With a series of evasive maneuvers, the main caliber comes into play. Olga notes the fact that they were attacked only after the landing began.
Hey, Satan paid my dues . . .
The capsules cross the hundred-kilometer mark; the bombs are far behind. The girl peers into the desert around the cosmodrome with hundreds of artificial eyes, waiting for the defense, which will now be put into operation. It is like a hunt, in which the paratroopers will perform the honorary role of the live bait.
I'm on my way to the promised land!
The altitude is thirty-five kilometers; the capsules have already fully opened, beginning to gradually lose speed. Here and there, at the cosmodrome and beyond, camouflaged hatches slide aside, opening the vents of the narrow mines. After seeing the enemy, Olga accelerates the bombs to the maximum speed, knowing that she won’t be in time anyway.
I’m on the highway to hell!
The laser cannon fires vertically upward. Despite scattered false targets and powerful jamming, the fire is precise, the capsules scatter into small pieces. This lasts for about two seconds, after which Olga destroys the emitters, pushing bombs into the mines one by one.
I’m on the highway to hell!
The surviving capsules fall on the takeoff field and immediately disintegrate, releasing paratroopers. Of the sixty capsules, twenty-three were shot down, and two more weren’t opened, crashing into the ground at the first space speed—totaling twenty-five killed. The landing cost the Martians more than forty percent of their personnel. And the battle is just beginning.
The first paratroopers already reached the observatory and have started breaking the lock chamber, but Voronov isn’t up to them: she’s dealing with the cargo containers that fell to the ground along with the paratroopers. The containers are automatically opened, releasing unmanned helicopters: Olga checks the systems, warms up the engines, and starts the drones into the sky. Simultaneously with the helicopters, an airship with a millimeter-wave radar rises into the air—just in time, the drones report that movement has begun in the desert north and east of the object.
Meanwhile, the paratroopers, punching their way with a directed explosion, burst into the observatory. Several fighters pick up a portable antenna to communicate with Antonina, and only now does Olga notice Emily adjusting the radio transmitter. The Matrix leaves very little room for emotion; the girl quietly realizes that her only friend outside the Bolshevik has voluntarily enrolled in the kamikaze. And yet it's a pity.
Numerous marks on the radar—the enemy is approaching from the ground and air.
“Take your men inside!”
Two light attack aircraft are the first to engage in battle. The sentinel airship disappears in a fiery flash; Olga presses her helicopters to the ground, firing toward the attackers with rockets. The head plane gets several direct hits and falls to pieces; simultaneously, four helicopters are destroyed, and cluster bombs fall in front of the observatory. The second attack aircraft passes over the dome with a roar, putting a couple of rockets into the upper floors; Olga turns the gun, catches the enemy in her sights, and sends a long burst.
“Clear!”
The ruby spear of the tracer blows the airplane wing; the girl isn’t going to watch it fall, instead regrouping the surviving helicopters and getting ready to meet the enemies approaching on the ground. Having received a respite, the paratroopers promptly search the underground floors of the observatory, descending to the command post. There isn’t even a hint of resistance; they haven’t met a single person or a robot, but Olga knew that someone would be here, and here they are. The fighters drag out three locals—two guys and a girl. All three are no older than twenty-five and obviously aren’t going to stand guard at the observatory until the last drop of blood. Civilian personnel, Olga thinks, looking at their frightened faces. Naturally, there would be civilians, so it will be more convincing.
The enemy is about to enter the firing zone; Olga disperses her helicopters, hiding them behind the ruins of hangars and overturned cranes. Stretched out in a long chain, the infantry moves to the observatory. The girl recognizes the familiar silhouettes of cyborgs. Not less than a platoon, they run along the dredged craters on the take-off field at a speed of fifty kilometers per hour. Each shooter controls its sector of fire, plus wasps in the combat mode. And the infantrymen aren’t alone—just behind the chain of cyborgs, tanks are moving—four tanks in brown desert camouflage. Massive towers are displaced to the stern, and wide caterpillars are crushing the sand and concrete. Even without air support, they’ll break through her defenses; Olga is absolutely sure about this.
