by David Adams
Cautiously, Yanovna tapped out a sentence or two, then put the device into a slot in his cell wall. He took it, glancing at what she’d written.
Pavlov said they escaped from the crater. He was almost shot by an invisible enemy none of them could see.
What was going through his mind? I asked him, and he said:
She’d prepared a new paragraph for him. He sat there staring at it for a long time, then put the tablet back in the slot.
“But it’s empty,” she said.
“Exactly,” said Pavlov. “Exactly.”
* * *
Jungle surrounding Hammerfall
Nobody spoke, as though the sound of their voices could summon more sniper rounds. Pavlov took another swig of Apalkov’s alcohol, cautious to ration it. It would have to last a long time. The sun burned them. They sweated. The mud was an enduring obstacle that clung to their clothes.
Then Pavlov’s visor flashed.
INCOMING TRANSMISSION
It could be the Varyag. He touched his radio. “This is Lieutenant Petya Pavlov.”
“Pavlov,” said Stolina in his ear. She seemed so damn happy. “I miss you.”
“With every round so far,” said Pavlov. “Fortunately, I’m a better shot than you are. Jakov and Apalkov are dead.”
“I know,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. They died happy.”
Small comfort. “You got anything more to say?” he asked. “Or should I switch to radio silence?”
“Why don’t you join us?” said Stolina. “You’ve seen it yourself. You’ve seen how happy we can be together.”
“I didn’t sign up for crazy,” said Pavlov. “And that’s what’s happening here: you’re crazy. You’re sick. You need help.” He didn’t think it would help, but he needed to try anyway. “You’re spetsnaz. You’re elites. You’re soldiers of the Russian Confederation—”
“We’re part of something much greater than the Confederation,” said Stolina, her voice almost breathy as she spoke. “Trust me.”
“I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you,” said Pavlov, and he closed the connection.
They marched on in silence.
Finally, Chuchnova broke the tense silence.
“You okay?” she asked him, her whole body still splattered in mud, streaked down her body from sweat.
“Yeah,” said Pavlov, casually wiping a thick layer of grime from his chest. “I’m not hit. This time.”
The spell was broken; something changed in their voices, and they all began to talk at once.
“Good thing too,” said Ilyukhina, “that shot almost hit you.”
“Holy shit,” said Chuchnova, “I thought I was going to die.”
“That was some good running back there,” said Pavlov.
They all tittered happily and Pavlov gestured to Ilyukhina. “You first.”
She smiled. She rarely smiled unless she was talking about war or killing. “Sweet dodge.”
Pavlov held up his hand. “Honest to God, total accident.”
“That’s often how it goes,” said Ilyukhina. “By the way…that rifle, it’s the BD-140 we brought along. I know it by the echo. Cука блядь.”
Pavlov grimaced. That thing could punch holes in tanks. “Like I said,” he said to Chuchnova, “we brought heavy weapons.”
“Too bad we don’t have them now,” said Chuchnova.
“Yeah,” said Ilyukhina. “Those things will fuck you up.” She gave a wide smile. “Just like that horse fucked up Catherine the Great.”
Pavlov snorted at that. “You know she didn’t really do that, right? She didn’t fuck a horse, and she certainly didn’t die from it…”
“Actually,” said Chuchnova, “Catherine the Great had many lovers, and there’s considerable evidence that—”
“Yeah, but a horse?” With the mud scraped off—he wasn’t clean exactly, and doubted such a thing would be possible for some time—he led the group further into the jungle. “That’s just crazy talk.”
The further they went, the more it began to rain. The drizzle became a pounding, the storm descending on them quickly, equatorial and thick, turning the already muddy ground into brown soup.
Eventually they had to stop, huddled together under a huge tree, the thick leaves shielding them from being rained on directly. It was both warm and cold; the rain took the edge of the heat away, but the water soaked into their clothes, into their armour, instilling a chill that was somehow more than simply the temperature.
The three of them huddled together for comfort as they waited out the storm.
