The Burglar folds the cutter and begins to lay the thread. Olga is glad that she didn’t get assigned this job, because working with a monomolecular thread is extremely dangerous. Even in the Matrix, one wrong move means you lose your fingers. But the robot does everything perfectly—briefly touching it with its front paws, the Burglar swiftly stretches the thinnest invisible threads from the grips on the wall to the tripod.
“Now we'll get the hippopotamus out of the swamp . . . ”
The armor has cooled down; the Burglar starts to pull out a plate, evenly coiling the threads. Olga sticks to the screen, watching as a thick piece of armor plate begins to slowly move out of the wall, sliding along the lubricant, which she carefully applied a few hours ago. Now the entrance to the hardware compartment is closed only by a rectangular plate of insulating plastic, which the Burglar picks up with a pair of suction cups.
“Good luck,” Joseph approves of his colleague.
If the explosion happens, it will happen now. Olga closes her eyes, and Anatoly freezes, not having reached the card. The Burglar removes the plate with an accurate movement. Voronov slowly opens her eyes, The Naughty Girl still looms in the porthole, and somewhere far away, in the Bolshevik control room, Natasha hands Yuri a five-ruble coin.
* * *
Again, a piercing metal screech—the ships make contact once again. Olga mechanically patches the new dents, focusing on the next line of enemy defense.
The former passenger liner and warship are flying forward, closely pressing against each other, maneuvering as one. The Naughty Girl is one and a half times bigger than the Bolshevik, her side shields the cruiser from enemy radars, and the compromised computer stably responds to code requests, so that until now, they have not been fired on, although it is probably only an ambush.
“The distance is 1,279; the speed is forty-one kilometers per second.”
Their radars can’t be turned on, so the Bolsheviks rely on the Naughty Girl's telescopes, keeping a close eye on the CV-509 and its surroundings.
Slowly approaching the Five Hundred and Ninth is a typical carbon asteroid, seven kilometers long and five wide, suspiciously reminiscent of an oblong potato. Large impact craters on the surface indicate a turbulent past. A piece of stone the size of a truck circles around it, performing the role of a local moon. It isn’t possible to look at the smaller details, in view of the extremely dark surface typical of such asteroids. Only where the North Pole could be glimmers a small glacier.
A convenient place for Anchorage, Olga thinks, looking around the Five Hundred and Ninth. Such boulders are rich in minerals; besides, there is water—all that is needed for an autonomous colony or a long-term pirate base. Using the telescopes, Joseph finds new traces of a long human presence—from a distance, seemingly uninhabited; CV-509 is dug round and round, like a rotten stump of ants.
“Sector 34—gas holder; sector 21—antenna post; sectors 9, 14, 47, 63, and 92—docks, sector . . . ”
As the Naughty Girl approaches the asteroid, she makes a series of short jerks, picking up speed, then braking—a kind of security measure: an approaching ship that hasn’t performed a certain series of maneuvers will immediately be fired upon without warning. While everything is going smoothly for the time being, however, such a deception cannot last long.
“There's a serious meeting committee.”
The Five Hundred and Ninth is guarded by two standard combat ships of the Syndicate, plus the asteroid itself is well armed. Uncle Joe counts nine cannon and laser batteries on his visible side, and another part of the arsenal is probably hidden in mine shelters. There are also four artillery satellites that cut circles around the asteroid. At the same time, there aren’t many ships docked at the CV-509; most of the Syndicate’s fleet is either occupied somewhere or spread out over other bases. Only one four-thousand-ton transport is docked, plus several multi-type coasters; most of the parking lots are empty.
“Eight hundred and sixty kilometers, thirty seconds before undocking, twenty-nine . . . ”
At the twenty-first second, shooting begins—the Five Hundred and Ninth sends toward them long pulsating lines of tracers. The gravimeter jumps to eighty-three; the Bolshevik and the Naughty Girl bounce off each other like two billiard balls. The main caliber comes into action, and Olga launches the Buran. There is no time to guess how the fraud was revealed; it’s necessary to engage in the fight.
