Our faces froze in a grimace of surprise when we saw that Yasmi's severed leg had grown back a little. Very slowly, but her limb was restored, as if she were some kind of lizard that had only lost its tail, which could grow back at any moment.

Human is not a creature that can restore severed parts of the body through natural regeneration; after all, the human body has its limitations and complete restoration for a human is considered impossible without the intervention of genobiology.

On the planets of the Republic, they learned to grow body parts and internal organs, and also learned to fuse them with the human body, thanks to which even fatal wounds such as the loss of a huge amount of blood from several parts of the body now seem not as dangerous as thousands of years ago.

People have the choice to restore their body parts through genobiological fusion or through cybernesization, that is, replacing natural body parts with bionic ones. More often, people choose the first option, since bionics requires that a person get used to a new artificial body part, and this despite the fact that bionic body parts are a hundred times more effective than natural ones. People are simply more accustomed to living with living body parts than with artificial ones.

The fact that Yasmi's leg has grown a little and even without the help of genobiology makes us once again surprised by the strange things that happen on this anomalous planet. Many of us had questions for Fred after what happened, but he simply shook his shoulders and answered:

"I don't know."

"You're the chief physician here and you don't know?"

Uwon was surprised at Fred's reaction.

"If I had an answer to every medical question, then I would already be the Minister of Health of the entire Republic, and not the senior physician in the regiment."

"Can not argue with that."

I said and before approaching Yasmi I asked Uwon.

"It's unlikely that I'll be able to extract everything from her right away. This takes time."

"I know."

Uwon nodded.

"We have a lot of time. Before the natives arrive, we can strengthen the shuttle and hide it in dense vegetation. So you can take your time."

"Fine."

I answered and began to approach the girl wrapped in a jacket. She was calm and looked at me with wariness. At this moment, Uwon suddenly turned to me:

"We need to find out anything from her, Boris. Extort from her everything she knows and doesn't know."

He may be angry, but he also wants to know how she killed John and Private Riedl. Either these natives use alien weapons that were on this planet or they themselves set our people on fire without us noticing.

"Fine."

I answered Uwon and sat down closer to the girl.

Another anomaly is the color of her eyes. They were snow-white and did not glow like those of the proximirians, but they were exciting in their own way, as if they were some kind of mechanism, a tool that she uses for her own purposes. Maybe she used them to set John on fire? I can't explain this exactly, otherwise Fred will definitely accuse me of conspiracy theories.

Before asking her my questions, I introduced myself to her:

"Do you hear me? My name is Boris Kipito, I am a junior lieutenant. Let's get to know each other."

She just snorted at my words:

"As if the great Sod cares about your pathetic name, insignificant barbarian."

Her reaction was what I expected from her. Aggression towards the enemy, unwillingness to conduct any dialogue with me. There can be no talk of cooperation here. However, my current goal is to show that we are different people, believe in different things and even think and know different things. At that moment I decided to ask her a question:

"I don't care what you think about me, you are our prisoner and must answer our questions. And the first thing I want to ask is... Tell us about Sod. What it is?"

The girl turned her face in my direction after hearing my words. My question seemed to anger her greatly.

"Heretics, barbarians and pagans do not deserve to hear words from the lips of the messenger of Sod. There is no faith in you, there is no trust in you, you are vicious and only the flesh-cutting gladius will become your salvation by cutting off the empty poisoned heads from your shoulders. How will my words about our great Sod save your miserable lives? You will not believe in him and you will not correct yourself, you will not be cleansed, this will never happen."

Fanaticism. I thought this was characteristic only of the Elarasians, or rather their descendants, who believed in the goddess Elarasia. Until now, in the modern history of mankind, it remains a mystery as to why a «golden colony» consisting of materialists turned into an entire religious isolationist civilization that does not have any friendly ties with the rest of humanity. No one could understand this, and yet it makes me think that people need faith since they have become so fanatical, they need something to rely on in their lives.

Or people believe in simple things, be it moral principles or the laws of some non-existent supernatural forces. Even now, in the Republic, three great religions continue to exist despite the fact that their interpretation of the origin of the universe has long been considered incorrect and erroneous.

In Yasmi's eyes I see this faith, this fanaticism towards my deity. She lived for many years seeing only one side of the coin, but she did not try to look at the other half and draw her own conclusions. That's why I decided to ask her:

"Interesting. First I would like to check if Sod is strongerour God?"

