The Blitzkrieg

by Yuri Hamaganov

Inside the gray corridors are few visitors. Quiet music plays, and fountains murmur. Along the walls are long rows of square cells.

  “Hello, Marina.”

  There is no photo on the square steel plate, only the name and surname printed in the Old Slavonic font, plus two dates. The second date is common for everyone who is buried here. The epitaph is one word—“Avenged.” Olga puts the flowers near the urn, lights a candle, opens a glass, and covers it with bread.

  “Thank you for your husband.”

  Here, Marina Petrova is buried, the wife of her curator and friend, who saved Olga's life with one accurate shot. Since then, more than a year has passed, and all this time, she has found out nothing about him. No one knows: the curator has disappeared without a trace, as if he was erased from reality. Even the most thorough search, carried out at her request by Uncle Joe, didn’t yield any results.

  “Thanks again.”

  * * *

  Returning to Freeport, Olga decides to have a snack until she has an hour left. She asks the Marine, and he points to one of the lunchrooms, the safest from his point of view.

  Voronov finishes her pilaf and is deciding whether to order a fruit salad when the next table is occupied by three newcomers: a red-bearded man, a tall black man with dreadlocks, and a black-haired woman whose chest and belly are covered with a complex tattoo—cobwebs. For a minute, they talk about something in a hybrid of Hebrew and French, then “Spider” looks distantly at Olga, holding a hand to her ear.

  “Get down!”

  Hurling the table at the attackers, Lobo continues the attack by nailing the bearded man's hand to the table with a dessert fork. A direct hit to the nose, and the black man falls, choking with blood. A shot rings out, and Lobo intercepts the woman’s hand and abruptly breaks it, crunching in her wrist and elbow, directing the gun to her stomach, and pressing the trigger three times. The bearded man tries to get the gun with his other hand; Lobo preempts him, thrusting the corkscrew into his left palm.

  “ I told you to get down!”

  Lobo demonstrates to the newcomers an anti-personnel grenade. The long, black Ruger rapidly moves from side to side, searching for a target.

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t do anything stupid!”

  They jump out into the alley, which is filled with garbage bags on both sides.

  “Lobo, what's going on?!”

  “You are being hunted; the price is ten thousand, announced forty seconds ago!” Lobo pushes Olga forward, bringing down the garbage behind them.

  “I need to get in touch with the cruiser!”

  “Negative; they’ll find you even faster—the entire city is already on the hunt. I’ll keep in touch. The locals don’t know the language of the Marines. Sherhan is already organizing reinforcements!”

  As he approaches a young prostitute, Lobo knocks her down with an electric baton.

  “Take her jacket and hat.”

  Olga pulls off her clothes, not forgetting to put fifty rubles in the girl’s palm to cover the emotional and material damage.

  Masking allows them to cross the street and enter the subway. For about thirty seconds, they quietly go down, and then all the advertising screens on the walls are switched off and then back on again. But now the screens aren’t urging viewers to buy, spend, and entertain. Rather, they are displaying a portrait of Olga in the stolen jacket and hat along with a brief description, her last coordinates, a black spot, and a figure, now twenty thousand. The stakes are rising.

  The man standing on the escalator jerks toward her, and a telescopic baton outlines a bright arc, aiming at Olga’s temple. Lobo blocks the man’s left hand. A long narrow bayonet jumps out of his right fist, and the Marine sends three sharp jabs into his opponent—kidney, heart, and carotid artery.

  They travel the last few steps and arrive on the platform. The needed train stands on the right track, releasing passengers. A woman in red overalls releases the hand of her little daughter and snatches a pistol from her reticule. In the closed space of the station, the thundering shot of the Ruger is deafening, and a heavy bullet, like a sledgehammer, breaks the woman in red in two, throwing her under the train that jumped out of the tunnel.

  Spattered with blood, the girl squeals, but Olga and Lobo don’t hear her. They run after the train, which is already gaining speed. Lobo breaks the glass, throws Olga inside like a kitten, and jumps in after her. Passengers glance at them angrily, but any newcomers trying to get an easy twenty thousand aren’t visible.

  “Olga, help me!”

