Unexpected meeting. Chapter 15

The spacecraft dropped out of hyperspace silently. To an outside observer it would seem that the material body simply appeared in a nondescript gamma-flash, invisible to the ordinary human eye, against the background of the starlight scattered across the cosmos. Paradoxically, humanity, having discovered and learned how to navigate in hyperspace, still couldn’t really decide what it is.





In order to develop and understand the theory of hyperspace, humanity had to reach a new technical level of work with gravitational fields. The departure of a ship into hyperspace can be compared with the movement of a material body through a layer of water. Very thin layer of water. It is so subtle and ephemeral that it is practically invisible and not measured by any measuring instruments available to humanity. If a variable sound pressure is applied to the water layer, then an unobtrusive ripple will pass through it. To jump the ship you need to get exactly in the center of this ripple. After the ship with its large mass pierces the stretched water barrier, a large wave passes through the layer of water, as if freed. From the entrance, it begins with the formation of a depression, from the exit - a hill. The gravitational wave arises and passes through space once as a spherical wave and attenuates very quickly. In the center of the sphere of gravitational perturbation at the time of entry into hyperspace, gravity takes a conditionally positive value, at exit - negative. The gravitational waves generated by the entrance and exit from the hyperspace are the same, but they are always out of phase at each moment in time and have multidirectional propagation vectors.
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The most interesting thing is that with the same rate of flow of time before and after the transition, the absolute values ​​of the time before and after it can vary significantly. If in hyperspace the ship spent one hour, counted by ship's clock, then after leaving hyperspace, the time counted by hours in ordinary space may be longer by a second or a minute for long jumps or increase by a year or a century for nearby jumps relative to the time of entry. This is one of the biggest paradoxes of the theory of the hyperfield, or rather the totality of theories: the physical and mathematical apparatus used to describe such phenomena clearly states that the transfer of a material object is momentary. In the universe, something cannot disappear for nowhere for some time, and then appear from nowhere. You can chop time and space into pieces as small as you like, but in each piece of time a certain particle of a spacecraft will disappear from one place of the universe and simultaneously appear in another, breaking all conceivable physical limitations on the transfer of matter in ordinary space.

In order to pass through the hyperspace, you must create a transition point in ordinary space. The transfer of material objects through hyperspace is different from the process of transferring information. Hyper-communication equipment creates a transition point that closes quickly without external directional energy replenishment. To transfer the material body, an anomaly must be created that would remain guaranteed to be stable until the entire ship completes the transition. The size of the anomaly should be larger. The parameters and dynamics of the anomalies are also very different, otherwise in the predicted place the exit point will not open or open, but instead of restoring the structure of matter, there will be an emission of radiation that is energetically equivalent to the absorbed mass. The hyperlink complexes, although complex, are compact enough, which cannot be said about hyperdrives, the systems of which are distributed throughout the ship and occupy a good quarter of its volume. Power reactors and transducers, plasma generators, concentrators and accelerators, laser guidance and support systems, computational complexes for calculating anomaly parameters, predicting its behavior and adjustments, monitoring systems in various spectral ranges, emitters of a hyperfield with their complex subsystems of hyperionic pathogens. Strictly speaking, reality joked with the word “hyperdrive” in the same way as with the term “neural network” - unlike the ideas in the old science fiction literature, both of them actually represent a distributed system rather than a bunch of technologies located in one magic box. beyond the understanding of the vast majority of people.

Humanity has not yet developed a single and general theory of describing a hyperfield, although it has already learned quite a long time how to move confidently in it. Perhaps it’s precisely theoretical misunderstanding that the maximum range of a jump is limited to only one light year, to overcome which dozens of hours have to be spent, and those transitions are obtained with stable, at which the time outside and inside it flows approximately equally.

