A King Word And a Gun

by Yuri Hamaganov

  “Let’s see . . .”

  The nearest airlock is only twenty-five meters away, but nobody should even think about entering here; the airlock is surely mined. This begins the most difficult part of the landing—penetration of the enemy’s occupied space. The Marines push off from the hull and slowly fly to the wide windows, behind which lies the French Quarter, a small but cozy and thoroughly reproduced piece of Paris from the time of the Belle Epoque.

  Lobo picks up a couple of false targets and pushes them up to the windows. The response follows immediately—machine-gun fire splits the glass, with a dozen bullets hitting the fake astronauts.

  Track the route of the shots and instantly make a ballistic calculation of the trajectory: having found the firing position, a fiery cluster of guided missiles breaks off the weapons module, makes an arc, and dives through the broken windows. The silent darkness is illuminated by silent flashes. A few more fake astronauts fly ahead; this time they quietly fly over the broken window: the enemy is either destroyed or has hid. Voronov takes control of one of the traps that still has some fuel left in the engines and sends it inside, turning on a searchlight and twisting the cameras in all directions.

  “Bonsoir!”

  It seems to her that she has climbed to the surface from a sewer hatch in a small park in the center of Paris. Around her are massive brick buildings, separated by narrow streets with wrought-iron lampposts, cylindrical thumbs of posters, and motionlessly frozen cars from the twentieth century. All the windows are sealed with hermetic flaps, and the street lights and advertisements don’t work, set at fifty meters above the dark steel ceiling, which in ordinary situations should simulate a light blue sky. The houses are seemingly intact, because the Bolshevik shells didn’t fall here. Only a small cozy cafe on the corner is completely destroyed by Lobo’s missiles—it’s there that one of the pirate robots sat down. Chestnuts, bushes, and lawn are covered with hoarfrost and have been dead for a very long time; the pirates pumped air in advance from the outer levels.

  “Send the burglar forward!”

  Reminiscent of a small crab, the robot burglar detaches off the fake astronaut and, quickly fingering its paws, jumps to the nearest lamp post, in the base of which should be an auxiliary console shield. Olga wants to turn on the daylight and if possible, the security system.

  “There is a contact, now . . .”

  The light doesn’t turn on—a hail of bullets hit the burglar, and the contact is lost. The fiery clusters of rockets again travel to the target, the Marines tear down the surviving windows, and the Lieutenant orders to begin the assault.

  In a small Paris begins a short but fierce battle, reminiscent of the street battles of World War II, with the exception that the battle is happening in complete silence. Marines and Red Dawn fighters climb ahead through broken windows, paving their way with rocket and grenades, and combat robots shoot from the upper floors and roofs of old Parisian houses, guarding the gates to the next level.

  Olga watches the battle through hundreds of cameras, trying to discern something in the chaos of shots, explosions, broken bricks, and pieces of furniture. Her task is to keep the connection between the boarding crew and the cruiser in spite of the revived jammers that have turned on somewhere a floor above. Having seized the moment when the Marines cleaned out the first couple of houses, Olga drops a few more burglars: after finding some undamaged terminals, she gives Riley and Joseph the opportunity to fight the pirates in their territory. Before the enemy manages to break all the lines, the double blow of the mighty computers inflicts no less damage than the actions of the Marines—the dark ceiling blooms with celestial azure and snow-white clouds, the gate to the upper level opens, and the surviving pirate robots cease fire; now they obey Riley. In the platoon of Marines, there are no losses, and among the soldiers of Andrei, there is only one wounded, who, after getting urgent assistance, remains in combat formation.

  Acoustic probes transmit the energy of powerful explosions somewhere above, and the blue Parisian sky is broken by giant dark holes. The pirates are beginning to destroy the colony. They must hurry, and without waiting for a new Bolshevik salvo to open the way for them, the Marines climb through the captured gates and through the breaks in the ceiling, immediately starting the battle at the next level. The center of Paris is replaced by narrow streets and old houses made of brown sandstone, and on the posters and road signs appears Hebrew instead of French—the Jewish Quarter. On the east side of Tel Aviv, there is the main technical tunnel, which connects all levels of New Louisiana; this is where the Marines are heading, despite the fierce resistance of the pirates. The Gauleiter seriously expects to detain the Bolsheviks at this point and spares no reserves, sending dozens of her fighters into battle, along with all the surviving robots.

