A fiery whirlwind, with the force of a blacksmith's hammer, struck the thin film of the polymer shield, causing waves to spread from it. The transparent barrier made the all-consuming fire glint, distorting the light like ancient glass, giving the scene of complete destruction a certain charm that was not diminished by the howl of overheated air and the roar of secondary detonations. The element struck the defense once more, dousing it with a wave of unbearable heat before retreating powerlessly.
Risa watched, mesmerized, as the now liquid flame receded from their sanctuary, like an ocean, but unlike a watery one, it held no secrets, but simply wanted to devour everything it could reach. Like her wild kin, the intelligent cat loved to watch man-made chaos, but now the fire, stirring ancient instincts within her, was utterly captivating…
Like a soap bubble, the polymer film finally burst. The cat's breath was instantly caught as hot air rushed into her lungs, instantly drying her throat and making her cough.
Nearby, exhaling with relief, Shep, who had managed to react and deploy a sphere, caught his breath. The explosion was unexpected even for him. Only lightning-fast reaction, far beyond that of an ordinary human, and reflexes hammered in through sweat and blood helped him react adequately to the threat, because if he had thought or hesitated for a moment…
Kneeling from overexertion, Miranda tried to calm the trembling of her hands. The girl, who was quite tired, had also managed to react and helped the operative maintain the defense, but despite better control over the polymer and a nervous system more adapted to prolonged manipulation, she could not boast of the captain's monstrous endurance.
Glancing at the surviving patch of land amidst the desert fused into cloudy glass, the cat's pupils involuntarily narrowed with the realization of her own horror. She was as scared now as she had never been, even when she became intelligent.
Risa always found it amusing to compare these two very different periods of existence. Here you are, a kitten, interested only in tasty food and hunting butterflies, and here you are, an intelligent being, faced with the choice of returning to its original wild state or remaining in the new one. It was then, for the first time in her short life, that she was scared to the point of stupor. The unknown was oppressive and terrifying, but becoming wild again was even more terrifying. She had a feeling that something important, which had suddenly become necessary, would die within her, despite the conscious nightmares. Humans had honestly revealed to the new carriers of intelligence the whole truth about the world that lay beyond the clouds, telling, showing, and giving them the opportunity to understand what young, inquisitive minds expected.
Then, elementary feline curiosity won out, which was now completely absent. She clearly saw the breached gates of the Vault, and that large robot assembled by locals from scrap metal and garbage, which was unaffected by the rocket explosion from the maniac's hand, absolutely unimpressed. And the lunatics didn't care that they were burning alive. Their soured brains were occupied only with the thought of how to disembowel Risa and her companions.
The monster that broke out of the vault, judging by the fragments of emotions that reached her, so strong that they were felt by an unconnected being, simply wanted to eat, and it was absolutely indifferent to what would satisfy its endless hunger. For it, Risa was not a proud, perfect predator, but a piece of living and tasty organic matter. To each their own, but the cat really didn't like suddenly feeling like a mouse.
As if that wasn't enough, wild robots, which were abundant in these places and were as crazy as everything else on this planet, marched in disorderly rows across the scorched field in front of the vault.
"I don't even know what to choose…" the girl in a school uniform, who had a prosthesis instead of a hand, muttered sarcastically.
"Why choose when you can blow everything up?" the sturdy guy said sarcastically, materializing two rotary machine guns in his hands. "My sexy tyrannosaurs have been cooped up in the stable, and there are too many bullets in my pockets!"
"They didn't prepare me for this in training. One turret won't be enough here, even with a rocket launcher," the paratrooper noted reasonably, observing out of the corner of his eye how the mechanical shell, piloted by a dead man, disappeared upon activation of holographic camouflage.
"This turret will be shoved up your ass," the schoolgirl replied to the paratrooper, singing and overly joyfully.
"Whatever…" the local psycho, who had somehow attached himself to this motley company, couldn't resist. With a deft movement of his hand, he lit two Molotov cocktails at once, rushing at the crowd of marching iron. "Remember me as young…"
Following him, a dwarf woman and a Nag broke away.
"Stop!" seeing this madness, Shep rushed to save his comrades, blurring into a gray streak.
"And this happens to you all the time?" asked the fighter from the special unit "Siren" to Miranda and Risa.
"No, it's just that the planet is wrong, and psychosis is contagious," the cat said.
"Then much becomes clear," the "Siren" replied, letting out a painful sigh, full of mental pain and humiliation.
