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With a deafening crash, the pod ploughed into the thick of the trees. Century-old branches lashed against the hull like steel whips, leaving jagged gouges in the metal. The craft bounced violently off the trunks, snapping trees, until with a dull, guttural sound, it buried its nose deep into a snowdrift. A thick silence fell over the cabin, broken only by the pitiful ticking of the cooling hull and the hissing of steam.
“No-no-no! Hirus!” Marex lamented, turning in horror to the mangled wreckage outside the glass. “We just destroyed so much timber! Dorian, couldn’t you have flown around them?!”
“Shut up!” Dorian furiously yanked at the jammed belt buckle. “You could have helped! What use are you in this cabin anyway?!”
Freeing himself, he tumbled clumsily out of the hatch straight into the snowdrift. The snow burned his fingers, but Dorian only buried himself in it more fiercely, continuing to grumble: “Just sitting there, maneuvering with his body!”
Marex slipped out right after him, already drawing breath for a scathing retort, but froze with his mouth wide open. A crisp, icy current struck his face, instantly sweeping all his prepared nastiness from his head. The ringing night chill filled his lungs, burning them from the within in a way no Margondian stimulant ever could. His head tilted upward on its own: there, in the bottomless sky, crazy lights were still scattering in showers of sparks.
“Look at that, Dorian!” Marex jabbed a finger at the sky. “They’re still firing into the void! Ha-ha-ha! What absolute fools! They lost us!”
In one movement, he closed the distance and threw his entire weight onto his partner, locking his neck and forcing his gaze toward the stars. Dorian was about to snap back, but suddenly felt the tight knot of tension inside him snap, releasing a wild, near-hysterical laugh.
“Ha-ha-ha! You’re actually right!” he choked out through laughter that burned his throat no less than the frost. “Fools… shooting at the clouds!”
“Do you feel it?” Marex suddenly fell dead silent, greedily catching his breath. A blissful smile spread across his face. “Dorian, my brain is dying and being reborn right now… How beautiful this oxygen is! Real stuff, from unprocessed trees!”
He spread his arms and froze, greedily swallowing the cold air as if afraid the Earth would suddenly change its mind and take this priceless gift back. His face shield finally misted over with a damp haze from his noisy, ecstatic breathing. Dorian closed his eyes too, allowing himself an impermissible luxury for the first time — a moment of weakness.
While his partner swayed in an oxygen nirvana, Dorian fumbled for the touch panel. A short pulse — and the pod responded with a barely audible electrical click. The metal shuddered, rippled, and in a fraction of a second literally dissolved into the surrounding landscape, leaving only a flattened imprint in the snow.
It seemed they could have stood there for an eternity, turned into two snow-covered statues, but the sudden paradise shattered to pieces at a foreign, frighteningly alive voice:
“Hello?”
The Margondians snapped their eyes open instantly. Right in front of them, on the exact spot where their invisible ship had been shimmering a second ago, a figure materialized as if from thin air. A human. In one hand he clutched an axe, while with the other he scratched the back of his head in puzzlement, staring into the empty space.
“That’s English,” Dorian breathed out barely audibly. His voice sounded level, but his hand jerked betrayingly, locking onto Marex’ elbow in a death grip. Dorian wanted to keep his partner from panicking, but achieved the exact opposite: a shock of the other’s sticky fear shot through his fingers instantly, tangling his own thoughts.
“Do they only communicate with one word?” sputtered the second Margondian, whose red-and-green suit now seemed an absurd blotch against the winter forest.
“I don’t know. Maybe this one is defective,” Dorian suggested.
“I can hear you, you know,” the stranger interrupted their bickering. A wide, terrifyingly genuine smile spread across his face, which was overgrown with thick stubble. “So, it turns out, ha-ha-ha, aliens really do fly only here? I had a feeling!”
“Here? Aliens?” the partners exhaled in unison.
“So, others have already flown to them! That’s why they were shooting at the sky!” Marex blurted out, backing away with feline caution, as if every step he took in the snow could trigger an explosion.
“The only question is… were those guests able to fly back?” Dorian grimly lowered his hand to his waist. His fingers settled habitually onto the cold, ribbed metal of his paralyzer. The man, catching this movement, immediately gripped the axe with both hands.
