LITMIR.BIZ

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from overseas. This is the task we will assign to Colonel General Nagulin. I think the new title will add to his importance in the eyes of our Chinese allies.”

* * *

      Lena and I spent three days of vacation time, generously allocated to me by personal order of the Chief, in the vicinities of Moscow. We didn't want to waste time going anywhere else.

      I listened with interest to her story about how, when she learned that I had been appointed head of the Soviet military mission in China, she went first to Sudoplatov, and then, together with him, to Beria. She didn't say a word to me about it at the time. Lena would not tell me the details of her conversation with the Commissar, but apparently she had said many kind words to Lavrentiy Pavlovich about how she had been used during my trip to America. I don't know what was going on in Beria's head during this conversation, but, to Lena's surprise, he quite easily agreed to send her to China with me, and Sudoplatov supported this decision just as unexpectedly.

      Naturally, I was pleased. It meant that in addition to all the pleasures of being near the woman I loved, I got a proven and reliable employee at my disposal. My wife had already demonstrated her organizational skills more than once, and I was not going to let her sit idly by on this trip, nor would she want to stand back to enjoy the Asian exoticism herself.

      Lena never ceased to amaze me. Walking along the well-groomed paths around the forest lake, enjoying the fishing, bathing, birdsong and the silence of the night, I tried not to mention the war and work issues in my conversations with my wife, but she would sometimes go over them herself. As it turned out, while I was traveling around America, periodically getting involved in shooting stories, she wasn't wasting time here, either.

      I have long wanted to bring together the people with whom I have fought shoulder to shoulder on this planet. I once told Lena that I had plans for them, but nothing concrete was said at the time. And now I was surprised to learn that my wife had managed to persuade Sudoplatov to find these fighters and commanders and combine them into a detachment of unclear purpose, but with versatile and very high quality reconnaissance and sabotage training.

      When I returned to Moscow, I immediately went to Lubyanka, where Sudoplatov, with a satisfied grin, introduced me to my new subordinates who were ready to go with me to China through the NKVD. In the last six to eight months, some of my comrades in combat have risen through the ranks quite a bit.

      Pluzhnikov, who had been a sergeant and was now a lieutenant of state security, shook my hand firmly. He recovered for a long time from the wounds he received during the breakthrough of General Muzychenko's headquarters column from the encirclement, but he returned to the ranks as a full-fledged fighter and received a new rank after taking an accelerated course in the NKVD School of Special Purpose.

      Ignatov and Nikiforov, who had been wounded in the attack on von Kleist's column near Rzhev, recovered much more quickly. I kept an eye on their fate myself. In fact, it didn't require much effort from me. They had been subordinates of Sudoplatov before, so after their recovery they simply returned to one of the NKVD bases near Moscow, only with new Orders of the Red Star and new insignia in their buttonholes. Like Pluzhnikov, they became lieutenants of state security.

      As for Major Shcheglov, he returned to front-line reconnaissance. He managed to avoid being wounded, but it appeared he woud no longer have to continue to lead reconnaissance teams behind German lines. At Sudoplatov's initiative, based on a tip from Lena, Beria summoned the Major to Moscow, and now Shcheglov was to come with me to China.

      And, well, this "support group" was led by Lieutenant Colonel Lebedev, who remembered to include in it saboteurs, with whom we had barely escaped the trap near Kremenchuk.

      My mood improved noticeably. I knew that these people would not let me down under any circumstances. In general, a trip to China did not seem too difficult to me. In addition to the NKVD detachment, Major General Kudryavtsev and his reinforced air regiment, fully equipped with new IL-8r planes, and a number of other detachments and support units went with me.

      At that time I sincerely believed that the Japanese could not oppose us, I feared not their opposition, but rather the problems that might come from outer space. As it turned out, I was only partially right – the problems came from everywhere at once.

* * *

      The Eye of the Void-class small automatic reconnaissance ship was not the Sixth Republic's latest generation of military space technology, but it could handle low- to medium-complexity reconnaissance missions. The destroyer Consul Pran had two of them on board, and Lieutenant Commander Hirch decided to risk these ships.

      The small yellow star of the G2V spectral class didn't appeal to him for many reasons, but the destroyer crew had little choice. The fleet's heavy ships died more than a year ago when they stormed the orbital fortresses of the capital planet of the infected humans. They accomplished their task and burned the snake's nest to the ground, but it was impossible to call the result of the battle a victory. Four badly battered destroyers, a dozen nearly empty support transports, and a few more small ships of various purposes were all what remained of the powerful fleet engaged in a decisive battle with the enemy.

      The planets of the central star system of the infected humans turned into black charred orbs, but the remnants of the fleet immediately received a new task to find and destroy the surviving enemy colonies. Hirch didn't understand what was happening. Retaliatory strikes by the infected humans deprived the fleet of supply bases and repair facilities. His ship had essentially nowhere to go back to, but the new order didn't imply a return. He was leading his damaged destroyer into a remote sector of space of which there was only sketchy information.

      The consciousness of the Lieutenant Commander, afflicted by virtual psychosis, could not critically comprehend the received order. The conviction that this was not real life, but only a high-quality virtual reality, allowed him to look at everything that was going on, as the whims of his commanders, who for some reason decided to drive him and the entire crew of the Consul Pran into a completely impossible scenario, where the majority of the population of the Sixth Republic turned into dangerous infected people who took over the planets and ships. Hirsch firmly believed that sooner or later this nonsense would end, he would get out of the virtual simulator capsule and return to normal life, but now he needed to solve the task as efficiently as possible, because all his future fate would depend on it.

      However, this training task dragged on too long, smoothly passing from one task to another, but the virtual psychosis forced the officer to ignore all inconsistencies and discrepancies, ruthlessly severing "unnecessary" neural connections and burning out memory areas that could plant the slightest doubt in the mind of the Lieutenant Commander that his actions are the only right ones.

      The destroyer Consul Pran, escorted by a supply transport, roamed from star to star, somewhere it clashed with the surviving patrol corvettes of the infected humans, somewhere it finished off the already damaged space stations, and somewhere it ignominiously ran away when it encountered a couple of destroyers or a light cruiser of the enemy. Infected people repeatedly tried to negotiate with him, but Hirch knew very well how dangerous it was to communicate with the carriers of the infection. In the beginning, when little was known about the disease, he tried to talk to captured infected people. They were rambling on about how everything around them was the real world, and the crews of the ships that had come to destroy the outbreak of the contagion were exposed to neurostimulation equipment that had not been fully tested, and plunged into a pseudo-reality, mistaking the real world for a digital simulation. Hirch knew it was morbid nonsense, but oddly enough, it worked on some of the crew, eating away at their brains and planting doubt in them. After two of his officers went insane after contracting the contagion themselves, the Lieutenant Commander stopped all contact with the infected people and ignored any their attempts to contact the Consul Pran.

      The single galactic hypernet was rapidly disintegrating. Communication with the command was cut off, and no new orders had been received, but the instructions received earlier had not been cancelled, and Hirch was plotting all new routes based on the last database update he had received almost a year earlier.

      Any raid comes to an end sooner or later. The supply transport fuel tanks have shown their bottom. The ammunition was also nearly exhausted, but the organizers of the "exercise" still did not give the signal

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