Prohibition of Interference. Book 1

Chapter 1

The high-speed elevator carried me to the flight deck, making a quiet rustling sound. The howl of the alarm did not contribute to my mental equilibrium, and the occasional tremors that were felt in the elevator, even through many meters of ground and armor, suggested to me that the base was still holding on only by some miracle. It looked like the protective field hadn't died down completely yet, and the shuddering of the cabin floor was just the vibrations of the warhead explosions that hit the peripheral infrastructure of the lunar base, which was not covered by a defensive field. Otherwise, the elevator wouldn't be going anywhere.

I could only guess what was going on on the surface and in space right now, but there was clearly something bad going on. The elevator came to a halt. It happened much more abruptly than I had expected, and I was literally thrown into the hangar, where my fighter was standing alone. The whole squadron had already gone into battle, and the alarm caught me on the lower deck of the base, which probably saved my life in the end.

I jumped into the cockpit of the fighter and connected up its interface, and then I realized with horror that my comrades were no longer alive. Apparently, they died in the first minutes of the battle, trying to prevent the enemy, who was still unknown to me, from shooting the base with impunity from low orbit. I still couldn't see what was going on in space. The data from the scanners was not coming in, and I was afraid I understood the reason for this phenomenon. When I started the engine, I lifted the fighter above the deck and immediately went into afterburner mode, thus cynically violating all the flight instructions. There were no other machines in the hangar besides mine, and I saw no point in caring about the safety of the base equipment in light of the events taking place.

The deck, walls, and ceiling of the hangar became a blurry shadow to me. The flaps of the outer gate slid open to the sides, and above me opened the blackness of space with bright dots of stars and numerous bursts of rocket and missile explosions.

I barely made it out of the hangar in time. The scanners of the rear hemisphere dispassionately recorded the moment the heavy shell hit the hangar from which my fighter had just escaped. The instruments could no longer see the protective field above the station, so nothing interfered with the projectile, and the hangar turned into the mouth of an erupting volcano.

The full picture of the battle finally appeared before me on the tactical projection in all its ruthlessness. Our moon base was attacked by a rebel cruiser. It was quite unclear to me how this cruiser got here, in this wilderness, since only a few hundred scientists and military in the Sixth Republic knew of our base. But it didn't matter now. The cruiser loomed over the base and struck at its facilities not only with its major caliber guns, but also with its plasma cannons. At least the natives couldn't see the fiery bacchanalia that was going on in their natural satellite since our base was on the back side of the Moon.

The thought came into my head automatically, apparently due to the fact that I had spent the last year on a research station that was observing a new human civilization that we had recently discovered. Given the level of development of the locals, the Central Republican Academy categorically did not welcome any interference in their affairs, and we tried in every way to avoid showing ourselves.

Through the crackle of interference from the cruiser's electronic warfare systems, someone from the base command finally contacted me.

“Seven, can you hear me? This is Colonel Niven.”

“Seven's on the line. I can hear you, but not very well.”

“Make him shift toward the fifth anti-space defense battery. This is the last thing we have left. I need to reduce the flight time. At any cost! I don't know how you're going to do it, but it has to hover right over the launch silos, or it's all for nothing. You got it, Seven?”

“Roger that. I'm on it.”

What an order! How am I going to make a cruiser shift? It's a cruiser, and what am I? A cricket compared to it. Especially since the rebel scanners have already spotted me, and now they will start pounding me with short-range missiles, since they can't reach me with their anti-aircraft guns yet. All I have against them is speed and maneuverability. It's a good thing they didn't bring an aircraft carrier here, then I'd be finished. But my comrades had enough of this cruiser, I remembered, noticing the places where the wreckage of my squadron's vehicles fell to the surface of the moon.

I went back into afterburner mode. I don't care about the overhaul life – it's clear that this fight will probably be the last one. A fighter can only do something to a cruiser by coming in from the stern. The ship's delicate propulsion systems are, of course, covered by armor to the max, but plasma emitters cannot be hidden in an armored cocoon, so I have a slim chance. I don't need to damage the cruiser, I just need to threaten it and make it maneuver in the direction I want it to go.

