“Fire in the hole!”
With lightning movement, she pulls the determinant out of the nest and puts it into the flask; in the next moment, the explosion of the oxygen cylinder completely destroys the underground operating room. Running inside the rescue robot and putting out the fire, Olga finds the flask under the overturned table; the ceramic armor withstood the explosion.
“Antonina, take it!”
Having received at her disposal an intact determinant, Antonina breaks the defense and gets access to a set of commands that control the wasps. Now the threat has been eliminated: having lost all targets at once, the wasps go into standby mode, and Antonina doesn’t allow Ferdinand to introduce new codes.
“Attention, violation of the perimeter, ignition in lock chamber nine, hacking the system . . . ”
This isn’t another warning from the air defense system; this one has been triggered by the command post alarm. The enemy has entered the gate and is standing at the threshold.
“And now, Olga, I really need your help!”
The Matrix is turned off; Olga is again in the dungeon, surrounded by screens clogged with thick snow. The video surveillance system isn’t functioning.
“I don’t yet have all the information about what is happening, but apparently, the Palace has been captured by a small group of enemy special forces. I don’t know for sure how many of them are up there, but one thing is for certain: they are now hacking the ninth sluice,” Antonina's voice rang out. “Moreover, for an unknown reason, most of the command post protection system has been disconnected. I can’t use two-thirds of the weapons we have.”
“Did you call for reinforcements?”
“Naturally. But since we have only one entrance here, guests will be here earlier than our soldiers. Prepare to fight back.”
When she planned and created a protecting system for the command center, Olga was sure that it wouldn’t ever be used. But the reality is less pleasant.
“Well, who could know that this would happen? Okay, continue the battle there, and I'll make bread and butter for the guests!”
“The elevator has been hacked!”
The elevator doors open, and Olga sees her opponents for the first time. This isn’t a simple paratrooper—she saw plenty of their blue spacesuits this morning. A tall figure entirely covered in dark gray metal and ceramite, unknown weapons, and equipment stands there.
“Is this a Supernova Marine or a combat robot?”
“It’s a cyborg, new human-based model, a prototype. It’s an extremely dangerous opponent.”
“So, don’t trample on the doorstep, come in!”
The cyborg enters; his armor with its camouflage coating changes its color in the rays of the lamp. She senses scanning systems; the enemy is carefully looking for Clark's mines. All is quiet, the doors are closing, the elevator starts descending, and Olga enters the battle.
“Okay, how did Clark teach me?”
The detonation of a dozen microscopic mines breaks the brakes, sending the elevator into an uncontrollable flight. The cyborg breaks off from the floor and soars to the ceiling, the successive numbers of the passed meters merging into a solid red spot.
“Have a nice landing!”
The elevator collapses to the bottom, the screen goes blank, and the girl is sure that even a combat cyborg can’t survive a fall from a height of nearly four kilometers. One down. Almost immediately, the motion detectors are triggered—the fall of the elevator didn’t stop the attackers; they have penetrated into the mine, and now they are traveling downward on the long coils of thin cable.
“They know! They somehow know where to go. They have found us!”
Thermal sensors on the bottom door signal rapid heating. The heavy locks break apart in a couple of seconds; the attackers must have used a high-powered laser. The door swings apart, and the girl immediately gives a long burst from the machine gun turrets. She sees how a dozen bullets hit the chest of the first cyborg, and then the camera is covered with the dazzling flash of a stun grenade; the turret has been destroyed.
Inspecting the warehouse from all the remaining cameras simultaneously, Olga sees that the four cyborgs are moving in short dashes between the pyramids of containers, trying to find the entrance to the tunnel. To aid in their search, they launch flying scouts, who are now carefully examining the walls. There is no doubt that they’ll be able to find the door.
The machine guns fire twice, and bullets ricochet off the cyborg’s armor, without causing any visible harm. The shooting doesn’t last long; miniature guided missiles destroy the machine-gun turrets, and attempts to activate the automatic grenade launchers hidden in the walls lead nowhere. They just don’t respond to her commands.