After about an hour, the rain slowed to a drizzle. Soaked to the bone, but now finally clean, the three of them gathered their things and prepared to head out. The weather would have held up their pursuers as well, so they had lost no time. Nobody would be able to move in that.
So his surprise was complete when a dozen soldiers wearing Separatist uniforms, and clad in active camouflage, and armed with high-velocity rifles, appeared out of the jungle like ghosts, their weapons trained on the three of them.
Cука блядь.
CHAPTER 22
Jungle surrounding Hammerfall
FOR A TENSE SECOND, NOBODY said anything. Pavlov ground his teeth. His visor should have warned him about incoming threats like this, even with its limited range, but apparently the rain—coupled with the destruction of the mainframe and the Separatists’ active camouflage—had reduced their effectiveness even further. Apparently, without a whole building’s observational power behind them, he was as blind as he was dead.
Well, not dead yet, anyway.
“Hands off your iron,” said one of the men, a tall, imposing figure with an assault weapon seemingly held together with electrical tape, his thick Ukrainian accent—just like Minsky’s—immediately causing Pavlov’s chestplate to seem far too tight. He had a ridiculous number of weapons and equipment on him—radios, water bottles, a gas mask clipped to his belt. “Guns on the ground. C’mon, let’s go.”
Pavlov dropped his rifle into the mud and slowly raised his hands. Beside him, Ilyukhina did the same, and he heard the wet splat of Chuchnova’s 6-1 falling as well.
“And the other one.”
He’d almost forgotten. Pavlov unhitched Apalkov’s rifle from his shoulder and dropped that into the mud as well.
“There we go,” said the Separatist, glaring at them suspiciously. “And anything else you got, too. Throw it down. No tricks.”
Pavlov said nothing. He’d been held by the Separatists before…the last time he’d been at their tender mercies, they had killed Minsky. He could still smell the blood. The acrid smell of gunpowder. And the mud.
His chest ached, breath coming quicker. He felt like he’d forgotten something urgent, but couldn’t remember what it was, only that it was critical. He felt that his whole body was speeding up and slowing down at the same time, and that if he didn’t do something he would evaporate into nothing.
No, no…
He instinctively reached for the flask he had at his hip.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” The Separatist leader shook his weapon violently. “Don’t even move!”
It felt like he leaned too far back on a chair and started to fall. The feeling intensified, gripping his whole body. He could feel his heart pounding against his armour as though it were going to burst out. His breath came in faint wheezes, air escaping through teeth pressed together. The jungle darkened around him as though clouds had come over the sun. Like the galaxy’s worst head rush. He was drowning without water.
“Hey Pavlov,” asked Ilyukhina, “you okay, sir?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Arf arf.”
And then he woke up on his back.
“Pavlov?” Chuchnova stared down at him. She was crouched over him, hand to his face. “Are you okay?”
Hard to know. He felt okay, just extremely tired, like getting up from a long, relaxing nap. “Yeah.” The words stumbled out, groggy, distant. “O
’course.”
“You passed out,” she said. “Just flopped over backward. Your helmet fell off, and everyone thought you might have been wounded, or dehydrated…”
“Nah,” he said. “I just got bored.”
* * *
Pavlov’s Cell
“Are you serious?” said Yanovna, glaring at him. “Do you really want me to put that in my report? Are you trying to piss the captain off?”
“It’s what I said,” said Pavlov. “I mean, if you wanted, you could write in there that I said something else, like, ‘I think I just had a panic attack thinking about my dead ex-boyfriend combined with the stress of being captured by the people who murdered him’, if that’ll make the paperwork better, but that’s not what I said.”
Yanovna shook her head and, with a few taps, put in what he’d said. “Okay, okay, fine. Fine. What happened next?”
* * *
Jungle surrounding Hammerfall
“That seems reasonable,” said Chuchnova, giving one of those forced, ha-ha, I’m just trying to make you laugh so that you’ll feel better because you’re obviously sick kind of laughs. “I mean, it happens to the best of us, right?”