Our base was dying. It was quite obvious, but Colonel Niven was not considered an experienced officer for nothing, and he knew how to wait patiently, when combat situations demanded it. I imagined him trying not to lose control of the few surviving systems down there on the lower level of the bunker, among the crumbling ceilings, and I increased my speed even though it seemed impossible. This lunar base was, of course, built as a dual-use facility, but it was primarily designed as a research base, not military, so it couldn't withstand cruiser fire for long, I knew that very well.

I think the commander of the cruiser quickly realized that I was going to attack his ship from behind, but it wasn't hard to guess. I went around the enemy in a big arc from the side of the fifth battery, which was still silent and undetectable, which is why it was still intact. The most logical action of the rebel ship, if it ever saw fit to react, would be to reduce the distance between us, and as a result dramatically increase the efficiency of all its anti-aircraft systems. I really hoped that the rebel commander would do that, but he stubbornly continued to fire on the base, not wanting to be distracted by such small things, like my fighter.

I had to provoke the enemy somehow. In principle, there was another way I could have gotten behind the stern of the cruiser, besides the evasive maneuver I was now taking, which would have been even faster, but there was almost no chance of success with that option. If I pressed close to the hull of the enemy ship and flew along it in afterburner mode, the guidance systems simply would not have time to track the fighter, because it would be in their range for too short a time. But to do that I had to break through to the side of the cruiser, and that, in fact, was the main problem. In squadron combat such maneuvers are not uncommon, but there the enemy ship is attacked by dozens of fighters and torpedo bombers at once, and the attention of anti-aircraft assets is distributed among them. Here I was alone, and the entire arsenal of the cruiser's short-range defense would be firing on my fighter, so it wasn't worth trying, but I could demonstrate my intent.

I sent the fighter into a sharp turn, and I approached the cruiser myself. The rebel anti-aircraft gunners, delighted with this gift, greeted me with a concurrent rocket salvo. At this distance, it wasn't very scary yet. The fighter's electronic warfare equipment were sufficiently reliable in suppressing the enemy's homing systems, and the maneuverability of my machine allowed me to dodge from missiles that were not too accurate. Nevertheless, this dance could not last long. I understood that, and the commander of the rebel cruiser understood it, and it more than suited him.

I jerked the fighter a few times chaotically in different directions, simulating panic as another wave of missiles approached, then I turned around again and rushed away from the cruiser, as if in desperation, trying to increase the distance. Sensing an opportunity to quickly solve a small but unpleasant problem, the rebel commander decided not to let me get away from the cruiser, and the warship started heavily following my fighter.

“Seven, you're good,” the communications system carried the Colonel's voice to me, “but it's not enough! Keep dragging it.”

Every second of delay could have been my last. It is one thing to taunt a cruiser by moving on parallel courses and evading its missiles with sharp maneuvers, it is quite another thing to run away from it when it is impossible to jerk sideways without a significant loss of speed. Of course, I should have gone into afterburner mode and quickly moved out of the effective range of enemy anti-aircraft fire, but then the cruiser would stop pursuit and all would be in vain. I gritted my teeth, but I endured it. A hail of projectiles whipped at the fighter's thin armor after a near missile explosion. A damage alert beeped and the tactical projection displayed a list of failed systems in front of me. Nothing fatal has happened yet – the most important components of the fighter are duplicated, sometimes repeatedly, but a couple more of these gifts and the damage will become critical.

I changed thrust vector sharply and went sideways, making the Split S maneuver, so I lost another few hundred meters of distance, but dodged another wave of missiles. A little longer and the anti-aircraft guns will start hitting me, and then – that's exactly the end, and missiles at this distance are much more effective.

And then something changed in the picture of the battle, and I did not immediately understand what it was. I didn't really care about what was happening on the surface of the Moon, or anywhere else for that matter, except for the small patchsection of space where my fighter was doing a death dance. Meanwhile, a lot has changed. The cruiser tried to change course sharply toward outer space, and then shuddered violently several times, cracked and began to fall apart.

