A King Word And a Gun

by Yuri Hamaganov

  Now the autonomous tempest has left the cruiser and has connected to the brain of the dead navigator, opening the way to Tartar's internal network. The chain is about to be torn down, and the awakening predator is waiting for the command to attack.

  “Wait for the signal!”

  Preparing for the launch of the electronic killer, Uncle Joe briefly separates Olga's mind from the main ship's network, locking her in the “black box”—a security measure in case Joker breaks free from his chain ahead of time and tries to hit the Bolshevik instead of Tartar. Managing him from the box, Olga risks only herself, and if something goes wrong, the black box will have to be sacrificed together with the operator to avoid exposing the entire ship to attack.

  “I have received the contact; data transmission has begun!”

  The dispatching station starts transmitting a new packet of data to the navigator’s brain, Joseph completes the decryption, and Olga gently removes the tempest’s protective barriers, ready to release him into the battle and then jump out.

  “There are the coordinates; we are getting the passwords . . .”

  “Faster! I can’t hold him anymore!”

  The power and ferocity of the electronic predator astound her and surpass all previous experience: Olga seems to be locked in a cage with a tiger, struggling to hold a beast with cracks of a whip. The chains collapse; her strength is exhausted, but Uncle Joe is already waving a red flag.

  “Go!”

  Olga drops the chain and jump out of the black box, fleeing from the predator. Outside the box, she is stopped at a filtration point, where her mind is subjected to stringent checks for any particles of the tempest that could penetrate the Bolshevik. But this doesn’t happen; Joker is all over the other side of the electronic wall, and now the Bolsheviks are watching for its rapid spread, temporarily shutting off Tartar’s Matrix with the most reliable protective barriers that a ship’s computer can build.

  Olga has never seen such an electronic attack before. Having escaped to freedom, Joker rushes forward, with amazing ease punching his way through the peripheral barriers, and for three hundredths of a second, capturing the whole sector of the transshipment station and killing everyone who is connected to the network. One of the features of autonomous tempests is that they don’t just capture the minds of enemy operators. The tempest just doesn’t understand why that would be needed and kills anyone it can reach.

  “Hold the parcel!”

  The central processor has been hacked; Olga and Uncle Joe at great risk to themselves snatch the necessary data sets from the epicenter of the electronic disaster, trying to take everything that Joker doesn’t have time to burn.

  “Yes, there it is!”

  The dispatching office stored the data on thousands of kilometers of fairways within the transshipment station’s zone of responsibility. Now these data, and hence the maps of the central parts of the Tartar cluster, are in the hands of the Bolsheviks, as well as a whole set of passwords and omissions.

  “Cut the anchor; we are leaving!”

  Andrei’s team hurriedly cuts the moorings on the flagship transport, preparing to tear away from the pier. The station itself is already on fire; the hull has been shaken by numerous internal explosions. Joker continues his hunt, carrying out sabotage and causing equipment failures wherever he can reach. Most of the ships docked to the station are also under attack, their crews already dead. The survivors hastily cut off the mooring lines, preparing to depart from the transshipment station and not knowing where to proceed further. Chaos reigns in the air; everyone is protected by interference, trying to prevent the predator from penetrating into the on-board computers through the radio channel. The signal lights beat unimaginable combinations, obeying the commands of the tempest.

  “Go, go, go!!!”

  Bolshevik’s caravan leaves the station without any damage, heading to the entrance of the next fairway; Olga once again throws beacons overboard. The transshipment station is bursting with the detonation of the main reactor, but it doesn’t stop the spread of the tempest; he continues to gnaw at the Tartar network, trying to pave the way as far as possible.

  Carefully watching the battle in the Matrix, Olga respectfully appreciates the concerted efforts of the cyber troops of Tartar. After recovering from the first heavy strike and losing a lot of sectors, they immediately rush into a counterattack, seeking to stop the spread of the aggressor while building new fortifications, to keep him from breaking through to the Citadel. Thousands of fighter-angels and the network hunters rush into battle immediately, perish, and are replaced with new electronic soldiers. This digital shaft faces Joker, causing him the greatest possible damage and delaying the spread, trying to win the peripheral sectors.

