IL sustained combat damage. Nagulin himself is wounded and is trying to reach the shore, where he can leave the plane with a parachute. The air group is covering him, but at dawn the Japanese can attack them with superior forces. Lieutenant General Kudryavtsev radioed an order to raise the regiment in the air and suppress the enemy's attempts to destroy the planes returning from the mission.”
“How bad was his injury?” Lena interrupted the commander, unable to stand it.
“Severe concussion. There is no more exact information,” Lebedev pretended not to notice the insubordination. “Squad, listen to the mission. Now we'll load up on the transport plane and fly right behind the air regiment's planes. Colonel General Nagulin will give us the exact coordinates of the place where he will leave the damaged plane. We immediately fly to this point and perform the landing. Kudryavtsev's pilots will cover us. Our goal is to find Comrade Nagulin, help him, and ensure that he gets to our units. Any questions?”
I was getting worse and worse. My headache was getting stronger, and my hands on the wheel were trembling sensibly.
“You have a severe concussion,” Letra commented on my condition. “It would be fatal for any local, but your body should be able to handle it. You need peace and deep medicated sleep with forced regeneration.”
“Are you kidding me? What kind of peace is there? Unless it's eternal… The Japanese are just getting ready to give it to me.”
The Japanese were really getting ready. And they've even begun to do it. Six dozen fighters took off in two waves from Taiwan. Normally they wouldn't have caught up with us, but now… By our standards, the group was barely moving. The altitude was two thousand, the speed was four hundred. My only engine couldn't provide more speed – it was starting to overheat. According to Letra's calculations, the enemy would catch up with us just over the coast, and the Zero planes, which took off from the outskirts of Hong Kong, would arrive there even earlier. True, by that time the main forces of Kudryavtsev's regiment should arrive to help us and give the Japanese a heated encounter, but all this air slaughter would begin exactly where I would have to leave the plane, if I was still conscious of course, which, given the dynamics of my well-being, was not at all guaranteed.
I underestimated the fury of the enemy. Taiwan and Hong Kong were just the beginning. Another large group of Japanese fighters took off from airfields around Shanghai, and they clearly knew our course and speed, as well as the fact that we could not turn sideways anywhere. The Japanese clamped us on three sides, slamming the trap tightly, and by their calculations we had no way to break out of it.
“I analyzed the condition of the disabled engine,” Letra seemed to be trying to find a way out of the situation the whole time, too, “It's cooled down, and if you get hard pressed, you can try to get it running again. There's a good chance it will work, but it won't last more than three or four minutes, the damage is still there. Then the fire will start again, and it will be impossible to put it out.”
“My side window is damaged. I can't reach top speed anyway.”
“No one says anything about top speed, but you'll get up to six hundred, and that should be enough to get away from the Zero planes a little or get out of the dogfighting zone.”
“I got it,” I had neither the energy nor the will to argue with Letra – I felt like my head was splitting in pain.
“Our Asians have shitty planes, Commander,” said the deputy armament chief contemptuously, looking skeptically at the holographic projection of the battle area. “They have no speed, no armor, no normal weapons.”
“What did you want from the savages?” Hirch sniggered. “It's all primitive on this planet.”
“No, it isn't. The aircraft carrier was destroyed by superior machines.”
“They're not a masterpiece either,” the Lieutenant Commander shrugged, “though compared to everything we've seen here before, their characteristics are impressive. It was not for nothing that the computer immediately singled out this air force unit, as something that required our attention. In addition, the scientific satellites in orbit are also clearly playing on their side – our drones could not block their communications for a reason.”
“And yet, they have already lost two planes and one more plane will definitely not make it to the base.”
“None of them will make it. We gave the Japanese information about the course of their retreat. From here on, I hope our wards will do everything themselves. You better tell me this, Korff,” the destroyer commander looked intently at his subordinate. “Where did these planes come from in this out-of-the-way hole called China? None of the parties to the conflict have anything like that, but the Chinese do.”
“The Chinese probably had nothing to do with it. After all, you can draw any identification marks on the wings, so the Chinese origin of these planes is most likely a fiction,” the head of the engineering service joined in the discussion. “Unfortunately, the satellite database we hacked contains only information up to the beginning of 1941. At that time, no nation on this planet was at all ready to mass-produce something like this.”
“Wherever those planes came from, they could interfere with our plans, especially if there are many of them,” Hirch replied, continuing to watch as more and more marks of Japanese fighters taking off to intercept the Chinese planes lit up on the virtual map. “We need to stop their production, and first we need to at least understand where they are made.”
“Probably in the U.S. or Great Britain. Germany would not supply weapons to China, and everyone else is certainly not up to to this kind of technology,” the engineer suggested.
A scattering of red dots flashed on the hologram.
“Observing Chinese fighter-bombers taking off from a base near Chongqing,” the space control operator reported, “These are the same type of planes as the ones that sank the Japanese aircraft carrier. Fifteen machines are already in the air, forty-three more are preparing for takeoff.”
“Well, we've already seen them in the night fight,” grinned Hirch, “let's see what they're capable of during the day. How many planes will the Japanese have time to pull in to the battle site?”
“One hundred and thirty Marine Zero planes and about a hundred Army I-1 Falcon planes. Almost a threefold preponderance.”
“Computer, give me a prediction of the results of the fight.”
“There is little data on the capabilities of Chinese aircraft,” the artificial intelligence replied in a colorless voice. “In combat with Japanese ships they carried different types of weapons. There may be a high margin of error in this estimate.”
“Report the most likely scenario.”
“Losses on both sides of up to 70 percent of the machines with an overall uncertain outcome. Combat will stop on its own due to the exhaustion of ammunition and fuel by the surviving enemies.”
“That suits us,” the destroyer commander's lips curved into a satisfied chuckle.
I seemed to have passed out or fallen into a semi-conscious state for a while, but I nevertheless didn't let go of the control column. When I was able to perceive my surroundings again, there was a mountainous coastline ahead, riddled with coves and bays.
“Come to your senses, Lieutenant! You're about to be shot down!” Letra's voice is screaming in my head.
The