For the hyperlink theory, the theory based on hyperions — virtual particles generated at the boundary of the transition to hyperspace and connecting the radiation flux absorbed by the transition point — is more suitable. But this theory in its modern form is unable to explain all the phenomena that occur when moving material objects. To transfer, it is first necessary to also form an anomaly resembling a miniature black hole, after which conditions are created for its growth. Upon reaching a certain size and anomaly parameters, the ship increases or starts acceleration and, continuing to pump energy to the transition point on the move, rushes toward it. After some time, the equipment of the ship to create a hyperjunction is turned off and the protective systems are activated. The ship quickly approaches the transition point with a certain speed, acceleration and motion vector. At the border of the transition point, the space-time continuum is destroyed and the ship dissolves for a few seconds at the transition point, after which its destruction occurs. Simultaneously with this process, the ship appears at a different point in space. Hyperions tear apart space, instantly turning into radiation. There is a surge in x-ray, gamma, ultraviolet spectra. The manifested particle of the ship seems to change color: purple, blue, blue, green, yellow, orange, red and now the luminosity is already going into the infrared range of electromagnetic waves. As if one wave passes the entire electromagnetic spectrum accessible to human understanding, it forms a wave packet that instantly regenerates into a particle and, at the same time, by its spectral shift, or transformation into matter creates a gravitational wave. The theoretical substantiation of the manifestation of matter describes just such a beautiful process of running energy across the spectrum, which seems to draw the ship in space, although in reality radiation is detected simultaneously over all frequencies - yes, there are many paradoxes in the hyperfield theory and it’s not yet clear whether the mathematical description is too idealistic technically, people are not yet ready to penetrate this area of ​​space physics. It takes just a few seconds from the beginning of the process of exiting the hyperspace and the ship appears in ordinary space, leaving behind a very pale flash in the gamma spectrum. A rapidly damped spherical gravitational wave propagates in the nearby space. It seems that the ship was always here.

Some scientists have suggested that the ship actually moves not in the space of a single universe, but between a pair of “close” universes, which explains such a non-constant time difference. The balance of energy and matter in the framework of the multiverse remains unchanged, but from one universe the ship irretrievably disappears and appears in the other. There is a hypothesis suggesting that it is not the ship that moves in space, but the space is transformed outside the ship, “sorting out” when it enters hyperspace and “gathering” back upon leaving. Despite the fact that transitions in hyperspace have been carried out for quite some time, this area of ​​science is still very young and, as often happens with fundamentally new areas of science, it develops to a greater extent due to practical high-tech technologies creating empirical rules than academic science. It is the technological achievements of the corporation Hypertech allowed her to feel on equal footing with such a powerful corporation as NeuroBiosystem.

***

After exiting the jump, Zarkon quickly checked the ship’s state telemetry. There was no need for this - the ship launches diagnostics on its own and if it detects problems, it will notify its captain. However, during his life Zarkon managed more than one generation of ships and there were also those who did not have modern self-diagnosis systems. After several unpleasant incidents that occurred on the old ships, Zarkon took it as a rule to personally personally check the ship’s telemetry. Over time, the rule grew into a habit that was strictly followed even where it was absolutely not needed.

Separate modules of the ship were upgraded according to the technologies of the Order and required a set of statistics on performance. It is impossible to say that Zarkon served as a tester, the ship was reliable, but the Order, unlike the combat or commercial fleet of SCM, did not have many identical carriers, when you can work out some solution on several identical ships and extend it to the whole series of the same type . Therefore, during upgrades, all telemetry was collected and carefully analyzed by development teams. It was resource-intensive, but turned into a wide versatility and excellent reliability of the equipment of the Order. Zarkon did not remember a single global malfunction in the Order’s ship equipment.

Relations with this ship at Zarkon developed uneasy. It seemed to Zarkon that the ship seemed dissatisfied with the fact that every time he checked his condition after the jump. This was manifested in the fact that the telemetric information came with a greater delay, compared with those cases when he did not control the state of the ship. The ship seemed reluctant to work out a pre-compiled program after the release. More smoothly, but because of that, it accelerated more slowly. The value of delays swam quite strongly and Zarkon, accustomed to accuracy and predictability, did not like it. Perhaps this was due only to the fact that in the ship's control system, some telemetric query commands were somehow not so processed, and this led to some cascade errors that needed to be caught in the very low-level protocols for exchanging ship subsystems. But Zarkon could not understand why absolutely the whole TSCS of the ship began to slow down. Even systems that were automated at the lowest level were slowed down and the entire high-level life of the CCTS should not affect them in any way. The ship worked magnificently when Zarkon was interested only in his general condition. Thanks to the new prediction blocks, the ship performed the work very well in advance, much more often guessing and fulfilling Zarkon’s new tasks faster than the ships he used earlier. But it was necessary to start, no, not to interfere, and at least to observe the low level of the ship’s work, it became incomprehensible how it can work at all so effectively.