The Naughty Girl rushes forward, and the Bolshevik covers her, implementing dizzying anti-flack maneuvers. On the dark carbon surface of the Five Hundred and Ninth, bursts break out. The cruiser hits two batteries, and the next volley knocks down an artillery satellite, but the reciprocal fire is deadly—the Naughty Girl falls apart under a hail of shells. But still she manages to overcome a hundred-kilometer radius; now the collision is inevitable: the mutilated ship falls on the asteroid, which definitely won’t be able to make a deviation maneuver. Remotely controlling the Naughty Girl, Klimov aims into the mouth of the largest open dock, counting on an internal explosion. He almost reaches the target, but the laser beams that stretch from the asteroid cut off the burning ship, destroying the last shunting engine. The Naughty Girl loses control, deviates from a straight line, and three seconds later falls at the southern tip of the asteroid, completing the attack by undermining the reactor.
“Fire in the hole!”
The hemispherical cloud of the nuclear explosion tacitly raises above the dark surface of the Five Hundred and Ninth, sweeping away the gasholders, the antenna field, and the artillery battery and completing the attack by destroying the two nearest docks and the surrounding buildings—the damage is generally small. Olga is waiting for Klimov to order the use the last two nuclear shells, but this doesn’t happen. They must leave.
“Azimuth 21, angle 17—warship; azimuth 345, angle negative 14—warship!”
The two Syndicate destroyers don’t immediately engage in battle; they round the asteroid along the arc, remaining outside the range of the cruiser's guns, turn around, and then attack the Bolshevik from both sides on a collision course. An excellent calculation of the maneuver: the cruiser is between the Five Hundred and Ninth with its guns, and two well-armed warships have it pinned from both sides. Defending itself with interference and false targets and working with engines and rudders, the cruiser turns from side to side like an experienced boxer in the ring. Several salvos force the attackers to quickly change their shooting ranges, providing the Bolshevik with a respite for a couple of seconds.
“Concentrate fire on the Rothstein!”
The Rothstein maneuvers at the maximum capacity of its engines: the first projectile passes by on the starboard, and after a split second, the remote detonation of the second shell forces the bandit to turn away abruptly, ending up exactly under the direct blow of the third and fourth shells.
“Well done!”
At the moment when the Bolshevik's shots hit the Rothstein, a fragmentary shell, fired by Clarence Boddicker, explodes two kilometers ahead of the cruiser. Briefly flaring, lasers burn most of the splinters, but not less than forty fragments reach the target. Olga can clearly hear the fractional metallic rumble that passes through the hull when a swarm of splinters cut into a disk and ricochet from the armor in all directions. The disk holds its own, which is why Voronov and Granddad’s team are still alive, but some of the fragments travel upward, severely damaging the nasal compartments.
“We have a hit!”
While the battle is going on, the Bolshevik’s engineers are beginning to struggle for the ship’s survival. They have twenty-two holes on the upper deck: there is no fire and no oxygen leakage because when they shifted into combat mode, air was pumped out, and the tightening of the holes has already started. Much more dangerous are the numerous damages to the ship’s electronics and other mechanisms, which require immediate intervention. Gun number one, Marshal Zhukov out of order—the gun itself survived, but the drives are completely destroyed. Most of the optical surveillance system no
longer functions, and two-thirds of the telescopes are broken. The antenna arrays have been significantly damaged–the Bolshevik lost some of its fire power and has gone blind in one eye. The boatswain simultaneously contacts each of the repairmen, allotting personal work sites. Wolff and Domcheev repair the hull and hastily replace broken telescopes, the Twins restore the drives of the gun, and Olga is assigned radar and wiring.