“So, if you don’t want it to be good, then it will be bad!”
Disabling automatic guidance, Olga takes control of the surviving machine guns, directing them all at once toward the first cyborg, simultaneously launching the overhead crane. Six machine guns open fire; Voronov targets the enemy in his legs, trying to hit the knee joints. As she expected, the armor on the legs is weaker than on the hull. Before the missiles destroy her machine guns, the girl manages to knock the cyborg to the floor, cutting his knees. Meanwhile, a crane with a twenty-foot container blocks his way along the rails laid on the ceiling.
“Reset!”
Fully stuffed with small pebbles, the container detaches from the electromagnet, flies twelve meters, and hits the defeated enemy, whipping up clouds of cement dust.
“The door has been found!”
One of the flying scouts has found the tunnel door; he lands on it and signals to the cyborgs, inviting them inside.
“No, you won’t enter so easily!” says Olga, undermining the charges under the pyramids. A series of powerful explosions overturn multi-ton containers; the pyramids crumble, blocking the entrances to the tunnel with impenetrable debris. The warehouse’s defenses have been exhausted.
“Antonina, I don’t want to seem capricious, but now I really need help.”
“Our soldiers are fighting on the ground floor; we'll have to wait.”
“Our guests won’t wait!”
Going to the barricade, the cyborgs stand motionless for a few seconds, as if conducting a production meeting, then toss their guns behind their backs, and with unprecedented ease, begin to throw the containers aside, freeing their way. The three of them will be able to dismantle the barricade and open the door, and this won’t take them very long. It is very similar to the storming of the High House, Olga thinks; the enemy is again behind the door and is knocking inside. Deprived of machine guns and mines, she tries once again to drop a couple of containers on her enemies, but nothing comes of it—taught by the death of their comrade, the cyborgs easily shoot the electric drives of the crane, immobilizing it.
The last container is thrown to the side with a roar; one cyborg with a laser starts to break through the door, and two others surround him on either side, preparing to break into the tunnel, but what happens in the next couple of seconds violates their plans. The head of the left cyborg flies aside, the right cyborg splits in two, and the cyborg at the door jerks, pointing the laser at the entrance to the elevator shaft, where Clark is shooting from. Olga sees how Clark’s right arm holding the laser gun separates from the forearm, cut off by a ruby ray. Clark falls down.
“OLGA, STOP!!!”
Antonina’s evil cry stops Olga, who has become mad with rage, at the very door of the command post.
“Stop panicking, fool! Where are you going? To fight a combat cyborg with your fists? Your boyfriend is alive—seriously injured, but alive. If you want to help him, you and I, we both need to stay alive and deal with the last enemy on our own. Thanks to Clark, he's the only one left. The cyborg will be here soon, and I can’t defeat him without your help. Do you understand? Look!”
Olga sees Clark lying on the floor. His right lung has been pierced, there is a monstrous burn on his shoulder, and his severed hand is lying
next to it. But, despite the terrible wounds, he is alive; the personal sensor confirms the presence of a pulse and breathing.
“What do we do?!”
“Get the tools!”
After shooting Clark, the cyborg returns to trying to break down the door. Thirty seconds later, he manages to break into the tunnel, but he is in no hurry to enter. After examining the dark passage for some time, the cyborg lifts the decapitated body of his partner and forcefully throws it into the tunnel, provoking an explosion of the mines hidden in the walls. The fire is extinguished, the smoke gradually dissipates, and making sure that the path is free, the cyborg takes on a second body like a shield and begins to walk slowly but confidently forward, heading for the command center.
“Olga, quickly!”
“I know!”
Olga puts a cylinder wrapped in white steam in front of the door and sets the detonator, then throws a hefty tool box with a crash, opens the lid, and begins feverishly throwing out of it expensive parts for Antonina, trying to free up as much space as possible. A siren wails, warning of the violation of the integrity of the door—the cyborg is piercing the armor with a laser.
