Chapter 8.

A dull summer day for Zoran Dragovic.

18.aug.2119.

KANAR 50 km south of the capital.

 Dragovic once again looked around the area, covered in a gray veil of fine, spray-like rain, and again walked toward the trailer house standing next to the mast. This was the third time he had taken such a walk in the last hour.

 - Are they even planning to come? - he thought angrily for the umpteenth time and stepped into the doorway.

 Inside were wooden boxes with some materials and spare parts, empty equipment cabinets and rolls of polyethylene, from which Dragovic had piled up something like a sofa, after which he spread his jacket on it.

 Next to the arranged place stood a travel bag, one of two with which Dragovic had made his way to the KANAR. The bag contained a complete survival kit. Houses like these had long since lost their relevance in the early years of the war, although their presence in the household was welcomed.

 As sometimes happens, having arrived in the Siberian Kuznetsk Region, Dragovich quickly realized that the place he found himself in was somewhat different from what he had imagined. Not so much in terms of nature and climate, but in terms of people. Dragovich, who had watched a lot of video footage, imagined that they took "their business" somehow more seriously.

 The front was much closer here, however, the locals were largely absorbed in their own confrontation with the SFS, or as it was called back home in Europe, the RBSF - the right-bank part of the Super Federation.

In part, such relative detachment from the Great War agenda was explained by the fact that the entire Kuznetsk Region and even some of the adjacent territories were covered no worse than, say, Washington - all because the Rocket Launch Site was located here.

 This strategic facility, called "Kepler-West", was protected by ground-based air defense, air defense aircraft and anti-missile defense, the pinnacle of which were two AEX AMANDA super-radars, each of which in turn consisted of three independent giant towers scanning in different directions.

 In all of Western Europe, AEX placed only one of these, and here there were two.

 This radar complex also included laser selectors - this was to avoid detonating a nuclear charge in space, which with its light pressure was supposed to slightly change the trajectories of false targets weighing some grams.

 Now the false targets, this swarm of junk accompanying the warhead, were irradiated by flashes from the ground, after which their speeds, and therefore their trajectories, barely changed, so that the anti-missile launched in advance with a very high probability hit the warhead. Time was gained, and therefore the range to the point of destruction, selective charges were saved, and efficiency increased.

 The laser selectors themselves were not something capricious, adapted exclusively for illuminating orbital objects - if necessary, they could hit anything that flies, albeit within a rather limited radius, about several tens of kilometers. The fact that if the beam was directed at a small angle to the horizon, it quickly weakened, like the light of the sun at sunset. Despite this and some other physical limitations, lasers were not a defenseless target for an attack "from below". Dragovich learned all this, both about lasers and about defense in general, from videos on Y-tube.

 The key object, as has already been said, was the rocket launch site for V-shuttles - the same "Kepler-West". It was built in 2115. In 2116, Oppenheimer came, whose list of priorities, or, to put it simply, quirks, included the concept of displacing the War into space. The rocket launch site became more than in demand. And it was so from the very beginning. Shuttles landed on concrete pads. From there they could take off. There were also huge strips and hangars for carrier aircraft, capable of dragging a shuttle of an earlier system anywhere and launching thousands of kilometers from the rocket launch site itself. And thanks to all these things scattered all over the Western world, the US reduced its once unimaginable national foreign debt to zero and then into the negative.

And so, all this missile-launching and missile-site magnificence, which in the pre-war decades was capable of if not completely curbing, then at least moderating the aggression of the Asian Bloc, was concentrated on the territory of a region that was quite small by Russian standards.

According to Dragovich's logic, titans should have lived here. It is clear that the locals will not be involved in the functioning of a precision military machine, but still... Related services, support personnel, security of the region as a whole, in the end...

 But the "titans" somehow began to disappoint. Expectation and reality, in short.

Of course, Dragovich knew that the Superfederant, which had stood in opposition to New Kronstadt, the Russian capital of wartime, was not a single entity - that within itself it contained two warring camps, separated by a river and dividing the main city of the Kuznetsk Region between them.

 This would not surprise anyone now - a whole series of internecine, often bloody conflicts had already taken place within the Western Nations Bloc. In addition, Dragovich knew the history of his Balkans and how it happens. In the modern world, these showdowns had practically no effect on the course of the Great War.

