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150.
There are a lot of stupid things to do. I don't care about the ceiling. Basking in the street with a rave blaring from the speakers of a portable stereo system. Cycling down the ski slope... especially in winter. Draw graffiti on any surface... As always, if you decide for sure "this is not going to happen to me," it happens...
"In my opinion, the upper line is skewed..."
"In my opinion, someone is holding the laser level crookedly!"
"Someone is holding the laser level steady, it's just that the surface itself is curved!"
"Not a curve, but a curved one."
"So what? A reason to draw lines crookedly?"
"If you have any complaints, draw it yourself, you know!"
"Yuto! Tell her!"
"Shizuka, we're like hands without you!" I said it quite honestly.
"А то ж!" The snake made a victorious face, and the water-based paint began to harden unnaturally quickly, losing water. Mizuchi is a cool inkjet printer, or rather, the printhead of this printer. As an ink, we have a bright red luminescent water-based paint for outdoor use (it does not take on water for the second time and does not blur). Ten barrels. And ten barrels of black. It's stylish: red on white, black on white, red and black stripes. The canvas is an unrequited Gift, to which we are now applying "combat makeup". And, I must admit, Tom Sawyer was right: painting is so entertaining!
I put down the laser plumb line and admired our creative design of Yu's development, by the way. It's good that we managed to buy the paint and load it before the departure of the barge. It turns out that Hiroe may forget something or not take it into account. The shoulders, elbows, sides and hips of the giant were decorated with "emergency stripes" on the sides — rectangular sections of black and red shading, which usually indicate oversized places on the equipment. Also, the chest and the free areas of the shoulders were decorated with red English inscriptions "TEST" and, just below, "prototype". Shimomuro also wanted to finish the sacramental "unit 00", but I managed to dissuade her: I'm not superstitious at all, but when it comes to "Evangelion"... Ugh, ugh, ugh, just don't jinx it! There was a similar chest inscription on the back, but it was not visible now: TheDar was lying in a mountain saddle near the shore, perched on rocks like on a feather bed. We forbade him to get up until it was completely dark. In addition, Yu suggested giving the Spirit of the Mountains an almost real manicure and painting the ends of his claw-like fingers red. After that, we had the opportunity to enjoy a rare sight — for five minutes, Shizuka, listening to an infrasound speech, gradually turned red, eventually becoming the color of a ripe tomato. "That was the answer 'no,'" she briefly "translated," and, tellingly, refused to repeat what she had said at all.
* * *
One o'clock in the morning, it's time.
"I'm starting!" Mizuchi raised her hands, and a thick fog fell from the choppy surface of the sea. And, interestingly, he fell towards the shore, and the air above the water became even clearer.
"Dar," I called out to the majestic figure that appeared silently in the fog, "remember: caution is the main thing. If you have any problems, report immediately and get back to shore. And be careful with the barge."
"He says he understands and remembers everything", Kashi translated his answer for me.
"Well, then let's get started." I opened the laptop, at the same time turning the electric motor speed controller on the joystick. After all, the Dar's ability to make almost no sounds when moving is more impressive than any fireballs and lightning from ass... palms. But the people who see it did their best to compensate for the lack of background noise. It took more than an hour for Mizuchi and me to learn how to guide a giant to another monolith, while Dar learned how to find small stones at the bottom for him the first time and stack the loot in a neat stone pyramid on the only gentle stretch of shore. During this time, the film crew and Rinko, who joined them, managed to change the batteries of the drone three times, to which a good camera and a small spotlight equipped with as many as three types of illumination were attached. If someone in the village deigned to spend the night, then they must have been spiritually enriched by watching one or another part of the gigantic figure appear through the fog in ghostly flashes of light... until the last set of batteries was reset to zero. I didn't let the untouchable supply of batteries for the "working" quadra be touched — another camera needed them much more. Although it was pretty shitty, it was black and white, but it had IR illumination, which made it stand out from the rest. And the presence of a Ferry on the lens glasses, similar to detector glasses, made it a completely unique device. Thanks to this, the camera allowed me to see magic even through the water column. Dissecting at an altitude of about thirty meters, I could view the water area from my drone to the very bottom, which was very useful: unlike my native stone, Dar's eye could not penetrate the water barrier. Naturally, by five o'clock in the morning, I had thoroughly washed my face — to the point of aching eyes and unrestrained yawns. The wet and disgustingly cold sand of the beach beckoned to me like a feather bed. With the twentieth magic monolith fished out, I gave up, and after instructing our main workforce to carefully get ashore, I couldn't stand it and sat down on the sand anyway. How so-o-o-oft it is...
