The Blitzkrieg

by Yuri Hamaganov

  The unexpected appearance of the cruiser becomes an extremely unpleasant surprise for the attackers. Corleone, who first rushed to finish the damaged truck, doesn’t have time to do anything to protect itself against the guided shells. The remote detonation cuts the pirate in two, and a second hit to the bow ends the destruction.

  Gambino shoots at the Bolshevik and then steeply turns away, but this doesn’t save her. The onboard jamming station, the false targets, and the maneuvering at the extreme overload lead the ship away from the first shell, but the second shot is accurate—the fragments disable the engine room. The deflector, which defends the Gambino from enemy lasers, is destroyed, and Severov doesn’t miss the opportunity, striking with lasers—the shells must be saved. The rays of death rip open the bandit with the accuracy of a scalpel. The destruction of the two enemy ships takes eight seconds.

  Luciano and Boddiker shoot at the Bolshevik, but from this distance, their fire doesn’t pose a serious threat. Olga is concentrating on her work, shielding the cruiser from enemy sights; Tokarev is flawlessly performing a series of evasive maneuvers. Briefly, violet lasers flash and go out, burning the approaching shells. The main caliber is silent—the surviving enemies are too far away, and it is risky to rush into pursuit, as the convoy will remain unguarded. For the first battle, the destruction of two enemy ships is more than enough.

  “Well done, comrades! ZZ TOP—thanks for the excellent work!”

  Superbly playing the role of bait, the intact truck returns to the convoy. The tugboats begin a synchronous maneuver, closing around the cruiser—a minute later, no one can say which truck is hiding the warship; the element of surprise is still on the side of Klimov and his crew.

  Without stopping to command the Buran, Olga parses the details of the battle that just happened—her first battle. From her combat post, she didn’t see much, only her part of the work, as well as the rest of the Bolsheviks, except for the senior officers and Uncle Joe. Now it's time for the analysis. She must carefully sort everything out, hastily filling in her lack of combat experience.

  “Uncle Joe, how did you, Klimov, and Severov know that the bandits would swallow the bait?”

  “We didn’t know, but we assumed. We have no full guarantee, but we have a high probability: you just need to know who you are dealing with. They’re gangsters, not a regular army.”

  “And what is the difference for us?”

  “We have a premium for every ton of cargo that will reach the target, and they have a prize for every destroyed ship. That's why all their crews dream of personally shooting our trucks to get premiums and not sharing with competitors. They run out of fuel, and then Fedor gives them a bite, a broken transport—and they took it. Finishing a single damaged ship is much easier than fighting against the whole convoy. There is no time for thinking; fuel is short, and they must attack immediately. Otherwise, the next link will get the prize, so they rushed forward, forgetting caution. Greed isn’t always good.”

  Joseph explains his words with a series of illustrations and educational videos.

  “Then why don’t we attack first?”

  “We could, if we had a second warship to cover the trucks. But there is no second ship, and we can’t leave the transports for a long time. We must wait for enemy attacks and provoke mistakes.”

  * * *

  Suffering a humiliating defeat, the Syndicate retreats to regroup and debug a new strategy. Remembering the Bolshevik, which is still invisible, the bandits decide to change tactics and move from pursuit to attacks on a collision course.

  They attack the forehead, rapidly converging on the distance of effective fire, firing at the head trucks, and immediately turn away for a second attack. The trucks’ crews, performing complex evasive maneuvers, respond with their artillery, giving fire control to Severov. The commander doesn’t scatter power and saves shells, concentrating the fire at only one of the attackers. On the third day of fighting, his efforts are crowned with success—Mayer Lansky disappears in a cloud of debris, meeting with a dozen shells. The victory is divided between the artillerymen of the Band.

  The attacks on the convoy aren’t in vain—the RAMMSTEIN is hit, and now he is the last in the right column. Emergency repairs are being carried out on board, and Olga, along with Wolff and Granddad, helps the crew by remotely patching the on-board electronics. Repair doesn’t release Voronov from a fierce battle in the air, where she has to work together with Anastasia, whose presence the girl constantly feels at the edge of her mind.