- Mito, appreciate our position and start moving along the route. Run the search program.

The program was compiled in advance and the search target was a ship with a local number KFN-34-AC57, the call sign "Trilem", and JTT-95-DM01, the call sign "Daona 37". Upon detection of any of the ships, the ship should have reported this to the captain. In the case of the discovery of "Daona 37" it was prescribed to move immediately to him.

- Adopted, captain.

Zarkon appreciated the delayed response of the ship and hemmed. Knowledge of the navigation map, the starting point of the position, the motion vectors of the ships, and simple linear motion equations made it possible to determine the position of the ships very accurately. The exit from the hyperjump could be called relatively accurate by cosmic standards, however, this was clearly not the accuracy for appearing in the immediate vicinity of the ships. The man left the wheelhouse - it will take time to find the ships and the ship’s artificial intelligence will cope with this on its own.

***

To get on board the government courier of the Daon series in outer space was not an easy task. On large ships there were transport gateways that were intended for sending and receiving small inter-air transport. It was very easy to move from one ship to another: a person got into the transport shuttle on one ship, the shuttle was released through the exit gateway, maneuvered and received through the receiving gateway on the other ship. Gateways are usually located in pairs, with separate starting and receiving tunnels, but a common transport platform. After landing, the man left the canoe and went about his business. If it were not necessary to be fastened during the flight and there was no feeling of weightlessness, then the trip could be compared with a comfortable elevator ride from the top to the bottom floor of a large corporate complex. The movement between the ships was automated and took place completely without human intervention under the supervision of the control systems of both ships, which ensured high reliability. There were no such locks on the “Daon”, and there was no place to place them, and it was possible to get on the ship only in the old fashioned way - through a spacewalk.

After finding the ship, Zarkon, using a pre-prepared protocol, contacted the “Daona 37” and unblocked access to the ship. In accordance with the previously laid down program of the ship’s behavior, he must now expect him to arrive on board. The route to the ship was drawn up, it was required to fly up to it, gain a foothold and get to the gateway.

“It's good that the shuttle is universal and not only designed for inter-gate movement,” thought Zarkon, pulling on his light overalls for a short stay in space. - Otherwise I would have to fly on the “chair”. And I used it already and not to remember when. If only I could get to this gateway ... And then I sat down, gave the command and watch the cartoon. ” The man finished his robes in a flexible jumpsuit-suit, drove him under his figure and headed for the shuttle waiting for him.

The shuttle was nothing unremarkable, ending in small nozzles, a cigar-shaped capsule standing on a wide monorail. Along the perimeter of the capsule were located the nozzles of the shunting engines. No portholes, observation windows or slots were provided; the walls of the shuttle had a layered multilevel structure, which, with possible impacts on external obstacles or the hull of ships, had to reach out and bend, but not break, protecting the internal capsule that had its similar protection circuit, from complete depressurization. Zarkon went inside, sat in the chair and gave the command to start. The ships agreed in advance on the optimal route and the flight program was already loaded into the shuttle. Zarcon's neural network produced a picture of the shuttle, the positions of the ships and the countdown of the time of each stage along the path between them.