  Olga hasn’t seen such a violent fight at close distance since the Alamo storm, although this is how battles in space stations always occur, when the unlimited void is suddenly replaced by the tightness of compartments, levels, and tunnels and the battle goes on at the distance of a bayonet hit or grenade throw. But here, in the dark airless streets and quarters of New Louisiana, the wrath of the hand-to-hand fighting is superimposed by the crushing power of modern weapons, and Olga, watching the battle through the eyes of the commanders, rejoices that she is here in her cozy armored compartment and not there, in New Louisiana.

  Possessing more powerful weapons and thick armor, the Marines forge ahead, paving their way with lasers and missiles. Andrei's paratroopers follow them, clearing the conquered territory from the surviving enemies. Despite losses and the fire superiority of their enemies, the pirates aren’t going to retreat. None of the defenders turn back, and every meter here has to be taken after a hard fight. Three more paratroopers are wounded; Olga fixes new damage to the Marines, patching their electronics, and the entrances to the tunnel are still in the hands of the enemy.

  Time is running out, and Domcheev is requesting artillery support—eight fragmentation shells, breaking through the outer hull, explode at the pirates’ positions, destroying four quarters to the ground. The way is finally open; the boarding team breaks into the tunnel and immediately sustains a loss: one of the paratroopers is blown up by booby-trap. Andrei orders his wounded to return to the surface, taking the body of their fallen comrade, and the assault continues.

  Bursting into the tunnels, the Marines and paratroopers move faster: Riley, gradually taking over the enemy computers, provides them with all possible assistance, launching or otherwise blocking various mechanisms under Domcheev’s orders.

  The pirates are still fiercely resisting—the Gauleiter in advance stimulated their stamina with huge doses of a fighting drug, ADAM, which turns any person into a berserker. The action of the drug is repeatedly reinforced by rigid psychological attitudes, implanted in their heads by Tartar’s propaganda, demanding from each of them unquestioning obedience and a readiness to easily give their lives for the Space Fuhrer. And they give all, rushing at the Marines almost with knives in their hands, without asking for mercy and without surrendering. Two more times, the Lieutenant asks for fire support; the second volley hit the last pirate computer. The organized defense falls apart, but the work of the boarding team doesn’t become easier. Mines begin to explode everywhere, threatening to inflict mortal wounds on the colony.

  Olga discovers several such charges: the mines in the hydroponic greenhouses represent the greatest threat—the destruction of farms will put an end to New Louisiana's food independence. Combining their efforts, Riley and Uncle Joe deal a double blow against the enemy network, for a short time cutting off the Gauleiter from the minefield control. Now Malena won’t be able to undermine the charges. Andrei's paratroopers sweep the guard out of the entrance. The Marines burst in and begin emergency demining—Malena could restore communication at any moment. In violation of the instructions, Olga helps Lobo bypass the detonators; now he can remove mines. The Marine passes the mines to his partner and goes further, checking the safe
ty of equipment and looking for other traps.

  A series of explosions is heard below, and contact is lost. Olga regains communication a second later, informing Klimov that the Gauleiter managed to blow up some mines before they could be thrown overboard. She killed two paratroopers, and one Marine is destroyed completely—the brain is dead and not recoverable. In a cold, calculating space of the Matrix, which doesn’t leave room for the emotions, Olga is calmly taking in the fact that the Bolsheviks have lost one of their own—now isn’t the time for grieving; they must continue the fight.

  CHAPTER SIX: RED SUN

  Level by level, deck by deck, the assault has been going on for a third hour. Having lost centralized control, the pirates have broken into small groups and sometimes single fighters, who act independently, exerting fierce resistance or trying to inflict as much damage on the mechanisms of New Louisiana. And yet the most dangerous moment has passed; the enemy computers are destroyed, and the surviving pirates will no longer be able to destroy the station, failing to blow up the hydroponic greenhouses or to break through to the reactor.

