A King Word And a Gun

by Yuri Hamaganov

  Thirty seconds elapse; the barge isn’t going to turn. The video channel is switched on, and Olga immediately recognizes the Gauleiter’s assistant, although a year has passed since their first and last meeting. This is Malena Madrigal, that captive girl, the Supernova trooper, in whose memory Antonina found sketchy mentions about comrade Petrov. Then she was badly burned, and some of the burns haven’t been reduced so far; pirates like to be adorned with scars. But, with some surprise, Olga understands, evaluating the clan tattoos on Malena's face, that she isn’t an assistant. She is a Gauleiter.

  “You can buy yourself a coffin . . .”

  Communication breaks up, although the transmitter continues to send an ultimatum. Nastya captures several compressed VHF broadcasts, this time being maximally protected from listeners. But the meaning of the message is understandable without a complicated decipherment procedure—Gauleiter Malena contacted the lunar branch of Tartar, requesting urgent help in solving an unexpected problem. There are fifty-six minutes before the collision.

  “Movement on the station!”

  Telescopes detect the change in the situation in New Louisiana; the assault boats hastily drop off the mooring lines, preparing to retreat into the void, and artillery satellites change their position.

  The signal lights flash and go out, the general lighting is replaced by an emergency light, the main cylinder and small rings slow down their movement, the auxiliary transitions are disconnected, the cables and ducts are already open—the standard preparation in case of possible depressurization. Fifty-one minutes.

  “Comrades, take a look at the fun in Freeport.”

  The Tartar citadel now occupies a whole block in Freeport, openly marked by a black flag with a skull in a Waffen-SS cap and two crossed Apollo missiles under it. As Uncle Joe correctly noted, a minute after receiving messages from Louisiana, fun begins in the city; a powerful assault group breaks out into the streets from the citadel, and all patrols in the city are alerted at the same time. Inhabitants of the criminal capital hastily seek shelter; the Riley Reid Boulevard empties in a matter of minutes—the locals are taught that no one should stand in the way of Boddicker's tugs, especially when they are very angry. Forty-eight minutes before the collision.

  “Now the most interesting part will begin!”

  That’s the goal of the pirates who left the citadel—the Temple, a strange mix of the barter market, the labor exchange, and the giant thief's dump, where the criminal contingent from all around Earth is constantly gathered. The vast majority of thieves, smugglers, hijackers, slavers, and other bastards in the Temple are under the omnipotent authority of Boddicker, but now it doesn’t matter for the pirates who are coming up. They are interested in the fact that the barge was aimed from here, and the address indicated in the ultimatum confirms this assumption. A ransom of ten million in cash must be received by a large gang of slavers, currently gathered in the Temple; this fact Olga discovered in advance.

  The convulsive attempts of the slavers to explain that they were framed and that they had nothing to do with the unprecedented attack on New Louisiana don’t meet with understanding from the pirates; the Bolsheviks took care of ensuring irrefutable proof of their guilt. The automatic barge belongs to the slavers: no one has yet discovered the fact that it was recently boarded by Dawn fighters. Identification codes, passwords, appearances, places of receipt of ransom—all this accurately indicates to the pirates the specific authors of space extortion. The judgment will be swift and righteous.

  With lightning-fast approaches to the Temple, the pirates begin a methodical sweep, generously treating everyone who tries to resist or who simply doesn’t succeed in getting out of the way with electric shocks, neuroparalyzers, and swarms of controlled bullets. Someone is immediately executed, and another is packed up for a subsequent thorough interrogation.

  The slavers maintain their defense on the upper floors, in the brothels and taverns, and there aren’t enough electric shocks here—the pirates clear their way with grenades, laser lashes, and infrasound, systematically destroying all those found in their way. Five minutes later, everything is over: after killing about two hundred bandits and all the service personnel on the upper floors, the pirates return to the citadel, along with several surviving slave-trade leaders. They have achieved all their goals, except for the most important: a barge forty minutes from the target.