  The Marine jerks the cover off of the switchboard and shows Olga a redundant hand control panel.

  “Break the defense and stop the train at my signal.”

  The local protection system isn’t a threat, and after five seconds, Voronov takes over the controls.

  “Stop it and set the train to move again in thirty seconds, continue to the next station, and stop there, without moving any further.”

  “Done!”

  “Three, two, one—stop!”

  The train breaks sharply, and sheaves of bright sparks appear under the wheels; the passengers fall on one another. Lobo opens the door; they jump into the tunnel and press themselves against the walls, avoiding the train, which again starts moving.

  “Here!”

  Olga's eyes go into infrared mode; she sees a round hatch a meter above the track, covered with a thick grid. Lobo pulls out a gray plate resembling chewing gum, squeezes it, clings the “gum” to the grid, and drags Olga into the gap between the rails. There is an explosion, and a bright flash illuminates the tunnel; the path is free. Bent over, the fugitives travel a hundred meters along the pipe to a narrow ledge in an old cylindrical mine, which goes down a mile and a half. Olga looks around the walls, but there is no staircase or lift, just the entrance to another tunnel on the opposite wall, and in between, twenty meters of emptiness. Hot air pours out of the tunnel. Lobo pushes the girl aside, almost colliding in the abyss, as a long tongue of orange flame bursts into the mine—their pursuers are using a flamethrower.

  The Marine answers with a burst of machine-gun fire, then picks up Olga and easily flips her to the other side. Passing the second tunnel, they rise to the surface, on the outskirts of one of the oldest city blocks: nine-story shabby houses, resting their roofs in a dull steel dome. There is dead silence and no movement in the streets; the lights flash dimly.

  Lobo drops his cloak and raises the armor module, then takes a large red fire extinguisher, which the Marine picked up somewhere along the road.

  “Marines are coming to help; we'll try to wait for them here . . . get down!”

  Lobo pushes Olga to the floor as the machine gun makes a low whistle. In the dark air, a blast rumbles, scattering hot white sparks, followed by two more explosions. Voronov notices a small red dot, rapidly approaching along a complex spiral trajectory—light-guided missiles. After Lobo knocks down the fifth rocket, the attack ceases. Apparently, the ammunition has run out.

  “So, new plan. We can’t stay here; they’ll smoke us out. We’ll have to meet up with the reinforcements. It’s two blocks to the second crossroads; locals don’t expect such impudence. We’ll go in the center of the street. I'll go first. You follow me in five steps, and don’t stop no matter what. Release the wasps.”

  Olga breaks the fuse and carefully puts the grenade on the cracked concrete. The wasps rise, forming a swarm a meter from her. A bright sight appears in front of her eyes.

  “Now the disguise.”

  One of Lobo's grenades wasn’t ammunition but rather a tiny drone hanging over their heads, its tiny blades making a barely audible whistling sound. On the drone, lights break out, and in the darkness around them appear dozens of holograms—full-sized images of Olga and Lobo, slightly transparent and blurred at the edges, but exactly repeating the movement of the originals. Meanwhile, the real Olga and Lobo become almost invisible to ordinary eyes; the camouflage fabric of their forms has activated.

  “For the motherl
and! For Stalin!!!”

  The Marine jumps out and throws the fire extinguisher forward. The first shots are heard, and someone yells out. The grenade splits the fire extinguisher, releasing a huge cloud of white reagent, sweeping the street with an impenetrable fog.

  “HOORAY!!!”

  Lobo and Olga rush into the white fog, surrounded by a horde of holographic twins. Dozens of shooters open fire. The return bursts of the machine gun and grenade launcher merge into a furious roar. Sirens howl, cables spark, the fog gets trampled by tracers, cars explode, and bullets and grenades hit new reward seekers.

  A dozen men and women in rags break out into the street, furiously chopping phantom figures with long knives and scraps of pipes. Lobo, with a predatory grin, shoots the attackers with three short bursts. Bursting 1.4-mm bullets knock out bloody splashes and don’t give Olga time to aim at anyone.

  “It's a hologram!”

