S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Southern Comfort s-1

by Balazs Pataki

  “I don’t care about revenge, komandir!”

  “You didn’t lose anyone from the family there? Your brother, father, a friend? Because it’s pay-back time!”

  Zotkin frowns. “After two tours of duty in ’87 and ’88, I was hoping to never see that cursed country again!”

  Tarasov leans closer to the soldier, as if that would make a difference in the helicopter’s roar while they talk through the intercom. “What? You’ve been there?”

  “As a private, then a sergeant with the blue berets. Airborne. Got a hang of it. Had to lie about my age, but who cared?”

  “Praporshchik Zotkin!”

  “Komandir?”

  “I have a feeling that we’ll make a hell of a team!”

  “It would be a privilege,” Zotkin replies with a smile, then turns his attention to one of the soldiers who is nervously effing around with his AKSU. “Don’t fondle that rifle, son! If it goes off, I’ll throw you out of this chopper!”

  After a few minutes they reach a hilly region. According to Tarasov’s map, the wide and flat Shamali valley lies beyond it, still invisible in the haze.

  “It’s the Salang Range” the pilot says as if he were a tour guide, “there’s a pass and a long tunnel beneath. It was our main supply route back in those times… you know.”

  Their altitude is low enough to make some hills tower over them, appearing close enough for the rotor blades to strike. Only the helicopters’ tiny shadows show how far up they actually are. The jagged, rough mountains around them fill him with awe. Suddenly, Tarasov sees a gleam on a ridge, seconds later another one. He puts on his helmet and zooms in with the built-in binocular.

  “Can we get any closer to that ridge at forty-five degrees?” he asks the pilot.

  “That’s off of our flight path,” comes the reluctant reply.

  Tarasov’s curiosity prevails and he ignores his gut feelings telling him he might be about to make a mistake. “Turn right and lower the altitude.”

  For a moment, the pilot remains silent before acknowledging. “Yes, sir. Adjusting course by zero-four-five.”

  The gleam appears again for a split second. Now it’s Kuznetsov in his earphones. “Dragonfly One, we noticed an unauthorized deviation from your flight path. I want you to — “

  Before the sentence finishes, the other helicopter’s pilot’s scream pierces into Tarasov’s earphone.

  “Dragonfly One, this is Dragonfly Two, we’ve been hit, I repeat — “

  Tarasov’s pilot shouts “pull up, pull up” but the only reply is fragmented swearing, getting thinner until it becomes static. The gunship is making a desperate, almost vertical ascent. Tarasov’s stomach seems to drop as he frantically tries to reach for his safety belt. He knows the pilot’s drill: climb over and disappear behind the nearest ridge to make any anti-aircraft weapon lose its target, unless it was a missile. He grasps a handle but the weight of his exoskeleton pulls him down. His head smashes against the cabin wall. The helmet softens the impact but he feels blood gushing from his mouth. A sizzling thunder suppresses the soldiers’ agonizing screams. The turbines howl like wounded animals fighting for their lives. Blue electric sparks splutter everywhere, as if the gunship had been hit by a hundred thousand volts of electricity. The earphones transmit the pilot’s desperate scream of “Brace for impact!” before falling silent. Darkness engulfs Tarasov’s sight. Before his consciousness dims and blacks out, a song echoes in his mind.

  Miraculous crystal

  Given by stars

  I can foresee the future

  In fabulous glass

  Lie spilt on the caves

  Mock scribbled on us

  Earth’s doom day is close.

  Encrypted digital VOP transmission. Central Afghanistan, 20 September 2014, 16:44:08 AFT

  #You were not supposed to shoot down those choppers, you trigger-happy bastards.#

  #Next time make sure they stick to their flight path. They were approaching our positions. When are you sending us the next exoskeleton delivery?#

  #There will be no more deliveries, shithead. Can’t you understand this one was carrying three exoskeletons, not to mention the regular suits? You don’t expect us to suck more American cock to get them, do you?#

  #You already received half the money in advance. Make sure you deserve the second part. A deal is a deal.#

  #You can get one exo from the Hind. The rest were on the transport chopper.#

  #We’ll send a team to the first crash site. We know its location. But we need the whole shipment.#

  #Then go and get your damned delivery from the transport chopper’s carcass.#

  #Negative. That’s your area. We must keep a low profile.#

  #So what do you expect me to do?#

  #If you want to stay in business, get those other suits like you did last time. Out.#

  Eyes in the Darkness

  Hindu Kush range, New Zone, 17:04:56 AFT

  I’m in hell.

