When you want to avenge the loss and feel that the hour of the decisive battle is approaching, you gather all your will into a fist, fully concentrate on achieving the goal. The path is not easy, but this is the price that the protagonist of Sergei Tarmashev's novel “Ancient. Background. Book three ". This series of books is associated with the cycle "Ancient", and readers have more and more questions. I would like to understand how Thirteenth and Thorbrand are connected. There are assumptions, but I want to know everything exactly. The writer does not forget to pay attention to the main war, the struggle between two forces, the experiences of the heroes and their relationship with each other, giving only part of the information. But there is a premonition that the ending of this story is already very close.

The war has been going on for four hundred and thirty years. Striving to destroy enemies. Large-scale and brutal battles. Whole, broken into two parts. And only at the beginning it was something painful and scary. The further, the more familiar it is to see this war, less and less emotions, more and more losses. But his life is subordinated to only one goal - he wants revenge. He will punish those who are guilty of losing the most precious thing he had. He is Thorbrand, the True Ace and the King. And the Dark ones are afraid of him. No one else in the Galaxy has such a power as he has. Thorbrand senses that a decisive battle is coming soon.

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"There is enough light for those who want to see, and enough darkness for those who do not."

Chapter one

957,600 years ago, the four-dimensional layer of the Universe, high-energy space, the bordering spiral arm of the Borderline galaxy, the Yarna star system, 12 hours 70 parts according to the time system of the Shining civilization

The first echelon of the enemy fleet fired a volley, and the consciousness dispersed by the Tracking Crystal automatically made a count. Four million homing torpedoes. A little weak for such a fleet, which means that the Dark Ones have something else in store. Hanging in the glow of the Light's battle post, Torbrand got in touch with the single contour of the Overseers:

- Look for hidden enemy forces. I feel the presence of more low-energy Entities than we observe. "Daariya" and "Ariste" do not leave the invisibility mode. To destroy the torpedo salvo for battleships. Strike groups prepare for the attack. Reserve to wait for my command.

The single command contour was colored with short impulses from the commanders confirming the receipt of the order, and the battleship squadron, spread out in the cosmic night in a gigantic shining necklace, fired a return volley. The torpedo ocean rushing at near-light speed was crushed by a region of transcendent gravity that suddenly appeared on the way, and the approaching wave of bursting serpentine silhouettes was replaced by a giant flash of many explosions that merged together. Thorbrand sent a short burst on the fleet's command frequency, and the strike teams launched their attack, instantly darting away at an acceleration thirty times the current speed of the photon. The first echelon of the enemy had no technological capabilities to prevent the rapprochement and a moment later found itself in the clinch zone. The attack cruisers of the Shining used their speed superiority to rapidly mingle with the enemy's battle formations, and a hot glow of explosions erupted in the midst of the icy vacuum. Streams of antimatter overwhelmed enemy fleets, turning the multi-deck monsters studded with guns into dazzling photon flares, and the number of the first echelon of the enemy fleet began to gradually decline. The second and third echelons of the Dark Ones began their retreat at full speed, demonstrating their intent to find the boundary of the region of space within which the Shining Ones blocked their ability to hyperjump. On the surface, it seemed reasonable. The fleet of the Dark Ones outnumbered the Shining by twenty times, which actually meant the complete victory of the Shining, and the enemy admiral saw no reason to waste his forces in vain. The first echelon of the Dark ones, as usual, consisted of representatives of the Black race, the rest of the enemy units belonged to the Grays, so the admiral's decision to sacrifice the Aliens for the sake of saving their own at first glance looked quite expected.

- The dark ones planned to lure us into a trap, - Torbrand's energy flow did not carry emotions. - Let's play along with them. The reserve begins a roundabout maneuver. The task is to bypass the battle, start the pursuit and tie down the enemy's second echelon in battle. Do not go into the region of space that allows the start of a quark reaction. Attack!

The reserve strike groups instantly picked up speed and dashed off after the retreating enemy. As a result of both attacks, the network of merged Guardians of the Fleet spread far beyond the sector, and almost immediately reports followed:

- I see the radiation of a quark charge! One low-power charge is installed on the second-tier flagship battleship!

- I confirm! The spectral response is distinct. Imitation is excluded.

- Another quark charge on the flagship of the third echelon! This is the gray dreadnought, giving the backlight.

