeah, you get that if there are "little ones" like "Lictors," then there are "mommies" that give them energy? Right, Cap?!"
"Right... Taking the above as fact and considering my own experience with "nests" of aliens, I can assume the drones may serve something more... intelligent..."
"Haha! You can tell a fellow scientist right away. Understands like his own! So if some "Jade Plague" comes, you must be ready!"
"I'll... try to remember our dialogue..." I leaned back in the chair.
"Mako, plot return course, we're flying home."
"You heard your Captain?! Back to work!!!"
"By the way... While everyone's here, I want to make an announcement... I've decided what to name our dreadnought!"
The combatants turned toward the Captain, at that moment he extended his hand to the invisible heavens, reciting one of his most important statements...
"Henceforth, the fury of blind justice, exiled to the empyrean along with the Justiciars of the old world, will always be with us! For their codex remains! It became her – the reincarnation of Astraea's light amid the stellar void! And let her name henceforth instill genuine terror in the hearts mired in sin, for she is – "Justice"!!!"
Rounding their eyes, the crew watched me right up to the last word. Some were in awe, some surprised, well, and some just covered their face with a palm.
"That's so you..." Mako smiled contentedly.
The team was stunned, but after a couple seconds the combatants also began smirking, accepting my decision as due, which was already a small victory.
And when the naming ceremony ended, "Justice" jumped into subspace again, leaving behind the mutilated hulks of ships of an unknown enemy.
Probably, that was the first time I encountered something beyond the understanding of an ordinary person... the first, but not the last... for every phenomenon must have a logical explanation, one need only find the right approach...
*
Our subsequent days passed fairly quickly, but with taste.
Owners of one of the few dreadnoughts periodically carried out errands from mercenary organizations, but only those that could become like a prayer for the machine god.
Conditionally speaking, I preferred not to take black jobs that harmed the company's reputation. Thomas duly appreciated this cloying correctness and almost didn't monitor the crew, preferring to tinker with internal systems on a permanent basis.
And one day, while we wandered the void, awaiting change... it came... like the change of seasons on the desert planet Oneir-IV... where "Irmir" first opened its eyes... summoning a nimbus of power that... Wait, no... stop... Getting ahead!..
A-a-and, yes... Now the backstory is done!.. Let's return to where we left off!.. What was it... Ah, right...
*
[Sector: "Alpha" – Orbit of Station: "Watchman-XVII"]
"HEY!!! Did you fall asleep?" Mako lightly shook me by the shoulders, a shadow of worry on her face, "Get out, we've arrived…"
"Agh..." the white-golden rays of the local luminary hit my eyes.
Judging by the indicators on the shuttle screens, we were quite far from the nearest service elevator to the consulate.
"Is this really the residential district?" the first officer stared in surprise at the huge complex of conjoined bizarre spires, whose tops drowned in the heavens.
Numerous gleaming, glossy buildings were like continuations of each other. Creating a web of transitions from super-strong polymers, they reflected starlight and absorbed their energy, being not only residential compartments but also power plants.
The transitions themselves, or rather streets, burst with people hurrying somewhere.
Looking around, I didn't catch a hint of security that should watch over such hard-to-reach districts. Most likely, the soldiers were sent to more priority places, leaving the local "slums" unattended...
Pondering a robber mugging, I took a step forward... Time to fulfill this damn contract... and the sooner, the better...
*
1: Singularity Generator – warp installation with N-Lasers.
2: Spiral Reactor (Refraction-Paradigm) – thermonuclear synthesis power plant.
3: Psi-Sonar (Sonolidar Locator) – installation for detecting space objects.
4: Adamantide (Admana-Otmium-Rutilomide) – strongest material in the universe.
5: Justiciars – highest caste of Equistella, the oldest and wisest Andjin