Freya, daughter of Torgen of the Stonegrabber clan, only now released the hilt of her trusty axe. Her fingers did not immediately unclench, as if not fully believing that the battle was over. The daughter of a glorious clan still did not believe what was happening.
Her entire mind until today was occupied with only one thought: how to die with dignity, taking as many monsters with her as possible. She did not hope to survive even in her wildest dreams, already preparing to appear before the halls of her ancestors. Every day of the siege, snatching precious moments of sleep, she dreamed of the end of her life. There was no bonfire or funeral feast, but only the rustling of plant horror…
Now, breathing in the cool air, clean as if it came from a high-mountain forest, being on board a full-fledged starship, not an elven trinket, the tension of the past siege suddenly fell upon Freya. The maiden wanted to simply gaze at the wall, wander in the void, while her mind was somewhere far away.
Her mentor, Orik, who was persistently placing something in her limp hand, brought her out of her thoughts. With difficulty focusing on the object in her palm, the maiden felt the pleasant weight of the horn. Nodding to the glorious warrior, Freya, having come to her senses a little, uncorked the vessel and boldly took a sip from it.
The liquid, like a fiery lump, went down her dry throat, making the daughter of the glorious clan cough.
"This is clearly not good beer, but rotgut…" she squeezed out, after coughing, secretly wiping away tears.
The old warrior just smiled into his mustache, admonishingly saying: "I could not offer the noble daughter of the miner's swill… This is pure alcohol. Now it is the best medicine."
"You have no respect for a high-born clan," Freya could not remain silent, with a slight reproach, barely hiding her sarcasm.
She struggled to push away the thought that she was the only one left of her clan, the youngest daughter of her father. Nodding gratefully, the maiden returned the horn to the warrior. The alcohol did its job, dispersing the frozen blood through her young veins. After the battle, her memory vaguely imprinted the last hours.
Quiet moans and sobs were heard, here and there turning into curses. All the survivors who found refuge in the ancient citadel of her people were gathered in the hangar, but instead of the usual tanks, other mechanisms were fastened there, more like birds. Their bodies were too angular for them to fly freely in the air, but for the lifeless darkness of space, they were perfect. Even though her people had long ceased to fly among the stars, it did not mean that the noble daughter was ignorant. She was taught conscientiously.
Local inhabitants, whom she saw without armor for the first time, scurried among the refugees. Among them were those resembling beasts standing on their hind legs, and those of a perfectly normal appearance. The dwarfess's gaze did not linger on their faces, feeling no disgust.
Tall, strong even in appearance, with skin like elven skin, not like it was carved from minerals, as hers was, they scurried among the wounded, providing assistance. Their hair was soft and flowing, like water, not rough and thick, which bent with difficulty. And Freya did not like their ears. Not pointed, but some kind of stumps. Fortunately, they were not long, like elves'.
Getting up from the floor where she was sitting, leaning tiredly against the wall, ignoring her mentor's hand, she threw her axe over her back and proudly walked towards the local leader. Freya had seen him fleetingly when she helped load the wounded into the flying boats.
He towered over her like a mountain. The maiden barely reached his waist in stature, even though she was tall among her people. Feeling her gaze, he turned to Freya, turning off the hologram. Although she did not see the image woven from light, she recognized it as a kind of computer.
Approaching the commander who had saved her and the other warriors, she bowed at the waist and was about to say the customary words, but the foreigner stopped her, raising his hand. Frowning, so that his face, too smooth, as if scoured with fine sandpaper, wrinkled, he touched his temple, where some device was attached. The previously motionless antennae came to life, swaying like seaweed, reaching out to Freya.
"I will take the words from your head to talk," the alien voice rustled in her mind, distorting the words.
The maiden just shrugged in agreement. After a moment's hesitation, as if listening to something, the commander of the foreigners nodded. Crouching down to her height, he slowly brought his hand to her head, which began to be covered with something red before her eyes, and touched her forehead.
At the beat of one heart, she felt sick. It felt as if a light breeze had risen in her memory, quickly passing through her recollections.
"Do I speak clearly?" the warrior asked her, taking his hand from her forehead. The maiden shrugged again. The commander of the foreigners, as before, distorted the words, but now only slightly…
"I am the commander of the expedition, Captain Artyom Pastukhov. Operative of the "Argentum" squad," Shep introduced himself, overcoming his fatigue. After scanning her memory, and after the battle, he was wrung out like a lemon. For him, it was easier to conduct a full interrogation, extracting memories, than to almost masterfully find what he needed, causing minimal discomfort.
"At least this little one's language allows for normal communication. No need to pick words. Otherwise, I would not have escaped a slight headache trying to quickly master it," the captain thought.
