Path book 1 Igor

"We'll catch up in five minutes— there's a herd of hornbills coming. There are always predators following him. If you're lucky, look at the maned ones, or maybe even at the tyrannodon!"

Silence in the car, you can hear the wind whistling and the mass converter humming. A huge swaying herd is becoming more and more clearly visible on the horizon.

"At nine o'clock— the maned wolves leave the herd. I'll start now, and we'll take a parallel course. Watch and record on camera, just don't shoot! They'll see it, they'll lie down, we won't find it in the grass."

"Understood, master!" The men answered in a discordant chorus.

The same steppe is in the frame, now huge, beautiful animals are galloping along it with an incredibly smooth gallop. Their running is silent and swift, powerful muscles rolling under their shiny black-and-gray striped skins, manes fluttering. The flock, about twelve individuals, stretched out in a sharp wedge and goes towards the foothills.

"What beauties!" someone's admiring voice is heard.

"Why are they leaving, Master?"

"Someone scared them off."

"Who can scare someone like that? They're bigger than a polar bear! Mother of God, what beauties! Steve, did you get it?"

"Yes, Dad."

"On the plains, the maned ones are afraid of only one thing — the tyrannodon. So he probably scared me off."

"Is it that... that hairy tyrannosaurus?"

"Ha ha ha! Precisely! He..." The flier makes a turn, and the flock stays away, and the approaching herd is visible again. A cloud of dust hangs over it, and the roar of many animals can be heard. A brown sea of backs, with horns sticking out like a stockade. HE's stomping behind it all! Even from a distance, the creature made an indelible impression. She reeked of such power and danger that everyone sitting in front of the hologram gasped.

"How scary he is," Azanti whispered, clinging to me. "Huge!"

"What can you shoot him with? He can't even scratch himself with carbine bullets like duck shot."

"You can probably use anti-aircraft guns!" Denis muttered.

"The beast from the anti-aircraft gun? You're a barbarian!" Azat laughs.

Nervous laughter rushes through the front garden. Let's look further. The flier cuts circles around the tyrannodon, but the beast does not care about him, he slowly wanders around the herd. The steepthorns are huddled together: in front of them are large males, two and a half meters at the withers, followed by females, and in the very center of the herd the cubs are plaintively roaring.

"What a colossal creature! Master Tanris, may I fly closer?"

"Don't worry, Admiral, he's massive, but he's very nimble, if he hits, we can fall, and that's certain death."

"Then maybe we'll land in those bushes over there, he'll pass by, twenty meters away, and we can take pictures in peace. He won't even notice us. How do you see it?" the grandfather asked.

"You can, of course. But, Mr. Admiral, you simply have no idea how dangerous this is. Tyrannodon's eyesight and hearing are not very good, but its sense of smell is like a dog's! If he smells it, he'll have to run very fast. Aren't you afraid?"

"So is he going to fall for us instead of the coolheads?" My father asked.

"Tyrannodon is curious. If he smells it, he'll go figure it out. The coolheads aren't going anywhere, and the new smell... maybe it's delicious? Who would he be afraid of on the plains?"

The men started talking, argued, and finally decided to sit in the bushes. Bushes appeared in the frame — not very large from a height, up close they turned out to be two-meter thick thickets of thorny tangled branches with thin needle-shaped leaves and long, sharp and scary-looking spines. There was a small clearing inside, slightly larger than a flyer.

"Like a refuge in the steppe!" Dahi said, looking around.

"Yes, it looks like it," the father agreed.

The camera swings and periodically jumps from one to the other, it is clear that the uncle is wearing a helmet. They squeeze through the bushes, and the standing herd becomes visible. The Tyrannodon enters the frame, and it's even scarier from earth. Someone groans softly from my uncle's side.

"Hush!" someone is whispering. The creature's footsteps echo clearly on the ground. It can be seen that the camera shudders slightly with each step, or the uncle along with the camera. I can feel Azanti shuddering with every step on the hologram and pressing closer and closer to me. The beast walks slowly, not taking its eyes off the herd. He stopped, lifted his head, and sucked in a deep breath. One, two, three. He starts to turn around.

"Spotted it! Let's run to the car, quickly!" Toliyat whispers loudly.

The camera shows that the men are running: Tael's back looms in front, and his father is snuffling on the right. When they jumped into the flyer, my uncle fixed the helmet on an arc and turned it towards the herd. The tyrannodon's head appeared above the bushes, and almost the whole thing appeared, the bushes up to its belly. She stared with crimson eyes at the flyer, the mouth opened — and the beast let out a low throbbing roar.