Shaking her head, she looked at her opponent, who was already shooting in their direction, pulled a submachine gun from her spatial backpack, darting to the side, dodging a too accurate stray shot. As if waiting for this, the man, whose form was based on a square, with a hearty grunt, opened fire with both hands, showering the local lunatics with a volley of bolter ammunition.
"Landing party, don't fall behind!" Siren called out to the paratrooper.
"My mother told me to just go into engineering..." he said resignedly, joining the fun with his turret.
"And who's the psycho after this? Me, who was dropped on the floor as a child, or these freaks?!" the schoolgirl exclaimed indignantly.
"A young lady shouldn't swear," Risa exclaimed, who was looking at all this mess with Miranda with square eyes.
"Go to hell! Teacher, my ass!" the girl snapped back angrily and not at all like a pioneer, jumping onto the specially welded footrest of her robot, proudly heading into the meat grinder, while pompously throwing a three-fingered gesture with her prosthetic hand right in the face of the sentient cat.
Left alone, the two friends exchanged glances, sharing mental images, and also joined the battle...
Meanwhile, Shep, having overtaken the hand-to-hand combat enthusiasts, crashed into the metal bodies, mentally cursing himself, and thinking about what had gone wrong this time. Since the USSR learned about their galactic neighbors, every encounter with the enemy in battle had become more and more absurd for the operative.
Or maybe everything had gone completely wrong on this planet, which the universe itself had ordered to be a sanctuary for lunatics of all calibers. Or maybe, when they responded to a distress signal, finding the paratrooper and Siren in the ice on the wreckage of a train, and then completely by chance giving a ride to a shooting enthusiast with a very vague past, who woke up and spoke exclusively in haiku, but as soon as it smelled like trouble, he switched to Russian profanity? Although maybe, when the local lunatic turned out to be friendly and gave them hot beer? Or when they found a schoolgirl on a cargo ship, who not only managed to avoid customs inspection groups many times, but also ran away from home, contributing to the death of her friend, for which she had already been заочно acquitted for lack of corpus delicti?
"No! Everything went sideways when Argon went off alone to God knows where!" the captain stopped the wave of self-digging, for whom this planet was already sitting in his liver. With an effort of will, he sent a telekinetic wave ahead of him, scattering the crowd of mechanical dummies.
"Captain!" the transmitter of his spacesuit came to life, broadcasting Jack's displeased, sleepy voice. "Are you out of your fucking mind?! What the hell did you wake me up for with a flash in my eye from the surface?! Did you detonate a hydrogen bomb on a planet under my supervision without my knowledge?!"
Instead of an answer, Shep simply sent him a fragment of his memory.
"Forgive me, Comrade Pastukhov. I was wrong in my hasty judgment," the administrator backed down, who would have detonated a dozen bombs himself to prevent lunatics from reaching the installation, which had already killed almost all living things on the planet once. Not to mention, he would have fired the "Hammer of the Motherland" and filled out the paperwork, leaving a crater on the planet's surface, but the batteries were wisely facing space, serving as protection for the orbital ring. "Sending reinforcements. Alas, you are under the industrial sector of the ring, so there will only be worker robots..."
"And thanks for that..." the captain said, disconnecting the channel. Spraying polymer into the air and luring the tin cans into its cloud, he ordered the substance to form threads, with which he simultaneously hacked the control programs of more than fifty machines, making them loyal to him or self-destructing.
With a loud crack of breaking the sound barrier, hitting the surface with a dull thud, transport pods full of construction robots descended from the ring. Jack, having a vested interest in neutralizing the threat to the Vault, decided not to skimp, stifling his greed.
Ignoring the new actors, Shep made a dash towards the Vault's gate, which was running towards the antennas destroyed by the explosion, diving onto a crudely modified truck. Automatically throwing an anti-tank grenade into the back, the operative soared into the air again, firing three shots from his rifle, killing the obvious leaders of the thugs. At the apex of his flight, the captain flipped over, pressing himself into the ground, softening the fall for himself with telekinesis. Invisible energy spread in a ring around the place of his landing, sweeping away sentient beings like an explosive wave, twisting and tearing apart the unluckiest.
Clearing his path, the operative took off again, flying under the feet of a giant robot. The pilot of the machine, seeing the flying fighter of "Argentum" perfectly and knowing WHO it was, did not wait for the "Iron Man" to break his favorite, so he immediately tried to crush him with a fist strike. Dodging, almost literally flowing around the machine's fist, the captain fired a harpoon from his left hand, running along the mechanism's arm, activating the magnetic boots of his spacesuit in time.