"I am Freya, daughter of Torgen of the Stonegrabber clan," introduced the alien, as if carved from either sandstone or cloudy amber, full of bubbles. Before Shep could grimace at the realization of the "nobility" of his interlocutor, she knelt down, extending her hands with the axe lying on her palms. "I acknowledge the blood debt to you and your people. From now on and forever, you are my jarl."
"Oh, damn!" flashed through the lost captain's mind before he was morally crushed by her kin, who also fell to their knees, uttering the same words of oath. Cursing mentally again, radiating his fatigue, irritation, and embarrassment into the "Collective," he reached for the unified mind, forming a request:
"Homeland, I need your help! Urgently!" his mental message thundered. A moment later, he felt someone's presence and a light touch to his memory. Having received what he needed, the AI of the collective mind gave him a solution.
"I accept your oath," he said slowly. "But there are no lords and servants among us. We are all equal. Therefore, get up from your knees and never kneel again. There is nothing more disgusting to us than to see servility and the shackles of slavery…"
Glancing at the short ones, sighing as if before diving into an ice hole, the captain continued: "An oath alone is not enough to become one of us. You must accept our essence, sharing with us joys, pain, and memories…"
The maiden, like all her surviving kin, agreed without hesitation. Besides gratitude and customs, she was guided by calculation. It was not enough to escape death, one had to live on. Their home was gone, and to be a refugee and dream of a crust of bread… this was not the fate she wanted for herself, nor for others.
Freya really liked the warrior's words that everyone was equal among them. Mentally, she was even ready for the role of a bed toy. Sacrificing her honor, she would have given a future for others. Her mentor understood this, which is why he did not object to such an impulsive act.
Having voiced her agreement, she felt sticky fingers of fear on her heart. It seemed she understood the words individually, but their meaning eluded her. And how was this accepted? Perhaps they opened the skull alive?!
Her anxieties were unfounded. A healer approached her, judging by his clothes, and asked her to roll up her sleeve. Waving some device and cutting off a strand of hair, he mixed something in vials, put it into an apparatus, waited for something known only to him, and filled a syringe-like device with the resulting mixture.
"It doesn't hurt," the captain said confidently when the healer brought the device to her neck.
Freya felt no prick. Her skin was only as if blown by a tight, elastic stream of wind, cold and lifeless. The healer withdrew the device, and the maiden noticed the absence of liquid in it. She had just opened her mouth, about to ask what, in fact, was next…
And then her world abruptly, many times over, expanded. From surprise, she swayed, and her legs became like cotton and not her own, if only for a moment. If not for the firm hand of her mentor, she would have fallen like a felled tree.
Everything around seemed to jerk, adding colors and sharpness. Then came the crushing sensation that she would never be alone again, and then an unimaginable number of voices greeted her, both living and… dead. The maiden understood this clearly, and it was whispered to her that death, in essence, was now no more for her.
The noble daughter sighed. Her inquisitive mind now saw everything and at the same time nothing of what the other… connected ones knew. She could concentrate, mentally reach out to another, and if there was silent consent, she could learn a fragment of his memory or receive advice.
And then a steady, pleasant cold touched her throat. "Language pack installing," the understanding came to her silently.
"Greetings, citizen! Bear this title with honor!" the voice of the Homeland thundered solemnly, and she understood who this creature was…
The "Normandy" hung in the vacuum near the broken copy of the Citadel. The discovery of this object alone was a colossal achievement, but at the same time, it opened the gates to the abyss, proving the depth of their misconceptions.
The abandoned Citadel against the backdrop of the still burning planet (who could have blown it up?).
The once majestic station now presented a pathetic and oppressive sight. Its hull, as if torn by the claws of a giant beast, was riddled with through-and-through holes, gaping black voids in its metallic flesh. From some, clouds of frozen gas and frozen droplets of liquid still slowly seeped into the vacuum, sparkling in the reflections of distant stars. Behind the station, like the bloody trail of a wounded giant, an endless trail of debris stretched for many kilometers: twisted beams, melted panels, and simply garbage. The traces of an ancient battle, fought epochs ago, were lovingly and ruthlessly preserved by the eternal cold of the vacuum, which turned the chaotic structure into a frozen commemorative picture.
It seemed even more incredible that deep inside this deadly cocoon of scrap metal, life still flickered. The station's systems, against all logic, stubbornly worked, maintaining a thin but breathable atmosphere in the surviving compartments, smelling of ozone and ancient dust. The heart of the citadel – the reactor and the mass core – hummed dully within it, functioning with the precision of a clock mechanism, as if refusing to admit its own demise.
Even in such a deplorable state, disfigured and mutilated, the Citadel was majestic. Like an old king, fallen in battle but not broken in spirit, she continued to radiate silent power and past dignity, making anyone who witnessed her agony freeze in silent reverence.