 At home, as probably in other corners of the world, the Superfederant and everything connected with it were known quite well - it often appeared in news broadcasts, and there were also plenty of specific paramilitary channels on Y-tube. On some of these channels, the topic of the Superfederant was almost the main one. So, setting off on his journey, Dragovich was convinced that he had a fairly adequate idea of the place he was heading to and the citizens who lived there.

 By all appearances, these were energetic, purposeful people who did not feel constrained in the matter of taking up arms when it came to defending their freedom, the right to a future and everything else - the phrases were from the videos.

 Also here, on the left bank, they put into operation and constantly improved their own, albeit simplified UCE, Unified Combat Environment, which was integrated into the interlink by agreement. This said something.

 In fact, when Dragovich arrived, he saw a distribution point without hot water - he spent the night there on the first day. Then he was taken to some industrial site, where a purely civilian engineer found out about his technical knowledge. This was an example of complete confusion - at home, at a semi-underground recruiting point, they really did talk about the possibility of working as a civilian fitter, but then Dragovich, who had five years of work in the "prevention police" behind him, received clear assurances that such people were in demand here, in the LBSF. In demand even more than their local colleagues - this is because a bunch of different foreign people have arrived in the region, and the leadership sees the idea of ​​forming international police units as reasonable. Neither at the distribution point, nor at the subsequent interview, did anyone even mention this topic - they referred to the fact that this was not their area, and if it was so important for him, Dragovich, then he needed to be patient, and the issue would be resolved, just not by them. In general, there was confusion and a feeling of the lack of concentration inherent in the locals, as it turned out.

 To be fair, it should be said that Dragovich would have gone to this distant land, even if he had been told in advance that he would be here as an assembly worker. This was much better than, having finally been mobilized, going on one of the countless transports or requisitioned liners to the Great Front - the Central African, CAF, or the Eurasian, EAF - the latter was nearby.

This was not at all part of Dragovich's life plans. Another widespread and unofficial statistical program showed that the probability that he would be "lucky" in the quarterly mobilization lottery exceeded ninety percent. The lottery was based on dates of birth, months and days. It is clear that these programs are amateurish nonsense, but it was better to decide to leave and take this step than to ponder later why he was such a fool and did not do it. Than to lament like this, already sitting in a dismal requisitioned plane in combat gear. Russia, having declared a policy of demarche after its catastrophe in 2114, nevertheless calmly handed over foreign draft dodgers. But the Superfederant, SSSF, South Siberia SuperFederant, which entered into confrontation with New Kronstadt in 2114-2115, was a real black hole. And besides, there was still a choice between the right bank and the left bank. Of course, here, on the left bank, in any conversation it was necessary to unambiguously state that the choice of LBSF, Left Bank SuperFederant, that is, KANAR, was completely conscious.

The Kuznetsk-Altai People's Anarchist Republic really seemed to Dragovich a little more attractive than the SFS, Siberian Federal Self-Government, but just a little. So he could well have chosen the right bank, where he would have been fooled just on the subject of the left. Here, on the left, they had already fooled him. However, they didn't say anything new - Dragovich had already learned everything he needed from all sorts of videos. After all, he had prepared himself so as not to look like a fool.

 Dragovich glanced at his bag. Among other things, there was a rather interesting thing - a satellite radio station, which, if the "day of judgment" came, that is, an escalation collapse, was supposed to ensure communication with at least someone. That is, if the satellites survived. In general, in order to contact someone via it, it was necessary to agree on a time in advance, choose a frequency together with this second subscriber, or rather a channel, and also to catch a satellite... But in case of trouble, not even an escalation collapse but, for example, a natural disaster, this, at first glance, useless thing could serve. It was possible to ask for help from the first person you came across - in the expectation that the one who was even on another continent would already be in touch via normal communication. It seems that there were also emergency frequencies for this. However, under normal circumstances, the thing was interesting in that it allowed you to listen to satellite radio - radio broadcasting, which was deployed back in the years of the Pre-War. In terms of audience, this radio network was not only inferior to the Internet - it didn't even exist, but all these years the broadcasts were carried out regularly - it cost negligibly little.

There were also the channels of the Asian block - these satellite networks, our own and the enemy's, were built in the time immemorial according to the same standards. It was hard to say how often these half-forgotten, unclaimed satellites were shot down, and whether the groups were regularly replenished. One way or another, the networks functioned.

 The radio was a brick weighing half a kilogram, maybe a little less. It was always supplied with a thick half-meter antenna, attached to the side. There was another one, similar to a folding umbrella, installed on a table on a tripod - this one received and transmitted best of all, especially transmitted. If you just needed to listen, then even with a spike everything was received quite well.

