by Ivan Shaman
“Let’s just say I remember how you comforted me after the death of a close relative.” The girl grinned. “In your past life, you also weren’t the most faithful servant of your God.”
They were silent. The river gradually changed, cutting off the bay from the sea. The all-terrain vehicle immediately crashed into the icy shore and barely climbed the hill. On the south side, there was a long, high bridge that led to a platform barely visible in the sea. A huge battle cruiser was docked at the shore.
“We’ve arrived,” Demon said, peering at the distant figures of people running across the deck.
Chapter 21. Ghost of Anxiety
“Is this a warship?” Jane asked, opening the glass. “It’s very large.”
“Yes. It’s a Japanese cruiser.” Demon sighed as he looked closely. “It’s bad.”
“What’s the difference?” The girl shrugged. “They are also just people.”
“There is a big difference. All people can’t be the same,” Demon explained. “If the Japanese are here, then they are here because they need something. Maybe, the lab…”
“Well, then let’s check it out!” Jane suggested. “Our procrastination won’t change anything.”
“Our all-terrain vehicle is, of course, good, but it doesn’t have a very high speed,” Demon said. “It’ll be spotted, and we’ll be shot on the rise. So, we must act smarter rather than faster.”
“You’ve just called me a fool, haven’t you?” Jane pouted.
“I’ve simply pointed out the difference in our stats and nothing more.” He looked around again. “I can’t see what is going on there. Let the first-levelers go. They’ll scout for us.”
“Can’t you gather those that are around us?”
“I can’t take those who aren’t here,” Demon replied, and then, noticing the puzzled girl’s expression, he added, “I told you at the entrance to the town that I didn’t feel any technocrats nearby. Most likely, everyone who was here was either called to Sakhalin or destroyed.”
“Not good.” Jane frowned. “How will we get to the lab?”
“We’ll scout and find a way. Let them go,” he said and concentrated. Taking the first-levelers under his control, even before the brothers got out of the vehicle, he carefully led them one by one – the first one went to the water’s edge, the second one headed inside the bushes, and the third headed into the forest. He tried to keep them so that the minimum distance between the juniors was about two hundred yards.
They were able to get to the bridge supports almost silently. As soon as the first brother climbed the stairs to the bridge, he immediately got a bullet to the head. The second one was shot along the coast. Only the farthest cyborg remained standing, unharmed among the trees.
“We’ll have to sacrifice the vehicle,” Demon said disappointedly, returning the remaining first-leveler back to the vehicle. He put him behind the wheel, took the map and the backpack with the necessary things, and got out. Jane followed his lead.
“Now we’ll go through the forest, then go down to the water, and go through a service bridge to the platform. He’ll distract their attention as we do so.”
“Don’t you feel sorry for him?” Jane asked reproachfully. “He’s our brother.”
“Of course, I do,” Demon agreed. “But it’s the only way. Ready? Let’s go.”
They tried to make their way through the forest as quietly as possible. It was only because of the Luminary’s high perception that they didn’t run into a patrol. Demon raised a finger to his lips and made a sign to duck. Jane understood it immediately.
In the distance, the ATV’s engine roared, and the vehicle rushed toward the bridge, slipping past the patrols. The soldiers immediately ran after it, firing. The first-leveler, filled with the Light, felt no pain and fear, and he headed forward. He carried out his mission perfectly. The soldiers surrounded the vehicle. They shot to kill, trying not to damage the priceless car too much in the process.
Taking advantage of the mess, Demon and Jane slipped to one of the supports and climbed up into the narrow service bridge. It was made of a thin but solid mesh. It was so translucent that it seemed almost as though you were walking directly on the waves below. In some places, it fell so low that the spray of water, beating on the pile, reached to their waist, and even on one occasion to their heads.
“Do you think we’re heavier than water?” Jane asked suddenly. “I don’t know if I can swim.” Or rather I don’t remember, because in this life I haven’t learnt to do it.”
“We haven’t learnt to talk, walk or eat either,” Demon said. “But considering how much armor you’re wearing, you’re sure to hit rock bottom. As I am too. And the bottom is apparently deep here, since the cruiser has managed to dock.”
The huge ship, made in the fifties, when Japan announced the final abandonment of the self-defense force scheme and the transition to a permanent armed force, had moored against the flimsy automobile bridge – which was clearly not intended for such loads. From the inside, it became noticeable as it arced, repeating the contours of the large cruiser.
Ten minutes had passed since the shooting had stopped, and they had already crossed a quarter of the bridge, passing half of the Japanese ship. A familiar, barely discernible sound made Demon wary.
From afar, an APC was approaching them at great speed. They heard the sailors running inside and outside of the ship. Looking around, Alex calmed down a bit: the only stairs were crushed by the cruiser’s covering, and he didn’t notice other ways to get down. The APC raced across the bridge and stopped almost above them, but instead of fire, there were loud cheers.
“Colonel Ferronov! Greetings!”
“Captain Hideyoshi! I’m glad to see you, but I’m afraid you’ve made a little mistake. It’s General Ferronov.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. My ship is too far from your port, and the information comes to us slowly. Please come aboard.”