  No matter how strong the electronic aggressor, the troops of Tartar will have the victor, as they have a huge numerical advantage on their side. But the end of the fight is still far away, and the Bolsheviks aren’t going to miss these advantages, disappearing without a trace in the chaos and skillfully using the captured secret information. The fairways are open; the maps of minefields and torpedo traps are decoded. They can move forward, for the time being unnoticed.

  The ruins of the transshipment station are left behind. A small caravan moves to the core in tight formation, not using the radio. Having captured and carefully forged waybills, the Bolshevik doesn’t ask anyone for permission to follow this course and doesn’t communicate with anyone, relying on the chaos reigning in the network. In such a situation, it’s very easy to lose a group of small transports, especially when everyone is busy with urgent military affairs.

  Twice more, the caravan stops, passing the warships going on a collision course. Once, for a short time, they join another caravan and follow it until the two caravans are separated at the next intersection.

  Olga misses the moment when the navigation devices lose sight of the last real stars, four thousand kilometers away from the Limb. Now only the deceivers shine with their dead, pale glare. The number of fragments isn’t amenable to enumeration; large and small reefs soar on all sides. Somewhere among this endless sea, they are awaited by laser guns, torpedoes, and minefields. But while all is quiet . . .

  “Caravan 2-12-98—immediately stop, put on your positional lights, and prepare for inspection!”

  From a disguised shelter in a large reef on the road comes a guard ship, blocking the way.

  “Stop the car!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE: WONDERLAND

  The caravan reduces speed and sets up the correct combination of position lights according to the secret scheme. A guard ship comes closer, releasing inspection drones; Olga listens to the attempts of his crew to call the nearest dispatching office. It’s unlikely that they will be able to get through; Tartar’s network is still in chaos.

  Inspection drones approach the head truck, diving under the bottom, where an assault boat hides in the landing bay.

  “Fire!”

  A moment before the shells hit the guard ship, Olga cuts off his radio contact with the impact of the Buran system. The enemy is destroyed, unable to contact anyone.

  “Return the boats!”

  The assault boats are disconnected from the carriers and return to the cruiser. Olga breaks into the flight recorder of the crashed guard ship, correcting some data, and Joseph begins to enter new commands. Fifty kilometers away has to be the next intersection, off the main road.

  “Watch out, the doors are opening!”

  Minefields and reefs move smoothly, showing the way out of the main fairway to the bypass road, until now safely hidden. The quality of the disguise is amazing; it’s absolutely impossible to open and even detect the secret paths without the key.

  “Here it is, bypass road 12-8-56! Send the scouts forward!”

  Even having a set of keys, the Bolshevik doesn’t rush forward headlong, first sending a flock of drones. Everything is fine; there are no mines, torpedoes, or networks. The bypass road is open and ready for use, although the pirat
es have clearly not used it very often.

  “Get ready; we’ll split up here.”

  The other fairways are now open, and the caravan splits. The second transport and the tugboat each follow its own bypass road, and the head transport remains on the main fairway. The assault boats go back to the Bolshevik.

  The cruiser slips into the narrow neck, which immediately closes behind it, the minefields restored to their previous configuration. The second transport and tugboat are also hidden on detours. The head transport gathers speed. After a moment, nothing remains to suggest that the caravan passed here; only the burning skeleton of the guard ship stays behind and a single transport follows its course along the fairway.

  “Good luck, comrades!”

  Olga knows what Andrei’s talking about. Although the boarding teams returned to the cruiser, they left one pilot on each of the three ships. In such difficult conditions, weak autopilots won’t be able to lead the captured ships independently, so Red Down fighters will have to fly them to the end.

