“Centaurs aren’t idiots to hang out in the hot sun all day. Over there, where the bushes are visible, a small river flows into the sea. There is shade and cold clear water. By the way, the only source of fresh water on the entire beach. It is still morning now, and in the afternoon the sun will be so hot here that our fighters used to lose consciousness from overheating. Therefore, I usually don’t wear my armor all the time, but only put it on when danger arises. Yes, not according to the charter, but then the brains will not boil ahead of time in this samovar.

By the way, yes. Already now it was stuffy and hot in the tower. And that's why I was even scared to imagine what hell would be going on here in the afternoon. And my flask was completely empty. I didn’t think of filling it in the Capital - I was in a hurry and thought that later I would be in time at any moment. Four hours without water I will somehow survive, although it will be a lesson to me for the future ...

I moved to the opposite loophole. There stretched the same hot beach running along the mountain range, and only some buildings could be seen far, far away.

– What is there? I asked the commander.

Sour looked in the indicated direction and, grimacing in disgust, answered:

- There's a pier. It stands on our land and formally belongs to our faction, but in fact it is run by the Geckho. From here, from the pier, they take our goods and the tribute collected from us by sea to their base. We are their vassals and pay thirty percent of all the resources we have extracted: from the harvest, from the chopped wood, from the ore raised from the mines ... Our diplomat Ivan Lozovsky assures that this is how it should be, that this is a payment for protection, and that people still got off easy. But I'm still disgusted. It feels like we have been occupied and openly robbed…

Sour relish spat down through the embrasure, expressing his attitude to what was happening. But then, as if answering himself, he continued:

“Though you newbies should be interested in interacting with the aliens. Centaurs are still not visible now, and it will be boring for you to sit idle here. If you want, go to the pier. You will not be allowed into the Geckho warehouses themselves, but no one forbids you to look around nearby. By the way, at the same time you can ask the Geckho to fill all your flasks with water, they usually do not refuse such a small amount.

***

We reached the pier in an hour and a half. During this time, I discovered an even richer deposit of hematite, chalcopyrite and, it seems, skutterudite. True, in the latter case, the matte white crystals were not determined as skutterudite, so I was not sure that I was right. The Mineralogy skill was thus raised to the eleventh level, and I was quite pleased with myself.

At the same time, the Cartography, Scanning and Medium Armor skills went up one level, so I approached the Geckh wharf as a proud Level 8 Prospector! My companions also improved noticeably during this walk along the Antique Beach and both reached the fifth level. Irishka was especially pleased with the opportunity to apply her professional skills - Imran, while training the ability of a quick jerk, once did not calculate the distance and from all the run-up hit a granite rock.

It was painful even to look at the crashed Gladiator - his whole face was covered in blood, a huge dark hematoma on half of his body, his left arm was hanging with a lifeless whip ... But Irishka took out a large first-aid kit and in just half an hour patched up our friend with her medical skills, even somehow spliced his broken collarbone. At the end of the treatment, clearly pleased with her work, the girl informed both of us that she had come to terms with her profession as a Medic, found certain advantages in it, and she no longer needed any other.

The Caucasian was very grateful for the help and even, either jokingly or seriously, promised Irishka to periodically break up on purpose in order to feel the care of such a beauty and give her the opportunity to grow professionally, pumping the necessary medical skills.

I distributed nine free skill points along the way: three into Guns, three into Scanning, which is a priority for my character, and the remaining three into Cosmolinguistics - after all, an encounter with aliens was foreseen, and the ability to speak their language was very useful.

But, as it turned out around the next turn of the coastline, it was still necessary to get to “talk to the aliens”. The road was unexpectedly blocked by a high three-meter fence made of thick metal mesh. The same one I saw near the Shooting Range, and even high-voltage barbed wire stretched over the top was also present.

The fence went far into the sea, while the other end rested on a high and almost sheer rock, so that it was not possible to climb up. We hesitated, discussing the unexpected obstacle. Irishka took out a walkie-talkie from her belt and called Sour to find out how other players passed here before:

Irishka says. Commander Sour, there's a high fence on the beach. Don't go to the pier.

In response, there was a vile crack and hardly distinguishable individual words:

- What (checkmate) ... was not ... (crack) ... built ... (checkmate) geckho ... (crack) ... come back.

And although I did not fully understand the phrase, I got the impression that the commander did not know about this obstacle and, accordingly, could not suggest a way to get through. Imran remarked with displeasure:

- What kind of anti-gravs and other high technologies can we talk about if the faction cannot make a normal walkie-talkie yet ?! We moved away from the Eighth Zastava only three kilometers, and the connection is barely catching!

It also seemed strange to me that with such a priority status of the Dome project and a huge investment of funds from the state, members of the faction cannot receive normal walkie-talkies. But I still did not discuss this topic - firstly, I did not know all the details, and maybe there really were good reasons for the low quality of the connection. Secondly, I noticed a gate in the fence.

True, as it immediately became clear, the door was locked on the other side, but on the same side there was neither a lock nor a bolt. Although… I made out high, somewhere at the level of two and a half meters above the ground, some small device similar to an intercom with a button and a microphone. I asked Imran to put me on his shoulders so that I could reach this intercom.

For the next four minutes, I pressed the button and uttered various phrases about who we were and why we had come. At the same time, all three of us just shouted through the fence so that the Geckho warehouse staff could hear us. But to no avail - no one answered us, no one opened the door or approached the fence.

We yelled so loudly that even the deaf could hear. I don't think there's anyone there,” Imran suggested.

“I have one more free skill slot. I can take the Swim and go around the barrier from the sea! - Irishka suggested a solution, although she herself seemed wasteful to spend a precious skill on such nonsense.

I, having tried all the options for contacting the guards through the intercom, decided to try to speak the Gekkho language:

- Kento Spirit! - I said the traditional greeting phrase, and in response I received a phrase in an alien language from the speaker:

- Sabi all cook.

The sand underfoot began to move, and a 1.5-meter metal column with a square white touch panel rose up. Looks like I was asked to name myself. I jumped off the shoulders of the Dagestan athlete, went up to the panel and leaned my right palm on it:

“Mosquito, human, H3 faction,” I introduced myself, but the system didn’t like this answer, and the column with the panel went underground again.

Hmm… Bummer. It looked like I wasn't on the list, or maybe the only thing the defense let through was the Geckho, which was what set me up because the touchpad was too big for a human hand. So, I tried to remember the only Geckho I had seen so far, a diplomat named Kosta Dykhsh. A huge four-fingered hand, the palm is also shaggy, I did not see areas free from hair. All fingers ended in large claws. With such an abundance of hair on the paws, it is clearly not papillary patterns that the scanner reads. What if…

I rummaged in the coastal sand and picked up a few empty shells, cleaned them of adhering debris and put them on the four fingers of my right hand, except for the little finger. Again, he said the greeting phrase in the Geckho language, calling up the touch panel, and put his hand with shells, trying to touch the white surface only with claw-like flaps:

- Costa Dykhsh. Geckho. Vaide-Dykhsh.

The Electronics skill has been upgraded to the fourth level!

Cosmolinguistics skill upgraded to level 8!

Hacking skill has been upgraded to the third level!

Lockpicking skill has been upgraded to the fourth level!

The gate slid noiselessly to the side, opening the passage for the three of us to the Geckho warehouses at the pier.