Free time is running out. Olga quickly writes a reply, sends it through the encryption, then goes to the second deck.
“Olga Voronov, my watch.”
In the campaign mode, the Bolshevik’s crew is divided into two shifts, each replacing the other every seven hours. At first, the unusual schedule confused Olga a little, but having gone through another upgrade with the help of Elena, the girl confidently enters the overall rhythm of the ship's life. Cozily settling in the compartment, adjusting the lighting, and putting on Delta blues, Voronov starts to work.
The new watch begins with a preventive check of the local network, followed by modernization and minor repairs on Judas Priest, performed remotely. The remaining 250 minutes are free, and Olga has to spend time preparing for a possible battle, which, most likely, won’t follow; there will be no war today. During these moments, she represents herself as an officer of the Missile Forces, patiently waiting for a nuclear war at the bottom of a deep missile shelter. At least she won’t be bored.
“Are you ready for a new lesson, comrade? Present your homework.”
For more than a month, Uncle Joe has been using every spare moment to drag Olga through various academic disciplines, preparing her for the inevitable battle. Learning the theory of space battles and completing millions of profile exercises and training, Olga makes up for her lack of academic education—her previous training at the High House considered military affairs only in general terms. The compressed training course developed by the Bolshevik’s officers won’t turn Olga into a universal combat machine capable of performing any military task—this is simply impossible. The purpose of the training is to show a specialist in one area other aspects of military affairs to achieve a common understanding of what is happening.
“You know your work well, but that's not enough. You are a communications officer and a repairman; you and Joseph will have simultaneous contact with all of us during the battle, so at any moment you need to understand the what, how, and why behind what your comrades do to give them effective support,” the captain admonishes her before starting her studies. “We have developed this training course to include the very essence of our knowledge, the best of the proven theories. Uncle Joe will ensure the clarity and availability of the material, and experience will come with time. So boldly bite off the granite of science!”
And she began to bite, filling many hours by studying, learning in compressed and processed form the military courses. In her last year at the High House, Olga herself studied a portion of the academic materials and now with some surprise notes how little Uncle Joe’s lessons look like formal lessons. A simple and at the same time exact language is radically different from academic officialdom, and each theory is successfully supplemented with specific examples from the Bolshevik’s service, as well as other ships and crews. The number of practical exercises has been expanded, with the addition of new, previously completely unknown trainings.
Strategy: Klimov teaches her to manage the armies, passing with Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Konev, Vasilevsky, and other commanders through a difficult journey from Moscow to Berlin, detailing the course of military operations, both successful and disastrous, transient and taking many months. Precise coordination on land, on sea, and in the air: a reflection of the enemy’s large-scale offensive operations, counteroffensive strategies, pursuit, encirclement, siege, and assault, from the blood, gunpowder, and diesel of the Second World War to the limitless outer space, gray lunar deserts, large and small asteroids, ships, and colonies. There are new weapons and fundamentally new conditions for combat operations, but much remained the same—the same flanking strikes, bombardments, raider operations on enemy communications, disembarkation of troops, encirclement, and assaults. They again travel the roads of the First Space War along with those who traveled them the first time.
The lessons about strategy are replaced by tactics, and here, she, along with Domcheev, moves from the offices of the General Staff to the trenches on the front line—another scale, another dimension of the war. Voronov commands an infantry platoon, leads a tank company or an air squadron, and performs the duties of a junior officer. The lessons are supplemented by studies with Lobo, under whose guidance she learns the wisdom of war in the most honorable rank—the private infantryman. Poltava, Izmail, Borodino, Stalingrad, the storming of the Reichstag, hunting for caravans on the Afghan border, lunar landings, and boarding fights in the colonies—Voronov must pass wherever the mother infantry passed.
The ship's doctor provides a compressed course of military medicine, the science of saving human lives, inseparable from the science of their destruction. To the course of medicine, several extremely painful lessons of hand-to-hand fighting are attached, after which Olga finally becomes convinced of the absolute superiority of firearms.
