Information Bomb.
The unfriendly activity of its forces towards the shuttle had meanwhile ceased to manifest itself - the onboard radar receiver, RWR, showed that the shuttle was being tracked by several MDS radars located in the European part, but there were no more launches - perhaps the ground was now feverishly trying to figure out what kind of malfunction had occurred, a malfunction as a result of which the precision ship being evacuated from Siberia began to be displayed as an unfriendly object and was attacked by its own forces.
Now the shuttle had to make one turn, after which it was supposed to proceed with the next part of the plan.
Zavirdyaev unbuckled his belts and rose above the chair. Then he smoothly turned and floated to the passage to the utility compartment - he intended to check what the local toilet was like - the flight was going to be a long one. The lower tier had a cozy and at the same time businesslike atmosphere - the air exchange fans were buzzing, small displays mounted in the wall were glowing.
The AI inquired about Zavirdyaev's plans and, having received an answer, moved the corresponding door itself. This was where it was possible to think everything over properly. However, there was zero gravity here - so it was not quite the same.
When Zavirdyaev returned to the control compartment, the onboard computer announced that he, Zavirdyaev, should take a paper bag, which was in a box attached to the side wall of the compartment. Everything indicated that the contents of the bag concerned the activation and operation of weapons.
The AI was not able to interfere with the operation of anything related to weapons - it was only concerned with the engine and other utilitarian systems of the ship. The decision was atypical - the overwhelming majority of combat vehicles, both at the front and in the air, were based on control by artificial intelligence, both their own and the staff. The main issue was the vehicle's own defense - under the control of the onboard AI, the defense worked even if the vehicle was outside the network coverage. Without AI, no crew would have been able to effectively control the onboard defense systems and the electronic warfare system, ECM, as it was now called even in the NVS RFR. The AI of this ship was not even loaded with its own defense system and ECM, not to mention integration into the network, that is, work via a bidirectional interlink - that tactical information that was displayed on the display of the shuttle via the communication node and, accordingly, via an ordinary virtual terminal. The "electronic pilot" of the shuttle, that is, the onboard computer in such a configuration had nothing to do with this tactical information - for a flying combat vehicle, this was nonsense. Perhaps the organizers had hedged their bets against the "crazy pilot" scenario and had deliberately left the mighty ship flying with vulnerability, or perhaps they had no clear picture of the supposed threat and had dumped all the work of informing the ship on a one-way interlink that they had modified and was working on the facility with a strange status without any visible interruptions. The funny thing was that in a certain sense, Zavirdyaev was playing the role of a "crazy pilot" or a "general gone mad" - this scenario, described at the dawn of the era of global weapons, had different names. Zavirdyaev opened the package. There were two documents there. The first, as expected, related to weapons systems. The second, more voluminous, contained a description of the political declarations that Zavirdyaev was to make. The document also described in detail the actions of the ground groups that were to carry out coups in the Bloc countries.
The strikes were supposed to be carried out exclusively manually. Of course, this did not imply working with a map and a calculator in hand. There was an unremarkable system for that, designed to calculate trajectories and program warhead boosters. However, the encrypted target coordinates still had to be entered manually from a sheet of paper, as well as the weapon activation codes. There was also an optical system on board, to put it simply, a twenty-inch Cassegrain telescope, presumably left over from the civilian appearance of the ship. In the military version, with the help of this optical station, it was possible to choose a place for a strike. It was also possible to designate a landing site, using TSICS, a system that kept in memory the entire relief, all significant visual landmarks on the planet. Whether this option with arbitrary landing and shooting was available now, Zavirdyaev did not know, at least such shooting and landings were not provided for in the plan. The first target for a warning strike was London. The cargo bay housed a turret mount with twelve positions. Each position was designed for a single block with an orbital maneuvering system. In other words, a drum for twelve warheads, each with an engine stage.
The attack on London was to be carried out in two stages - the first pass was to be a strike with a high-altitude detonation with zero losses, after which an ultimatum was to be issued, which was supposed to be withdrawn by the time the attack line was reached again, and for history, the issuance of an openly terrorist ultimatum was to be presented as a fake and a provocation by the enemies of the revolution.
The next attack, which was supposed to be carried out after the first strike on London, fell on the desert in Nevada - there was a storage base there, where combat-ready but disappointing aircraft had been dragged over the past couple of years - hundreds of beautiful bombers, including dozens of Mach 5 carriers, were to be turned into piles of torn, charred metal. The "Nevada" sector was covered by missile defense, but it was a previous generation missile defense. It would have dealt with a high-speed block and a pile of foil cups, but not only were two blocks supposed to be dropped, there was also supposed to be sabotage.
