by J D Astra
At one time, Almaz-Antev was the premier weapons manufacturing company for all of Russia. They had colluded with other nations, of course. There was nothing to be done for that. My weapons killed a lot of people, and there are regrets I will never be able to put aside. But it was not the time for regrets. It was the time for action. “There is still time,” I said absentmindedly. “I will fix some of the mistakes I’ve made. First though, I must wash this mountain of dishes.” I set about working on the broken coffee cup, gently placing the pieces in the waste bin. The noise from the city street outside my small house filtered through the cracked window, stuck open from the years of Saint Petersburg winters. I had promised Ina I would fix it, but always there was another important thing to be done. It got pushed back further and further, until there was no time left to fix the small things. “Ina, I am so sorry. I will fix the things that I can soon.” I pushed the anger and the pain back into their space and finished the dishes.
The six months since Ina had passed had been very challenging, and there was more than one time where I had completely fallen apart. I had lost considerable weight, simply from forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep. I threw myself into my work, and Almaz-Antev was happy to see the improved work ethic. While Ina was sick, I was almost fired. That would have endangered everything Ina and I had worked so hard for. It would have voided our passes into V.G.O. Now hers was gone, and so was she. “No, I cannot fall back to this, the anger, the sadness. Always, it comes back to her being gone. I cannot focus on that now, there is so much to do before the morning.” I needed to work, I needed to get my mind off her.
Timeline - 4 days before Astraea, 16:52
In the evening, I retired to my basement workspace. I neglected to eat dinner, and as a result, found myself getting easily irritated. “Two more screws here,” I said. Talking to myself while working helped me to focus. It allowed me to make sure I didn’t miss any steps while making things. And this project was important. The radiation shielding needed to be perfect, both inside and outside. “Will check the Geiger counter later, I don’t have time for this shit.” I set the machine core to the side and changed my focus to another portion of the machinery: the converter. “This will need sturdier wiring. Perhaps dioxymethylene coating will suffice? No, too caustic. That definitely will eat through cables in a few decades. Something stronger, a polycarbon wrap?” I leaned against the table, both palms flat against it. “Ina would know what was best. She was the best chemical engineer in all of Russia.” I slapped my hands down hard, harder than I had thought, rattling the pieces all over the table. The machine core bounced off the table and smacked against the ground. The sound of crunching metal greeted my ears.
“Goddammit! Everything is going wrong!” I picked it up from the floor and cradled the broken core in my hands. “Well, it clearly isn’t strong enough yet.” I chuckled as I stared at the cracked and broken core. “Back to the drawing board.” I shrugged as I tossed the prototype core into a pile of other garbage.
Several hours later, I ended up with a much-improved core. It had significant resistance, and I was working on the last bolts. They needed to be sealed with a specific corrosion-resistant material, which I also had manufactured with Ina’s help. “Only last bolts, now. Then I can scan and send the schematics to Almaz-Antev, easy as cake. Is that how that goes? No, no, that is not the adage. English is ignorant.” I rolled my eyes as I picked up my wrench, hefting it in my hand. The weight felt good, it felt real. It kept my mind focused as I worked. Halfway through fastening the last bolt, which required a considerable amount of force, my hand slipped off the spanner, and my palm raked across the now-stripped bolt head.
“Ahhh!” I shouted in agony as blood poured from my hand, my tool falling to the floor. “You stupid piece of shit!” I picked up the machine core and hurled it as hard as possible against one of the block walls in the basement. It smacked against the wall and fell to the floor. The clang of heavy metal resounded around the small room. “Goddammit all!” I stepped over to the medkit I kept in the basement and wrapped up my hand. “Another setback.” I headed over to the core on the ground and picked it up. I turned it about in my hands and noticed that everything was still intact. “Huh, is much stronger. Eh, bolt is not in perfect position, but Almaz-Antev will not care, I am thinking. Project complete.”
