Natotevaal. War Chronicle

Commander of the picket boat ‘Ropin-6’

255 patrol division,

Lieutenant Kannet Prehur.

***

Digital Coded telegram AHO 69

Confidential level: A.

To all combat vessels of the squadron 156 Fleet 1U.

I hereby order:

– To abort all current tasks and block the areas adjacent to the sphere sector A16N45 according to the scheme ‘Net’.

– To organize a search for survivor vessels and rescue boats of yagdishwalder-42

– To  bring the lock scanners of the second and the third watch on combat duty

– Cancel leave and enter the mode of 1A degree alert

– Commander of the ‘Tybentite’ battleship, Captain Grafog Tertisote should launch an investigation concerning the circumstances of the YAG-42 destruction.

Natote!

/A copy to the General Headquarters

Of the 3rd Galactic directory

19-55.

Mars 18 a.c.

Commander of 156th squadron of 1U Fleet,

Colonel yagd Kokum Yohoud.

***

The earth, covered with glittering scales of cirrus clouds, decorated with scrolls of ocean cyclones seemed to be a figment of someone's whimsical fantasy.

Slowly spinning around like a huge lazy ball, it seemed, it took dense blackness from deep space and spread it on its surface in various colors and shades of blue, from smoky, white and blue on the edge of the atmospheric film, to dark ultramarine over the ocean breaks.

Awakening continents slowly crawled out on the sunlit side, showing spots of deserts, forests, wormholes of megalopolises, negligent strokes of Islands and zigzags of coastlines.

Pilot of the shuttle "Independence" Lieutenant of the SAS air forces, Ronald Whitehouse sighed deeply and not paying attention to this magnificent picture, rubbed his neck on the collar of his spacesuit:

– When it comes to it, nothing ever turns out! – He put a krypton cutter that has not yet cooled off, in his backpack, circled around the bent bracket that jammed the docking rim of the rescue capsule, and perched on the edge of the shunting engine.

Aiming, he slung a piece of the rod from a broken solar battery from hand to hand, and brandished:

– Geronimo!

A blow.

The bracket trembled slightly, but didn't move an inch.

The astronaut himself flew off to the whole length of the tether on an impact and, after he had stopped the indiscriminate tumbling with great difficulty, began to maneuver the back pack, attempting to re-approach the odious piece of iron:

– Hey, Mackliff, Mackliff, hey! I can’t do it. We should try something else. Maybe we can descend with the Germans?

Air crackled, and the nervous voice of John Mackliff, the flight engineer, came through:

– The Germans are in no better conditions than us. Depressurization of the capsule. All of their life support systems have failed. Ronald! If you don't straighten out this piece of iron shit, we are going to die, damn it!

Prickly shivers ran down Whitehouse’s back; the indicator of the sleeve altimeter showed indifferent figures-«334».

Only three minutes ago the altimeter was showing 335, 5 miles at perigee. "Independence" was falling down rapidly, narrowing down the number of turns of orbital rotation. Having miscalculated the power of the back pack jet, Whitehouse hit the casing of the radio telescope, broke the sun visor of his pressure helmet and having made a ridiculous flip, found himself on the other side of the Shuttle.

At the right side of ‘Independence’, like a dark sprout, the streamlined hull of the German military ship ‘Das Rhein. WN-4962’ was sticking out.

An authentication check box of the Euro-Asian Community contrastingly stood out on its black armor.

Six hours ago, when ‘Das Rhein’ started a complex maneuver on the selection of the supply container in close vicinity to the research Shuttle, one of its shunting engines broke down.

At high speed the armored nose pierced the belly of ‘Independence’, which was covered only by sunshield.

The blow was terrible.

The right solar battery and the wall-mounted fuel storage containers have been torn off from the shuttle; the shield of the aerodynamic braking was messed up, a valuable telescope was broken to pieces, the rescue capsule was damaged, almost all of the flight control systems were deactivated, and the equipment for ozone-plasma synthesis, intended for ozone input into the atmosphere was broken as well.

Jean Dunois, the flight supervisor and George Fujieka, the second pilot were killed because of depressurization of the laboratory and the engine compartment.

Dick Aidem, the general major of the SAS air forces, received multiple fractures, concussion of the brain and now was lying unconscious in the control room under the supervision of the navigator – Alexander Dybal.

The German ship was less damaged.

However, everything that had been fixed in it without welding, was swept away from its places by inertial acceleration; the clamp bolts were cut from the storage batteries, as well as the main and local computers, propulsion systems, aiming systems, food containers, not to mention personal belongings of the crew, rubbish, rags and oil from the broken gyroscope that appeared out of nowhere…

All of these things were sadly floating inside the battle station that now looked more like a garbage truck, rather than a military ship.

The Germans were all alive, but two of the four officers had fractures and the board gunner Wolff Lawyer Hoffman was in a comatose state.

Otto Franz Eichberger, the navigator of «Das Rhein», who was performing the duties of a doctor, having examined the Lieutenant just sighed:

– Poor Hoffman, he can only be saved on Earth, in a special ‘Raumwaffe’ hospital in Dusseldorf.