OUTCAST

2

Realizing that the program would now be buggy for about five minutes, I was distracted by the news bulletin on the air. An hour ago, Argun fighter aircraft took off from the airfields in Urga and Morabon. Despite the expectation of a strike, 30 "hawks" caught the Horde by surprise. They suppressed part of the air defense, lost 5 vehicles and retreated to the east, meeting the Horde fighters, who raised the alarm and flew to rescue Kaulnin. After 30 minutes, 10 heavy bombers approached Kaulnin, at the same time strategic silo-based complexes reached the target. The air defense of the Horde shot down 2 complexes out of 4. The surviving 2 hit the power plant and the communications center, cutting down the light below and, accordingly, communications. 5 bomb carriers plowed the airfield, turning the runways, all ground buildings, planes and helicopters standing on the ground into a mess. Another five bombers marched west of the city on the location of the 22nd division, covering Kaulnin, and its supply units. In the course of this, 4 strategic bombers were destroyed by air defense fire. The remaining six gathered in battle formation (a rotating circle) above the center, and then covered the industrial zone with all their might. Apparently, all the ammunition was used up there, since the three surviving vehicles (three were shot down by Horde anti-aircraft gunners over the factories) turned around over the western suburbs, over Kaul Mountain, and went southwest towards their base in Argunsk.

Finally, the grief, nerves, horror and rage of millions subsided, and the holographic image moved. The industrial area was now a gray shapeless long spot, slightly stretching to the north with the wind. The metropolis, without electric lights, looked naked and battered. This is how corpses look in the morgue - bluish, rumpled, with a pulled up T-shirt, he seemed to be looking into space either with reproach or with indifference. The lines of avenues cut through the dirty skin of neighborhoods like whip marks. In the haze, the city trembled slightly, as if afraid of a new blow. The lake, with its blue embankment, looked frightened into the sky like a black eye.

It is strange, after all, how the Argunians managed to achieve surprise. The Horde had been waiting for their strike for two months, but it was just a diplomatic maneuver, the beginning of nothing promising negotiations of third parties (under the patronage of the anteevs, lavandos, northern Karyans, and party members gathered in Grothill - all the neighbors of Argunia and the Horde) even without the official participation of opponents (there were unofficial representatives at the level of advisers to the heads of state) without even a formally declared agenda... They just talked there. Yes, the media gave it as a ray of hope. And the Horde people believed in this hope for a couple of days. But can the Argunians be considered treacherous? After all, they always openly called the release of Kaulnin their main goal, and with this slogan all their presidents came to power for the last 40 years, that Kaulnin was occupied by the Horde.

Suddenness is a strange thing. Any more or less rummaging couch analyst understands that the main goal of a strategic strike is power plants, communication centers, transport hubs, and, above all, industrial facilities. As a result, the strategic forces of Argunia have now worked for "5", and certainly now their generals are already picking holes in their tunics for orders. It was a brilliant operation, their names will go down in history, these names will be called the new bombers and fighters of the next generations.

But after all, just a few circles of bombers over the center of Kaulnin made thousands of people believe that the blow would be inflicted on the governor's palace. The anti-aircraft gunners shifted their attention there and allowed them to bombard the industrial zone almost unhindered. And how many thousands of extra people because of this remained in the industrial zone and died? And how many traders did not have time to merge the securities of the companies that own these plants, mistakenly deciding at the last moment that the plants would survive?

News channels went "URGENT!" from a deserted area five hundred kilometers east of Kaulnin, where fighter jets from two sides clashed in the sky. The Horde, going to the rescue, were met by the Argunians, who covered the withdrawal of their bombers. A violent skirmish no longer solved anything. And watching a high-speed battle of fighters on a hologravizor is no pleasure, keeping track of their crazy frills is still not realistic. It's easier to look at the loss table. 25 Argun "hawks" against 30 Horde "falcons". Losses - 6 hawks, 4 falcons. But the Horde, apparently realizing the lack of a clear goal - they did not have time to repel the attack on Kaulnin, they did not go for the second attack, but flew to the north. The Argunians, waiting for the bombers to almost return to Argunsk and become inaccessible to the falcons, flew south, and from there to the bases,

Stock tapes have already "knocked out money", throwing out the first figures - the results of the battle. In monetary terms, 4 used mine strategic complexes amounted to 200 thousand conventional gold, 18 lost bombers and fighters 1,440 thousand gold - in total, Argunia spent 1,640 thousand on this raid. gold. For the Horde, 14 aircraft and 12 helicopters lost in battle and on the ground cost 1,400 thousand gold. And the destroyed 4 industrial plants on the ground and the power plant, taking into account the non-production in the next at least two years, caused damage to the Horde by at least 7,500 thousand. And most importantly, in the event of a protracted war, the absence of the Kaulinsky industrial complex on the scales will not allow the Horde economy to outweigh the economy of Argunia. The airport and the communication center are pennies. But it’s not the governor’s palace to bomb at such rates,

While traders were crawling up and down support lines and lines with forecasts were running. Political channels began to issue generalized preliminary results of the battle. They talked about the small losses of the Horde army (about five hundred military personnel) and about one hundred thousand dead civilians - the same ones that the Argunians today began to liberate from the Horde.