With the utmost caution, as if afraid to wake a sleeping giant, the expedition began to land scouts. The assault shuttles, resembling steel beetles, silently slid into the gaping holes of the half-dead hangars, their searchlights picking out twisted trusses and charred remains of fighters frozen in their last dive from the darkness. Having confirmed the oppressive, deathly silence and the absence of immediate threat, the scouts, leaving the grim tombs of the hangars behind them, penetrated the devastated construction on the surface of the station.
And immediately, at first glance, it became clear who reigned supreme here in the last cycle. Among the dried, petrified gardens, in the intricate arches of collapsed passages, and in the elegant, even now not devoid of refinement, elven style striving for natural forms, it was simply impossible to recognize. Even though sixteen cycles had passed, the innate passion of even the diminished representatives of this people for beauty and harmony had not changed, manifesting through the pervasive regression and return to a primitive intelligent species.
The practically sterile, frozen environment had preserved this place. It turned the Citadel into one giant, silent tomb. In the transparent domes, pierced by meteorites, bodies in elegant clothes were frozen, like dried flowers, their faces retaining the masks of last-moment horror or detached peace. The organic matter did not decay but turned into fragile, frost-covered mummies. Every corridor, every square was a frozen moment of agony, where time had stopped, preserving for eternity the silent scream of a dead civilization.
After several days of methodical searching, the remains of an expedition of local elves were found, and the cause of their death, which led to the extermination of the population of six worlds, was established. In their unwavering arrogance, they overlooked a trap left by their own ancestors, a dormant beacon of the "dead hand" system.
The elves considered the ancient defensive mechanisms unworthy of their attention. This fatal overconfidence became the cause of the catastrophe: the activated beacon attracted an ancient weapon that turned the former power of the empire against its own descendants.
The plant horror was merely an ancient bioweapon, waiting all these millennia for its hour in the icy silence. It broke free at the first opportunity, like a predator smelling blood.
Much later, thanks to the painstaking work of scientists, it became known that the weapon of retribution had been deliberately distorted. The mutated plants were supposed to awaken on their own in a little over a hundred years, quietly and methodically sterilizing the nearby worlds, ruthlessly clearing them of traces of intelligence.
But the USSR's enemy had no need to hurry. Why rush when the clock was already wound? The station, in its semi-destroyed state, faithfully continued to carry out its mission, and the organics of past cycles could not harm it. The Union could only guess why such a deadline was chosen…
Another interesting find was hidden in the presidium. Among the dead vegetation, the remains of not elves, but divine Protheans were found, lying near a relay statue in the park. Decayed mummies – all that remained of the divine Protheans.
Much later, when access to the active Citadel systems was gained, the investigative group established what the dominators of the past cycle had wanted to achieve and how they were lured into a trap, leaving and setting a new one for this cycle. Although suspicions about a number of blueprints left on Mars in a destroyed scientific complex had existed for a long time, it was only years later, in the distant future, that these two seemingly unrelated finds could be connected.
For now, the expedition members merely placed the remains in sealed bags, leaving the research for later, entrusting it to professionals. Shep, as the expedition commander, was more interested in the elves and what their empire was like, along with the potential biological threat. On two of the devastated worlds, they managed to return to the stars, although it did not help them much in confronting their rebellious weapon. By studying the information carriers of this race, the USSR made a leap in many areas of science, as it turned out in the future.
The remnants of the dwarf and nag peoples made an invaluable contribution to understanding the roots of this threat. Unlike the elves, they only remembered the past, but did not live it, carrying information about many things in their legends. After studying their epic and questioning the surviving carriers, and correlating the already available data, Lieutenant CERBERUS, Comrade Miranda Kholmogorova, established a connection between the dwarf forge planet Run and Pandora, based on indirect evidence, namely the description of the operation of a great machine.
This device saved the ancient peoples, albeit at the cost of regression to the state of animals. Some species could not rise back to a sentient state, which is clear proof of the unreliability of such a survival method…
This was all later, and now before the Soviet researchers lay a silent, abandoned station, holding many secrets. While an research outpost was being established in the dark corridors, and ship medics were integrating new sentient beings into the society of victorious communism, Shep pondered how to get rid of one representative of the dwarf people, with a bonus in the form of a grumpy bearded strongman.
The captain was not even bothered by the naga, who turned out to be extremely friendly in peacetime, so much so that they would hug him. After connection, each representative of this species tried to test the strength of the operative's bones, so it's not surprising that in the next wave of landing, he left the "Normandy" with his duffel bag along with his combat group, although this circumstance did not save him from the society of the most radiant maiden…