"Kila! He's going to eat us up!" Aegich shouted hysterically.

"Toliyat, take me away, quickly!" The father speaks loudly.

The beast moved forward, the bushes crackled. The men in the car screamed in fear, and so did everyone watching the holo. The car got up and flew away from such a dangerous place with increasing speed. The Tyrannodon watched her go with attentive eyes and roared again at parting. The recording ended, silence hung over the front garden, and after a short pause, Mom said in a quiet, calm voice:

"Men, you are all frostbitten fools!"

The men were dejectedly silent. I felt that my mother was supported by absolutely all the women sitting next to her.

"Have you noticed the oddity?" Uncle Steve asked.

"Which one?" several voices answered at once.

"Look at this!" uncle rewound the recording and started it at a slow speed.

"The tyrannodon did not climb into the bushes at all — there are thorns as long as a finger and even it can be scratched, and any wound is dangerous for a wild animal. He just scared us, roared, pressed his chest against the bushes and waited for us to break into the steppe, but we couldn't get away from him in the steppe."

"Well, Tolyat, well, the bug! Tricked us! And we believed it.... Note that such islands of bushes are scattered quite often across the steppe. Obviously not for nothing!" said the grandfather.

"As if someone had planted it on purpose.... But who? They're obviously not colonists or game wardens," Dahi says, sitting with a thoughtful look.

"This planet is full of mysteries, and I don't know if we'll solve them all. The colony is only 15 years old", A quiet Quarian voice is heard.

It's time for my uncle to leave for the Navy, his vacation is over. He takes with him a canister of wild berry juice, a tyrannodon claw on a stand, holos and impressions. Tael was completely taken aback, and they took him home by the arms. The grandfather hugged his uncle goodbye, told him not to embarrass him, showed his fist and went into the house. There were parents and children left. Uncle looked around at us all with a dazed look and smiled.

"How I will miss you! But never mind, wait for next year, I will definitely come!"

Chapter 8. They know everything!

Igor (Mendoir, September 2360)

Grandpa

So the new school year began, but Nasar and Azanti did not go to school. Grandfather went to the director and arranged for us to extend our holidays for two months and that he would study with us himself. We only went to the mnemograph, the rest of the time we spent fishing or hunting. Grandfather bought us three light carbines and taught us how to hunt. The compact and lightweight 6.5 mm carbine, weighing only 1.5 kilograms, was incredibly convenient in hunting "mukliks", so named for their characteristic sounds. In the foothills, you could often hear their "kli-kli-mukli-kli-kli-mukli" and see their ears sticking out of the grass. The animals are extremely cautious, and they only let themselves in at 300-400 meters. If you get closer, they hide in holes, and those are like a maze, all the hills are covered with them. So you have to shoot from four hundred meters, and from that distance you can still hit a small target.... But, as my grandfather says, "You have to teach a reasonable person to shoot, and the sooner the better." So he took the three of us into his fold, and we spent two weeks at the city shooting range, where grandfather taught us how to shoot, take care of weapons, properly load and unload, calibrate bullets, and monitor battery charge. In general, I fully taught the lessons of marksmanship. Remember, kids! The main thing in marksmanship is not an eye or a sharp eye, although they are, of course, also important. The main thing is endurance and proper breathing. You have to feel yourself, watch your breathing, and then no goal will escape you. A real sniper is always calm when shooting — everything around him can collapse, explode and go crazy, but the shooter must be able not to be distracted by this. When hunting, you should not let the excitement capture you — the beast feels your desire to kill it, starts to get nervous, and this can cause a miss. Be calm — imagine that you are a grass, a bush, a tree. You're impassive, but you keep a sharp eye on your prey. A shot and the prize is yours!

I start reading all the emotions around, but I react to them mechanically. Consciousness calms down and you look at everything as if through the sight of a rifle. For the first time in my life, I used the combat mode of consciousness to prevent a brewing fight between classes — in our school, the ninth and tenth grades decided to sort out the relationship in this way. My appearance scared not only the pretty grown-up guys, but also the teachers.

As Nasar said:

"Your eyes have become like two laser sights-cold and scary. Like a droid. It was impossible to look into them..."