The girl's face showed anger at my question. It seemed that every question I asked was wrong and offensive to her: «How dare you ask such offensive questions in front of the messenger of God?!» or something like that. She answered as viciously as her facial expression:

"There are no more gods in the world except Sod. He is our creator and our destroyer; Parent and Judge; Teacher and healer. All other «Gods» are just pitiful creatures, degenerates of demons, mutants and monsters, the creation of infidels. Sod is more powerful and majestic than all of them, Sod always tells us, tells us how to live, how to follow, how to come to salvation."

At this moment, the girl suddenly became interested with a malicious grin on her face.

"And if our Sod is more powerful than everyone else, I would like to know how insignificant your deity is."

"It will be more honest."

I answered, deciding to explain to her my philosophy of looking at the world, or more precisely, the view of a republican materialist and earthling.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Our God is our Sun, the light in the sky that gave birth to life on Earth. It is powerful, but silent; it shines brightly, but not in the shadows. People don't pray to it, because it's not even alive, but this God gave birth to us, and we consider it God or we don't consider it to be everyone's business. We do not make sacrifices to him, we do not build temples, we simply live under the rays of his light and continue to live among other suns in the sky."

Quite strange words came out of my mouth. The girl was shocked by what she heard, and I probably plunged into nostalgia, missing home, my native Earth and my family, who had been waiting for me for ten years and might have to wait for me just as long.

I myself never believed in the Gods, but if I did, I would believe in the Sun. A huge ball of gas that warms the surface of the planets of the solar system, on one of which life appeared, and then man himself. After this, is it impossible not to call our Sun God? In fact, the star that created life and not only created it, but supported it.

If we do not consider God to be a certain rational being, but possessing the power to create life, then the Sun will be such a God. Nevertheless, along with the shock on Yasmi's face, doubts about my words about our «God» were visible, and she hastened to answer me:

"This is not God. The sun is only the light of Sod, its brightest eye in the sky, but it is not God. You believe in absurd things, stupid barbarians. There is no morality in your faith, no purity, no meaning, no nothing. You don't believe in anything!"

I couldn't stand it at her words and grinned.

"But you don't believe in anything either."

"THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT SOD!"

The girl shouted, almost spitting with anger.

"Sod will punish you all for your unbelief! WILL PUNISH WITH OUR HAND! For there is no need to tear Sod away from his unknown paths! WE WILL DO THIS!"

"You are saying this to me, a man from another world, a man who has seen the heavens, stars and other planets. There is no Sod or other Gods there. No Gods create life, the stars do."

"What are you talking about, barbarian?"

The embittered Yasmi was perplexed.

"Only Sod orders people to be allowed into heaven! Only Sod creates life! Life cannot come from nothing!"

"But that's how life came into being. We don't have Sod and we can freely go to heaven, but we create the essence of our life, its goal ourselves, without the orders of the so-called higher powers."

«But if you are a civilian, then flying into space is still very expensive.»

I added to myself, but decided not to voice it out loud because this native simply would not understand me.

The girl, however, did not calm down. Her usual worldview was crumbling right before her eyes. She just didn't want to believe what she heard. Hammering the nail of doubt into her was my first step towards extracting from her everything she knows.

Once upon a time I believed in something firmly and without any doubt. Republican propaganda convinced me that people must be united to resist possible alien threats, and especially fucults. Now I don't believe it.

Humanity, no matter what it is on a galactic scale, does not threaten anyone, and the fucults do not need war; they also do not threaten anyone. I have seen too much in life to begin to doubt many things, but before that I simply could not give up what I was firmly convinced of. I was tied to the republican faith, and when my eyes began to cut my faith with a knife, I grabbed onto it with my last strength until I finally let it go, threw it away from me.

I did the same with Yasmi. She was fanatical, did not doubt anything, and I destroyed her worldview. Now she has clung to her faith tightly and for a long time, but crush her faith completely, and she will immediately open up and begin to be interested in other things and look at the world familiar to her in a new way.

Will I be able to win her over to my side? I think it's unlikely, because she's too fanatical. Perhaps someone else, for example Fred, will do the recruiting. He may be rude in his own way, but his medical care will leave Yasmi with a good opinion of him.

«The main thing is not to drive her to suicide.»

I constantly emphasized to myself. Yasmi, meanwhile, clung to her faith with all her might.

"You are blatantly lying to me, barbarian! No matter what shackles you use to shroud the righteous eye in darkness, you are a liar! No, you yourself believe this lie! It was instilled in you by your insignificant evil patrons. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING! You did not know this world.

"I would like to tell you the same thing."

I answered calmly, to which she snapped again.

"MY FAITH IS PURE AND SINCERE! AND YOU, WORTHLESS ONE, ARE STANDING IN THE WAY OF SOD WILL!"

