Path book 1 Jane

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

  "Why are they leaving, Master?"

  "Someone scared me 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," Gina whispered, snuggling up to me. "It's huge!"

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

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

  "The beast from the anti-aircraft gun? You're a barbarian!" Hem 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 steep horns 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?

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

  "Don't worry, Admiral Shepard, 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, Admiral Shepard, 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 cool horns?" My father asked.

  "Tyrannodon is very curious. If he smells it, he'll go figure it out. The cool horns 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!" Dakar 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 Gina shuddering with every step on the hologram and pressing herself 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!" Tael shouted hysterically.

  "Toliyat, take me away, quickly!" My father says 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. 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." Dakar 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 strawberry 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!

  Eugene (Mendoir, September 2360)

  Grandpa

  So the new school year started, but the girls and I didn't go to school. 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 within 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. In general, he taught us the lessons of marksmanship to the fullest.

  "Remember, girls! 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!

  At first, I didn't do well, but then I figured out how to use an average emotional shield. In general, the Guardians had three forms of emotional defense. Small shield — protects you from weak and medium emotional outbursts from the outside, stabilizes consciousness, allows you to concentrate better, but does not block your own emotions, it can be worn constantly without noticeable consequences. The average emotional shield completely blocks external emotions and greatly blunts one's own, cleanses consciousness, sharpens perception, facilitates memory work, but it is very tiring, and the strength to maintain it quickly runs out. Well, the last one is a full shield. This is not even a defense, but a way of controlling consciousness, when a reasonable person turns into a living machine. He feels other people's emotions, but stops reacting to them, his mind sharpens to the limits impossible under normal conditions. Perception accelerates, reaction time and decision-making decrease — you turn into a living supercomputer capable of solving complex equations and complex problems with great speed, a kind of "mentat" from Herbert's "Dune". Cold, cruel, calculating and, if necessary, absolutely ruthless. Unfortunately, this method had a flaw — a flaw that did not allow a reasonable person to use it all the time. This is a rollback!

  The first time, I used a full shield 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 Nain 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 took off the shield.... How I was overwhelmed! Mixing laughter and tears, I threw a natural tantrum in the corner and only five minutes later calmed down in the arms of Rien Vais.

  The teacher carried me to class in her arms, calling the high school students "brainless varren" along the way. 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 covered myself with the middle shield — and I did it. 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. Nain 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. Gina just fell in love with her grandfather, and the old admiral reciprocated the love of the little Batarian, calling her, like us, 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 snuffles 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! 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. Gina and I draw pictures that my grandfather puts on the walls. Nain embroider small pillows, which 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. Grandma, in company with Ray, arranged flower beds, and now she has a flower garden no worse than our doctor's.