The Raven High
Page 18
Somewhere ahead there is a skirmish and fire, next to the figure appears a person in a fighting suit, the helmet's glass made opaque by a light filter.
“Continue operation.”
A strong female voice, real, not a simulator. The strange trapezoidal figure with a machine gun disappears with incredible speed, and absolutely noiselessly. Only then does the woman in the space suit turn to the girl.
“As I understand it, you aren’t Frunze Anastasovich, born in 1979?”
“Of course, no.”
“But you heard his distress signal and helped us by hacking the net from the inside. Who are you and what are you doing in this prison?”
“Ensign Olga Voronov, the Corporation’s merchant fleet, personal number 294770. Confined here for an unknown reason for three hundred twenty-nine days.”
“Uncle Joe, check it out.”
“Ensign Olga Voronov died under unclear circumstances last year,” recites a male voice with malicious intonations, “and was duly discharged. Interesting … Check her eyes.”
The woman approaches Olga.
“Stand straight, look at me, and don’t blink.”
A beam scans Olga’s eyes.
“Yes, it’s really Ensign Voronov,” the male voice says.
“What if it’s a fake?”
“I don’t see much use in making such a thorough impostor for a dead girl. Take her. If she is Olga Voronov, I have a couple of questions for her. And if not—throw her overboard.”
The woman looks at Olga. “You’re coming with me, no objections?”
“None.”
“We haven’t finished here, so it’s not safe in the corridors. You walk in front of me, five steps away. If I say lie down, you lie down, if I say run, you run. If you try to call security or panic, or something like that, then I’ll shoot you in the back, agree?”
“Yes.”
“Then go ahead, Countess of Monte Cristo.”
As she walks down the dark corridor, Olga tries and fails to connect to the local network—everything is turned off. The wasps are returning; somewhere ahead there are shots, then a loud explosion. They walk past a female corpse in a guard uniform without badges—it seems the same guard that threatened Olga with execution. The corpse is riddles with about thirty coin-sized holes that the wasps punched through her. Olga is a little sorry that the woman is dead; she would like to talk to her. Another fifty meters, two more guards in the same condition. Suddenly, the woman pushes Olga in the back.
“Run now, we found a client!”
On the second turn someone silently emerges from the darkness. The same metal figure, apparently he was waiting for them. He follows silently behind them.
“Who it that?” Olga asks.
“A marine.”
Another turn and they stop at a door.
“He’s here, wounded, urgent medical needs,” the marine says in its deep, inflectionless voice.
“Cover us,” the woman says. “Olga, come and help me.”
They enter the cell, and the artificial daylight automatically switches on. On the bed is a tall gray-haired old man in his underwear.
“Frunze Anastasovich?” Olga asks. “He looks good for one hundred seventeen.”
In truth he doesn’t look more than seventy. Strong muscles, not a gram of excess weight and all his teeth are intact. But his heart is palpitating and his lungs are failing.
“What happened?”
“The neural resonator,” the woman says. “Implanted to immediately kill him in case of escape or release. Uncle Joe jammed the resonator, but he couldn’t turn it off completely.”
“A resonator? But—”
“Yes, they didn’t implant such an interesting device to you; later, we’ll find out why. Now we must remove the resonator before it kills the client.”
The gloves of the woman’s spacesuit rapidly transform, each finger bristling with a surgical instrument, reminding Olga of Freddie Kruger’s gloves.
“I hope blood doesn’t make you nauseous,” the woman says.
“I’ll survive.”
The woman kneels down, injects something into the man’s left hand, and he immediately loses consciousness. A precise movement of a surgical laser opens his throat, practically without blood. Then a strange device like a long plastic centipede creeps out of her glove and straddles the incision, hooked on the edges with thin claws. Extraction of the murderous device leads to the clinical death, but the woman manages to save the patient with the help of a miniature resuscitation apparatus that delivers oxygen directly to the brain. The centipede tightens the legs, closing the cut. The operation lasted forty-three seconds.
The woman takes a long metal cylinder from her suit and nimbly unfurls it—a stretcher.
“We’ll have to carry him.”