I spent a few moments scanning the project blueprint into my computer, using my 3-D scanner, and emailed it off to Almaz-Antev. Within seconds, I received a confirmation email. Along with a short note at the end: “Godspeed, Vlad Nardoir.” That was it, then. The only job remaining was to begin my transition into V.G.O. Well, that and to see the grave of my lost beloved one last time.
Two: Breaking Bone and Shattering Bond
I headed back up to the house and found a guest in my kitchen. The man stood a head and shoulders above me, with a slightly bulging belly that strained against the buttons of his well-tailored black suit. The rest of him was nearly all muscle. I recognized him immediately as my old childhood friend, Bruno. He was standing in the kitchen, looking through some of the cupboards, making himself at home. “Well, this is unexpected, to say the least.” I raised my hands to show no hostility toward him. I had not expected to see a member of the Russian Mafia in my home.
“Vlad, it is good to see you have not fled.” Bruno was imposing, as he always was. Today, though, he was even more so, easily outweighing me by a solid fifty kilos. “It would not do Almaz-Antev, or my fine employers, any good if you were to disappear before your debts were paid.”
“Ah, Bruno.” I backed up a little bit and found myself against a wall. “I do not know of what debt you speak. I have paid off what I owed.” I wrinkled my forehead, trying to think of what I still owed, but nothing came to mind.
“You see, Vlad, Viktor is looking for the blood price you owe. We spent a lot of money getting medication for your Ina, and now we are owed a debt. The motherland is more forgiving than we are.” Bruno sat heavily into a chair at the kitchen table. He shrugged his shoulders as though it weren’t a big deal. “But you see, there is not much time left, and Viktor, he does not like to wait. He said something about you moving to some kind of different world, the same place he is going. Vermillion Glands, or something?” Bruno pulled a pair of brass knuckles from his pocket and slipped them onto his fists. My heart was pounding like it would leap out of my chest and scamper across the floor. I looked around for any kind of exit from this situation. I remembered the V.G.O. pod in the basement. I remembered the smell of Ina’s hair. I remembered that I wasn’t going to die, not today.
“Bruno, let us talk. I will make coffee, we can share vodka, yes?” It was a ploy to get him to relax, and I was hopeful it would work out.
“Ah, so hospitable.” Bruno laid a heavy arm on the table, and the wood groaned under the weight. My heart skipped a beat as I heard the chair shifting, expecting him to get up, but he didn’t. “You know, Vlad, I don’t remember you ever making coffee. That was always Ina’s thing.” He plastered a hard smirk on his face, and I knew he was being an ass.
“She was always better at it,” I said, hiding my anger at his comment. “But I can make it just fine. Might taste like mud, or engine oil, but it works.” I set about making said coffee, and I pulled a bottle of my finest vodka from the shelf. I wasn’t going to need it where I was going, or if I was going to die tonight.
“How long have we known each other?” Bruno sighed as he slipped the brass knuckles off his hands and set them on the table.
He was letting his guard down, good.
Sometimes Bruno asked stupid questions, sometimes he just forgot.
He had received a nasty blow to the head shortly after he started working for that mobster, Viktor, as a bouncer at a Mafia-run club. It was forty-three years ago that our mothers had given birth in the same hospital, and until he joined Viktor’s crew, we were close friends. Sometimes I liked to think we still were. He was present for Ina’s funeral, and he was there for me when
we found out she was sick. He was actually the one who reached out to me when the chemo wasn’t covered any longer. He was still a good man inside somewhere, but he was better at following orders than he was at keeping his friends and jobs straight.
“You know well enough,” I said as I lit the gas burner on the stove and set the coffee percolator on the flame. I needed to make a plan, and I had one in the works. I just didn’t want to have to follow through with it. I used an unnecessarily large amount of room to get everything ready, making sure I could reach my goal. I needed to gather a weapon—my aim was the knife block.