 From time to time, Dragovich indulged in listening to the voices of the enemy - they, broadcast in many languages of Western nations, could only be heard on radio networks. The satellite wasn't the only one - the enemy's voices could also be heard on the completely antediluvian terrestrial radio broadcast. On the Internet, on their Internet, of course, there was nothing even close to enemy, just as there was nothing Western on the Asian network.

 Dragovich attached a whip antenna and turned on the radio. A cheerful Spanish-language voice rang out, accompanied by the noise of the stadium. As far as Dragovich understood, it was a broadcast from a match currently taking place in Latin America. That entire continent was perhaps the most carefree place on the planet. Although "@enemy" had a foothold there, albeit a constrained one - from the land it was reliably blocked by the coalition forces of the Western Bloc. One way or another, that line of contact was not considered a front and the continent was perceived as the place as far away from the War as possible. Psychologically distant, or something. On another channel, some music was playing, very similar to a jazz church choir - this was common in some eccentric American states. And so it turned out - the channel was English-language, much more understandable to Dragovich than the South American one.

 - The name Bandon is certainly familiar to many, - the voice continued the speech that had obviously begun before the music, - Reidenald Bandon - the fifty-sixth president of the United States. He was born in the distant year of two thousand and two in the city of Campbell, California, in a family ...

 - Exactly, one of the American presidents, - Dragovich remembered.

He pressed the button, switching the channel up. There was a hissing interspersed with a buzzing - this happened when an enemy channel was jammed.

 - Having graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in two thousand and twenty-six, Reidenald finally began to implement his plan. With two of his friends, he set up a workshop in his uncle's garage...

 - Where's the story about his bare-assed childhood, - Dragovich chuckled to himself.

 A picture of how this Bandon, being a kid, ran around in short pants, got caught on a fence and tore them appeared in his imagination - in general, this was exactly his, Dragovich's, vague memory from his "prehistoric" childhood.

 - In those years, mail drones were already commonplace, but they could not recognize images and navigate by terrain and ground objects without the help of a GPS network.

 - Invented my ImageCon, - thought Dragovich, and he was right, in the sense that the announcer basically described the ancestor of the Terrain Shape & Image Connasense System, the ancestor of TSICS.

Dragovich put the radio aside and went to see once again if a truck was coming for him. The rain was still falling, finely, as if from a spray, and slightly lighter wisps of clouds, like fog, were floating across the sky against a gray background. No movement was visible on the horizon in the direction where the serpentine road ran. Nothing was visible in the other direction, where it ran out from. Dragovich walked back to the house.

 - A space flight, even on an excursion rocket, in those days assumed the participation of a crew heading to one of the stations of that time. The flight itself could take up to two days.

 - And now there are no stations, - Dragovich thought with a feeling of condescension towards the frivolous ancestors who built these vulnerable giants.

 - In the same year 2043, he, according to his own recollections, became seriously interested in thermonuclear energy. And what prompted him to do this? It was that very flight and the realization that our Earth and the humanity inhabiting it...

 Dragovich began to sort through the channels and finally came across a female voice speaking Russian and slightly distorting, strangely pronouncing hissing sounds - it was an enemy voice, an enemy channel. Dragovich almost mechanically turned it down, then got up and stood by the doorway - it would not be good if someone came in and this was playing in the house.

 After listening for a while, he returned to the American program talking about Bandon. Here they had already reached 2056, when Bandon's company launched the first working industrial thermonuclear reactor. The first in the world.

 Dragovich didn't know such details with dates, although, like any more or less educated person, he knew that thermonuclear energy came into its own in the middle of the last century.

Before that, it was quite natural that states fought over oil, which is still needed today, but has not been at the forefront of everything for a long time. It also turned out that Bandon's company almost stood at the origins of AEX. Somehow too cool for some single company from the last century, although, however, everything big grows out of small.

 Dragovich turned the device in his hands and turned it off. By the way, on this one, in addition to the manufacturer's logo, there were also three other familiar letters on the nameplate - GBA. The LAURA missile defense radars that protected Europe were from GBA.

Towards evening, gaps appeared in the clouds, then there was a red sunset, and then, when it got dark, rare stars appeared. There was still no truck. It was getting colder and colder in the house. When Dragovich had already started to figure out in his mind how it would be best to arrange his overnight stay and whether to light a fire in front of the house, a distant hum was heard, which did not resemble the sound of a car.

