These two natives give me nothing but anxiety. Firstly, this is the second time that we establish contact with the natives so quickly due to the fact that they speak English, or rather one of them. Secondly, this is the first time that among the natives we find our own person, who not so long ago went missing before my eyes.
Right now I was watching Ashwani sitting tied to a tree trunk and slowly starting to wake up. Having grunted a little in discomfort and opened his eyes, he began to whisper something under his breath in a language incomprehensible to us. This alone made us understand that this Ashwani was not the green earthling we had known for many years.
It was a completely different person, albeit with the face of our missing friend.
"Miro? Ho lre miro so?”
«Ashwani» hummed.
«Damn... he really is a native.»
He looked around with an obvious lack of understanding of what was happening, and when he realized that he was tied up, he began to go into hysterics, jerking from side to side and shouting something in the language of the local residents.
Fortunately, his hysteria did not last long and Incartia, with her quiet voice, was able to bring him to his senses by telling him something, but we still did not understand what exactly. This is what Itami demanded to explain from her, playing with a knife in his hands and looking at the dark-haired girl with a stern expression on his face:
“What did you just say to him?”
The girl looked in fear at Itami, or rather at his knife in his hand, and clearly expected that for an inappropriate answer she would receive severe bleeding somewhere on the side, and perhaps immediately in her throat. That’s why, with fear in her eyes, swallowing saliva and hiccupping, she said barely audibly:
“I... I asked him to calm down... I reassured him that he would be okay... and that was it.”
This answer was acceptable to me, but not to Itami.
“Okay. What’s wrong with her then?”
Itami nodded towards the blonde Camellia next to her. Although she looked older than Incartia, she behaved like a really little girl and it seemed that even Incartia could not calm her down, no matter how hard she tried to do so. Camellia continued to sit, sway from side to side and whisper something under her breath, shaking her head from time to time.
She acted as if she were mentally ill and almost went crazy from the shock she experienced. For a native woman who had never seen guests from outer space until today, this was quite expected, but her reaction still raised more questions than necessary. Incartia clearly expected completely different behavior from her and looked at her as if not recognizing her at all.
"I don’t know what’s wrong with her, I thought I’d ask you about it."
She answered the Incartia signalman and tilted her head questioningly while looking at Itami.
“Did you take away her memory?”
"No."
Itami answered, simultaneously surprised by the girl’s words.
“How could we do this? Are we wizards? We can't do that."
«More precisely, we don’t have the funds for this now.»
I noticed to myself. In response to the counter question, Incartia remained silent for some time and shook her shoulders as a sign of misunderstanding. Looking at Camellia again, she thought about something and answered, turning to Itami:
“But she doesn’t even remember who we are.”
The girl's answer angered Itami, causing him to throw the knife with a click. Incartia, twitching, widened her eyes and the next moment froze when the sharp blade of the knife, with its tip, plunged into the tree trunk a centimeter from her head. After a couple of seconds, she took a deep breath into her chest and barely turned her head and saw the barely cut ends of her dark hair, realizing how close she had just been to death.
Itami got angry not because of the girl’s answer itself, but because of Camellia, who with her inappropriate behavior is only wasting our time on them. Her interrogation was supposed to take place immediately after the Incartia interrogation, but it looks like it will take longer than we expected.
The signalman was tasked with finding out as much information as possible about Camellia, but apparently he will need to wait a little for her to come to her senses. We all knew how carrots and sticks work, and now our captives needed the carrot so that we could continue to extract from them the information we needed about this planet and the civilizations that inhabit it.
"Okay, it's not that important now."
Itami leaned closer to Incartia and imperiously demanded action from her, hovering over the girl’s frightened face.
“In this case, let Ashwani talk about himself. I want to know who he is, where he was born, how old he is, what he can do... preferably as much information as possible, everything he knows. And if he doesn’t tell, we’ll kill him. So tell him. You understood me?"
Incartia nodded with fear on her face, and Itami pulled the knife from the tree trunk and moved away from her, squatting down and allowing the machine gunner to take better aim at her in case of unforeseen tricks.
“Since you understand me, now get started, I don’t want to wait until you decide to tell about yourself.”
Itami ordered her. Incartia turned her head towards the perplexed Ashwani and said something in him language. The native with the face of Ashwani looked at us strangely and then apparently told the girl everything he knew about himself, and after that Incartia calmly translated to us everything that he said to her.