  Despite their personal disagreements in the past, now these two must give the maximum consistency to their actions—Olga blinds the enemy radars and deafens the radio. Anastasia, on the contrary, must preserve her eyesight and hearing, despite the opposition of enemy operators. They must complete hundreds of billions of operations per second, day after day, when even the neuro-interface can’t cope with the accumulated fatigue. The crew continues to stay awake thanks to Chernova, who continues to supply the Bolsheviks with stimulants—in the future, they’ll have to pay for it with blood transfusions and kidney transplants, but there is no other way; even Joseph can’t handle everything alone.

  Another unsuccessful attack—no hits on either side. The convoy has crossed the conditional boundaries of the Asteroid Belt, but this doesn’t affect the battle in any way. In the old films, which Olga loved so much in her childhood, flying through the Asteroid Belt was like a race to survive. In reality, the probability of not even collision but convergence with one of the hundreds of millions of asteroids infinitely revolving around the sun is minimal—one in a billion. On the other hand, many of these boulders are populated, and the Syndicate will get help here.

  The bandits retreat to refuel; the next attack will follow in a couple of hours.

  “Olga, how is RAMMSTEIN?”

  Klimov appears in the center of the interwoven nerve lines.

  “We are finishing the repair, Comrade Captain. She can’t run like before but will be able to trail at the tail.”

  “Well done. I thought I'd have to evacuate the crew. You have two hours for rest.”

  “Roger.”

  The Matrix is disconnected for the first time in two weeks, leaving Olga alone.

  “That's not how I imagined it,” the girl said lazily, starting a program of deep sleep without dreams.

  * * *

  “Azimuth 320, angle 40, correction 9, distance 570—illuminating shell! Get ready for the torpedo attack!”

  “Good morning, everyone.” Olga tunes the phased antennas, preparing to meet the torpedo swarm with directional electromagnetic pulses. Far ahead, an illuminating shell explodes; alternating multicolored flashes tear out from the darkness—the shark-like torpedoes.

  A space torpedo is the kind of weapon that has little in common with its marine ancestor: to destroy the target, it doesn’t need to pierce the enemy ship. The torpedo is equipped with a primitive laser emitter, capable of giving a single but very powerful shot. Going at a tremendous speed, constantly maneuvering, and rejecting false targets, the torpedo has a good chance of overcoming the reflector barrier and ripping the enemy with a laser beam. At the moment, six dozen torpedoes are attacking the convoy, the second attack in the last twenty-four hours.

  “Battle order T!”

  The trucks, moving in a dense formation, change course, increasing the distance between each ship, preparing to meet the enemy with crossfire.

  The laser torpedoes are approaching, moving like a wolf pack. At the time of the first shots, the pack disperses, as if choosing individual targets. This is a fraudulent maneuver—the main target will be the cruiser and the head transports. The enemy expects to engage the Bolshevik in a battle at close range and not give the cruiser the opportunity to cover the trucks. Blasts burst—anti-aircraft guns have found the first targets.

  The battlefield is infinite in three dimensions and rapidly moving in the fourth. There are dozens of objects, and the coordinates are changing with cosmic speed. E
xternal factors, internal operations, orders, actions, and consequences—the human mind, liberated by electronics and merged with the machine, perceives these infinite changes as a single stream of data, processes it for billions of seconds, and chooses the only possible solutions.

  Protecting the trucks with a wall of interference and throwing out the false targets, Olga tries to burn the guidance systems of the torpedoes with gamma radiation. The torpedoes are well shielded; they constantly perform dizzy turns on an unpredictable trajectory, but she still manages to knock off three such space wolves, sending them into an uncontrollable flight.

  The main caliber is silent; the laser cannons are working at short intervals, and the violet rays flash and immediately go out, burning torpedoes. The Bolshevik, which has taken its place at the center of the convoy, moves at a low speed to make it easier to shoot, but Granddad is ready at any moment to authorize full speed ahead.