“Thank you. But before we go up, I’d like to clarify one thing.”
“You can ask any questions you wish, General. If it isn’t a military secret, I’ll happily answer you.”
“Are you ready to team up and clean away the zombies from Sakhalin, under my command?”
“I think we should discuss this inside. I have some reasonable requirements. If you agree to them, I’m ready to make an alliance with you.”
“Okay,” the general said quietly, so Demon could barely hear it. “Peter, tell the artillery not to fire for five hours. It’ll be enough.”
Fading footsteps sounded, and then the APC’s engine started and it drove away. They heard the military men raise the ladder, and then all was quiet. Demon, who had been hanging on the pile at the top of the canvas all this time, descended back to the service bridge below.
“I wonder what will happen next,” he said in a low voice to Jane, who had been patiently waiting for him.
“What was it?” She asked, pointing up.
“I think this is one of very few occasions when the military were able to negotiate without interrupting each other with attempts to figure out who was cooler,” the Cannibal replied. “It isn’t good for us.”
“Do you think there are many of them?” Jane pointed to the elongated exterior of the cruiser.
“It doesn’t matter how many of them there are, but rather the most important thing is what they have.” Alex paused for a moment. “Did you see the lights on the ship when we went down to the bridge?”
“Not really.” She shook her head.
“They have electricity,” Demon said dryly. “So, the EMP didn’t hit them. Why? If the EMP didn’t hit them, their weapons are in full working order. Of course, they don’t have nuclear missiles, but there are surely other weapons they will have at their disposal... ”
“You mean they could destroy the relay station?”
“No, I mean that if they want to, they can wipe Sakhalin out of existence. There won’t even be any ruins left behind, just dust.”
“We
must stop them!” Jane said abruptly. “Let’s sink the cruiser!”
“You’re brave, of course. But how do you plan to do that?” Demon smirked in response. “We don’t have a lot of explosives available. Even if we put a single charge under the bottom of the boat, it won’t solve the problem. They’ll just close that compartment or fill it with foam. Ships such as these are almost unsinkable.”
“Then let’s blow up their power source!” Jane demanded. “We mustn’t leave it here-”
“From my estimations, there’re about a thousand people inside,” Alex interrupted her calmly. “They’re trained and well-armed. If we were Ghosts, if we knew the layout of the ship, and there were a dozen of us, then we would be able to discuss it. Now, let’s move on. It’s unreal.”
Jane pouted and they continued in silence for a few minutes. The ship’s side finally ended after they’d been moving along it for over twenty minutes. Only when they’d passed it and Jane saw its rear did she realize its entire scale.
“What a huge machine,” she said quietly, turning around. “But there must be a way to destroy it.”
“The simplest way would be to destroy it with a similar machine,” Demon said, moving from one bridge to the next. The cross pile was placed in the most inconvenient way, cutting their path in two. “That or we need to find an appropriately powered cruise missile or torpedo. Obviously, it’s then desirable to be very far away at the very moment of the explosion.”
“Why?” Jane asked naively.
“Because the cruiser is much more solid than the bridge. The shock wave alone would be so strong that it would demolish everything on the coast and the bridge,” Demon replied. “That’s if we could even find a projectile that could destroy such a machine in one blow.”
“What about your gun?”
“God knows,” Demon confessed honestly. “It probably won’t even make a hole. It works on a different principle. Its penetration is low, but the stopping power must be enormous. Although I’ve never tried, and I don’t think now is the right time.”
“Are you suggesting just leaving?” Jane asked sadly.
“Until we come up with something real, yeah.” He glanced back at Jane and, in a sudden impulse, he embraced her. “Don’t be upset. The fact that they came isn’t the end. Though, it also clearly isn’t the beginning. Come on.”
Chapter 22. Platform
They passed the next half mile safely, though they got drenched in doing so. The bridge, in the middle hanging just above the water, now rose on stilts. The platform was getting closer. Making another step, Demon nearly fell into the water. The steel mesh, corroded by something resembling a black rust, collapsed under his weight.
“I guess we’ll have to go upstairs,” Demon said, looking at the mesh: it was now completely covered with the black rust-like substance. Returning to the last pile, they carefully climbed up to the bridge. The watchers didn’t look in their direction, but they didn’t want to risk anything, so they moved, crouching and keeping close to the edge.
However, they had to head toward the center, as the road was also corroded with the rust. Only the thick plastic communications pipes, located in the center, were untouched, so Demon and Jane were left with no choice but to move there.
The platform itself had no road covering of note at all, only pipes and open white gates made of some strange material—similar to plastic, only compressed under enormous pressure. Inside the gates, small pads lined with rough tiles stretched out before them. Once it had been beige, but now it was covered with the ubiquitous black mold, visible wherever they looked.
“What is it?” Jane asked, carefully climbing onto the platform.
“I don’t know. Considering how it has corroded the bridge, it’s something bad, though,” Demon replied, skirting a particularly dense cluster of the black rust. “It’s good that it also doesn’t digest this plastic, otherwise, this platform would have disappeared long ago.”
