“Fortune favors the bold.”
General Sergei Pavlovich Antonov sat in his chair and watched the world roll by beneath him.
“What are you thinking, Sergei?” the naked woman beside him wondered.
Antonov turned to regard her stunning beauty. She was like a classical sculpture, a blond Venus manufactured for his pleasure by the scientists. He’d thought he might grow bored of her, like a child with a toy, but she learned so much so quickly.
“It is destiny, Yevgenia,” he told her, using her, as he often did, as a sounding board for his thoughts. “How else could you explain it?”
“Explain what, my love?” she asked, floating at his shoulder in the weightlessness of the chamber, her fingers stroking his temples.
“All of this,” he told her, waving a hand expansively, the sleeve of his robe billowing with the motion. “Just when things seemed irretrievably lost, when the Motherland lay in radioactive ruins and the whole world turned its hand against me, my one desperate hope of escape led me to the very source of the power to take it all back. And it is within my grasp, Yevgenia, my beautiful one.” He stretched out a hand toward the viewport, as if he could take the world in his fist.
“It is only a matter of patience,” he went on. “My technicians have assumed control of power and food production in all the major cities—within days, the people will be forced to come to us to survive. Already the city officials in three of the largest of their megopolises have begun to cooperate in exchange for food and supplies.”
With a satisfied smile, he slipped an arm around his biomechanical consort and drew her into the chair with him, settling her on his lap.
“Yes, Yevgenia,” he concluded, softly stroking her perfect skin, “there must be a God and he must be a Russian…”
“General Antonov!” the unwelcome voice came over the room’s intercom with a palpable sense of urgency. “General Antonov, are you there?”
“Damn it!” The General punched the comm switch on his chair angrily, startling Yevgenia and sending her floating out of his lap. “I told you never to disturb me here, Pyotr!”
“I am sorry, General,” the bridge officer stammered, “but it’s the orbital-weapons control center… the place we are holding the Republic President.”
“I am very well aware where we are holding the Republic pretender, Lieutenant Dubronov,” Antonov growled. “What about it?”
“Sir, it’s under attack!”
“What?!” Antonov exploded out of his chair, nearly impacting the chamber’s padded roof before he caught himself. “Don’t do anything!” he yelled at the intercom pickup, pushing off toward the door. “I’ll be right down.”
The command bridge of the Protectorate flagship was awash with confusion when General Antonov arrived, floating gracefully through the transport tube. The ship was equipped with a rotating habitat drum to provide simulated gravity for the crew quarters, but the bridge was intentionally kept at zero-gee for tactical purposes.
“Silence!” Antonov roared, coming to a halt in the center of the control room. The buzz of activity came to an abrupt halt, as if a switch had been turned off, and all eyes turned immediately to the General. “Lieutenant Dubronov!” he snapped. “Report!”
“Yessir, General,” the younger man barked—though younger was a relative thing with the original Russian crew: Dubronov was a hundred and five to Antonov’s hundred and thirty, though thanks to the technology of the Great Machine he still seemed to be no older than his mid-twenties. “General Antonov, we received a transmission from Captain Constantinov at the satellite control center. He reported that they were under attack by motorized forces with missiles and small arms.”
“Get him on the radio for me,” Antonov ordered.
“We cannot, sir,” the Lieutenant said, shaking his head, his face pale. “We lost contact with the base five minutes ago, and we apparently no longer have control of the weapons satellites.”
“I am surrounded by incompetents!” Antonov roared, and Dubronov’s face went pale as he anticipated one of the General’s legendary rants.
“General Antonov!” One of the comtechs took his life in his hand by interrupting the General. Antonov swung around to glare at him menacingly, but the man went on hurriedly. “Sir, it is Colonel Podbyrin. His ship is approaching, requesting to dock with us.”
“Podbyrin!” the General barked. “Good Lord, I’d nearly given up hope he would make it. Put him on screen.”
“Yes, sir,” the comtech said, eager to comply and get the General’s focus off him.
The bridge’s main screen lit up with the snowy, staticy image of Colonel Podbyrin, flashing in and out of existence with each moment.
“Dmitry Grigor’yevich!” the General boomed. “What the hell is wrong with your communications?”
“…eral Antonov,” Podbyrin’s image said between bursts of static. “…attack by… forces damaged… antenna… life support failing.” The screen blacked out for a moment, then returned with amazing clarity, revealing Podbyrin’s sweating, wrinkled visage. “Need to dock immediately!”
Then the image disappeared into a collage of snow and the comtech switched it off.
“His radio has stopped transmitting, sir,” the comtech announced. “Your orders?”
“Allow him to dock,” Antonov instructed, frowning deeply. “Have a security team detailed to the docking bay in case there is anything wrong.”
“Sir,” Lieutenant Dubronov asked with some hesitation. “About the satellite control center—do you wish me to land support troops?”
“Not yet,” the General shook his head, sneering. “We cannot afford to lose any more troops--we are spread thin. We do not need the center anymore, since we have established orbital dominance.” He sniffed, turned to the weapons officer. “Prepare a fusion missile for immediate launch.”
“We’re in like Flynn,” Vinnie told Jason, shutting off the hologram simulation of Colonel Podbyrin. His sweat- covered face disappeared from the front screens, replaced by the looming mass of the enemy vessel. Sunlight glinted off the silver-metaled hull of the cylindrical Protectorate flagship, an elongated mass driver stretching along its spine.
“Ari,” McKay spoke into the radio pickup in his helmet, “are your people secure?”
“We’re tight, sir,” came the reply.
“Launch the pods,” McKay told Vinnie.
The Sergeant hit the control, and they all felt a sharp jolt as the boarding pods cut loose from the body of the ship, floating a few dozen meters away before their small rocket motors ignited.
On the screen, the egg-shaped grey shells streaked across their view, one of them heading up the portside toward the bridge, while the other preceded them into the yawning mouth of the docking bay. Vinnie turned up the magnification and they could see spacesuited maintenance workers within the bay scurrying for safety as the pod rocketed into the bay’s inner wall, small braking thrusters in the nose igniting just short of the surface of the hull.
The combined impact of the tungsten-carbide nose of the pod and the heat of the chemical braking thrusters burst through the inner wall and melted an airtight seal around the nose of the vehicle. Vinnie hit a control and a video window appeared on the viewscreen, bringing them a picture from Ari Shamir’s helmet cam.
In front of Ari, the pod’s combat lock shot out with a bang of explosive bolts, revealing the smoke-filled corridors beyond the docking bay and a cluster of stunned Protectorate officers staring with disbelief at the hole that had suddenly materialized in the wall.