  Tarasov’s nose and lungs are filled with the reek of burning flesh. Blinding light pierces into his brain with weird reflections. He doesn’t dare to open his eyes.

  I must be in hell.

  Slowly his brain starts working again. He realizes his eyes are open. The light comes from above. It’s the empty sky, with the sunrays refracted by his helmet’s broken visor. He wants to sit up but cannot move.

  Oh God, my spine is broken.

  He tries to move his fingers and toes. To his relief, none of his bones feel as though they are broken. He can even raise his left hand now.

  But why can’t I move my body?

  Then he grasps it — the exoskeleton is holding him. It must have saved his life but now, shattered and deformed by the impact, it keeps him down as if he’s tied by its metal tubes. Groaning, he reaches for the combat knife fastened to his belt and cuts through the straps attaching his backpack to the metal frame. With his shoulders free, he leans forward to release his legs. Finally he rises to his knees and, after gathering his strength for a long moment, he stands up. He checks his rugged, military-issue PDA. It’s still in one piece but doesn’t function.

  Damn it… where in the hell am I?

  The gunship’s smoking wreck lies a few steps away. The impact threw the crew compartment hatch open. The noxious stench comes from inside. His helmet’s integrated breathing system should keep it out, but when he checks the filter he finds it hanging loose of its casing, rendered completely useless.

  I can’t believe this is happening to me.

  Checking his exoskeleton’s built-in instruments, he finds that only the Geiger counter remains operational. It ticks dangerously close to the yellow zone. He removes his helmet. It won’t help him anymore.

  He limps to the wreck. Initially, he manages to fight his nausea but as he peeks inside the compartment and sees the burnt corpses of his comrades, Tarasov turns around and retches. He needs several minutes to pull himself together. Covering his nose and mouth with his hand, he climbs inside. Sparks still sizzle among the broken instruments and torn cables. Most of the corpses sit where they were during the flight, fastened to their bench with their safety straps, still in their very last posture as they tried to protect themselves from the impact. They look like grey, smoke-blackened statues. Among them, with his neck broken beneath his half-burnt skull, lies the praporshchik. Zotkin’s remaining steel-blue eye is staring at him and Tarasov turns his head away. It’s not the sight that disturbs him so much as the feeling that the dead man is looking at him reproachfully — a reproach made more terrible because Tarasov knows that it is just.

  His weapon lies in the compartment, but with the butt stock broken the rifle is now nothing more than a piece of junk. It could probably be repaired, if only he had the tools. Tarasov throws it away in frustration. Checking his backpack he despairs to see it is burnt and ripped open. Apart from the grenades, only a few anti-radiation drugs and bandages, three packs of army rations and a medikit is all that he can still use. Neither h
as he any use of the spare 9 mm ammunition now that his rifle is beyond repair. His frantic search still yields a few pairs of spare socks, always a blessing for soldiers in the field, and — his toothbrush. Holding it in his hand, he bursts out in hysterical laughter.

  Oh God! A short time ago, I was a high-tech warrior riding in an assault chopper. Now I’m standing here with a damned toothbrush as my only weapon!

  It seems to the major as if the New Zone had wanted to show its power, outwitting and forcing him to make his first steps here alone, even more poorly equipped than the greenest of rookies.

  The paratroopers’ rifles didn’t fare much better than his own but eventually he finds an AKSU that looks more or less intact. Tarasov fires a few shots to check if it works properly. Satisfied, he slings it over his shoulder.

  The pilots were spared electrocution in their heavily protected cockpit, but as Tarasov judges by the splashes of blood inside the plexiglass, the impact killed them in a perhaps even crueler way. They wear light armored suits, designed to keep them protected from the worst only until rescue comes. But even if hardly suitable for combat, the light, olive-green suits would still be more protective than his ruined exoskeleton.

