VII
(Three minutes to launch)
(One hundred and three minutes to impact)
Shaking the last drops of water from his hands, Tomi headed back to the console.
He felt good and relaxed. Masturbation was a habit for him, but also a way to work off stress.
And he'd had a genuinely stressful stretch behind him.
For days he'd wrestled with the electronics and with assembling a system that, in its own maddening way, refused to work as it should.
The sheer mass of wires and cables was beyond measure.
Nor did the systems of the ancient atomic shelter help.
It would have been far easier if he'd had access to the heart of the shelter's system — he could have reworked and upgraded it so everything ran more smoothly — but Nick stubbornly wouldn't reveal the location of the central system, because Nick loved to make life difficult for everyone around him.
He tapped the screen showing the feed from in front of the entrance.
The odd drunk staggered among the vehicles, and the odd couple did their thing in the parked cars.
"Next time I have to put up more cameras around the parking lot. There could be some good footage there," he said to the empty room.
The only answer was the hum of the electronics he was used to.
Tomi didn't like people; he liked only his components and laptops.
Besides, he had the internet, and on it was everything that interested him.
The internet didn't belittle you, didn't hurt or beat you, and the internet loved you.
Apart from Nick, Tomi had no other friends, and he didn't need any.
An occasional coffee in town with Nick completely satisfied his need for socializing, and he was content with that.
Besides, Nick brought him these interesting parties that Tomi would work on for weeks beforehand, and afterward too.
And he earned well selling the party footage, as well as the explicit recordings he secretly shot in the toilets and wherever else he caught some action.
Interestingly, such recordings sold extremely well online.
That was where Tomi earned, and he was very careful not to let Nick catch him at it.
Though Nick knew about Tomi's perversions, he lived in the belief that none of that went on at his parties.
But Tomi knew otherwise. And tonight of all nights he'd gotten some terribly good footage from the restroom.
He huffed with satisfaction and sat down in front of the screen of his personal laptop, which occupied the royal position on the throne of the console.
He lowered the resolution, adjusted the parameters, and, having satisfied himself that everything worked as it should, opened a news page.
Staying informed was Tomi's passion; he loved following the news and could bore Nick to death with reports and forecasts of the great powers' global geostrategic positions.
On the screen appeared an attractive anchorwoman reading something off a sheet of paper, while behind her flashed an image of tanks firing.
Tomi grew interested and adjusted the earphones in his ears:
…meanwhile, the escalation triggered by this morning's incident off the port of New York shows no sign of abating.
In response to the sinking of their submarine, Russia has shot down an American AWACS aircraft in the international waters of the Baltic Sea.
The situation is escalating by the minute as the American State Department confirms that U.S. forces have entered DEFCON 1…
Tomi fell into thought; he had never yet heard of the Americans going to DEFCON 1. That meant they were literally at war with the Russians. He turned back to the screen.
…in keeping with the latest displays of hostility between the two powers, two American fleets of nuclear aircraft carriers are approaching the occupied part of Ukraine and the city of Odesa across the Black Sea, where a significant massing of Russian naval and land forces has been observed.
This is it…, the anchorwoman looked dramatically into the camera, …
officially, the two largest militaries in the world are in armed conflict.
She returned to her papers, keeping the drama in her voice.
On the other side, NATO forces led by British and French aircraft carriers and their accompanying fleets are taking up positions in the Baltic Sea.
Judging by scant information, they are in a position to strike targets across much of western Russia with Tomahawk missiles.
And from unconfirmed sources… The screen showed what was clearly a phone-camera recording from a ship's deck, depicting the launch of two long missiles.
…which we have received — as you can see, the Tomahawk missile launches have begun.
How many missiles were launched and at which targets, we have no information at this time.
Tomi wasn't surprised; this was to be expected.
The Russian bear had run rampant and believed it could do whatever it pleased in northeastern Europe.
The days of fun were beginning for Tomi.
He savored thoughts of the conflict and tacticized over the moves the warring sides would make.
