After swallowing her ration, Olga idles through the evening, watching an episode of I Love Lucy while lying on the stone floor. Now she need to move as little as possible, so as not to bring down the adjustment of the thinnest process of building a molecular structure that has been going on continuously for almost a month. Silence, calmness and concentration to avoid the slightest mistake that can tear her to shreds.
As a drunken Lucy Ricardo slurs her way through her lines for a Vitametavegamin commercial, the screen turns off along with lighting. The light turns on after a second, the review is resumed, but for Olga this short break in the usual routine is enough. The time for plans is over; the time has come for action.
Olga builds the last molecules into a chain and stops the process, immediately feeling a surge of energy. Very on time, she is already beginning to lose control of her project, a little more and detonation will become inevitable. Now the devise must be removed. Still lying on the stone floor, Olga brings her palm to the lower jaw, and with an accurate movement she breaks out her rightmost tooth and then rolls to the door. It's the third second since the beginning of the break-in. Attaching the tooth to the hinges, the girl clamps the nerve, starting the process. Now there is no way back, and if everything that happens is only a provocation from the kidnappers, then she bought herself a one-way ticket.
Having finished with the door, Olga rolls over to the cot, squeezes into a tangle, covers her head with hands, and hopes that she wasn’t mistaken with the calculation of the equivalent.
Contact! The strongest explosion inside the sealed cell gives a monstrous blast wave, almost killing Olga. But the door, that armored door that closed the exit all these eleven months—this door is no more: torn from its hinges and thrown into the corridor by a directed explosion.
Staggering and bleeding, the girl is getting out from the overturned cot. She needs to go into the corridor, to where the broken wires are sparkling—somewhere near there must be a cable line, among such thick walls they can’t rely solely on a radio signal.
The corridor, seen for the first time, differs little from the cell—the same basalt walls, the same lamps under the ceiling, burning in a half-nook, the rows of steel doors leading to other cells. On the opposite wall are laid cable lines, some of them are broken by splinters, Olga sees the surviving network. So, let's go, the second ace comes in from the sleeve—a large set of virus programs, almost a year waiting for this short moment. Putting her hands on the sparkling wires, Olga has time to notice with her side vision the number on the broken door—49...
“Stop now or I'll shoot!”
Consciousness returns instantly, like electricity in the chain after the turn of the switch. It seems that a set of crackers' programs broke through an electronic glacier and hit the enemy network from the inside, simultaneously with a blow from the outside. And it seems that this is really not a provocation, and the only signal that went through the walls a month ago was understood by her correctly.
There is darkness all around, but somewhere ahead the glimpses of the fire and shots are audible. And someone else is there, someone who injected her with a powerful toning mixture that restored exhausted strength.
“Get up!” a voice shouts in space Russian. “Hands behind the head!”
No intonation—it’s a speech simulator. Olga stands in a stream of white light, legs wide apart, hands behind her head. She hears a continuous low hum as if from a dozen electric motors of low power, and a cloud of tiny drones surround her.
“Don’t move!”
The mechanical wasps hang in front of her for another ten seconds and then recede. She sees a strange figure—wide shoulders and a thick cylindrical head. No neck, a trapezoidal body, narrow waist, body covered with matte black armor. Hands and feet are very long with two joints. If this is a combat robot, Olga doesn’t recognize the model. She looks down to see a laser sight holding steadily on her chest. A gun is leveled at her from over the right shoulder of the figure in front of her.
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 blo
od 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.
Author’s note: I apologize in advance for any mistakes in the text: English isn’t my native language, and I have to translate my writing myself. And even though the text has been edited, some annoying mistakes can slip through. Errors happen :)
CHAPTER TWO: BOLSHEVIK
As always, silence awaits her in the morning. But it’s not a prison cell silence. There, the silence is dead, motionless. And here the silence is alive, filled with the life of numerous machines, whose tireless work you can’t hear but can feel with your whole body. Silence, weightlessness, and persistent data flow, as before, at High House.
Everything is as it should be. She is where she should be—in space, on a warship, in a permanent Matrix. And yet, Olga opens her eyes slowly in a tide of irrational fear, which isn’t peculiar to her—what if this beautiful dream melts, revealing a dark basalt ceiling above her?
A light gray-blue synthetic covers the armor. Olga isn’t in the prison cell, but in a tiny cabin. She lies on the top cot and can touch the gray-blue surface with her hand.
“Be careful, the ceiling is low.”
Russian with a strong accent. This is Comrade Frunze warning from the lower cot.
“Thank you, I remember.”
Voronov hovers a centimeter above the cot, fastened with a wide elastic strap: The Bolshevik finished its acceleration and set a course for Earth; the engines are silent, and the weightlessness is permanent. A battleship isn’t a space station with constant gravity—she must update her reflexes and again get used to the cosmos after a long period of idleness—get used to weightlessness, the overload, and feeling cramped.
“The light!”
The lamp floods the cabin with a warm yellow light. Olga unfastens the belt, neatly moves over the cot, and pulls herself to the lock, but the round hatch refuses to open.
“Olga Voronov, please open the hatch!”
The hatch opens to the side, revealing access to a narrow, vertical tunnel, reminiscent of a corrugated pipe. She feels the breeze, created by the ventilation system; the red arrow is hanging in the air, pointing downwards, to the stern compartments.
“Roger. Comrade Frunze, I’m going to take a walk to the saloon.”
“I don’t mind; I'll be sleeping.”
Olga slips into the pipe and descends, crawling head first upside down and clinging to the tiny ladder with her fingertips. Passing several closed compartments, the girl approaches the crossroads. The arrow points into the side tunnel, to a spacious, bright saloon with a large panoramic window, behind which is the usual starry darkness and a small Earth. A red-haired girl is sitting at a wide, round table in splendid isolation, surrounded by a dozen screens. Long red hair hovers in the weightlessness, like flames in the wind.
“Good morning.”
“Howdy,” says the redhead in a lazy voice, not looking up. Voronov slips past her into a tiny shower chamber. She was here
yesterday and is now again enjoying the shower, having missed the real water for all these long months. The water is strictly rationed, and it must be used wisely, but this doesn’t prevent Olga gets the maximum pleasure.
When Olga returns, the red-haired girl still doesn’t spare her a single glance: Olga calmly tolerates this hearty welcome and sits down at the table.
“Excuse me, what about breakfast?”
From the table itself, a mechanical hatch opens, through which Voronov pulls out a standard ration package.
“I hope you know how to eat in weightlessness,” the red-haired girl remarks.
“I can handle it.”
Olga tries to eat as slowly as possible, first, to enjoy real food, which she missed no less than being able to enjoy water. Second, she needs to use all her free time to think carefully about the situation.
She has been on the private warship Bolshevik for almost a full day. Immediately upon arrival, Voronov and Comrade Frunze were taken to the medical compartment. The girl had never seen such an operation room in space, intended for emergency medical assistance for the wounded crew members. Dock would like it here.
Squeezing out the tube of hot beef jelly with beans and red peppers, Olga recalls how Chernova again carefully examined the old man, looking for implants and programmed pathologies that could detonate after a certain period—a time bomb. After making sure that Comrade Frunze's life no longer threatened anything, she turned her attention to Olga. The electron microscope, X-rays, internal examination probes, numerous analyses—Elena works in the Matrix, directly connected to the ship's computer, which she calls Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe analyzes the collected material, continually releasing sarcastic comments during the process.
The Blitzkrieg Page 2
