The Road to Nowhere

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***

2012.

* * *

The young man walked down the street of the city-station with a quick, confident stride. Houses-bays, big signs, lots of advertisements, noticeable and not so noticeable. He breathed in the smells of the space station - the smells of various intelligences, rubbish, ship's grease, filtered air... His path led him to one of the many shops. He turned down a side street and found a shop called "Shandri's Goods" and went inside. The atmosphere at Shandri's hadn't changed in years, perhaps even centuries. A half-dark shop, an unfamiliar warm yellow light, a terminal on a table, a salesman - not particularly polite, but kind, a lot of advertising posters of different times on the walls. The salesman examined the young man with all four eyes and raised his paw in greeting:

- Hyarty! You are still alive!

- You will not wait, as they say in my homeland," Hjarti leaned on the counter next to the vendor. The seller reminded Hjarti most of a big four-eyed mongoose with sharp fangs and tenacious paws. Same fur.

- What do you want?

- Three months worth of food, some variety, some guns....

The vendor grinned, baring his fangs:

- Hunting again? Who is it this time? - A bottle of beer and two mugs were quickly extracted from under the counter, - will you have a drink?

- Always," Hjarti agreed without feeling threatened, "two fingers...

However, the seller poured the bottle equally and drained his glass in a gulp: "More from your batch. I saved it, it's very good booze. Where did you find it?

- Where did you find it, it's gone," Hyarty ran his finger over the fogged mug, the beer was cold, "I need a blaster GMK-600, a needle gun.

The vendor tucked the bottle under the counter, squinting at Hjarti:

- Nothing illegal, I hope you don't need?

- Don't get your hopes up," the guy chuckled, "A bigger disintegrator, a Breaker, four explosive clips, and a crowbar.

- What?" the salesman's eye twitched.

- A steel crowbar. Five to ten kilograms of weight that would break the skull for sure ...

The salesman grinned:

- As always, in his repertoire. I don't have the scrap, the guns will be delivered to you. A hundred grand.

- Yeah, that's great. Don't forget the food, too," Hyarty turned round and waved goodbye as he left the Shandri.

* * *

"Hurry up!" - "Faster!" said the captain, "faster! What did I teach you? Use the Force!

- I am, Master!

- Then you're lazy. You're losing concentration, you need to stay calm," the captain admonished his apprentice, who had once again lost a duel to a training droid.

The apprentice, the slightly older Roma, was tiredly catching his breath with his arms at his sides. As soon as he took a break, the captain attacked Roma even harder - this time the boy had to accelerate even faster to evade the droid's attacks. The droid was fast, very fast. Roma could hardly imagine a man who could stand up to a droid without the Force. It wasn't even possible.

Roma rolled away from the attack, taking the next one on the block. A long thin sword met Roman's long dagger. The boy barely withstood a blow capable of punching through a concrete wall.

The captain spat annoyed - too arrogant an apprentice. The droid, as expected, won once again.

While Roma was catching his breath, he listened to a whole lecture on how he shouldn't have blocked the blow and dodged quickly.

- The best defence is to let your opponent's blow pass you," the captain concluded, "this droid is tuned to a level of strength not yet available to you. I don't have the muscle mass to do it.

* * * *

The backbone of every spaceship is its power source and engines. Without them, a piece of iron isn't a spaceship. Engines come in many forms, ionic, reactive chemical, plasma, electrojet... Contrary to Roma's beliefs, ionic engines weren't that cool. Their thrust was negligible, and it took a long, long time to accelerate to high speed. Plasma thrusters are much more efficient from the ground. Only they need fuel, and quite a lot of it.

The structure of the ship was extremely complex. It's very, very difficult to get all the systems to work properly. And the number of these systems is off the scale. Roma honestly studied everything to the smallest detail, although it was of little use - he still did not understand the structure of the ship. But the Captain finally allowed him to fly on a cargo shuttle around the ship, so that the boy could rest a little. The result was a puppy's delight and quite a long flight around the cave. Roma flew only on the third day, when the captain forcibly pulled him out from behind the wheel, taking control of the shuttle and demanded to continue the lessons. Annoyed boy with burning eyes went to learn maths....