“Hey, no-no, I don’t want to fight,” he said quickly, glancing at his weapon as if he were afraid of it himself. “As for this… I just came to chop a fir tree.” He hesitated, a guilty, almost childish smile appearing on his face: “Lost a bet. In cards.”
“You chop down a tree… on a wager?” Dorian’s voice faltered. The linear vents on his neck pulsed painfully — he could physically feel his partner’s panic drilling into his own mind, crowding out the remnants of logic.
Before the man could even open his mouth, Marex, completely blinded by fear, whipped a bizarre, glowing device out of his pocket.
“Bow down, madman!” he roared so loudly that frost showered down from the nearest branches.
“O-o-oh…” Instead of collapsing into the snow in terror, the lumberjack leaned right toward the barrel of the paralyzer with a sort of reverent trance. His eyes gleamed feverishly. “Look at that shine… Just like in those Roswell specials! Listen, we have things that look like that gathering dust on the shelves in toy stores, but this one… this is real! Can I have a look?”
“Know the wrath of Margondia!” Marex broke into a squeal and pressed the trigger all the way down.
Wave-like beams slammed into the Earthling’s chest with a hum. He merely grimaced amusingly, as if from a light tickle, and continued to advance: “Guys, I come in peace! I moved to the States just for… for you guys! And everyone kept telling me, ‘You’ll ruin yourself, Bobby, they won’t fly here, it’s just hallucinations.’ And look how it turned out! It came true! Will you let me feel what kind of device this is?”
“Dorian, what do we do?! Why is he still standing?!” Marex’ voice turned into a thin, barely audible whistle. “I’m starting to get anxious; I’m not supposed to!”
“Just shut up!” Dorian roughly shoved his partner aside with his shoulder and stepped forward, trying to seize the initiative. “We… we too… come in peace!”
“Then why was he screaming about wrath?” Bobby nodded his axe amiably toward the shaking Marex. “Listen, I’ve got a good offer here. Business!”
He reached masterfully into the deep pocket of his greasy down jacket, desperately fishing for something inside.
“Let’s take a selfie, otherwise the guys won’t believe me. I’ll go back with both a tree and a photo — now that’s what I call perfect! Beautiful!”
“Oh, I don’t like this at all…” Marex exhaled. His pupils dilated, drowning the iris in blackness. He caught Dorian’s arm in a death grip and bolted into the thicket. The pure Earth oxygen surged into his muscles, turning the Margondian into a living projectile. “What is a ‘selfie’?! ” he shrieked, leaping over fallen logs. “Dorian, that is clearly the name of some kind of execution!”
Dorian wanted to yell, “Where are you going?!”, but the question caught in his throat. Marex’ fear flooded into him like molten lava, instantly burning away the remnants of his self-control. His mind still tried to cling to logic, understanding that this terror was foreign and imposed, but his body had already given up, submitting to the shared rhythm of panic. The rational “stop” was definitively replaced by the instinctive “run.”
“Y-you’re right!” Dorian panted, feeling his heart launch into a gallop in tandem with his partner. “Who knows what he was pulling out of there! Accursed translator!”
“Blame Goldon!” Marex resolutely dragged his partner behind him, breaking through the deep snowdrifts. “He set us up!”
Meanwhile, the man finally fished a smartphone out from the depths of his pocket.
“Phew, it got stuck, the damn thing… Well, shall we take a picture? Guys?”
He froze, watching the two bright figures crashing through the undergrowth. The Margondians were racing away, stumbling and looking back at him in such terror as if the devil himself were chasing them. The silence of the winter forest swallowed their cries, leaving Bobby alone with a flashing screen and an uncut fir tree.
Chapter 3: Negative Growth of Stealth
To the Margondians, the sky over Earth felt like an endless battlefield. The deathly pale light of the moon drowned time and again in “cascading bursts.” The scouts, utterly convinced they had caught the brunt of an artillery barrage, sprinted forward, choking on clouds of their own steam that grew thicker beneath their helmets in rhythm with their death-rattling gasps.
Despite the considerable distance they had covered in this mad gallop, Margondian vision allowed them to clearly discern details even from afar. Marex, looking back on the run, jerked as if struck. In the distance, at the very edge of their perception, the silhouette of the man in the down jacket still loomed. Through the falling, sparkling ash, he could be seen clutching the device in his hand. Watching the fugitives run, the pursuer raised this “something” upward, and a steady, pulsing glow emanated from the device.