“Seven, can you hear me?” The interference disappeared, but I could hardly hear Colonel Niven's voice, it was so weak.

“I hear you, Number One. Observing the destruction of the rebel cruiser. The debris is captured by the gravitational pull of the Moon and falls to the surface.”

“I'd like to congratulate you on your victory, Lieutenant, but there's nothing to congratulate you on – everyone lost in this fight. The base is gone, you have nowhere to go back to. I've got a couple of minutes left, it's all going to collapse here.”

As if to confirm the Colonel's words, I heard a rumble and a shriek from the communications system. Nevertheless, a few seconds later, Niven was back in touch.

“Most likely, no one will come here for years to come, maybe never. The civil war in the central worlds of the Republic has taken on far greater proportions than those you have been told. Chaos ensues, and no one will remember this far-flung base for decades to come,” the Colonel coughed heavily, “I don't care anymore, but you have no reason to die. If it had been like before, I would have introduced you to the Order of the First Consul – you've earned it. Except, I'm afraid, there will be no one to write the recommendation or put a resolution to it. I authorize you to land on the planet and lift the ban on interference in the lives of the natives. People there are just like us, and maybe even better, given what's going on in the Sixth Republic right now. Hopefully, with your help, they can avoid what we got into, if, of course, you see fit to help them do so. Part of the network of scientific satellites survived in orbit. I've already given your machine's computer the access codes to it. That's all I can do for you. Goodbye, Seven.”

The Colonel's last words were barely audible, and after a few seconds I heard the rumble of the collapsing ceilings in my headphones again, and the signal was gone for good.

I disobeyed the Colonel and landed on the surface of the Moon, but I couldn't find a single intact entrance to the base. I found nothing but piles of debris and many meters of rubble. The rebels even managed to destroy the Fifth Anti-Space Defense Battery, which finished off the enemy cruiser, before being annihilated. If there were any survivors on the lower levels of the base, I couldn't help them. After standing over the ruins of the base for a few more minutes, I returned to the fighter and started the engine.

After circling the Moon, I steered the fighter toward the planet. Half of the blue balloon was in shadow, and I adjusted my course slightly to enter the atmosphere over the day's hemisphere. I was neither a historian nor an expert on evolving civilizations, but my year at the station and my close acquaintance with a very pretty research assistant awakened my interest in this subject, and I even picked up some knowledge. It's a good thing Letra left for the central worlds a month ago, and I was so worried… Who knows how her fate turned out in the chaos of the rebellion, but at least she's not now lying under tons of moon soil and slab debris in the ruins of the lunar base.

Down there, according to the local chronology, the 20th century was approaching its midpoint. Electricity, oil, mechanical and electrical engineering, the internal combustion engine, automobiles, tanks, propeller aviation, the recent great war and the next one, by all indications even larger and more destructive, already knocking at the door…

Hello, my new home!

Chapter 2

I faced an unfriendly welcome from the atmosphere. A space fighter is not designed to fly in a dense gas environment, especially if it has combat damage. Of course, fighters are quite capable of landing on planets in an emergency, but in doing so they exhibit the gracefulness of an ancient flatiron and overstress the engines by operating in extremely erratic modes, which leads to their rapid deterioration and sometimes failure.

I tried to pilot my flying machine as carefully as possible, but already at an altitude of 60 kilometers above sea level the fighter's computer started beeping angrily, reporting new damage caused by the abnormal use of the march and maneuvering engines. Holes in the thin armor, punctured by the strike elements of rebel missiles, prevented the oncoming airflow from flowing normally around the fighter, which, at my speed, severely overheated the hull and the technical compartments directly beneath it, where important communications ran. The fighter was losing control. The computer was giving a very disappointing prognosis. I could count on no more than a couple of minutes of more or less controlled flight, and then the fighter would just start to fall apart.

