I don't know what happened to the computer that ejected with me in the escape pod, but for some reason it switched into voice communication mode. Although, maybe it was stipulated by some regulations and instructions, I do not remember.
Lieutenant Irs, it sounded from the helmet's earpieces, you made an emergency landing on the planet Earth. The escape pod is damaged on impact with the surface. Hull integrity is compromised. The life support test failed. There is no damage to the communication system. The power plant is functioning normally. External conditions are suitable for life. Your body condition is satisfactory.
Where did the fighter crash?
I have no way to pinpoint the exact location of the fall. The fighter crashed and partially burned up in the dense layers of the planet's atmosphere. Individual pieces of debris reached the surface ten to 30 kilometers west of the landing point of the escape pod, answered the computer and projected on the visor of my helmet a map of the surrounding region with the area of debris dispersion.
Excellent, I couldn't resist a caustic comment. The computer nonchalantly ignored my words.
* * *
So, what do we have as an asset? Well, first of all, a livable planet inhabited by not-so-wild people. That last statement is a bit of a stretch, of course, but considering the circumstances, Lieutenant, I wouldn't be too picky if I were you.
I know the basic aboriginal languages, thanks to Letra and her hypnolinguistic equipment. I remember local history rather superficially, but I have a pretty good idea of what has been going on here for the last hundred years, and the computer, if anything, will always tell me, so in this respect, I hope there will be no problems with naturalization.
What else? I also kept some of the technical stuff, that this world is still 200 years away from. First and foremost, of course, is the computer that survived the landing and the remnants of the network of satellites in orbit. With a functioning communications system, that's a lot. Also, there are personal weapons, although I probably shouldn't, on second thought, carry a plasma pistol, as well as any other equipment I can't explain the origin of. Consequently, I will have to hide my spacesuit, my personal weapons, and other equipment I have, except for the ones that can be worn discreetly, which I also have. Thanks to pilot foresight we all prefer to have a backup targeting and navigation system and communications equipment, independent of the fighter, but able to work in conjunction with its computer as a last resort. In my case, they are contact lenses on which, if necessary, information is projected from a dozen pea-sized devices that are placed in various organs and tissues of my body. For example, in my palms, under the skin behind my ears, in my liver, kidneys, and even my heart.
Together, these components are actually a very peculiar computer, the parts of which are somewhat separated in space, which does not prevent them from working as a unit. But our scientists have never learned how to stick anything useful into the brain practice has shown that it is not necessary to do this, it is not good for man. In general, I will have something to surprise the locals, even without showing them high-tech devices.
Now the minuses and problems. The main thing is that I am nobody here. I came from nowhere, I do not fit into the local social environment, and it is very specific here and extremely suspicious of outsiders.
I found myself in a state that kind of suffers a paranoid disorder and suspects that almost every other citizen is an enemy and a spy, and I can hardly avoid confronting its security forces. That is, I need a clear and consistent legend. Of course, the technical level here is low, even the photos on the documents are flat, black and white and of such quality that it would be better if they did not exist at all. There are no unified databases at all, and those that do exist are on paper. In other words, it's just paradise for a rogue scout, from which I am not much different at this stage. But here's the trouble I don't have the means to make fake documents even of this quality.
The specialists at the lunar base, of course, would have done it in no time, but the designers of the escape capsules and combat suits didn't think to equip their products with such devices. I could, of course, try to use someone else's documents, but I have to get them somewhere, which is not so easy to do in peacetime, and the age and sex must coincide, as well as the appearance, at least in general terms. And with this approach, it's easy to miscue on any little thing related to the biography of the character whose ID I'm trying to appropriate.
As I pondered all this, I was at the same time masking the crash site of the escape pod, in which I carefully packed all the things I had decided not to take with me. Naturally, I had no clothes suitable for the local environment, so I had to stay in my flight suit for the time being, that was worn under the battle suit, especially since the late spring in these latitudes did not promise any serious cold weather. The place where I found myself was a remote taiga, so I didn't have much trouble camouflaging a not-so-large capsule.
After about an hour, I checked everything again and made sure that communication with the computer left in the capsule and with the satellites in orbit was functioning properly, then I had the satellite closest to my landing point take a picture from orbit to make sure that the pilot of some plane that happens to be in these parts would not notice anything curious. The taiga had reliably swallowed up the wreckage of the fighter and the escape pod, but in a couple of places the largest debris still gleamed in the sun, and I decided to plot my route in such a way as to pass by them and finally eliminate traces of my invasion of this world.
After checking the map, I just shook my head: I was in the Tuvan People's Republic, not just anywhere. This strange state was formed in southern Siberia four years after the communist upheaval in Russia. Having survived the troubled times of the Civil War, the capture by Admiral Kolchak's troops, and the subsequent Chinese-Mongolian intervention, the republic, not without the help of the Red Army, proclaimed its independence, which was recognized by the Soviet Union and later by Mongolia. Almost the rest of the world considered this territory part of China, and refused to recognize the TPR. However, despite its formal independence, power in the republic belonged to the local Communists, who regarded Comrade Stalin as their older brother and teacher.
With my European appearance, it was not so easy for me to go unnoticed among the local population. However, there were also enough Russians in the Republic, and I intended to turn this fact to my advantage.
I wasn't going to hole up in the taiga. According to predictions made by our scientists-historians with the help of the lunar base computer, it appeared, that very soon Comrade Stalin's aggressive and dangerous Western neighbor would wage war against the USSR. And, like, he has every chance of putting the Soviet Union in a very uncomfortable position, for after the revolution in this large country, under the wise leadership of the Leader and Teacher, there are, to put it mildly, ambiguous, events, so that all its many tanks and planes may not help in organizing a proper repulse to the foe.
The prospect of the mad Adolf winning and taking over much of the world did not please me at all, and that is why I originally chose Soviet Union as the landing site. My scientist friend's colleagues did not eat their bread in vain, and were rarely wrong in modeling the future of pre-space civilizations. Their calculations suggested that the brunt of the war with Hitler would fall precisely on the shoulders of Comrade Stalin and the citizens of his country, rather than on the shoulders of the Anglo-Saxons, who had already been actively fighting Adolf in Europe, the Atlantic and North Africa for two years. And on the eastern frontiers of the Soviet country, from time to time samurai Japan also looks toward Siberia, remembering the wrongs done to it at Lake Khasan and the Khalkhin Gol River. It is true that these bellicose yellow-faced characters now have much more problems with the looming American oil embargo, without which the island empire will be dead in a year if not a month, so it is unlikely that they will get into a fight with the Soviet Union. But even if war comes only from the west, the key events that will determine the fate of this world, will take place here.