“Dorian!” Marex nearly ripped his companion’s shoulder out of its socket. “He’s still holding that apparatus! It’s a beacon! He’s painting a target on us! That’s why they’re firing at us!”
Dorian, though trying to cling to the remnants of his sanity, saw the flash as well. In their world, no technology radiated energy for no good reason. If a device phosphoresced, it meant it was either prepping a shot or transmitting data.
“Get off me already!” Dorian snapped, feeling his own panic resonate with his companion’s terror, while the ominous speck of light in the distance only confirmed their worst fears.
“I can’t see a thing!” wailed Marex. His helmet had turned into a personal sauna: condensation obscured his view and dripped in stinging beads directly into his eyes. “My face is crying from the inside, Dorian! I’m blinded by my own stress!”
“Stop!” Dorian wrenched himself away sharply, ripping his elbow from the iron grip, but their momentum was too great.
They flew forward a few more meters, breaking through thorny brush, until the thicket suddenly ended. Their boots skidded down an icy slope, and both Margondians tumbled head over heels, coming to a halt at the very edge of a clearing. Dorian panted heavily, ready to turn around and give a final stand against the “beam beacon,” but his gaze was pulled forward on its own.
Before them, cutting through the night darkness with millions of lights, sprawled a city. The streets pulsed. Crowds of citizens scurried between buildings, and despite it being midnight, a frightening, unnatural joy shone on their faces.
“Do they not need sleep at all?” Dorian whispered, staring at this electrical madness. “And they aren’t afraid of the flashes in the sky?” He cast his gaze upward. “I don’t understand… Deafening sounds all around, yet they act as if they don’t even notice…”
“They’re lunatics!” Marex cut off his companion’s musings and yanked the helmet off his head, exposing his damp skin to the sharp, frosty air. “Phew! I couldn’t stay in that thing a second longer. The feelings get trapped inside; it makes me sick!”
“What if there’s radiation?!” Dorian looked at his companion with genuine reproach, who was already slipping into an oxygen ecstasy. “Put it back on this instant, your face will peel off!”
“Doria-an…” Marex carelessly pressed a side button, and the heavy apparatus collapsed with a soft metallic click into a compact module right in his palm. “Without the filters, this world is even better. And as you can see, I’m not dissolving into atoms. There’s no contamination here. Only life!”
To prove his words, he spun on the spot. The fresh oxygen hit his brain no worse than Margondian liquor: the poor fellow swayed, and the sensitive appendages on his head wobbled drunkenly in time. Dorian waited a minute, checking to see if the violator would begin to suffer agonizingly, and only then, with doubt, pulled off his own helmet. The frost bit into his cheeks. The air was so pure that for a second Dorian forgot how much he hated all living things.
“I could stand like this for an eternity,” he squeezed out, feeling the spring of fatigue unwind inside him.
But the peace ended quickly. Snapping back to reality, Dorian realized that Marex had already been holding forth on the greatness of Margondia for a couple of minutes. From this torrent of pathos and incoherent wheezing, he managed to salvage only a single grain of “brilliant” strategy.
“We just need to take their trees!” Marex yelled, waving his arms. “All of them! Every single one!”
“They’ll drop dead on our second day, Marex. We’ll just feed them to the processing plant again and breathe dusty cardboard. Forgot about the dome and the leaky satellite?”
“Then we’ll take the trees, and then…” he faltered, his mental gears grinding as they turned. “Then we’ll figure something out!”
Dorian was about to reply, but Marex’ gaze snagged on an object in the sky, and a new idea flared up instantly. He jabbed a finger toward the lunar disc and solemnly proclaimed, “Then let’s just take their moon! How have our great minds never thought of that?!”
Marex hopped up, inspired by the scale of the theft, but Dorian cut his flight short immediately: “That is physically impossible. We don’t have that kind of technology.” He grimaced, looking at his dejected companion. “Come up with something… less planetary.”
Dorian turned back to the city. “Let’s move closer. We are here for reconnaissance. Please, just stay quiet. Let’s be honest: diplomacy is not your forte.”
He strode resolutely toward the thrum of music, maneuvering between the shadows of spreading pines.
