The colony. Chapter 7: The Story of Angus

The clock showed the beginning of the ninth. Usually at this time in the laboratory there was such silence that if there were cockroaches here, one could hear their footsteps. But not this evening - today it was festively noisy here, and Marcus was already pouring the first glass unfiltered.

Dr. Angus was not against such a development. Perhaps he was even flattered by the fact that the laboratory had bypassed the canteen in the ranking of places for birthday parties.

“We are all professionals with you, and I’m not going to control you,” he said, “if you want to celebrate in your own laboratory, for God's sake!”

The entire base is assembled here - even the mechanics from the hangar came, which were rarely seen anywhere else, except in the hangar itself or on the sports field. Only one person was sitting in his workplace, not noticing the noise around. He constantly shifted something in the scanner, and then stuck it in the monitor and studied something. Marcus approached the man, holding two glasses of beer, and said:

- Professor Rytnov, as a junior in rank - I order you to postpone work until tomorrow and join us!

He was cheerful as always, and his red hair after a busy day was tousled even more than usual. With a smile, Raytnov got up, pulled out a small and seemingly unremarkable stone from a scanner and put it in his pocket, and then took one of the glasses from Marcus.

- Well, your health! - he said, took a long drink and nodded approvingly, - still a good beer was poured into our expedition. Forgot what is called ...
- “EarthGarden”. But this is not it.

Raytnov raised a questioning look.

- And then what?
- “Von Demetrion”, brewed in a nearby lab.

Seeing the growing indignation of his friend, Marcus laughed out loud and slapped him on the shoulder:

- You really need to relax. But agree, you either believed me for a moment, or really wanted to believe it!

He turned to the others and cried out:

- Hey guys! Alex believed that this beer was brewed in a nearby lab and called “Von Demetrion”!

The room filled with loud laughter. Raytnov also laughed - and as soon as this red-haired hochmach managed to circle his finger again?

The party has begun. The participants were divided into several circles of interest, and Marcus walked between them and tried to communicate with everyone. At first, in all circles, people mostly talked about the house and plans to return, but within an hour - as is usually the case of people who were very passionate about their work - they began to share their achievements and research results. Marcus walked past a small company of three mechanics and heard some of the conversation.

“The scientists asked us to provide them with rovers tomorrow,” said one of them, whose name Marcus didn’t even remember.
“Tomorrow won't work,” replied the big guy Joe, rolling up his sleeves and baring his hairy arms, “one of them has a generator. Tomorrow just scheduled to repair it. If they want, let them go on one thing.

Having said that, Joe laughed idiotically. Many considered him stupid due to the fact that he did not have a wide outlook and was interested in only one thing - the manufacture and repair of mechanical and electrical products. As a result, he rarely could have supported a conversation on a free topic, but it is worth admitting that he didn’t know any equal in his case.

“I’m afraid we don’t get into one,” Marcus told him and smiled, “especially if you get behind the wheel.”
- What about? - Joe did not understand, but just in case he prepared to give him a slap, purely for prevention.

Marcus, too, just in case, quickly retreated and approached another company - in which Raytnov and Angus were present. They were just discussing the recent discovery of an underground cave, and the doctor excitedly resented:

- Imagine how many new life forms we can find there? God, how can I not wait to go back and continue to research!

Raytnov reached into his pocket and groped for the stone. He was also very worried about the find, but he was more restrained in his emotions. Noticing a suitable Marcus, he withdrew him aside and said:

- Thanks for the party, friend. But I have to go - I want to throw a couple of notes and go to bed early, tomorrow is a hard day.
“Okay, no problem,” Marcus smiled, “thanks for coming!”

Raytnov drank the contents of the glass and headed for the exit. Passing by his seat, he picked up a portable scanner from the table and turned around over his shoulder to make sure that Marcus did not see it. But he watched him carefully and burst out laughing when they met their gazes.

“Here is a hard worker,” Marcus said out loud, and then returned to the company with the doctor, who in the meantime continued with even more enthusiasm:

- And imagine, if this room is not at all alone and connected to many similar ones by means of passages? Damn it, it could be a whole underworld!

