All The King's Men Read online

  YURI HAMAGANOV

  GROND-III: ALL THE KING’S MEN

  Copyright 2018 YURI HAMAGANOV

  All right reserved

  First edition: April 2018

  Cover Design by Alexandra Brandt

  Edited by Michelle

  No part of this book may be scanned, reproduced, or distributed in any printed or electronic form.

  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

  TABLE OF CONTENST

  Оглавление

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE: BIG LEBOWSKI

  CHAPTER TWO: SAKHALIN-28

  CHAPTER THREE: RED ALERT

  CHAPTER FOUR: WIND OF CHANGES

  CHAPTER FIVE: USUAL APOCALYPSE

  CHAPTER SIX: DAY IN LIFE

  CHAPTER SEVEN: GATE OF BABYLON

  CHAPTER EIGHT: MASTER KEY AND SLEDGEHAMMER

  CHAPTER NINE: HIT AND RUN

  CHAPTER TEN: FAVORITE

  EPILOGUE.

  PART ONE: DYNAMIC LOAD

  PROLOGUE

  85,000 meters.

  So, eighty-five kilometers up to the water, manual control, descent from orbit at a small angle, drop a bomb, and evasive maneuvers. The target doesn’t counter with anti-aircraft fire and interceptors, doesn’t maneuver, and isn’t blocked by interference. Combat sortie, my ass!

  77,000 meters.

  Nothing will come of it. How many times have we tried everything with a consistently negative result? Now they complain about insufficient accuracy when bombing from orbit—so I'll try it the old-fashioned way, with a deep dive.

  68,000 meters.

  OK, here it is—a designator mark from navigation satellites, so I can’t miss. And I thought that it would be quite difficult to miss a target with a diameter of almost three hundred kilometers.

  62,000 meters.

  At this altitude, thirty hours ago, the Supernova Corporation’s drone met the ceiling. Damn professors, they still don’t know why the ceiling is at different heights every day—they blame solar activity. Only a region of locally changed atmosphere pressure, but at this speed, it’s enough to spread fragments within a radius of one hundred kilometers.

  59,000 meters.

  Launched two hours ago, the automatic balloons should warn me about the approach of the ceiling. But the professor said that they have an error of 300-350 meters, so I could easily fly to the wall before the warning comes.

  53,000 meters.

  I see the lightning flashes on the edge, with hundreds of peripheral tornadoes. It seems to me that I hear his roar, but this is simply impossible.

  50,000 meters.

  Drop off!

  60,000 meters.

  Firing! The glow was visible for about forty-five seconds. That's how I remember it—just a dim red glow and that’s all. No shock wave, like I threw a grenade and not a hundred-megaton bomb. I repeat—the blasting was observed visually. The satellites confirmed the one-hundred-percent accuracy. I didn’t miss. But in vain, Grond didn’t even notice it. The plan to destroy his epicenter or core, or whatever it has, with a powerful explosion didn’t work. If you have anything left that can be used, I recommend doing it now. I don’t think that we have much time left.

  First Rank Captain Fedotov. Excerpts from the verbal report. The date is unknown.

  CHAPTER ONE: BIG LEBOWSKI

  The red light. The distance is twenty-five meters. The grips on the boots are firmly clinging to the floor, and the handle is beating the palm. The recoil is almost nonexistent. There are no flashes, and the integrated muffler turns the rumble of shots into a low hiss, as if oxygen is escaping from a punctured canister. Three men in the front slowly fall, pierced by a dozen bullets.

  “Exercise is over!”

  Olga opens her hand. Stechkin jumps back into the chest holster, carried by a flexible power cord, and the holographic targets disappear.

  “Will you be pleased?”

  “There are no complaints about the mechanism. Decrease the drive effort by ten percent; it hits my hand hard.”

  “Done—try it.”