  From the attic shoots a shotgun, and the response shot throws down the legless body. An old man gets a machine gun on the balcony, but breaks down along with his weapon. A girl in a swimsuit raises an improvised rocket launcher on her shoulder, trying to find the real Olga. A bullet in the forehead overturns her, and a rocket sets fire to the upper floors of the house opposite.

  Don’t stop moving, don’t stop shooting. Pave your way towards your enemies with fire and maneuvers. Again, explosions—another missile attack. The missiles have a combined infrared-ultraviolet system; they aren’t sold on the holograms and go straight for the target. All hope rests on Lobo's machine gun. The Marine shoots the last missile over their heads; the drone falls, shot down by a blast wave, and the holograms disappear. Dozens of small fragments pierce Olga’s hands, and the girl shakes them off, hoping that the fragments aren’t poisoned.

  The crossroads are blocked by a heavy machine gun. Lobo pushes Olga away from the firing line and hits the enemies with a grenade, receiving in response half-dozen bullets in his chest and head, knocking the Marine on his back. Behind them, a hatch opens in the pavement, and a boy jumps out, pressing an Uzi to his hip. He has tactical glasses and sees Olga, his wild look meeting her gaze. The Uzi spits out a long burst, and a swarm of wasps break into flight. A hail of bullets hit like a jackhammer, hurling Olga for a dozen meters. She sees the shooter slowly fall to the floor, pierced with a wasp swarm.

  The shooting ceases. Lobo's fingers close on her collar, and the Marine jerks the girl to her feet. Her gaze doubles up, and her ribs start burning with fire from a huge dose of pain medication. Her lungs seem to stop pumping air.

  She vaguely sees Marines, almost the entire platoon. The machine guns are looking for new targets, but no one else is daring to go after the valuable girl. The white cloud dissipates, revealing a view of the charred cars, collapsed houses, and corpses on the pavement. Sherhan puts a second bulletproof vest directly on her charred jacket and then gives her a helmet. The platoon begins to move, Voronov in the center and the Marines at the edges, without lowering their guns for a second.

  Half an hour later, Olga sits topless in the medical compartment as Elena finishes an inspection and treatment of her wounds.

  “Now you'll appreciate your newly reinforced skeleton. That's what a professional surgeon's job means! Look how beautiful the bullets lay—nineteen hits from the waist up to the shoulder. Before upgrading, this burst from such a distance would certainly break at least four ribs and seriously injure a lung, and with new bones you got off with only bruises that will disappear in a day. Charming . . .”

  “What's happening outside?"

  “Klimov is discussing the consequences of your remarkable leave. The Aces have no complaints about the forty-three killed and the 150 wounded townspeople, but they are insisting that we compensate for the damage to public property. It is likely that the compensation will be at the expense of your future salary.”

  “That's what I call shore leave!”

  The captain takes emergency measures to defend the ship, turning dock №53 into a small fortress: nuclear shells have been sent to the naval guns, and the cruiser is preparing to take off. Olga has a few minutes before her shift, and, leaving the medical compartment, she descends to the fourth deck, where she finds Wolff and Domcheev, who are making emergency repairs to Lobo. She thanks Veniamin for a grenade and bulletproof vest and then respectfully shakes the black, charred palm of the Marine.

  “Thanks for the fire support, comrade!”

  “Thanks for showing me a great time. I haven’t shot anyone for two months; it's just amazing how sometimes you miss the little joys of life.”

  CHAPTER SIX: FORCED STOP

  “Hajime!”

  Olga waves her hand and flies up under the ceiling, making room for the fight. Natalia and Elena rush into the fight at the minimum distance for violent strikes by elbows and knees. Space combat, the synthesis of Sambo and Thai boxing, is an effective and brutal martial art, devoid of beautiful elements and imprisoned for maximum damage in minimum time. The fight lasts only eight seconds: the navigator misses several knee blows; Chernova gives a crushing headbutt, then completes the attack, breaking Natasha’s hand with a dead capture.

  “Clear victory!”

  Olga fixes the end of the fight and takes over the distribution of the winnings—part of the crew made bets, and now the losers’ money goes to the winners. Natasha looks distractedly at the droplets of blood hovering in the gym.

  “Why do I always miss this headbutt?”