* * *

1999.

* * *

- How much longer to fix? - A boy, about thirteen years old, climbed out of a narrow technical manhole. His hands and face were smeared with oil.

- Not much left. Now screw up the hatch and let's go to the power lines of the third engine.....

Roma, spitting, left the job to the droid and walked down the corridor. From engine to engine was more than two hundred metres in a straight line. On the rough terrain - much more. And it wasn't that the engines were far away - the engines themselves had a diameter of a hundred metres and could easily accelerate millions of tonnes of metal to unimaginable speeds. Roma stepped out into the technical corridor. He was wearing the overalls of a space fleet technician - simple, rough clothes, tools and a computer on his belt.

The captain was here, the holocron was attached to his belt in a special container. So the hologram could see everything going on around it. The captain was in charge of fixing the ship. Patching holes in the armour and outer hull was not difficult, it was much more difficult to repair the reactor. The huge reactor had never and never shut down, the fusion reaction in the small controlled star inside the giant reactor ball had never stopped since it was made. But the amount of energy the reactor produced depended on the condition of the current collectors, on the intensity of the reaction... Roma fixed another power conduit - a big thick cable, one metre in diameter, with a special superconducting element inside.

- Now we just need to restart the current reception from the Ioniser and we'll be able to take off.

- Then let's go... - Roma returned to his bike, on which he rode around the ship, and sat on it. The bike hovered slightly above the surface. Roma twisted the crank and flew down a large long corridor to the reactor control room. Unfortunately for him, the AI's capabilities were not infinite. At least one person could operate the ship, but procedures like restarting the reactor had to be done manually. There hadn't been a technician on the ship in many millennia, so Roman would be the first to have to employ the procedure.

Inside, the reactor control room was quite small. You could say it was a cubicle, the only control organ in it was a console with holomonitors. In front of it was a large panoramic armoured glass, through which the reactor's current collectors could be seen. Roma entered the chamber and began manipulating the control programme.

The reactor was huge and powerful - the figure of maximum power was coded as 2.25*10^11 e.u. Of course, such power was excessive for any other ship - e.u. is an Energy Unit - about fifty kilowatts by Earth standards. Enough power to power an entire advanced planet. However, the ship needed such a powerful reactor to power its hyperdrive, which allows it to move quickly through space. The reactor was restarted and the power came back on. The ship came to life.

Roma, exhaling tiredly, leaned against the wall.

- That's it. Finally.

- What are you going to do now? - asked the captain.

- I'll go home.

- All right, if that's what you want. But you can come back anytime. Life is so... unpredictable.

Roma didn't heed the captain's advice.

* * *

The exit to the surface was melted through by a turbolaser. The powerful beam made a through hole that went through five hundred metres of rock and earth, the exit to the surface. Roman packed up the hangar. An ordinary-looking kid, only in a field military uniform. Next to him, an aerospider. A small ship, literally - a flying stool, with a powerful atmospheric engine and only one place for the pilot - no one else can be put here. Roma had long ago chosen his own means of transport - he had found the blueprints for it in the ship's computer and had made it by force, taking components and materials from one of the fighters.

Two small engines in the tail - on the fighter they were manoeuvring engines, but an engine that could instantly brake and turn a two-tonne fighter could easily accelerate a light, five-hundred-kilogram, single-seat flying chair to supersonic speed. The repulsor from the aerospider, the chair from the fighter, and the hull from the drain were the strongest material in the galaxy. A coating of other material ensured it was invisible to radar, and the chameleon panels made the lander very inconspicuous - in motion it was hard to spot, like a diamond in clear water. There seemed to be distortion, but nothing caught the eye.