The shuttle faltered, rose above the monorail and slid smoothly into the airlock. From above, it scraped several times while the upper guides of the shuttle stood on the upper monorail. “It shouldn't be like that,” thought Zarcon. “It will still be necessary to deal with this childish illness of the ship — the power of the upper rail is, then not.” The shuttle moved forward a little and stood still, waiting for the end of the air exhaust from the airlock. Zarkon felt the lightness of his body - the gateway was located outside the zone of the location of the graviators and there was practically no artificial gravity here. Finally, the lock was completed, the gateway opened in the ship’s hull and a man was slammed into a chair — the electromagnetic ejection system dispersed the shuttle through the tunnel and spat it out into space. The guide brackets slowly pulled into the shuttle, hiding behind the flaps that took their place. Shunting engines revived, the nozzles of the main engine warmed and the shuttle headed for the government courier barely visible in the distance.

Zarkon did not have to wait long and the shuttle approached and twirled a little next to the gateway of the government courier "Daona 37" entrenched around him. The man buttoned up his helmet, checked the tightness of the spacesuit and gave the command to equalize the pressure. Since there was no atmosphere overboard, the compressors pumped out the air from the residential capsule evenly for quite a long time, a small residue was dropped into space. Zarkon secured the safety cable, unlocked and carefully opened the door. Without making any sudden movements, he emerged from the shuttle and, a little pushing away from him, gently lowered himself onto the ship's hull. The shoes immediately stuck to the skin without letting their wearer fly into space. Zarkon took a few steps and, making sure of the safety of the movement, unhooked the safety cable, which hurried to crawl back into the canoe. The man slowly headed for the entrance to the ship, the gateway of which had already been prudently opened by the artificial intelligence of the ship.

***

Laer felt an instinctive reluctance to wake up. She was easy and comfortable. I did not want to make any unnecessary and absolutely unnecessary movements. She seemed to float in endless flight, and the pleasure was delivered by the process of endless soaring, which desperately did not want to interrupt. Her brain did not produce any significant effort - he definitely liked the current state of serenity. The situation was like a protracted sleep of an adult - the more he sleeps, the less he wants to wake up, especially in a situation where there is no urgent need and nothing happens if he takes a nap more, let's say, for one minute.

A similar effect has a medical capsule in the recovery mode, controlling the metabolism and chemistry of a person, as well as his neural network. The medcapsule does not allow his patient to lead at least some kind of active life, but at the same time, does not allow his mind to fade away completely, stimulating and keeping him on the thin border of the sense of reality. The medical complex through neural network access occasionally excites the nervous system, forcing the body to run through convulsive tremors, stimulating the work of the muscles and internal organs. In such a state, a person may even have pleasant dreams, but he is unlikely to be able to realize their imagination in this medical captivity.

In one of these wonders, the techniques of Laer have been lying for quite a long time, completely unaware of this fact. The medical complex helped to restore the body of Laera, the recovery cycle was already over and now he was keeping his patient on conservation. In accordance with the previously laid down program, the complex was obliged to wake the patient, but immediately after going into space the artificial intelligence of the ship intervened, which extended the storage period to the maximum possible. The medical complex is not obliged to directly obey the artificial intelligence of the ship, but this was not the case - it was given the appropriate service code, which has the same priority as the captain's access. Laer could have been in the capsule for more than one year, but today the capsule has received an external command to retrieve the patient.The team was also accompanied by the correct service code, and the medical complex, without hesitation, began to work out a complex and highly branched algorithm for awakening a person. The last was accomplished aggressively-stimulating intervention in the human nervous system. The chemical composition of the biological fluid began to change slowly. The human neural networks were given the latest instructions. The colonies of nanorobots began exodus from the surface and from within the human body. The matte capsule lid became transparent and divided into two parts, which slowly crawled to the floor on the sides of the capsule. Immersed in the darkness of the room lit up with a soft yellowish light pouring from the entire surface of the ceiling.The chemical composition of the biological fluid began to change slowly. The human neural networks were given the latest instructions. The colonies of nanorobots began exodus from the surface and from within the human body. The matte capsule lid became transparent and divided into two parts, which slowly crawled to the floor on the sides of the capsule. Immersed in the darkness of the room lit up with a soft yellowish light pouring from the entire surface of the ceiling.The chemical composition of the biological fluid began to change slowly. The human neural networks were given the latest instructions. The colonies of nanorobots began exodus from the surface and from within the human body. The matte capsule lid became transparent and divided into two parts, which slowly crawled to the floor on the sides of the capsule. Immersed in the darkness of the room lit up with a soft yellowish light pouring from the entire surface of the ceiling.