- I confirm the compliance of the emissions. The flagship dreadnought has a high power charge.

- I see the radiation of the Immortal! The avatar is on the third echelon dreadnought along with a quark land mine. Goes at full speed to the region of free start of the quark reaction.

“Do not pursue the immortal,” Thorbrand merged with the general energy flow of the solar system and listened to the radiation emanating from the avatar. - Ignore the enemy's third echelon until the special command. Guardians, is there any new data on the hidden forces of the Dark?

“Not yet,” the Guardian from "Daariya", who heads the general network, answered for everyone. - Are looking for.

The reserve strike teams overtook the second echelon of the Dark Ones, and a second hotbed of battle erupted in deep space. There the overall balance of power was even, and the Grays fought fiercely, probably counting on the help of the third echelon. But the third echelon was in no hurry to help and continued to retreat, maintaining a tight battle formation.

- I feel the radio communications of the Dark Ones! “The general overseer network has sent a report from one of the reserve strike cruisers. - Admirals of the first and second echelons do not ask for support from their naval commander. I do not observe panic among the Dark.

- I confirm. - In the general network of Overseers, an impulse has arisen from the cruiser fighting the first echelon of the enemy. - Strong emotional imprints emanate from Blacks. They are waiting for some event and hope to win.

Bright thin lines connected both fleets, bringing unforgiving death to waterfowl in concentrated streams of radiant energies. The marching order of Delphi's transport convoy flared up like a multitude of small suns, obscuring the vapor of cover warships that were swelling in the place of the destroyed ships with clouds.

O Owner! - Bloated with happiness, the Follower reported. - The transport ships of the Delphic Empire are completely destroyed! The escort ships mixed their battle formations and began an indiscriminate retreat!

Shshekh jutted out his mandibles. Waterfowl panic. Excellent, what you wanted to get. Demoralized warriors will not display miracles of courage and tenacity. This is what one, but carefully calculated blow means.

Delphi's fleet fired a missile salvo! - continued the Follower. “They're trying to get out of the reach of our weapons!

The owner chuckled. Apparently, the commander of the waterfowl completely lost his head from confusion. Only the battle lasers of the great Insectorate can fire an effective salvo at this distance. Not a single missile will reach the Inces' battle formations, at such a distance they will be shot halfway. The Delphic Warlord just doesn't know what to do. Shsekh himself, in his situation, would try to hide behind a star, leaving it between himself and the enemy, thereby gaining time for a hyper-jump. A speedy flight is the only thing that would allow us to preserve at least some part of the fleet.

The enemy ships began to move towards the sun. Computer analysis shows that they are trying to get out of the line of fire, hiding behind the star! the Follower announced gloatingly.

Ssekh felt that he was getting bored.

Fleet to begin pursuit. Fire when ready.

He sprawled lazily on the Guiding Web, wondering if it would be wise to give the left brain permission to sleep.

The trap succeeded, and the outcome of the battle was already a foregone conclusion. His fleet was in the immediate vicinity of the star's photosphere, Delphi's fleet much further. Traveling a small radius will be faster and more economical than a large one. Waterfowl can never hide behind the sun. They will lose a few small ships before they figure it out. Then their commander will sacrifice the remaining small ships, putting them in a screen to save the large ones, which will come out of the battle to go into a hyper-jump. In fact, the victory has already been won. The owner scanned the battle scene. The ships of the Inspectorate pursued and fired at waterfowl, gradually skirting the sun, Delphi lost two destroyers and retreated, stupidly snapping missile salvos, meaningless at such a distance. What was happening was no longer of any interest to Shshekh. He plunged into himself and began to think. After the destruction of the remnants of the waterfowl fleet, he imitates the departure of his fleet from the system. In fact, he will again hide under the fields of refraction, but only farther from the star, and wait for the rescue squadron of the Commonwealth. He will destroy people completely, cutting off their escape routes. Then it will poison the planets and leave the system.

To enhance the effect of his triumph, it would be wise to appear before the Queen Mother as quickly as possible, as rumors in space spread at a speed much faster than the speed of the ship. As you know, the new Queen Mother is emotional, she is most generous in the first days after receiving good news, you should not neglect this circumstance. Perhaps he will be awarded the right to climb another thread to the center of the Throne Weave ...