"Don't sleep, you'll freeze, you know." The snake's head appeared above the water a few meters from the shore. Then her outstretched arms appeared above her head, with which Shizuka made a wide movement, as if pushing something away from herself... and the waves spread out from her figure. The dream came off, and I watched in fascination as the fragile girl repeated the feat of one notorious character, accomplished about four thousand years ago. The only thing that prevented me from classifying Moses as one of the Japanese water snakes in absentia was his equally famous feat of circling through the desert. Meanwhile, the Goddess of Rivers came up to me and motioned for me to dry both my clothes and the sand under my ass. She sat down next to him, resting her hands on the sand behind her back. Stars... In their ghostly light, the slow-walking figure of a giant yokai, silent against the background of lapping waves, created the impression of a completely unearthly nature. I looked for the point of the quadcopter practicing the "return to base" maneuver, but I couldn't find it. I wonder if Mizuchi sees it? Snakes seem to be very good at thermal vision...
"Shizuka, do you see if the object is radiating heat?"
"Not very well, Yuto," the snake took advantage of the situation to lean against my shoulder and lazily pointed: "Ove-er there, to the left of the bright star. A tiny, fast-pulsing point of heat and something like rays radiating from it... Uh-oh..."
While Shizuka was yawning, I was peacefully looking for a "point to the left of a bright star" in the sky. I searched for a whole minute until it hit me. One point. The rays. There can be no such illumination from the electric motors of the quadra! I frantically pulled the laptop towards me, pumped the joystick, trying to catch it in the frame... something. And suddenly he caught me! I revved up and turned the zoom... and he stared with amazement at the drone dancing in the frame! Naturally, the gray globular color merges with the night sky... and such a familiar St. Andrew's flag with an oblique cross on the keel! And the white letters, which formed into letters that were quite understandable to me on the third attempt. "Horizon". RUSSIAN LETTERS! While I was trying to digest the hallucination, which did not want to disappear, words that I had long and firmly forgotten surfaced in my head, completely empty and hollow:
Cool you hit it,
Cool you hit it,
Cool you hit it,
On TV!
Interlude 30. Ship of the measuring complex "Marshal Krylov" (project 1914.1) The Far Eastern Fleet of the Pacific Squadron of the Russian Navy. A special engineering and testing group for aerial reconnaissance. Operator engineer Viktor Sazanov, programmer operator Leonid Ivanov.
"So, how are the alcoholic parasites doing there?" Lieutenant Ivanov asked his colleague-friend with concern and interest.
The "radio cabin" on the second deck was so crowded with different-caliber equipment that it looked more like a narrow pencil case for pens and pencils.
"They're babbling that they're very, very peaceful fishermen who very, very accidentally fished out a container of dope in the sea. Very, very much! And they are asking to put them in our prison, because they are a little bit very, very guilty. They don't want to go to a Chinese prison." The technical specialist, of course, was not present during the interrogation, but on the way he was introduced to the translation in great detail. Five times!
Victor looked irritably at the list of scrolled "prayers" flashing on the auxiliary monitor — the drone helicopter was testing its numerous systems. Formally, there were two jobs. Damn Chinese! Damn Koreans! And the japs are damn good too — just for the company! Why don't the damned fuckers go to sea a day later?
"And what, is Semyonych still throwing up?"
Captain Semenov, of course, was even Vasilich according to his passport, but this fact did not bother the naval wits much: the typical Semenych: with a mustache, a red muzzle and a cap on the back of his head. Semyonitch! And he really didn't like emergency situations.
"He promised to write a report "if I touched that bitch's control stick again!", end quote."
