Artem removed the medallion from his neck.
"Show it to the guards. They'll let you in without further questions. And we will save Maria. Yeah, and tell them to make as many arrows as possible. I think we'll be able to handle them that way."
"Alena, how's the miller?"
"He's sleeping."
"Wake him up and tell him we're going. There's no time to lose."
Alena went into the house.
"You also need to make a wooden weapon," Babak reminded them. "Make yourself a spear or something."
"We'll do it right now," the princes said.
Yaroslav looked at his brother and muttered, "I wish I had a chance to test the arrows on them."
"You've killed the bats!" Artem pointed out.
"They didn't burn. The vampires do."
"That's it?" Artem asked, surprised. "It's not really a problem. I wish I could make a sharp wooden sword!"
"Nonsense," Yaroslav said. "We'll manage."
***
That same morning, the fox began to carry out her ingenious plan.
The wolf didn't find the requested chickens, grew furious, swore, and went in search of the wily fox that had dared to disobey him so recklessly. And soon, he found what he was looking for. A gutted chicken was lying on the ground, and a sparrow was sitting on top of it.
"Shoo, you pot-bellied thing!" the wolf growled.
In response, the sparrow made a lazy motion with his wing, showing the wolf what he could do with himself. The wolf was unable to believe his eyes. He growled so loudly that the Sparrow was simply blown away. But the Bully didn't give up. He came back and repeated the motion with his wing. Enraged, the wolf rushed at the crazy sparrow to crush him with one blow of his paw. However, the sparrow fluttered and flew up, trying not to get ahead of a pissed-off wolf.
"Where do you think you're going?!" the wolf growled. "Stop! "
"Run, predator, run!" the sparrow giggled. "Don't give up!"
The wolf was shaking with rage, and only the appearance of the fox on the trail stopped him from exploding. The wolf stopped and snarled, but said nothing. Suddenly, there was an incredibly loud uproar, and a cloud of sparrows attacked the wolf.
***
A few minutes before the meeting between the fox and the wolf, the captain of the ship woke up because the on-board computer was vibrating with a melodic trill. The ship was almost restored. The captain opened his eyes and jumped up. He hit his head against the shelf but still got into the chair and gave the ship a command to check the state of equipment. Then he gave a short cry of pain and checked if he had cut the skin on the back of his head.
No. A second piece of good news.
On the holographic screen, the messages about the devices' current performance appeared. Most of them had already recovered. Now, he just had to restart the program, and in a few minutes, according to the clock, the ship would be fully prepared to perform its basic functions. Most of them recovered almost completely.
"Great news!" the captain exclaimed, turning on the stopwatch and entering the command into the computer. He wanted it to broadcast the time remaining until the ship was restored.
"Fifteen minutes, ten seconds," the low and unclear voice muttered. Before, it had belonged to a generic female, but the block of voice modulation was restored last. The captain shivered. The voice sounded unusually muffled, and the joyful news were shared with an intonation that seemed downright ominous.
The captain tried to calm his heart and turned on the second monitor to admire the marvelous local scenery. From what he saw, his heart jerked even harder. There was a suspicious level of activity of some flying life forms around the ship. The sparrows, who had seemingly flown out of nowhere, settled on the neighboring trees in such huge numbers that the branches drooped under their weight. In the next moment, the Fox came, put the gutted chicken about fifty meters from the ship, and stared at the latter in a way that made the captain break out in a cold sweat. He felt that the time, which was rapidly fleeing, suddenly slowed down, and even the automatic voice continued the countdown after a very long pause.
"Sssseevveen miiinuuttees, foooortyyy seeecccooonndds!" the computer voice drawled unbearably slowly.
The captain nervously tapped his fingers against the table and watched the developments around his ship. The fox hid behind a tree, peeking from behind it every couple minutes to glance at the bait up until the sparrow landed on it and the wolf appeared.
There were only ten seconds left before the ship was restored, and the captain was really hoping that nothing unimaginable would happen.
It did.
A sparrow flew under the vehicle, followed by the wolf. The fox left her hiding place and blocked the way, so the wolf stopped. A flock of sparrows soared into the air and went to ram the ship. The frightened captain grabbed the wheel, simultaneously trying to turn on the takeoff system. The ship tilted, the captain pulled the lever to activate the manual control mode and pushed the button of anti-gravitation system with all his might. No results. The computer said three seconds were left when the ship lost its balance and began to fall down.
The wolf was ready to grab the fox by the throat but with a distant part of his furious mind, he heard a suspicious noise above. He looked up involuntarily and stared. Something was falling directly on him, something with a huge hole in the center. At the same moment, he heard a joyous cry of the fox and realized that she had outsmarted him.
"Zero!" the computer announced. Thirty-nine inches left to the ground. The instruments were restored, anti-grav mode turned on, and the ship froze, slightly brushing against the wolf's ears.
'Still alive,' the wolf thought, looking at a fox that wasn't laughing any longer. 'Now I'll show you what attacking me results in!'