Wolff teaches her the basics of military logistics, the most complicated art of supply and transportation, which decides the outcome of local skirmishes and general battles. Under Granddad’s guidance, she learns about military production, comprehending the subtleties of the war industry. Granddad mercilessly drills her, demanding that she find the only true solution to an unsolvable task, composed of three mutually exclusive parameters—to make as many weapons as possible as quickly as possible and as best as possible. During the war, this unsolvable task turned out to be solved by Soviet industrialists, and now she won’t have an excuse if she ends up with the worst results.
Today, Olga is continuing to learn the material part of naval artillery, comprehending the theoretical course of space combat at long distances, written by Commander Severov.
“In case of damage, your task is to promptly restore the network and restart the software, and the Twins, under my supervision, will be engaged in hardware repair. We will begin with the guns of the main caliber—our most weighty argument.”
Here it is, the Bolshevik’s main argument—four electromagnetic forty-five-millimeter guns creating a continuous zone of destruction around the ship.
Extremely complex devices, each consists of more than a million parts, although at the heart is the well-known pulse electrode accelerator. Voronov is familiar with these guns because she saw the result of their work when the orbital cannon smashed the Black Swan into small pieces.
Each gun was made specifically for the Bolshevik, and the quality of the work is exceptional—Olga has never seen such pure superconducting accelerator materials. The fusion reactor supplies the guns with enough energy to throw out projectiles at an initial speed of one thousand kilometers per second. Here they are—black two-meter cylinders of guided fragmentation and armor-piercing shells. There are also special shots with nuclear warheads capable of splitting asteroids into small pebbles.
“Accelerators provide an attack, beam weapons—defense,” Severov describes the old principle of space combat.
The Bolshevik's defense, its shining armor, is twelve laser emitters with a capacity of fifty megawatts, easily penetrating a steel armor plate—using them, the commander saved Olga's life during the fire on the Libra.
At the dawn of the space fleet, laser cannons were regarded as an absolute weapon capable of hitting the enemy at the speed of light at any distance. That was before the invention of Rodionov’s generator. This device, also known as a reflector, has the ability to deflect deadly streams of light, changing their direction by several angular seconds. As a result, impact beam strikes at long range became ineffective, and laser guns were assigned the role of a melee weapon designed to protect the cruiser from enemy shells and destroy damaged ships.
“Restless work.”
“Don’t worry. After the first battle, you'll get used to it.”
Severov and Uncle Joe take on general control of the firepower, receiving from the radar-range finders all the necessary parameters: azimuth, angle, distance, target speed and course, their own speed and course, and much more. Instantly processing the data, they point guns at the target meet the enemy shells with laser beams.
&nbs
p; “Find the enemy, engage, and destroy—this is the main task of any warship, and nothing has changed here since the Roman triremes plowed the Mediterranean Sea. We are looking for the enemy with the radar and telescopes, trying to see him before he sees us, for whoever sees first, he wins. Sometimes, the enemy goes for rapprochement; more often, he has to be pursued, and here, we rely on our engines. And when the distance decreases to one hundredth of a light-second - that's when big guns come into play. I can say a lot about the effectiveness of the main caliber, but our trophy shelf displays it better than any words.” Severov points to the bow.
There, at the distance-measuring post, the Bolshevik’s emblem is displayed on the matte-black hull. There are additional images of the medals won in battle—the Gold Star of the Hero, the three Orders of Glory, the Red Star and Red Banner, and then long rows of badges—all marks of victory. Olga guessed that there would be many but didn’t imagine that many. A long chain of red stars—destroyed enemy ships. The white stars—ships taken over by boarding. Crossed hammers are captured space stations. A dozen stylized images of the atom are successful nuclear bombings. Red crosses—rescue operations, the last one for the Libra. Many other victories left traces on the ship's armor.
