Vor: The Playback War

by Lisa Smedman

  The snow was falling more thickly now; in a short time it would provide a shroud for the dog.

  A noise intruded on Alexi’s thoughts: the drone of an aircraft, far overhead. Alexi craned his head back, but couldn’t see anything beyond the cloud cover.

  Suddenly the dog lurched to its feet. It was a tough one, this hound. The half-starved animal had fallen over more from shock than anything else. But Alexi’s joy was short-lived. Staring at the bullet hole in the animal’s flank, watching it seep blood, he knew the animal would eventually die without medical care. And with medicines so short that Nevsky was forced to buy them on the black market for the squad, there weren’t any antibiotics to be given to a mere dog.

  Whining, the hound licked Alexi’s hand. He scratched it behind the ear, and reached into his pocket for the tube of sausage paste. The dog would be hungry enough to appreciate it. . . .

  Booted feet thudded around the corner. Irina skidded to a stop in the snow. Alexi heard the rustle of her greatcoat as she raised her weapon.

  He threw up a hand. “Nyet! Don’t shoot!”

  Irina held her fire.

  “Tovarish!” she panted, lowering her weapon and looking at the hound. “I thought it was a growler.”

  The dog whined. Alexi squeezed some of the sausage out of the tube, and the whines became hungry slurps.

  “What are you doing?” Irina asked.

  Alexi could not see her eyes in the shadow of her helmet, but the censure in her voice was clear.

  “Feeding a dog. Are you going to criticize me for wasting rations—tovarish?”

  “It could be a rad-hound.” Irina whispered, as if her words alone would set off a bomb.

  Alexi jerked his hand back from the dog. The animal whined, looking up at the paste tube. Saliva dribbled from its mouth. Well trained, it waited for him to lower the food, even though it was starving.

  A rad-hound? The thought had never occurred to Alexi. But it was possible, especially here in what remained of Tomsk 13. Neo-Soviet officials were often accompanied by personal guard dogs—mutants that were trained to protect their masters at any cost. These “rad-hounds” would hurl themselves at a target and then trigger an explosive charge that had been implanted inside their abdomens. Once triggered, it sent shards of steel flying in all directions, like a mobile land mine.

  This dog looked normal enough. It certainly didn’t have the grossly augmented musculature of a rad-hound. But that didn’t mean its body cavities hadn’t been tampered with. Especially since it was running loose in the ruins of a military research facility.

  “Stand aside,” Irina said. “It’s best to shoot it.”

  The dog looked up at Alexi with equal parts of hunger and obedience. Its eyes never left the tube.

  “Nyet,” Alexi decided. “Leave it be. If it was to have exploded, it would have done so when I approached. It’s just a normal dog.”

  Alexi’s voice was firmer than his resolve. But he was tired of this pointless war. He wanted to let something live, for once. Still, it paid to be cautious. He raised the tube of sausage paste above his head, then tossed it away, into the ruins. The dog limped after it and disappeared from sight.

  Irina snorted, then turned on her heel. As she walked away, Alexi could hear her muttering into her helmet, no doubt complaining to the leitenant about Alexi’s incompetence.

  Something overhead caught Alexi’s eye. He looked up—and saw a large white circle fluttering down from the sky. Suspended below it was a dull silver object that was difficult to see against the falling snow and gray sky. Just as Alexi realized what he was looking at, the parachutist aimed a weapon at him. The machine gun belched fire from above and bullets churned the snow at Alexi’s feet into slush. One of the slugs smashed through the open visor of Alexi’s helmet, perforating the clear plastic and slamming it shut.

  The parachutist landed just behind him. The dull silver bodysuit the soldier wore was unmarked, save for a patch on each shoulder and rank designators on the sleeves. But Alexi didn’t need to see the combination of stars, maple leaves, and eagles that made up the Union shoulder patch to know that this was the enemy.

  Neither did Irina. In one smooth motion she wheeled around to face the parachutist. In that same instant, the Union soldier whipped his compact machine gun to his shoulder. Alexi realized that he was standing between the two—in a space that was about to be filled with flying lead.

  He dived for cover.

