The helmet is equipped with a standard food connector, so using local delicacies isn’t a difficult affair. There is meat ragout with vegetables and a lot of spices, something like moussaka, perhaps—even Arina Rodionovna didn’t cook so tastily. Chemical heaters and microwaves capitulate before the heat of the bonfire, giving this uncomplicated dish some special, ancient coziness left far beyond the space age.
“Well, are you happy?”
“Give my thanks to the chef. It’s clearly not a hamster broiler, but not a bird either. What did we eat?”
“I splurged for a good piece of beef; it was marinated for a month using a local recipe.”
“You know how to invest.”
Leaning back, Olga peers into the starry sea, immediately finding Jupiter. Clark guesses where she is looking.
“Long way?”
“Extremely. The flight itself isn’t difficult, but we’ll certainly meet bandits.”
“Then immediately knock out teeth without talking, as is customary on Mars.”
“Roger—immediately knock out teeth without talking.”
Tomorrow she’ll return to the Bolshevik. Another week to collect the convoy, and then they will begin a long journey. That will be tomorrow, but today she still has several hours.
“Let’s go to the movies!”
The movie theater called Twentieth Century is located at the foot of the Douglas Quaid monument: It shows movies from a hundred years ago in the old manner—with a film projector and a white screen. In one of the small halls, Total Recall is playing. Olga and Clark go there, buying large popcorn and cola, to fully match the traditions of the old culture.
Arnold has just divorced his wife when Clarks kisses her. And Olga responds.
“Have a nice trip, comrade.”
CHAPTER TEN: TRAVELING BAND
“The masking mode is on!”
Olga brings a red wrench to the smooth gray wall as the timer counts out the microseconds. The surface around the instrument begins to darken. The color changes rapidly, and on the fifth microsecond, the wrench is in the center of a round red spot, lost on its background
“The color reproduction is normal, and the response time is satisfactory.”
“Confirmed. Step back five kilometers and re-check.”
“Roger.”
Olga picks up the wrench, and with a short engine start, she throws herself to the side, away from the wall. While flying, she manages to chew the pemmican, then makes a somersault in the void and stops. From five kilometers, she sees the transport perfectly—a cylindrical cargo container a hundred and fifty meters long, under which a tugboat is docked, like a gondola under a zeppelin. In the light of the powerful searchlights, the truck resembles a polished elephant tusk.
“Start the masking mode.”
The lights go out; the gray wall disappears, merging with the emptiness. The truck was there a second ago, and now it seems to have dissolved into the usual space. For some time, Olga doesn’t see anything, but then she manages to distinguish the contour of the truck bow. Here, the outlines of the constellations are becoming blurred. Yes, if you know where to look, you can recognize the disguise, but in any case, such a camouflage will considerably complicate the aiming ability of the artillery fire.
“Uncle Joe, I just barely see the ship's bow; everything else has completely merged with the surrounding background.”
“I’ll increase the tension on these sections of the scrim. Come back. Motorhead is ready for departure.”
Ten large-capacity interplanetary transports, each carrying twenty-five thousand metric tons of cargo, have finished prelaunch preparations. The private commercial squadron, whose ships are named after the famous rock bands of the twentieth century, is known as the Traveling Band.
Trade in outlawed spaces is always accompanied by risk; pirate raids and attacks on the station are usual occurrences here, so these once-civilian ships are heavily armed, and their crews have considerable combat experience and a solid reputation. They only agreed to this dangerous mission on one condition—the Bolshevik would provide security, taking control of the convoy on the longest road in the solar system.
The Traveling Band arrived on Mars a week earlier and began loading while simultaneously making upgrades, preparing for the inevitable battle. The Bolshevik’s engineering section is taking on the management, and now Olga is finishing finetuning the camouflage system of each vehicle. Trucks are too heavy for sharp evasive maneuvers, as their design won’t withstand hard overloads, and so a good disguise is often the only effective defense against the enemy. Plus, there are other technical surprises that the Bolsheviks have up their sleeves to use at the right moment.
Returning to the cruiser, Olga naps for a couple of hours before the evening captain’s council. She won’t be allowed access to all the information; the captains led by Klimov will discuss with each Bolshevik the details of his or her work privately. But after the council, Klimov will once again gather his crew for a final briefing.
“Olga, wake up!”
The girl wipes her face with a hygienic napkin, swallows a toning pill, and heads to the second deck. The Twins greet her with short nods and Granddad hands her a large yellow pear grown in the Valleys. Uncle Joe is already waiting in the operator's compartment.
“So, the captain's council has begun. Let me introduce you to the participants.”
The operator’s compartment disappears, and Olga hangs in the void, still holding a bitten pear. The massive disk of the Enterprise station slowly rotates in front of her; the ships of the merchant squadron, small coasters, and the Bolshevik are lined up. The convoy is in assembly.
The void disappears, and now she’s in the Enterprise’s compartment, judging from the rich atmosphere belonging to the senior officer. Among the thirteen persons, she only recognizes her captain. Two more have the uniforms of the Republic, and the remaining ten—seven men and three women dressed in red and white overalls with stripes “TB” on their sleeves—are captains of the squadron. The picture is fixed; there is no sound. She doesn’t have access to this part of the council. While waiting for her turn, she eats a pear and listens to the ship's computer.