“Faster!”
The locks and hinges on the door have already been destroyed; the cyborg throws the laser and leans on the scorched armor with his shoulder, inflicting crushing blows.
“Three seconds!”
The girl hides in the box, slamming the lid on.
“Two!”
Getting inside the box, she feverishly passes a sprayer that throws out insulation foam through the joint of the lid.
“One!”
The door collapses, the cyborg steps over the high threshold, and Antonina blows up the cylinder.
Olga's ears are pained by a deafening whistle that pierces every cell of her body, and then comes the cold. The drop in temperature is swift; it feels like the thick, heat-insulated walls of the box are chilled. Her body cramps, the hair and skin on her head tightens to the lid, and her left palm is soaked in burning gasoline—a microscopic particle of the coolant seeps into the box. And then there is silence.
“Olga, are you alive? If so, you can get out. We won.”
Olga doesn’t immediately understand the words from the reasonable machine, and when she does, she doesn’t bother to answer. Now she is worried about another thing—how to tear off the lid from her head without taking off her scalp. The girl tries to turn, but discovers that her left hand, which has lost all sensitivity, doesn’t move at all; apparently, her palm has also frozen.
Swearing and thinking about how much air is remaining inside the ice coffin, Olga manages to tear her palm from the lid with great difficulty, cracking several small icicles with a crunch.
“Okay, now just push the lid out with one quick movement.”
Just pushing the lid out with one quick movement doesn’t work; the frozen hair desperately resists, but then the damned lid still sits to the side and breaks into pieces. The girl remains lying in the box, muffled by painkillers and pressing her hands to her head, from which she has just pulled out a hefty shred of hair along with the skin.
“My dear Olga, if you haven’t already noticed, it's negative ninety-eight degrees Celsius here, and if I were you, I'd try to leave the building as quickly as possible. Get out of there and go to the warehouse; your beloved seems to still be alive.”
“I don’t feel cold; I don’t feel my skin, and the diagnostics have failed. What has happened to me?”
“An examination will find out. It’s a side effect of extensive frostbite of most of the epithelial layer. Don’t worry, you’ll feel your skin again when it starts to slip.”
“Thank you. Tell me, is my head bleeding very much?”
“No, nothing serious. You’ll want to forget about the wound on your head—look at your left hand.”
“What … holy space!”
With an angry face, Olga brings her left palm to her eyes. That's what was crunching so gaily. Her little finger and most of her ring finger no longer exist; they are frozen and fell off with the sharp jerk. There is no pain, but this is a temporary phenomenon—the pain will come when the flesh begins to thaw. It takes a lot of painkillers to bear it.
“Don’t stand here like a pillar—go out! You're dying from the cold!”
Olga throws off her astonished numbness, and, swaying, uncertainly wanders toward the broken door. The explosion of the coolant cylinder turned the command center into a branch of Scandinavian hell, where the main tool of divine retribution is the cold in all its manifestations. The walls, floor, ceiling, and all the objects in the hall are covered with a layer of white frost, including Antonina, but she isn’t injured, being protected by multi-layer thermal insulation. But all the rest have come to full disrepair: metal and plastic, exposed directly to the coolant of increased heat capacity, can now easily be broken with one’s fingers, if, of course, those fingers are available.
Overcoming the resistance of the unyielding icy clothes, she approaches the cyborg, frozen in the doorway, on which most of the coolant collapsed. As she approaches the enemy, the girl kicks him hard in the right leg. The leg breaks at the knee, and the cyborg falls to the floor, breaking into thousands of fragments.
“Antonina, are there any more mines in the tunnel?”
“No, go boldly. The faster you get out of here, the better.”
“Despite the loss of my fingers and the frostbite, thank you for the idea with the coolant. I wouldn’t have thought of that.”
