by Lisa Smedman
Neo-Soviet rifle fire cut him down. Then an acrid smell filled the air as Vanya’s chem-sprayer soaked him from head to foot. The Union soldier fell, still screaming in terror until the air bled from his lungs.
Then it was quiet, aside from the crackle of gunfire and muffled explosions coming from the fighting elsewhere in the former port city. It sounded like the battle was moving deeper into Vladivostok.
Irina leaned out from behind her cover and fired a burst from her assault rifle at the submarine, then disappeared behind the cement block again.
The submarine was silent. No one fired back at her.
What was happening? Alexi stared at the dead Union soldier, whose body was rapidly being consumed by the chemicals from Vanya’s sprayer. Why had the fool shucked his armored suit and run out into the open where he would be shot? What could possibly have frightened him so badly? And what had that ball of screaming light been?
Alexi glanced back to the cement block that the Leitenant was sheltered behind. Despite the armor that covered him from head to foot, Soldatenkof hadn’t yet had the courage to show his face. But with the lull in the shooting, he’d be looking in Alexi’s direction any moment. . . .
Alexi ground his teeth in frustration. He was caught between a rock—a pile of broken concrete, actually—and a hard place. Then he sighed. Now was as good a time to die as any. If he stayed put, the tension alone would kill him.
In a shambling crouch, he broke cover and ran for the grenades. Scooping one up, he charged at the sub. He twisted the primer on the bottom of the grenade, bowled it underhand through the gaping hole in the sub’s rusted hull, and slammed up against the side of the submarine, under one of its fins, sheltering himself. The grenade exploded. Fire and smoke fountained out past Alexi, littering the beach with twisted metal fragments. The rush of air from the explosion carried with it the smell of burnt flesh and hot metal.
More silence. Nothing stirred within the sub.
The members of the rad squad broke cover and ran forward, assault rifles at the ready. Leading from behind, as usual, was Leitenant Soldatenkof, who shouted orders at them over his helmet radio from the shelter of the concrete block. Static crackled in Alexi’s helmet speaker; he couldn’t make out what the officer was saying over the ringing left in his ears by the exploding frag grenade. He lifted the strap of his AK-51 over his head and began lifting the weapon to his chest.
A figure stepped from the submarine. Alexi caught only a glimpse of it: incredibly tall, strangely jointed arms, blue skin covered with intricate white lines, one hand holding what looked like a scythe-tipped metal pole. Then it shoved him back with one hand in a motion as fluid as it was swift. In that same eyeblink-quick movement, the creature plucked the assault rifle from Alexi’s hand before he could pull the trigger, and tossed it to one side.
Alexi found himself sprawled on his back, his glasses hanging from one ear as the AK-51 clattered to the ground somewhere to his right.
He looked up, trying to focus on the impossibly tall, incredibly swift blue creature. But the human-shaped creature was nothing but a blur. And that blur was . . . shifting. The white lines on its blue body squirmed like writhing snakes, pulsating in a strobelike effect.
A thought entered Alexi’s head: his squad was about to die. Each and every one of them would stand like ripe wheat waiting to be cut down by the blue creature with his deadly scythe. . . .
The creature was ignoring Alexi—for now. Why wasn’t anyone shooting at it? Were the others in the squad holding their fire because Alexi was too close to the thing? Why didn’t Vanya spray it? Why didn’t someone shoot?
Reaching a trembling hand to his face, Alexi hooked his glasses back over his ears. He scrambled sideways across the concrete like a crab, away from the creature, searching for his rifle. There! Only a meter away. He picked up his AK-51 . . .
And looked up at the other members of his squad. They were standing still, weapons held loosely at their sides. Even Leitenant Soldatenkof had risen from cover and was staring at the creature with his mouth hanging open, slack-jawed as a half-wit.
Alexi heard the creature moving behind him. He started to turn his head . . .
A warning voice whispered in Alexi’s mind: Don’t look!
And then he almost remembered . . .
His glasses were off . . . a rocket . . . No, a blade at his throat . . .