"I don't give a damn about your Sod. He is nothing to me, just a word from your mouth."

"YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR BARKING, PLEBEIAN! SOD WILL PUNISH YOU!"

"Let's see him try to. Who is stronger: your non-existent deity or a machine gun?"

I briefly glanced at the machine gunner's position, again reminding the girl of the power of our weapons, capable of tearing her body into small pieces. The girl's look at that moment was almost murdered. She really believed in what she said, and her faith really collapsed, or maybe it was not her faith that collapsed, but her confidence in the power of her deity.

"If there is Sod,"

I said, rising to my feet.

"Why didn't he protect you?"

"He protected; He always protects me; He heals me; He whispers to me. His great voice, I hear Him; He always commands me; He will show me the way. Never shut up, never leave, never abandon his faithful children... ...never..."

Yasmi seemed to be in prostration and talking to herself, and meanwhile I approached Uwon and said:

"I'll continue the interrogation later. Now her head needs to be cooled."

Uwon nodded with his arms crossed and went into the compartment, and we left the girl with a lot of thoughts in her head. She looked at the ceiling with emptiness in her eyes and muttered something under her breath. I, in turn, decided to return to the compartment with my guys.

At this time, Fred's subjects began to recover and rise to their feet. The native four continued to study English with Itami, and some other fighters also joined them to practice. I approached Itami and asked him:

"How is the progress?"

"Very tight."

The black-haired signalman sighed tiredly.

"They showed their alphabet on the tablet. I can't even imagine how to make the correct transcription from Latin letters to theirs so that they can more easily start learning words in English."

Indeed, learning a language is one of the most difficult tasks for anyone in any part of the galaxy. Only a few can grasp someone else's language on the fly, but the majority are tied to their worlds, their culture and, of course, to their language, and they find it difficult to learn the languages of other people, and of other intelligent species in general.

«I think if Yasmi had been obedient, she would have helped in learning the language. Since she knows English, she could parse the transcription for the local language.»

I thought and was already thinking about how to use Yasmi later in terms of negotiations and teaching the natives English.

At that moment, Uwon came up to me and said:

"Boris, we need to discuss something."

"Okay."

I answered, we moved to another compartment, where a humanoid tactical droid stood and displayed a projection from its limb on the wall, where a map of the area was displayed.

"Not a single form of life."

Uwon said. At that moment, my eyes were darting, first to Uwon, then to Fred, who had just come here, and I couldn't help but wonder:

"What about plants?"

"These are not plants, Boris."

Fred answered me, making me perplexed.

"More precisely, they are still plants, but they are already dead. They have only retained their pigment, but they are already beginning to decompose. Soon this area will be filled with poisonous gas and I'm afraid our filters won't last long."

Fred handed me a curved stick with gray leaves hanging limply. I took it in my hands and looked at it for a long time, trying to understand something.

"And what does it mean?"

I asked, to which Uwon immediately answered.

"Two options: the first is the consequences of the crash of the cruiser «Zeus». The release of toxic chemicals has filled the atmosphere with hazardous substances and is falling as precipitation right now."

"And the second one,"

Fred continued.

"This is an anomaly. My observations showed that before the rain, flora and fauna flourished here quietly, and this rain began a week before our shuttle crashed in the middle of this jungle."

"And which of the two options is correct?"

I asked, to which Uwon answered me shaking his head.

"No matter what is true, you should pay attention to the fact that we will no longer find living creatures here. This means that we can no longer stay here. Our supplies are running low. The energy will soon run out. We need to go to this Empire and hide in it until help arrives."

"What about Leo?"

I asked.

"We'll leave him a message before we leave here."

Uwon's words were a little scary. What we've been doing all this time is trying to hunt local animals to replace our limited rations with local food. Fred had already begun testing an adaptive drug on the wounded so that we could eat local food, but in the end it was all in vain. Ultimately, we found ourselves in a disastrous place where we would not live long due to the toxic rains that kill all life as such.

Uwon performed magic on the tablet, moving the position of the map and showed us a map of the continent with an orbital scan of complex life forms.

"We have two ways. Closest to the west, most likely to that same Empire,"

Said Uwon, showing bright dots that could be settlements of local natives.

"And the second way is to the east."

There were also settlements in the east, but they were further away and seem less populated than the west. Considering what we had done here, our path to the west was closed, and therefore we needed to go east, but this road would be much more difficult and longer than to the west. If we're lucky, we'll be able to meet Leo and his platoon.

"We wait for all the ninth and eighth to rise to their feet, and then we collect all the things we have and go east."

Uwon concluded our little meeting.