Now the vast forests of the eastern part of the largest continent on the planet stretched below me. When I was putting the fighter into the atmosphere, I was planning to land much to the west. More populated areas began there, but it was still possible to hope to land unnoticed. Now I had no choice, so as I descended a little more, I ordered the computer to eject the escape pod.

A sharp jerk, an excessive overload, which caused my seeing red, a brief loss of consciousness… After all, the ejection system of a space fighter is not at all designed for throwing out of a capsule with a pilot in the dense layers of the atmosphere. The roar of the disposable braking engines, the crackle of the breaking tree trunks, the violent impact that shook the capsule and knocked me unconscious again. However, the battle suit quickly brought me to my senses by injecting the necessary cocktail of stimulants into my bloodstream.

I don't know what happened to the computer that ejected with me in the escape pod, but for some reason it switched into voice communication mode. Although, maybe it was stipulated by some regulations and instructions, I do not remember.

“Lieutenant Irs,” it sounded from the helmet's earpieces, “you made an emergency landing on the planet Earth. The escape pod is damaged on impact with the surface. Hull integrity is compromised. The life support test failed. There is no damage to the communication system. The power plant is functioning normally. External conditions are suitable for life. Your body condition is satisfactory.”

“Where did the fighter crash?”

“I have no way to pinpoint the exact location of the fall. The fighter crashed and partially burned up in the dense layers of the planet's atmosphere. Individual pieces of debris reached the surface ten to 30 kilometers west of the landing point of the escape pod,” answered the computer and projected on the visor of my helmet a map of the surrounding region with the area of debris dispersion.

“Excellent,” I couldn't resist a caustic comment. The computer nonchalantly ignored my words.

* * *

So, what do we have as an asset? Well, first of all, a livable planet inhabited by not-so-wild people. That last statement is a bit of a stretch, of course, but considering the circumstances, Lieutenant, I wouldn't be too picky if I were you.

I know the basic aboriginal languages, thanks to Letra and her hypnolinguistic equipment. I remember local history rather superficially, but I have a pretty good idea of what has been going on here for the last hundred years, and the computer, if anything, will always tell me, so in this respect, I hope there will be no problems with naturalization.

What else? I also kept some of the technical stuff, that this world is still 200 years away from. First and foremost, of course, is the computer that survived the landing and the remnants of the network of satellites in orbit. With a functioning communications system, that's a lot. Also, there are personal weapons, although I probably shouldn't, on second thought, carry a plasma pistol, as well as any other equipment I can't explain the origin of. Consequently, I will have to hide my spacesuit, my personal weapons, and other equipment I have, except for the ones that can be worn discreetly, which I also have. Thanks to pilot foresight – we all prefer to have a backup targeting and navigation system and communications equipment, independent of the fighter, but able to work in conjunction with its computer as a last resort. In my case, they are contact lenses on which, if necessary, information is projected from a dozen pea-sized devices that are placed in various organs and tissues of my body. For example, in my palms, under the skin behind my ears, in my liver, kidneys, and even my heart.

Together, these components are actually a very peculiar computer, the parts of which are somewhat separated in space, which does not prevent them from working as a unit. But our scientists have never learned how to stick anything useful into the brain – practice has shown that it is not necessary to do this, it is not good for man. In general, I will have something to surprise the locals, even without showing them high-tech devices.

Now the minuses and problems. The main thing is that I am nobody here. I came from nowhere, I do not fit into the local social environment, and it is very specific here and extremely suspicious of outsiders.

I found myself in a state that kind of suffers a paranoid disorder and suspects that almost every other citizen is an enemy and a spy, and I can hardly avoid confronting its security forces. That is, I need a clear and consistent legend. Of course, the technical level here is low, even the photos on the documents are flat, black and white and of such quality that it would be better if they did not exist at all. There are no unified databases at all, and those that do exist are on paper. In other words, it's just paradise for a rogue scout, from which I am not much different at this stage. But here's the trouble – I don't have the means to make fake documents even of this quality.