  “Sorry comrade, but you don’t need this any longer,” Tarasov murmurs as he cuts the straps that fasten one of the bodies into its seat before dragging it out of the cockpit. He changes the exoskeleton for the dead pilot’s protective suit. Inside it he finds a torchlight and a small survival kit: a ration pack, one more medikit, a compass, a field flask filled with water and two flares.

  Now that he can act like a soldier again, duty to the squad comes to Tarasov’s mind.

  I could at least bury them, he thinks. But the ground is hard and rocky, so instead he takes the pilot’s body and moves it into the trooper’s compartment, where it will be safe from animals and worse.

  Had that bastard let them wear their protective suits they’d be still alive. I should have insisted, damn it. It was my fault after all.

  Tarasov doesn’t let himself look for excuses. He cannot deny himself that it was his recklessness that led them into disaster. Properly protected, especially the squad leader in his exoskeleton, they would have had a better chance. But this is irrelevant. He was not supposed to change the flight path.

  I will be court-martialed for that alone… if I ever get out of here at all.

  Tarasov finds it strange that he does not see any entry point on the helicopter. If Dragonfly One was brought down by hostile fire, which those gleams must have surely been, it must have hit us somewhere. But pondering through the few impressions he remembers from the crash, and finding no hole or explosion trace on the wreck, it all looks to him as if the helicopter had been hit by an enormously strong electrical impulse that had instantly electrocuted almost everyone inside and fried the on-board systems.

  Suddenly he detects the faint noise of a helicopter.

  Could it be the rescue?

  Listening more carefully to the approaching noise, his feeling of relief proves short-lived.

  It doesn’t sound like one of ours.

  Something inside tells him to hide, but he couldn’t make it up the hills quickly enough and the barren valley does not offer any hide-outs. Finally he dashes up a knoll and hides behind the sparse bushes.

  Soon, a double-engine helicopter appears over the valley and lands at the crash site, swirling up a huge cloud of dust. Tarasov sees five or six figures jumping off, all wearing thick body armor with tactical helmets and holding modern-looking weapons. They start inspecting the wreck. One of them, wearing a bulky backpack, looks inside. To Tarasov’s horror he steps away and sends a stream of liquid fire into the compartment. Immediately, the wreck goes up in orange and white flames.

  Oh Gospodi, they have a flamethrower. They came to make sure everyone is dead.

  One of them stumbles upon his exoskeleton. The others gather round. Tarasov cannot hear anything they say but it seems to him as if the men are arguing. The first, apparently the leader among them, orders two others to recover the remains of the armor and load it into their helicopter.

  What the hell is happening there?

  He wishes he still had his binoculars. There are no marks or call signs on the helicopter. It is painted entirely black. The visitors look around, scanning the area. One of them starts walking up the knoll on which he is hiding. Cautiously, Tarasov prepares his AKSU.

  He is lucky, however. The leader orders his men back to the helicopter and in a few moments only the wild fire in the wreck is left as a reminder of their visit. After a few minutes, the helicopter’s noise fades away.

  Tarasov sighs in relief but waits a few moments before leaving cover. Then, safe at last, he reconsiders his options.

  First, I have to establish contact with Whiskey. Probably Kuznetsov would want me to check out Dragonfly Two’s fate first, and now I have no means of communication anyway.

  Allowing himself a little wishful thinking, he hopes that the transport helicopter fared better than the gunship.

  He looks at his watch. Dusk will soon fall, and with the sun already low it is getting dark in the narrow valley. Tarasov knows the drill: he should stay close to the crash site if he wants any rescuers to find him. But if there was going to be a rescue, it should have arrived long ago. Three hours have passed since they got shot down and Termez is just forty minutes away.

  Maybe they’ll come later, perhaps tomorrow morning.

  But the mysterious visitors could also soon be back in greater numbers. Not even darkness could hide him if they brought thermal imaging equipment with them, and as he had observed from their gear, they certainly wouldn’t lack for state-of-the-art equipment if it was needed.