Laera’s serene state, having no beginning or end, was suddenly broken. To her suddenly and abruptly returned memory. She remembered. I heard the sounds of a battle in the hangar. How quickly returned for the previously observed kinetic rotary induction gun. How to drag this heavy weapon to the upper levels and opened fire on the person trying to kill Lex. How she had to go down several levels. How she pounded this man behind the bulkhead. As he abruptly rolled out into open space and fired somewhere higher than her. Laera thought that he was wrong, missed, and decided that now he definitely had no chance against her FIRM, when suddenly everything swam around her and suddenly collapsed. Laer remembered how the ringing noise of collapsed metal structures was flying down, a dull blow of a fall. Finally she remembered the painwhich the neural network could not pay off, the pain that made her open her eyes and convulsively twitch. In the capsule immediately opened the drain holes and the level of the liquid, rich in oxygen, quickly fell, revealing the patient's body. Laera jerked once more, realized herself and, involuntarily trying to scream, choked on the liquid inside herself. A gag reflex triggered, forcing her to roll over and kneel, spitting out liquid on the way. The fluid was viscous and its layers seemed to cling to each other, again and again causing vomiting spasms, which help cleanse the lungs of fluid. Finally she sat up, knees tucked in and timidly lifting her head. A couple of minutes ago, in a capsule under a layer of clear liquid lay an admirable slim woman, a goddess with a golden-marbled body color,graceful lines of a body and thin beautiful features. Now she was a creeping and crumbling, frightening person with coarse hair, who was smeared and began to turn green in the open air gel. Directly in front of the startled woman, a display panel emerged from the wall of the medical unit on which the most important words for her were highlighted: “YOU ARE SAFE ON THE DONA 37 SHIP.” Synchronously with the text of the proposal was voiced in a soft male voice. From the point of view of the medical complex, the process of awakening the patient followed exactly the optimal algorithm that was required. The human response was as expected, the main parameters were within acceptable ranges and there was no need to force the patient to sleep.On Laer’s wrists and legs, bracelets clicked and thin, but rough to the touch, threads began to slowly pull them onto the side walls of the capsule. Laer frantically threw them off. Above clicked, the woman raised her head and instinctively crossed her arms over her head, protecting her from something falling from above, which turned out to be a stream of water. Warm water with elastic jets cleared the human body and capsule from the gel soluble in water. After the flow of water from the bottom of the capsule, a warm wind blew, drying the human body and the bottom of the capsule. The medical complex reported on the completion of its neural network program of its patient, which until that moment had been forbidden to interfere with its vital activity. Bordering on magic, the process of human rebirth is over.Laer frantically threw them off. Above clicked, the woman raised her head and instinctively crossed her arms over her head, protecting her from something falling from above, which turned out to be a stream of water. Warm water with elastic jets cleared the human body and capsule from the gel soluble in water. After the flow of water from the bottom of the capsule, a warm wind blew, drying the human body and the bottom of the capsule. The medical complex reported on the completion of its neural network program of its patient, which until that moment had been forbidden to interfere with its vital activity. Bordering on magic, the process of human rebirth is over.Laer frantically threw them off. Above clicked, the woman raised her head and instinctively crossed her arms over her head, protecting her from something falling from above, which turned out to be a stream of water. Warm water with elastic jets cleared the human body and capsule from the gel soluble in water. After the flow of water from the bottom of the capsule, a warm wind blew, drying the human body and the bottom of the capsule. The medical complex reported on the completion of its neural network program of its patient, which until that moment had been forbidden to interfere with its vital activity. Bordering on magic, the process of human rebirth is over.Warm water with elastic jets cleared the human body and capsule from the gel soluble in water. After the flow of water from the bottom of the capsule, a warm wind blew, drying the human body and the bottom of the capsule. The medical complex reported on the completion of its neural network program of its patient, which until that moment had been forbidden to interfere with its vital activity. Bordering on magic, the process of human rebirth is over.Warm water with elastic jets cleared the human body and capsule from the gel soluble in water. After the flow of water from the bottom of the capsule, a warm wind blew, drying the human body and the bottom of the capsule. The medical complex reported on the completion of its neural network program of its patient, which until that moment had been forbidden to interfere with its vital activity. Bordering on magic, the process of human rebirth is over.