At that time, I simply crushed the elders with logic and a look, then I moved away from the silent brawlers and returned to a peaceful mode of consciousness.... How I was overwhelmed! Mixing laughter and tears, I threw a natural tantrum in a corner and then dumped into our shooting range, where I sat down until the evening with rifles.

The teacher called the high school students "brainless varrens" when I broke away from her embrace and left. Then they came to apologize for their unworthy behavior, the whole crowd. After all, the Turian method of clarifying relationships was cultivated at school: there are complaints — welcome to the gym in the ring, find out there, and do not arrange an ugly mass brawl at school. And it worked great with all kinds of intelligent school students. Humans, Asari, Turians, Batarians, and Drells all found this way of resolving claims quite appropriate, if, of course, the verbal arguments ended. So, I rebuilt my consciousness into a combat one, and I succeeded. The lightweight and comfortable carbine, with low recoil and good 2x optics, allowed me to shoot 95 out of 100 at a 150-meter range and hit the "muks" from four hundred meters. Nasar was doing well too.

Our artist is not shining yet, and anyway, she has plenty of other advantages. She doesn't like hunting, she feels very sorry for the animals, even to the point of tears. Her grandfather does not force her, on the contrary, he teaches her to notice various subtleties in nature, to see nuances with her artistic perception. She sees details that we don't even notice. Azanti simply fell in love with her grandfather, and the old admiral reciprocated the love of the little Batarian, calling her his granddaughter and responding when she calls him grandfather. Natoli is simply shocked by the behavior of the strict admiral! And I'm glad — I feel like Arthur just got younger inside, what a cheerful fire his eyes are burning. An avid hunter and fisherman, he received a huge patrimony on Mendoir to realize his passion. And even if you can't hunt on the plains, hunting in the foothills, for nazumi and mukliks, is quite enough to satisfy a hobby. I remember a recent conversation between him and my grandmother, where they decided to stay with us on a permanent basis.

"Archie, tell me, are you so eager to participate in local life... aren't you going home?"

"Tell me, Liv... tell me, what awaits us on Earth?"

"Well... we have a house there. Where we lived for many years and where our children grew up."

"Olivia, but it's empty! There's not even a cat in it. And here we have everything! All of our people are here, everyone we love is here, even Stephen visits the guys more often than we do. So what have we forgotten on Earth? Longing? Loneliness? What?! Olivia, look at you! It's like you've lost twenty years, you've blossomed, you're glowing! Why should we leave here? We don't even have any friends left on Earth! What about our house? Back on Earth... What will happen to him? And what about the house? It's just a pile of rocks, it's useless without tenants. We'll hire a company to keep an eye on you, because you don't even have flowers there, Liv!

"So, are we staying?"

"Yes, Liv, I'm in favor of staying! Do you agree with me?"

"You old fool! Of course, I agree! But, Arthur, where are we going to live?"

"Liv, our savings are enough to buy a whole city here, not like a small house across the street."

"Arthur, there's no house there!"

"So we'll put it on!"

Since then, the house of my grandfather and grandmother has been standing in front of our house. And grandfather, with all his fervor, is engaged in its arrangement, attracting us all little by little. Azanti paints paintings that his grandfather puts on the walls. I embroider small pillows that my grandfather laid out on sofas and armchairs. The boys brought live perennial flowers from the foothills, and grandma planted them in pots, placing them on the windowsills. Kaadi and mom went to Gagarin, and there, in a shop with an Azari, they bought very beautiful curtains. Kassia and mom went to Gagarin, and there, in a shop with an Azari, they bought very beautiful curtains. Grandma, in company with Ratnait, arranged flower beds, and now she has a flower garden no worse than our doctor's. My soul is just singing! If there is happiness, then here it is, around me, I can touch it with my hands!

We're lying in the grass, on a slope. At a distance of about six hundred meters from us is Muklikov hill, I practice long-range shooting. I have a praying mantis in my hands, an eight-fold optical sight with a built-in ballistic calculator and small removable bipods are mounted on it. But now the calculator is disabled, and I'm learning to shoot on my own. My grandfather is lying on the left, holding a monocular rangefinder in his hands. Nasar is on the right, holding army binoculars. Azanti is sitting three meters behind me, and what's in her hands? That's right, the album! The hill is clearly visible through the optics, and it is still empty — the mukliks saw us on the slope and hid. However, one appeared, stood on its hind legs, ears pricked up, looked around, and flew over the hills: "Kli-kli-mukli, Kli-kli-mukli." At the same time, the animal shuddered all over its body in a funny way.