Adding to the irritation was the fact that the lieutenant was sitting on a single stool bolted to the floor: initially, the room was according to the staff schedule for only one radio operator, and not at all for the calculation of the control and management of the UAV.
"A serious case. How much free gerych have you intercepted? Five kilos?"
"Shut up, will you?"
Formally, the operators had to duplicate the controls on two sets of monitors. Lieutenant Sazanov exhaled noiselessly and squeezed himself sideways and backwards into a reclining chair, first stretching his arms forward: on the sides there were racks with a power amplifier and a redundant "all-wave" receiver scanner. Lamp-like. For the sake of installing the remote pilots computer system, no one, of course, unscrewed and removed obsolete, but working and reliable equipment.
"Don't forget to upgrade the modes before untwisting the rotors."
"Don't worry, pull the lieutenant, we'll do it in the best possible way! The main thing is not to descend over unfamiliar junks!"
Victor groaned naturally. Well, who knew that fucking narrow-eyed people were dragging a few tons of loose white "goods" on a motorboat? And a machine gun! Flying an unmanned reconnaissance helicopter, Sazanov lowered the car about five meters above the lost junk and stared in disbelief for a while at the fishermen stretching their "arms uphill", shouting and jumping up and down. Looking at the light smoke blown off by the propellers from the uncovered diesel engine at the stern of the "marine vessel", the lieutenant logically decided that the Chinese were in distress and called the bridge. And he continued to think so, until, following the thin, emaciated sailors, the Marines dragged onto the deck a completely recognizable Chinese Maxim with a blued casing on the machine. Then it turned out that the crew of the motorboat was shouting something like "we are pirates, we surrender." And there's something else about the damned bay...
The two sailors rolled out the Camcopter S-100 UAV onto the aft pad, which was actually designed for a fully manned KA-27 and quickly ran away. The drone slowly began to unwind the screws.
"Do you remember the flight mission?"
"A spiral, then along the Japov coast, no higher than a hundred meters, so as not to unnerve the narrow-eyed air defense, and back."
""Spiral"!"
"No, but what about? We're spiraling!"
"Divergent search warrant with right circulation, Lieutenant!"
"The IL-2 has always been called a "spiral"!"
"...You'd better keep quiet."
In principle, the gray ES-hundredth with the St. Andrew's flag stenciled on it was controlled like a toy brother two dozen centimeters long, while it carried a decent autopilot on board and could even be controlled by a child... but the twenty-seven-year-old software lieutenant was simply distinguished by his phenomenal "driving technique", even on the shore, having plowed through an expensive large-format special camera thirty meters down the slope on the first test. But an order is an order. It remains to be hoped that the flight is not officially combat, but night optics testing, and for the drowned device they will simply be kicked out of the "ranks" of the victorious with demotion and without benefits, rather than being court-martialed.
"Sazanov! A fucking hero! What kind of upside-down octopus did you decide to play an airy fucking wolf with?"
"No way, tavarish cap three!"
"Sazanov! You're a technician, not a pilot! Are you testing the fucking bourgeois equipment that will be the main drone of the fleet? What's not clear here?"
"That's right, tavarish cap three!"
"In short, m-mother... once again, you see the "case proposed by the fleet charter for submitting an oral report," you press the "delete" button and pretend that nothing happened, do you understand, h-hero?!"
Strangely enough, Ivanov, either imbued with the moment, or rather, feeling sorry for his partner's nerves, worked out the test flight mission quite clearly. Victor even relaxed a little...
"Bridge to the BAR group!"
"I'm in touch."
"There's something on my radar."
"What's it got to do with me?"
"Can you fly up to the border of the 12-mile zone and take a look? Shiraki Bay."
"Take a look at what?" Sazanov opened the interactive map and found this very Shiraki: puddle and puddle, average depth of 4 meters.
The bridge operator on duty hesitated. He could be heard whispering to himself, "what the hell," but then the targeting followed anyway:
"It must be something big... It's like a house with twenty floors, visible from a distance."
"Are you kidding me?" asked Ivanov. "There's a hill on a hill, and everything is as one above twenty floors."
"It... It's moving."
"What are you smelling on the bridge?" The commander of the remote pilots asked politely. "Give me the logs."