“The woman on the right is Commander Valery Jones, the eldest in the ‘Band,’ the captain of Iron Maiden. She has known Fedor since the war, and it’s she who insisted on our participation. During the flight, Valery will drive the trucks under the guidance of Klimov; the Bolshevik will become the flagship …”
Joseph presents the captains, providing a brief but precisely drawn up description of each. The majority are veterans of war. They all have vast experience in managing transports of various classes and many trade expeditions to distant planets. Each of them owns his own tugboat, the crews of which are made up of reliable, carefully selected people. According to Uncle Joe, this isn’t just a commercial company; it is rather a small state with a common business.
“Olga, now it's your turn. You know the main details of the task at hand, but they can ask you to tell your story again. Introduce yourself and wait for their questions.”
Here she is among the captains, all of them looking at her, Klimov nods to the girl.
“Leading Seamen Voronov, engineer—operator of artificial intelligence—glad to see you,” Olga answers courteously, but without servility.
“What is your participation in the upcoming task, young lady?” She hears the slightly condescending question from Commander Valery.
Her answer was prepared in advance. Each truck is equipped with a standard civilian computer, powerful enough but still hopelessly behind the constantly evolving Joseph. Her task is to unite these computers in a single network, ensuring the fastest reaction of each truck to the Bolshevik’s commands. The convoy ships will follow in a dense formation, so Olga will have to work in real time, and the signal delay won’t be affected. Since the truck crews don’t have an operator position, Olga will take on the remote monitoring of each computer, eliminating possible damage. She�
�ll also perform the duties of a specialist in electronic warfare.
“We wish you luck.” The commander smiled at her for the first time. “And remember, we are all counting on you, Comrade Olga.”
“I got it. Thank you for your trust.”
This ends the captain's council for Olga; Uncle Joe lets her go to the saloon for dinner. Almost all the Bolsheviks are gathered there, waiting for their captain, discussing the council. The main details have already been discussed; now they are expressing their personal opinions about the upcoming work. Olga says little, trying to hear more in order to understand what her comrades think. The general mood is upbeat; everyone is joking, remembering their accomplished tasks or amusing cases from the past, but there is a certain tension.
The flight to Jupiter at the speed of the convoy will take slightly more than half a year, and then they’ll return back alone in less than a week. Olga is glad that this flight to distant worlds will not only be her first—Anastasia and the Twins are also flying for the first time. The others have already visited Jupiter, and the top five officers have climbed much higher—immediately after the war, the Bolshevik made two scientific expeditions to Trans-Neptunian objects, becoming the first manned spacecraft to reach Sedna. Theoretically, this isn’t the limit; Uncle Joe once showed her that if they loaded all the holds with fuel, the Bolshevik could make an interstellar flight, reaching the nearest stars in about forty-five years.
“In secret, I'll tell you that Fedor dreams of such a flight, and I think that when he and Elena retire, they’ll dare to do it.”
“Uncle Joe, will you keep them company?”
“Could I really miss such fun?”
They talk a lot about the upcoming battles, and here the opinions are divided—someone says that the first attacks will begin almost immediately after the start of the journey. Others are of the opinion that only unmanned scouts will follow the convoy now, and the main battles await them in the Asteroid Belt.
This area of space is populated and has developed at a rapid pace over the last two decades. New colonies appear almost every day, and the number of habitable asteroids is growing exponentially. These places are mostly privatized; there are no laws and a lot of bandits. The local gangsters have close contact with the Tartar pirate groups, and they are usually hired by Supernova and the Union when they want to deal with their enemies in free colonies and not get their own hands dirty.
“The captain is on board.”
“Joseph, a festive dinner for the crew.”
A small holiday on the last day before a long-distance flight is an old tradition, and no one is going to violate it. Standard rations give way to the Russian and Chinese dishes prepared by Comrade Peters, plus plenty of fresh vegetables and fruits from the Republic greenhouses, as well as a portion of vodka and strong red wine. The constant tension of the naval service is retreating for a couple of hours; danger and hard work are left behind. Experienced officers relax, competing with one another in various games and displaying numerous talents.
Having various hobbies is an integral part of the life of all cosmonauts, allowing them to effectively relieve nervous tension and occupy their heads in their spare time, which is especially important in long-distance flights. So every Bolshevik has something to show.
“Please note that I recently picked up a real instrument, so don’t judge strictly," says Olga, her fingers resting on the strings.
“This is dedicated to a good man, whom I met in the Valleys: Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit.’”
* * *
For security reasons, Antonina gives them only thirty seconds for their last communication session:
“Hi, Clark! We go out into the void. Wish me luck.”
“Fly there and be sure to return. Stay alive, my friend!”
“Roger! I fly away, but I promise to return. See you in six months!”
It is 3:15 in Moscow when Klimov gives a short signal to the caravan—start the movement. Before beginning, Papa Johnson gives a farewell to the crew.