  Olga imagines Electra Donovan at the far wall, and Stechkin again jumps into her hand. Now she hardly feels it—the anatomical handle fits perfectly into her palm. The girl releases the gun several times, and then catches it, amused, as if playing with a toy. In her left hand, from her left to her right and back, behind her back, above her head—the heavy gun jumps, like a tennis ball.

  “I want to try armor piercing and explosive bullets with increased power. Do you have any suitable targets?”

  “Any whim for your money, comrade.”

  At the far end of the shooting range, a figure in a bulletproof vest rises, aiming at Olga. Having received a mental order, Stechkin instantly transforms for its new task. The caliber and rifling change, throwing 1.7-millimeter armor-piercing bullets. A short burst pierces the bullet-proof vest with a dozen tiny holes, and then a single explosive bullet blows up the mannequin’s head. The recoil significantly increases, but Olga is calm about this.

  A week ago, she puzzled the owner of the local armory shop with her order—only rarely is someone willing to pay a fair amount to radically remake an ancient pistol, updating it to modern standards. But what you pay for, you command, and now even an experienced gunsmith won’t immediately recognize the Stechkin automatic pistol that this special gun once was. The only thing that remains is part of the body. Everything else was subjected to a total rework—a neurointerface, a barrel transformer, designed for shooting different types of ammunition, multi-chamber magazines of high capacity, and other useful options.

  “So, in the standard magazine—one hundred ordinary cartridges with increased stopping power. In addition, there are thirty armor-piercing bullets, twenty explosive high-power bullets, and ten stun cartridges—a total of 160 shots. Plus, there is built-in non-contact electric shock, with a guaranteed range of twelve meters, seventy paralyzing impulses on one charge. A muffler, a flash suppressor, sights, a neurointerface, a holster, maintenance aids, ten spare magazines, and a machine for the production of cartridges—a total of 160 rubles. Cash only.”

  Olga thoughtfully scratches behind her right ear with the gun.

  “I don’t suffer from multiple sclerosis, and I remember that we agreed on 130.”

  The skinny old gunsmith dramatically makes a helpless gesture.

  “My girl, that was three days ago. You saw the morning course in the exchanger? Prices skip like devils in a frying pan. What can I do? It’s necessary to raise the prices—unpleasant, I agree, but you’ll get a good product in your hands, and I'll have a few coins and bills that will maybe cost nothing in a week, so it's a question of who, of us two, will lose more. Based on personal experience, I can say that in the conditions of chaos, the commodity is always preferable to unsecured money—especially weapons. Well, if you want 130, I’ll agree, but for only seven spare magazines, not ten, right?”

  Olga isn’t in the mood to argue. Besides, she remembers that at noon, they’ll announce a new course, and she hurries to cut a deal before the frenzied inflation finally turns the remaining money into paper. The old gunsmith accepts the cash and quickly packs the purchase.

  “If it's not a secret, why do you change this gun so much?”

  “Actually, it is a secret,” Olga replies. She takes the purchase, pushes off from the floor, and flies into the upper hatch.
Once inside the narrow tunnel, she wants to immediately unpack the gift and put the holster on, but then she changes her mind—carrying weapons is allowed here, but the captain still urged her to avoid it. This isn’t a hostile territory.

  Big Lebowski. A trading station and a trans-shipment base, 1.5 million kilometers away from the Earth. This crossroads, a barter base and a repair station, serves about fifty high-orbit colonies. In addition, merchant ships make intermediate landings here, so the station is always crowded.

  Lebowski was assembled from the decommissioned ships and a dozen small asteroids, representing a chaotic conglomeration of open docks, fuel tanks, repair shops, and residential and storage facilities. The station rotates along the longitudinal axis, changing day and night every hour and forty minutes, but the gravity on the station is still weak—thirty-five times less than Earth—and if you find a hangar with a high ceiling, you can jump to the height of a ten-story house. At first, these unusual conditions seemed special to the girl, but she quickly mastered them, and now she rises to the core through tens of meters of narrow tunnels.