  “It's because you're lazy, and because of your laziness, you don’t train much, which isn’t surprising for such a spoiled young lady. Don’t take it so tragically; just agree with the fact that you can’t defeat me, and your style will remain at the level of the regional sports day,” Elena says affectionately, examining the face of the navigator. “Rejoice—your nose isn’t broken, your teeth are in place, and the bleeding has stopped. If you want, I can win you again next week.”

  Olga calls to her colleagues from the ceiling.

  “Elena, can you teach me this?”

  The navigator and the surgeon laugh amicably: Natalya in her throat, and Elena quiet and reserved, like the reigning empress over the vulgar anecdote of one of the courtiers.

  “Olga, don’t do stupid things. She'll break all your bones in the first workout!”

  “Don’t listen to this ineptitude; listen to me. I won’t give you bad advice. In general, you don’t need this; all these acrobatics are no use against modern weapons. I learned these nasty little tricks over half a century ago, and even then, they were little use. And our trainings are manifestations of a violent female character and congenital bitchiness, nothing more.”

  “This is Elena—first, she beats you to death, and then she heals and calms your nerves but doesn’t give out secrets. Come on, Olga, we'll play poker until the shift begins.”

  * * *

  Fifty-four G on a gravimeter, and the speed of 415 kilometers per second is increasing. Four hours ago, they urgently left Freeport, and now they are completing the accelerating maneuver.

  Released by electronics, Olga's mind detachedly watches her own body, lying in a pickle-filled spacesuit on the anti-overload chair. If her consciousness returned to her body now, then she wouldn’t be able to move her finger and her lungs wouldn’t be able to breathe; her oxygen supply is provided by pumps constantly pumping the liquid stabilizer, and her heart is duplicated by a powerful pacemaker.

  The four main engines run at one-fifth of full power; in a normal flight to Mars, there is no need to accelerate them to the maximum. Olga can feel how each of the 2.25 billion parts of the cruiser reacts to the overload, conducting hundreds of thousands of checks per second. Now she examines the starboard together with Veniamin, preventing possible deformation and subsequent destruction.

  The hull of a modern ship is an unusually complex device that has much in common with a living organism. It’s formed by tens of millions of cells that have the function of metal regeneration, which allows for the restor
ation of various mechanical damages, resisting the destructive effects of overloads. At the moment, these cells are being seriously tested, and the task of the repair team is to monitor the most damaged areas, timely eliminating possible threats, replacing deformed cells, and immediately growing new ones in their place.

  “Reactor compartment—check finished.”

  The heart of the Bolshevik works without failures, reliably protected by a complex system of balancers and shock absorbers.

  “Five hundred and ninety-five kilometers per second; ten seconds before the engines are cut off!”

  The emergency signal tears her away from the monitoring of the hull; Olga instantly makes emergency repairs, patching the burned-out nerve circuit on the third deck. While everything is going well, she says to herself, “I was afraid the everything would be much more complicated.”

  “Seven hundred and fifty kilometers per second.”

  The engines stop, and at the same moment, the confirmation from the navigator is given—the Bolshevik is entering the calculated orbit, and before them lies the direct road to Mars.

  * * *

  Her first duty: the rest of the Bolsheviks are free from their watch and have a break, and Olga will have to work in solitary for four hours and then be replaced by Anatoly. There’s a straight road ahead and relatively free movement—the Bolshevik is rapidly catching up with a pair of Supernova trucks, and far ahead are the flashing positional lights of the Libra—the famous liner, one of the twelve in the “Zodiac” squadron of luxury passenger ships of the Union Martian lines.

  The trucks were left behind. Uncle Joe spoke with their computers, after which he continued the lesson. Olga spends free time studying the accelerated course of the ship’s mechanisms—Joseph decided to seriously build up her education and is now training her in profiling subjects.

  Now she is learning to operate a system of telescopes and optical range finders. These instruments are used to point the guns in the event of a strong electronic countermeasure, and now Olga is testing their software, using as a training target the swept body of the liner. On the third attempt, she manages to accurately calculate the speed of the ship and the distance to it in order to introduce the necessary lead, when a white flash covers the Libra for a couple of thousandths of a second. There is a blast on board, accompanied by a powerful electromagnetic pulse.