The paratroopers have entered the command post; Antonina has begun hacking the main computer: all that is needed now is to gain her a minute, preferably two.
Nine helicopters are synchronously rising above their shelters. The targets are outlined in advance; Olga is keeping the last helicopter in ambush. Simultaneously shooting from nine guns at nine targets, Olga watches with grim pleasure how the tracers flash briefly, piercing the cyborgs—their armor isn’t designed to meet with the twenty-three-millimeter armor-piercing projectile. Direct hits throw them a dozen meters with broken pieces of human body and metal, but cyborgs aren’t frightened by losses; the return fire is no less damaging. After a short but violent exchange of fire, Voronov manages to hide only two drones back in the shelters; the rest are destroyed. The enemy had six killed. She also tried to burn the nearest tank, but without success. Ten missiles rushed to the armored machine, but exploded without reaching it, unable to overcome the force field and the reactive armor. A small success, but still she managed to force the enemy infantry to lie down for ten seconds, and when the thinned chain rises again, the cyborgs are moving less confidently, looking for possible threats.
Three kilometers to the north, a powerful explosion rumbles—the shuttle, knocked down from orbit, falls. A huge snow-white antenna changes its position, silently turning on powerful drives—Antonina has handled the processor; the transmitter is ready to put a new course in the meteorite bombs. The job is done.
The tank, on which Olga has spent all her rockets, again bursts forward. The cyborgs follow it, and the other tanks move a little further. The girl raises both cannon helicopters, firing in all directions just to distract the enemy fire, and then shows her last trump card. On the last surviving drone, a combat laser has been installed. Olga is aiming the tank at the port side, keeping the sight in the left driving wheel: she isn’t sure that the shot will break through the turret and tries to shoot a direct hit. A short burst of deadly light pierces the larboard; the tank turns to the right, then stops, throwing out a tattered caterpillar belt in front of it. The downed helicopter falls. Her strength is exhausted.
“I confirm the change in the swarm's course. Destroy the equipment!”
The command post is destroyed. The paratroopers are undermining the computers; other fighters on the first floor are firing back at the cyborgs. In the battle against the cyborgs, they might have survived, but there is no chance against the tanks. The volley of tank guns sweeps away the Republican fire points, opening the way for the cyborgs inside. The lenses of personal cameras go out one after another, giving Olga a jerky picture of the furious battle going on at the observatory. The girl analyzes the options available in a desperate attempt to help those who are still alive, and comes to a single decision; other options have fallen away.
“Captain, I'm requesting fire support at the indicated coordinates—at least a couple of shells!”
“The answer is no. We can’t attack the territory . . . ”
Klimov doesn’t finish, and Olga doesn’t ask again, for at that point, everything immediately ceases to matter. With a microscopic time delay, communication satellites inform the crew about what has happened on the other side of the planet. A second ago, a nuclear strike was detonated along Alamo.
The tactical nuclear bomb is undermined in the city center, absorbing the People's Palace, the hospital, and other buil
dings with a silent, man-made sun. And then comes the hemisphere of the blast wave, the rapid running of which is clearly visible from the orbit. This moving wall of red-hot compressed gas, which has turned entire blocks into piles of melted brick, sweeps through the city like a giant bulldozer, leveling to the ground all within a two-kilometer radius from the epicenter. Another nuclear strike was carried out on the cosmodrome.
“Attention to the crew: The task has been completed; we must leave!”
Olga hears a few words from the Captain, addressed only to her.
“Give me the coordinates; we'll shoot one last time.”
The battle at the observatory is over. The cyborgs are leading up Emily and another wounded fighter, the only survivors of the whole detachment.
