The Cosmic Adventurers

Chapter 1. The birth of a new dawn. sub-chapter 2.

I am one of the distant descendants of these partisans rescued from the Earth. Like everyone who lives on our small planet. So yes, formally, it's not quite accurate to call the Founders that way - the exodus and the first wave of colonization in the Perseus arm began later, without them. But they have prepared for this the forces, resources, and the idea of a new society born in the midst of the fire of total war, which probably could not have appeared in another place and time. They made the creation of a new society generally possible. And it cost their first descendants, followers, serious efforts and time to organize a new society so that it would not run into the old stones on which old Russia stumbled, and so that everything worked as planned by the Founders even before the Exodus. And in general, from the height of centuries, it can be stated that everything turned out even better than expected. As a result, the long-standing conflict between the state and society almost does not concern us. With all the advantages and disadvantages of such a position. Advantages- almost no one pulls us from above and does not rip us off. Lack- we have to take care of most aspects of life ourselves, and it's not easy. In the star sectors of Novorossia, which are considered central, the influence of administrative structures is felt more strongly, but we are far from all the centers, we have a wild corner. In a good meaning. People organize themselves into groups, learn directly from each other, interact with each other on the principle of healthy necessity, with the understanding that if we do otherwise, either a despot will appear among us who will one day want to rule slaves, or everyone will slide into the Stone Age. Bosses are temporary, but necessity, duties and responsibilities are permanent. There is a minimum of bureaucracy, and even the Society of Bureaucracy itself exists not to get on people's nerves, but because there are times when it is impossible without documentary support of processes. Bureaucrats who meddle in someone else's business, where bureaucracy is not needed, are beaten here. Probably that's why they very rarely meddle in someone else's business. For example, when designing radiation and chemically hazardous facilities. We do not use money because it is not necessary in our model of society - with our small and small population (there are hardly a couple of million people on the planet) - it is easier to produce, distribute and consume everything necessary for life at home, on the spot. As a last resort, if necessary, we can exchange resources with other settlements for large projects. And the settlers themselves, with rare exceptions, understand that this is a severe necessity. Otherwise, the whole system of the new society, which has been established for centuries, will fly into a black hole. In the yard we have a kind of advanced socialism, well, or a medieval commune, pumped up to the cosmic level- people work as best they can and are able to, get a certain set of everything necessary for life, some of which they automatically produce themselves one way or another, while in a defined position in any of the Societies. People don't get married - if two people want to live together and have children, they do it without asking anyone. And if they don't want to, then no documents, seals, electronic matrix indexes and other creations of bureaucracy will save them from the collapse of relations. We don't live richly, but no one dies under bridges either. In particular, because we do not have bridges in the classical form. To whom such orders are not to their liking - all doors and orbits are cheerfully open. In the absence of personal spaceships, anyone can get into the interzone at the space port orbital station and fly away on the first alien ship under any possible pretext or without asking at all. The departure of the dissatisfied is only welcome - there are fewer potential scoundrels who, because of their failed hopes, will s**t on others. The departure of the discontented is only welcome - this way we have fewer potential scoundrels who, because of their failed hopes and ambitions, will harm the people around them out of spite if they stay. And regularly some small part goes away to foreign star systems - to neutrals living in the old way, and the space powers of humanity in the Old Area. Some even try to fly away to the xenos. But there are few of them at all. At the first wave of new colonization, it seemed to the ancestors that twenty thousand light-years, which the Founders had moved away from the Old Area, was sooo much, but today, in the 3500s according to the standard Earth calendar, the newest starships with the best gravpolars overcome this distance in a day or two, the old flying troughs of previous generations, which are more than a hundred and fifty years old, - in a month, provided that if you do not plod between the stars, but dive into the Outer Galactic Abyss, fly over the disk of the galaxy in the purest space and get closer to the finish point to go down again, into the space of the galactic arm. Almost teleportation. It took the Founders years to make such a flight. And the once seemingly reliable escape from civilizational relatives now resembles the escape of a naughty child from his mother to the backyard. The comparison is not the most successful in meaning, but technically it is quite correct. Why do some Roses fly away from their home planets? In different ways. For what is impossible or extremely difficult to achieve with us. In pursuit of untold wealth and luxury, absolute power over others, adventures or just a different way of life. Most of them disappear forever, someone achieves wealth and fame and becomes known for many parsecs, someone banally settles in criminal organizations, for example, smugglers and raiders, or even puts together their own gangs, replenishing the databases of the starsystem militia with characteristic gloomy faces of detective neuroprojections with the eloquent signature "Wanted!". Very few of those who have left return home. However, they are not allowed back just like that, without checking - you never know what the failed returnee took with him from the places where he visited. These are not always safe things... It is very easy to leave us, but it is difficult to come back. And in some ways I even understand these "outsiders". It's pretty quiet and peaceful here, and only a fool can't appreciate it, but sometimes it's so boring and dreary that even flies fall on the fly. Yes, these creatures were also brought from Earth. Together with mosquitoes. Of course, not on purpose - these cunning synanthropes have perfectly taken root themselves, without asking anyone.