The captain yanked the seat belts, which had jumped out from the recesses in the chair at a supersonic speed, and gave the command for an emergency take-off.
The wolf bared his teeth and…
The ship took off, throwing out a powerful jet of plasma from its center. The sparrows and the fox rushed away from the noise, smoke, and sizzling flames.
The wolf was gone.
***
The Bully was flying away from the scene when a terrible roar began to chase him. The trees swayed, rustling in the awakened wind. The Bully suddenly felt like his fellow sparrows had caught up with him, so he chirped in fright and flew north, away from these places. It was better to lay low until the sparrows forgot about his skull joke.
***
The fox ran, or rather, flew away by a decent distance, swept away by a hot wave. Everything became clear. It was time to run as far as possible because the crow would not rest until she got revenge for the eaten cheese. She'd managed to get rid of one wolf, but how many more the angry crow would be able to persuade? The nut flew off... an odd nut, to tell the truth, and no similar ones seemed to be in the vicinity. She had nothing to beat the wolves with. And the sparrows wouldn't agree to help again. There was no reason for it. She'd given them the skull and told them about the Bully's hiding place. She could only run to the north. No one would look for her there.
Saying goodbye to her native forest, the fox slipped into the bushes. North it was. There was no need to put something off until tomorrow when you could have done it yesterday.
***
No one noticed that the ruffled crow was left sitting on the tree. Her plans for revenge had failed so suddenly... If the fox could do such tricks this easily, her retaliation would be fantastically terrible, with salvation not possible. She had to run! Or rather, to fly! To quietly disappear from this forest and settle in a distant and secluded place. Somewhere with no fox, no stupid sparrow with an even more stupid skull on his head, no elusive food.
When the ship disappeared in the clouds, the crow looked sympathetically at what was left of the wolf. A piece of scorched earth and a handful of ash covering the ground with a thin layer. The crow cawed goodbye, flapped its wings, and slowly flew north.
The crowd heading north had no idea about each other, and they were moving toward Kashchey's castle, the safest place on the planet. No sane creature would ever look for the fugitives there. It was too life-threatening. And Kashchey was unlikely to pay attention to a lone tenant among his possessions.
If they were lucky.
***
The captain stopped at an altitude of three miles and stared sullenly at the control panel. He didn't want to look at the green forest beneath him. The primitive inhabitants of this world were idiotically brave and reckless. The unintelligent species were just the same. A savage civilization. Like an epidemic of some kind…
"Of course!" It suddenly dawned on the captain. "It’s not microbiological expertise! There’s a massive occurrence of rabies!”
“So, I have to check the health of the local population, to identify the causative agent of the disease, if any, synthesize the drug, and cure the local forms of life!" And then he would emerge dressed in a white suit and declare himself their savior and master. It was a lot of work, but the result was worth it!
The ship hovered over the village and released a probe with a micro-robot. The captain decided that he shouldn't risk it by personally roaming this location. One never knew when someone was going to attack. These beings definitely would.
The probe flew down, and the captain stared at the monitor.
"The village," he muttered disdainfully. "Primitive economics at the dawn of civilization. No automatic devices, no gas and electricity, and in the eyes of the citizens, the road is the direction in which they move on one half-dead horse. But they are angrier than the entire Galaxy!"
Gradually, though, the captain began to realize that what was happening at the bottom did not correspond to the usual village life. Almost no peasants were outside, and those who occasionally appeared disappeared back in their houses as quickly as they left them. The modulator of a straight-through image showed that people in the houses seemed to be actively preparing themselves to something. They were building something akin to a defense system, but against whom? Neighbor versus neighbor war?
It felt like something big was coming.
"Like I said, they are mad!" the captain grumbled. In case some native ceremony was going on, he turned on the recording equipment. But the captain had to wait for the development of events for so long that he almost dislocated his jaw from boredom and yawning. He perked up only after receiving the first data from the micro-robot.
The data showed that the inhabitants of the area weren't particularly sick and weren't planning on becoming sick in the nearest future. Moreover, they didn't suffer from any health problems at all. This wasn't an accident. The natural conditions here were just perfect. Especially for an interplanetary resort.
"By the way, yes," the captain said thoughtfully. "It's a long way, really, but it's worth it. The composition of the air... The composition of the soil... Other rubbish... Hmm... Nothing significant. Nothing bad, that is. Then why the heck are they so crazy?!"
The computer could translate the local language, so the captain started reading the printout. It was mostly a meaningless chatter, but there were slips indicating that the organisms whose existence was dubious could attack the village at night.
"What a joke! Getting ready for a battle with non-existent enemies! I can't miss this! What a funny planet. There are either psychopaths or crazed folks here. Oh! I've figured out how to make them obey! I'll create holograms of monsters and arrange a light show, and then I'll drive them away and make the locals worship me as their savior!"
It wasn't all that difficult to become the master of this primitive world. Ha! The evening couldn't come fast enough.
How many hours did the local day have, a hundred and fifty or something>?