O Owner !!! - Half-dead from panic horror, the Follower tore him out of his thoughts. - People !!! People are here !!!

Sshekh rushed to the center of the Guiding Web. For the first second, he didn't believe his facets. Right in the middle of the battle formations of his fleet, the warships of the Commonwealth of People appeared literally out of nowhere. For a few moments, the Keeper stared in a daze at the gray balls of shock cruisers and bulky cylinders of aircraft carriers emerging around.

Ambush!!! They are everywhere !!! squealed the Inferior, and the Weave began to shake, conveying the horror that gripped the flagship's crew.

Fleet to fire on Human ships! - the Owner came to his senses. - The first salvo against aircraft carriers!

At that moment, the People struck. The viewscreens were momentarily lit by explosions bursting dangerously close to the flagship cruiser. The automatics adjusted the brightness, and Sshekh realized that he had lost a quarter of the fleet in an instant. Some of his ships, obeying the order, tried to find the Commonwealth aircraft carriers in the confusion of explosions and debris and attack them, but time was already lost - everything around was swarming with Human interceptors.

Cancel the attack on enemy aircraft carriers! “The Owner did without an intermediary this time, transmitting his orders to the Inferior directly. Time was the deciding factor now. - Focus fire on Human cruisers!

The people fired a second volley, and everything around was drowned in a roaring ocean of boiling fire and seething clouds of hot gas, which a second ago were the mighty ships of the Sixth Fleet of the Second Swarm of the Insectorate. The ether was filled with screams of pain and panicked screams. Sshekh turned to the Follower:

Order to the fleet! Engines at maximum power! Break the distance and leave the clinch zone immediately!

The lower one, half dead with terror, frantically rushed to obey the order. The owner was furious. Commander Delphi has trapped his fleet! People appeared here even before the arrival of the Insectorate ships and all this time patiently waited for the right moment. Someone had foreseen the train of thought of Sshekh and built a trap. And this someone was not a waterfowl. To uncover such a brilliant plan, you need to have the brain and instinct of a predator, a ruthless killer, and Delphi cannot do that. So that's why, after the conclusion of the alliance between the Empire and the Commonwealth, Delphi's military successes went uphill! The conclusion was unambiguous: People are even more dangerous than he expected. They must be destroyed at any cost and as quickly as possible. Left without the Commonwealth, the Delphic Empire will inevitably fall under the combined blows of the Insectorate and the Hegemony.

The Keeper's flagship cruiser sprang out of the swirling mess and began picking up speed. Sshekh again took control of communications with the fleet and ordered all the Inferior to cover the flagship until the hyperjump. Inferior can be sacrificed: the Insectorate is large and powerful, new Inferior will hatch, new ships will be built. Now it is necessary to deliver to the Queen Mother these findings, containing information that may be invaluable.

Suddenly, out of the general chaos of explosions, clouds of debris, boiling fire and hot gas, a dull gray ball of a Commonwealth heavy cruiser emerged. The ball swiftly approached, and Szhekh recognized the identification mark engraved on the upper hemisphere of his body. An incomprehensible creature consisting of a round hairy body with two black eyes and two large round flat ears, exceeding the size of the body. Commonwealth flagship insignia. Right in front of him was the War Leader of the Human race. The Owner grabbed onto the weaving of the Guiding Web and literally fired his command to destroy the enemy. But it was too late. The matte gray ball obscured all the view screens, growing in size. The last thing Shshekh saw was a sterile cold flash that stained the conning tower of the heavy plasma emitters.

The Guardian Ace disconnected, and at that moment the third echelon of enemy forces changed the direction of movement. Enemy squadrons undertook maximum acceleration towards the second focus of the battle, and in their place only the Immortal flagship dreadnought remained, surrounded by a dozen guard cruisers. The general balance of energies at the point of its location corresponded to the region of space in which nothing prevented the occurrence of a quark reaction. Thorbrand listened to the distant, crude imprint of man-made energy and stifled the outburst of rage again. Not now. The immortal knows that he will go away unpunished again, and therefore boldly provokes an attack. Its third echelon will soon join the second, and their combined forces will increase. The reserve of the Shining Ones will begin to suffer losses, and this, according to the Immortal's plan, should make the Shining Warlord lose his temper. And then the Shining One will send a Melee Light to destroy the Immortal's flagship in order to deprive his troops of control. And the fire support battleships will remain unguarded. This means that the hidden forces of the Dark should already be somewhere nearby. They will strike suddenly at the battleships, and if they are lucky, the Light will be destroyed by a quark explosion. But this is all just a cover. The ruler of the Grays has conceived another meanness.