  The visor of Alexi’s helmet was crazed—a mass of cracks crisscrossed the clear plastic. He couldn’t see the ground as he hit. But as the two weapons roared behind him, he realized his mistake. As he skidded on his belly in the snow, a ragged chunk of glass from a blown-out window frame caught his right arm. It tore open his greatcoat and gouged into his flesh just above the elbow. In seconds, the sleeve of his greatcoat was soaked. Alexi’s arm throbbed as hot blood pumped out of it. He groaned, realizing what had happened. An artery . . .

  Dazed, he sat up, clutching at the pain with his left hand. Through the bullet hole in his crack-obscured visor, he could see that both Irina and the Union parachutist were down, their bodies sprawled heaps in the snow. Red puddled around them, staining the snow.

  Farther away, Alexi could hear gunfights erupting. Somewhere to the north, the helicraft’s engines were revving. He looked up and saw another Union parachutist. Dizzy now from loss of blood, he hallucinated that the parachute was a gigantic white snowflake, drifting down from the sky to cover him gently like a soft, cold blanket. . . .

  Alexi shook his head violently. Something rattled next to his ear. At the same time that his thoughts cleared, so did the radio in his helmet.

  Got him! Boris shouted jubilantly. Then, Uh-oh. Here comes another.

  Fall back to the helicraft! Soldatenkof screamed. You’ve got two minutes, and then we’re taking off. Move it!

  Alexi didn’t feel like moving anywhere. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, fighting back the pain. If he didn’t get to the helicraft, Soldatenkof would leave him. . . .

  But what about Piotr and Nevsky? They’re too far below to make it.

  That was Vanya’s voice. Panting, as if he was running. Alexi waited for Boris to lay odds on whether the chem grunt would make it to the helicraft, but the bearish man’s voice was missing from the radio traffic. Then he heard Vanya scream into his radio. The panting stopped.

  A rocket exploded, throwing a flash of red into the sky from behind a building to the north. That had to be the helicraft’s ordnance.

  Alexi tried to get his feet under him. The slight motion sent more blood pumping through his fingers. No good. He’d bleed to death before he took a single step.

  “Pazhalsta,” he groaned into his mike. “It’s Alexi. I’m wounded. Won’t someone help—”

  Soldatenkof’s terrified voice shrieked out of Alexi’s helmet speaker. What in the name of the Savior is that? he screamed. Get this helicraft into the air before that thing—

  The rest was lost in what sounded like a lion’s roar—so loud that it rattled the broken window glass beside Alexi in its frame. Fighting to remain conscious, Alexi imagined that the saber-toothed tiger from the museum had come to life. Except that a lion would have to be as big as a mountain to make that noise, and would have to have vocal cords made of strung steel.

  Someone was still shooting. And the helicraft rotors were whirring. But the radio in Alexi’s helmet gave out only a faint static. The voices of the squad had fallen silent, replaced by a ghostly hiss.

  A cold feeling in Alexi’s gut told him that the rest of his squad—to the last soldier—was dead. He was the only one to have survived.

  Alexi tried once more to stand, then collapsed again. Flakes of snow puffed into the air as he landed on his back on the cold cement. He let go of his throbbing arm and pulled off his helmet with his uninjured hand. Snowflakes drifted down onto his bare cheeks as he pulled out the cross he wore around his neck and began to pray. He was getting colder, st
arting to hallucinate.

  Yes, there. You see? That blue-skinned person bending over him couldn’t possibly be real. It had to be the ghost of the alien that Alexi had killed. Or an angel. But it seemed so solid, so detailed. Alexi was amazed at the amount of detail his imagination could create—right down to the snowflakes that were landing and melting on the alien’s bald head.

  The ghost’s blue-black eyes became flecked with red as it chanted in a garbled tongue—the language of the angels, Alexi wondered? Maybe even his own personal guardian angel?

  Alexi watched, entranced, as it raised its hands above its head, spindly blue fingers open to the sky. Something twined around them—a swirling mist that sparkled with points of energy. Then the creature lowered its hands to Alexi’s wounded arm, and the sparkling mist flowed into the rent in his greatcoat sleeve like a snake down a hole.

