The Nuclear Fortress Read online

  Dmitry Chkalov

  The Nuclear Fortress

  Novel

  Part One

  Bombs and the World Light

  1.

  It cannot be ruled out that Uksun-Boo would like to open the hatch slightly, lean out and look at the sky nearby. To find out finally how it is there, in the vicinity of the World Light. Is it really so uncomfortable by this self-illuminating substance as they said? Does the place look so untended? Or does a specially trained man with strong nerves, sound mind and memory can at least for some time retain his healthy state of mind and have time to understand what is really happening here before the critical phase?

  Yes, he may have wanted that. But the others did something for him not to do that. They told him honest truth, no crap, explaining what happened if one peeped out even through the porthole, reinforced with three layers of armoured glass. Or through the mirror-like periscope mechanics. It does not make any difference. There were such heroes in the past, rabbits, to be more exact. Guinea pigs. Testers.

  Besides, they took care of Uksun-Boo not in just words – they honestly warned him, instructed him, made him sign papers confirming his understanding, and so on. They knew that in the vicinity of the World Light even the mind of the bravest, hale and hearty man may not stand the test, and he was carefully and tightly sealed up in the capsule. And what could one do? The capsule, excuse me, cost a lot. Its launching cost even more. Well, and to say nothing of the importance of the mission. There was nothing to discuss here.

  So, Uksun-Boo was neither a guinea pig, nor a rabbit at all. All guinea pigs and rabbits were used before him. We are certainly speaking about testers and not the real animals which one can eat. Those animals can only be useful on some festive table. But if they are sealed up in a capsule – they die from fear even before launching. Rabbits with long ears have weak hearts; Mother Nature did not give them enough bravery, and nothing can be done. But the dogs — they are good! They staunchly endure the enema given before the start and antibiotic shots as well as take off and landing. They only grumble and rumble and bark as if speaking to themselves. They especially bark, whine and squeal when, following the order coming from below, the tightly sealed porthole doors finally open. Only the Devil knows what they wonder at with their dogs' heads. There are only flare spots on the film projector. However, it can be black sometimes. Why is it dark, damn it, if there is the World Light there? So the business is as clear as mud. Most likely, these are the instruments' tricks. And why should not they give trouble, really? The instruments were thought up, drawn and assembled on the terra firma and they sent them working Devil knows where – somewhere up.

  They thought that a man will do better. Well, a man is not made up by engineers and he was spontaneously self-generated in the paleontologic thickets of the infinite past. Uncountable epochs sharpened and honed him, straightened and dressed him, brought him up to the mark and presented him – here you are! Take him and enjoy him! The most reliable thing in the whole World Sphere, the most advanced and the wisest. And all these things exist only because of that brain. And now they have to seal up the most experienced pilot with loyal heart and body inside, as some criminal. And he can be insulted because of such distrust. Can he?! But what's the use of his grudges? There is not much time left for him to be insulted. There were no provisions made for Uksun-Boo's coming back to his hearth and home.

  It is so unjust! Those guinea pig testers did come back. In the sense that coming back was made provisions for. And when the time for real business came – there are no provisions made for any landing.

  Certainly it's different from what it was with the large-headed dogs who took part in the experiments. Though they are considered to be quick-witted and shrewd creatures, and it's a real pleasure to train them, no one gave them lectures as to the cyclic flashing of the central gas bubble or the primary reduction and further increase of the pressure when climbing higher. As a matter of fact, they did not even take time to explain to them if they were put in the spacesuit and capsule for ever or just for some time. Though they are companionable animals, they are brainless creatures. Well, Uksun-Boo was certainly in the know of all and everything. But nevertheless the hatch was sealed.

