In retaliation, plasma and mortars again hit the 9-storey buildings of Ratmir and the sports center in short bursts ... So the day passed. By evening, Ratmir popped into the reception of the sports center to see what was happening with the wounded. 11 guys were lying on mattresses, under droppers. Another five “heavy” ones were loaded onto the bases from PAKs under tents, preparing to be sent to the rear, to the regimental doctors. Ratmir helped to drag a fighter laid on a tent onto the platform. At the moment when the tent was being pulled up, the anesthesia slipped off the guy and he began to moan, looking around frantically. Then he realized that he no longer had legs ... His paws were crushed by a stove in a collapsed apartment, where a tank hit in the afternoon. Doctors, doing everything right, amputated both limbs to the hips. Now this guy looked into the eyes of Ratmir - the first one he saw. The captain felt like he was about to lose consciousness at that look. There, in these eyes you can’t tell anything cheerful and patriotic now, about the holy war and military duty. The dude now realized that at the age of 19 he became a cripple, a person with “disabilities”, he is unlikely to find a normal job, is unlikely to marry and have children, he is unlikely to be happy at least once in this life. He is a burden for parents, a sitter in the queue for social assistance, a sitter at home until the end of his days ...

Ratmir wanted to smile in his own way, slap him on the shoulder, say something about Paralympic athletes, about the fact that you need to take your will into a fist and fight ... Or something about the achievements of medicine and cool modern wheelchairs ... But he was silent. Filled from the helmet-sphere to the socks in the boots with a heavy glue of shame and guilt, he silently pushed the tent with the guy onto the platform. Perplexedly continuing to look into those eyes, he commanded the driver to touch, and then looked after the car receding into the darkness.

A battalion doctor, nicknamed Dr. Livesey because of his resemblance to a cartoon character, approached from behind - he laughed all the time. In general, this always gave courage and helped the fighters and commanders overcome the usual human fear of medical matters. Livesey was still whinnying upliftingly, asking Ratmir how his health is, how are his nerves? The captain replied that everything was fine, but suddenly remembered his own nuance:

- In general, I can’t shit for the third day, I never had problems with this ...

So you're growing up, bro. Constipation is a commander's illness, a soldier has diarrhea. It is in you that sense of responsibility takes root, nervous activity becomes more complicated. Now you are not a shy and light-footed gazelle, simple to take a shit. Now you are a lion, and a lion can prepare for a week, look for a place, guess the wind ... Look, the battalion commander can’t do without a laxative at all. Like an addict. As long as you're okay, don't worry. But if after another three days you still don’t wake up, I’ll give you magic drops and everything wakes up tics like that.

Livesey, still laughing, wandered on to the wounded. And Ratmir looked at the corner of the foyer, where 32 corpses lay in a row - his irretrievable losses at the moment. For some reason, it was easier to look at them than into the eyes of that legless man. He approached, peering into the faces, recognizing the guys. These are from artillery, these are infantrymen from the second platoon. Not all 32 could be called corpses. What was left of the destroyed PAK crew and machine gunners - a pile of burnt rags scraped off the charred walls. Then, in the rear, by DNA, they will find something from their tissues in these heaps and give it to their parents for a solemn funeral.

Ratmir remembered his father. He imagined how the old man was now sitting in the kitchen and, as usual, was chiseling something or scratching it with emery. Until old age, my father loved to make something all the time, he calmed himself with this. He, of course, now fundamentally does not watch the news, does not look at e-mails and chats. The mother, most likely, is sitting alone in a large room with the TV turned off and staring at the wall. She imagines Ratmir also lying in the foyer in the form of a charred piece of meat wrapped in burnt rags. The father, cutting out a piece of wood, conjures in his own way. How well the wooden crap is carved, just as well everything should work out for the son - without burrs, evenly, tutelka in tutelka, between bullets ... The old soldier bites his lips intently, muttering something quietly under his breath.

On the third day without sleep, Ratmir began to buzz in his head, and at times some sand flickered before his eyes. During these three days and three nights, he really did not lie down. I ate something I find in dry food. His kitchen worked well, the soldiers were fed hot, soups, porridge. But he did not really have time to sit down to the plates. He sipped water from a flask. In the end, he went to Livesey's, to ask for at least a coffee, so as not to pass out. It was impossible to sleep. The Argunians in the forest were constantly up to something, moving and unexpectedly hitting with whatever they hit. After the failure of the "attack in the neighboring yard", it is clear that they will soon strike here again, and these creatures know how to be sudden, ask the 21st division what they defeated on the border.

During these three days they managed to crawl some hundreds of meters in different sectors of the Horde's defense. A couple of times they broke through a little deeper, but they were knocked out by paratroopers. It is clear that from day to day, or maybe in a minute, somewhere they will hit with all the nonsense on the defense already explored along and across.

Livesey did not give him coffee, but injected something from a blue ampoule right through his tunic, grinning, promised that the captain would not fall asleep for another three days and would feel like a cucumber. “True, then you will pass out suddenly even for yourself. Just, oops, and you'll pass out." Livesey said that he was instructed to inject all the officers on the front with this mixture. Like, in three days, in any case, they will be replaced with the second echelon and reserves.

Ratmir was surprised at the unexpected clarity of consciousness and a surge of strength. “What progress has come to, to unprecedented miracles,” he sang, running from apartment to apartment, through the positions of his soldiers, checking the posts. The fighters slept in turns and did not need the doctor's drugs.