It was time to say goodbye to the captain. Although he was only a hologram on a small cube, Roma had already become attached to his mentor. The captain had taught Roma many, many things. Roma himself could hardly imagine what such skills might be needed for. He stopped in the hangar, putting his belongings into his rucksack. He had also borrowed the rucksack from the ship's holds. Roma had already forgotten what it was like on the surface. Catching himself at that thought, he was surprised - he had worked hard for five long years to leave the damned ship, but now he didn't want to leave. Thinking his sudden desire was bliss and just unwillingness to change anything in his life, Roma continued to pack his rucksack. Two vibro-knives flew into it - the kind that could cut a whole tree like paper and a centimetre of steel like a tin can. Vibroweapons were popular in the galaxy the ship came from. Roma put the two long narrow swords the captain had taught him to fence with there as well. Made of fantastically strong material, the swords were little more than a millimetre thick, they could withstand enormous stresses and were easily infused with the Force, making vibroblades unstoppable. They could easily cut even Linear Cruiser armour made of sap. "Sap is an extremely strong metal that was used to make the armour of almost every starship in the Empire. It could withstand a thermonuclear bomb on its surface, or a collision with a planet at high speed.

- You don't seem to be in much of a hurry," the captain said. The cube held a small drone that rode beside Roma. The hologram captain looked as usual, unperturbed and calm.

- 'I'm... I'm used to it here already, Master,' Roma blurted out, 'somehow our training ended too abruptly.

- When you were able to make a complete ship, I decided that enough was enough. By the way, your skiff turned out beautifully. You have a sense of taste.

- Thank you, - Roma sighed heavily, - I'll visit you, teacher.

- I will. Though as you wish, the image in the holocron has no sense of time or boredom. For me, eight years or eight thousand is all the same.

Roma threw his rucksack into the space behind the pilot's seat and jumped straight into the cockpit with a mighty, inhumanly light jump. He pressed a couple of buttons and the cockpit lantern closed, flight information appeared in a foreign language, which Roma already knew quite well. The boy flicked the engine start toggle switch and selected medium power mode. The speeder lifted off the hangar floor and then floated to the exit. Roma flew out of the ship very quickly, heading up the hole in the ground.

* * *

The flight was mesmerising. For the first time in years, Roma saw the sun - the real sun. He even began to doubt and forget that the world on the surface existed. The aerospider gave him a feeling of freedom. Roma made a few turns on it. Gravity compensators maintained standard gravity in the cockpit, but the sensation of flight did not go away. Roma pressed the engine control stick with pleasure and the speeder took off, flying towards the city....

Roma had a rough idea of where he was going - sometimes he would descend to find a familiar city. Some things had changed over the years, some hadn't. He flew north - towards Moscow.

The aerospider flew fast, and in an hour Roma was over Moscow. From here he was to find his city....

However, this is where the confusion began - Roma did not recognise Moscow. And perhaps, though he had spent five earth years on the ship, learning Kung Fu, Power and Zen, he had learnt something. Including thinking. And he hadn't forgotten Moscow. Roma was not surprised to see the sprawling city beneath him, but..., but he did not find the skyscrapers of Moscow City. The buildings are really remarkable. From the height Moscow looked amazing - old Stalinist high-rises, the river across the city... The view of the city reminded of a map, only it was reality, not paper or a computer screen. Roma flew over one of the Stalinist high-rises. As far as he knew, the skyscrapers of Moscow City were clearly visible from the centre. However, flying to where they should be, he found nothing.

Shaking his head, the teen directed his aerospider towards the Ostankino Tower spotted to the north, a large spire far on the horizon. Near the tower was the VVTs Park. Not a bad place to land - Roma flew over the horseshoe hotel and chose a quiet place on the edge of the park. There were few people here, the day was already coming to an end. Roma landed on the grass, getting out of the speeder as soon as all the people had disappeared. Just in case, he left the ship hovering at a ten-metre height, so that no one would bump into it.

He stepped out onto the deserted walkway and headed towards the centre of the exhibition. There were more people. Roman noticed some rather... strange clothes on some of them. Stalls occupied all corners and even stood along the central "street" of the All-Russian Exhibition Centre. This was strange - he had been here with his mother, many years ago, but even then the stalls had all been removed. Surely, a new president, new orders... - he shrugged his shoulders and, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his military uniform, moved towards the nearest newsstand.

