We're lying in the grass, on a slope. At a distance of about six hundred meters from us is Muklik hill, I practice long-range shooting. 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. Nain is on the right, holding army binoculars. Gina is sitting in the back, about three meters away, and what is 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.

"Eugene, calm down. Distance: half a thousand and thirty. Wind: five, headwind. Drop: twelve down,— Grandpa mumbled. I'm calm, the middle shield has suppressed emotions. I put the risks in the crosshair, here's the animal in the crosshair, and I clearly realized: I'm going to miss, 530 meters is almost the maximum distance for a carbine. Fuck, fuck, fuck! The shield slides off, and goosebumps crawl down my spine. What should I do?! What if... I put on a full shield, the emotions turned off, the picture slowed down, the chirping of pseudo-grasshoppers turned into a mournful rasp, the rustle of a pencil on a pipe, the heavy breathing of Nain and the grandfather's voice, as if from a pipe, are heard, low, low.

"W-i-i-i-n-d: th-r-e-e, s-i-i-i-d-e-e-w-a-a-y-y-s o-n-c-o-m-i-ng, o-n th-e r-i-gh-t."

I aim the scope, muklik stands, the ears turn slowly, the crosshair is slightly to the left and higher. Words cannot convey my state — my head is like a calculator, the equations are solved by themselves, it is only necessary to pay attention to a particular problem. I pull the bracket -BOOM! — the butt pushes into the shoulder, I see a bullet flying, hitting muklik in the neck, just below the head, piercing through, throwing out a reddish cloud at the exit. The animal falls, its hind legs twitch. There are zero emotions of my own, only the joy of my grandfather and sister is felt nearby. I close my eyes, take off my shield. Oh-h! Rollback started!.. I want to jump, yell and fool around! With an incredible effort, I hold myself in place. Nain, overcome with emotion, bites my neck and whispers fervently in my ear:

"Well, you're doing great!"

Grandfather's voice:

"Good girl, Eugene!" and there is love and pride in feelings.

We switch places with Nain: my sister lies down in my place and looks at the scope, and I pick up the binoculars. This army binoculars is a good thing: comfortable, in a soft plastic case, non-breakable, with a built-in rangefinder, as well as wind, humidity and temperature sensors. It's both day and night, and it also has a thermal imager.

"Nain, my girl, breathe! Breath control, inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale! Clever girl! Imagine that you are a holly bush. Standing here, rustling the leaves, you're calm and unperturbed," Grandfather says slowly. "You don't care about the mukliks, let them run."

Under the recitation of her grandfather, Nain calmed down, serenity crept into her feelings.

"Distance: five thousand forty. Wind: two, sideways, on the left. Drop: eleven down."

The sound of sight rollers is heard. Nain is calm, breathing evenly. I look through binoculars — not far from the lying one, another muklik sticks out, anxiously looks around and, shuddering, pulls: "Kli-kli-mukli, kli-kli-mukli!". Silence, the soft whistling of the wind in the grass, even Gina is sitting, not drawing. DAMM! I'm startled. Muklik is thrown back, he shudders a couple of times and falls silent.

"Ah, I got it, I got it!" Nain shouts. We jump up, hug, laugh, shout and jump at the same time.

"Ah, well done! Oh, my beauty!" Grandpa shouts, laughing. "Come here, my hunters, my grandfather's delight!" and hugs us both.

Gina looks at us, feeling a little envy and, for some reason, regret. Grandfather turns around, looks at her, smiles, lets us go and sits down next to her. Hugs her and speaks softly:

"Hunting can be taught. Yes, it's long and tedious, but you can make a hunter out of anyone! And you can't teach how to draw like you, sweetheart. So you're a hundred times more expensive than any hunter!"

Gina has snuggled up to her grandfather's side and is looking at him with love and adoration.

"And you magpies, what are you waiting for? Now snuffle will appear — you will only say goodbye to the loot! Come on, get after the shot!"

And we are skipping, shouting and hooting, rushing towards the hill, followed by the glances of grandfather and girlfriend.

