by Lee Stephen
The flight felt as if it were the longest of Scott’s life. He knew they weren’t far from The Machine; he’d heard the pilot exchanging words with NovCom—Novosibirsk Command. But every second still felt like a long minute.
When she wasn’t tending to the wounded, Svetlana was sitting right next to him. He couldn’t blame her for sticking to his side—not after what they’d been through.
He had listened to the radio long enough to hear the latest status of the federal building. To his satisfaction, he discovered that the rest of the Thirty-fifth had finished the job. All Bakma in the building were dead. He was frustrated that he couldn’t complete the task himself, but at least it had been done. Better by someone else than by no one at all. If any Bakma stragglers remained in the city, they wouldn’t last long. While local authorities skimped out when it came to battles, they did an excellent job of cleaning up. They would be assisted by the city’s local EDEN stations once they’d wrapped up their job with the Carrier. Krasnoyarsk would be safe, if not half burned to the ground.
“I forgot what this was like,” Svetlana said softly.
Scott looked her way.
“I got used to being a civilian. It was nice.” She laughed pathetically. “This is not so nice.”
That’s why you should have stayed home. He couldn’t stop the thoughts from forming, but he held them back. Instead of speaking, he looked at the floor.
“Scott, you there?”
The voice came from Scott’s handheld comm. He immediately recognized it as Max.
“Scott?”
Rising from his seat, Scott took the comm to the back of the Vulture. Lowering the volume for privacy, he brought it up to his lips. “I’m here.”
“Ulrich’s dead, man.”
Scott’s face must have registered his surprise, for his comrades were all staring at him. He resumed his covert exchange. “What happened? Did he get shot?” The obvious answer had to be yes. Unless he fell out of a Vulture. Nonetheless, he was surprised he hadn’t heard it over the open channel. News like that tended to spread.
“A sentry killed him.”
“A sentry? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know all the details. Clarke just commed me. Something happened back at the hangar.”
Ulrich dying in the hangar? What could possibly have happened that would induce a sentry to kill him? He had a feeling Krasnoyarsk was part of it.
“How’s Becan?” asked Max.
Scott turned to the Irishman, who was in less pain now thanks to morphine and burn gel on the wound. Svetlana had done well. “I think he’ll be fine,” he said. He could hear Max sigh with relief.
“At least only one of us died,” Max said.
Max’s words struck Scott as heartless until he had a moment to think them through. Maksim was dead. That was indeed terrible; the young demolitionist had been cursed from the start. But that only Maksim was dead—that was a minor miracle. He tried not to think about God, but only halfway succeeded.
“All right,” Max said. “I’ll see you back home.”
The comm channel closed.
Scott lowered his head. Maksim Frolov. Though the demolitionist had had several good missions after Khatanga, he’d been more in the background than anywhere else. What a wasted career. I should have taken more time to know him. Now it’s too late. He forced himself to think about something else. Maksim wasn’t the mission’s only loss.
Ulrich was dead. The Eighth was leaderless. He wondered how William and Derrick would take it. He wondered how he would tell them. Returning to his seat, Scott lowered himself next to Svetlana. She looked at him with curiosity.
“Scott, what is the matter?”
How would he even begin to explain it? It wouldn’t even matter to her. To her, Ulrich meant nothing. He was a Russian name, nothing more. She hadn’t been there in Khatanga. But to William and Derrick, he meant their careers. He glanced at them. Both men were watching him with apprehensive stares, and as soon as it became apparent that the news concerned them, they approached.
“What is it?” Derrick asked.
Your commanding officer was just murdered. How else was he supposed to say it?
“Scott?”
Just say it. Just get it out. “Ulrich was killed by a sentry.”
Neither William nor Derrick said a word; they simply stared. Then William reacted, his gaze falling to the floor for a moment as he lost himself in deep thought. Then his eyes settled on Derrick. When William spoke, his voice was thick with new purpose.