I didn’t have any relatives or valuable assets there, and I didn’t perceive the spectacle of the steaming industrial zone in Kaulna, which had become a smokehouse for a hundred thousand corpses, very emotionally. I had a friend in Kaulnin, but that devil certainly couldn't stick around where the bombs fall. He is whole, unharmed, and working. Maybe in a month he will contact me.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was +10, but Ratmir was sweaty even in a summer jumpsuit. He had never been to a war before, the Horde hadn't fought in 20 years, although he was sure he was ready for the stress of combat. But the evacuation of civilians from Kaulnin, in which he, an army captain, had to participate from yesterday evening until this morning, is something with something. Ratmir did not understand how there was a lack of counter-traits of women - civilian doctors. His soldiers sometimes retreated behind the car to vomit, and sometimes they vomited right on the spot. It was difficult to say what was worse - loading the sick into the wagons or loading the healthy.

The loading of patients and staff of city hospitals was organized at the lowest management level. Buses and trucks were delayed somewhere, and arrived 10 minutes before the departure of the train. It was impossible to pull, the task was to send 30 trains from this station overnight. In order to have time to load 400 bedridden sick women, they decided to break the rules and allow soldiers to approach the patients (without dressing gowns and bandages, in dirty field overalls, with dirty hands, without the slightest skill). The guys cheerfully grabbed stretchers and gurneys, some appliances and dragged them up the stairs into the cars. Of course, some bubbles beat, tripods with droppers fell into the mud. When a soldier stumbled on the stairs, the stretcher tipped over, and some naked, shabby, overweight old woman flew down, hitting her head loudly on the iron of the car and muffledly smacking with all her weight into the dirty slush on the ground. Doctors watched with empty eyes as some obviously expensive unit with a bunch of lamps and tubes crashed. When they rolled the gurney from the car, they caught on some hooks with a blanket and tore it off. The soldier slipped and buried his muzzle in the woman's bare stomach - in pus, in some kind of pungent smelly mucus, similar to maggots. The fighter was sick on her stomach, the woman was moaning ... “Who came up with the idea of ​​​​using the army for evacuation? The guys won’t get up later! ”, Ratmir thought and was surprised that the boys didn’t even swear that night. Silently they worked. the woman groaned… “Who came up with the idea of ​​using the army for evacuation? The guys won’t get up later! ”, Ratmir thought and was surprised that the boys didn’t even swear that night. Silently they worked. the woman groaned… “Who came up with the idea of ​​using the army for evacuation? The guys won’t get up later! ”, Ratmir thought and was surprised that the boys didn’t even swear that night. Silently they worked.

There was a whistle ahead, a beep was heard into the phone fixed on the chest, Ratmir waved his hand, and the soldiers began to push the people away from the cars. The first echelon left on time, and it was possible to load 400 sick people and 200 personnel. They stuffed it, of course, at random, but there they will figure it out on the way, lie down. It was already 30 minutes for the next echelon, and the guys got used to it, everything went more or less.

At 4 in the morning, healthy people left - from some organizations. The fact that they were walking didn't make it any easier. They broke like cattle. When one healthy forehead with suitcases squeezed into the narrow door of the vestibule, pushing the stroller with the child, the stroller fell, the child fell into a puddle, the bag was torn, some sausages and linen did not fall into the puddle. The child yelled, the mother squealed, the man barked obscenities at her, the soldier backhanded him with a rifle butt. The goon, waving his arms, fell back down, and fell into a puddle on a child, a stroller and sausages, catching a woman who fell on top of him with his hand. The soldier rushed by the legs to pull her up into the car, the soldiers below kicked the peasant with their boots and began to get the screaming child and the carriage out of the mud, trampling sausages and linen into the mud.

Ratmir went into the car - people were jostling in the dimly lit corridor, swearing with the last words, sharing shelves and places for bags under the seats. Some of the scum were drunk, some of the whiners were already yelling that they had been robbed. Ratmir with two soldiers walked along the carriage. They pushed the people with their fists and feet, forcing them to sit down and lie down. “Who, bitch, gets up from his place, - pere ... boo nah!” Ratmir yelled, kicking someone's trunk from the passage under the seat with a kick. Soldiers smashed someone's head with a rifle butt, he sat, his face was covered in blood, his eyes wide. But the others were quiet. Ratmir went to the rest of the cars.