  Three ships and three pilots will distract the guards on the main fairway and bypass roads while the Bolshevik breaks through to the core. They have no chance of survival, and the volunteers who stand at the helm of the captured traders know it. Comrade Andrei will never see his brothers and sister again, and Olga is very happy that he is the commander of the boarding team and cannot be a volunteer.

  The new bypass route is much smaller than the main fairway. It is an invisible bent pipe with a diameter of just thirty-five kilometers, surrounded on all sides by reefs and minefields. The cruiser moves slowly; the probability of collision with a fragment or drifting mine is very high; the pirates don’t often clean this path. But this is the only safe road; the bypass route leads to the core, bypassing a couple of large transshipment stations and outposts.

  Cautiously scanning the network, Olga notes the increased activity of the pirates; apparently, they have found a broken guard ship. Now they know that someone has penetrated into their system, but they don’t know exactly where and who. With the data removed from the flight recorders, what will they do? Most likely, they will rush in chase after the head transport, which is now breaking through to the core along the main fairway.

  A laser beam hits the portside. For some reason, one of the camouflaged laser guns has been triggered. The Commander instantly shoots this gun down. Fortunately, there is no damage; the weak beam doesn’t have time to burn the bulwark. The Bolshevik defense systems are brought to the maximum readiness, but none of the other guns and torpedo tubes around react. Apparently, it was an accidental attack caused by the actions of the tempest.

  “The head transport has been destroyed!”

  Going on the afterburner mode, the pilot drove the flagship forward, ignoring the orders of the pursuers, who demanded an immediate halt. As a result, the runaway transport was taken into pincers at the next outpost and, being hit with the crossfire, threw itself into the mines to prevent boarding.

  “We’ll remember you, brother!”

  The guard ships throw out drones at the crash site, trying to get at least some data from the deceased ship, and again return to the chase—they already know that someone else has penetrated the bypass roads. The second transport and tugboat don’t leave them any doubt, deliberately crushing several observation posts with torpedoes and bombs.

  “Attention, the gravimeters are detecting a change in the center of gravity!”

  The devices have spotted some large object, so heavy that it can’t just be a large reef or a broken colony. They have gone deep into the center and are rapidly approaching the core, where the Citadel hides. According to the navigator, the cruiser will enter the central cavity in less than two minutes.

  Olga is providing hidden passage to the next observation post when her attention is attracted by an unexpected guest that appears on the battlefield between the autonomous tempest and the defense systems.

  She has never seen such a set of software before. Apparently, it is some extra-powerful fighter-angel that hasn’t been used before. Carefully reading the signature of the unexpected guest and figuring out how to fight him, the girl can’t help but be amazed by the beauty of the angel hovering over the destroyed Matrix like a gigantic golden crystal.

  After the appearance of the golden crystal, the rest of the angels and network hunters hastily run away from his path, freeing the battlefield. The waves of the autonomous tempest are thrown on the newcomer with a cloudy foam stream, or, vice versa, they are attracted to the angel, slowly revolving around its axis. A cloudy foamy shaft covers the crystal but then rolls down from its smooth surface, struck by the radiation.

  “Attention, the tempest is about to be destroyed! We have thirty seconds left, no more!” Olga warns. She has no doubt that the golden crystal will be victorious. This fighter is simply perfect. It’s strange that he wasn’t thrown into battle immediately after the appearance of Joker; apparently, the pirates use a super machine in battles at the South Pole.

  “We are at the end of the road; the cavern is straight ahead!”

  The mishmash of garbage reefs, minefields, and broken colonies is left behind, as if they have once again emerged into outer space. But this impression is deceptive—the Bolshevik has entered the central part of the Tartar cluster, the inner cavern. They are the first outside crew that has ever managed to get here. Before them stretches a spherical cavity with a diameter of about a thousand kilometers—a thousand kilometers of carefully cleared emptiness, surrounded on all sides by endless garbage and fake stars.