* * *

Roma flew back at the speed of sound, clutching a fresh issue of the newspaper in his hands. There was a lot of information there, but the most interesting was the date. The end of October of the ninety-ninth year. One thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. Now it became clear to him why people were dressed so casually, there were no high-rises and so on... He flew at full speed, reading newspapers and magazines on the way, which he simply took from the seller - a slight mental compulsion and the seller already thought that Roma had paid him. He even gave him the change, and it was enough for an ice-cream.

The arrangement was as follows - the president was a certain Ivanov, a man unknown to Roma. Tsar Boris was gone, and Russia was doing quite well on the world stage. There was no less news about the Americans. Although they were still reviled as the main purveyors of democracy, which was strange.

The speeder flew into the hole made in the ground by the turbolaser. Roma landed his transport in the hangar and got out of it, carrying a pile of newspapers. As soon as he approached the cube left in the hangar, the holocron activated.

- Are you here yet? How long has it been?

- Less than a day, Captain! - the kid dumped the waste paper on the table, -teacher, I think I'm in the wrong place...

- What do you mean, wrong place? - he arched an eyebrow, -what do you mean? Are you buried there already? I'm not surprised...

- No, teacher, it's more complicated," he sat down on the nearest container, "I wasn't even born there yet... You can read it yourself....

- You explain. I can't understand anything in your language. And what is this? - The hologram poked at the newspapers.

* * *

A week later.

* * *

- Secondary circuit reactivation complete. Please leave the hangars," the ship broadcast over the speakers.

Roma, depressed and devastated, sat in the pilot's chair, staring at the numbers and letters flashing before him. He thought he was going to come home, even if it was unexpected... was putting together a tale to tell his parents, but... this wasn't his planet at all. I mean, it's his, but it's a different story. There are no familiar people - not in the government, not in the city. It's a completely different country, and yet it's the same. Same people, same problems, same world. A world where a mobile phone is still rare, much less a computer. A world where his parents are still just studying at the institute, not thinking of starting a family.

It was a difficult decision to make, but Roman was not the kind of man who would chicken out to do something big. He returned to the ship and decided to just get the hell out of this world that was foreign to him. The captain understood him, though it would take a lot of effort on Roman's part to make that decision a reality. After all, the boy had no means of subsistence, no knowledge of other worlds than the Empire, nothing.

The giant line cruiser switched on its repulsors to full power - so much so that tonnes of earth were ploughed through its thick, super-strong hull like paper with the stroke of a knife. The ground on the surface bulged, the further the ship flew, the more the ground rose. At first it was a large hill, about five kilometres in diameter, then the sight became quite extraordinary - tons of earth fell down, and in their place appeared a giant ship. The spaceship, roaring with repulsors, froze above the surface at a height of a couple of hundred metres. The giant covered a huge area. Underneath it was a ditch - everything that had once been there had been covered with earth. Roma sat in the captain's chair, the cube in front of him. The ship's ISKIN reported:

- Surface exit in normal mode. Reactor power level - twenty-two per cent.

- Raise it to thirty, - Roma commanded, starting to work on the console, - switch on optoelectronic invisibility.

- Copy that. Systems active.

Roma shifted some power to the engines, checking the dozen or so giant thrusters, they started up and the ship sailed upwards, faster and faster. In a few seconds it had already reached a speed of six hundred kilometres per hour, going strictly upwards. Roma looked through the side windows at the ground, which was now perpendicular to his gravity vector.

- Well, old Earth, this is goodbye....

- Not forever, I think, - said the captain, or rather, his hologram, - you'll come back.

- Why?

- Because every traveller needs a home. You'll understand, later. Without a home, even if it's somewhere far away, it's harder on the soul.

- Yes, you're right, - Roma agreed with him and returned to his chair.

The ship was already entering a low orbit. Ten minutes later it left the earth's magnetosphere. In front of Roma was black space. Black and lifeless at first glance.