Natotevaal. War Chronicle

“Getting out from a pile of floppy disks and coils of a collapsed rack of the archive, Whitehouse was anxiously listening to the established silence.

The emitter of «Das Rhein» was quiet.

Mackliff was pottering about nearby, "Yes, it has been a long time I was hit in the face like that…"– he said, letting trickles of blood pour into the weightlessness down his smashed nose.

The speaker of internal communication rustled again:

– ‘Das Rhein’ calls up ‘Independence’, ‘Das Rhein’ calls up ‘Independence’.

Raumwaffe Colonel Manfred von Conrad speaking…As a result of penetration of a cumulative rocket, depressurization of all compartments has occurred. I beg permission to move to your Shuttle.

Whitehouse approached the microphone as quickly as it was possible:

– Yes, hurry up. We will open the lower gateway.

German astronauts appeared in ten painfully long minutes.

Covers of cadmium suits were torn apart; glass of pressure helmets was smoke-stained, identification badges looked faded.

Their eyes were empty, staring at one point. Their faces looked like the astronauts have just returned from the underworld. There were four of them, Colonel von Conrad, Navigator Eichberger and board gunner Hoffman, who was laid next to the fourth, Matthias Leiseheld, whose body was inside a funeral package with a small black-and-red-and-yellow flag pinned to the chest.

He was killed when one of the missiles hit the emitter tower.

– Well, what do we do now? – Eichberger asked gloomily.

– Allah Akbar. That's what. – Von Conrad looked up at his Navigator with his dull eyes, reddened from capillary bleeding, and brushed the edge of his hand across his throat.

A game of this self-confident giant with legless midgets went on for several minutes, after which the remaining Stergs were turned into rubble with a few exact salvos.

– Now, that’s what I call real war! – Von Conrad broke the deathly silence and clapped his hands. – Bravo, Swertz.”

Soon the soldiers from Earth will become space soldiers, the recruits of Natotevaal, and the victory or the defeat of the space race, for which they have decided to fight, will depend only from them.

This is where the author gets a chance to study human psychology and behavior in new, seemingly improbable situations.

Heroes will act in a new reality for them, which is hard to perceive, even in terms of technology – even though the author smartly describes all the technical details, they are not presented as a contrived conglomeration of terms, although composed in the form of a document:

“Digital Coded Telegram NO5

To:

Commander of the "Independence VH-O" group,

Captain-Commander

yagd Audun Tskugol.

Regarding the raider "Krovur":

During the battle for Terhoma in the Blue Plume area, sector A55S00; sub-sector 354 the following features of the raider "Krovur" were detected;

– The raider is a plate-shaped aircraft with two modes: cruiser and combat.

-in cruiser mode its body is solid, has a radius of 4.7 Krs and an average thickness of 1.01 Kr.

-in combat mode, a remote cabin separates from the central part of the body, leaving a 2.1 Kr radius void and the raider turns into a toroidal body.

At the time of the fight its cabin, which is a standalone warship moves away at a safe distance.

About ten objects get separated from the main body simultaneously; they most likely perform the repeater functions of the cabin because a variety of interference and communication blocks are commonly used in combat.

-Repeaters, due to their small size are survivable against the enemy; they line up in a chain which connects both parts of "Krovur".

-experts believe that the ‘swarming fly’ maneuvers are only possible due to a radically new type of engine, different from the megrasine ones.

"Krovur" probably has gravitational driving force, which is two or more artificial groups, asynchronously rotating inside the computer by thickening the rim, which is no more than a looped-through accelerator channel.

This allows "Krovur" to change the direction of the flight instantly, along and across its body, which is almost unattainable for our "cigar-shaped" vessels.”

However, the scientific and technical achievements, no matter how incredible they are, do not cancel or devalue human emotions and qualities – the duty of friendship, loyalty, personal courage and honor – these feelings are eternal and timeless. The strength of these feelings will be time-proved, and it will depend only on the hero whether these tests will end up with victory of the spirit or shame.

Therefore, when we read the list of the fallen Natotevaal recruits, we see an eternal granite plate in front of our eyes with names of the heroes of the Second World War, and this feeling is intensified with a Russian name of one of the characters:

"Here rest:

Jean Batiste Dunois,

George Fujieka,

Wolf Lauer Hoffman,

Otto Franz Eichberger,

Mathias Leiseheld.

And the soldiers of Natotevaal:

Richard Aydem,

Alexander Vladimirovich Dybal.

God bless their souls,

And the souls of all the commandos from Earth,

Who have fallen in Natotevaal.”

A detailed analysis of various aspects of science fiction as a phenomenon of literature and philosophy, that precedes the story about the novel of A.Demidov was not accidental.