The Blitzkrieg
Page 29
“More expression, please. Something about how much I learned from my great predecessor, what responsibility lays on me, and how I’ll observe her traditions and so on, which will be appropriate for such an occasion.”
“It will be done.”
Lincoln ends the speech; Jenna no longer looks at her, instead focusing her eyes on the old-fashioned clock on the right wall of the conference hall. If the clock is right, then Lincoln will still live for forty-five hours and twenty minutes, plus or minus ten seconds, after which she’ll have a massive brain hemorrhage, against which all modern medicine will be powerless.
“Sic transit gloria mundi.” Thus passes the glory of the world.
“I'm sorry, what?”
“Don’t pay me any attention, I’m just talking to myself, a bad habit since childhood. I can’t get rid of it. You can go.”
Left alone, Jenna calls back to the screen a voluminous photograph of the nuclear mushroom above the center of Alamo, watches it for a while, signs the photo with an electronic facsimile, and then goes to the panoramic window, shaking cigarette ashes onto the Persian carpet. Looking at the floating Earth below, Jenna habitually analyzes the situation and is generally satisfied. She just won a protracted war, and by the end of the day, she’ll fully restore her position on the upper floors of the Supernova hierarchical pyramid. So even her critically minded mind can’t help but admit that the day turned out to be extremely productive.
* * *
Somewhere far away, Jenna gives a sympathetic speech about accepting the new position, and Olga, meanwhile, hovers over the cot in her cabin, aimlessly staring at the ceiling and lazily playing some of the early ZZ-Top. She plays horribly and doesn’t regret it—the mood corresponds to the music.
Long ago, Arina Rodionovna had long and persistently taught her to block thoughts and feelings that were unnecessary in her work, but now one of these enemy thoughts continues to cling in her head with the persistence of the kamikaze.
“Why did we all agree then?”
Eight months ago, after the proposal of the ambassadors—why did they agree? Why did they subscribe to this task? Olga remembers why she agreed—everyone raised their hands, and she did, too. She was then a new person in the crew; you don’t go against the collective. Yes, and because of her limited experience, it didn’t seem difficult for her to carry out the caravan to Jupiter. And they really managed to do it. But this success didn’t prevent the defeat: it simply hardened the war and increased the losses. And if they had refused, then the caravan would never get out and would not get money, and then the Republic couldn’t fight and would have signed the capitulation. Without bombing, without landing, without a nuclear strike. Just surrender all. And Clark would have been alive. It seems that all that would true.
“You fool!”
Olga throws the guitar aside and then gives herself a slap in the face. No, none of it is true. Clark knew what was going on, saving her life; everyone knew what they were fighting for. And now, by refusing this war, she seems to betray them, devaluing their entire struggle, everything that she and her comrades did. Everything was right.
“I'm sorry, Clark, it won’t happen again . . . ”
Hunger overcomes the lazy depression and drives Olga into the saloon, where she decides to fix her mental affairs with a large portion of pilaf. For the first time in God knows how long, she can eat normally, without expecting that at any moment, a combat alert will interrupt her. The Bolshevik is departing from Mars on a long journey, heading for a shelter known only to senior officers, where it is planned to wait some time until the fog of war settles.
At first Olga eats alone, and then the twins are pulled up, immediately spreading out on the table a board for three-dimensional chess. Olga watches the game and then joins them, and when Anastasia descends into the saloon, the usually self-confident face of the radar operator looks somewhat confused as the Twins and Olga bombard her with questions.
“Well, what do they say about the war?”
“Are we on the blacklist or not?”
As if she has not heard the questions, Nastya goes to the table, makes herself a large glass of strong tea with a huge portion of sugar, and only then turns to the other Bolsheviks.
“Ah, that, the blacklist . . . no, they didn’t announce it, and even about the war, too, there were almost no words; everything is already forgotten. They have other news now. All the earthly information channels are occupied by it—I have never seen such a thing. Something bad happened with the weather. I didn’t really understand exactly what, but they are all repeating the same word—‘Grond.’”
15:10:2012
01:03
To be continued…
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GROND SPACE DYSTOPIA series:
GROND-I: THE RAVEN HIGH
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XCFT4D1
GROND-II: THE BLITZKRIEG
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078X14W2F
GROND-III: ALL THE KING’S MEN
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQ1MTGZ
GROND-IV: A KIND WORD AND A GUN
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G2RGW6P