  And somewhere there, in the darkness, in the center of the cavern, is the Citadel. The total blackout doesn’t let a single ray of light slip through for telescope lenses to catch; radars can’t be turned on. But the gravimeters in the void can’t be deceived; they have found the presence of a giant object, the mass of which is a thousand-fold greater than anything they have seen before: Citadel.

  Yuri turns to the right, mooring to the last garbage reef on the border of the cavern, preparing at any moment to give full speed. They can’t hide there for very long. Joker is about to fall, and then the pirates will learn about their bold breakthrough. But even a short pause can be useful to put the ship in order after the race on the narrow roads and have a good look around; there is something to see.

  Although the Citadel itself isn’t visible, this doesn’t mean that the cavern is empty and lifeless. Quite the contrary: the entire infrastructure of the pirate state is raised on military alert.

  Here and there, dazzling welding lights flash out in the void; on numerous slipways and docks, there is a hasty repair of damaged ships, as well as assembly of new weapons. Periodically, new passages are opened in the vaults of the cavern. Trade caravans are pouring in, squadrons of warships are coming out, and coasters are scurrying everywhere.

  “Azimuth eighty-two, it’s our tugboat!”

  At 350 kilometers away from their shelter, a burning tugboat escapes from the fairway to the cavern. The hull of the tug is crippled by buckshot and a laser lash; two guard ships hang on its tail, methodically finishing off their booty with single shots, while it still stubbornly flies forward, despite mortal wounds. One of the squadrons guarding the cavern rushes to him. The pursuers stop the shelling; they will take him to boarding. The whole group is approaching the Bolshevik’s shelter.

  “It’s done; the tempest is destroyed!”

  Joker gives one last, desperate attack, but the angel is still unshakable, methodically cracking down on the electronic predator. The fighter gains a convincing victory; the last of Joker’s units die. Tartar’s emergency teams begin a hasty recovery of the shattered sectors, reading data from the surviving flight recorders. They are about to learn everything that happened at the station and find out about the fourth ship secretly following the bypass roads. There is no sense in keeping up their disguise any longer.

  “Comrades, we are honored to be the first to engage the fascists in the heart of their state,” Klimov
says. “Now we are alone, but our friends are coming, which means that we must hold on as long as possible, distracting the enemy’s attention as best we can. The enemy squadron is right in front of us—the more honor for us. Let’s not make them wait. To arms!”

  The volley from the garbage reefs is completely unexpected by the enemy, and therefore the shells meet no resistance, breaking through a short distance and hitting the leader’s destroyer.

  “Drop the bulwark! Assault boats in the void!”

  The false hull crashes to pieces, freeing the Bolshevik. Assault boats cut off their mooring lines, hiding from enemy radars in the wreckage. Granddad accelerates the reactor at full power, and Tokarev throws the cruiser forward, away from the border, where the laser cannons are awake. Olga is using the Buran, hiding the boats. Now it’s important to cover the boarding team, to allow their comrades to get lost at the border, and for this, it’s necessary to distract the enemy's attention to themselves; let the pirates shoot only at the cruiser.

  Severov continues bombardment, methodically striking enemy ships near the broken and burning tugboat. The tug and its pilot can’t be saved; one of the guards manages to burn it with lasers a second before the last shell hits, which completes the rout of the enemy squadron.

  “Well done!”

  Having jumped out of shelter, the cruiser takes a position 130 kilometers away from the border, surrounded on all sides by a clean emptiness; Anastasia finally gets the opportunity to turn on the radars. Now they see the Citadel straight ahead, in the heart of the darkness, surrounded by hundreds of ships and auxiliary objects. And right in front of the Citadel is the Bolshevik, the mortal enemy of the Space Reich, so hastily declared destroyed and sneaking into the heart of the pirate state under the guise of false death. There it is, in all its fighting glory, with a proudly raised pennant, alone against the largest gang of the solar system.