Ivanov and Sazanov watched the radar report file that had fallen through the ship's network together. Indeed, if we combine the cut-offs of the last three hours, they formed an intricate trajectory inside a shallow bay... but there was no periodicity of their appearance. The "something" seemed to mock, then appeared, then disappeared... And the decimeter radar couldn't see anything at close range. The patrol drone operators exchanged glances. On the one hand, the midshipman on duty did not give the order as such — he simply had no right. On the other hand, it can aggravate relations when, unlike kaptri, you will not return to fleet headquarters, but will most likely, as a "valuable specialist," already implement the "innovative technology of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft" on the patrol ships of the Pacific Squadron. This is if the tests are completed normally. But here's the thing: once you get dirty, you can't clean up. The captain of the Krylov gets a drop, he gets his superiors, and so it goes. The entire fleet is one "close-knit family", and they pay more attention to rumors here than to official reports. Okay, we'll see... — the head of the calculation forced himself out, while Ivanov dictated to the test log:
"... a change in the flight task to verify the results of radar scanning in an inconspicuous mode. One hundred meters altitude, low radar visibility mode."
Meanwhile, the unmanned reconnaissance aircraft has already approached the borders of the 12-mile zone. And nothing. The wall of fog separating the bay's waters from the open ocean was dense enough to almost completely drown the taillights of a self-propelled barge anchored somewhere there, which had somehow dragged itself into the "dangerous navigation zone." At least, the Swallow should have been there according to the narrow-eyed coastal navigation system, but Sazanov did not dare to turn on the universal UAV radar so easily. The fog moved like a living thing, throwing out tentacle tongues from its body, thinning, thickening... It was beautiful, but it got a little boring. The head of the calculation opened the diagnostic window for the engines and power systems of the unit, remotely checking the device for possible problems (according to the test regulations, they did this once every half hour), and did not immediately realize that his neighbor was too intently silent. Stop. The coordinates!
"Lenya, fuck! You're totally fucked up! Get out of here right now..." then he saw an extremely clear contour picture from the course lidar and stopped in mid-sentence. The huge figure, visible from above-from the side-from behind and slowly moving towards the shore, seemed to be a mystical creation of twilight... if it weren't for the inscription "TEST prototype" that was automatically caught through a gap in the fog.
"Do you see it too?" Ivanov asked a little out of place, and the junior officer "fell out" of contemplation back into the real world.
"I see it! Now turn around and... oh, shit!"
On the tactical interface, in the information window from the synthesized aperture sensor, which was constantly searching the near space, an alarm beeped shrilly, detecting a small target almost too late next to the UAV. Having worked out the engine and forced the drone to turn sharply, the operators' calculation already saw the source of the alarm in the optics — a clumsy "stool" with four screws with a camera hovering near the water.
The fog at that moment, as luck would have it, moved somewhere in a few moments, and the naval UAV became perfectly visible against the sky. Damn it!!!
"Welcome to the talk show "you're fucked up," Ivanov, sitting next to the commander, muttered faintly.
And Sazanov suddenly remembered the words of the Chinese: "the cursed bay."
151.
Einstein was once asked: "where did higher mathematics come in handy in real life?" I can say that I finally found it useful that my supervisor "there" disapprovingly called me "disorderly scientific interests." Very disapproving! It all started in high school, when for a long time I couldn't choose between a medic and an engineer, either burrowing into biology textbooks for junior university courses, or plunging into the frenzied (and crooked, as a result) construction of the first thing that came to mind. Thank you, thank you, my character, because looking at a drone that captured the wrong thing, I suddenly realized that I not only know WHAT to convey to the operators, but also know HOW. www.qrz.ru . File archive. Telegraphy. CwTypemorseterminal. The backlight port is the pulse transmission port. 200 characters per minute (teletype standard). Virtual keyboard. Russian. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed how Dar, taking a step onto the sand of the shore, literally "falls through the ground" in a second. By the way, it's an interesting old Russian idiom...