  “The pirate squadron is split; both wings are gaining speed!”

  The commander of the Tartar squadron sends some of his ships to bypass the colony along a wide arc through the three nearest sectors, with the intention of shelling New Louisiana from two sides. The meaning of the maneuver is clear—the Bolshevik won’t be able to rush into a clear void and give to the pirates his favorite gunfight from a long distance, because then New Louisiana will fall under the crossfire and be fully destroyed. It will be difficult to protect the giant station alone; emergency measures are needed.

  “Elena, Boris, Olga—go to New Louisiana and help Domcheev!”

  “Roger!”

  Olga gives her post to Joseph and descends quickly to the fourth deck, seizing a set of personal weapons and tools. Forty seconds later, the Red Star emerges from the dock. During the short flight, the girl manages to cast an appraising look at the main building of New Louisiana, assessing the extent of the damage. Yes, there is a lot of work to be done; she sees numerous holes left by their own shells and wide breaks from the mines’ explosion. But repairing the hull and patching the holes is a matter for the future; now they have to restart the defensive system at any cost.

  On the surface, they are met by a girl from Andrei’s squad, who leads the Bolsheviks inside through a broken window in the French Quarter. They go through the ruined Paris to a medical zone where Chernova will deploy a portable hospital for a dozen wounded paratroopers.

  Olga and Boris go further, to the upper levels; they need to meet the Lieutenant. The internal transport system is broken; the lifts and escalators are standing still and de-energized, so they have to walk on foot, occasionally making short jumps on jet packs, closely following the girl. There are mines everywhere.

  “It used to be beautiful here . . .”

  They don’t have time to look at the surrounding space in detail, but what they see is enough to appreciate the architecture and interior of a rich colony. Although Olga and Boris have seen the interior many times in photos and videos and also know the station structure, getting the full picture requires a look with one’s own eyes.

  Inside the New Louisiana, it is much less like the Gate of Babylon than Olga imagined. The Gate is a tourist station, like a space version of Las Vegas, designed to welcome a huge stream of guests, like sand on a field of gold. Here, everything is organized differently. There are almost no guests from the outside, for in their place is a permanent population, the citizens of New Louisiana, about ten thousand very rich people together with the service staff: very rich and immortal people who are determined to use their station as a giant ark where they can safely survive the troubled years. Olga appreciates how wonderfully and well-thought-out everything has been arranged here, how beautiful and harmonious this ark is. It’s a pity that this dream to calmly wait for the great storm was unsuccessful.

  Luxury quarters and areas of natural landscapes, enclosed in a giant cylinder, meet them with magnificent luxury and total destruction. Marble stairs have been smashed by directed explosions, cozy country houses are stitched with fiery lashes of lasers, ceiling paintings in the style of the Renaissance have been disfigured by hundreds of holes, and expensive cars lie on the streets in piles of scrap metal. And all this is in a vacuum, in the dazzlingly clear beams of searchlights and in the webs of coal-black shadows, with the accompaniment of absolute cosmic silence.

  “Hello, comrades.”

  Domcheev meets them at an improvised command post in the center of the cylinder, where gravity is two and a half times weaker than on the surface. The enemy has already been destroyed almost everywhere, and the Lieutenant returns to his main specialty as an engineer, entrusting the final purging to Andrei and his fighters. Despite the damaged spacesuit and several light wounds, Domcheev is in the best of spirits.

  “Nice how this night turned out; now you can work. Listen carefully, comrades. Pirates are about to appear on the horizon, and half of our guns can’t fire a single shot. I understand that we have tried very hard over the past few hours, doing a great pogrom here; now let’s try to at least slightly remedy the deed and bring a defensive system to life!”

