Rocket Launch Site. Shuttle Takeoff.
23.oct.2120 Local Time 00.20.
"Kepler-West" Rocket Launch Site. Launch Pad "South-002".
- Sir, don't worry, the terrorist group's invasion has already been localized. Attack aircraft are already working, - the ground operator's voice sounded.
- What's on the interlink, - Zavirdyaev addressed the AI. In response, it brought up the map on the left display. At the same time, the operator's voice sounded over the spacesuit's communication system, describing approximately the same thing as was on the map.
Zavirdyaev peered into the darkness outside the window - somewhere in the distance, tracers from aircraft cannons were indeed shooting down. They were helicopters.
- Lebedev's troops wandered in the wrong direction?
- No, what are you saying, Sir, that's impossible. They are in constant contact with us. The attack was carried out by an unidentified terrorist group.
Indeed, for Lebedev, an attack on the missile launch site not only made no sense, but would also have been a rather extravagant way to commit suicide. Maybe in the most moderate version, only in a political sense. Even if not immediately, but within a few days. In any case, this was not what he, Lebedev, had been striving for all these years. However, these OMSDONs were full of crazy soldiers and officers. Now Zavirdyaev understood perfectly well what was happening and why, but the question about the Lebedevites was asked quite sincerely - the attack could have been carried out by these reckless police warriors.
Meanwhile, the ship's onboard artificial intelligence revived the instrument panel and the screen showed the text of the status of the pre-flight checks of the cruise engine. Zavirdyaev, to his credit, understood what each item on the list running across the screen meant, but he had no influence on the process - the AI was doing a great job without human intervention.
Come on, let's take off soon! - Zavirdyaev glanced at the screen and mentally addressed the computer.
About another minute passed. The shooting in the distance, although it had slowed down, did not stop. Finally, the AI announced that the engine was ready, as was the ship as a whole. The ground operator repeated the same thing.
The computer began a voice countdown, starting from the tenth second. By the standards of pre-war orbital flights, videos of which Zavirdyaev had once watched, the entire launch procedure from the alarm signal to the start of this countdown took place very quickly, as if it were not a fighter, but simply a military aircraft accustomed to various troubles, standing on duty.
The ground operator wished them a happy flight. Somewhere below, something howled - most likely, auxiliary units of "launch capacities" - that's what they called here the side engines built into sharp angular protrusions, lifting the shuttle a couple of hundred meters - it was impossible to launch the cruise engine while standing on the pad - the danger was not so much in the destruction of the pad as in the ship itself.
Even after being pushed hundreds of meters up, the shuttle could not immediately turn on the cruise engine at full power, however, it was not advisable to give full throttle in the future - the overload could be about ten to eleven units and this with a full load of the ship.
The power-to-weight ratio allowed the new shuttle to evade any anti-missile attack without any particular difficulties for itself. Without difficulties for the shuttle, but not for the crew, that is, for Zavirdyaev.
Finally, the computer counted down to the launch. The ship shook slightly, and Zavirdyaev, whose chair had already assumed a lying position, felt a pleasant heaviness on his back, as if he were accelerating in a powerful car.
The altitude mark reached 250 meters. Contrary to expectations, the ascent did not slow down - it felt like nothing had changed at all. At this mark, the starting engines were supposed to smoothly reduce power, after which the cruise engine, consisting of a large central chamber and four smaller side ones, would start working. Judging by the display, this is what happened. But no changes were felt.
However, when the altitude reached five hundred meters, the heaviness began to increase. At an altitude of two thousand meters, the accelerometer indicated a value of three and a half units. This meant that every second the ship added one hundred and twenty-odd kilometers per hour to its speed - this figure was right there. The figure did not stand still - it went over the mark exactly to plus one hundred and twenty and went on. Another part of the display was given over to the image from the onboard video system, some of whose cameras were looking down. Only now did Zavirdyaev notice that the starting engines, their plasma jets, had left a rather characteristic mark on the platform - it was a white cross with rays diverging to the periphery. Perhaps it had been drawn by the same engines during landing. One way or another, it was rather difficult to see this mark from below, standing on the platform.
The acceleration was growing.
- Maybe it's time to stop revving it up, we're already flying so fast! - thought Zavirdyaev.
In general, the AI monitored the condition of the pilot-passenger through the sensors in the spacesuit, and if something bad happened to him, to Zavirdyaev, it would have reacted - it would have reported down or reduced the power - with such energy, it was possible not to be so careful in choosing the acceleration and trajectory - there would have been enough energy for any nonsense, even for a descent with a repeated takeoff. This was the amazing superiority of the shuttle - it was not a movie ship that flew at will, but it could also do something that previous shuttles could not.
The accelerometer readings approached the mark of five units, or rather, four and seven - every second the speed increased by one hundred sixty-five kilometers per hour. Zavirdyaev's weight had increased five point seven tenths times - he should have added one unit, which corresponded to normal gravity.
Zavirdyaev wanted to say "how are my readings?", but instead he only creaked something. Down there, living on the right bank, he had noticed a strange and somewhat frightening thing about himself several times - falling asleep at night, falling asleep completely, he would suddenly seem to fall out into the darkness of his bedroom from nowhere, and just as helplessly either moan or whine. Of course! It was later that he remembered how he had spent almost a whole month at the AEX space center in Florida, where he had been prepared, among other things, for overloads.