  Alexi’s artery stopped pounding. The pain was gone. Suddenly filled with a surge of energy, he sat bolt upright.

  “Who—”

  13

  “—are you?” Alexi asked. “A god?”

  A fragment of historical trivia bobbed to the surface of Alexi’s mind. In ancient India, deities were depicted as having blue skin. The creature whose midnight blue eyes bored into his own had flesh that was colored just like the gods in those ancient paintings. Except that it didn’t have an elephant head or dozens of arms. And although it was sitting cross-legged, it wasn’t perched on a lotus blossom.

  No—the backdrop was even stranger.

  It was daytime, and they were in the taiga, one of the expanses of forest that covered northern Siberia. The snow-covered landscape was thick with pine, fir, and spruce trees. Rising above them to the height of a twenty-story building was a gigantic pyramid made of gray stone with a sheen that was almost metallic. Utterly smooth and featureless, the tetrahedron balanced impossibly on its tip, its broad base high overhead.

  Alexi and the blue-skinned alien sat in the inverted pyramid’s shadow, on bare ground that had been sheltered from the falling snow. The tetrahedron loomed overhead. Alexi looked up at it nervously, feeling like a bug watching the heel of a boot about to descend. He shivered. He was afraid to move—afraid almost to breathe. Would a mere sigh send the thing toppling over on its side?

  “What,” he whispered, “is . . . that? And where are we? Did you transport me here?”

  Absentmindedly, Alexi rubbed his arm. He expected to feel a torn greatcoat wet with blood. But instead his palm slid against the stiff fabric of a flak jacket. Then he remembered: He was wearing Soldatenkof’s armored jacket. He’d been wearing it in the helicraft, when the alien had been about to slice open his . . . throat?

  Alexi’s hand rose to his neck. It was very much intact, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed his fear. He glanced at the weapon that was lying beside the alien, just within reach of its double-jointed arms. The wickedly sharp blade on the metal staff buzzed softly. The last thing Alexi remembered was the alien swinging it at him. . . .

  No. That wasn’t right. It didn’t happen that way.

  He touched his arm again. Ah. That was it. The alien had healed him, using some sort of godlike power to mend the wound in his . . .

  His hand fell to his side. No. That wasn’t the way it had gone, either. Now that Alexi tried consciously to think about it, he couldn’t even remember what part of his body had been wounded. Or how it had happened. Or if he had been wounded at all. . . .

  The alien’s eyes flickered up briefly. Then they locked on Alexi’s face. It peered intently at him.

  “It’s happening again, isn’t it?” the alien asked.

  Alexi nodded, even though he wasn’t sure exactly what the question meant. Something was happening—something that was causing his memory to fragment into shards that were melting away like icicles in spring.

  “It’s fighting you,” the alien said solemnly. “Good. Your idea will work, then. We really will be able to do it.”

  “What . . . ?”

  “I can’t stop,” the alien said. “Not now. Just trust, Alexi. Trust and do. And hold on to . . . now.”

  Hold on to what now? Alexi wondered. He glanced down; his hands were empty. He wasn’t holding anything.

  Alexi didn’t think the alien had misspoken. Its Russian was flawless. Its voice was couched at a moderate pitch, neither male nor female. Its vocal cords produced a slight crackling sound, as if its words were coming through a faulty electronic speaker. Yet when it began chanting in its own language, the staticky sound was gone.

  Alexi thought of the Chinese shopkeeper he’d met in Moscow, and how the woman had spoken Russian with an English accent she’d picked up from the Brit who’d taught her the language. It was almost as if the crackle was an accent that the alien had picked up, after taking Russian lessons that had been broadcast over a radio.

  Alexi studied the blue-skinned creature. Despite the cold air that was fogging its . . . it was completely naked. Sitting cross-legged as it was, Alexi could see that it had no genitalia. Unlike the other blue-skinned creature—the one Alexi had shot in Vladivostok—its chest was smooth, without nipples. And its skin was devoid of tattoos. The palms of its hands and soles of its feet were a paler blue, tinged with red—giving them a lavender shade. The same color as its tongue.