"AN UNIDENTIFIED UNMANNED VEHICLE WITH THE MARKINGS OF THE RUSSIAN NAVY. YOU INVADED THE SET AND CAPTURED FOOTAGE THAT IS THE PROPERTY OF OUR COMPANY. IF THEY ARE PASSED ON TO THIRD PARTIES, WE WILL HAVE TO HAND OVER INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR VIOLATION OF JAPANESE AIRSPACE."
Naturally, the "automatic telegraphic key" program did not recognize large and small letters — there are simply no such letters in Morse code. Naturally, no one has guaranteed that the operators know Morse Code or that the control software has a special module for code recognition... but my haphazard knowledge was enough to realize that the probability of both is very good... After all, a purely combat drone would have no markings at all... probably. And emergency signals and generally signals in the fleet in emergency mode or during radio silence, as two hundred years ago, are transmitted by flags or a lamp. However, the robot helicopter continued to hover, holding its position in the air... And burst into a series of flashes:
"I AGREE," I read in the interpreter window... and dropped out of the "combat meditation". And when did you get there? Suddenly, sweat broke out on his face, and his hands began to tremble... but they automatically gave out a half-forgotten "73" on reflexes to the unfolding helicopter. A single thought was beating in my brain: "did it really get through?!" Now the idea of making a game of big humanoid robots no longer seemed like a genius to me. Especially on the coast — actually at the border of the country! Damn, what's going to happen now?!
Shizuka knelt down in front of me and, taking off her glasses, ran a wet, cold hand over her face: my skin instantly became clear... and dry. I looked into my eyes, saw something there for myself, and immediately calmed down.
"You scared me, you know. Your heart rate was under two hundred and your hands were almost smeared in the air over the keyboard as you typed. Problems?"
"I don't even know" I suddenly felt almost at ease, the block of icy inevitability suddenly turned out to be quite an iceberg... It's still a long way ahead. "Perhaps Kashi will be offered to become a Stirlitz and renamed the Eater of Secret Documents. The resident intelligence spirit, it's a fantasy classic!
"It's a difficult case," Mizuchi repeated my expression, feeling her forehead. Well, yes, it's hot. I got a lot of stress. Damn, the "Cursed Bay", the locals are right. On the other hand, I would have shown up anyway... or I'll show up soon anyway. Probably. However, I thought that "soon" would be in four or five years. Whatever, whatever, I say. You just need to turn on your brain more often...
For a while, I wondered if it was a good thing to get under the "intelligence" of my own country or someone else's. And if America comes out to us first, then immediately drain the Japanese, or vice versa, this is a good "bun" against the exorcist clans... or will they not be interested in the demonstrated level at all? So far, all my vassals and I have achieved is good street repairs... The adrenaline rush was slowly letting go of me, and instead I wanted to sleep more and more, and sitting on the November sand, even if it was dry, was not the best idea. In the end, I decided to just give up and wait to see what would happen. There was no way I could influence the path of information captured by the drone. Link info: "barge in the bay" — "tenant" — "team "filming the movie."" It is possible that the drone operators will actually put the compromising material under the carpet. For them personally — or for their commander — the next round of the Russia-Japan diplomatic scandal will be like a sickle in one place. The amers don't care about the scandal, as their military personnel at the bases of the "unsinkable aircraft carrier" caused problems with the local population, and they continue to do so. And nothing. Maybe they really will believe in the movie... Stop! I went to the second round. Okay. You'll have to put on a good face with a bad game and play out Hiroe's plot to the end. And somehow take care of political self— or just education. It's okay, Uncle Kouji won't refuse an orphan... Damn, I keep forgetting that I'm really an orphan... Tomorrow, everything is tomorrow.
And the next morning, the locals looked in some amazement at the pyramid of twenty-one monoliths, on top of which, having stretched the arrow as far as possible, another stone was laid by the crane of the barge. It's a good thing I reached out, otherwise it would have turned out to be an epic fail in whipping up the mystery in the story "either it was or it wasn't." At least, the crew of the barge honestly said that they had been working all night (in shifts).
The monoliths themselves, outwardly calm, began to exchange energy with each other when folded and tried to stretch the "Path" spell. Because of the shape of the storage, it ended up being a kind of "skein of road" for the spirits, probably the unwise, once in the formation, could get lost inside. I didn't want to leave a kind of cheerful "hello" on the shore, so I decided to do the tried and tested way: arrange a "short circuit" with a wooden jumper and see what happens. At least Kashi and Mizuchi couldn't come up with anything more sane, and they approved my plan.