“Dude. I bet we can get our barbeque back.”
* * *
Back in the hangar, Max was carrying Maksim’s body bag out of the Vulture and prepping it for departure. It was a tedious task usually carried out by several people, but Max was the only member of his team there. There was no captain, no commander, no one else from the Fourteenth. It all fell on him.
“Veck,” he said under his breath.
Brunner approached him from behind. Like Max, she was out of her armor. Her brown pigtails dangled behind her head. “What is wrong?”
“There’s no one else here and I gotta make a report.”
“Report about what?”
“About casualties, Ann! I got one man dead and one injured, and it’s my doggone fault.”
“Max, it was not your fault.”
“Then who the hell’s fault is it? You see anyone else from my team standin’ around?”
“Max…”
“This was just a bad mission. That’s it. Just one of those missions from hell. We get a lotta those in this squad.”
Brunner was quiet for several moments, then her jaw set firmly. “Thirteen of my teammates are dead. By the end of the night, there may be more.” She stared as he looked the other way. “And you are feeling sorry for yourself because you lost one. Shame on you, Matthew.”
An awkward silence ensued, and she turned to walk away.
“Ann!” he called after her. She walked on without stopping. “Veck, Ann, I’m sorry! Gimme a chance to say something here!”
When she turned and saw the sincerity in his eyes, her anger relented. “I will pray for your men. I expect you to do the same thing for mine.”
Max sighed. “All right, fine.”
She acknowledged and left.
* * *
David and Esther stood alone in the infirmary. It didn’t matter that surgeons and nurses were bustling past them or that they were periodically forced to step aside to allow wounded through. In the midst of the clamor, they were alone.
No word had come back about Jayden—not since the initial report. They were forced to endure the anxiety of having no news. They could do nothing but wait.
Varvara was somewhere in the infirmary. Supposedly, so were Travis and Boris. No one else’s whereabouts was known.
Not once had Esther shed a tear, despite the knowledge that two of her comrades had fallen either to death or heavy casualty, and despite the fact that she’d just been punched in the face. Her lower lip, swollen and torn, was Ulrich’s final mark on the Earth.
“You saved that guy Jacobsen’s life today,” David said, his voice barely a murmur. “You did good.”
She watched him for several seconds, scrutinizing his expression. Finally she spoke. “I just did what I did.”
“Esther…”
Surprisingly, the voice wasn’t David’s. Esther turned to find the source of her name. It was Varvara. The ragged medic was running toward them. The moment she reached her friend, she buried her face in Esther’s shoulder. Tears poured as Esther pulled Varvara in close. For the first time since they’d arrived back, Esther’s British stoicism faltered. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“What did you hear?” David asked.
Varvara didn’t answer.
“It’s okay,” Esther whispered again.
Travis and Boris appeared down the hall and approached them. “There’s good news and bad news,” ventured the pilot.
“The bad news,” said David firmly.
Travis frowned. “Boris and I didn’t get to go in, but we saw photos. Jayden looks like a wreck.” He kept his voice low, concealing it from Varvara. “Apparently, he hit metal railings or something all the way down from that tower. Hard enough to slow down the fall and save his life, but it jammed his visor into his face like a cookie cutter.”
“What about his eyes?”
“His left eye is gone. They said it was beyond anything they could do. But his right eye…they think it has a chance.”
“Is that the good news?”
“Yeah.”
“If one eye gets better, that’s good enough,” David said. “God, I’m not even worried about his career. I just want the poor boy to see.”
Travis agreed. “This was the worst thing that could have happened to the best possible person.”
“It’s not like him not to see a Bakma like that. He’s never missed one before.”
“Speaking of Bakma,” the pilot sighed, “Jayden’s got a nasty plasma hole in his back. It couldn’t have been a better shot, it hit him straight on. He’s lucky he still has a spine.”
“Viktor said something about broken bones?”