Full recovery is most effective only if the patient has a neural network with an accumulated body work statistics of at least a year. An ordinary person after the revival procedure requires a full day to be fully aware of reality. During the first hours after recovery, there is an extraordinary ease and flexibility of the body, you do not want to go - you want to run, jump and be interested in everything that you will meet on your way. Like a child who knows the world, a person receives a lot of emotional impressions, from which his psyche gets tired quickly and requires sleep. A neural network that is practically inactive during this cognition is activated during sleep, completely checking itself and re-calibrating itself under the organism of its carrier. After a long sleep, a person wakes up with a feeling already known to him,familiar and unsurprising reality as if it came tomorrow after the events that led him to the medcapsula. Laera had a completely non-standard neural network and a subconsciously trained psychological program of recovery in such situations, so the whole process took no more than half an hour, which she spent motionlessly sitting at the bottom of the medical capsule.

Finally, the woman straightened up and confidently stepped outside the medical capsule. The medical unit was a small room, so she immediately noticed a bag of clothes. Having unpacked it, she was surprised to pull out of it a long black dress, more appropriate on some social events or entertainment liner than on board a government courier. Even more impressed by her unremarkable soft slippers, which did not fit the luxurious dress. “At least under the color of the dress,” the woman automatically noted to herself. Laera did not know how she got here and how much time had passed, although, judging by her awakening, she guessed that there was obviously a lot. She checked the neural network connection with the ship and decided to clarify the current situation.

- Daona 37, what is my status aboard ship?

- Your guest status. Go to the shower, after which your waiting in the mess room.

"Oh, how?", Laera looked at the clothes she was holding. The dress was with a non-standard automatic fit, obviously high-quality and expensive. - "Before you put on this is worth putting yourself in order." The woman walked to the door of the medblock, which immediately opened. In the corridor all the doors were closed, except for the shower. The program of her actions was painted and in this situation there was no reason not to carry it out.

***

The door to the mess room opened and a woman entered, wearing an elegant black evening dress. The absence of ornaments and other secular merchandise only emphasized the harmony of the outlines of its owner. The person sitting on the couch apparently worked with the neural network, therefore, somewhat belatedly he rose to meet the visitor. Laera recognized in him a stranger, whom she seemed to be trying to shoot in the hangar just yesterday. The stranger bowed slightly.

“Laera Sibiria, please,” the man made an inviting gesture on the opposite sofa. “It’s just a little over one hour after waking up.” I am impressed.

Laer hesitated, staring at the man. She understood perfectly well what she would see in the mess-room or Lex, or this man. There could have been other options, but in understanding the current situation of Laeer, they were much less likely. Judging by the events of this hour, this stranger was most likely. The lack of Lex was disappointed and alarmed at the same time.

“Lex is all right,” the stranger seemed to guess the flow of Laer’s thoughts. - Actually, the discussion of how it is now safe to meet with him and how to continue to live together is one of the main topics of our current meeting.

Laer slowly passed and sat down at the place offered to her. The stranger sat down opposite her, rubbed his palms, smiled, and after a few seconds began the conversation.

- My name is Zarkon. First of all, I would like to apologize for the events on the ship. I initially did not want the situation to develop in this way, but ... sometimes the events are not at all the way you originally planned. As far as I understand, a similar situation arose because of a ridiculous accident, which was simply impossible to foresee. I didn’t have goals to kill you, moreover, I needed both alive. That shot was supposed to fill up the upper levels. I assumed that you would just walk back, finding out the danger in time, but you ... - the man shrugged his shoulders - probably just fascinated by the battle, especially in the open space I represented a rather convenient target. You made a mistake that is unforgivable to a person with a preparation like yours.