  The cruiser is attacked by six torpedoes, which travel in an expanding triangle. The left torpedo turns aside, bewildered by Olga’s false target, and three more are exploding, shot down by a fragmentation shell. Even in the Matrix, Olga feels a crushing overload—four of the Syndicate ships rush into the dogfight, firing on the convoy from the maximum distance, and the cruiser rushes to meet them.

  Taking over the lasers, Joseph burns down the torpedoes, while Severov launches the main caliber. With the second shot, he manages to seriously injure one of the attackers, but the Bolshevik also receives fragmentation damage from a nearby explosion.

  The hours of emergency training, which Uncle Joe put Olga through, weren’t in vain—without stopping the battle, she begins to struggle for vitality, along with the other engineers. The fragments hit the fourth deck, breaking through the service compartments and damaging the Red Star—in total, Joseph counts seventeen holes.

  “Calm down, it's just a scratch,” Joseph encourages. The main computer buses are in order; several peripheral lines are broken. Voronov is accustomed to building up the broken conductors, simultaneously stretching a pair of temporary cables.

  The Syndicate retreats, but while the cruiser was repulsing the attack, the last four torpedoes were attacking MOTORHEAD. Two torpedoes are shot down by the Bolshevik, one is shot by the tugboat’s anti-aircraft gun, but the last one manages to overcome the reflector radius. Olga sees how the torpedo's head disappears in a blinding flash. For a fraction of a second, a ray flares up, stretching the line to the truck. For another couple of moments, MOTORHEAD travels without visible damage, then a part of the hull flies out, knocked out by a powerful internal explosion. One of the three engines has been destroyed; another one has stalled.

  The battle is over; the Bolshevik gathers around itself the dispatching transports. Olga reads a series of quick flashes from the crashed truck, without waiting for a complete decoding.

  “The fire is localized . . . we are losing air . . . the hull is punched from frames seventeen to twenty-one . . . the reactor is under control . . . engines one and two aren’t repairable . . . the third engine is in order . . . three are killed . . . two are wounded.”

  “With one engine and half a crew, you won’t be kept in the convoy—we can’t take any chances,” Olga insists, trying to reanimate the truck’s electronics. She hadn’t seen such a visual effect of laser weapons before—the beam cut the hull with a thin hole, causing multiple damages to the ship's mechanisms. Restoring MOTORHEAD is possible, the damage isn’t fatal, but this will require factory repairs. Alone, they can’t cope.

  “Uncle Joe, what do you think?”

  “It's easier to shoot. Now Fedor will decide what to do about it.”

  A series of pyrobolt flashes runs along the truck. The cables and hoses simultaneously disconnect. A second later, MOTORHEAD drops the cargo container. Everything is clear without words—only by dropping the container can the tugboat continue to move. Olga is waiting for the order to blow up the container, but the captain is silent—leaving billions worth of cargo to drift behind, the convoy continues on its way.

  “Uncle Joe, why didn’t Klimov blow up the container? We are leaving a lot of money to the enemy!”

  Olga looks through the MOTORHEAD cargo manifest—thousands of tons of food, huge lots of scarce medicines, valuable raw materials, and much more that can’t be found in distant worlds.

  “That's why we are leaving the container intact, with lighted beacons—an invitation to come and take it. A proposal that can’t be abandoned.”

  Joseph describes the scheme of the alleged route of the bandits.

  “As we go forward, the container will fly away from the highway to the roadside. First they will approach, then remove the mines, then unload, then they will again rush into the chase—this way we will win forty hours, no less.”

  The thirst for money has the desired result—the bandits stop the attacks and go marauding. Their ships round the convoy and, after approaching the container start looting. They return two days later, which is enough time for the Bolsheviks and the truck’s crews to patch the holes and rest a little. The long run is coming to an end.

  * * *

  "Certainty is good." Olga thinks about the upcoming fight. Long weeks of exhausting duty in anticipation of the next attack are left behind. Everything will be resolved within the next few hours: the Band is headed full steam ahead to the center of the Syndicate’s trap.