What she translated to us destroyed our hopes that this Ashwani was somehow connected with our missing friend. After her story, Itami and I moved away from the grove and somewhere behind the next tree we discussed with the entire platoon what Incartia had translated to us. Itami scratched his head, reminding us all of what she said:
“The son of a peasant, stole a horse, became an adventurer, loves money, excels with a sword... am I missing anything?”
“Basically, that’s all she told us, everything else didn’t matter.”
Fred confirmed, crossing his arms over his chest.
“This Ashwani from your fantasies must really be somehow connected with him, otherwise I cannot explain such an amazing, extremely unlikely coincidence of names.”
“Maybe if we tell him about us, he will remember us?”
Forn suddenly suggested, to which Fred only snorted skeptically.
“What nonsense. Even if he is the same Ashwani you are raving about, this Ashwani has a completely different set of memories. It could be the same bodily shell, rejuvenated, adapted to the ecosystem of this planet, but with a completely different consciousness.”
“Perhaps there is some kind of bodily memory?”
Itami said.
“О Elarasia.”
Fred put his hand on his forehead, shaking his head and feeling ashamed at the signalman’s words.
“What a dumbass you are. Bodily memory... this is anti-scientific nonsense refuted a thousand years ago. Don't even try, it just won't work."
“And yet it could be him...”
Will interjected, but Fred continued to stand his ground, interrupting the sergeant.
“I don’t care whether he really is a missing and somehow forgotten soldier of the army of the republic, deal with him yourself, without me. I hope you haven't forgotten that we should unite with the rest of the 127th Army, and not chase non-existent ghosts? If not, then let’s get back to interrogating the prisoners and finally move on instead of sitting around here.”
"That's enough, Fred."
I said the senior medic.
“We should at least make sure that this Ashwani is a local resident and not an earthling.”
“Like I said, do it without me.”
Fred waved his hand and left to join the rest of the platoon.
“I have a lot to do.”
While Fred left to check the supplies of medicine, I noticed how Will, looking after the senior medic, clenched his hands into fists. He was angry about Fred's behavior, angry about his doubts about Ashwani, but at the same time, he, like me, understood that Fred's skepticism was valid.
Fred, and perhaps the rest of the universe, have forgotten about Ashwani. His existence for them is the same fairy tale as the “Eternal”, a deity allegedly generated by the Pantorians. Meanwhile, all I could do was sigh sadly and let everyone go and return to our prisoners.
Coming out into the grove, I noticed the same picture when I left here, and immediately I turned my attention to the machine gunner who was lying on the grass and aiming his machine gun towards the prisoners and asked him:
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“No one was being capricious?”
"No."
The shooter answered extremely seriously, continuing to aim at the natives, without taking his eyes off them.
“But they talk too much.”
"It's clear. Continue to keep them at gunpoint, anyone will replace you soon.”
"Yes, sir."
Meanwhile, among the native captives, the big man also woke up, and it seems that when they all woke up, they immediately started an explanatory conversation among themselves. The machine gunner did not interfere with them, because there was no order to shut their mouths, and we were not going to hold them for a long time as prisoners.
At a minimum, we need them as guides on this planet, even if they know no more than we do, we need their experience of living among the locals in case we have to hide among the natives, and I’m sure sooner or later we will do that, but we also we can act differently, but this other course of action did not suit me at all, because it was bloody in nature.
Itami continued the interrogation after some time and found out a number of interesting facts. Even if Incartia herself did not know the name of the country from which she was coming with her friends, but the local Ashwani, on the contrary, knew this well.
Kingdom of Lacuus - that’s the name of their country and unfortunately, that’s all Itami managed to get out of the boy. No useful information about the size of the state, culture, language, level of development, life, political structure and the like. Politically, these natives were extremely uneducated, they were simply simple representatives of the people, the lower class and nothing more, they were not supposed to know anything more, and there was nowhere to know.
The last big native who woke up was called Furgur and his voice seemed extremely rude to us and it was clear that Incartia tried not to translate all his words, apparently due to the abundance of insults and spitting in our direction. Every time Furgur looked at us, he contorted his face with anger and contempt and did not waste a second without trying to break out of prison.
Furgur himself was only a simple mercenary, a veteran of the fighting between the native factions and was an excellent archer based on his story. We obviously didn’t dare test his abilities, and especially after his words, Itami had to threaten him through Incartia to stop trying to escape, otherwise he would have to be killed.