  “How nice it is to do good deeds from a distance,” Olga murmurs contentedly, contemplating the smashed Temple and the hundreds of charred corpses. The slavers who were taken alive should already be beginning torture so their captors can find out the access codes to the barge processor, and since none of them knows these codes, the process of obtaining the necessary information will be delayed. And the barge, meanwhile, is halfway there.

  Malena isn’t going to sit idly—she doesn’t have time to wait until the citadel gets the codes that she can use to subordinate the barge. Attempts to remotely intercept control, in many cases undertaken by the powerful computers of New Louisiana, are not successful—the engineers of the Bolshevik have ensured reliable protection. And in case the pirates attempt their favorite boarding maneuver, the hull of the barge has been lavishly sprinkled with mines.

  “They’re starting to shoot!”

  Artillery satellites give several volleys of illumination shells, highlighting the barge for the warships. But they don’t shoot: knocking down the heavy barge isn’t a simple matter, especially with the containers shielding the engine room. They need a small-caliber atomic projectile, but Tartar pirates try not to demonstrate their nuclear potential too much, even in the days of chaos. Therefore, it’s quite possible that there are no nuclear charges in New Louisiana’s arsenal.

  “Mine explosion on the starboard!”

  Severov catches a short flash; one of the mines fixed on the barge hits a dangerously approaching unmanned scout. Most likely, there is shelling now, Olga thinks, but she is mistaken—the guns remain silent, the barge continues its flight, and preparations for a possible collision are over in New Louisiana. The operator continues to track the intense radio traffic between the colony and the citadel; most likely, the lunar pirates are informing their colleagues in New Louisiana about the failure of the interrogations and the need to act independently. Artillery satellites suspend a few more illumination shells on the barge's path, then start shooting to kill, although not too aggressively.

  “They’re waiting for something . . .”

  The alarm comes after forty seconds—an alien on the barge. Under cover of conventional shells, the pirates fired an armor-piercing bullet with a charge of nanomachines in the core. Deeply plunging into the containers, the bullet cracked, releasing the atomic invader, and now the nanomachines are confidently making their way through the moon gravel, approaching the main bus, through which they intend to get to the main processor. The atomic shell isn’t needed; the control of the barge will be obtained from within with surgical precision. The bombardment ceases, and only the spotlights flare up occasionally—now the rudders and engines of the barge won’t suffer, so that the invader can use them.

  The standard security measures aren’t working; the invader easily escapes from the traps. This is a new type of machine, like those Olga dealt on Mars. They still have to find out where the pirates got their secret weapon, which is only in the arsenals of the Union and the Supernova, but now Olga needs to figure out how to keep the barge under her control for at least a couple more minutes, and she hastily disconnects a few working mechanisms and cuts some auxiliary electric circuits.

  In the meantime, Tokarev again gives full steam ahead, while simultaneously smoothly turning the barge around the longitudinal axis, so that the main processor is on the shady side. A sharp drop in temperature will complicate the work of the atomic invader, whose main weakness is a small amount of energy. The trick with the shadow works; the nanomachines slow down, but they don’t stop completely.

  “Thirty seconds! I can’t hold th
e steering wheel any longer!” Olga informs Joseph, launching the countdown and activating the pyrobolts. According to the plan, the discharge should occur much closer to New Louisiana, but there is no other choice; the invader is about to intercept the rudders.

  The air is suspiciously silent; the jammers are off—the pirates don’t want to interfere with the nanomachines. The neighboring colonies remain silent, watching the attack through telescopes. Most of the ships on local roads hastened to leave after a warning from the Gauleiter about the closure of the sector, including the old transport, headed for some starving colony and now completing the turn.

  “Twenty-five seconds. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty . . .”

  “Reset!”

  The pyrobolts detonate, but the invader pays no attention to them. For a brief moment, the barge disappears from view, obscured by bright flashes. A lot of new marks on the radar indicate the impending destruction—the barge is collapsing, and most of the debris moves inertially towards New Louisiana.

