For "Jurg": Izvestia publishes an excerpt from the novel by the finalist of the World Fantasy Awards

Two hundred years ago, a tiny moon called Jurga won freedom, but now a powerful corporation is preparing to take control of it again. Dejah Munk arrives to make a deal, a cold—blooded corporate agent who does not even suspect that she herself belongs to a family of legendary rebels. She has to make a choice between her career and the legacy of her ancestors, corporate loyalty and the freedom of the whole moon. The space novel by K.A. Terina, a finalist at the 2026 World Fantasy Awards, is the first major work by an author who previously wrote short stories and novellas. On November 10, the space series starts on Yandex Books, and at the end of the month it will be released in paper edited by Elena Shubina. Izvestia exclusively publishes a fragment of the main fantastic journey of autumn.

K.A. Terina, "Jurga". The fragment

It was only half a century after the revolution, but Uncle Banev, who lived in pre-revolutionary times, seemed like a real relic, because he personally knew Chiara Munch. He had been to Yum-Kaasha twice with the Sidhe trade and was therefore considered an expert on it. When the uncle took Yanik with him in the hope of passing on the skill of trading with Yum-Kaash, Yanik realized that there is no skill and there is no trade. When he saw Yum-Kaasha for the first time, he was convinced that there was no Yum-Kaasha either, such as the old people of Volchan and Sidsky imagined him, who had been accustomed to hide their children from him since pre-revolutionary times. And there is a huge, forgotten, absolutely nobody's treasure chest. Janik barely slept for three nights. As soon as he fell asleep, it seemed to him that Yum—Kaash was about to leave the Cronus system and all of Yanik's hopes for a special and free fate would fly away with him.

For some reason, everything is so arranged in the head that, in fact, the same act is more difficult to apply to a loved one than to a stranger. Perhaps the fact is that the trust of a loved one makes the fulfillment of the plan elementary, and robbing a stranger, a varangian, is a difficult task and, therefore, a feat. Yanik thought about all this later, but he just took Varang's boat, the baby grasshopper, the interplanetary yawl, because he could. And then the grandmother would have seen the act of the demonic ball. The grasshopper, in no way comparable to a bulky, unwieldy sheep, was moored not at the Mitrian landing site, but at an abandoned gas station, at the very edge of the crater, and that was the only reason Janik managed to steal it.

And so he arrived on Yum-Kaash, a 15—year-old stupid Yurgan bastard. Of course, berestyanka was with him.

You think: this wonderful miracle has long forgotten its owners. All you need to do is explore it better, use all your wits. You think you're smart, smart, smarter than most. The rest either didn't figure it out or got scared. Luck loves the brave.

Much later, Yanik realized that the stranger whose boat he had stolen must have been from Yum-Kaash, and there was nowhere else. The grasshopper himself deftly flew onto the landing deck, moored and froze, fitting into the situation like a native. Janik thought about all this much later.

Photo: Global Look Press/Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center

At first, he and berestyanka trusted the atmosphere of Yum Kaash, were stunned by its grandeur and horror, wandered around it until their muscles ached, because it is impossible to stop admiring this treasure trove: from tiny callaby flies to giant stingrays and dragons - neither alive nor dead, from miniature coral colonies to entire cities. frozen in stasis. And Yum-Kaash showed them all this without hesitation. Yum-Kaash always understood how and what to show a new guest. For Yanik, he paved the way with bread crumbs from his mechanical creatures to the living deck, where there were luxurious cabins where imperial scientists probably once lived, and a kitchen with an ancient imperial printer, in which Yanik discovered an endless collection of hitherto unknown recipes. Janik's childhood wasn't hungry, but it wasn't well-fed either. My mother and stepfather made do with concentrate; there were no horned feasts and peddlers. On Yum-Kaasha, Yanik found himself in paradise.

***

You'll understand when Yum-Kaash talks to you. Not with a voice from speakers, not with letters on monitors, not with touches and circumstances. Yum-Kaash will talk to you from the inside. One day you'll just understand. What you understand depends on him.

***

Janik spent several days searching for people. Someone, anyone, who would challenge his right to own a Yum-Kaash. It wasn't easy, given the ship's extremely unusual design.