  The alien’s eyes were closed. As it chanted, Alexi took a better look around at the landscape, trying not to think about the tetrahedron balanced forebodingly overhead. There were no landmarks; the terrain here was made up of rolling, tree-covered hills. Closer at hand, the only thing that wasn’t part of the natural landscape—besides the inverted pyramid—was a small wooden cross made of two pine branches that had been lashed together. Driven into the ground, the cross marked a mound of mud and snow: a grave.

  The sight of it made Alexi overwhelmingly sad. He had no idea whose grave it was; he couldn’t put a name to the person who lay there. He knew only that the grave held someone who could have been his friend, had she lived. He tore his eyes away.

  She?

  Not . . . ?

  The name was gone. Another one hovered at the edge of his consciousness: Raheek.

  He stared at the alien’s bald head. The name fit.

  Alexi shifted. The ground was cold beneath him, even through the seat of the padded trousers he wore. And resting under his right knee was an uncomfortable lump. He moved his leg, and saw a pistol lying on the ground. A Pug—a Union army weapon. What was it doing there?

  Alexi picked it up and turned it over in his hands. He cracked it open and saw that it was loaded.

  Raheek’s eyes flickered open. “Not yet,” it said. “Wait.”

  Alexi snapped the weapon shut. What did the alien expect him to do with it? Was he supposed to shoot the alien? Shoot himself?

  A sense of déjà vu settled upon him. As if his arm were moving of its own accord, his hand lifted the pistol. He touched the cold steel barrel to his forehead and blew air through pursed lips, softly mimicking the sound of a shot being fired. A bullet would be one way to sort out all this confusion. It even felt like the right thing to do. . . .

  He laughed nervously. The last thought had been a joke—the whim of a crazy man. But it left him feeling slightly queasy, as if he had just drunk sour milk.

  Alexi sniffed. What was that smell? Age . . . rot . . . decay . . .

  He glanced over at the grave, wondering if a faint breeze was carrying the smell of the corpse it held. But she’d only just died a few . . .

  The thought was gone.

  The alien was still chanting, eyes closed.

  “Raheek?” Alexi whispered.

  The alien’s eyes opened—and remained open, this time. Flecks of red were swirling within the blue-black irises. Raheek’s skin was darkening to a deeper shade of blue, and now the darkness was bleeding off the flesh like black steam. Alexi thought he could see faces in that inky aura—faces of people long dead. His grandfather, his father, his mother . . . And others. Older, more anci
ent. More terrifying.

  One of Raheek’s hands fastened around Alexi’s arm, just above the hand that held the Union pistol. The spidery fingers pressed into the inside of Alexi’s wrist, making him aware of the pulse that throbbed there. Then Raheek forced the hand up until the barrel of the pistol was pointed at Alexi’s head. Raheek’s other hand was just in front of Alexi’s mouth, lavender palm up.

  Again, the sense of déjà vu. Of insurmountable fate. Of death whispering with gunpowder breath in his ear.

  “Do it now!” the alien hissed. “Now—while I can still catch your soul!”

  The torpor that had settled over Alexi as he’d struggled to sort out one crazy bit of unreality from the next suddenly broke. He struggled to his feet, yanking the alien who still gripped his wrist up with him. Flame roared from the pistol barrel as Alexi’s finger tightened reflexively on its trigger. The bullet struck the pyramid overhead, ricocheting unscathed off its smooth surface.

  The flattened slug of lead caught the alien in the chest. Raheek’s grip on Alexi’s wrist slackened, and the alien’s mouth gaped open as it stared down at the purple blood that welled from the jagged wound.

  “Nyet . . .” it whispered as it sagged.

  Without understanding why, Alexi dropped the pistol and caught the dying alien in his arms. He had the horrified sense that he had just done something terribly wrong.

  But he didn’t know what. Or why.

  The alien’s blood pumped out of its chest, soaking the front of Alexi’s flak jacket.

  “Raheek,” Alexi said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  It was a trick of the light—no more. But Alexi suddenly had a picture, in his mind’s eye, of the tetrahedron teetering, tilting, racing down like a mountain falling triumphantly on his head. . . .