Usually he did not swear, but the incredible excitement and alcohol added to the diversity of his speech. Marcus looked at people like Angus and Raytnov, and saw in them the embodiment of his own future self. These are the people who devote their lives to science and leave behind a mark in the history of Earth Civilization. Marcus was still young, but he firmly determined his own path for himself, and working side by side with such people did not allow even to doubt his future success.

The doctor looked at his glass and then picked it up, showing it to those around him.

“Is my glass half full or half empty?”

Without waiting for an answer, he put it on the table beside him and asked:

- Where is Alex?
“He’s already gone,” said Marcus, “referred to fatigue and being busy.
“And I'm thinking of referring to ill-being,” said Angus and slapped Marcus on the shoulder, “I’ll go breathe some fresh air and take a little walk.” Thank you for bringing us together today!

He went outside and walked away so that he could not be seen from the window, and then sat down on the lawn. More precisely, I wanted to sit down, but lost my balance and stretched out on him to his full height. My head was spinning, and I didn't want to get up at all. Angus closed his eyes for a moment, but it got worse — so he decided to look at the stars.

They say that only fire and water can catch the eye forever, but you can always look at the starry sky - it is the same every time, but at the same time completely different. Unimaginable scale and a huge number of untouched worlds stirred the imagination of Angus. A hundred years ago, there were active discussions on Earth about the existence of extraterrestrial life, and many fools asserted that we are the only ones in the Universe. And now the drunken earthling is lying on a lawn on another planet, breathing its air and looking upwards - where the home planet spins in one hundred eighty-nine light years.

Angus loved the night sky. It was bright, with an abundance of fat and not very stars, a multitude of nebulae of different colors and short-term stripes from meteors. And in the middle passed the sleeve of the Milky Way, dividing the sky into two equal parts.

“That's the Big Dipper,” Angus whispered.

In fact, it looked like a dim cluster of stars due to its great distance and from a different angle. Rare constellations visible from Earth could also be observed on Demetrion - he had his own sky map.

Angus forced himself to look away from the stars and rise to his feet - he didn’t want to miss several days of research because of a cold. Uncertainly, he went to the dining room to drink a couple of glasses of water, and at the same time to look for Rytnov. He was approaching the dining room when he heard the noise of a running engine.

“I knew that Alex was somewhere here,” the doctor smiled and decided to reach the hangar first.

Fearing to fall, he looked at his feet, and when he again raised his head to adjust the direction, he realized that the light in the hangar was not lit. The light of the spotlights located along the base perimeter only increased the contrast with the darkness inside it - even the rovers standing there could not be seen. Angus listened - the engine was still working, but with a strange sound, as if adding gas to idle. The sound is too strange, but somehow familiar, and Angus could not remember where he had heard it before. And after another second the sound subsided - someone drowned out the rover.

It seemed strange to Angus, and he was alert. He tried to think logically and understand who it could be and what he needed at night in the hangar. And this someone - most likely not Raytnov.

“Hey? Who's there? He cried out and immediately cursed himself for it. To attract attention in such a situation is not the best idea.

Angus backed away, keeping his eyes on the exit from the hangar. For a moment, it seemed to him that a figure had slipped in the darkness, but he wrote it off to his imagination. Walking a few more meters, Angus turned and ran to the laboratories to warn the others.

He ran past the canteen, and thirty meters remained before the entrance to the laboratory, when he again heard the engine noise — louder and closer this time, and Angus was ready to swear that the rover would crush him now. He turned sharply and fell at the same time, and then covered his face with his hands and shouted. A second passed, and then another - nothing happened. Angus took his hands from his face and took a quick look around - everything was as usual, and no rover-killer drove around the base in search of victims.

Angus slowly got up and looked around again in complete incomprehension, trying to notice at least something suspicious. Even for a non-drinker and an unaccustomed to alcohol, such hallucinations after a couple of glasses of beer is absurd. Some kind of hell really happened on the base. The sound of the engine again subsided, but gave way to other sounds, which are periodically repeated - as if someone was knocking on the bass drum.