“Our enemies don’t want any ship in this convoy to reach Jupiter. The Presidential Council wishes to arrange a blitzkrieg, defeating us with one quick blow, as they consider the Republic to be an easy prey. Don’t let this happen! Throw off the blitzkrieg—you Russians know how! Godspeed!”
At the signal, the trucks launch their shunting engines, leaving the trading station one by one. In the Martian space saturated with radars and telescopes, no one can even try to leave the harbor unnoticed, so the trucks leave for their flight with fanfare, beeping at all frequencies and launching fireworks.
“Half speed ahead!”
Olga doesn’t feel any acceleration, so smoothly is Tokarev gaining momentum. There is nothing like the powerful accelerating maneuver of the cruiser—in this flight, the Bolshevik will have to adjust to the speed of slow tugboats. This restriction greatly complicates their work: the Bolshevik's trump card in battles has always been speed and maneuverability.
Her usual work doesn’t stop for a second: the girl conducts standard tests of ship electronics and an examination of the hull elements. Everything is fine here, and for a couple of microseconds, Olga checks the local network. The machines communicate among themselves with short messages in a new machine language; their conversation is kept hidden from her. Voronov is engaged in routine checks and tracks attempts to break into the network from the outside. Everything appears to be clean.
The Enterprise is left behind, and the shunting motors run for another five seconds and stop, handing the work over to the main engines. Ten ships have completed the turn and, having built a wedge, begin to gain speed; the Bolshevik is in the center. Olga mentally applauds the skill of the Band crews—the coordination of movement is amazing. The huge machines strictly maintain their distance, and their speeds are synchronized to thousandths of a meter per second, measuring 7.3 G on a gravimeter.
“We are being watched.”
As Klimov suspected, the shadowing begins on the first minute of the flight. Anastasia quickly discovers two long-range unmanned scouts carrying Supernova pennants. The spies travel three hundred miles out on both sides, keeping the distance allowed by the statutes. Alone, the Bolshevik could easily leave them, but at the tugboat speed, it won’t be possible to break away. The scouts won’t join the battle; they are almost completely unarmed. But at the time of the attack, they can act as command posts, leading the attackers to the target. Destruction of the Supernova’s ships is not an option, so the Bolshevik prepares to play hide and seek.
“The second shift is free of watch. Rest, comrades,” orders Klimov. Olga promptly leaves the operator compartment and heads to the cabin for sleep. She has four hundred minutes of free time and doesn’t intend to lose any of them.
* * *
Forty-five days and half a billion kilometers later …
The image is blurred, and Clark's speech is periodically interrupted by white noise—Supernova jammers are clogging the signal. But even if the radio communication was ideal, the conversation would fail in any case—the distance is too great, even for radio waves. Olga writes a short message—Clark receives it twelve minutes later, and now Olga is waiting twelve minutes for his answer.
“We were bombed again, five times in the last forty-eight hours, unmanned bombers without identification marks. Antonina gave them a hard landing . . . ”
The undeclared war is gaining momentum. While previously only the space possessions of the Republic were being attacked, now battles were beginning on the surface of Mars. Officially, nothing is still happening, but a day doesn’t go by without rocket attacks or air raids. The first attacks were directed at the Alamo, to demoralize the colonists.
However, the Republican army led by Antonina has been able to repel the attackers with dignity, dotting the surroundings of the Alamo with the skeletons of the downed aircraft. Unable to counterattack, Antonina steadfastly maintains the blow to Ferdinand, the main Supernova computer on Mars. She keeps t
he blow in place, not allowing the opponent to gain air supremacy and effectively resisting in the face of the enemy’s numerical advantage.
Convinced of the low effectiveness of attacks on the central cities, Ferdinand suffers a blow to the border settlements and achieves more—Antonina lacks the strength to protect the entire vast territory. Several small towns are completely destroyed, requiring the evacuation of the population. The territory of the Republic is shrinking.
“Harvesting is going well.”
Olga grins at these words; she realizes that Clark doesn’t mean picking tomatoes in greenhouses, but rather harvesting of a different kind. Antonina controls not only the army but also the counterintelligence of the Republic, with Johnson's tacit consent, having established total surveillance over all lines of communication. The results didn’t take long to come in—in the first week, she identified more than a dozen enemy agents. Some of them were secretly taken under control and supplied with bad information, while others had accidents. The war continues.
“In our territory, there are sabotage groups, mostly bandits from the near-Earth sector; they have derailed the last train. Yesterday, we managed to smash one of these groups. According to the prisoners, Ferdinand tries not to send Supernova soldiers into battle, preferring to count on mercenaries. This is in our favor—in the vicinity of Mars, there aren’t enough gangsters to carry out a large-scale invasion. If he seriously wants to attack us, then he’ll need to transfer the military contingent from Earth, which will take time. Such an army operation will definitely not go unnoticed, and we’ll be able to meet them if we get weapons, so don’t fail us.”
The meaning of his statement is clear; the Republic will have enough weapons if the convoy reaches its destination. The inhabitants of the Jupiter system, who haven’t seen natural food for years and who are constantly balancing on the brink of starvation and scurvy, are ready to pay well for the cargo; with this money, the Republic will purchase weapons from the Union. There is no backup plan.
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