Eirik, lying in the opposite part of the central compartment, felt an impulse of rage emanating from the owner and jumped to his feet. The mighty griffin listened to the Crystal of Search, but did not find an enemy nearby and lay down in place. Torbrand lit the Pet Crystal's glow for the pet and spoke softly:

- Prepare to accelerate.

Hearing the familiar command, Eirik climbed into the interweaving of energies and curled up as usual. Fighting animals are not able to merge with the ship's contour and prefer to sleep, being inside the amphibious glow. But Eirik had an increased attachment to the master's energy flow and often felt the course of the cosmic battle. In order not to disturb the beast, I had to plunge it into sleep myself. Thorbrand poured a small stream of energy into the pet's energy circuit, putting the griffin to sleep, and again listened to the flow of cosmic energies. The thoughts of the Immortal cannot be listened to, his avatar is controlled by the technologies of the higher Dark worlds, but the shadow of their energies can be seen and along it one can pass through it to his planetoid of Immortality. But to detect the shadow, you need to have time to come close to the Immortal, and the rulers of the Grays know about this. Therefore, they destroy their avatar at the slightest sign of threat. Until now, it was not possible to take them by surprise, there are still too few Ases in the military caste.

- I feel the work of the refractive fields of the Dark! “A general network of Overseers has brought a report from one of the battleships. - At least seven hundred prints. Slowly approaching.

“Confirming,” said the next Overseer, also from the battleship squadron. “The dark ones are somewhere nearby, trying to get out to our rear.

- I fix a slowdown in the movement of prints, - followed by another report. - The enemy's hidden fleet stops.

“The presence of the Light frightens them. Thorbrand listened to the imprints of alien energy gathered by the Overseer's net. Covered by refractive fields, the Dark One fleet stopped moving and raised the cloaking mode to maximum. Usually, in such cases, the troops of the Immortals become almost invisible, and they can be found not so much by the traces of the refractive fields as by the energy imprints of technogenic devices in the general flow of the surrounding space. However, now the Overseers clearly saw the frequency sweeps of the refractive fields, which indicated that the enemy's camouflage equipment was not of the highest quality. The Dark Ones have more serious technologies. This means that Bessmertny saved money on this fleet too. Well, it's time to find out what he's up to.

- Commander Askjold, - Torbrand called the commander of the reserve, - report the situation.

- The enemy carried out an encirclement maneuver and cut us off from the main forces of the squadron. - The Crystal of Bond lit the image of a kin. - While holding on. Four dead, many wounded, half of the interceptors were badly damaged and returned aboard. Three cruisers are on the verge of losing their speed, one is hit.

- We begin a counterstrike. - Thorbrand put the Torch into Deathmatch mode. - Battleships to transfer fire to the second echelon of the enemy. "Daariya" and "Ariste" do not leave the invisibility mode until contact with the enemy. "Daariya", your target is the Dark Ones saboteurs. "Arista", help Askjold. I will take care of the Immortal and join the main force. We work when ready!

A lump of ink-black radiant energy with a Light inside instantly gained thirty times the speed of a photon and pierced the boundless infinity of space. Sectors engulfed in seething battle were left behind, and ahead loomed the marks of the Immortal dreadnought and his bodyguards. Thorbrand sensed an emanation of panic emanating from the Grays, and the unified energy flow of the solar system trembled, feeling the launch of a quark reaction. Burning with bottomless blackness, the Light instantly changed its direction to the opposite, and a huge chunk of space boiled with unbridled fury of enraged elementary particles. Everything around was covered with a gray haze of crumbling space, and an all-devouring stream of destructive energy crashed into the Light. But the infinitely strong blow collided with the infinite power of the battle Ace, dispersed by the mighty Crystals, and the gigantic all-crushing ram admitted defeat to his brother, the same Son of the Great Flash. The equipment driven by the energy of Asa, created by the wisdom of millions of generations of Shining Ones, redirected the incoming destructive force to revive the matter it had devoured, and the space around the Light began to restore stability.