I was thinking too much. All of the above... it's long gone. Such a bright morning, and I dived into a not too cheerful, albeit very edifying pool of people's memory... This happens to me often, and always at the wrong time. All right, away with it all! There will be more time to be sad, but for now-everything is not so sad at all. I am Vlad Gor, I am sixteen years old, I have relatives, friends, I finished the last tenth stage of general education this spring, and now I'm thinking where to move on. The whole life is ahead, as some mature like to say with a touch of envy. And then everything was complicated. Every member of Society is obliged to benefit others - by work or study. The idle and those who have not found themselves in life are not oppressed (already well), but they also do not like. After all, the more such people there are, the less effective Society is. Others will not leave such a person to starve to death, especially if it is someone's friend, but they will try in every possible way to convince and re-educate him. But even such rare passive and apathetic people are not lost to Society, they can also be attached. Most often, such characters join the ranks of "socially useful employees" - observers, messengers, informants, lower-level assistants, etc. - stupid and tedious, but simple and unstrained work, ideal for those who have not learned anything but do not want to work hard on ore mining or garbage processing- we use such work as punishment for not too serious offenses. And since we are not demigods, but ordinary people who can make mistakes and be stupid from time to time, someone regularly does some s**t, by mistake or on purpose. As a result, ore pits and mobile plasma sprayers of garbage are never left idle. Whether or not to send a "loser" to correctional labor is up to the people around him. The recipe for how never to ride on a garbage can and not to hammer ore in quarries is simple - behave decently. Then even if you say some unpleasant nonsense by mistake, the probability that you will be forgiven increases. Alas, not everyone is capable of this 24/7. Well, if a person does not take care of himself and regularly gets into trouble, then he will ride on a garbage can until he gets smarter. I have also been in the skin of a scavenger more than once. However, there are people who do not consider such work a punishment, and treat it calmly. In addition, those who need recycled raw materials for their affairs often sort out the garbage themselves, and those who need good metal sometimes look for stones, ore and in quarries themselves.

I remember a funny case when the famous musical group "Strips to the Zenith!" got together with me on the "garbage punishment", whose work I really like. It turned out that they caught up with moonshine in search of inspiration and came to the concert drunk. But it is f*******n to appear in such a state in public with us. And the act is not beautiful. They were almost beaten then, and one of the spectators wanted to shoot the would-be musicians at all, but he was restrained by others in time. As a result, the failed (fortunately) shooter went to the "garbage punishment" together with the musical group "Strips to the Zenith" - waving a weapon in a situation where you can do without it, we do not approve. If they did not agree, the surrounding people would have sent into exile both the musicians and the one who wanted to shoot them. That would be much worse. There I heard all this from them, one might say, firsthand. Our media discussed this case for a long time that day in colors. However, this did not affect the fame of the music group "Strips to Zenith". I would even say their fame has increased since then. But they didn't come to their concerts drunk anymore...