Boom! Boom!

About once every two seconds. From this sound, the internal organs vibrated, and it becomes louder. The sound of the engine reappeared, this time even louder, and now it seemed to Angus that its source was somewhere very close, not far from the dining room.

The doctor continued on his way to the laboratory, but after a second he stopped, it seemed to him that he noticed something outside, beyond the perimeter. It was as if something appeared in front of the searchlight and disappeared after a moment. And this sound, as if the engine is working - why does it seem so familiar? Where could he have heard it before?

And he remembered. Angus has heard many different variations of this sound, synthesized on a computer with hundreds of parameters. This thought made him feel the coldness on the skin. The further development of events for Angus seemed to be turned into a film in slow motion.

A harsh and unexpected sound, as if from an explosion, made him instinctively crouch, covering his head with his hands. And when the doctor looked up, he saw the pillars of the dust that had come from. His gaze slid to the laboratory building, and then to the fence behind him — there was a gaping hole, and the searchlight hung on the wires, creating a play of light and shadow. Suddenly, he fished out of the dark silhouette - something huge slowly passed to the base, all with the same sound: “Boom! Boom!". The doctor did not hear him as much as he felt the vibration.

The silhouette advanced a little deeper into the base, appeared from behind the far corner of the laboratory building and appeared in front of Angus in full growth. Titan was not at all like the three-dimensional models that scientists built in trying to guess its appearance. They drew something like a tyrannosaur - an image, of course, also terrifying, but the titan looked even worse. His tail was longer and thinner, and at the end of it was a massive bone growth, which he used as a club. The front legs were almost as powerful as the hind legs, and did not resemble a stump taken away by evolution as superfluous. The shoulders were powerful and wide, like those of a man - the bodybuilder-athlete looks like that, who trains only the torso and arms, letting in the legs. But the most terrible in the image of titanium was his head - she looked like a bare skull with a huge mouth and the same gaping hole instead of a nose. Add another fiery breath - and you can safely insert as a final boss in any computer game.

The doctor froze in place and did not dare to move, just in case he covered his ears with his hands. But the titan died down and slowly began to look around, looking for a victim for himself. Another second, and he would notice the doctor, but Angus could not take his eyes off him, like a rabbit looking at a constrictor waiting for its fate.

Suddenly the door hissed, and Joe, already pretty drunk with a bottle in his hands, stepped out into the street. He immediately noticed the doctor and took a couple of steps in his direction. Two more people appeared in the doorway, but they were afraid to go outside and looked around cautiously. The rest stuck to the windows and also looked around.

- Doc, why are you laughing? - shouted Joe from afar.

Angus just raised his hand and pointed somewhere behind him, without saying a word. One of the people in the doorway, a low friend of a mechanic, took a step out and looked in the direction indicated by the doctor.

“The sound was as if the wall had fallen,” Joe continued, “what is happening?”
“D ... Joe ..."

Joe didn't even turn to the voice.

- Shut up, midget! Every day we are doing something for these egg heads, and they break the base here at night.

Boom!

One more step. Liliput quickly came back and disappeared in the doorway, and all the observers suddenly recoiled from the windows. Joe finally turned to look the way the doctor pointed. When he saw the titanium, he uttered the word that all the surprised mechanics usually say, and then took a sip from the bottle and swore again, firmly, this time. The titan ducked and looked at his victim for a few seconds, and then began to inhale the air with a whistle. Angus covered his ears again with his hands, but still he clearly heard his powerful roar. Joe reeled from the airflow and the sharp stench emanating from the creature’s throat, but quickly recovered.

- Fuck you! - He screamed and threw the bottle with a swing into the open mouth, and then ran towards the residential buildings, away from the laboratory.

Running two dozen meters, he turned around and shouted again:

- How do you, scum like?