  Warships and artillery satellites again change position, signal lights flash, and radio communications come alive; crews and on-board processors request urgent instructions from the main computer of New Louisiana, preparing to meet new targets, the number of which is growing with every second. In the concerted actions of the defenders, confusion arises; they aren’t ready for such a turn of events.

  “Contact is lost!”

  The invader breaks through the main processor: once again giving fuel and starting the engines, he sharply turns the barge; now a collision won’t happen. But this maneuver only adds to the confusion—the barge goes to the right, the boarded-up main processor signals a successful attack, and hundreds of suddenly emerging new targets continue to move along the same course. The number of marks is skyrocketing; where there was only one barge thirty seconds ago, now there are thousands of small targets headed toward New Louisiana.

  “They opened fire!”

  The guards’ ships again shoot to kill: fragmentation shells alternate with explosive bombs. The pirates finally realize what exactly is happening. Ostensibly going to ram, the barge threw a swarm of false targets towards New Louisiana: tens of thousands of false artillery shells and landing capsules, a huge cloud attacking a large colony. Anastasia tracks the amplification of the radio exchange—the Gauleiter tries to communicate with the Moon, other bases of Tartar, and all the ships of all the squadrons in the nearest sectors.

  Malena asks for urgent help; she has already realized that launching a ram barge and demanding a ransom isn’t any more than a cover for a massive, well-prepared attack. But it isn’t clear to her who began this attack: she doesn’t see any foreign ship next to New Louisiana, just a swarm of false targets going on the previous course. They need to be destroyed urgently; among the clouds of fakes, there could easily be real shells and landing capsules, and the pirates shoot from all their barrels, alternating conventional shells with laser beams. Olga is tempted to disperse the Buran system at full capacity to complicate the work for the enemy artillerymen, to hammer down the connection between the pirates, but there is still no order.

  “Fire!”

  The main caliber throws out four shells, but without the usual prolonged buzz, when every detail of the cruiser seems to resonate. Granddad gives an unusually low energy charge to the accelerators; the shells go to the target at the lowest possible speed. Another volley. And one more, also with a minimal charge. The radars are still turned off; the fire adjustment is only visual. Far ahead, the Louisiana guards continue to shoot at the swarm.

  “Direct hit!”

  The thin, long rods of the main caliber shells, reliably protected from enemy eyes and radars by an impenetrable black anti-radar cover, slip unnoticed to the target among thousands of bright deceptions. Three shells pierce the enemy boats, and the remote detonation of the fourth shot seriously damages the artillery satellite.

  The enemy jamming howls, and the surviving guard ships are hastily changing their formation and gaining speed, diverging from the false swarm, when the second wave of shells hits the target. The measures taken by the enemy give the desired result; the second volley manages to knock down only one boat and finish off the damaged satellite, and the other two shells are burned by lasers. Trying to meet the invisible enemy and to understand where the shells are coming from, Louisiana's guards ignore the false targets, not intending to spend any more ammunition on them. The third wave of shells is on the way.

  “Drop the bulwark!”

  There is a series of strong jerks—the Bolshevik is freed from disguise, dropping the fake hull of the old truck. Olga gets the long-awaited command to run Buran; Granddad accelerates the reactor, preparing to give full speed and the maximum charge to the guns.

  “Full steam ahead!”

  It’s a good steam, Olga thinks, pressed to the chair for a brief 120 times overload. The element of surprise is on their side—the trick with the fake truck worked, allowing the Bolshevik to penetrate the New Louisiana sector at the right time, and shooting at a minimal charge didn’t betray their presence with a powerful surge of energy.

  Unexpectedly arisen on the horizon, the Bolshevik breaks into the battlefield, in just four and a half seconds overcoming five hundred kilometers, but for the crew, much happens in these four and a half seconds.

  Captain and Uncle Joe take over the general leadership, conducting a team of professionals, who work in harmony like a symphonic orchestra.