There was a screech and a splash of sparks near her ear. The bullet entered the wall. A sniper fired in the forest. In general, the fire from the forest became more and more targeted. They already thoroughly knew the positions of the Horde, and nothing could be done about it. There was nowhere to move and change positions, all the good points had already been used. Now the company of Ratmir for them, as drawn on the map, they only choose places and moments to strike. An explosion gasped in a neighboring building, it was reported that enemy artillerymen had burned another PAK for us. We had to leave here, move to the side or to the rear. It was already too heroic to hang around here ... But the order of the regimental commander was unambiguous, to hold this section "until the end."

Ratmir called sappers and began to mine the first floors of 9-story buildings, the passages between them and the glass of the shopping center. One tank with its holograms drove into the lobby of the sports center. He left 20 people in the old positions. All the rest, one remaining PAK and two tanks, the entire infirmary (the wounded from there were already sent to the regiment of all) and the rear willfully pushed into the houses hanging over the sports center on the left, a little deeper into the microdistrict, at the same time, well sticking out in the way of the enemy, if he goes along boulevard on the left.

The forest was born with an attack around 7 am, with the first rays of the sun. A volley of 6 plasma shots actually leveled the long-suffering 9-storey buildings. Mortars covered the yard so tightly that there was not a single unplowed area left. PAKs were stirring up something in the ruins of 9-story buildings, throwing up crumbs from broken concrete slabs with explosions. 6 tanks and two dozen armored personnel carriers with infantry rolled out of the forest, quickly overcoming the field, entered the yards. The tank from the sports center managed to burn down one enemy tank and was torn apart by a PAK shot. The Argunians filled the area in front of the sports center, the public garden and the yard. They were among the soldiers of Ratmir as targets in the shooting range right in front of their noses. Horde earned from all trunks. Two more tanks burst into flames, infantry mowed down by machine guns and arrows fell to the ground. The Argun tanks, having deployed the towers, began to tear up the houses in which the fighters of Ratmir settled. The captain heard a heavy hoot from the left and right - tank shells hit there. He called his PAK in the chat, but the artillery did not answer, it looks like they got one of the tank shots. The last ratmir tank, which had glitched, immediately lost its protective hologram, and it turned out to be visible as a clear dark dot among the birches in the park. Looks like it was hit by two enemy shells at the same time. The tower was torn off and thrown onto the ruins of the sports center. The tank became like a flat pancake, with a flaming core. Ratmir waved his hand to the grenade launcher at the enemy tank that had become prominent, when he felt a blunt blow to all his bones at once. Stone crunch surrounded everything around. The walls twitched and rippled like water, the floor under the stomach moved. A few floors up, plasma hit the building. Now the floors will fall from above and can be crushed by a slab,

Ratmir barked his jump at the windows, jumped to the window with a throw and jumped down from the third floor. On the lawn where the soldiers fell, they found themselves directly under the fire of the Argunians. On twisted and bruised legs, they, like zombies from a movie, clumsily, waving their arms, ran towards the neighboring building, where they could take cover. Sparks dimmed his eyes, bullets crackled underfoot, spraying mud. Someone fell in front of Ratmir, and he jumped over this someone and ran on. Silently, without thoughts, seeing in front of him only a saving entrance. Running into it, broke into some apartment on the first floor and began to look out the window. Three others made it home with him. Five lay on the lawn in silence, two yelled - wounded. About twenty more living people responded in the chat, who settled in some places in the surrounding houses and pits. Ratmir dragged a grenade launcher over his shoulder and jabbed his finger at the second floor window in the house opposite - from there a machine gun mowed them down on the lawn, and now he was scribbling offhand on the windows, hoping to at least accidentally snatch out the survivors. Granik sent him a flash - it lit up there, and the machine gun fell silent. The enemy tanker appreciated this shot. The shell entered the ceiling between the floors above Ratmir and his grenade launcher. He gasped, pressed into the floor, burned his back, then falling pieces of concrete hit with a dull crack. Ratmir saw nothing in the muddy dust. "Yek", - he had time to think and disappeared. The shell entered the ceiling between the floors above Ratmir and his grenade launcher. He gasped, pressed into the floor, burned his back, then falling pieces of concrete hit with a dull crack. Ratmir saw nothing in the muddy dust. "Yek", - he had time to think and disappeared. The shell entered the ceiling between the floors above Ratmir and his grenade launcher. He gasped, pressed into the floor, burned his back, then falling pieces of concrete hit with a dull crack. Ratmir saw nothing in the muddy dust. "Yek", - he had time to think and disappeared.

After an unknown time of darkness and silence, Livesey's familiar laughter brought him back to reality. Ratmir opened his eyes, felt himself in a horizontal position, smelled of medicine, blue lamps were burning. The doctor's face grinned over him. “You were presented for a reward, you’re fighting cool,” Livesey said, meeting his gaze, and making sure that the captain was conscious, at least partially, asked “how are you in general?”

Ratmir suddenly felt a strange freshness below the waist and checked his hands along the thighs:

- Where are my pants?

- They threw it away, I don't need your tests. I told you not to worry about your constipation. He pissed like a pretty, and pissed too. And so, in general, you got off well. Contusion and several bruises. Consider yourself unharmed. There is also something left of your company.

You stuffed a lot of Argunians there, then another landing force climbed there, ripped up someone's stomachs. In general, the situation at the front is not bad. We retreated to previously prepared positions, retreated a kilometer or two in different areas. In a week of fighting, their losses are three times more than ours. Now everything is bogged down in street fighting and is still far from the city center. We have every chance to hold out for another three weeks, then the troops from the east will have time to arrive. It may turn out that we will keep this Kaulnin.