Лю Цысинь - Hold Up the Sky

Vechnyy Buran could only take avoidance measures. It couldn’t depart for farther space, with numerous unmanned NATO satellites patrolling Jupiter’s orbital path. They were small, but whether armed or unarmed, any one could pose a deadly threat to the Vechnyy Buran.

The only option was to draw near the sun. The automatic active-cooling heat-shielding system that was the pride of the Vechnyy Buran allowed it to go closer to the sun than any other man-made object yet. Now the Vechnyy Buran had reached Mercury’s orbital path, five million kilometers from the sun and one hundred million kilometers from Earth.

Most of the Vechnyy Buran ’s hold had been closed off, but the area left to Misha was still astonishingly enormous. Through the broad, clear dome ceiling, the sun looked three times larger than it looked on Earth. He could clearly see the sunspots and the singularly beautiful solar prominences emerging from the purple corona; sometimes, he could even see the granules formed by convection in the surface. The serenity here was an illusion. Outside, the sun pitched a raging storm of particles and electromagnetic radiation, and the Vechnyy Buran was just a tiny seed in a turbulent ocean.

A gossamer-thin thread of EM waves connected Misha to the Earth, and brought the troubles of that distant world to him as well. He had just been informed that the command center near Moscow had been destroyed by a cruise missile, and that the Vechnyy Buran ’s control had passed to the secondary command center at Samara. He received the latest news of the war from Earth at five-hour intervals; at those times, each time, he would think of his father.

Marshal Mikhail Semyonovich Levchenko felt as if he were face-to-face with a wall, though in reality, a holographic map of the Moscow theater of war lay in front of him. Conversely, when he turned toward the big paper map hanging on the wall, he could see breadth and depth, a sense of space.

No matter what, he preferred traditional maps. He didn’t know how many times he’d sought a location on the very bottom of the map, forcing him and his strategists to get on hands and knees; the thought now made him smile a little. He also remembered spending the eve of military exercises in his battlefield tent, piecing together the newly received battle maps with clear tape. He always made a mess of it, but his son had done the taping neater than he ever did, that first time he came along to watch the exercises….

Finding that his musings had returned to the subject of his son, the marshal vigilantly cut off his train of thought.

He and the commander of the Western Military District were the only people in the war room, the latter chain-smoking cigarettes as they watched the shifting clouds of smoke above the holographic map, their gaze as intent as if it were the grim battlefield itself.

The district commander said: “NATO has seventy-five divisions along the Smolensk front now. The battlefront is a hundred kilometers long. They’ve breached the line at multiple points.”

“And the eastern front?” Marshal Levchenko asked.

“Most of our Eleventh Army defected to the Rightists too, as you know. The Rightist army is now twenty-four divisions strong, but their assaults on Yaroslavl remain exploratory in nature.”

The earth shook with the faint vibrations of some ground explosion. The lights hanging from the ceiling cast swaying shadows around the war room.

“There’s talk now of retreating to Moscow and using the barricades and fortifications for a street-to-street battle, like seventy-odd years ago.”

“That’s absurd! If we withdraw from the western front, NATO can swing north around us to join forces with the Rightists at Tver. Moscow would fall into panic without them lifting a finger. We have three options in our playbook right now: counterattack, counterattack, and counterattack.”

The district commander sighed, looking wordlessly at the map.

Marshal Levchenko continued, “I know the western front isn’t strong enough. I plan to relocate an army from the eastern front to strengthen it.”

“What? But it’s already going to be a challenge to defend Yaroslavl.”

Marshal Levchenko chuckled. “Nowadays, the problem with many commanders is their tendency to only consider a problem from the military angle. They can’t see beyond the grim tactical situation. Looking at the current situation, do you think the Rightists lack the strength to take Yaroslavl?”

“I don’t think so. The Fourteenth Army is an elite force with a high concentration of armored vehicles and low-altitude attack power. For them to advance less than fifteen kilometers a day while not having suffered serious setbacks seems like taking things slow on purpose.”

“That’s right, they’re watching and waiting. They’re watching the western front! And if we can take back the initiative in the western front, they’ll keep on watching and waiting. They might even independently negotiate a cease-fire.”

The district commander held his newest cigarette in his hand, but had forgotten all thoughts of lighting it.

“The defection of the armies on the eastern front really was a knife in our back, but some commanders have turned this into an excuse in their minds to steer us toward passive operational policies. That has to change! Of course, it must be said that our current strength in the Moscow region isn’t enough for a total turnaround. Our hope lies in the relief forces from the Caucasus and Ural districts.”

“The closer Caucasus forces will need at least a week to assemble and advance into place. If we account for possession of the airspace, it might take even longer.”

It was past three in the afternoon when Kalina and the first lieutenant entered the city in their jeep. The air raid alarm had just sounded, and the streets were empty.

“I miss my T-90 already, Major,” sighed the lieutenant. “I finished armored-vehicle training right around the time I broke up with my girlfriend, but the moment I arrived at my unit and saw that tank, my heart soared right back up again. I put my hand on its armor, and it was smooth and warm, like touching a lover’s hand. Ha, what was that relationship worth! Now I’d found a real love! But it took a Mistral missile this morning.” He sighed again. “It might still be burning.”

At that time they heard dense explosions from the northwest, a savage area bombing rare in modern aerial warfare.

The lieutenant was still wallowing in the morning’s engagement. “Less than thirty seconds, and the whole tank company was gone.”

“The enemy losses were heavy, too,” Kalina said. “I observed the aftermath. There were about the same number of destroyed vehicles on each side.”

“The ratio of destroyed tanks was about 1 to 1.2, I think. The helicopters were worse off, but it wouldn’t have gone over 1 to 1.4.”

“In that case, the battlefield initiative should have stayed on our side. We have a sizable advantage in numbers. How did the battle end up like this?”

The lieutenant turned to eye Kalina. “You’re one of the electronic-warfare people. Don’t you get it? All your toys—the fifth-generation C3I, the 3-D battle displays, the dynamic situation simulators, the attack-plan optimizer, whatever—looked great in the mock battles. But on the real battlefield, all the screen in front of me ever showed was ‘COMMUNICATION ERROR’ and ‘COULD NOT LOG IN.’ Take this morning, for example. I didn’t have a clue what was happening in the front and flanks. I only got one order: ‘Engage the enemy.’ Ah, if we’d only had half our force again in reinforcements, the enemy wouldn’t have broken through our position. It was probably the same way all down the line.”