  In the fifty-five minutes that the pirates take to approach the station, the Bolshevik's engineers have done a lot. They repair holes and patch life-support systems, preparing New Louisiana for a new shelling. They re-stretch the electric chain and recreate the Matrix, helping Riley regain control of the entire colony. They remove sights and ammunition from broken guns and change the configuration of the minefields in anticipation of an enemy assault. But the main prize for the station's defenders is the automatic arms production line, which was delivered to New Louisiana shortly before it was seized.

  When he hastily left the colony, Borgnine prudently took with him the operational codes of the conveyor, so the pirates weren’t able to make weapons and used the plant for the production of civilian products. Now the line is launched again, and Olga hastily makes false targets and mines; they will soon be needed in large numbers, all in order for the fortress of New Louisiana to finally fulfill its purpose and repel the invaders. Last time, the pirates seized it without a single shot, but now they won’t manage to march in here; Olga and her comrades will take care of that.

  “I see sixteen lightweight Morgan-class raiders, plus landing boats, unmanned fighters, and torpedo bombers. There are no army transports. They are coming with raised pennants . . .”

  Anastasia continues to track the enemy squadrons that enter the firing range, openly raising the black flag. The terrifying Tartar pendant is deliberately raised so that the inhabitants of neighboring colonies won’t forget who is in power here and won’t even think of helping the defenders of New Louisiana.

  But this awesome gesture won’t work for the Bolsheviks, and the pirates know this very well. For the old enemy, they have prepared a weightier argument, gathering in counterattack unprecedented forces—almost four dozen warships, albeit small class.

  The tactics of the pirates have evolved continuously; now they rarely operate as single ships disguised as harmless trucks. Feeling their strength, they now prefer to attack with large packs, and the developed network of military bases and supply points allows the bandits to multiply the radius of effective action. Relying on these bases, and without having to drag slow-moving transports on their tails, they are now attacking everywhere in near-Earth space.

  Worse yet, they have more combat ships, much more—the strength of the pirate Navy is constantly increasing and repeatedly covers combat losses. Long gone are the times when Boddicker's pirates had only obsolete civilian vessels, crafty converted into warships. These old junks are all in the past, and the ships attacking New Louisiana right now descended from the shipyards no later than last year.

  Some of these warships previously belonged to other pirate gangs or mafia clans that either recognized the authority of Boddicker and became h
is vassals or were simply defeated. But most of the raiders are factory built, made according to the well-thought-out plans of a project. The most dismal fears of Klimov, which the Captain repeatedly expressed at the auxiliary fleet headquarters six months ago, are coming true—Tartar’s pirates are close to mastering the full cycle of production of warships and nuclear weapons. His bosses didn’t listen to him then, feeling that Boddicker and his gang weren’t the biggest and most dangerous problem in the shadow of Grond.

  And now, when new pirate raiders are appearing with entire squadrons where they have never been seen before, causing terrible devastation in the Free Zone and leaving behind the scorched skeletons of ships and colonies, the scale of the threat has been belatedly realized by the residents of the near-Earth sector. This is no longer a gang; now it is a real militaristic state, a new space Reich, whose Fuhrer has laid claim to all his neighbors. And now the large squadron of the Space Reich stands at the threshold of New Louisiana, in a firm determination to regain the rich colony—or destroy it, but not give it to the enemy.

  “Attention, Bolsheviks! You are surrounded! New Louisiana is in our sights! We will give you five minutes to get out of our colony!”

  The admiral of the pirate squadron sends an ultimatum to Klimov, without even remembering the previous owners of New Louisiana and without mentioning the Red Dawn. Apparently, they don’t yet know that the Wasp Queen played on the side of the Bolsheviks; this is a plus. There is no reply to the ultimatum, and the pirate admiral obviously doesn’t count on getting one, but the Gauleiter’s thugs, who settled on the outskirts of Louisiana, are visibly stepping up their resistance, realizing that the Fuhrer's promised help has finally arrived. Domcheev orders the Marines to block the pirates and temporarily stop the attack, preparing to repel the enemy’s landing. The cruiser remains in position, covered from enemy guns by the hull of the station.