 Leaning out of the open door and looking around, Dragovich saw lights moving over the far edge of the field. Obviously, it was some kind of copterbus - if so, it would be the first airmobile seen in the Siberian region.

 At home, air cars have also become a rarity - it is too much of a luxury for an ordinary person to fly anywhere, when electric motors and advanced aviation hydrogen equipment are needed by the fronts. Safety and poverty again.

 Meanwhile, the machine described an arc, passing low over the field and was definitely heading towards Dragovich, shining a searchlight down. Just a minute after Dragovich heard the distant hum, the copterbus was already standing in front of the house, gradually reducing the speed of the propellers. The first to emerge from the side door that had slid open was the Chief, as Dragovich called him to himself.

The Chief was a healthy, broad-faced fellow with a mustache and a goatee. He was a lieutenant in the communications department, and Dragovich had been assigned to him, having just arrived at the distribution point.

 - I thought you'd be here earlier, said Dragovich. - I was already planning to spend the night here.

 - Oh, come on, why? - the Chief responded with feigned emotion. - Look at what we're driving today.

 - You yourself were talking about a no-fly zone, I heard something flying here a couple of times, maybe air defense.

 - They're not interested in us, - the Chief responded. - If anything, the driver can fly well, low. We also have a radar receiver, RWR, - He waved toward the bus, on the roof of which something resembling a toadstool mushroom towered. - Take everything you own and get on.

 At that moment, the Chief himself took out a cigarette and lit it.

 Dragovich hurried into the trailer. Less than a minute later, he was already in the cabin. The windows were covered with blue curtains, and under the ceiling there was some kind of box on fasteners, obviously installed here in a makeshift manner. Apparently, this was the radar detector. A huge twenty-one-inch monitor for a simple vehicle was also installed in the front panel on the driver's seat, on which the interlink navigation seemed to be displayed.

 Finally, the Chief finished his cigarette, squeezed into the cabin and slammed the retractable door.

There was a low hum, turning into a quiet whistle - this is how the electrics usually work, controlling the power of the engines. Then the car rocked and smoothly rose. Dragovich pulled back the curtain and saw the lights of some distant village, the view of which opened up only after the rise.

 Apart from the lights, nothing was visible - only complete darkness. The flight altitude was small - every now and then tree branches flashed almost under the bottom of the car, caught by a wide sheaf of the turned-on searchlight. The searchlight was definitely not shining on course.

 Dragovich, who was nervous at first, calmed down when he saw the driver's night glasses.

 - The main thing is not to fly too close to the river, to the right bank, - said the Chief, noticing Dragovich's lively reaction. - But everything is fine, we have had a radar coverage map for a long time.

 - And don't go near the "Amandas" either, - the driver added, - Otherwise they will quickly fire their lasers. Then everything at once.

 - To the "Amandas"? - Dragovich asked, having heard the name, legendary for any military-weapons maniac, which, however, he was not.

 - Don't listen to him, - the Chief intervened, - it's in the line of sight and even closer. And they are almost three hundred kilometers from here. Those in the north, the second group, they are generally on the right bank, further than the missile launch site. They don't care about us when we are here. Also, they, the "Amandas", have additional radar receivers. They are much smaller, about the size of a three-story building. The security zone is only half a kilometer in radius. There will be nothing like that there. In general, as you can see, our region is completely packed.

 Watching the further course of the flight, Dragovich came to the conclusion that this was a real guerrilla warfare. Not in the sense that guerrillas were hiding in the groves and forests, but in the sense of organizing everything, the flight in particular.

 Not even ten minutes had passed since takeoff when some kind of warning beep was heard. The driver turned to the interlink and began to look for something.

 Of course, Dragovich could not see in detail what was on the screen. Basically, the same map with some kind of layer of tactical information on top of it.

 - What's there? - the Chief shouted.

 - AWACS is irradiating to the south.

 - Where is it flying to?

 - It will pass by.

 - It is flying here?

 - Almost.

 - Let's stand! - the Chief almost commanded.

 - Let's pass! - the driver answered.

 - I said let's stand! Don't understand?

 - Yes sir, - the driver muttered and began to slow down.

 Half a minute later, the bus was already hovering about five meters above another field, after which it began to descend.

 - He who takes unnecessary risks is doubly a fool - said the Chief, when the machine was already standing on the ground, and the propeller speed had dropped so much that these propellers practically did not make any sound.