  Finally, she enters the crowded dining room. Judging by the stripes and emblems on the jackets, almost all the individuals present left one ship or another, representatives of thirty-eight crews. No one pays attention to her; everyone is busy eating lunch or talking about something in a mix of languages. Having flown past the closed illuminator, Olga lands at the counter and loudly calls to the Korean woman who is working at the food processor.

  “I want to pick up order number 238. It should be ready!”

  The cook turns to her, and a menu pops up before her eyes. Olga reads the inscription on her apron: “The best and only confectioner within a radius of thirty thousand miles!”

  “It was very difficult, I tell you. Milk is now tight, natural sugar hasn’t been transported for the third week, and the cream had to be pulled from my personal stocks. Will you take the candles?”

  “Naturally. If there is natural milk, sugar, and cream, how can I do without candles?”

  Olga gives her a ten but receives only one ruble for change, not two, as she expected.

  “Inflation,” the best and only confectioner within a radius of thirty thousand miles calmly responds to Olga’s raised eyebrow, and then she puts a cake on the counter.

  “The product is natural. I recommend eating it within a day, no more. If something else is being planned, please, call me, but the availability of cream isn’t guaranteed. Also, I have . . . ah, Jesus Spaceman Christ!”

  Olga turns to the screen hanging in the middle of the dining room with a big red mark, “urgent news.” All voices cease, and in the silence, the blonde girl from the Lunar News Studio presents the latest financial report.

  “It’s extortion!” – Someone yells.

  Prices for most vital goods, from air to food, soared by more than twenty percent since the beginning of the day, and most currencies are rapidly losing their purchasing power. Only Stalin's rubles increased in price—coins of precious metals, put into circulation a month ago in response to a growing commodity crisis and now reaching Lebowski in single copies.

  Olga instantly appreciates the advantage of her position and again turns to the Korean woman, holding out to her all the remaining cash.

  “Emergency rations, for all my money!”

  The girl gets out of the crowd, holding a cake high above her head and just three packs of a ration. Behind her, a scandal erupts; the Korean woman threatens to call security, so Olga decides not to stay here. Having made it to the trading deck, she sees that most of the local food warehouses have already been closed. At the neck of the tunnel, she has to give way to two metal octopuses—robot guards rush to the dining room, inspecting her with the rapid movement of short-barreled machine guns.

  “Keep calm, guys, I'm leaving.”

  Already in the tunnel, she is caught by a short warning signal, then the light filters on the windows crawl down. Big Lebowski is once again turning over from side to side. For the next hundred minutes, it will be dark here. Taking advantage of the moment, Olga stops at a large porthole, although she has promised herself many times to stop staring down.

  Earth is still Earth, the habitual globe since childhood. Only in childhood, there wasn’t a large dark gray spot in the southern Pacific Ocean. From such a distance, Grond doesn’t look threatening, as if it isn’t he who is driving up prices, mercilessly chasing the choking economy with a whip.

  “How is the weather?”

  “Rainy and windy,” Olga replies to the tall black man in the familiar white and blue overalls. It seems he is from Led Zeppelin, the ship of the Traveling Band that came to Lebowski the day before.

  “How is your work?”

  “Sorry, little sister, that isn’t a topic for conversation. By the way, I congratulate you on your promotion.”

  “I'm still without epaulettes.”

  “You’ll get them by evening. Bye.”

  Almost a year ago, when she first signed the contract, the possibility of enrolling in active military service seemed unlikely to Olga. After all, in the over thirty years that have passed since the war, mobilization, neither full nor partial, has never been announced. True, when signing the papers, Olga also didn’t think that she would go to war without mobilization.

  Rumors about the possible mobilization of auxiliary ships and their enrollment in the main fleet spread like wildfire almost immediately after the appearance of Grond. But these rumors changed three weeks ago. It was then that Captain Klimov received an order from the auxiliary fleet headquarters, after which the cruiser anchored and left a tiny shelter in the Asteroid Belt, where the Bolsheviks put their ship in order after the Martian adventures. Olga was happy about this: they were all bored with the microscopic asteroid, where there is only enough space for a wide smile.