“I beg to differ! I am terribly suave,” Marex hurried after him, wiping his face with his sleeve on the go. “That’s what my grandfather used to say. Maintained that I am the sole specimen of emotional equilibrium in our family.”
Dorian tripped on flat ground. The thought that somewhere on Margondia existed an entire nest of creatures compared to whom Marex was considered “balanced” momentarily paralyzed his will. He already had a toxic retort prepared about his partner’s defective genetic code, but bit his tongue just in time: Margondian etiquette strictly forbade mentioning relatives unless they had already been annihilated.
“Look over there, some kind of ice structures,” Dorian directed his locators toward the central square. “There’s a sea of people.”
“Dorian!” Marex clamped onto his shoulder in a death grip, pointing ahead. “Are they… worshipping a tree?! Look! It’s covered in lights!”
A giant fir tree in the center of the square, wrapped in kilometers of electrical serpents and studded with shiny spheres, beckoned to them.
“This is… sacrilege,” Dorian whispered, feeling the back of his neck begin to itch from his companion’s greed. “They’ve draped the timber in trinkets. Mocking the resource!”
“We must save it,” Marex had already taken a step forward, his pupils dilating to the size of coffee saucers. “We are absolutely obligated to take it home. This is a humanitarian mission!”
“Stop, you idiot!” Dorian deftly cut around his companion and blocked his path. “We need to analyze everything first!”
Turning back to the epicenter of the light madness, he squinted. His gaze caught on a massive wooden platform.
“There!” Dorian pointed at the structure. “There’s an empty cavity under the decking. An ideal sector for observation.”
Bypassing the crowds of citizens who, in the festive bustle, paid no attention to two strange creatures in “designer” suits, the Margondians ducked into the darkness beneath the heavy supports.
“Alright, it seems quiet here,” Dorian raised his head, listening to the thumping of footsteps above them. “Aside from this primitive noise. We can reflect on what actually happened…”
“Even this structure is made of timber!” Marex raised his voice to a dangerous limit and struck a nearby support with a short, frustrated fist.
“Quiet you!” Dorian pinned him against an icy beam. Through the contact, he instantly read the wave of extreme indignation radiating from his companion. “We need to try and get used to them flaunting their wealth…”
“That’s one thing!” Marex hissed so loudly that it could hardly be called stealth. “Why didn’t the paralyzer put that man in the forest to sleep?!”
“I’m thinking about it…” Dorian drew the weapon, turning it over in his hands under the meager light rays filtering through the cracks in the decking. “Trying to find malfunctions, but the indicators are normal.”
“And they also walk around in the dark. Do they really not need sleep at all?” Marex dumped his thoughts all at once. His locators pressed tightly against his head, betraying rising fear. “And the one with the axe? He wanted some kind of ‘se-elfie’! What does that even mean?! A method of execution? We need to find their Emperor and find out why they attacked us!”
Why can’t he just handle things one at a time? Harping on the same thing, just winding me up! Dorian thought. Marex’ fear began to resonate with his own state. It seemed logical: if official representatives of Margondia, harboring no criminal intent, were openly attacked, it meant the planet was in a state of total mobilization.
“We need reinforcements! Hiding here like rats!” Marex swung with anger to kick a support of the platform, but was interrupted by a thin, ringing little voice.
“Aren’t you guys a bit too old for the slide?”
A young girl popped out from around the corner of their hiding place. She tilted her head, studying the uninvited guests with the unceremonious curiosity of a child.
“Oh, cool costumes! Are you from Santa? I thought he had elves, but you guys are tall.”
“WHERE IS YOUR EMPEROR?!” Marex tried to jump up, but instantly connected the back of his head with the massive boards above him with a dull thud. Bent double and rubbing his head, he leveled his shaking paralyzer toward the girl. “Answer! Or you shall know the wrath of Margondia!”
The air froze for a moment, and in the next second, it was torn by an ultrasonic shriek. Marex rocked back, nearly dropping the emitter from this sonic attack. A woman came rushing to the scream immediately.
“Alyssa! How many times have I told you: don’t run off!”
The mother scooped her daughter into her arms. Her gaze landed on the saboteurs frozen in the icy slush. There was no fear in it — only disgusted irritation.
“Have you no shame at all? Grown men, crawling under a slide and scaring toddlers! Drunkards! Ptooey!”