Without really understanding why, Alexi took off his glasses. The creature passed him by, striding toward the nearest Neo-Soviet soldier—Vanya. The musician-turned-soldier was a motionless blur; the nozzles of the chem-sprayer in his hand hissing as they sprayed a blurry arc of black gunk onto the ground a short distance ahead of him. Vanya stared at the blue-skinned creature as if hypnotized.
The blur that was the creature raised something long and slender that glittered in the moonlight: its scythe-bladed staff. The staff started to swing . . .
Alexi squeezed the trigger. His AK-51 bucked in his hands. He had only the vaguest of targets to aim at: the taller of the two human-shaped blurs. He ran the risk of hitting Vanya or one of the other squad members—or even the Leitenant. But if he didn’t shoot, they’d die anyway.
Alexi wasn’t able to see the back of the creature’s head tear open as a round from the AK-51 caught it. Not clearly. But he could see the results. The staff flew from the creature’s hands, and then the creature itself folded up like a Chinese fan, the life suddenly gone from it.
In that same instant, the other members of Alexi’s squad came to life. At least three of them—Alexi wasn’t sure who, since they were still blurs—fired a burst from their own weapons at the thing as it lay twitching on the ground. As Alexi put his glasses back on, Vanya was just about to reduce the creature to a bubbling mess when the leitenant ran over to him and smacked the twin nozzles of the chem-sprayer away.
“Idiot!” Soldatenkof cried. “Don’t destroy it! Intelligence will want the body intact, you imbecile.” He looked around. “Someone get a tarp so we can move it,” he shouted.
“What is it?” Vanya asked the leitenant as Alexi approached. “Some sort of mutant?”
Boris and Piotr ran toward the beached submarine and clambered inside. Their voices crackled back over Alexi’s helmet speakers.
Just an empty assault suit in here. All clear!
And Neo-Soviet dead. Ugh . . . body parts everywhere . . . slaughterhouse in here . . . thirty rubles says . . .
Curious, Alexi knelt beside the blue-skinned creature. Purplish blood was puddling on the cement underneath it. The white lines on its body were still now. Its face . . .
It wasn’t . . .
A name hovered at the edge of Alexi’s consciousness, then vanished. He glanced back at the submarine and saw Boris emerge from a hole in its side.
“Whatever that blue thing was, I’m glad it’s dead,” he shouted. “Nice shooting, Alexi. Thanks. I don’t know what that creature did, but it felt as though I was hypnotized. I couldn’t—”
“That’s enough chatter,” the leitenant snapped, cutting Boris off. “No one is to speak of this—person—further, until given permission by me to do so. Especially over your helmet radios. Understood?”
Boris and Piotr jogged back to where the rest of the squad had gathered. As they stared at the creature on the ground, the leitenant glared at each of the squad members in turn until they nodded.
Alexi stood, and looked around for the blue-skinned creature’s weapon. He had seen where it had landed, but now he couldn’t find the strange metal staff. He couldn’t be certain, but had that area of the beach suddenly turned a darker color—a shade of black that was somehow more dense than it should be?
“The creature,” Alexi murmured, speaking his thoughts aloud. “How can we be sure there was just one of—”
Suddenly the leitenant’s face was centimeters from his own. “Minsk! You half-witted dreamer,” he screamed. “No talking about it! That’s a direct order.”
“But . . .” When Alexi
looked back, the patch of darkness was gone. Something important had just happened—something he understood only at a subconscious level.
He had no idea what it was.
Instead of arguing with the leitenant, he turned away to fetch a tarp.
9
T he hissing noise was the first thing Alexi noticed. That—and the darkness.
He wasn’t in the helicraft anymore.
He froze.
“Alexi, what’s wrong? Did you hear something?”
That was Piotr’s voice.
Alexi’s hands no longer held the microphone. Instead they gripped his AK-51. He stood in a concrete-walled hallway, in utter darkness except for the beam of light that came from the halogen bulb in his helmet. The hissing was coming from somewhere up ahead, up past the point where the corridor had partially collapsed.