  After a series of short flights, they arrived at Lebowski, where the junior officers received a short vacation while the captain and a few marines wandered on a shuttle among the nearest colonies. About what exactly and with whom he negotiated is unknown, and in the meantime, other ships of the auxiliary fleet were pulled from a distance. Judging by intelligence reports, the same thing happens in the Supernova sectors.

  Taking into account what happened last year, the prospect of military service doesn’t frighten her at all. Olga remembers well what Arina Rodionovna had said once—it's better to be in the service in hard times; it's easier to survive. But what is this service for? There is no war. Or is it still to come?

  “Olga Voronov.”

  She enters the ship, throwing the cake and a pistol into the cabin, then descends to the saloon to have a snack.

  “Joseph, did you get anything from the captain?”

  “Don’t run ahead of the rocket, Fraulein, you still have time to get epaulets. Eat until the price tag jumps.”

  At dinner, Olga connects to the Matrix, launching two hundred news and entertainment channels trying to find among the viscous information swamp at least some interesting material that wouldn’t be associated with what is happening in the Pacific Ocean.

  “It seems obvious that the spike in food prices that took place today, which has led to an abrupt increase in prices for virtually all other goods, isn’t the last. Unnamed sources in the government report that it is possible that by the end of the week, restrictions will be imposed on the sale of a large number of—”

  “Hungry rebellion, threatening the northwest food distributor, was suppressed only after a series of air strikes on the columns of rebels. A curfew has been introduced in the city; the military courts have been given the right to speedily issue and execute death sentences for looting—”

  “And our Lord tired from looking at all this mess, and he said that it is time to arrange a spring cleaning, and he sent us not his son, but his vacuum cleaner, which will now blow us all to hell—”

  “Undoubtedly, we are now observing the long-term consequences of the use of climate weapons during the Hot
Twentieth. Why these consequences are appearing right now is another matter, but I’m sure that the answer should be sought—”

  “I assure you, it worked Tesla's perpetual motion machine, which was kept under Lenin’s Mausoleum on Red Square—”

  “They are from the Sirius system; my grandfather told me about them. He was a guard at a secret facility even under the first black president. They came to the contact, and the technology was offered as an exchange. Well, our fools at once agreed, so we learned how to make thermonuclear reactors. And in their technologies, there were malicious bookmarks for the planned diversion. Well, now they have been triggered—”

  “We welcome our spectators to the next arrival of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse! The first three minutes are free; then you can view one race for three rubles, or a full series of five races for twelve rubles! Hurry, you have less than a minute to bet on the winner, who will be able to approach the edge of Grond closer than the other pilots and stay alive. Also, bets are now being accepted for the first catastrophe and—”

  “Holy space!”

  Olga comes out of the Matrix, turns off the light, and stares blindly into the porthole.

  Grond. GROND. Now, not everyone remembers, but Olga knows that once it was a drifting fish factory, one of many other similar plants in the South Pacific Food Cluster. There was no special meaning to the name; most likely, the owner was simply a fan of Tolkien.

  Anyway, it was the automatic weather station of the Grond plant that first broadcast a message about an abnormal wind increase at 1:00 a.m. on October 29, 2093. Sometime later, similar signals were given by weather stations of other nearby plants. At 4:20 a.m., the Grond plant sent out an SOS signal, after which the connection was lost forever. The unmanned rescue aircraft sent to the disaster area didn’t return; twelve watchmen at the plant were declared missing, while neighboring plants also began to send out distress signals. Weather satellites testified of a hurricane of extraordinary strength, the epicenter of which was above the place where Grond had previously drifted. Information about the collapse of a large part of the food cluster leaked into the Matrix, provoking panic on the exchange. The remnants of the rescue service were lifting the last airplanes into the air when the boat came out from the disaster zone.