“Yeah.” Travis looked at Varvara again to ensure their privacy. “You name it, he’s got it. Foot, fingers, toes…his legs and arms…I heard more bones I couldn’t pronounce than in my whole life combined. He’s messed up, man.”
David grew more concerned. “How bad are we talking about?”
“They said all of it’s recoverable. The plasma hole, too. They said it’s possible for him to actually be at one hundred percent in two or three months, minus being totally out of shape. They said he’s the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”
David scoffed.
“I guess we’re just at ‘wait and see.’” Said Travis. “It all depends on that right eye.”
David did not respond.
Clinging to Esther’s jersey, Varvara repeated her near-garbled words incessantly. “How could this happen? How could this happen?”
Esther stroked the medic’s hair. “He’s going to be all right.”
For a moment, Esther caught David’s eye. He stood beside Travis and Boris, his expression revealing his despair. For her part, Esther remained stubborn. She gently shook her head, mouthing the words, “Do not give up.”
David’s reaction was faint, but evident. He almost looked ashamed.
* * *
Jacobsen was carried out of the transport while Svetlana clung to the injured man’s side despite the fact that he was from another unit. She’d monitored him constantly during the flight, as she had the other injured operatives. Now the injured were being removed. Becan was among them.
It was one of the strangest missions Scott had been on. Though his role in it had been smaller than that of his mission in Chicago, for some reason this one felt larger. It felt as though he’d been on several missions in one.
As Scott stepped into the hanger’s open area, he took a moment to observe the chaos. The hangar was bustling as rarely before, undoubtedly due to casualties from Krasnoyarsk.
“Lieutenant.”
Scott turned to see Oleg approach. The battle-scarred operative smiled through obvious fatigue.
“Thank you for saving us, lieutenant. We would not have survived without your rescue. Becan and Jacobsen would surely be dead.”
Scott answered Oleg with silence. Almost for the first time, instead of fawning, the delta trooper’s flattery sounded sincere. “Go find Brooking. Thank her, instead.” If not for Esther’s arrival on the snowmobile, they’d have never reached the federal building in time. He had no idea where she’d found the vehicle, but she’d done a good thing.
The delta trooper looked puzzled, but acknowledged. “As you wish, lieutenant.” He turned and walked away.
Scott recalled the federal building battle. He remembered everything from the moment they entered through the metal door to the moment they were driven away in the Grizzly. He remembered Oleg in particular. Scott had never seen the soldier fight like that before, and he’d never seen Oleg so adept. Prior to joining the Fourteenth, Oleg had been with the First—supposedly the most elite unit in Novosibirsk. It was now obvious why.
Every time I turned around, Oleg was there. Shooting. Attacking. Avoiding the enemy. He never got touched. Perhaps there was something untapped there. Perhaps Oleg was epsilon material.
Scott turned back to the hangar, where he found the Pariah. It was parked in its regular space at the opposite end. He walked toward it.
It was a mistake to send Travis back.
The cursed transport had been home for quite some time. From the looks of things, it was already prepared to launch again. Reaching out with his hand, he felt the ship’s hull.
I never thought I’d miss you.
He stared at the image of the feral dog painted on the Vulture’s tail wing. More paint had chipped off, yet the dog still snarled with rabid ferocity. Was the ship cursed? Maybe. But it was theirs. During the entire return ride in one of the Thirty-ninth’s Vultures, Scott felt as though he didn’t belong. Flying in any other craft just didn’t seem right.
His thoughts were interrupted as footsteps emerged from the ship. Stepping back, Scott looked at the rear entrance. Max made his way through the door and down the stairs.
The two lieutenants locked eyes in an awkward moment. Both men were exhausted. Both looked beaten. The soreness in Scott’s chest where he’d been blasted by the shotgun was affecting how he walked. Max had a noticeable limp, too.
“I didn’t know you were in there,” Scott said. Max looked more weary than Scott could ever recall—in fact, he looked lost.
