Cargo 069

“Stand up!… Attention!..”

The cadets jumped up. Dmitry Bystrov continued:

“Comrade Lieutenant General!.. The senior training group has a practical class! Head of the group Lieutenant Colonel Bystrov!” Larin threw his hand up to his cap:

“Hello, comrades!..”

The audience shouted loudly:

“Greetings, Comrade Lieutenant General!”

The inspector dropped his hand and said warmly:

“At ease…”

Soon a trust conversation started between him and the cadets. It was about the studies, the service as a whole, about the goals and tasks of the newly formed unit, which was so important for the security of the country.

2

Early in the evening, Sergei Petrovich was summoned to the office of the Deputy Head of the Directorate.

Larin was very alert as he did not like sudden calls to his chiefs but arrived at the appointed time without showing it to anyone.

In his head, he scrolled all the potential flaws in the activities of the analytical department entrusted to him. He could not find any sedition.

But, as you know, man plans and boss laughs. As a man with great powers, he had a special view of reality. So he could easily see white as black or vice versa if he wanted.

Although the Directorate has always tried to have people with positive and objective thinking on top positions… But… none of the subordinates is immune from any unforeseen bossy trick. You never know if he has a sudden bee in the bonnet or his mood is spoiled after a dialog with his quarrelsome wife in the morning. The ways of bosses are sometimes inscrutable.

Lieutenant Colonel’s personal assistant opened the door and said:

“Come in, Lieutenant General is waiting for you.”

After a brief meaningless greeting, Larin sat down on a chair suggested by the office owner and expressed maximum attention on his face. Naturally, attention was not bordered on servility. The Main Intelligence Directorate did not like active opportunists but, as elsewhere in the country, it was worth keeping an eye on when talking with someone who, in fact, controlled you. Even a tiny part of inattention could spoil curator’s perception of the supervisee.

Heck!..

Larin did not like to wear an intelligent face just like that, although he knew that the person sitting at the end of the table likes others to eat out of his hands.

“Why do we need these virtualists?” asked Lieutenant General and found like-minded people of a smaller range in this regards.

But after a couple of successful missions, Lieutenant General changed his mind. This happened as soon as he learned that the head of the General Staff himself was satisfied with the result of the secret unit. And now the deputy of “the One” was an admirer of Burlak’s team..

“How is Leonid Mikhailovich? As far as I know, Sergei Petrovich, you visited him this morning, which means that you are aware of the whole information,” he wondered with an encouraging smile on his lean face.

“Colonel Burlak is ready to fight, in an astral sense of course,” Larin said convincingly and explained: “His people are studying a very difficult but quite effective method of transferring consciousness to a specific recipient. Our success in intelligence mainly depends on how well it will be mastered.”

“Tell me more, Sergey Petrovich.”

The Head of Directorate’s Analytical Department started to share the details.

Chapter 3

Dmitry had a difficult day today.

He was strenuously mastering a rare technique… the transfer of consciousness into another person’s body. The difficulty lied in the fact that a transferring person has not only the opportunity to see and hear the same things the recipient does but also to become his “companion” in consciousness. It turned out that the consciousness of the carrier and the transferring person could become one. The only good thing was that the settler could realize it while his counterpart couldn’t!

However, first experiments in transferring to the “rulers of destinies” did not give the desired effect. All the people on top of power, without exception, were protected by some mighty force. This force did not allow such a symbiosis to be possible.

Pity. If the experiment was a success, it would be easy to learn all the secrets and hidden thoughts of any ruler. The tasks in the country’s national security, in this case, would be substantially simplified.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel was solving a simple task. He just transferred to… his friend Victor Kotov. And he completely succeeded!

According to experiment tasks, Victor closed his eyes and wrote what he thought. Dmitry read it from his brain being in Kotov’s head. He saw everything with his friend’s eyes!

The whole procedure of consciousness transfer was practiced in Tibet a long time ago. The expedition sent there by the heads of the Main Intelligence Directorate brought a lot of useful information in this regards. However, there was a certain difficulty: the Chinese authorities had not long allowed to enter their controlled territory. They also did their best to control the expedition activity in this mountainous region. Naturally, the expedition experts presented themselves as civilians. They did manage to get some relics…

It was a start. But there was one more, the more promising direction in the process of consciousness transferring: the use of an energy twin. The method of creating such an assistant was obtained on the very last day of the Tibetan expedition. It was given by the Lama under the strictest prohibition to disclose it. Otherwise, as Lama said, his monastery storing ancient knowledge could be persecuted by the Chinese authorities. The abbot of the monastery decided to help the Russians secretly, as there were mentions in ancient Buddhist manuscripts about a Northern country which brings light to the whole world.

And now Dmitry began to use this esoteric knowledge that was so difficult to obtain. The first experience of using an energy twin turned out to be successful let alone the headache when pumping the “twin” with internal content. But such a pain was a passing factor, a so-called side effect.

Thus, under the supervision of the parapsychology laboratory staff, Dmitry “transferred” to Victor. Zener cards and all the equipment had a purely applied value.

But for Lieutenant Colonel Bystrov as a person, the coexistence of two personalities in one “vessel” was a kind of shock. Even such a small desire like peeing caused a reaction of uttermost plausibility. And when the experimenter pricked Kot’s finger with a needle, Dmitry felt the pain in full. He and Victor were the one and completely identical!

Bystrov’s body at that moment laid peacefully on the couch and seemed completely lifeless. To him, while being in Kotov, the situation resembled the famous “Avatar” movie. The experiment was recognized as successful as a whole but required careful verification and complication of further parameters for its implementation.

Chapter 4

The unit commander and his deputy were sitting in the so-called “corner”: a recreation place after numerous hard tasks. There were two armchairs where they could relax contemplating the decorative fish in the aquarium on a small table under a real palm tree in a tub. For greater detachment from endless pressing problems, Henry Wood turned on the aquarium lighting and quiet music.

It was a routine ritual. As Lieutenant Colonel said, ten minutes of staying in the “comer” could substitute a two-hour sleep. Of course, it was not recommended to sleep at work. But service in the magical military unit required mandatory relaxation of the staff. After lunch, everyone had a relaxation session. Many mages fell asleep listening to relaxing music and lying on the couches. But these were real and necessary features of a purely specific work.

“It would be nice for me to have a similar corner,” thought Archibald Gottlieb. “We’ll have to talk to Henry until the final budget of the unit is approved”.

The Major did not just deputize Wood but was formally known as the “Deputy Commander of the Unit for the Practical

Application of Combat Sensitive Skills”. This meant that he, Gottlieb, was the most important figure in the newly created military unit. Like it or not, he was the person to be appreciated and cherished. However, it was Henry who skimmed the cream off, Henry who did not know a damn thing about the practical magic, well, almost a damn thing…

After ten minutes of relaxation, the commander and his deputy moved from their seats to their places. Pedant Wood sat at the end of the table, while Archibald Gottlieb sat aside. A classic scheme!..

Lieutenant Colonel placed pencils and pens in a pencil case strictly by the size, made a lean official face and asked shortly:

“What do you have, Major?”

“Miss Betsy Gordon is asking to breach the defense of the Russians.”

“What defense, God damn it? Can you be more precise?”