Having maintained the attack, the Bolshevik continues the battle, constantly protecting herself from the guns of the Five Hundred and Ninth with the fire-covered wreck of the Rothstein. The Boddicker doesn’t accept the direct attack and leaves at maximum speed. Voronov continues to sew broken electrical circuits and restore the elements of the antenna arrays and radar switches one after another. Only now, she understands that there is another rescue operation occurring simultaneously with the emergency repairs, one that Chernova is carrying out—one of the Bolsheviks has been seriously injured.
A small fragment struck the hull in the area of the radar post, almost tearing Nastya’s left leg below the knee. Connected to the Matrix, Anastasia didn’t immediately understand what had happened, for the pain was unavailable to her. The fragment shattered the bone and tore out a piece of muscle; if it had passed a centimeter to the right, it would have torn off her leg completely. The combat suit managed to instantly tighten the torn hole, preventing leakage of the pickle, and the onboard medicine kit rolled her a dose of an anesthetic along with a coagulant that stopped the bleeding. Having received first aid, Nastya remains at the fighting post until the end of the battle, and only at the captain’s order gives her watch over to Uncle Joe. The Bolshevik is already far enough away from the Five Hundred and Ninth, and the shooting has ceased, so Tokarev slows down a little to enable the wounded girl to be brought into the medical compartment.
“Twenty seconds!”
Elena takes over Nastya’s spacesuit, in case the girl can’t move independently, and calls a couple of Marines. They rise from the fourth deck, carefully remove the operator from the chair, and begin to lower her down; the doctor helps them, trying not to disturb her left leg. They must hurry before the Bolshevik starts gaining speed again; otherwise, the strong overloads are guaranteed to break all of Anastasia’s remaining bones.
“Lena, save my leg, you hear! I don’t want it to be like yours!”
“Stop the hysterics; your knee joint is intact, so we'll do without prosthetics. Just climb into the capsule and go to sleep. When you wake up, I'll be done,” Chernova replies, putting Anastasia in the intensive care unit. “Fedor, the patient is ready, I suggest leaving this party; we are definitely not welcome here!”
* * *
Olga has been hanging out in open space since three in the morning, for over four hours, managing a vacuum foundry on Cobblestone’s surface, like a worker of an ancient steel mill in the Urals. Casting metal in molds has already been completed; now there is a multi-stage purification process to complete, and then she’ll introduce nanoconstructors, which will change the alloy to the required standard. Then forging will begin—and a new batch of patches will be ready to seal the numerous holes on the upper deck. Slowly but surely the repair process is coming to an end.
Three hundred and seven hours have passed since the unsuccessful attack on the CV-509, half of which the Bolshevik spent at the tiny iron-nickel asteroid with a ten-digit identifying number, to which the crew gave the simple and understandable name of Cobblestone. In the Asteroid Belt, you can find almost any raw materials you need to quickly patch up a ship after another fight. They had to fly far away from the roads for the right asteroid, but here the cruiser doesn’t need to be afraid of an unexpected attack: there are no ships or colonies nearby.
Cobblestone itself, discovered by a Chinese scout satellite half a century ago, is a thirteen-meter-long iron-nickel nugget, one of the many pieces of debris from some large celestial body that for some unknown reason split into pieces a couple of billion years before the first human appeared on the plains of Africa.
Having cut two and a half tons of metal from Cobblestone, the Bolsheviks installed tools on the asteroid, promptly setting up a small shipyard. Naturally, Klimov reminded Olga of her production past by putting the foundry under her management, so she is working like the owner of a private copper mountain.
The cleaning is finished, and the high-precision work begins. She reduces the temperature in the forms; the metal thickens and changes color, the nanoconstructors rapidly filling the alloy. Managing the millions of construction machines of atomic size, Olga's consciousness subordinates the hot mass of liquid metal, changing the alloy at her will. The atomic structure changes, and the metal acquires unprecedented properties, becoming much stronger and at the same time more flexible and lighter than conventional steel. The initial hardening is enough now, and she can give the blanks to Anatoly, who has a perfect knowledge of the ancient art of forging.
“Work harder, journeyman!”