  In the beginning the first ones had the field of vision like common pilots. However, the cabins were not fully glazed, after all they were not festive bomb-carriers of some Duke. What a fashion! The Dukes are puffed up with pride, showing off their bomb-carriers to each other! It is certainly understandable. What are they to boast of? Not their limousines for sure. Even a real estate trader can buy a limousine running on benzene, to say nothing of some magnate – an owner of plants and ships. But the aristocracy has their special bones. They have their hereditary right to own weapons and horses in harnesses. No oil magnate, even if he crawls on his belly in front of the royalty, will get a permission for a harness, for no money. You won't get it, period! Would you like a key to the Royal Treasury and bedroom as well? Not with your mug face, Mr. Moneylender. First, you have to have the ancestors who died heroically for the crown, and ten generations of them, and the harness comes only after that.

  It is clear that the harness is in conformity with the era of engines. And the horse is even more so. One hundred horse powers of the limousine engine are no longer the required scales. But a bomb-carrier is just the thing. It is not for parades only. Though if some Ex-Duke is flying over the city... It is a real pleasure watching his flight at low altitude over the roofs. And some heralds starting a competition. The roar is deafening and glass jumps out of window-frames, tiles fall down from the upper floors. No enemy raids are needed. Though the people are trained and used to it. There is scotch tape on glass crosswise, stuck to the windows beforehand in order for them not to fall out at once. However, how can they not fall out? Some Ex-Barons have three and even four engines on each wing. Such a wing can show off in the air without any aircraft, independently. But it is certainly attached to a bomb-carrier. It is such a jumbo that one should bow down to those Dukes and Barons thanking them for patrolling in their aircrafts without any bomb loads.

  The inner design is certainly corresponding the outer looks. Though not everyone can see it but only the invited, the chosen ones. And there is information that there are diamonds inlaid in the steering wheel. They shine so brightly that one can see the instrument board without any additional light. Gilded levers, verniers on portable radio sets are pure platinum, multi-position control knobs are cut from amber. The chief pilot's seat is with the massaging back. The carpet in the cabin is such that one's heart bleeds when pilot's high fur boots step on it. The weight of all those ornaments is such that one could attach an additional megaton by the wheels instead of it. There is a rumour that once one such royal aluminum jumbo fell down in a forest: some Prince of the royal blood decided to work on his diving competing with someone after a palace ball as a bet. They say that while specialists in crime detection, experts and technicians were on their way from the capital to the scene of action, the local people really became rich.

  However, it seems that asceticism came in fashion later. Like everything should be the same as in a combat liner. This is not a country villa for you, massaraksh! Try covering your flyers with marble, and we'll see the length of the runway required for take-off! Massagers were torn out of the chairs with the help of crow bars, carpets from the cabins were thrown into the sea directly from portholes. It was unclear what they did with verniers and other platinum things. It seems that they were preserved somewhere by certain persons for showing off and flaunting. An Ex-Duke's bomb-carrier cannot be a common one, can it?

  Of course it cannot! Technician in the rank of Major regulates the engines of the combat machine, and the designer who worked out the engine does the same for an Ex-Baron, at special rates. One should not cover the surrounding forests and fields with Ex-Dukes and Ex-Barons really. And especially cities.

  So, the glazing in this business is not like bomb-carriers' glazing. The upper range limit is incomparable. The pressure of the World Light falls to practically zero outside. All the beauty of the glazing can be forced out and go to hell because of the inner pressure difference. But then, the speed! Sooner or later the machine will have to go back, to the high density atmosphere layers. So even the first experimental hypersonic aircrafts were no match for the crystal vases of Ex-Dukes' bomb-carriers. However, it did not save them from trouble. And the reason was not the firmness of the construction, but the fragility of human perception of the world. Thank the World Light, Ex-Barons did not go to the bottomless expanses beyond the atmosphere together with their platinum verniers. It could have been really sorrowful. Let the World Light shine for ever, but happily, Dukes and Princes of the royal blood had more pleasure when they pranced on their cuttlefish with turbines and propellers over the capitals. And they thought that switching to turbines instead of propellers was indecent for the aristocratic bones. That's a sure thing! To say that the length of the blade on your freshly laquered and hurriedly updated bomb-carrier is more than three meters is like to make a neighbouring Prince swallow a crowbar for the whole time of the ball. And even the ladies of the court will laugh at him in their girls' smoking room – ha, his thing is so small. We are speaking about the eight-blade propeller, surely.