* * *
Trouble begins during dinner, when Olga has a conversation with Natasha. One second, she is telling the navigator the details of the battle for the High House, and a moment later, a thermos of hot coffee crashes into her nose. Nastya rushes at her across the table. Olga sharply bends over, meeting the red-haired girl with a powerful headbutt to the chest; the girls silently cling to each other. The battle doesn’t reveal the winner, because Severov pulls them apart, holding the neck of each girl with a steel grip.
“Care to explain, comrades? What was that?!”
Anastasia is silent; Olga wipes a few drops of blood from her nose, then answers.
“I beg your pardon, Comrade Commander, there was a misunderstanding. We accidentally collided with each other.”
“I hope that no more such misunderstandings happen on the cruiser. Do you understand me, girls?!”
“Roger.”
“Roger.”
Olga says goodbye to Natasha and goes up to her cabin.
“Uncle Joe, did you see that? What was that? I know that Foxy is sharpening her claws at me, but why is she so mad now?” Olga is waiting for clues, treating her broken nose with a personal first-aid kit.
“Anastasia Melnikova is a girl from high society; she has a circle of acquaintances. Even before the Academy, she was very friendly with Naomi Rothstein, the daughter of the owner of the casino network in Asia; they entered the Academy together and studied together for their entire training.”
“I'm very happy for both of them, but what did I do wrong?”
“Nothing, except you killed Naomi; she was on the Black Swan that night because she was friends with Electra Donovan. To the credit of comrade Melnikova, she always hated Electra; they knew each other.”
Olga remembered the girl in the suit and the hit of the welding manipulator.
“So that's it . . . ”
“Don’t worry.”
“I’m not. Uncle Joe, where are you?”
She sees a red light and hears the siren.
“Attention! The radar post has detected a group of unidentified ships headed this way. The crew needs to take their places according to the combat schedule!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN: GREAT SILENCE
The shelling resumes for the ninth time in thirty-seven hours. Artillery strikes have ceased to seem unusual to Olga; now it’s just part of her job. For two days, the convoy has been fighting against a small enemy squadron. It’s not even a full battle, more of an artillery reconnaissance. The main events will unfold in the future.
The flight routine has been forgotten, and none of the entire crew has left their posts for fifty hours. Heavy suits protect their wearers from crushing overloads, and powerful tonic drugs allow them to keep their eyes open for tens and hundreds of days, always staying in optimal shape. Instead of the usual food, Olga gets a strictly calculated amount of necessary proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and amino acids in the nutritive mixture that is delivered directly to her blood. The ship is engrossed in concentrated silence; every Bolshevik silently does his or her job, only occasionally turning for help or to give instructions to colleagues—experienced cosmonauts don’t chat pointlessly during a fight.
“Battle order K!”
The captain's order is transmitted to the Band’s ships by signal lights; the radio silence mode is strictly observed. On the trucks, the nozzles of the shunting engines briefly flash and are extinguished, and the ships, going in close formation, smoothly change course, leaving the line of fire. Another volley strikes the void. There is a twelve-fold overload, then the gravity decreases to three G and then rises again to nine—the trucks lay down on the other tack, following a complex zigzag path, making the enemy artillery fire as difficult as possible.
To ensure the destruction of the convoy, Supernova has attracted a powerful criminal gang, originating from the American mafia—the Syndicate. By trading in the near-Earth space with traditional racketeering and smuggling, the Syndicate uses conventional piracy in the Asteroid Belt, for which it has a significant fleet and several bases.
At the moment, the convoy is being attacked by four light warships traveling parallel to their course— Gambino, Corleone, Luciano, and Boddiker, the main squadron, are moving far ahead, beyond the Bolshevik artillery zone. The main advantage for bandits is the low speed of the convoy; it’s impossible to break away from pursuit. The main advantage of the Bolshevik is the small radius of autonomous action of enemy ships. At such a distance from the permanent bases, the Syndicate ships depend wholly and entirely on the supply transport leading the squadron. Mindful of the Bolshevik, the bandits won’t under any circumstances decide to leave the transport without a cover, so they won’t be able to throw all their forces into battle.