“I'm glad to see you too, Anatoly. Did you manage to bring Marshal Zhukov to life, or did you fail again?”
The number one gun, named after Marshal of the Soviet Union Zhukov, still hasn’t been repaired; the mechanics have worked on it over the past two days.
“Partly; we managed to restore the drives so that the old man can shoot, but not as accurately and quickly as before. The corners of the guidance had to be limited; otherwise, it just collapses. For the best results, we need—”
“I know; we need a complete repair in dry dock and a full set of spare parts. So, take the first batch of pancakes and start knocking with a hammer; I'm going to have a bite.”
The chronometer reads 18:45. Olga rises from the hangar to the saloon, squeezed out like a lemon. No more work for today; she has half an hour in the bath and a hearty supper at her disposal, but now she just needs to sit still for a few minutes, feeling the pleasant warmth of a mug of hot tea in her hands.
“Uncle Joe, is there any news from Mars?”
“The captain is waiting for a personal telegram, but nothing more has been heard. The bath is free.”
Entering the gym, Olga encounters Anastasia; the girls are seeing each other for the first time since the attack on the Five Hundred and Ninth. Since then, the wounded operator has remained in Chernova’s realm. She has only pants on and a white towel around her head, and Olga sees her snow-white angelic wings—a beautiful three-dimensional tattoo. The wings are moving; Anastasia turns to her.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
The operator is wearing an army shirt with short sleeves; a pair of translucent feathers flies off the wings and start spinning around the girls like snowflakes. Her left trouser leg has been cut off above the knee, and a translucent restoring bandage has been applied on the deep wound.
“How was it?”
“It's fine; better than I expected. I was afraid that I would wake up with a piece of iron and wires instead of my leg, but Elena, as always, keeps her word, so I can still play volleyball as well as before.”
Nastya is going to leave, but Olga calls her.
“Listen, Anastasia, I don’t know how to say it, but I'm sorry about what happened with your friend. I didn’t want to, but I had no other choice.”
Nastya is silent for a couple of seconds.
“I have been friends with Naomi since childhood; our fathers had a joint business. Friends forever—we shared secrets, dreams of our first love, and other girlish nonsense. She was there wherever I was, and when I decided to go to the Academy, Naomi did the same, although cosmonautics was clearly not for her, and without my help she would have been quickly dismissed. But I helped her, so we studied, in our company of Academy Princess. Unfortunately, Naomi was smart enough to contact Elektra, even though I specifically warned her about it . . . so she was on the Black Swan that night when you fought for your life. I was at the funeral, although there was nothing to bury, the coffin was empty . . .
It was all so stupid; I understood perfectly well that it wa
s entirely the fault of Electra and those who followed her, but I couldn’t stop hating you with incomprehensible malice. That’s the way it is . . . ”
“It happens.”
Hovering over hot boards in the bath, Olga tries not to think about anything and just enjoy life, but one annoying thought still makes her contact the medical compartment.
“Elena, what exactly did Nastya mean?”
“Saying that she doesn’t want to be like me? It's simple,” Chernova maintains the conversation, not distracted from the electron microscope, through which she is examining dust samples from the surface of Cobblestone. “These aren’t my legs.”
The girl remembers how well the surgeon works with knees in training melees.
“These are prostheses?”
“Not exactly. My legs have been artificially grown, using my DNA, but a few wires are still present, which is very convenient in certain cases. I left my old legs in the war when our burning medical transport collapsed in the Ocean of Storms. The bailout in the damaged capsule ended with twenty-seven fractures, plus my teeth being almost all broken. The Bolshevik picked me up, but it had just come out of a great fight, and the old medic had been killed, along with three more of the crew. So, Joseph had to work on me, and he couldn’t think of anything better than amputation …”
“Why recall such ancient mistakes?”
“Joseph, it's not polite to interrupt the ladies. So, farewell, my slender legs, you were very beautiful; men were crazy about you. But that’s how I met Fedor, in compensation.”
The Blitzkrieg Page 21