  It is clear that a propeller is no good at all in the sparseness near the World Light: no matter if you make it even ten-meter long, its usefulness will still equal zero. Other principles are required here. However
, it was not the principles that were at fault.

  All the first experimental hypersonic aircrafts did not return to the base. They tried to look for their baked dross in the Khafif-Koldilier Mountains: they sent an expedition there. Naturally they did not even try that in the ocean. Sure thing, you won't trust a hypersonic liner to a dog, even a specially trained one. The large-headed creatures, as it was already said above, were just sent up with the help of a jet thrust. But there was no effect, was there? None! And a large-headed beast can tell nothing, really. But they take them out of spacesuits alive, right? Certainly they are in poop and piss: they are just dogs, and they were so frightened. And they bit their tongues as well. It is not clear how that could happen – massaraksh! — if they were taken to a dentist even before training, and dentists pulled the fangs out with their dental extracting forceps, for pendants in a sense. And now the beasts can only eat some porridge and milk: remembering their golden childhood in a cave, in the jungle. In short, judging by the urine and feces, the large-headed beasts were really frightened, but the question arises: what frightened them? But the beasts tell nothing, damn it.

  Glory to the World Light, the fourth hypersonic liner did land on the runway. However, the pilot said such things that all the minutes of his questioning were labeled secret and the tester himself, according to rumours, was sent to the life-long vacation, with registration in a single room with vigilant mental hospital attendants.

  And it was from that time on that all the window blinds started closing automatically in any hypersonic liner after reaching a certain altitude, with no vision left. A pilot had to fly blind. But it was better like that than with no return, meaning sending expeditions to the Dead Mountain Climbers Glacier, for looking for the pieces left. Because of that Uksun-Boo was piloting his hypersonic liner as it was to be done – blind, guided by the instruments only.

  *

  2.

  The squadron taxied to the runway and then went up to the sky in the correct order, as if they were parading. Not a gram of extra fuss even when the crews were boarding. If there was any hurry, it was so well-trained that one could think that there were only mechanisms engaged in this business, but for two legs and two arms on each pilot's body. But in essence people here were really just mechanical attachments. The required spare part at this stage of technological development. They managed fairly well without it in rocket business already, but it was still impossible to do without it when piloting aircrafts. Byuros-Ut, a radioman-machine-gunner, was registered as one of such mechanical attachments to the aluminum and steel monster. On the whole there were ten such attachments inside. Surely that was in one bomb-carrier only. But there was no one free from work, there was enough for everyone to do. They had to not only take the very heavy machine off from the very end of the runway but it was also desirable to bring it back sometime in the future to the monstrous hangar. It was required to balance up massaraksh knows how many hours, without loosing their way in the grid pattern of the World Sphere, and get to the required meridians and parallels precisely and just on time, with the accuracy of seconds. Ililjer-Soo, Four Times Major-Master, told them exactly that when instructed them.

  “If you get to this line five minutes earlier – the whole operation will go down the drain. And I won't put even ten pesetas on your heads either. You will surely lose the aircrafts.”

  And Ililjer-Soo, who was the Commander of the Peredovaya Base and the heavy bomb-carrier division, was certainly one hundred percent right. Byuros-Ut has never tried capsule-cabin catapulting in battle, but he hardly believed that extra-heavy ejected cabin will be able to stay on some sea surface until the rescue and salvage team arrives. And they will really have to fly the most part of the route over the ocean. It was horrible! In essence, they will have to maneuver over the half of the World Sphere. To go to the south-west in order to confuse the location of the Northern Empire which is beyond the horizon, and prance over the ocean, making a giant arch above it – fourteen thousand kilometers. And after that cross the borders of the continent directly from the north, from where imperial air-defense Marshals expect nothing. How can they know that we have bomb-carriers of the new type?