  Tarasov decides to climb up the ridge to get an overview of the area, hoping to see rising smoke or anything that could give him an idea of Dragonfly Two’s whereabouts. As he toils up the steep hillside, the thought that the visitors might have also found the other helicopter occurs to him. He finds the prospect frightening.

  That would leave me completely alone.

  But then, as he arrives on top of the ridge after a rigorous climb, what he sees shatters all his false hopes.

  What looked from below like a high ridge is all but a small hill compared to the ragged peaks beyond. He removes the tiny compass from the survival kit and takes a bearing.

  To the west lies a circle-shaped valley with a tarn in its middle, its dark blue hue reflecting the brown mountains and the patches of grey snow on their fells. But as Tarasov strains his eyes he sees the water itself is swelling with mounds of water, slowly moving up and down, as if a sudden chill had frozen its waves in a storm.

  It’s a damned Cone anomaly.

  Looking at the far, snowy peaks on the red horizon, he feels lonelier than anywhere in the Zone.

  If this is the New Zone, it will take a hundred years to explore just the half of it.

  All of a sudden he understands why the black chopper left in such a hurry. To the south, where his original destination lies, a curtain of darkness falls, lit up for split seconds by flashes of thunderbolts. Even from far away, Tarasov can see it moving closer as it engulfs the lower hills.

  I don’t care if this is just a storm or a new kind of emission. I must find shelter, and I must find it right now!

  Below, where the slope meets the tarn, he sees a cave. He takes his AKSU from his shoulder and runs down the ridge. It is much farther away than he thought. Finally, gasping for air, he reaches it just as the storm strikes, making everything disappear in a howling, suffocating cloud of dust. His Geiger counter shrieks beyond extreme values. The tiny particles drift through his helmet’s air filters and soon he feels as if a myriad of needles are picking at his throat and trachea.

  Coughing and with eyes full of tears, Tarasov lights an emergency flare and enters the cave. The orange light casts intimidating shadows on the rock wall. Holding his weapon at the ready, he moves deeper into the cave to escape the radioactive dust
. With each step he takes, the ticking of his Geiger counter lowers until the usual ticking cycle sets in, signaling a more survivable level. The click-click and the muted howl from outside is all he can hear.

  The ground is covered in inches of thick dust. His steps make no noise. After a minute, he can hear his own heartbeat.

  The cave widens. A thick cable lies on the ground. Tarasov raises the flare to see more. A hiss comes from the shadows. His blood curls as he sees the cable moving. In a second, it darts up and to Tarasov’s horror, he sees the flare light reflected in the glowing red eyes of a snake, its body as thick as a man’s limb. Greenish, phosphorescent patterns glow upon its skin, either to scare him away or root him to the spot with fear. He screams and stumbles. It is instinct rather than willpower that moves his finger, trigging the AKSU to pump a dozen steel core cartridges into the mutant’s flesh, puncturing skin, ripping through muscles and shattering bones even before the thundering bang-bang-bang can reach his eardrums.

  “Fuck!” he swears, gasping.

  Exhausted and with his heart still pounding hard, he picks up the fallen flare and sits up. The nauseating smell of burnt gunpowder pervades the cave. He opens his flask and takes a deep gulp of water. As his senses are clearing up, he can clearly smell the stench of rotting flesh.

  Maybe it was a sick snake, he thinks getting to his feet and warily kicking the carcass to make sure it’s dead. The flare burns out. He switches to torchlight. Penetrating the shadow, the tiny circle of light suddenly falls upon a badly damaged suit of armor. The stench is coming from the body parts still inside.

  This… snake didn’t swallow its prey. It was eating them, bit by bit.

  Normally he would not do such a thing, but now it is clear to Tarasov that normality ended in the moment when he left the Zone. Eager to see if the corpse has anything useful on it, he overcomes his nausea and steps closer to it. The prey was a Stalker — leastwise the armor looks identical to the suits worn in the Zone by the more experienced Stalkers. They called them “Sunrise”, for reasons beyond his understanding. However, this one has a sand-colored camouflage scheme with brown patterns and a scarf attached to cover its wearer’s head from dust. To help its wearer cope better with the new Zone’s warmer climate, a camelback water bag was integrated into the suit.