Piotr stood beside him, holding a frag grenade in one hand and his Uzi in the other. His breath fogged in the chill air, forming tiny ice crystals on the fur of his ushanka cap. He wore a padded greatcoat over his combat fatigues. So did Alexi; his armored vest was gone.
The last thing Alexi remembered, he’d been on board a helicraft as it flew away from the battle in Vladivostok. The leitenant had been about to shoot him because he couldn’t remember how he’d killed the blue-skinned alien. He’d been trying to point out something to the leitenant, something in the helicraft that none of the other squad members had noticed. . . .
Except that he did remember how he killed the alien: by taking off his glasses so he wouldn’t be affected by the hypnotic tattoos, and shooting it. And he had made the report to Intelligence.
And the patch of darkness in the back of the helicraft . . .
Only a shadow.
Yes, the memory was clearer now. The leitenant had called Alexi forward to the helicraft cockpit to speak on the radio. As he’d handed Alexi the microphone, Alexi thought he saw something moving in the back of the cargo bay, but it had been nothing more than the shadow of one of the squad members, a product of the cargo bay’s flickering interior lighting. He’d begun making the report to Intelligence . . .
And found himself here.
Wherever here was.
Piotr shifted nervously from one foot to the other. He’d been an actor in Moscow before being conscripted into the rad squad—back before the radiation blisters marred an otherwise perfect face. His chiseled features and long dark hair gave him the appearance of a noble boyar, and his actor’s training enabled him to hide his emotions well; he was one of the few members of the squad who could keep the contempt out of his expression when he looked at Leitenant Soldatenkof. But his face was an open book. Piotr was scared. His dark eyes were wide in his pockmarked face.
“What do you hear, Alexi?” he asked. “Something up ahead? Or are they radioing us? Can we return to the surface?”
Radio. Yes. That might give him some clues. But the speaker was producing its usual static hiss.
Alexi thumped the heel of his hand against his helmet. But the static didn’t clear up.
Should he tell Piotr about his blackouts? Alexi didn’t think it was a good idea—not after what had happened to Tamara. When she’d gone crazy and started talking to her grenades as if they were babies, the other squad members had at first turned a blind eye. Then she’d primed one, and held it to her breast. Boris had wrenched it from her and tossed it away only a second or two before it exploded. A short time later, Tamara and Piotr had been sent ahead to scout out a downed Union bomber plane. Shots were fired, and only Piotr had returned. He’d claimed that the plane’s automated weapons systems had killed Tamara, but Alexi doubted it. If the plane’s weapons were still functional, it would have required a miracle for Piotr to escape without a scratch. Nothing was ever said about the incident—not even by the lieutenant. Alexi had just gone along with the silence, adding his unspoken vote in favor of Piotr’s actions.
Alexi didn’t want Piotr thinking that he had gone mad, too.
“Where are we, Piotr?” Alexi asked. He decided to stretch the truth a little, in case he’d been providing Piotr with position reports up until now. “I’ve ah . . . lost track. My helmet radio has just gone dead.”
“We must be too far underground to pick up a signal,” Piotr answered. He glanced up, but the bulb in his helmet had nearly burned out and emitted too feeble a glow to illuminate even the ceiling overhead. “Too much concrete above us. We should climb back up to where they can hear us.”
Alexi turned his head, swinging the beam of the helmet’s built-in flashlight around. Underground, then. In a bunker, perhaps?
The light picked out a pattern on the floor. Half-hidden by grime were stripes that ran along the middle of the corridor—a broad band of yellow and one of red. They reminded Alexi of the stripes used in hospital corridors, to direct people to the various wards. The yellow stripe turned a corner to the left; the red one disappeared just ahead, under the pile of broken concrete that had fallen from the ceiling. Pieces of wire and a broken light panel dangled just above the chest-high debris. Faint sparks crackled from their frayed ends. The hissing noise came from just behind the collapse.
Piotr gestured at the spot where Alexi’s helmet light illuminated the red stripe. “We don’t have to follow it all the way to the end. We’d never get past that collapse, anyhow. Do you see the sparks? There must be some sort of emergency generator—those wires are live. We could just say the lab was clear and go back.”