“Emily, it's Olga. At count five, get down. One, two . . . ”
* * *
“According to preliminary data, the number of victims has reached thirty-two thousand and continues to grow. The death of the First Chief is confirmed, and all surviving members of the Republic’s government have been arrested. A transitional administration has been formed under the leadership of an authorized representative of the corporation . . . ”
This encoded message is overtaken by the Bolshevik an hour after Alamo has been struck with a nuclear strike. Mars by that time is far behind, and this brief report from the chief of the general staff of the discontinued Republic puts the last point in the conflict.
Everything turned out exactly as Klimov supposed it would—an attack on Supernova territory and the murder of three of its employees was a suitable occasion for the official declaration of war, and the fact that Olga saw cyborgs shoot those three civilians in the observatory won’t matter much. The war didn’t take long; everything was decided by a series of pinpoint nuclear strikes, after which immediate and very concrete proposals for peace were made. The rebellious state has been left in the past; the Patel Glacier has passed into the ownership of Supernova as a payment for the damage caused, and the citizens are preparing to deploy a peacekeeping contingent in their surviving homes—the same ten thousand criminals who were landed outside the battlefield.
This was a total defeat, followed by a complete and unconditional surrender. But still Antonina, who survived the nuclear bombing in her shelter, managed to slam the door loudly at last. She once told Olga that she had found a weak spot in the electronic armor of her main opponent, the Ferdinand artificial intelligence, the most powerful Supernova computer on Mars. Previously, she couldn’t take advantage of this flaw, as this would also be a cause for war, but now there was nothing to lose, and Antonina didn’t miss the opportunity.
“You got him.”
Ferdinand burned down in about ten nanoseconds, having received from Antonina a deadly charge of viruses, like a bomb in a mail envelope. And this period of time was enough for Antonina to slightly fix the enemy databases, which would then be found and restored. Now no one knows exactly where her bunker is located; she slightly changed the coordinates, sending the corporation spies to a false address, on which a persuasive pile of debris was prepared in advance. The real command post would survive, but getting there would be very difficult. After the destruction of the People's Palace, the elevator shaft and the warehouse would be destroyed by directed explosions, securely locking Antonina's chamber with solid rock, like a bubble of air in a layer of ice.
Deprived of constant work, she plunges into hibernation, with a capacious battery adequate for a hundred thousand years of sleep without dreams. Now Olga is the only one who knows where Antonina is, the only one who has a chance to get her out of there. At that second, her friend is in perpetual imprisonment.
“It was a pleasure working with you. Excavate me some time and try not to die. Good luck, my friend.”
* * *
A few more strokes with a shovel, and she finally gets what she is looking for—the lid of a large, sealed container.
Emily casts a short glance at her injured comrade lying on a roll of heat insulator. A young black guy in an orange combat suit is unconscious, reliably lulled by a powerful dose of pain medication. Two hours ago, she managed to quickly operate on him, so he now has a chance, if of course she is able to deliver him and herself to some civilization. They are the only ones who have survived from the whole detachment; there is no connection, and there will be no support, so it will be necessary to act further in an autonomous mode.
When Olga said “five,” Emily's legs buckled, and she, as if losing consciousness from her wounds, collapsed to the floor. The cyborg that walked behind didn’t immediately shoot but tried to lift the girl to her feet with a strong kick. No one had time to do it, though.
After half an hour, Emily managed to get to the surface, passing through the cable collector under the observatory. The observatory itself was no more; the Bolshevik’s shells covered absolutely everything within a radius of five hundred meters with a hail of fragments that pierced the reinforced concrete and tank armor like cigarette paper. Emily and her wounded comrade seemed to have won the main prize in the lottery—it's almost impossible to survive after such a blow.
Luck was over; survival began. The parking lot with the service cars had ceased to exist, but Emily had lived on Mars for many years and knew the local rules. One of the rules is that there should always be a backup transport at remote bases.