Not to spetsnaz, but Pavlov kept that little thought to himself. “I guess,” he said, taking a deep breath.
“That’s good,” said Chuchnova. “Breathe. Get the air into you. Looks like you had a panic attack there.”
Panic attacks. He’d never had one before, and if the spetsnaz screeners had detected it, he would have been out.
Then again, they were also something covered in the Combat Stress Reaction manual, too. Something about traumatic experiences which could bring out the potential for panic attacks even in people who had never had one before…
No idea what that could have been. No idea at all. He’d definitely blacked out on the Anarchy due to the g-forces, right? Definitely. Nothing at all to do with…nope.
“Names and ranks,” said the Separatist leader. “From all of you.”
“Mika Chuchnova. And I’m a civilian.”
“Sergeant Paulina Ilyukhina.”
“Lieutenant Petya Pavlov.”
The leader blew a low whistle. “Officer, hey.”
Pavlov said nothing.
“What’s in that flask?” asked the Separatist leader, and his tone carried something, some kindness which suggested that he might actually care. “Medicine?”
“Booze,” said Pavlov, propping himself up on his elbows. “Helps with the…um, chest hurty things.”
Chuchnova squinted at him. “How long have you had these for?”
“My first proper one,” he said, giving her a coy smile. “Glad you could help pop my cherry.”
Her flustered, confused, embarrassed face was worth it.
The Separatist leader took the flask, opened it up and took a sniff, recoiling at the smell. “This is…this is pure ethanol.”
“Almost,” said Pavlov. “It’s vodka. Pretty great stuff. I confiscated it from one of my men, because we don’t allow drinking on the job, but it turns out that the person who enforces that is me, so…” He laughed bitterly. “Guess I shouldn’t have done that.”
Ilyukhina, he noticed, seemed to be saying nothing, but her face wore a dark mask, eyes darting from Separatist to Separatist as though expecting them to tear out her throat at any moment. Which seemed prudent.
For the first time since he arrived, he was glad Minsky wasn’t here. At least they couldn’t do what they’d done to him again. Couldn’t kill someone twice. Chuchnova and Ilyukhina, on the other hand…
Might as well get it over with.
“Well, what now?” asked Pavlov, taking in the measure of his captors in turn. They seemed strong…better than the rabble who’d attacked them before. “Going to make us die for freedom?”
“No,” said the leader, “not unless you do something real stupid.” He replaced the screw-top on the flask. “Or if we think you’re infected.”
Now that caught his attention. “Infected…?” Pavlov and Chuchnova exchanged a look.
“Let me guess,” she said, “symptoms present as being fucking creepy and crazy as shit?”
The leader regarded her, then Pavlov. “Yeah,” he said slowly, as though careful of admitting some great secret. “And stronger than normal?”
Stronger, just like the guy Ilyukhina had shot.
“That’s right,” said Chuchnova. “And they touch you—”
“And you become one of them.”
Certainly sounded like the same thing. “Some of our unit have been affected by this,” said Pavlov.
The Separatist leader’s face suddenly soured. “You’re from Hammerfall station?”
Admitting to slaughtering their comrades would doubtless win them no friends, so Pavlov thought quickly. “Not yet,” he said. “We only just got here. We were sent to reinforce Hammerfall, but some of our guys tried to kill us when we arrived.” He tried to sound as honest as possible, mixing in a little truth. “We were delayed for some time. The anti-air was too strong to airlift us. You guys have a strong air defence network. Heard you nearly shot down the guys before us.”
That seemed to mollify the guy. He reached out his hand to Pavlov. “Damn straight, our launchers are the best. I’m Captain Tasha Dmitriev. Head of the Separatist forces in this sector. Good thing you haven’t seen any of the action at Hammerfall. It’s a bloodbath out there; your friends have obviously been infected with the virus.”
“Why’s that?” asked Pavlov cautiously.