He'd done it so many times already in games and simulations that the real thing raised his excitement to an unprecedented level.
He grabbed a tuna sandwich from a small plastic container.
He always brought his own home-prepared food to gigs like this.
He didn't trust the hygiene or the quality of the food offered at parties, and his sensitive digestive tract could tolerate only certain foods. He turned back to the screen.
Meanwhile, amid the escalation of the conflict between NATO forces and Russia, China, in an evident attempt to surprise the international forces in the blockade off the island of Taiwan, has deployed its newest hypersonic missiles.
Data now available through colleagues in Japan and India speak of terrible losses among the naval vessels of the Australian and Thai militaries.
Japanese ships managed to evade the attack, but losses have been confirmed on their side too.
Colleagues report panic in the ranks of NATO forces, because a hypersonic weapon has been used to which the allies have no obvious answer.
Information indicates the blockade has been broken and that two Chinese fleets, with their accompanying aircraft carriers, have set out toward the island of Guam in an evident effort to close in on the American fleets stationed there.
Tomi had expected it. He knew Russia and China were in a covert alliance.
The two states constantly denied that fact, but they fooled no one.
It was to be expected that China would deal with Guam, which, along with Japan, held the largest military bases in the Pacific.
By disabling them, China would gain tactical supremacy in the Pacific, especially if it managed to surprise the American Eighth Fleet, which at that moment was resupplying at Guam.
The only thing that could slow China down was Japan, whose fleet, now intimidated by the Chinese missiles, was withdrawing toward the home islands.
It seemed the Americans and NATO were caught in a trap.
Engaged in two simultaneous conflicts with two enormous militaries, the situation didn't look good for them. The anchorwoman went on:
Meanwhile, launches of long-range missiles from positions on the Chinese coast have been confirmed.
Detonations are echoing across the American prefecture on Okinawa.
Witnesses speak of heavy damage to airport runways and buildings.
The percentage of hits on the installations is low, and civilian buildings in the vicinity of the base are being struck.
Footage of fires and screaming people filled the screen.
Firefighters battled wearily against the raging fire on the ruins of what looked like a former apartment building.
The Americans appear paralyzed by the Chinese weaponry.
All eyes in the Pacific are fixed on Guam as the Chinese fleets close to within range.
The Pacific is boiling, while smoke rises toward the sky from the ruins and the sunken ships.
An ad for toothpaste came on the screen.
Tomi took off the earphones and leaned back thoughtfully in his chair.
He hadn't expected hypersonic missiles. He knew Russia had them, but China?
The Chinese leaders were fanatical and mad enough to play every ace up their sleeve.
And with the fall of Okinawa and Guam, they could do whatever they wanted in the Pacific — they could even park their carriers somewhere in the territory of Iran, which, as always, welcomed any blow against the West.
From that position they could strike directly at the Black Sea and hit the American fleets from behind.
This did not look good for the Western world.
Tomi glanced at the screens where oblivious partygoers danced wildly on the floors below him.
He wondered whether anyone cared that a world war had just begun!
? Croatia was a small country, but as a NATO member it was obliged to take part and send equipment and troops.
And since Poland had already been attacked, Croatian soldiers would most likely be drawn into operations there too.
He watched the people having fun. He wondered how many of them would answer the army call-ups the government would undoubtedly send out.
How many of them would die? He didn't dwell on it.
To him they were just statistics he'd use in his battlefield simulations.
For medical reasons he was unfit for military service and didn't worry about his own situation.
For him the whole war would pass in the comfort of his home, in the countless tactical simulations of his computer and the news on the screen.
He finished his sandwich and turned back to the news, unaware of the red light that had switched on and begun blinking on an ancient column of electronics behind his back.
On top of that, because of the earphones in his ears, he didn't even hear the hum of the electronics waking from their decade-long sleep.
Screens began switching on and data began to scroll.
Screen by screen, the security room came to life, while the call light on the locked elevator beside the bathroom lit up for the first time in a little over forty years.