It was already quite dark when she managed to unearth the container and pull the all-terrain vehicle out. Securely fixing her wounded comrade in the back seat, she throws batteries, tools, packages with rations, and oxygen cylinders into the small trailer—they have a long way to go. Emily already knows from the broadcasts that the war is lost, the way home is closed, and salvation must be sought elsewhere. The occupation, apparently, has already begun, so now they have a chance to hide: in such a mess, nobody will look for them.
“Come on, comrade!”
Having left on the take-off field, Emily looks at the map, for the last time looks back at the ruins of the observatory, and slowly drives the car away from the cosmodrome, moving to the north.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: DISTANT RUMBLE OF THUNDER
Nun komm der Heiden Heiland. Bach created this pipe organ chorale for the Duke of Saxe-Weimar in 1724. Three hundred and sixty-nine years later, Jenna Donovan, virtuously as always, plays the chorale, attentively listening to the sound of the instrument—until now, she has had no time to try this purchase; the last few days turned out to be extremely tense.
“Congratulations on completing the collection, Miss Jenna. A great instrument, just amazing. Is it true that it belonged to Mozart himself?”
“To Bach, my dear, Johann Sebastian Bach. And not exactly belonged.”
Jenna, without ceasing to play, turns to a young brunette in a gray suit who has entered the chamber hall.
“Bach played it, that’s certain, but he didn’t own it, no matter what the seller promised me. This particular pipe organ was installed in the Town Hall of Weimar no later than the year 1700 and stood there until the Franco-Prussian War, after which it was purchased by a private owner. The new owner made repairs, replacing some of the worn parts, but in general, it is an authentic instrument. I've laid eyes on it for a long time, but have only just now had the opportunity to get acquainted with it. Do you want something?”
“The Chairman asked me to convey his congratulations to you—in words, of course. He was very impressed by your work. He regrets that he can’t . . . ”
“To thank me personally, and he sends his mistress. In any case, tell the Chairman that I’m grateful for this sign of attention.”
It is the duty of Miss Donovan's personal secretaries to serve as mistresses of the highest authorities in the leadership of Supernova. At the same time, accustomed to protecting her people, Jenna doesn’t require them to spy on her behalf—most often, these girls are used as communication delegates for the transmission of especially important messages that can’t be trusted to paper or electronics.
“I'll te
ll him about it in bed tonight. Miss Jenna, if you don’t mind, I wanted to ask you something else. In talking about your operation, he mentioned one word, which I didn’t understand and didn’t know—it seems he said ‘Gleiwitz.’ Can I ask what it means and what it has to do with today's events? I haven’t found any data on this matter anywhere . . . ”
“Still, the prohibition of teaching history in schools was an extremely erroneous decision. In short, Gleiwitz is a town in the east of Germany, at the Polish border. In 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, about which I hope you know at least something, Hitler conducted a special operation there by the SS forces—a fake attack on a city radio station allegedly committed by Polish saboteurs. Like the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, it was a classic provocation, organized for one single purpose—to create a legitimate reason to attack Poland, allegedly in response to its aggression. Having mentioned this locality, the Chairman has it in his mind that I arranged something similar. But, in my opinion, I performed more elegantly than Himmler's thugs; forgive me for this slight attack of complacency.”
Jenna pauses her playing to light another cigarette.
“In this case, the attack on our territory was real, with all the necessary attributes, such as the bombing and the death of civilians. It’s the ideal and absolutely legitimate reason for war. So, it's almost seven. Lincoln will speak now; it's worth seeing.”
In the center of the chamber, a screen appears: a conference hall filled with journalists at the Chicago headquarters. It was decided to disclose Lincoln's resignation in public. She reads her application, but there is no sound—Jenna has gotten used to reading lips. Everything is as it should be—retirement, spending more time with family, and so on.
“Is that my speech?"
“It's ready.”
The mistress of the Chairman passes Jenna a sheet of stamped paper.
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