“You’re welcome. This cylinder stands next to me all the time; it had to be used for a backup cooling system. I analyzed the situation and realized that the coolant was the only thing that we could effectively use in this situation.”
“Antonina, were you sure that I would survive, that the walls of the box would withstand?”
“Actually, no. Honestly, I'm surprised that you survived. I thought that the box would freeze through; the heat insulator in such boxes is usually too thin, and the probability of your death was seventy-five percent. I told you that you were guaranteed to survive the explosion because I had to say something so that you wouldn’t be nervous and would calmly prepare the cylinder. I must survive in any case, and the rest is of secondary importance, isn’t it, Olga?”
“I've always liked machine logic. How are things up there?”
“Well, we have almost won, but in some places, fighting is still going on.”
Olga sees the way out to the warehouse. It's quite warm—only negative twenty-seven. Olga makes her way between the capsized containers until a weak voice calls out to her.
“Hello, Snow Maiden.”
Clark lies where he caught the laser beam, next to his right hand, still clutching the gun.
“How's Santa Claus doing?”
“The joker . . . ”
Olga leans over the mutilated Clark, examining his wounds. He remains conscious, as he has lost little blood. The laser cauterized the edges of the wounds, preventing heavy bleeding, and it is only because of this that Clark is still alive. But his intermittent gurgling breath doesn’t add to Olga's optimism; several of her injections of anesthesia and anti-shock drugs aren’t enough; she urgently needs to lift him up. The girl throws a quick glance at the dark opening of the elevator shaft and the pile of scrap metal in place of the cabin.
“Clark, tell me, how did you get down here?”
“I used their cable—installed on it my climbing carbine.”
“What is the maximum load?”
“A quarter of a ton; there will be enough for two of us, especially for me. I, as you probably noticed, have lost a little weight.”
Clarke laughs hoarsely. His chest again starts to gurgle, a thin strip of blood stretching out of the corner of his mouth.
“I'm glad for your sense of humor, Yankee. So we just need to get to the lift. In this state, I can’t throw you over my shoulder. I'll have to drag you by the collar: unfasten the locks of the knapsack on your chest, and I'll take o
ff the straps! Clark, I’m sorry, but I'll have to leave your hand here.”
Olga gently raises her injured comrade, helping him drop the heavy knapsack and trying not to disturb his wounds. The chrome Stechkin in the shoulder holster under his left hand prevents her, and the girl puts it in her breast pocket. Clark still manages to cope with the lock. Olga puts the knapsack on the floor, takes her comrade by the collar, and starts dragging him slowly to the elevator shaft.
“Stay awake, okay? Tell me, what happened up there, and why did you come down here alone?”
“It will be a long and interesting story . . . ”
Clark's platoon was carrying a watch on the roof of the city exchange, in front of the People's Palace, when the landing operation began. He pierced the barrels of his twin machine gun at the zenith and fired at the capsules that fell on the city. He then fired back at the landed paratroopers until the ammunition ran out. Two-thirds of his platoon was killed by wasps; Clark was the last who managed to get out of the roof alive, in order to fight the enemy inside the exchange, where the Stechkin Automatic Gun, purchased at the antique shop, was extremely useful. The wasps almost killed him, but then they all went blind at once, and then came the signal of another enemy group thrown directly to the Palace, where a new fight began.
“When Antonina sent a distress signal, I managed to get into the Palace through a secret passage known only to me. By that time, the cyborgs had already descended here. I had to follow them without waiting for reinforcements, borrowing a laser cutter from one of the enemies.”
Olga stops to take a breath. The pain of frostbite is growing stronger.
“Clark, they knew where to go. They knew where the lock chamber was hidden and where the mine was leading. The disguise didn’t work, and the security system went off. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I can come up with only one explanation. Are you thinking the same thing?”
Foaming blood flows from his pierced lung; Clark clumsily tries to cover the wound with a surgical gel from a small syringe.
The Blitzkrieg Page 25