The specialists at the lunar base, of course, would have done it in no time, but the designers of the escape capsules and combat suits didn't think to equip their products with such devices. I could, of course, try to use someone else's documents, but I have to get them somewhere, which is not so easy to do in peacetime, and the age and sex must coincide, as well as the appearance, at least in general terms. And with this approach, it's easy to miscue on any little thing related to the biography of the character whose ID I'm trying to appropriate.

As I pondered all this, I was at the same time masking the crash site of the escape pod, in which I carefully packed all the things I had decided not to take with me. Naturally, I had no clothes suitable for the local environment, so I had to stay in my flight suit for the time being, that was worn under the battle suit, especially since the late spring in these latitudes did not promise any serious cold weather. The place where I found myself was a remote taiga, so I didn't have much trouble camouflaging a not-so-large capsule.

After about an hour, I checked everything again and made sure that communication with the computer left in the capsule and with the satellites in orbit was functioning properly, then I had the satellite closest to my landing point take a picture from orbit to make sure that the pilot of some plane that happens to be in these parts would not notice anything curious. The taiga had reliably swallowed up the wreckage of the fighter and the escape pod, but in a couple of places the largest debris still gleamed in the sun, and I decided to plot my route in such a way as to pass by them and finally eliminate traces of my invasion of this world.

After checking the map, I just shook my head: I was in the Tuvan People's Republic, not just anywhere. This strange state was formed in southern Siberia four years after the communist upheaval in Russia. Having survived the troubled times of the Civil War, the capture by Admiral Kolchak's troops, and the subsequent Chinese-Mongolian intervention, the republic, not without the help of the Red Army, proclaimed its independence, which was recognized by the Soviet Union and later by Mongolia. Almost the rest of the world considered this territory part of China, and refused to recognize the TPR. However, despite its formal independence, power in the republic belonged to the local Communists, who regarded Comrade Stalin as their older brother and teacher.

With my European appearance, it was not so easy for me to go unnoticed among the local population. However, there were also enough Russians in the Republic, and I intended to turn this fact to my advantage.

I wasn't going to hole up in the taiga. According to predictions made by our scientists-historians with the help of the lunar base computer, it appeared, that very soon Comrade Stalin's aggressive and dangerous Western neighbor would wage war against the USSR. And, like, he has every chance of putting the Soviet Union in a very uncomfortable position, for after the revolution in this large country, under the wise leadership of the Leader and Teacher, there are, to put it mildly, ambiguous, events, so that all its many tanks and planes may not help in organizing a proper repulse to the foe.

The prospect of the mad Adolf winning and taking over much of the world did not please me at all, and that is why I originally chose Soviet Union as the landing site. My scientist friend's colleagues did not eat their bread in vain, and were rarely wrong in modeling the future of pre-space civilizations. Their calculations suggested that the brunt of the war with Hitler would fall precisely on the shoulders of Comrade Stalin and the citizens of his country, rather than on the shoulders of the Anglo-Saxons, who had already been actively fighting Adolf in Europe, the Atlantic and North Africa for two years. And on the eastern frontiers of the Soviet country, from time to time samurai Japan also looks toward Siberia, remembering the wrongs done to it at Lake Khasan and the Khalkhin Gol River. It is true that these bellicose yellow-faced characters now have much more problems with the looming American oil embargo, without which the island empire will be dead in a year if not a month, so it is unlikely that they will get into a fight with the Soviet Union. But even if war comes only from the west, the key events that will determine the fate of this world, will take place here.

The taiga on my way turned out to be really dense, but a couple of dozen kilometers from the drop point the satellites saw an abandoned Old Believers' farmstead, to which I was now approaching. Given that I needed a believable legend and at least some local clothes, it certainly made sense for me to check the place out.

I had no experience walking through the taiga, so my speed left a lot to be desired. I had to go, as they say, using general erudition, since pilot training did not devote much time to the problems of survival in the forests and jungles of the oxygen planets, to say the least.