The lunatics, seeing this, opened fire on the fighter, but he, detaching himself, simply swung on the harpoon like a bungee cord, dodging the bullets that clicked against his hull, hitting dangerously close to him. The robot's pilot waved his hand, wanting to throw off the annoying bug. The harpoon pulled Shep upwards, following the movement of the mechanism, which was exactly what the captain needed.
Waiting until he was level with the head, where the cabin was, he simply gave the command for the harpoon to be quickly reeled in, simultaneously activating his jetpack. Further strengthening the blow with telekinesis, he broke through the armored glass, and with two hand movements, chopped everyone in the cabin with his sword. The machine, losing control, stumbled awkwardly and began to fall on its back, but this was not what the captain needed.
Breaking the cable channel of the main highway with a kick, he directly connected to the robot's systems. A second of struggle with a simple protective program, and the machine surrendered to the man's power, obeying.
A moment later, through the broken glass, Risa and Zero jumped into the cabin, taking up convenient sniper positions, and began shooting immediately, while simultaneously covering Shep, who had completely surrendered to the piloting process.
No longer distracted, the captain showed what a qualified heavy equipment pilot meant, unlike an amateur. Even though the machine was assembled by roughly fitting parts from a dozen models, it seemed to come alive in the operative's hands, losing its slowness and clumsiness at once, becoming truly combat-ready and deadly. The natives, whose self-preservation instinct and remnants of reason had atrophied as unnecessary from the first breath after birth, duly appreciated the man's skill.
He was already known, nicknamed "Iron Man" for accepting the challenge one-on-one and not being afraid to face the local authority, who was not only five meters tall, but was also riding a "mordoplyu" that was a good ten meters at the shoulder... And he defeated him with one shot, blowing the brains out of both at the same time, but after that he became a true god for them, about whom the lunatics composed legends, one more beautiful than the other, even after centuries and rehabilitation.
But now the completely enraged and fed-up captain was letting off steam, demonstrating its full breadth, showering with kicks everyone who fell into his hands. So what, a whole horde stood before him and the Vault! To get off this planet and finish this chapter, that's what drove him now!
He knew what was hidden in the depths of the artifact of a perished civilization, so after scattering the bandits, he switched to the monster-guard, which broke out after the explosion. If it weren't for the horde and the threat of re-activating the ancient machine, they would have detonated it in a measured way, just making a small hole in the gates, not blowing them to hell!
Therefore, the monster was simply incredibly unlucky that this man came out to fight against him, and that there was a suitable tool nearby. Shep didn't bother. Picking up a stone beam like a bat, he smashed the bared maw. Giant teeth scattered around like a beautiful fan, and the operative had only just begun the beating, feeling with each blow how anger and fatigue were leaving him.
"Die! Die! Die!" he encouraged himself, having already broken the beam and continuing to beat the weakly resisting creature with the robot's fists, ignoring the shelling from the locals.
One of the anti-tank missiles fired at random hit the machine's joint, almost breaking a leg.
"You got me," the operative said calmly, having managed to release his steam. "Well, now we'll cover the baryons with chalk..."
With these words, he grabbed the weakly wriggling monster by the legs and, slinging it over the shoulder of the machine, brought down the improvised weapon on the lunatics, who only now realized that they should have run away already...
"I almost feel sorry..." the schoolgirl said, watching this scene.
"For whom exactly? The monster or the freaks?" Siren asked her.
"Everyone."
"That is, if you were offered to drive, you would refuse?" Risa asked sarcastically.
"Hell no!!! Am I crazy?" the schoolgirl snapped back, offended by the cat's words in her most tender feelings. "I'd jump out of my skirt if someone offered... but who would give it?"
"You know that sounds very ambiguous?"
"Otherwise, I wouldn't have said so," the pioneer remarked, shrugging.
"Our kind of person!" the square man even wiped away a tear, not letting go of his favorite guns. "Love, weapons, and death! What could be better?"
"To leave this planet," Miranda said dryly.
"And quickly," Risa added. "Otherwise, you'll get yourself killed here..."
Having acquired the Vault, the USSR gained full control over a number of breakthrough technologies. Although most of the discoveries were yet to be embodied in metal, even the development of electronic systems had a positive impact on the country's national economy.
The resulting compositions of new materials allowed for the rapid strengthening of ship armor, but this was not the main thing. Information about past cycles was what was invaluable. By correlating the maps of the relay network of those times and the archaeological research of Citadel Space, Soviet science was able to restore the borders of the former Prothean empire, mathematically calculating the coordinates of their main worlds, which led to obtaining a critically important source of information, but that was in the future...
For his displayed valor and by virtue of his merits, Captain Artyom Pastukhov was awarded the extraordinary rank of Major...