Chapter 8.2 A month later

Somehow, unnoticed, the old admiral gathered all the youth of the town around him, organized several interest groups and sections. He smacked the headmaster, the huntsmen, and the mayor. Our director was so enthusiastic about my grandfather that he used him as an example whenever he could.

At the initiative of my grandfather, all responsible colony workers, heads of services and the colony's leadership were gathered. At the meeting, my grandfather demolished the civil defense system, saying that the measures taken were criminally insufficient for a rich colony in the border region.

The population is not trained and is not learning, reasonable people do not know how to behave in certain situations. A third of the colonists are former military personnel, but their experience is ignored. He gave his speech for about forty minutes, and the whole colony listened to him on the broadcast. The management got into it, realized it, and immediately, without departing, as they say, from the cash register, appointed grandfather the senior civil defense officer of the entire colony and obliged him to provide all possible assistance.

That's where he turned around: he requested a list of all the retirees in the colony with their military specialties, distributed them among the colonists, built a mock-up of the town on the outskirts of Leonov, and bought electric markers with his own money (these are automatic machines like paintball machines). And grandfather started training. He was given an assembly hall at the school for lectures. At first, things were tough, but then the people got involved, and the registration for the grandfathers' training ground was two months in advance. Moreover, not only various combat situations were trained on it, but also emergencies, such as fires, floods, and so on. Doctors, including Ray and Dak, gave lectures on emergency care for any of the races represented in the colony.

Grandma, being a naval security officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel by profession, organized an analytical counterintelligence service on an optional basis, mobilizing local hacker youth into it. The whole Strafer gang was on the extranet, in Tael's company, monitoring various mercenary forums and making sure that the name "Mendoire" didn't flash anywhere.

The huntsmen, led by their chief, Toliyat Tanris, gave lectures on the flora and fauna of the planet to everyone without exception.: what grows and lives where, what of all this can be eaten. The cunning drell tricked his grandfather and the company back then. The Tyrannodon would never climb into the bushes, and when Grandpa pinned the huntsman with arguments, Drell confessed, laughing.

The colonists accepted most of the innovations well, and some even enthusiastically. Such, for example, as exits on foot raids. This is when teams of colonists, with minimal equipment and provisions, had to perform certain tasks in the wild part of the colony. They organized a sweepstake on this, and the whole colony was happy to watch the ordeal of the next lucky ones, inventing exit scenarios on the go. These scripts were then sent to my grandfather by mail, and he used them without a twinge of conscience. Such raids, with my easy submission, began to be called partisan, and the raiders, respectively, were called partisans. And all this is for a while and in the spirit of competition.

Of course, the colonists couldn't be compared to the regular army in terms of training, but grandfather trained them not against the army, but against pirates. These brothers were never famous for their preparation, but they took on numbers and brutal cruelty. The five of them suddenly piled on top of one, robbed, killed, took women and children as slaves and fled. That's the pirate tactic. The mercenaries, of course, will go through the colonists like a knife through butter, but how many of those mercenaries... The military does not like to become a mercenary, whether among humans or other races.

The attitude of the regular army to mercenaries is appropriate, as to the degraded, who betrayed the idea. That's the way it is with all the Citadel races, and I agree with that.

Together with the brothers, a whole crowd of classmates and friends are currently studying. Even those who had no intention of joining the corps said they wanted to learn how to be strong and skilled. I have to keep an eye on my homeworld while my brothers protect everyone. In general, the youth in the colony maintained an active position. Something like, `We want to fly to the galaxy, see, learn, and definitely return home. The native world deserves to flourish, and for this it needs experienced and skilled residents.' Every morning they flock to our village and, after intensive training under the supervision of their grandfather, they run cross-country, every day for a different distance.

Oh, the enemies and the various tati will wash their faces in blood, coming to our colony in three years. I flatter myself that this will be enough to make my dream come true....

Two more weeks have passed

Today we went fishing. There's only a week left from our extra holidays, and somewhere inside I already miss my classmates. The guys called, they were interested in when we would appear — I told them that soon, wait.