“It seems like yesterday we were going to university together. You were promising and intellectual. I was a mass of raw muscle.” He poked at the flab that had started to show over his gut. “Some things have changed, others have not.” He raised an eyebrow at the equipment I had strewn about the kitchen and dining room. Nearly all of it was of my own design, some of it from various jobs I had handled throughout the years. “You know, I was almost hired by Almaz-Antev as well. Well...” He laughed as he looked away. “I guess I technically still work for them. Hired muscle through their connections.” He tilted his head to the side and a loud pop issued from the bones and muscles in his neck.
I nearly knocked the coffee kettle over from being startled. I also almost knocked the knife I had acquired from the knife block onto the floor, which would have given away my intentions. I didn’t want to have to use it, but it was a likely conclusion that I would have to. I turned around and carefully slid the knife into the back of my pants, blousing my shirt a bit to cover the handle.
“We don’t have to fight, Bruno. Take whatever you want—I have money saved, you can take that too.” The coffee was done, so I poured a pair of cups and spiked them both with vodka. Heavily. I was going to need all the courage I could muster for this next act.
“No, see, Viktor was clear. I bring you back broken, or I don’t come back at all. He is beyond wanting money now. You made him mad—he thinks you stiffed him on the bill.” Bruno took his cup with a small smile and took a large drink. “Ah, that is good. And the vodka was a good touch. You were always heavy-handed.” He set the cup down and looked at me with remorse. “I am sorry, old friend, but this is where friendship ends and work begins.” He stood, replaced his brass knuckles, and smacked his fists together. I reached behind my back to grab the knife. The blade felt clumsy in my hands. I hated bladed weapons.
He stopped for a moment, then a sly smile rolled over his features. “You were not going to go down easy, always the hard way, my friend.” He took a heavy swing from the side, and I scrambled out of the way. His fist slammed into the countertop where I was standing just a second before. Cups rattled and bounced, and my freshly washed dishes shook in the drying rack. The blow was so strong that it knocked Ina’s favorite coffee mug off the spindle it hung on. It shattered on the floor. The sound of it breaking hurt, like years of memories shattering against cold, uncaring stone. I knew I couldn’t get hit by the force of Bruno’s swing; I simply wouldn’t survive.
“Damnit, Bruno, you’re better than this.” I was already shaking from fear and anxiety, I didn’t need to fight for my life. This was a problem. “I don’t want to hurt you—we can still leave this place as friends. I will give you everything I have.”
“You, hurt me? You’re a brain, Vlad, and I’m a muscle. There will be only one person with pain tonight.” He took another swing, and I backpedaled into the large grandfather clock against the wall. It rang as the chimes within bounced around. I wedged my hands into the narrow space between the wall and the clock and pushed with all I was worth. The massive clock creaked and groaned as it fell towards Bruno. He put his shoulder into it and shrugged it off. The man was a beast, for all his age. The cacophony of the metal inside the clock’s body was painful to hear as the wood splintered and smashed against the floorboards.
“I’m warning you, Bruno. Stop this and we can be friends again. I’ll forget it all.” I didn’t want to end up beaten and battered. I lunged forward and swiped at him with my knife. It left me terribly open, and he punished me for it. I received a quick jab to the ribs for my effort, knocking the air completely out of me. I doubled over on the floor in pain, the knife slipping out of my hands as I wrapped my arms around my gut. I gasped for air as Bruno stepped forward, rolling his hands together, cracking his knuckles.
“Only one punch, Vlad?” Bruno sighed heavily as he loomed over my breathless body. Wracking coughs had started to pull air back into my lungs. “You used to be so much more resilient. This is what working with tools and technology all your life gets you.” He went to stomp on my head, but I rolled out of the way just in time. His foot hit the ground heavily enough to rattle the dishware and the coffee cup he’d left on the table. I scampered up to my hands and knees, grabbed the knife, and thought I was clear of him until I felt the collar on my shirt stiffen.
“Hurk,” I spouted as I was pulled backward. He had the grip of a rabid bear. I struggled against the clothing restraining me, but it was no use. Before I knew it, he had lifted me into the air with a bear hug. My lungs felt like they were on fire as he crushed my torso between his massive arms. “Bruno...” I coughed and choked as I squirmed, my vision darkening. Right before my sight left me completely, I had a moment of clarity. The knife was still in my hand!