The man carefully looked at the woman, got up and walked over to a small table, near one of the walls of the mess room. Laera drew attention to a suspiciously familiar package and several boxes. The stranger took one of the boxes and took out a needle case. Needle Birkona, thirty-seventh series, which were staffed only special units of the security center and a few special agents of corporations. Exactly the same that used Laer. Zarkon walked slowly over to Laer and handed her the weapon on his open palm. Laera, having paused, took the needle case. Zarkon turned away and headed back to his sofa, and for the few steps that he managed to do, Laera managed to connect to the weapon, to understand that no one had yet mastered it and to carry out identification and binding. The ammunition was full, the weapon is ready to go.Zarkon sat on the opposite sofa.

“As you probably already know, a weapon is efficient.” The security system in the mess room is disabled. And I have no armor. I know that this is not easy, but first I would like to restore confidence. Or at least its appearance.

Laera, listening attentively to the man, got up, walked over to the table and put a needle case on it. Her gaze lingered on the bag.

- Standard universal officer overalls. Although, to be honest, the dress from Reedu Work makes you irresistible. This is not surprising, since this model was created, we can say, for you.

The man’s gaze slid over the woman’s figure and settled on the awkward slippers. Zarkon once again with effort suppressed his desire to laugh and at the same time cursing himself for such an oversight - order an expensive dress and so fatally make mistakes with shoes. The store apparently took the initiative, choosing sneakers to match the color of the dress. And if the color was different? And most importantly - everything is packaged in a standard bulk package, that is, you can learn about the error only when it is too late.

Laera, without a word, came back. There was a pause. Finally she decided to break it.

- And what do you need from me?

Zarkon sighed and spoke briefly about past events, starting with his meeting with Lex in the hangar. The woman listened attentively, in no way expressing her attitude to the events being narrated.

“So now we have you on the government courier and Lex on the Trileme.” Lex thought he was saving you by courier. The program he had enacted prescribed to determine the exact position and move in the direction of the nearest world of the CWS, avoiding any contact, except in cases of threat of destruction or hopelessly emergency situations. The program is ornate and quite beautiful, compiled with the testimony of the medical complex. The medical complex was also instructed to wake you up after the end of the recovery procedure. However, after the start, my low-level bookmarks in the system worked, so the courier just follows a parallel course with Trilem, and I woke you up when I appeared on the courier.

“And now, using me, you want to contact Lex again.” Why should I help you?

Zarkon sighed.

“In a sense, to save the world,” the man looked at the questioning expression on the woman’s face and smiled. “This is ... not a quick message.”

Zarkon went to the table, opened the box and laid out two cubes of data banks on the table.

“They are both encrypted, but one of them is clearly meant for you.” The second is probably for the ICF. The codes are powerful, the days here are clearly not enough to decipher them, so you can be sure that I do not know what is inside there. I guess you know the cipher. Of course, I understand that you are an agent of the NBS, but not much more than three hours have passed since your awakening, and I suggest that you rest. Ideally, just sleep. Your, albeit specific, but neural networks need recalibration.

“I feel quite well, I don’t think it’s worth it ...” Laer began, but stopped short when she saw a man raise two hands.

Zarkon approached the woman and sat down next to her on the sofa.

“Listen, Laera,” the woman noted with surprise the softness in his voice, “I understand your impatience, but everything is somewhat more complicated than it might seem at first glance.” Most likely, we will have to hold more than one conversation before you make an informed decision. You lay in a capsule for a very long time. Lex, he is not going anywhere, if we stay here for another couple of days. There he is, - the man waved his hand toward the wall, - flies nearby, alive and well.

The man fell silent. Unexpectedly, the Laer received a neural network request.

- Laera-S, Daona 37 welcomes you. You have a captain level of access to the ship. Expect data to confirm identification.

Laer almost automatically confirmed her identity.

- Captain, identification confirmed.

The woman looked at Zarcon in surprise.