Meanwhile, some changes had occurred on the interlink display, which were not a surprise for Zavirdyaev - it was part of the plan. On the map, which had an impressive number of layers, including Lebedev's troops, which appeared on the overall picture after takeoff, there was also a mark of the shuttle itself, circled in blue. Suddenly the circle disappeared, and then reappeared, but it was red, indicating an enemy object. The text mark next to the object designated the shuttle as an unknown target.
Under normal conditions, this simply could not happen - the interlink had a blocking system in case the combat vehicle was captured by the enemy. When someone had an interlink on a computer or other device - that was one story. It was an account on the device.
The completeness of tactical information in this version was quite limited - it was not surprising - a physical device could quite easily and imperceptibly end up in the hands of the enemy. The one who owned the account had to be verified periodically. Of course, it was impossible to foresee all the situations that happened on the battlefield, but it increased the level of protection. When the interlink was installed in a combat vehicle, it was a different matter - it was already an interlink terminal, physical, on a separate computer, or virtual, in the main onboard ones, and it was integrated with the systems of the vehicle itself, a fighter or a tank.
The tactical picture in this case was much more complete, and the system was ready to block at any moment. For example, the fighter's computer had a lot of opportunities to understand that something had gone wrong with the vehicle, and further execution of the mission was impossible. Such informative events included stopping the engines in the air and certain combinations from the list of malfunctions, or the approach of a missile preceding this. Finally, the system could suspect something was wrong, having detected a touchdown or a decrease in speed to zero at an unplanned point on the route. Simply put, the hijacking of a vehicle without damaging it.
The tank's computer received telemetry from the crew's equipment and had the ability to understand what was happening to the people. Everything was done so that enemy fighters or engineers who climbed into an abandoned tank or hijacked aircraft for some reason would find there, from all the information support of the integrated combat environment, UCE, only an empty terminal screen.
In general, the key goal of the interlink blocking system was to determine whether the terminal was currently in the hands of friendly forces, or whether it was left without control, which would already threaten capture by the enemy.
Here, in the shuttle cabin, there was a terminal that knew that it was not in the hands of friendly forces, it even designated its own side as enemy. However, it was not blocked. The computer had definitely been worked on.
The screen, which had previously shown a completely static picture, began to stir - in the south, at nine o'clock, several SAM/MDS "Percival" launches took place.
The red lines quite reliably indicated that the target was his, Zavirdyaev's Shuttle. However. The ship was quite far from the launch sites, and was also moving away rapidly. It had already been calculated that if the ship continued to gain speed, the missiles would not pose a danger.
- With such an overload, my ass can crack even without any missiles! - thought Zavirdyaev.
He also thought how cool and cowboy-like it would be to say this to the ground, but the communication channel with the missile launch site had long been blocked. Besides, Zavirdyaev himself still couldn't say anything.
Then an air defense aircraft responded to the changes - this one was in the north, at two o'clock. Its two missiles, obviously taking a lead, went to the west, but soon both marks first blinked and then disappeared - the ship's movement parameters crossed the mark beyond which it was unreachable.
- I wonder what's going on with the radio exchange? Do you know who's flying? Your future leader! - Zavirdyaev smiled to himself and remembered how in his school years his friends would happily mock all those portraits and statues of Ilyich that filled all the school closets in 2089 - these were the portraits and statues that the teachers obviously felt sorry for and did not send to the trash.
- How would the lisping eccentric Ilyich and his drunken sailors react if they saw how real things would be done in the future, - a mischievous thought flashed through Zavirdyaev's head.
Somewhere, already far behind, two more anti-missile launches had taken place - these were already serious anti-missiles, launched from a ground launch terminal. However, they no longer posed a threat - the ship had gained more than ninety percent of its orbital speed and was now rushing over the Omsk region. There was a terminal there too, but it was not showing any activity at the moment.
Still, it was not worth having fun from the feeling of complete safety yet. The Siberian radar AEX AMANDA alone, as far as Zavirdyaev knew, was capable of scanning space for seventy thousand kilometers, and it was now shining on his, Zavirdyaev's back. Nothing prevented it, this radar, from transmitting coordinates to a terminal located somewhere in Europe, that is, on the shuttle's course.
However, the plan provided for reduced activity to intercept the ship, in other words, sabotage. Now, apparently, there was confusion on the ground and no specific decision had been made regarding the shuttle. It could happen that later they would be pushed to the conclusion that the hostile affiliation of the ship had been determined erroneously.
Finally, the engine thrust dropped to zero. A feeling of weightlessness appeared - it was not quite like swimming in water - out of habit, there was a feeling that everything inside, in the stomach, had somehow unnaturally frozen. Zavirdyaev opened his helmet visor and inhaled. The ship's atmosphere smelled of plastic, only it was high-quality plastic, not smelly. There was also a smell of some kind of chemicals - they were probably cleaning the compartment with the appropriate products. It was interesting. The smell of the leather interior of some car was nothing compared to that - this car with its plasma engine can add one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour in a second, or even two hundred and fifty, as long as the pants remained dry and clean.