The next evasion maneuver presses Olga to her chair, but she almost doesn’t notice it. After taking the combat post, the operator is in the center of a man-made electronic storm. Under her control is the “Buran” system—a dozen powerful electronic warfare generators, synchronized into a single network. The Buran is a shield that protects the convoy, and it’s also a smashing sword, no less dangerous than the main caliber.
To deprive the enemy's ships of radio, to disrupt the work of radars, to burn electronics—to blind, stun, and paralyze the enemy, this is her task at the moment.
The power of the on-board equipment and the range of the muting frequencies are so great that stable radio communication is almost impossible at the moment, Olga commands the Buran using coded light signals with durations of several microseconds. Constantly tracking the enemy’s radars, Voronov either clogs the screens with impenetrable electronic snow or creates hundreds of false targets, firing charges of dipole reflectors and aerosol clouds in all directions. Deprived of radar, the Syndicate's artillerymen use optical sights, trying to find the trucks in the infrared or ultraviolet range, highlighting targets with illuminating shells and stroboscopes. Here, the system of visual disguise enters, periodically making the ships invisible or projecting onto their hulls a complex pattern of broken lines that interfere with enemy sights.
Masking in conjunction with vigorous maneuvering is quite effective—until now, the bandits haven’t achieved a single direct hit; light shrapnel damage doesn’t count. No response has been made—the artillery of the convoy remains silent, and the Bolshevik is moving ahead in full radio silence.
Once upon a time, Petrov told her that during a fight there was no fear, and now she is convinced of that. There is a sense of danger, a constant awareness that the slightest mistake or technical failure can cost the life of the Bolsheviks and the Band’s crews. But there is no fear. Fear can’t exist—fear was defeated by neuroelectronics and medicine long before her birth; fear is banished from the mind as being incompatible w
ith the cosmos. And now the Bolsheviks and their opponents on the Syndicate ships quietly face the silent death that has long become a natural part of their existence.
Another hour has passed; the pirate link will soon run out of fuel, uselessly burned in short throws after the convoy. This means that the bandits will be forced to either immediately attack or go to refuel.
“Olga, how is life?”
Uncle Joe periodically checks in with the crew along with Chernova.
“It's all right, Chief. How much time do they have?”
“A hundred minutes. A maximum of one hundred and ten, if they don’t risk attacking earlier.”
“We’ll wait.”
The stalemate is resolved ninety-three minutes later—traveling in the left column, ZZ TOP gets a direct hit. The blue-white flash indicates the destruction of one of the main engines: the truck begins to lose speed, falling out of the column in the next evasive maneuver. The head pair of bandits dramatically change course, intending to finish off the damaged transport.
“Engage!”
Fifty G collapses on the Bolsheviks—the cruiser is hovering over the convoy, bouncing off the side of the AC/DC, all the time covering the cruiser from enemy radars and telescopes. Olga accelerates the Buran, hammering the enemy’s radio with a thundering howl and scattering in all directions multi-colored distractions of false targets. And simultaneously with Anastasia, she changes radar frequencies, feverishly jumping over the centimeter and millimeter range, evading enemy jamming, and trying to find in the white noise the only true ray that leads to the enemy. Somewhere along the edge of her consciousness, Olga hears Severov's orders:
“Azimuth 295, angle 22, correction 30, fragmentation!”
A volley of the main caliber fills the Bolshevik with a whimsical metallic rumble—the hull responds with an electromagnetic echo to the discharge that has passed through the accelerators. One millisecond after the shot, the engines jerk the ship aside, leading the Bolshevik out of the line of fire.
The Blitzkrieg Page 16