Dmitriev’s face soured again. “There must be a whole battalion of soldiers defending it. We tried attacking when we thought they were weak, and they wiped out half our forces.” He squatted in the mud beside Pavlov. “Going to be honest with you, Confederate, there’s something bigger than us happening here. Something much more dangerous than our war.”
“Yeah,” said Pavlov truthfully. “There is.”
Dmitriev extended his hand. “I propose a truce. Come with us, talk with us. There’s no reason we have to be enemies this day.”
Just for today? he wanted to ask, but he knew better. What choice did he truly have?
“Truce,” said Pavlov, taking the offered hand.
CHAPTER 23
Pavlov’s Cell
YANOVNA WAS QUIET FOR A moment.
“Do you really want me to tell the captain, tell the flag officers she reports to, tell the whole Confederation that you, Petya Pavlov, willingly laid down arms and worked together with these traitors to the Confederation?”
“To be honest,” said Pavlov, “I didn’t exactly have much of a choice. What was I to say? No? I’m sure that would have been taken very well. They definitely would have treated me well and not just shot me.”
“You have your standing orders,” said Yanovna. “The Separatists do take prisoners, and for the most part, they are treated well—”
“Tell that to Minsky’s corpse,” spat Pavlov, but the tightening in his chest returned.
He had no booze. He had nothing to help. Nothing to take away the pain except discipline.
“Are you okay?” asked Yanovna. “Because you better be, Pavlov. I do not have the time to drag you to sickbay.”
Deep breaths. That was important. Deep breaths.
This one wasn’t too bad. Clenching his hands together gave him pain, and he used that pain to focus. To force air into his lungs and stop the horrible cycle from starting. Panic leads to hyperventilation, which leads to panic, which leads to…
He managed to bring himself back down.
“Yeah,” he said, with little conviction. Then again, with more. “Yeah. Yeah. I got this.”
Yanovna examined him cautiously, then slowly began to relax. “Right. So, how did this ‘truce’ of yours work out?”
* * *
Jungle surrounding Hammerfall
The Separatists handcuffed them all and took Pavlov and his squad further into the jungle. Exactly where, he had no real way of knowing; they put
a black bag over his head, and did the same to Ilyukhina and Chuchnova, too. Regardless of how amicable they seemed, given the circumstances, the Separatists were unwilling to trust their enemies so quickly.
To be fair, that spoke volumes of their sanity, something which seemed to be in short supply.
Hours passed and they were led blindly through the jungle heat. He could hear Chuchnova’s occasional muttered swearing near him, and Ilyukhina’s breathing. The path beneath their feet was firmer than the mud elsewhere. It felt like a compacted dirt road, and there were limited roads in the area. Despite their preparations, he could guess, roughly speaking, where they were being taken.
Away from the flag they’d seen burned into the jungle, north, toward Druzhba City.
That, in and of itself, was a substantial comfort. The Separatists were taking them where they wanted to go anyway. Plus, they hadn’t shot them yet. That was always good, too.
Small mercies.
Finally, the group turned off the road, Pavlov’s feet returning to thick mud. For almost an hour, they walked further, vaguely downhill, until the ground hardened again. After about ten minutes, the group called for a halt.
Someone unclipped the handcuffs from his wrists. The bag was taken off his head and light poured in. For a moment, Pavlov assumed it was daylight, but as his eyes adjusted and the white world faded away, he saw he was in a vast underground complex. Fluorescent lighting cut harsh shadows across the water-eroded limestone, the glare softened by swarms of bioluminescent insects that gathered around the white bars of light, flashing multi-hued lights of their own, painting the grey stone walls with strange colours. Chuchnova and Ilyukhina stood nearby, similarly gazing around.
“Welcome,” said Dmitriev, sweeping his hand around in the air, “to our humble home.”
“The Miranda Caves,” said Pavlov, smiling appreciatively despite it all. “The thick iron deposits would hide you from our sensors, and there’s plenty of fresh water…”