“Lab?” Alexi asked. “What’s inside it? Maybe we should take a look.”
“Nyet.” The once-handsome man’s eyes grew still more fearful. “Let it be.”
Alexi’s mind whirled. “Let what be?” he asked.
Piotr laughed. “That’s the spirit, Alexi,” he said with a broad wink. “We saw nothing. The tank was crushed—just like the others. Our recon is done.”
Alexi glanced at the spot where the ceiling had collapsed. Was the hissing noise getting louder?
“Should we be turning our backs on it?” he asked.
Piotr turned on his actor’s charm. Smiling, affable, he clapped Alexi on the back. “Come on, tovarish,” he said. “Let’s just tiptoe away. I’ve never known you to do anything you don’t have to. Or have you suddenly turned hero on us, now that you’ve been recommended for a decoration?”
“I have?” Alexi asked. Then he quickly added: “Oh—for killing the alien, da?”
Piotr grunted. “Don’t get too boastful about it, or they’ll promote you. And then you’ll turn into a bastard, like every other officer. And then I’d have to shoot you.”
Alexi looked sharply at Piotr. The words had been spoken entirely without expression—Alexi couldn’t be certain it was just a joke. He took one last look in the direction of the hissing noise, then nodded. The light from his helmet bobbed across the floor.
“Which way?” he asked.
Piotr gestured with his Uzi. “We followed a green one in. And then the red. But I think the yellow is a faster way back to the surface.”
They turned down the side corridor and began trudging back along the yellow line. As they walked, their footsteps echoing off the concrete walls, Alexi couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something just behind them—something menacing and evil. Was that faint sound the scrape of metal on concrete—or had Alexi’s helmet speaker started crackling again? Alexi had the strange feeling that he knew what the thing making the noise was—but every time he tried to picture it in his mind, the image vanished. He kept glancing back over his shoulder, splashing the corridor behind them with light, until Piotr stubbed his toe on a piece of hospital equipment that looked as if it had been chewed up by a frag grenade. Cursing, he made Alexi take the lead.
“You want us to break our necks, Alexi?” he asked in an exasperated voice. “Nyet? Then keep that light pointed for—”
A noise erupted out of the darkness—a cross between the roar of a strangled lion and a sound like metal being sawed with a dull blade at high speed. Ech
oing down the corridor, it approached like the roar of a subway train through a tunnel. Fear washing through his gut like ice water, Alexi turned to see what was bearing down on them. . . .
Piotr went down.
The rad soldier screamed as he was pulled to the ground. A flare of red erupted from the barrel of his Uzi as his fingers convulsively pulled the trigger. Bullets crashed into the ceiling, showering chips of cement on Alexi’s shoulders. One or two spanged off the metal of a light fixture overhead, and glass exploded from it. Piotr’s other hand flailed, and the grenade he had been holding rolled away.
Backpedaling rapidly, Alexi pointed the light of his helmet down at Piotr. An animal about the size and shape of a chimpanzee, but with exaggerated muscles and metallic spikes radiating out of its spine, was sitting on Piotr’s chest. It had a short, thick tail and bare skin that gleamed like burnished copper. One of its lumpy knees pinned Piotr’s arm to the floor.
Alexi brought up his AK-51, aimed . . . but Piotr was in the way. He didn’t want to shoot him by mistake.
As Piotr screamed and fought to twist his Uzi around to shoot the thing, the creature opened oversize jaws that looked like a spring-loaded leg-hold trap. Its mouth was filled with rows of bright metal teeth. Slamming its head down, it sank these teeth into Piotr’s neck. Alexi heard a wet crunch, and Piotr’s scream choked off abruptly. The Uzi fell silent and clattered onto the ground.
Alexi took a cautious step back from the creature, struggling to fight down his panic. Another step. As the creature fed, pulling an artery from Piotr’s mangled neck and slurping the hot blood from it, Alexi aimed his AK-51 at its head. Then he fired.
The assault rifle bucked as bullets roared out of it. The barrel began to steam in the cold corridor. Bullets slammed into the creature, some striking sparks as they ricocheted off the steely spikes on its back.