As a result, he did not listen to her and continued to try to escape, as a result of which Itami took out a stun gun and, approaching him, forced the native to finally stop his actions, leaving him twitching in place from the shock.
The last person we interrogated was Camellia, that same inadequate blonde girl, and fortunately she came to her senses much faster than we expected and told us more about herself than anyone else. According to her, she is a free sorceress and adventurer who travels the world in search of power. It was much easier to talk about her this way than the whole biography that she blurted out to us.
And although she tried to look like a stern and unyielding girl, her expressive eyes revealed her fear to us. In general, after interrogating each and every one, we found out the general purpose of their being here: all these natives were heading northwest to the crash site of the «Persia» for research purposes and to contact us.
Well, they coped with the second task with a bang, but they will have to wait with the first, mainly because we already blew up the shuttle when we were escaping from the white knights of a certain «Empire» and it is unlikely that they would be able to find anything useful there other than debris and burnt territory.
I would like to find out more information about Ashwani, but I’m afraid that what they managed to tell us is the most that we could get out of them. Now we had to decide their fate. Should we try to use Incartia as a translator and establish contact with the kingdom of Lacuus, or get rid of witnesses and continue our journey to the east, trying not to catch the eye of the natives?
Maybe at first glance the first option looked more attractive, but it was more risky than trying to pass through the territory of the kingdom without the eyes of the natives. What if this kingdom has friendly relations with this Empire? Then there is a high probability that these natives will simply betray us or maybe simply not provide any help. As a result, we risk shedding much more blood than by not making contact at all.
«This is a difficult choice.»
I thought to myself.
«Very difficult choice... what to do?»
I walked closer to Incartia and squatted down opposite her. She is clearly afraid of my appearance; she sees in front of her not a person, but a terrible mummy wrapped in bandages. It was still hard for me after the poisoning, and also that strange dream in some musty building. I could barely walk, so Stern and Will helped me, supporting me as I moved.
As soon as I sat down opposite Incartia, Will and Stern walked away without further disturbing me. I will have to decide the fate of these natives, but before that I decided to ask the girl a very important question:
“What should I do with you?”
Incartia was surprised by my question. It looked like she wanted to say something, but was clearly afraid that I would quickly shut her up, so I pushed her to answer:
“Don’t be silent, say what’s on your mind.”
Whether to kill her or not depends only on her. It is unlikely that I will be able to recruit her as a translator if she herself does not want it. If she doesn't want to be her, then we won't waste any more of our precious time on them and just kill her and her friends at the same time.
Incartia kept her mouth open and when she finally spoke, I raised an eyebrow, because what she told us was not exactly what I expected to hear from her:
"My teacher wanted to give you a message."
"A message?"
I asked again and Incartia nodded in response.
"Yes. My teacher wanted to convey to you the following: «May you not be dark guests from the stars who have brought only suffering and evil to our world. Peace and prosperity to you, travelers of the void».”
At that moment the girl closed her eyes, finishing the message with words incomprehensible to us.
“Esquelero-maoiti ekleros sigai.”
At that moment, the world seemed to freeze for a moment, all sounds disappeared, all the moisture around condensed into droplets hanging in the air, all feelings turned into emptiness, the temperature around suddenly dropped sharply. Only the last picture hovered before my eyes, where strange, barely visible waves floated over Incartia, as if they were moving only through her body.
I did not have time to realize this, because my mind at that moment was occupied with something else, namely, what I had just managed to react to.
«What are those strange words at the end?»
I was thinking in the meantime and intuitively rushed to the side when strange green lines began to envelop my body, appearing out of nowhere.
"SIR, RUN!"
Suddenly the machine gunner behind me shouted.
When I fell sideways on the grass, the shooter fired a machine-gun burst. The crack of gunfire echoed throughout the forest, but none of the fired shells reached their target. The red-hot bullets hovered in the air a few millimeters from Incartia’s face. The girl widened her eyes when she realized that she had almost died, and meanwhile the red-hot shells fell to the ground as if they had simply been released from invisible hands, and that they had been caught.
Meanwhile, luminous green threads, like tiny snakes hovering in the air around me, crawled under the bandages and skin and strangely enough began to modify my body. At that moment I realized that I did not have time to react to the danger in time. With her command of strange words, she began to influence my body, and alas, I could not do anything about it.