  Being in the center of the electromagnetic storm, Olga defends herself and attacks simultaneously, protecting the cruiser from enemy radars, silencing the radio communication, and burning the enemy’s electronics with directional strokes of microwave generators. The pirates don’t let themselves get behind and are actively fighting in the air, trying to blind the unexpectedly appeared enemy, and here, Anastasia picks up the fight to save her radars and telescopes at any cost.

  The minds of the pilot and the navigator merge to calculate the optimal trajectory and to carry the cruiser along it to the firing position, not allowing the enemy to make an aimed shot. Instant acceleration from idling up to hundreds of kilometers per second and active maneuvering aren’t possible without clear operation of the reactor and engines, and everything here depends on Granddad and his two loyal assistants, leading the cruiser and supplying energy to the mighty cannons. The guns and lasers, shells and rays of death, shield and sword of the Bolshevik are subordinated to the will of Commander Severov for the sake of one single goal—destruction.

  Domcheev and Wolff follow the integrity of the hull and the mechanisms, patching the damage and updating the electronics, while Chernova supports the life of the crew, preventing the Bolsheviks from perishing after monstrous overloads. And all together they fight, breaking into the open space in front of New Louisiana; it's time to clear it of the invaders.

  Scoring the enemy sights with clouds of false targets and ensuring the secretive approach of their shells, the Bolshevik, even before its appearance in the ring, defeated almost half of the guards of New Louisiana, at once changing the alignment of forces in a sector of a billion cubic kilometers.

  Now the cruiser enters an open battle, headed toward the target on a complex, spiral trajectory, each segment of which is a short leap along the straight line. Attack, withdrawal from the line of fire, attack, turn, attack—the Bolshevik shoots the surviving pirates on the move, and for Olga, this tactic resembles an ancient western, like a gunman firing from both hands. Here, the last boat disappears in the explosion of a blasted reactor, and the Bolshevik remains alone in the void, right at the gate of New Louisiana.

  They drop their speed, take up an optimal position for direct firing, covered with a swarm of false targets, and check the system—the electronics are in order, there is no combat damage, and the damage from the overloads is eliminated. Now there are only two still in the ring: the Bolshevik and New Louisiana. The deciding round begins.

  “Shoot to kill!”

&
nbsp; Again comes the lingering roar that you realize even in the Matrix; the four Marshals of the Soviet Union are shooting simultaneously, the guided shells rushing into the void. A maneuver, half a second to recharge, and another shot, followed by another maneuver. Severov isn’t operating volleys, but single shoots, reducing the charge by a third; now their fire needs the maximum accuracy, which will disable the defensive systems of New Louisiana. Three times, lasers flare and die out, meeting enemy shells—the pirates don’t need high shooting accuracy, and they shoot on the Bolshevik with all their guns, trying to damage the cruiser with fragments. Having lost support from the outside, they need to tighten the fight for as long as possible and hold out until reinforcements approach.

  The battle against the space station has little to do with the duel of warships in pure emptiness. The size of the enemy is huge, and the colony is unable to maneuver and leave the line of fire, but this doesn’t mean that the station will be easy prey, especially a long-term colony built with the use of military technologies and designed for self-defense like New Louisiana. The lack of mobility is compensated for by the power of on-board reactors, many times superior to ship analogs, which allow large guns to throw heavy guided shells at enormous speed.

  Lasers, which normally burn micrometeorites and space debris, can effectively fight shells, creating an insurmountable barrier to enemy artillery. A huge mass makes it possible to reliably hold invisible minefields around the station. And the cyclopean dimensions significantly increase the survivability in the case of shelling—conventional high-explosive shells cause extensive damage to external layers but can’t damage the most important mechanisms hidden deep in the heart of the station. For a densely populated civilian colony, such a shelling would lead to terrible consequences and the death of many residents, but now the team in New Louisiana has been reduced to a minimum, and all of its crew has long been in spacesuits, in compartments with pumped atmosphere and sealed bulkheads.