  As expected, the Syndicate gets reinforcements in the outer boundaries of the Asteroid Belt—two fast-moving arsenal vehicles without identification signs join the squadron, and the work of the Bolsheviks sharply increases.

  The first transport carried on board a seemingly inexhaustible supply of torpedoes—it was that one that killed MOTORHEAD. And then a minelayer was added to the squadron, which now scurries before the convoy, generously scattering mines. Violent attacks with large losses have been abandoned—the bandits wait for the trucks to begin to run out of fuel, burnt in numerous battles. With every bypassed minefield or repulsed torpedo attack, the convoy loses possible maneuvers. A little more of this and the mines will drive the trucks into a trap, like a school of fish into a net.

  Again, laser cannons are firing, two volleys, then one, and then two more—Nastya discovers another minefield. For the last ten days, it has been she and Severov who are the main combat workers: She looks for targets, and he shoots, clearing the way. The remaining Bolsheviks, meanwhile, are preparing for a decisive battle, which won’t last long.

  “Attention, comrades,” says the captain. “The bandits have arranged the trap, firmly intending to finish our long journey. They are waiting for the Bolsheviks, knowing about the trap, to turn back and cowardly leave the convoy, for they themselves would have done so. We answer the bandits with this: ‘Nuts! The Bolsheviks never give up a good fight!’ All hands on deck!”

  The convoy changes course, bypassing the next minefield. Olga is well acquainted with this threat—five years ago, a similar mine blew up the Texan Bill, the debris of which thoroughly decimated her space house. Created with the principle “easier and cheaper” in mind, a space mine is an effective weapon when used correctly. Having visually discovered the enemy ship, the mine corrects its orbit and then a disposable electromagnetic accelerator is triggered, throwing away the shrapnel charge.

  Black plastic mines are difficult to detect by radar or telescope—for slow-moving transports and passenger ships, they represent a mortal danger. Often, the crew learns that the mine is drifting nearby only when the hull of their ship breaks through twenty-five thousand steel pellets rushing at second space speed. Jamming stations and camouflage systems knock off the mines, forcing them to detonate prematurely, lasers clearing the free path. But still some mines make aimed shots, and it’s necessary to maneuver, working energetically with engines and rudders, burning the remains of fuel.

  The funnel is narrowing, and the trap is about to close. Surrounded on all sides by minefields, the convoy is moving in the right direction. The Syndicate ships have alread
y taken positions at the mouth of the funnel, preparing to shoot the trucks with crossfire. The Band can still break out of the trap, making a sharp turn, but after this maneuver, they will only have enough fuel to crawl to Jupiter for at least three months. And the destruction from marching at a snail's pace and being incapable of maneuvering ships won’t be a problem.

  “Two-minute readiness!”

  The Syndicate squadron is divided into two links: the first link headed by the torpedo-bearer comes to the right, and the second link, reinforced by the minelayer and the supply transport, is on the left side. Both links are surrounded by minefields. The speed of the enemy ships is reduced to a minimum, and the air is unusually clean: the jamming stations have stopped in order to keep from blinding their own radars; the bandits are preparing to shoot for sure. But the prospect of the last battle against the Bolshevik doesn’t seem tempting, so diplomatic measures are being taken—a powerful searchlight is being signaled from the supply transport, offering unconditional surrender.

  “Stop immediately . . . turn off the camouflage and set emergency beacons . . . get ready to take a boarding team . . . guarantee life!”

  “Go and f—”

  Darkness. Cold. Silence. The timer counts the seconds and distance of the emptiness. Two hundred and forty-one kilometers to the target. Lobo flies forward, shrinking into a tight metal ball, covered with the canvas of an anti-radar camouflage net. He has only a pistol—every extra gram and square centimeter increases the threat of detection. Only a pistol, and Olga's mind, for a moment merged with the mind of the Marine.

  The target is right ahead—just a second ago, there was only emptiness, and now she sees the fast-approaching Bugsy Sigel, covered with a masking pattern. The collision seems inevitable.

  “Geronimo!”