***
When the sun went over the horizon, the captain was already exhausted from the tedious waiting. The holograms he had created were projected onto the surface of the table in a reduced size, but even in this form, they were truly repulsive, if not terrifying. The captain pressed the button, and the holograms disappeared from the table, being projected all over the ground in the size of the average person now. Another button, and the figures moved to the village in a disorderly crowd.
The captain rubbed his hands in glee. Watching the phantoms approach the village, he imagined how frightened the villagers would be, unable to hold back his chuckles. Because of this, he didn't immediately notice that a crowd of no-less strange creatures had casually joined his phantoms. An impartial computer immediately analyzed the aliens and transmitted the data to the printer. The captain looked up, surprised, and took the paper from it.
What was the matter? The text was printed automatically only in case of emergencies!
The captain quickly looked through the first lines, then returned to the beginning and started to read slowly and carefully. As he read, the fun wore off, and in the end, his face showed not just fear but actual terror. He turned his eyes to the screen and turned cold, seeing what an ignorant person would have probably found funny. The vampires were trying to pounce on the phantoms. They jumped through them, turned, and pounced again and again, not understanding what was happening. The phantoms were calmly marching toward the village as the vampires were trying to bite their neck or hit, acting crazed now. Their efforts didn't bring any results.
The captain tried to read the text again but failed. His hands started trembling more and more, the letters jumping in front of his eyes.
"It just can't be!" he exclaimed. "They were destroyed thousands of years ago!"
Space plague, the inhabitants of dark worlds, alien parasites from an ancient star, the cruel vampires… and they were quietly living on this god-forsaken planet!
"No! No! No!" the captain kept repeating frantically.
In the great deadly war that had once involved hundreds of star systems and required a truly cosmic effort, an innumerable amount of parasites was destroyed. Everyone believed that the vampires went on living only in the memory of the winners.
But the computer data showed it clearly. The vampires had managed to survive, had somehow flown to this insignificant planet in a remote part of the Galaxy, and quietly existed here until today!
"How did they escape?! The planet must be destroyed! Blown up! But with what?! I have to hurry back home! I need proof! To provide some documented evidence!"
The captain threw the paper on the floor, bent over the computer, gave it the order to destroy the phantoms and turned on the recording. He'd have to sacrifice a few natives to shoot a scene with hunting vampires.
"I'd love to save you from the enemy," he muttered, "but I don't have the weapons to do it!"
The vampires didn't die from conventional weapons. For many years, civilizations had been creating special stunners to immobilize them and transport them in special bins, at the risk of being bitten or getting into a vampire trap. In the bunkers, the vampires were sent to annihilators and processed into energy that was then pumped into the batteries for the paralyzers and sent back to the front line.
The war went on with varying success. Some of the planetary systems were freed from the parasites in a few years while in other worlds, the fight went on for decades. The problem was that the vampires had intelligence and were able to turn the enemies' weapons against them.
Interestingly, the story of the vampire invasion started off in a remarkably peaceful way. A research ship had arrived at a new planetary system. The system was ancient, located in the zone of Dark worlds with aging stars. This rather normal astronomical name of the Galaxy had acquired a sinister meaning after the beginning of war with the vampires.
First, the scientists began to study the planets for the development of minerals. On the seventh planet, a red giant was discovered to have life inside it. The life wasn't particularly impressive, but it was still developed. Not by human standards, sure, but still, highly organized forms of animal and plant life were scattered all across the planet. Astronau
ts enthusiastically commenced studying. First of all, they found out how life had originated in these parts, considering that the light of the star almost didn't reach them. It turned out that everything started from the overabundance of carbon dioxide, which created a greenhouse effect.
Animals and birds didn't seem to know that there were enemies, so they nonchalantly wandered around the camp among people. Researchers have accumulated a lot of material when their attention was drawn to the insects that fed on the blood of both animals and birds. In the saliva of these insects, there was a microorganism that destroyed pathogenic microbes. The animals that were ill with something recovered quickly after the bite. The researchers caught twenty insect families and placed them in containers for further research in stationary laboratories on their home planet.
That was how the problems started.
The "Healer" microorganism was identified and thoroughly studied. Its impact on the strains of viruses and bacteria exceeded even the wildest expectations of the scientists. All harmful microorganisms died! Even rats infected with an incurable disease fully recovered in about a day! Cuts healed like in a fairy tale!
Soon, based on the "Healer", an elixir was created, becoming the medicine for all diseases except toothache. And that's where the problems started. People taking the medicine began to slowly grow bestial. They stopped seeing others as people and slowly, they turned into vessels with blood. Their body persistently demanded that they drink more and more blood. This idea evoked a feeling of disgust at first, but then it disappeared completely, giving way to the overwhelming feeling of hunger.
Once, someone was surprised to find that his canines had lengthened and sharpened. He went people-hunting but his fear didn't let him finish drinking the victim's blood, so he escaped. The victim survived, and a part of the vampire's blood was transferred to him. That was how the second vampire emerged. And then there were tens, hundreds, and thousands of bites. The chain reaction was gaining momentum with every bite. The case was taking a catastrophic turn.
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