After all, there was a plan for that, and if there had been no alternative, the plan could well have provided for even sabotage of the "Amanda". Of course, the ship's flight was only an integral part - there, on the ground, their own processes were supposed to take place and were already taking place, and not in the intricacies of defense systems, but in the state machines of individual national states.
Zavirdyaev fixed the weapons document on a special holder to the side of the chair and opened the political one. There was something to read and something to be surprised at. It was noteworthy that all this familiarization was supposed to take place in the ship. Zavirdyaev, who was preparing for the flight and even riding the bus to the shuttle, had to be a "clean slate" in terms of awareness of the contents of both documents.
Some of the items in the document's table of contents simply bore the names of the Bloc countries. Each item prepared its own fate and its own future for them.
For example, as far as Russia was concerned, much of what had been happening recently was explained rather unexpectedly. Lebedev, who unleashed an inter-party confrontation between his coalition and the SDPR - "Social Democratic Party of Russia" and RPEE - "Workers' Party "European Unity" that stood on the other side, unwittingly created a situation close to the one that resulted in the emergence of the SSSF, the Superfederant, that he hated. The Federal Counterintelligence Service, FSK RFR, which took the side of Speaker Lebedev, successfully swallowed the disinformation that individual units of the Superfederant were secretly transferred to the capital to support Eplinsky and Bokin, who opposed Lebedev. After this, it was not surprising that Lebedev decided to at least block the SSSF and at most deal with it - this would have been the main armed effort that the Coalition of People's Democratic Parties and Representatives of the NDPP would have undertaken - fighting in the Capital was not in their plans at all. A kind of Conversion, only not of the Great War, but of a political crisis. In a cheap Russian localization Instead of Oppenheimer's orbital war, there should have been a massacre named after Lebedev. The suppression of the Super-Federant, both of its banks, would have immediately raised the rating of the already presumptuous speaker of parliament inside Russia much more noticeably than last year's October settlement raised the rating of Harlington in his election campaign. Against this background, the resistance of Eplinsky and Bokin, who would have begun to "lose the street" in the capital, would have been broken.
It was curious that the most probable reaction of ordinary citizens majority of both the SFS and KANAR to Lebedev's police operation was assumed to be positive - the cessation of the existence of both political entities would put an end to the mutual hostility constantly fueled from above by the authorities of both sides. In part, Zavirdyaev was ready to agree with this, but only in part - many citizens of both parts of the Superfederant took their SFS and KANAR quite seriously and were truly loyal, if not devoted. The most interesting thing was not this, but the fact that Lebedev's attack, who would have to carry out his plan despite the dramatic events in orbit, was supposed to end in complete collapse. And all this despite the additional funds given to the "semi-police" forces as part of the secret cover operation. The document, however, was silent about what these funds were. After all, a new group was to be formed from the disparate and noticeably battered forces of the SFS and KANAR, which would move together with the Order Commands, very reminiscent of the same OMSDONs, to Europe. The previous entourage of the RBSF and LBSF top brass, the word "establishment" was very difficult to apply to them, had been neutralized back in the spring, so the ideology and morality of mutual hatred had significantly sagged in recent months - now such united forces were quite real. After going through several more stages, the situation came to the point that all of Russia found itself under a kind of political occupation of the SSSF, and the Super Federation itself did not disappear anywhere and continued to exist in a softer version. At the beginning of the War, it was really conceived as a port for trade with the post-war Asian Bloc - crazy rumors turned out to be true. For this purpose, a twelve-foot road branch was built in the Super Federation. And not at all to meet the needs of the Doomsday infrastructure. Many events were envisaged and the combination was unexpected. Just like in a yellow tabloid.
And such a rather aggressively turbulent scenario was prepared for the overwhelming majority of countries - for Britain, for France and for the USA.
Now the document looked like just a list of some strange plans, no one knows who came up with them and why, but when these plans are backed up by action - the shuttle flight and the upheavals below, this document will be able to become the most powerful information bomb, the most powerful in the entire War. And also the source of an avalanche of conspiracy theories for posterity. If, of course, there is a leak. In fact, it will most likely sink into obscurity.
Zavirdyaev recalled in detail his meeting with one of the prime directors of AEX, Bandon. Memories of this surfaced only when the shuttle entered orbit - down there, at the launch site, he had not yet remembered about it. Having once again replayed in his head the episode of the meeting with the titan of world business, Zavirdyaev admired the plan, the training he had completed, and his historical mission.