Marex just stood there with his mouth open. “Drunkards”… The word lashed like an unfamiliar but clearly shameful title. In his head, it instantly formatted into the name of the lowest caste of suicide warriors. He slapped the paralyzer against his palm in frustration: “Should have shot them both. Dammit!”
“What are you muttering over there?” Dorian raised his apparatus, viewing it as a useless piece of junk. “It’s functional. Hear that? All systems normal. They just… don’t react to our frequency. As if these creatures have different vibrations.” He hesitated and added barely audibly, “Probably.”
Dorian’s doubts only spurred Marex on. His locators deployed with a whistle, assuming a combat stance. “Since technology fails, we go hand-to-head! We are stronger!”
“Marex, turn your brain on.”
“What was on the platters?” the latter interrupted, refusing to listen to arguments. “Where do we look for their leader?”
Dorian treated his partner to a heavy look.
“As I already told you, they are rushing toward a unified Earth civilization. That means they have an Emperor, but his whereabouts are unknown.”
“Then maybe it’s much simpler!” Marex paid absolutely no attention to his “brother’s” skepticism. “We saw a huge glowing tree, which means the Emperor is there! Let’s go there, and along the way, we’ll overpower anyone who objects!”
Dorian keenly envied his companion’s defect. While Marex was trying on the role of a world conqueror, Dorian was trying to gently ground his fantasies:
“Let’s go. But keep in mind: so far, no one has perceived us as a threat. Our task is to infiltrate their trust and locate the ruler. We’ll approach the sacred tree; the elite are bound to be concentrated there.”
They scrambled out from under the decking, shaking packed snow and sawdust from their suits. As soon as the Margondians left the shadow of their sanctuary, they were instantly engulfed by a many-voiced hum and the blinding radiance of string lights.
Making their way through the crowd, Dorian noticed people casting suspicious glances at their locators, which were involuntarily twitching from the abundance of foreign scents.
“Damn it! Marex, we need to lie low. We’re too easy to spot.”
They ducked around the corner of a market pavilion. By the wall, Dorian discovered a tall plastic bin, filled to the brim with a strange mush: rotting organics mixed with scraps of items that had once been the height of fashion. Without hesitation, he began to study this dubious treasury in search of a disguise.
“Well, what are we standing here for?! We should have approached the tree long ago; it’s just drawing me in… Do you think it’ll fit in our pod?” Marex squinted dreamily. “Maybe if we cut it into pieces?”
While he was calculating how to section such a massive bioresource, Dorian continued to rummage intently through the bin, displaying the ultimate degree of diplomatic indifference.
Drowning out the stench of rotting organics with his own focused snorting, Dorian momentarily felt a bright inner ping of joy emanating from his companion. Realizing that Marex hadn’t babbled for a good couple of minutes, he finally looked away from the container. His partner’s attention was fully arrested by a cluster of people in the center of the square. They were all crowding around a tall creature in a bright scarlet robe.
“Do you see that, Dorian?!” Marex shoved him in the shoulder. “The one in red over there! There’s a crowd around him, and he’s handing stuff out to them… Damn it, hard to see from here, let’s get closer!”
“Stop!” Dorian called out to him, holding out a strange scarlet item with a white pom-pom. “Here, found this in the bin.”
“What’s that for?” Marex arched an eyebrow in confusion. “If that’s their Emperor, let’s just go and take him by force!”
Dorian sighed and resolutely tugged Marex by one of his appendages.
“We don’t know anything for sure yet! Hide the ‘antennas’ under these covers to avoid unnecessary questions. Besides, it looks like everyone here is wearing these caps.”
“True…” In a burst of feeling, Marex grabbed Dorian by the neck in a brotherly fashion, transmitting emotions directly. “You are so smart! You and I — the perfect team.”
He began talking so fast that the words merged into a single stream:
“Listen, we put the caps on. Do you think it’s connected to that guy in the red robe? Then it all adds up! If he’s their Emperor, they wear this in his honor! Ooh, or maybe their Emperor never changes? I have a plan…”
“Eno-cough-cough-ugh-gh!” Dorian interrupted him, roughly pushing his hand away. “You’ve already clamped all my receptors! You’re broadcasting across the whole neighborhood as it is, don’t touch the neck! All your feelings hit me in double format, brr!”