Foothold For A Loner

“Nothing serious, yet. Some operational issues. I turned the beacon on.”

“I see. Wait. And don’t you dare die. You’ve got it, General?”

“Yes, Sir. My mission is not to die. Do I have permission to carry it out?”

“Once you reach my ship, I’ll show you!”

I didn’t listen. Behind the thin chain of my robots was a small relatively vacant patch of space in front of a heap of burnt iron debris. That’s to where we were slowly moving back, snapping shots at the toads’ most impudent flyers and terrestrial drones. Good thing they had run out of heavy tanks, otherwise I’d quickly been screwed. There was no good news in my situation.

The medium-range scanner buzzed, and 19 small high-speed air targets appeared on the screen. That was a missile salvo. How fortunate that there was almost nothing left to deal with them. Just guns. I had run out of guided missiles seven minutes ago, and I directed my module to the enormous pile of burnt heavy machinery.

On top of this heap of wreckage our heavy tank stood with its hull side split open and the turret smashed. Hiding behind it, I sent my robots to the opposite side where they began to shoot at the approaching missiles. The toads became quiet, and didn’t want to get hit by their own missiles. My robots performed very well and managed to shoot down nine missiles… Then an explosion!

The tank behind me, where I was hiding, was knocked over by a shock wave, but I managed to get out of the way. As I’d hoped the incoming missiles were aimed at targets that were actively fighting back.

“General, do you hear me?”

“Yes, Dean, I hear you well.”

“I’m alone now, the robots have been blown to bits.”

Before Clay could answer, a toad drone appeared, jumping on the tank that was on its side. We fired almost simultaneously at each other, the enemy was blown away from the tank and disappeared behind a heap of debris. My module’s force shield repelled the intense plasma strike, but the generator burnt out from overload and only my armor could protect my vulnerable module.

“Lie down!” I heard the general shouting in my helmet’s headphones.

I fulfilled the order without thinking, and I did so right in time. The area around me became a fiery inferno. The main battleship’s cannons ain't no aircraft gun. I’ve already seen something like that… The air above me was filled with howling pieces of armor flying in all directions, as well as pieces of concrete and various debris. You don’t want to get caught in the way of these projectiles. Heavy blows banged the module’s armor, but lucky for me the shards couldn’t pierce it.

When the dust settled I saw an approaching corvette. Usually, space warships don’t enter the atmosphere, but this was clearly a very special case. The battleship above continued shooting while taking on fire from 800 meters away. Clearly there were no worthy targets left in my vicinity. I didn’t wait for an invitation and rushed to the corvette as fast as I could. My module tumbled into the ship’s hold while general Clay urged me on, hollering with such great skill that even the legendary sergeant from military school would have been envious.

Chapter 2

“General, Sir…”

“You can put ranks aside, Dr. Silk.”

“Ehh… yes, of course. So, Dean, have you heard anything about mental fields?” The medical colonel glanced at me questioningly.

Our conversation was informal. General Clay brought me to the Admiralty’s central clinic and handed me over to the local vanguard of medical science who were going to explain everything. Clay also wanted to attend and brought along two generals whom I had caught a glimpse of before at headquarters.

“I only know that your department is working on this matter; nothing more.”

“Well, I see no reason to go into detail, but there are a couple of points that I really want to make clear. Until recently the physical nature of this substance wasn’t certain. Plenty of empirical data attested to the existence of mental fields and to the fact that such fields allowed for the instantaneous transfer of information from the brain activity of intelligent beings across a very large distance. At the same time, the principles of controlling these fields were, and still are, beyond our comprehension. Strangely enough, the enemy attack that you were a victim of, along with 1,500 members of our military, has led to a breakthrough. Whatever was used by the … ehh, toads, which so it seems, that’s how you call them – functioned on the basis of mental fields, but it definitely used their vibrations as one of the harmful effects. In general, the details aren’t important, but we’ve found the key to a partial understanding of this phenomenon while studying the changes in victims’ brains. Bear with me a little longer, I'm coming to the main point. We’ve modernized one of our experimental units and now we have a kind of scanner allowing to study the extent of mental fields at great distances from us. I’m talking about millions of light years. At lesser distances signals merge, unfortunately, and are distorted by interference, but that’s secondary. The important thing is we’ve discovered a human civilization. It’s very far from us, and we can’t even indicate the precise direction. We’ve been lucky with this coincidence of circumstances, and we’ve managed to gain access to the mental field of a comatose man. He’s sick. At their medical level he’s terminally ill, but we know this disease and are able to cure it. Their civilization is significantly less advanced than ours – some 200 years behind, at least. They recently discovered hyper-jump and started launching interstellar flights, and almost instantly they bumped into a hostile race, a humanoid, but not a human one. There’s a war on there, just like here. I wouldn’t say they’re loosing, but this war is all-consuming with apparently no end is in sight.”