I reached the lodge when it got noticeably darker. The place really turned out to be long abandoned. Those who once lived here apparently went into the taiga and never came back. There could be many reasons for this. There were plenty of dangerous predators around, and I had more than once praised myself for that I had decided at the last moment to bring my standard pistol.

The horizontal pole fence had long since lost its battle with the rain and wind, and in many places it was gaping holes. Things were no better with the outbuildings, which stood on the perimeter of the vast yard overgrown with grass and young trees. It didn't take long to examine them. If there had ever been anything of value in those animal barns and pens, it was now just shapeless piles of decay.

The house was somewhat better preserved. The thick logs held up for now, and the owners had renewed the roof, apparently just before they disappeared. The door was a little warped, but it still seemed pretty solid. It was bolted from the outside, but there was no lock, so I, after a bit of fiddling with the rusty bolt, I entered the long-abandoned dwelling.

Apparently, only one person lived here. It looked like this house was once inhabited by a large family, but then, evidently, something happened. Maybe illness, or maybe something else. But in the end there was only one owner left. The house had two living rooms, a hallway, and something like a kitchen, although I could not identify with complete certainty the purpose of this elongated room. The roof was leaking in many places and some of the furnishings were hopelessly ruined, but some things have survived.

After a thorough search of the crudely made furniture, I found myself in possession of a pair of pants that fit me relatively well, shapeless but warm enough, three shabby shirts, some very old but neatly stitched quilted jackets, several shifts of strange-looking underwear, and, most important, a bunch of yellowed papers that clearly served as identity documents and social status documents for the locals.

I carefully read and remembered the names of the people who once lived here, their dates of birth, and in some cases – of death. The overall picture was poor. Apparently, here, in the middle of nowhere, even births and deaths were not well documented, to say nothing of other, less significant facts of citizens' biographies. But I did manage to understand some things. The documents in a separate box apparently belonged to the last inhabitant of the house – Ivan Terentyevich Nagulin, born in 1890.

Judging by the names I could make out on several covers of books blackened by time and damp, he was, like the rest of his family, Old Believer, who had gone into the woods with his parents at the end of the 19th century, and who had been staying in the taiga permanently ever since. Ivan Terentyevich was old enough to be my father, and after some reflection, I decided that I could not find a better option for my legend.

* * *

I was too late for the start of the war after all. An Old Believer who came out of the taiga, having decided to return to the world after his father's death, aroused natural distrust in the representatives of the Republic's authorities. The lack of other documents than my 'father's' passport, issued back in czarist Russia, also did not help my smooth entry into the local society. I was lucky enough to get some of the right words from the newspaper Tuvan Truth, published here in Russian, which was crudely pasted on the wall of the house of some official institution in Kyzyl. I surrendered to the local people's militia completely voluntarily, so I was beaten without any excess, just to prevent and to make sure I knew exactly where I ended up.

The district militia chief, to whose office I was taken after my arrest and initial processing, was rather skeptical about my words about the boring taiga and my desire to return to my ancestral homeland. It seemed that my case was not unique here, although it was quite rare. After the interrogation, which he conducted with a boredom in his eyes, he scribbled some words on a yellowish sheet of paper and summoned a sleepy guard, who took me to a cell with a dirt floor and uneven, badly painted walls. No one was going to feed me here, but they did give me some water.

Toward evening a representative of the local security service came to pick me up. This organization bore the complicated name of the Office of State Internal Political Security. Unlike the militiamen, the officer who arrived was Russian, and his uniform was of much higher quality. Guarded by a soldier armed with a rifle that was outdated even by local standards, I was taken to the central part of town in a very quaint and mercilessly stinking horse-drawn vehicle.

They didn't keep me in a cell and immediately sent me for interrogation. The specialists here were more thorough, in the sense that they beat me longer and more thoughtfully. Nevertheless, they weren't going to maim me, because they didn't seem to have anything to maim me for yet. Naturally, I offered no resistance, limiting myself to timely tensing and relaxing the necessary muscle groups, as well as making light movements of the body and limbs, which helped to minimize the damage to my body from the not too dexterous and skillful blows of the investigators.