Four more trapezoidal marines have joined the figure in the corridor. They continue on their way: two marines in front, three behind, Olga and a surgeon in the middle, carrying the patient.
“Lieutenant, report the situation!” the woman orders.
“The prison’s under our control; the surviving guards escaped through a secret passage in one of the cells. Per the records, these are two prisoners here. Ready to sail.”
A dull red light ahead shimmers like coals in a fireplace.
“Is that fire?” the girl asks.
“That’s a window.”
The flickering light grows stronger as they emerge into a wide hall. One of the walls is entirely glass. Olga catches her breath as she looks out the window.
Low orange clouds stretch over a rocky plain of dirty gray to the horizon where the high mountains with flat peaks rise. The sun isn’t visible, but it’s light enough—it seems that the clouds themselves radiate an iridescent glow. Huge black tornadoes and thousands of dazzling lightning bolts tear at the cloud cover. Olga senses a continuous low rumble, even through the thick armored glass—the wind is howling outside.
“The Oven,” she says. “I’ve been in the Oven all this time!”
This isn’t Earth; she’s been on Venus all this time! But her implanted gravimeter keeps showing Earth’s 1G, rather than Venus’s 0.92. Someone not only reset her clock, but tampered with her gravimeter software.
“Olga, we aren’t on holiday. Go to the third gate!”
They hurry through the hall, Olga still looking at the amazing scenery outside the window. Venus is as exactly Mikhail described it—a quiet dungeon under a raging sky.
The third gate closes immediately as they pass through. Olga realizes that they are in a vertical lock chamber. A huge diaphragm hatch looms above their heads, and in front of them stands the smooth wedge-shaped body of a short-range shuttle.
At the ramp awaits a tall man in a combat spacesuit. “One hundred and twenty seconds to takeoff; the charge is set!”
Passing three yellow barrels of explosives, Olga climbs the ramp, noting the emblem on board the shuttle—a red star helmet and mauser 1912 crossed with a cavalry saber.
When the last marine has boarded, the man goes into the cockpit. The hatches close, the engines buzz to life. Olga and the woman shift the old man into a medical capsule. They strap him down and put on an oxygen mask, then hands Olga a suit and points to an anti-overload chair.
“Yuri, we have two civilians aboard and one of them is wounded, so spare them your beloved takeoff on a ten-fold overload!”
“Roger, no more than three!”
The air is pumped out of the airlock, the diaphragm retracts, and the poisonous six-hundred-degree atmosphere rushes in. The buzz of the engines turns into a roar; a second later, the shuttle rises from the launch pad, lifts its nose, and surges into the low clouds. The shuttle shakes like a tin can in the dense atmosphere, and the lighting goes out several times. This lasts a minute and a half, then the roar recedes and the thrust of the engines drops sharply.
“We are in orbit en route to the rendezvous point. Docking in twenty-seven minutes.”
Through the narrow
portholes, Olga sees the almost forgotten starry sky. On the starboard side is the slowly retiring dirty gray disk of Venus. The engines continue to run; the force of gravity is a third of Earth’s.
“I hope I never come back here again,” Olga says, unfastening her seatbelts. The woman takes off her helmet. She looks about thirty-five with a beautiful Russian face, a strong chin, and steadfast gray eyes. She corrects the tight long plait of platinum hair, then goes to check the old man in a medical capsule.
“Good, he survived the takeoff,” she says. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Olga answers.
“Do you want something to eat? Drink?”
“Right now, I’m interested in another thing—who are you, and where are we docking in twenty-five minutes?”
The woman sits and takes a couple of sips from a thermos.
“Olga Voronov, nice to meet you. I am Lieutenant Commander Elena Chernova, the medic on the Bolshevik, the ship that we’re on now. Heard of us?”
Naturally, Olga has heard of this ship. There isn’t a person in space who doesn’t know about Old Bolo.
The end of bonus chapter…
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GROND SPACE DYSTOPIA series:
GROND-I: THE RAVEN HIGH
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XCFT4D1
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GROND-IV: A KIND WORD AND A GUN
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G2RGW6P
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