Appreciated the book

What cannot be taken away from Tarmashev is the author's courage. He is not afraid to give free rein to fantasy, is not afraid to become a "formulaic" writer, is not afraid to play with the scale of the plot, does not run, as I think, for recognition. And the most important thing that does not take away from him is that with all the obvious shortcomings and advantages, he writes damn interesting.
With regard to this particular book, here, I have to admit, I wanted all this cosmic excess to finally, at least a little closer to some kind of logical conclusion. I love it when the cycles that are interesting to me go on and on, new books are written, but here, already in the third part, it doesn’t smell like a final yet, but I really want to understand what the trick is. I want to finally understand how Thorbrand and Thirteenth, the one who is earthly, are connected. I don’t see any connection yet, except that they are warriors and that they are clearly the same person, but I haven’t finished yet how to connect all this. Maybe that's why I already want to quickly finish with the backstory. I want the final !!! And he did not come again, infection!
Everything is still incredibly interesting. Immediately we find ourselves in the thick of events, immediately space carnage, different planets, different races, different heroes and their views on such a long war. But the development of Thorbrand's story, and in fact it is, in fact, is the main storyline, I do not see.
Well, apparently, one thing remains, to wait for the next book of Prehistory. After all, someday its finale will come. Someday this war will end.

Appreciated the book

After the sad end of the second book, the mood was only good. I would like somehow the author to "sort out" the situation with the death of one of the main characters. All the same, not George Martin with his PLiO, where the main characters "die like flies."
I was glad that Thorbrand is doing well in terms of the development and growth of his strength. He became Fighting Ace and Konung. And now the Dark ones fear him even more. And in general, everything in the Edge Galaxy is more or less calm. But this calmness is somehow oppressive and it is obvious that soon there will be "tin".
From the pleasant - new heroes and a storyline with Kuohtli. Which, in some miraculous way, will have to play a significant role in the end of the entire cycle (at least I think so, otherwise why did they even appear here ?!).
From pleasant - Harmonious Alice. From the obvious, this is Alina's reincarnation. But with the details - everything is complicated and I will wait for an explanation.
So, I happily approach reading the last book. There are many questions that I want answers to. And the most important of them is the connection of Torbrand and Alina / Alice with the very Thirteenth and Alina from the main cycle about the Ancient.

Appreciated the book

So I finished reading the third book of Tarmashev's cycle "Ancient. Prehistory". After that, I decided to surf the Internet in search of reviews about the work of the author himself. Some say that his works are almost the standard of Russian fiction, others that Tarmashev does not understand science and therefore his books are complete nonsense. And, purely my opinion, all these reviews are complete nonsense.

The narrative in the novel brings the reader as much as 449 years after the death of Adelheid. The war continues and so on and so on. But this is not the main thing. The main thing is that Thorbrand once meets a young and thirteen-year-old Valkyrie (about this magic number thirteen) who is also called Adelheid. The girl was named so in honor of the great heroine and you don't need to be seven spans in your forehead to predict the "unexpected" turn in the following chapters. The legendary Ace at first does not really pay attention to the girl, but later (quite a long time later) says that Adelheid has the same glow and the energy of his beloved Adelheid. WHAT A TWIST! The warrior does not understand how this is possible, but he just "feels" that he intends to figure everything out.
And we also describe the war from the point of view of the Dark Ones. Boredom is mortal, to be honest. Everything is so depressing, but the idea itself is not as bad as it was daring, although it was hammered to death.

From the side of describing the world of his novel, Sergei Tarmashev tried. We are told about the training of the Valkyries, and through their training the reader learns incredibly huge information about the weapons of the Shining Ones, about the past of the world (this is such a small excursion into previous novels), as well as about the relationship between pairs of Valkyrie-warriors and what happens when one of them dies ... This is a big plus for the novel, it very much reveals many characters and their relationship to everything that happens in the universe.

Tarmashev is a good writer (probably one of the best in Russian literature), but this book is far from a masterpiece. It's very short and boring. Banal plot twists, the inevitable backlog of continuation and the simplicity of the characters ruined everything. There is no soul here. When an author wants to say something in a book, it can be seen immediately, but not here. I understand everything, this is just combat fiction and there is no need to look for something supernatural and meaningful in such books, but, damn it, how you want to. It remains only to wait for the finale and hope that it will "take out" the readers' brain (in a good sense of the word).