(image taken from the Doom game)

The Titan stopped roaring and turned his head in his direction, but he did not rush in pursuit. Angus was still in the same place and still did not dare to move - he only cursed himself for having missed a great chance to escape. He mentally promised himself to use the same opportunity, but suddenly became cold - the titan was looking straight at him.

- Well done, damn it! - the doctor said to himself, - now you are dead!

There was no less than thirty meters to titanium - but what does this mean for such a whopper? A couple of steps. Angus cast a quick glance toward the dining room and realized that it was only ten meters away - far less than he had imagined. In my head from fear, for some reason, any shelter automatically moved away for hundreds of kilometers.

Staying in place is certain death, so it is obviously better to use at least some opportunity to be saved. The doctor jumped to his feet and ran to the entrance to the dining room, but he did not approach at all, and seemed to even move away from him, violating all the laws of physics. It seemed to Angus that he was already running for ages - his breathing was lost, and his pulse rose to a good 180 beats per minute, but he did not look back. But he listened, hoping never to hear the sound of the drum.

Boom!

A new step, and all hopes of Angus for salvation disappeared with him. And Angus turned to face his death. To his surprise, he discovered that the titan had not pursued him - no, he was much smarter. He stood next to the laboratory building and seemed to understand that right here, in this fragile box, there is much more food.

Feeling in relative safety, the doctor stopped in the doorway and watched. Titan walked away from the lab a little, without losing sight of it, but did not take any active actions, which seemed to Angus quite interesting. People inside the laboratory also watched with interest with what was happening, once again clinging to the windows.

“Maybe they don’t see us as prey?” - someone asked.
“If you want, go out and talk to him,” answered the one whom Joe called Liliput. Joe himself could not be seen - apparently, he also decided not to tempt fate and took refuge somewhere.

The laboratory was quiet - as is usually the case here at this time.

“It is clearly waiting for something,” Marcus said. “We need to somehow slip into the bunker.”
“But if it wanted,” someone else said, “the whole corps would have already smashed!” Look at this growth on the tail.

People were divided into two camps - someone really believed that the creature was not hostile to the colonists, while the rest wanted to get into the bunker.

“This is stupid,” said Liliput, “you look at his face and physique — does it seem like he eats grass?” Where did this devil come from?

Suddenly, everyone fell silent and began to slowly move away from the windows - the titanium began again with a whistle to draw air into the lungs, which seemed to have an infinite volume. Finally, the whistle ceased, and for a second there was silence, which seemed like a calm before the storm. Titan took a step forward and roared, while spreading his front paws wide apart. One of them, he touched the radio tower, which tilted strongly, but did not fall.

- Need to send a signal! - Marcus guessed and rushed to his workplace.

He wrote two messages to the rest of the bases - the first contained only three letters: “SOS”, and in the second there was a little more information: “Titan attacked Alpha”. Marcus clicked on the “Send” button and drove a slow car with various expletives.

“Sending messages ... 1 out of 2” was shown on the display, and then the unit was changed into a deuce - the first message was gone.

“Excellent ...” began Marcus, but did not finish.

"Mistake. Check the signal. Number of unsent messages: 1 ”. Marcus looked up - the radio tower lay in the middle of the take-off area, hopelessly crushing a helicopter.

Angus watched the same picture from the dining room. Two desires fought in it — rather, run to the transition to the bunker and hide or stay in place and watch. The titan was silent, but he still didn’t take any action. We heard only new blows to the barrel.

Boom! Boom!

The footsteps grew louder, and soon the searchlight snatched another silhouette out of the darkness. “They hunt together,” thought the doctor and smiled involuntarily. So many unique discoveries in one evening - more than in all three months. Angus was afraid to admit to himself that he really found what was happening very interesting, but he reassured himself that he could not help his comrades.

The second titanium also approached the laboratory, as if realizing that there was prey. Both monsters suddenly turned around and with a sweep of their tails struck the hull, smashing windows and breaking beams. Angus turned away and headed towards the bunker - he no longer wanted to see this scene.

The searchlight no longer hung on the wall and snatched new silhouettes - apparently, it was broken by another unwelcome guest.

I will be glad to see everyone in VK group :)