..Hiroe is the only one from the "directorate" to whom I described in detail the communication with the naval drone. The always self-confident girl pulled her slightly overgrown hair a little mechanically and said nothing. Only in the eyes there is a confused and guilty expression. Hey Hiroe? Hiroe?! Damn it, Doctor, we're losing her! After looking around and making sure that no one was really watching us, I dragged the unresisting girl behind the trailer and... yes, everything was banal. Press her against a corrugated metal wall and kiss her, kiss her until she comes to her senses. According to my estimates, it took about a minute before the first limp, and then animated lips tried to take the initiative in the kiss. Damn, it's great that the girl is only a year older than us, she was already much more mature emotionally... And I'm ready for kisses... physiologically, so to speak.
"I... you..." She couldn't catch her breath.
"We. That's the only way. You promised."
And there is no need to say a mountain of words that "we will walk this path together" or "trust me." One kiss and five minutes in a hug — and no visible effect from the shattered faith in a bright future. And there is one more connection between the clan and its first analyst: the consequences of the "innocent coastal cinema" may surface within a few years. Usually in such cases, the characters of my favorite books about popadants think something like "well, I'm a scumbag" and "I took advantage of it." I didn't feel anything like that-we're in the same boat, you know!
...Hiroe is also a very interesting kisser. A little hesitantly, as if repeating what she saw, and then explained. I think I'm going to have to get some practice soon... Oh, what's going to happen, oh, what's going to happen...
What's next? The next night, Shizuka kept an eye out for the sky from the outer waters, covering the harbor with cotton wool from above — however, there was plenty of fog even without the snake. And the excitement has increased... We built another mound of monolith stones, and the next day I spent most of the daylight in a hollow in the mountains, where Dar and Mizuchi had stolen the trunks of more or less straight trees from all over the area. Hammered in (rather— inserted, like matches in the sand) For free, these trees served as an "insulator" in the canvas of the already built road. Now that the "road" has turned into just a set of stones, albeit not quite ordinary, but not connected to each other, we were able to make out another piece of the ancient path... without approaching the island bank. The locals, satisfied with the free entertainment (someone there had seen the light on that first night of work, and even seemed to see the movement of something big), bombarded us with "true" horror stories about idiots swimming there, and Kashi decided not to push his luck. Totally in favor! In total, we pulled out 64 monoliths, and eight more remained lying on the bottom near the underwater island of Spirits. In a line. However, the remnants of the underwater dam could no longer have much effect on anything... With a solemn gathering of people from among the fishermen, the contract was closed to us. However, there will be another state examination. And the village head (not to be confused with the head of the administration!) he intended to invite the priests to "purify the cursed stones from evil," and no amount of careful persuasion helped Kashi and Patchi to move him from this position — even after half a liter of sake on the snout. They say, the carefully preserved testament of the ancestors. I'm suspicious of this "testament"... we did not ask the names of these "priests". In any case, Shizuka and I destroyed the finished log "closures" into splinters, dried the splinters and burned them. It's not our concern anymore. The locals won't go near the damn stones anyway, not the locals... Well, I hope they will be warned. It's time to go to Takamiya. The next round of "emergency concerns" seems to have ended — the wave of crazy spirits no longer threatens the city. There is no dam, and the "Path of Spirits" will no longer gather, penetrating half of the ancient mountainous region due to the refocused jet of natural magic. We can focus on protecting Takamiya within its current borders, which are clearly outlined by the natural lake shores — moreover, every unreasonable little thing has already become a little bolder and the patrol brigade spotted the first "swallows" last night. And destroyed it. Our "living radar" Ginko, judging by Dofu's stories, enjoyed these nightly outings like crazy... How is it, I wonder, that Zashiki-varashi in my house hasn't completely gone off the rails, left alone? No, I was probably too hasty, deciding that all urgent matters were closed. So go ahead, Amakawa, you have a handful of spirits with you, even fewer people, and an approximate plan for the future... not so little, damn it!
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