I swung for all I was worth with it, trying desperately to get a cut, a nick, anything that would cause him to release me. After what felt like an eternity, the blade found purchase. It sunk deep into his right thigh, and I was rewarded with him dropping me. The bellow he let out was enough to nearly deafen me. Everything was going to hurt in the morning, for sure. I collapsed to the floor as my body was basically deadweight. I sucked in hard lungfuls of air, doing everything I could to make my body respond to simple commands. Look around, get up, move, get away from him. Nothing was working.
“You put a knife in my leg, you dirty shit!” Bruno continued to howl as he sunk to the floor. I was hoping the blade would simply get him to release me so I could get away, but it seemed as though I had hit a nerve. As I watched the blood spurt from his leg, I realized I had hit something much more important. I had driven the knife into his femoral artery. He was going to bleed out without medical attention. I stretched out and reached for the towels that hung from the handle on the stove. I grabbed both of them and managed to crawl over to where Bruno was gasping.
His skin tone was already changing to ashen grey mixed with blue. He was losing blood fast. I wrapped the towels around his upper thigh, above the wound, and tied them tight. Then I ripped a large piece of my shirt off, removed the knife from his leg, and stuffed the clothing into the wound. It was immediately soaked in blood, a bad sign. I hadn’t meant for the blade to bite so deep, I hadn’t meant for him to be bleeding out! My tourniquet wasn’t working as well as I had hoped, probably because my dexterity and strength were still reduced from nearly being crushed to death.
His eyes started to glaze over as he stared at me. “Vlad, Vlad, please...” His words were gentle and full of fear, and for just a moment I saw that child I had grown up with. My heart shattered.
“Bruno, I am so sorry.” I hadn’t meant for him to die; I had intended to talk him down, to find a common ground. Maybe even to part as friends. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” I said to him, holding his hand, which I had gripped without thinking. His hand was so much larger than mine, but his grasp was gentle.
“I... I know I didn’t do right. By either of you.” His words were slipping now. They were coming slower, his gasps shallow. “I am sorry, friend.” The last words from the one person I had known my entire life were an apology as he died. I sat there with him for some time before I was able to come to grips with what had happened. I had killed a man. I had killed my best friend.
Timeline - 3 days before Astraea, 00:21
I buried Bruno in the backyard in the dark of the night. I had cleaned up the floor of the dining room as best I co
uld, but I was still covered in blood. I hadn’t thought to take the time to clean myself up. I didn’t care, as I was exhausted and needed rest. I looked at my watch, which was spattered with dried, flaking blood. I was almost out of time: I needed seventy-two hours inside V.G.O. to be able to fully transition, before the world as we knew it would end. I knelt at the shared grave site of my beloved wife and my best friend. The shovel fell from my grasp and I sobbed deeply. I could no longer hold it back, and I didn’t even try to stop it. There was literally nothing left for me here. I had killed the only person I still cared about—I should have let Bruno take me back to Viktor. I was broken, I was shattered like a glass that was carelessly tossed away. Everything I had in this life was gone, and the emotional trauma was almost too much. I would have rather been tortured by the Mafia. At least that pain would subside, either in my death, or when it was over. This pain, though? I expected it to last forever.
Timeline - 3 days before Astraea, 05:19
The kiss of the morning sun warmed my skin against the cold teeth of the Russian morning. I startled awake, my mind running in a panic knowing I had almost no time left. It would be a near thing, for sure. I brushed myself off and rushed inside. My pain from the fight last night was screaming at me, everything was agony. My body was nearly in spasms from the effort.
The dew from the morning had made the blood on my hands and clothes fresh again. I left smears on the walls as I stumbled from room to room, heading to the basement. I placed my bloodied palm onto the biometric reader that unlocked the steel blast door I had installed. It beeped and slid open. I trudged in and fell to my knees before I reached the capsule. I dragged myself up the face of it, leaving a trail of blood on the pristine chrome.