  One could not even try such a maneuver on the old ones. However, some tactical knick-knack was offered not long ago and it seems that it was even experimentally tested. One Inspector General from the outside even lectured the bombardiers from the Base. And he mentioned something indefinitely on the subject. Somewhat like it was possible to restructure one bomb-carrier in order to make a refueller out of it. And not just for carrying fuel to some stopover base on some island. It turns out that it is possible to throw a hose out of it in the air, and the most common regular bomb-carrier will have to attach itself to this hose somehow and suck as much fuel as it wants. The idea was definitely dumb.

  Byuros-Ut, thank the World Light, has been in the Air Force for many years. He is not a novice. He knows how difficult it is sometimes to keep distance in the bomb-carrier line even on a parade dedicated to the Coronation's Anniversary. The speed there is small and there are not bombs but tin imitations hanging for the people with binoculars to wonder at and the ladies of the court to gasp because of emotions overfilling them when they are watching through their telescopes. But the territories here are neutral, there is some ocean or, even worse, the waters by the shores of some potential enemy. So they are on edge. What if the wind throws this hose directly at one of the propellers? And then a kerosene fountain bursts from it? Byuros-Ut already saw a plane turning into a torch in the air without any such acrobatics in the sky. Besides, what if some hostile long-distance fighter aircraft appears nearby in the course of this wild debauchery, while the liquid substance is pumped from one board to the other? It will definitely taunt and sneer at this pair, coupled by this artificial umbilical cord. And how many missiles and shells can be saved?! You fire at the first one, and what is left of it destroys the second as if taking up the torch. And why in the first place? Why should they use a good fighting machine for carrying liquid? There is an evident profit from the normal bomb-carrier, and what's the use of all those intricate turns and twists? In short, someone up there in the ministries is just moving up through the ranks, advancing his own career, so he came up with this initiative. That someone is a bastard, massaraksh! He is ready to sacrifice numerous bomb-carriers and pilots as well and just for the convenience of his Marshal's ass. Doesn't he understand that no one will pat him on the back after the number of accidents in the Bomb-Carrier Air Force increases many times?

  Let the World Sphere be safe forever, but the strategists of the Kingdom of Noyui normally solved the problem of flight length increase. And they solved it cardinally. Radioman-machine-gunner Byuros-Ut hoped very much that only the people of his native Kingdom managed to come up with such an idea. He did not want the people from totalitarian Northern Empire to think up the same. He did not want it very much. Then all the advantages will go down the drain.

  *

  3.

  How it was before? Everyone stole nuclear technologies from each other: it is not clear already who started the process. The same can be said about missile technologies. Well, we are living in the industrial age – it is not so difficult to make all the mayhem a conveyor-like process. One missile, two missiles, ten, short-distance, middle-radius, intercontinental type, though there is only one continent. But they are still called intercontinental, ICBM, as people are used to the name and it has become, so to say, traditional. So, we have what we have. Everything is mixed now, and it's confusing as to how many each one has: there are not enough fingers on both hands to count. There are computers, certainly, for electronic counting. But it is still unclear who will press whom how many times if the action really starts. And there are bomb-carriers as well, damn you, massaraksh! How many bombs are there on this one and that? Who will let you inside the cabin? Especially to the bomb hatch? Quiet down. In short, it's the fear balance. Massaraksh! Guaranteed mutual destruction, seal affixed!

  So what? The economy, damn it, is going forward and forward. You see, all the government is taken by the throat. Give the access to raw materials, counterrevolutionary! Give new sales markets, shady bureaucrat! But what markets now, uncle? You — oops! chow-chow! — snatch their colony, and they answer you with a nuclear club. Sure thing, you grab your own club and... What's the result, my dear? You were told already, “guaranteed mutual destruction”. The egg-headed wise asses made their calculations, stretching the lines on their foreheads. You see, it's impossible to evade! As for economy – it does not give a damn about anything: “Sales markets! Sales markets!”.