“Nanotechnology Laboratory,” Jane read from a sign in front of them and smiled. “God knows what that means.”
“Yeah, it’s weird, the more you bump your ‘Intelligence’, the clearer these things become. For example, this I understood.”
“Well, explain then,” Jane said resentfully.
“There is nothing particularly useful in the sign,” Demon said, opening the lock on the valve door. “It’s an Institute laboratory. Nothing more.”
“And nanotechnology?”
“Well, you should probably understand that without any explanation.” Alex chuckled. He opened the door, and he saw a black corridor covered with the same black mold. “Damn. I wonder if there’s another entrance?”
“What’s wrong with this one?” Jane wondered aloud, looking inward.
“Let’s just say I have a very bad feeling about this mold.” He squatted down and stared at the black floor. Then, following a wild hunch, he took a can from his backpack and threw it inside the corridor. At first, for twenty seconds or more, nothing happened, and he relaxed. But suddenly, the can burst and spread. Then it quickly began to be covered with black dots. “What the hell? They couldn’t be that careless.”
“What are you talking about?” Jane asked, surprised by the quick disappearance of the can. “Do you have any idea?”
“I have a theory.” Even the Master’s Focused Vision didn’t provide him any information on the contents of the corridor, but he was almost one hundred percent certain. “It’s nanomachines. A very thick layer of them. Simply put, a lot of experience.”
“So I can eat them right now and level-up?”
“I doubt that very much. They still work. Which means that somewhere nearby must be the control implants.” Looking around, Demon saw a thin plastic tube sticking out near the entrance. He carefully broke it away and put the edge on the mold. Nothing happened for a minute or two. Then he slipped the stick into the thick of the mold, moved it there, and rolled out a small control board on a clean spot.
“Here it is. Let’s try to extract it.” Demon leaned down to press the implant with his finger, but he jerked it back sharply when the nanotechnology hazard warning window popped up. “Why not earlier?” He said with slight indignation, looking as the nanomachines flowed to the implant. “Great, just great.”
“What happened?” Jane asked, interested in what was happening. “Is there a way to replenish our experience with them?”
“No, that’s a different version.” Alex read the information in the warning window. “Even I can’t adapt them. If you were to eat them, they would likely make a hole in you and crawl back out. Fortunately, at least they don’t breed.”
“What happened to that can?”
“God knows. It looks like they’ve broken it down into its simplest elements. But I don’t understand where the energy and matter have gone. The implant, of course, has its own battery, but the main energy it draws from the human body.”
“Could they reproduce due to absorption?” The now frightened Jane asked.
“Well, firstly, self-replicating nanomachines are completely prohibited by several international laws – orders of the UN and other crap – and, secondly, it’s complete madness to make uncontrollable breeding nanomachines.”
“Why?”
“Remember the theory of gray slime?” Demon looked at her and then covered his eyes, took a deep breath, and calmed himself down. “Sorry, I keep forgetting about our differences. Well, let’s say that you create a nanomachine that replicates itself in one second. If that were to get out of control, it could devour the Earth in a single day.”
“No way! They’re tiny!”
“What doesn’t prevent them from multiplying at an unlimited geometric rate of progression, though. For example, at the first second, there is one nanorobot, at the third second there are four, at the tenth, a thousand, and in half a minute there are more than four billion of them.”
“Shit!” She was surprised. “How many would there be in an hour?”
�
��Many,” Demon pondered. “I don’t know that number. Let’s just say it has more than five hundred zeros.”
“Shit,” Jane repeated.
“Therefore, self-replicating nanomachines aren’t made, in principle. People build mini factories that produce them, but they have strictly limited capacity.” Alex once again shook the tube in the bunch of nanomachines. “It’s possible that such an implant is integrated into a plant and then nanomachines bring its resources into production. The question of energy remains open. Our main source, the Sun, isn’t inside.”
“You don’t need to explain this, especially if it isn’t useful.”
“Okay, that’s fine then since I don’t really understand it either,” Demon agreed. “Caesar could probably explain it as he has 700 in ‘Intelligence’. But there is no point in distracting him over such trifle matters.”
“What are we going to do now?” Jane asked, looking into the black corridor. “Go back?”
“Why?” Alex asked surprised, then he picked up and showed Jane the severed piece of tube. “We have a stick. In extreme cases, we’ll use my gun.”
Coming up the corridor, he slowly moved the nanomachines with the tube to the right wall, then he repeated the operation in the other direction. The result was a narrow clean path down the middle.
“Welcome to the white tile road.” He smiled, showing her the way. “Only if you don’t mind, I’ll go ahead and clear the way for us.”
“I don’t mind at all.” Jane smiled back.
They couldn’t move quickly. The corridor was dark because all the lamps and conductive surfaces were thickly covered with the black mold. Only his extremely pumped ‘Perception’ saved Demon, and Jane just kept track of him as she followed behind.
Beyond the long, dark corridor, there was an almost clean room that looked like a meeting room. There were several rows of chairs, a projector, several cabinets, and a locked door inside. There were puddles of nanomachines in a couple of the corners, and a few lamps were covered with them, but generally, it was mostly free of them.