I'm not much of a fisherman, I don't have what I need for this activity — silent patience, waiting for hours for a bite. Whatever, I'd rather sunbathe or read while Grandpa and Gina sit with fishing rods. Our artist turned out to be an excellent fisherman! She has a lot of patience, as well as attentiveness, and the ability to wait for the right moment. So Nain and I let it down in this regard, well, it's okay, it's not a big deal.

We go upstream and there, in a large backwater on the river, we catch bud-crab. They are bigger in the river than in the Mirror, so you have to fish with gloves. If he grabs it with his claws, it won't seem enough. The water in the river is cold, twenty-five degrees, despite the heat, and you don't dive for a long time. Nain generally climbs onto the rocks after a couple of dives, his teeth chattering. At 39.4, it's bitterly cold in this kind of water, but the stones are hot, and she warms up quickly.

There were screams downstream, we exchanged glances and ran to look at what was happening. There, grandfather was shaking along the shore, the rod in his hands bent almost into a ring, the line stretched so that the ringing could be heard. Gina was hopping around with a net in her hands.

"Grandpa, grandpa, pull to the shore! I'll put him in a net!"

"I can't, it's too strong, it's coming out!" the grandfather wheezes, but slowly and surely pulls the fish to the shore.

Gina saw her in the clear water, her eyes became five kopecks, and she felt scared, turning into fear.

"Grandpa, how big he is!" and she froze, clutching the net to herself. Who did they catch? We need to help...

I sit cross-legged on the shore, the middle shield, mentally reaching out to the stream of power. And here it is, my biotics, my nerves are buzzing, I glow with a blue-green dim light, a seething ocean of energy wraps around me like a whirlpool. I look at the water and feel a mighty fish in it, this aquatic creature is one and a half meters long, maybe longer.

I wrap her in bundles of power, squeeze her, feel her struggling in the grip of biotics, and slowly begin to pull her out of the water. The main thing now is not to lose concentration, not to let yourself be knocked down, otherwise a fish that has fallen into the water can jerk violently, and even injure grandfather. My head popped out of the water, then my whole body, and I slowly dragged it to the shore and let it go over the pebbly beach. From a height of one and a half meters, the fish flops onto the shore and begins to beat. Grandpa takes a stone, comes up from the side and hits her hard on the head. The creature stretched out and trembled slightly.

"Ugh!" the grandfather says, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "What a hulk! Who are these girls?"

Nain, slowly walking around the fish, answers.

"Leaftooth, Grandpa! It's never been this big before, you're the first! We need to give the head to Master Gartog, he will process it and hang it over the bar with your name on it."

Master Gartog is the same Krogan, the co-owner of our club, a passionate hunter, fisherman and bartender at the same time. The entire bar in the club is covered with the heads of various animals, fish, birds. All the city hunters, if they shoot something unusual, drag it to him, he embalms it and hangs it on the wall, with a description of whose trophy it is. Our fish's head will soon decorate the wall in the bar!"

Snuffling and grunting, the four of us load the fish onto Grandpa's bike. It immediately subsides, the mass converter changes the tone of the hum.

"Wow! How much weight does it have?" Scratching his head, Grandfather says. "Tell you what, girls, I'll take him alone, I'll come for you later, and you'll wait for me here. Ok?"

"Okay, Grandpa," I reply. The girls just nodded in agreement. Grandfather flew away, and we went to the pool to catch crabs in the mud.

Chapter 8.3 November 2360

Early in the morning, I do morning exercises — this is my usual morning activity, for the past four years in a row. In the window, in the light of the lanterns at the intersection, you can see a large group of boys and girls of all races, who are warming up under the guidance of their grandfather. Despite the fine drizzling rain and the cold air, no one stopped classes. The grandfather moves at a distance of five meters from the line of young people, and they synchronously repeat all the movements after him — an absolutely fascinating sight. Somewhere out there, all my brothers are in the ranks, except Ivan, as well as Vasil and Noverry. The predatory plasticity of military gymnastics performed by the order is something I have never seen in my previous life. It seems that this is not an old soldier and a crowd of young people aged 13-14 years, but a pack of some kind of predators or primitive hunters dancing a strange, fascinatingly dangerous dance in absolute silence.