“And how could they help us?” this question from my mouth was clearly written on the faces of all those present who still weren’t in the know.

“Generals, Sirs, tell me honestly, will we be able to win this war?”

There was a long silence in the doctor’s office. Eventually, it was broken by Clay.

“This is a very difficult question, Dr. Silk. Let's say, if there won’t be any great innovation in the field of armaments, we'll lose.”

“And how long can we keep going? After all, we're not the only ones with possible breakthroughs in new weapons; our enemy might as well.”

“The war has been going for almost 100 years. For now, we still have somewhere to retreat, but this can’t last forever. We have 20 years, probably 30 if we’re lucky.”

“And what happens next?”

“It gets pretty grim after that, doctor. We’ll be chased out of the developed worlds system interconnected by a network of stationary hyper-portals, and we’ll have nowhere to go except intergalactic space. But I don’t think they’ll let us go. They’ll catch up and destroy us. The toads can manage hyper-jumps as well as we do.”

“Here’s an answer to your question. We need a place to run to in case things turn out bad. You have this place. We found it for you.”

“But how do you expect to get there? You can’t even point in the right direction. Even if you knew it, what’s the point? A linear motion that far in hyperspace will take thousands of years. What we need is a stationary portal, a couple of gates at our side and theirs. Besides, we must know the exit’s subspace coordinates.”

“That's why you plucked our heroic Brigadier General out of that mess in Delta Kirsani. The thing is that the General’s brain was exposed to radiation from the toads’ artifact and has been altered. Now it can harmoniously resonate with the brain of a young man lying in a coma millions of light-years away, and that means we can transfer General Dean’s mind into that man’s brain. Moreover, we can download much knowledge into it, and that can be of immense service to the general when he’s there.”

“Excuse me, doctor,” I was amazed. “But I wasn’t the only man exposed to radiation. You’ve got at least a thousand patients like me at your hospitals.”

“We’ve examined all of them. Unfortunately, they’re not suitable because of the individual peculiarities of their brains. We’re lucky to have you. Your experience will be extremely helpful there.”

“But that man is incurably sick and in a coma…”

“This alone has enabled us to connect to his brain. Coma and his disease – these are undoubtedly problems, but there is a solution. While transferring your senses we’ll download an enormous amount of information into your brain, including the means of treating this disease. Your brain won’t make it, however. If it had been possible to instruct everyone in this manner then we’d have defeated the toads long ago. Alas, a human brain can’t bear a direct data download. Your case, however, is very special. Your brain will die, but it won’t matter. Your senses, including the downloaded information, will be transferred into a new body.”

“And what if I die while still in a coma?”

“It’s highly unlikely. Transfer of senses stimulates brain activity and the immune system of the recipient. You will almost certainly have two or three weeks of remission. Within this period of time you’ll have to solve the problem.”

“After that you’ve got a military career ahead of you, general,” said General Filt, the highest-ranking officer among those present. “You’re used to it. You’ll have to strive to a high position in the power structures of our potential allies and provide for the construction of the second gate of a stationary hyper-portal. Your brain will hold all the necessary knowledge and hyper-coordinates. And we’ll construct our gate here. We’ve already found a god-forsaken place on the periphery of the galaxy for the gate, and if things turn bad we’ll still have a chance to survive as a species and to start all over again.”

“And what about that civilization? They may be reluctant to accept us.”

“That’ll depend on you in many ways, General. Actually, there’s much common ground between us. Both of us are humans, hence, we’ll be able to come to an understanding. We’ll provide technological advances and help them to win the war. They’ll help us develop new territories for our settlements or invite us to their planets if they wish. Anyway, we won’t impose ourselves. In case they don’t want to collaborate we’ll go into unexplored space and start all over again.

“Dr. Silk, are you ready to do it, from the technical point of view?” I was highly excited and couldn’t control my feelings.

“Practically, yes. We have to do a little fine-tuning of the equipment, and that’s not possible without your participation. What we need is your consent.”

“My consent?” I made a half-smile. “You have it.”

* * *

Behind the open window of the nurses’ room a light wind blew the poplar’s twigs. It was early June and the smells of summer covered the specific hospital odor of the furniture and the walls. Olga sat in the armchair having crossed her legs, and looked through the news of the day on her tablet. Upon hearing the equipment beep she jumped up and rushed to look at the patient’s monitor. Her hand automatically pushed the call button.

„What happened, Olga?” asked the doctor on duty via the communicator.

“Ilja Sergeyevich, the patient in the sixth emergency room has regained consciousness.”

* * *