- That's right. Lex has upgraded your access level before shipping. I just give it back to you. Three simultaneously operating captains for one ship is too much, so while you rest, I would like to remove all my interventions in the ship’s system and their tracks and lower my access level. Although I will use the service codes, this work may take up to a day - the local Daona is atypically smart for its series.

Laere at the level of some sensations suddenly liked this man. There was something so aristocratic and convincing in him that allowed the weights of the relationship to swing a little out of a state of equilibrium of uncertainty towards sympathy. It was a bit silly, short-sighted, frankly naive to believe that you just want to see in this or that person and which is fraught with great emotional disappointment if this drop of your trust is not justified. Perhaps he was right that she needed to really get some rest?

- Laer Sibiriya, acting agent of NeuroBiosystem Corporation. An agent who personally has the personal confidence of the heads of corporate divisions, right up to Dyad Ivor.

Laera had ceased to be surprised at the awareness of this man, it seems that he knew everything about her.

“In view of my serious intentions, I think that I should also introduce myself completely: Zarkon, head of the Order of the Guardians.”

The man got up and suggested, involuntarily staring at him with his wide open eyes, to the shocked woman to take her to the cabin. Laera automatically extended her hand and they left the mess room. After Laera found herself in the captain's cabin, Zarkon handed over to her incomprehensibly how the package with the contents of the cabin table was in his hands and wished to have a good rest. Emotional overload added the last drop of fatigue to the newly awakened body of Laera, she took off her only dress, climbed into bed and almost instantly fell asleep to herself, amid chaotic whirling thoughts.

Zarkon proceeded to the cabin of the ship and collapsed in one of the chairs. “It seems to work,” the man thought rather. “Soon, the project of this useless neurostop implementation will be completed, and the Order, in view of the chic completion of the project“ Unexpected Meeting, ”will have a good bonus for more than a dozen years.”

The man remembered about slippers and already openly laughed out loud. He connected to his data bank, requested and filtered financial transactions, and studied the result for a while. “Well, it is,” he said in the direction of the virtual terminals of the ship, “Error in order.” In general, I was lucky that there was a point "in the color of clothes." I present the reaction of people completing the order. Probably thought that this is one of the subtle secular izdevok. Zarkon again plunged into studying the data, “They didn’t even write money for them!”, Laughing at the head of the Order of the Guardians, connected to the ship and delved into the technical routine of programs, settings and protocols.

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Unexpected meeting. Chapter 15.
Text version: 1.0.4.
Date of first publication: 05/25/2018.
Last edited on July 7, 2017.

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The full table of contents is given in Chapter 1 .

Quick navigation:
Chapter 14 - previous chapter.
Chapter 15 is the current chapter.
Chapter 16 is the next chapter.

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I apologize for such a long delay after the publication of the previous chapter, but, unfortunately, I can not guarantee a speed increase. Those who occasionally kicked me for half a year through a personal, social network or even directly through a blog, I can assure you that the book is not abandoned and will be completed in the foreseeable future. I think that I managed to work out the detailing of this chapter quite well (I’d still have to return to it so many times), I hope this will somehow compensate for the length of her waiting.

I want to share a little news. Now it is not necessary to collect all the chapters in a single book or read only through the site / blog / social network - at the long-standing request of the workers, I decided to learn and do the general assembly myself and post them in my blog. The blog has a new horizontal menu item called "Library", where you can download a book in fb2 format. Since chapters will be added and sometimes even corrected, the fb2 build will also be updated.
To simplify orientation, the assembly, as well as individual chapters, will have a version, and at the end of the text provides information on the chapter versions included in it. Version 0.1.0 corresponds to the assembly of the first 14 chapters. The major number takes the value 0 until the book is completed, after which it will change to 1 and this will no longer be an assembly of chapters, but some kind of full-fledged and complete work. You can read about version 2 in the epilogue to chapter 12 , although the further it becomes, than something to me, it becomes doubtful that I will go to “there” on my own, and if I do, I will do something. The second digit will increase one time as each new chapter is added. The minor figure will change when the chapters are updated - in the overwhelming majority they are insignificant and do not require rereading of chapters.