Some processes had already been launched and I could only wait for their outcome, and perhaps one of these outcomes was my death. The inevitability of current processes plunged me into a state of insane panic, realizing that I could not do anything about it. I just can’t stop this process, no matter how hard I try to throw off this swarm of green lines.
I was terrified, feeling a strange burning sensation all over my body, I tried to shake off this snake heap from myself, but they seemed to be completely impervious to matter, my hands simply passed through them, and I could not do anything about it. And although I was now in a panic, I also seemed to have stopped feeling the enormous weakness in my body, which is why I came to my senses a little and finally jumped to my feet when all these green lines disappeared from my field of vision.
The burning sensation throughout my body stopped and yet I did not understand what had just happened. I, turning my head towards the girl and filled with fear of her, wondered: did she just try to kill me?
My heart was racing, I longed to know the answer to my own question. Should I kill her right here and now? What was she even trying to do to me? I didn’t know the answer and therefore I loomed over her threateningly with anger in my voice and demanded an answer from her, having managed to start shouting:
"What have you done?!"
"I?"
The girl mumbled with a blank expression on her face.
“I just... just conveyed the teacher’s words, I didn’t mean to... I mean...”
She fell silent when I suddenly pressed the barrel of my pistol to her temple. The last thing I needed right now was to listen to mumbo jumbo, which is why I was angry, very angry. I can't let the whole platoon fall for another trap. I will not allow Republicans to die on this planet again. This time I will finish her off if I am not satisfied with the answer!
“You better tell me in a good way what you just did, otherwise your brains will splatter on the faces of your friends! SO ANSWER IMMEDIATELY!”
Incartia's reaction to my words was immediate. She instantly rolled her eyes out of their sockets, squeaking in fear after the words I uttered, and a moment later she closed those same eyes, trembling with fear like a hammer drill, and while I was hanging over her I realized something that for some reason I didn’t immediately understand.
I felt much better, it seemed that the bandages were gradually falling off my swollen skin, as if I had just been miraculously healed. This fact slightly reduced my fear, my panic and my anger. It could definitely affect my body, it could definitely kill me, but instead of pain, instead of imminent death, I felt better than I had the last few days.
«This... is strange...»
I thought and removed the barrel of the gun from her temple.
«I'm still alive.»
I stepped aside while a platoon gathered around me and aimed with all our arsenal towards the captured natives. Even the fugitives were no exception and stood behind the guys with their fists ready to attack the uninvited guests.
Incartia, meanwhile, began to sob, she squealed and whimpered like a helpless puppy, flooding her red face with tears. At that moment, another figure in the orange uniform of naval engineers ran up to her. Will, standing next to me, wanted to stop Sigrun from seemingly rash actions, but I blocked his path with my hand, as if letting him know that he should not disturb her.
"She needs to calm down."
I said in a calmer voice.
"What?"
Meanwhile, the alarmed Will was perplexed.
“You almost died! How can you say such a thing?! What if this bitch kills her?! Then Sigrun will die because of you, do you understand that?!”
At that moment, I tore the bandages off my face and stood facing my entire platoon, loudly giving the order to everyone:
“Put your weapon down. That's an order."
"What the?!"
Fred was surprised, along with the whole platoon, staring at me.
“Has your skin recovered yet? How?!"
I turned towards Incartia and Sigrun, who was rocking her to sleep. They sat hugging while the engineer tried to calm the girl down, and meanwhile I said out loud:
“She didn't mean to harm me, she just healed me. So put your weapon down."
Reluctantly and not immediately, but all the platoon soldiers, after hearing the words, eventually lowered the muzzles of their rifles, convinced of my words by my healthy appearance, and only one machine gunner continued to aim at the natives, and meanwhile, watching the touching scene, I was filled with a number of new questions in my head .
«She had the opportunity, she could have killed me. I don’t know what kind of tricks these natives are doing, but she really could have killed me, but why did she heal me instead?»
I thought, simultaneously watching how Sigrun calmed the girl by whispering in her ear:
“Hush, little one, calm down, everything will be fine, you will live, they won’t touch you. I'm here, I won't let them hurt you."
«You know how to reassure, Sigrun.»
I thought, seeing how Incartia was gradually coming to her senses after Sigrun’s soothing words.
Sniffling, the girl continued to say the same words, over and over again:
“I really... didn’t know... I didn’t know... forgive me... I didn’t know... really...”