There were people here. Encased in cocoons of stasis sarcophagi, they looked at Janik from the distant past and from very recent times. For some reason, Janik did not worry that he himself would one day find himself in such a sarcophagus. It was known (although Yanik would not say from where) that Yum-Kaash took only one specific creature into his collection. One representative of the species. Occasionally, there are unique, special specimens for the kunstkamera.

Yanik had no illusions about his own uniqueness, but there was already an ordinary sid in the Yum-Kaash collection. Janik found it on the fifth or sixth day of his trip to the museum.

Photo: Global Look Press/IMAGO/Rene Traut

By this time, the Yum-Kaasha virus was already inside. Janik felt a rush of heat. Nausea rose from his stomach and took over his head; his arms and legs cramped every now and then, as if someone tirelessly drove millions of invisible needles into them. Her eyes were filling with tears, and her mouth, on the contrary, was dry. In the last hours before losing consciousness, Janik vomited uncontrollably.

Tiny mechanical creatures, similar and unlike Yurgan cockroaches, of all shapes, sizes and colors — after all, Yum-Kaash was once created to celebrate the diversity of life - tirelessly cleaned, cleaned, glued, broke, pushed, cared. They brought him food and drink. With his already fading consciousness, he saw Kaisa, who was obviously unaffected by the virus, trying to protect him from this hypocritical concern. She kicked the freaks away, but they kept coming back, and each time there were more of them.

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Then there were dreams, hot and filled with visions, which were the only ones Yanik's mind, which had not seen much, could produce at that time. In the dream, there was a stepfather, bent over from burning out, there was a mother, an unhappy and sad woman, and for Janik, she was merciless. There were a lot of screams and insults in the dream, and tears burned my eyes, and sobs tore my chest. In his dream, Kaisa was running away from him, and Yanik could not catch up with her in the endless tunnels of Jurga. And then he was surrounded by brownies, and Janik knew that they would break his legs and that would be just the beginning.

***

But one day you wake up and realize that Yum-Kaash is your god. And you are his eternal slave.

By this point, Yum-Kaasha's alphabet, the rules of his language, his verbs and participles, all his vocabulary and spelling are already inside you. They've settled in, settled in, multiplied to a quorum, and they look into your thoughts and soul not from the outside, but from the inside.

Your best friend is locked in stasis, and you don't care, because your new god tells you: serve me faithfully and all your dreams will come true.

You wake up because your god needs you. You're doing a job. And you fall asleep again, only to wake up in a new world the next time. Isn't this a dream?

Photo: Global Look Press/Lunar rover

You will visit everywhere where there are interesting creatures. You'll see them all. You will become a master, or you will die very quickly. Your god doesn't need incompetents. He will help you. Oh, he'll help. His word, living inside you, knows how to discover new facets of your talents. In your usual gray Sydney life, would you have learned so much about yourself? You run like a god, you're a master of observation. You're a brilliant killer.

Returning home to your god, you walk past sarcophagi, and more and more often you see creatures there that you got yourself. Many of these creatures are human, but it doesn't matter.

You are a tool that should be protected, and therefore, every time you return to Yum-Kaash, you sink into stasis.

Sometimes you go from being a tool to being a weapon. Because it wasn't just little Yanik Banev who came up with the idea to look inside this huge monster.

Most of the uninvited guests die on their own.

Fools who trust the atmosphere of Yum-Kaasha die painfully and for a long time. This is how you understand your value: after all, you were able to get along with the Yum-Kaasha alphabet and become a part of it.

There are other traps for smart people.

Photo: Global Look Press/Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center

Stasis awaits some.

Units — extremely rare specimens — leave Yum-Kaash with loot.

You're the little tame sid who goes after them. You know how to hurt them. You know how to return stolen goods.

The first person you see coming out of stasis is your birch bark. You see her last, going into stasis until the next time God calls you.

You have unknowingly entered into a contract, and this contract is simple: perform a hundred services, kill a hundred thieves, demolish a hundred pairs of cast—iron shoes, and then you will be free again. If you remember what freedom is.