“Yeah,” Max answered. “Just wanted to walk through it. For some reason.”
Scott understood. There was familiarity with the Pariah. “We should have kept it out there. I screwed up.” He caught himself at the end of that statement; it sounded uncharacteristically responsible. At least, uncharacteristic as of late.
“Nah.” Max looked up at the ship from outside. “I would’ve done the same thing.”
If the ship had stayed in Krasnoyarsk, we might have reached the federal building sooner. Lives could have been saved. Was one sniper worth it?
He hated himself for asking the question, even if only in his head. The emotional side of him said absolutely. But the logical side disagreed. He wondered what would have happened had someone else made the decision. Clarke could have made it, but the captain had left it to Scott. He knew what Thoor would have done, but Thoor was too vicious to even matter. What would Colonel Lilan have done? For a fleeting moment, he missed Falcon Platoon. Scott was snapped out of his thoughts by Max’s next words.
“I’m a horrible lieutenant.”
The statement stunned Scott.
“Some people have it,” Max continued, “and some people don’t. I apparently don’t.”
Max, what are you talking about? What happened to you? This was the same man who had beaten him senseless in a sparring match the day he’d arrived. Who had mocked his religion to his face. This was his rival. Is it because I’m worse than you now? Do you feel we’re somehow at the same level of crudeness?
Max ran a hand through his hair, his fingertips disappearing beneath snow-dampened blond spikes. “Sometimes I could die.”
Scott still said nothing. Those were words he could understand—but from his own point of view. He had felt the same sentiment many times.
Max stepped away from the Pariah. As he strode past Scott, he slowed down. “If you tell anyone I said that, I’ll bash in your face. Fulcrum or not.” The technician-turned-lieutenant walked away.
Scott watched as Max disappeared. I’ll bash in your face. That sounded like the Max he knew. For a moment, he considered saying something. But no proper words came to mind. Instead, he queried himself.
When was the last time I actually reached out to someone like Max? Am I really so different now than
I used to be? He shook his head. I’m not different at all. I was always this way. It just took Novosibirsk to prove it.
Scott touched the Pariah a final time before stepping back and turning away. He was ready to go somewhere else, somewhere dark, where he could be alone. He still needed to check on Jayden, but that could come later. The Texan would be in surgery for a couple of hours. Hours, if not days.
Scott made it all the way to his quarters without encountering anyone he knew, and without having to talk to a soul.
That felt familiar, too.
9
Monday, November 7, 0011 NE
0535 hours
EDEN Command
Judge Torokin’s entire body quivered as his right forearm flexed into a rocklike bulge. He dangled just a half-meter from the ground in one of EDEN Command’s many weight rooms. It was an irony that any of the rooms existed at all. He was one of the only men who religiously used them.
He clenched the pull-up bar with white knuckles, lifting himself with one arm. It was a slow motion by design. It was meant to be painful. His chin eased over the bar.
“Seven,” he counted in Russian. The word was barely audible as he inhaled a short breath. Exhaling, he lowered himself.
As usual, there was no one else present. On rare occasions, Judge Richard Lena would join him in the mornings. But more often than not, he was alone. Taking a preparatory breath, he once again pulled himself up. His teeth were clenched in focus. As he lifted, his face flushed bright red.
“Eight.”
Of all the judges in the High Command, only Torokin could have picked up a weapon and rushed into battle with little to no warning. With office jobs often came physical laziness. He refused to succumb to the same out-of-shape fate as the rest of his fellow judges and staffers.
For a ninth time, his chin edged over the bar. He could feel the muscle fibers tearing in his chest and arms.
“Nine.” Then down again.
The routine was always the same. Ten one-handed pull-ups with each arm. This would finish off his entire set. He had been in the weight room for over an hour already. His sweat-soaked hair and gray T-shirt were evidence of that. It was a rare night when he got more than six hours of sleep. Sometimes even six felt like too much.