If the "patient" is hopeless and continues to create bullshit and spit on others, it may all end in exile - we have a humane alternative to the death penalty - when a person has thoroughly annoyed everyone around, but does not pose any particular danger. There have been cases, and more than once. At the same time, it is not even necessary to throw the unfortunate person out of the settlement or from the planet - the process is purely internal, it's just that everyone around with the declared exiled subject completely ceases to have any business - to communicate, help, provide any services. Complete indifference, and the one who shows criminal leniency automatically joins the "exiles". The measure is effective - no violence or humiliation, especially given the fact that our people walk with weapons (the habit was inherited from the rescued earth partisans, who considered any attempts to deprive them of weapons as a mortal insult), and waving their fists without prior agreement is simply dangerous - you can get a bullet. Most people come to their senses after such collective ignore therapy and do not repeat old mistakes. Well, if not... Such a person has no chance to take an important and interesting position and a decent material and moral position in society. We do not have pronounced rich and poor, but there is still some stratification depending on the position, activity and some other conditions. According to the law of Societies, educational, industrial technologists, popularly beloved artists and other respected people are entitled to personal official transport, special housing conditions and other small but significant bonuses in our relatively flat society. It is officially stated that these bonuses are not intended to elevate worthy people, but solely to facilitate their activities. Well, one does not interfere with the other. For some, this is even a motive for self-development, although there are few of them. Those who need the "attributes of a sweet life" - money and the opportunity to spend it on anything, luxury, flattery and sybaritic comfort, as a rule, leave the borders of Novorossia. Those who do not need it, just do what they love. I don't care about luxury, but I also don't want to remain an unnecessary loser. Alas. I've always been interested in everything at once and nothing in particular. But I have not yet decided firmly who I want to become and what I want to devote my life to. I tried to do a variety of things, mastered many of them a little, but none perfectly. If I were a genius of the level of Renaissance Titans, no problem, but I'm not a genius. Not even hidden. An ordinary guy is of medium height, moderately strong, pleasant to the face, calm, if no one infuriating me off. I proudly wear a magnificent mane of shiny brown hair (girls are jealous, and sending those who advise me to get a haircut far and for a long time has become one of my favorite daily entertainments). A funny circumstance, my father, Vlad Gore Sr., is a strong pale, fair-haired, touched with gray hair, my mother, on the contrary, is a short and elegant tanned brunette. And in the end, my younger sisters Daria and Irina are more like their father, and I am more like my mother. These are the hilarious wonders of genetics... By the way, my father is not from our planet. He hails from the central worlds of Novorossia. Nineteen years ago, an landing-spaceship on which he, as part of a group of Space-Infantry, flew to storm the base of the raiders, who then pretty much disrupted the exchange of resources and the flow of passengers between the star sectors of the Ariadna Ring and Clover. The spaceship was intercepted by these same raiders, they managed to regroup and ambush. There were a lot of them, the space strike group had to retreat. The retreat did not go very smoothly, the ship on which my father was flying had to retreat in a completely different direction than the others, otherwise it would have come under fire from raider unmanned fighters. They still came under fire, but managed to escape. The jump to the neighboring system was unsuccessful - there was nothing really there, and it was unwise to go back - the raiders did not go anywhere. It was also unwise to give out your location by gravcom. The crew had to carefully examine the map of the sector, listen to the gravitational ether, look for inhabited systems of people with space bases. That's just the Ariadna's Ring sector is very extensive, but it is not very densely populated. The nearest system turned out to be ours- the Lotus. The landing-spaceship could not reach it - within a radius of several parsecs it was necessary to use gravcom and send a distress signal. Soon the sentry space-corvettes of our MSS came to their aid. Alas, it took a very long time to repair the ship - it received a lot of damage, which made it dangerous to fly on it. The space-crew and the space-infantrymen were stuck on the planet Bryanskaya for a long time. And then my father met my mother and chose to stay with us forever. They accepted him without any problems. All this, of course, from his own words. Perhaps he hid something from me and told me inaccurately, but there is no reason for this. After all, he had told about the retreat, but he could have lied that they had defeated all the raiders then. Anyway, he has since said goodbye to military service. The Space-Infantry of Novorossia is equipped with volunteers, and they did not require him to return to service. Since then, he has chosen to become a writer - he writes short stories, novels, scripts for those who make films and virtual games. People like it.

In general, I wanted to become a cool combat space pilot. Of course, there is one option where to move on. I remember, from the age of six, I couldn't watch enough films produced by our Order of Reneissanse, especially about space adventures, immortal masterpieces that have become classics, like "Project Omega", "The Fall of the Phoenix", "The Birth of a New Dawn", and so on... All as one, fiercely pretentious, epic, to one degree or another documentary, and, importantly, beautifully and brilliantly executed. And I firmly decided - even if the galaxy turns in the other direction, but I will definitely become a real pilot of the Military Space Forces of Novorossia. (hereinafter referred to as MSF). And not by any one, but by the pilot of a fighter bolid of a space aircraft carrier group, and the best!.. Yes, it's normal to dream about this at the age of six or eight. There were opportunities - even in our town there is a club of young spacemen, there are such on all planets and residential stations of Novorossiya, all these are units of the ubiquitous network structures of the Defense Council. With hundreds of other guys and girls, I joined the club and attended it every free evening after going to the House of Education, colloquially, school. With the consent of the parents, of course, they were only in favor, especially since the father himself served, though not as a spaceman, but as a Space-Infantry , participated in battles with raiders and some xenos hostile to Novorossia a couple of decades ago, during his turbulent youth). At the club, we studied the theory of space movement, communications, transportation, logistics, the general initial military space program, reviews of equipment and strategies of potential enemies (this is considered everything except ourselves) Naturally, we were taught according to a highly simplified and accelerated program adapted for children. In the real military academies of the Defense Council, and even more so, in the secret structures of the Order of Renaissance, they teach much more in-depth. We raced on flight simulators, engaged in spacefleet-fencing, and felt like incredibly cool conquerors of space, without leaving our home planet. However, we also had orbital flights together with the star system militia. It was then, looking down from the cockpit of a light bolid, a thousand kilometers above ocean level, that I really realized how huge our planet is... and at the same time so small. And almost uninhabited- even the Sovetsky city, the largest on the planet, seemed like a brilliant star somewhere in the blue-green expanses shrouded in haze, and its best sign was the spaceport hovering above it in stationary orbit, shining with another star. But the orbital spaceport is a giant of modular blocks the size of a quarter of a city. How infinite are the bottomless, black depths of space! How far away are the stars, and what a miracle that people have learned to overcome these seemingly absolute distances. On screens and projections, it feels a little different - there is nothing important, decisive. Impressed by all this, I got down to business so abruptly that I quickly became the best in the squad in literally everything - from aerobatics to handling a fleet-epee, and I won't say that the others were lazy. Everyone tried their best... well, as the best... the most bouncy frog in our little frog house. Now I understand that a real mature MSF-pilot, even with equal bolides, would have disabled our group before we would have noticed him... But every year I realized more and more that the driver of the car is a little not mine. Firstly, I liked working in the team of the patrol corvette simulator more. It even turned out that I have the makings of a commander - to organize the work of several crew members into a single volitional effort that leads to the desired result - I managed it! However, only when I was in the mood. When I felt like I was one with the crew. Alas, every year the mood became less rather than more. It turned out that I have a persistent allergy to submission. And the command, too. But there's nothing to do alone in space. Well, if only in a flea-class bolid from one orbital station to another, and even then the dispatcher leads you and tells you what to do. Every year I cooled down to this activity, and every year my initially phenomenal results sank more and more confidently. Three years ago, I was transparently hinted that if I don't want to go to the club, no one is holding me. Nevertheless, I tried to pull myself together and made it to the end. Maybe I would have left, but our training system is built like this - several of the best representatives of the squad take a dozen children from a younger graduation under their wing, and teach them everything they learned last year. If necessary, they are helped by older comrades. We don't have teachers - the young spacemen club is a completely self-supporting system, like most of all other organizations that we call Societies. There is only a curator from the educational part of the militia of the star system, with whom general issues on the implementation of curricula and exams are solved. He also acted as an intermediary from the Defense Council, which monitored our training and took note of the best. The best of us had a chance to get an internship in the starsystem militia, and the best of the best - straight to MSF. And imagine, I would have taken and said to my twelve wards, whom I have known for years, "goodbye, I'm tired of all this, I'm off, good luck, flyers.".. That would be categorically wrong. In general, as a last resort, I could enlist in the starsystem militia. The minimum necessary knowledge and skill is there, the right thing. But... that's all later!

In the meantime, I remembered a very important matter.