Vor: The Playback War

by Lisa Smedman

  Alexi’s hand rubbed his throat.

  A cold breeze gusted in through the crack in the cargo-bay door.

  “Raheek?” the Union officer asked again. She rose to her feet.

  The door fell to the ground with a crash. In that same instant, Alexi saw what was framed in the open doorway. Not the blue-skinned alien he’d been expecting, but an enormous creature with tusks that curved up over its back and grasping hands tipped with razor-sharp claws. Three times the size of a human, it filled the open hatchway completely, its mouth open in a snarling grimace.

  Then it roared.

  The sound hit Alexi like a physical blow, turning the blood in his veins to slush. No! his mind screamed. No! We left this creature behind in Tomsk 13.

  The Union officer’s scream blended with his own. The Pug pistol in her fist barked flame. The growler ignored the sting of the bullets, hauling itself into the cargo bay where the humans cowered, a malicious grin on its ugly face. With two fast sweeps of its hand, it tore gaping holes in Alexi’s chest, claws grating against suddenly exposed ribs. Numbed by the pain, Alexi sank to the ground.

  The Union officer lasted only a moment longer. The growler’s teeth fastened around her leg, severing it at the thigh. Screaming, she fell on top of Alexi.

  Feebly, his consciousness flowing out as quickly as the blood from his chest, Alexi draped an arm across her. This time, at least, neither one of them was meeting death alone. . . .

  18

  A lexi ran for the helicraft, the wolfhound sprinting beside him. The motors were revving up, and Soldatenkof screamed static in Alexi’s ear. In another moment or two the helicraft would take off, leaving Alexi stranded here in Tomsk 13 with the growlers. . . .

  Alexi skidded to a halt. What was wrong with him? The helicraft was just around the corner. Why was he hesitating? It would take off without him, leave him standing here like a fool, his feet frozen to the spot like a man in a dream where his legs will not move . . .

  The wolfhound had also skidded to a stop. It crouched at the corner of the building, nose low to the ground and hackles raised. Then it nervously bared its teeth and whined.

  Gunfire erupted just around the corner. A pistol—but in the hands of friend or foe? It had a slightly higher pitch—usually a sign of a Union weapon. But Alexi couldn’t be sure. Boris would have offered high odds on there being other Union paratroopers around here somewhere. . . .

  Alexi jogged back the way he had come, the dog trotting obediently at his heels. He’d circle around and come at the helicraft from the other side. Then he saw an open doorway, and a patch of light coming through a hole in the far side of the building. And through this hole, a blur of silver that was the helicraft rotor. He decided to cut through the ruined building; it would be quickest. He pushed the door open wider and stepped into the building . . .

  And stopped short when he saw the pile of canisters inside it. A dozen or more of the things were stacked in a neat pyramid, like tins on a grocery shelf. Tucked into the gaps between the canisters were fragmentation grenades. Lying at the base of the pyramid was a soldier in an MVD uniform, a grenade clutched in one rot-bloated hand.

  The upper half of the soldier, to be more precise. Something had chewed away the lower half of his torso, one tiny bite at a time.

  The stack of canisters needed only a single frag grenade tossed into the center of it to set it off. And the canisters—each stenciled with a single word in faded white letters— TABUN —together contained enough nerve gas to wipe out an entire city.

  The room was large, and housed what looked like a heating system. Ducts led away from two squat boilers near the pile of nerve-gas canisters. The wolfhound had trotted over to one corner of the room and was pawing at some gouges in the floor near a vent, nose to the cement. Then it growled, and the fur along its spine rose in a sharp ridge.

  From outside the building came a loud roaring that had a hollow reverberation, as though the sound were echoing inside a tin can. The sound sent a shiver through Alexi. He was suddenly very glad he wasn’t any closer to whatever was making that noise.

  Alexi stared at the pyramid of nerve-gas canisters and frag grenades. Any sane man would back away from such a lethal sight. But Alexi felt strangely drawn to it. Slinging his AK-51 over his shoulder, he lifted one of the canisters from the pile. He cradled the canister in his arms like a baby, one hand stroking its rust-pocked metal. The thing was heavy, and it was against every rule of common sense to carry it around a battlefield. Even if a bullet didn’t puncture it, the canister would slow Alexi down, make him an easier target for any Union paratroopers who might be lurking about.

  But for some reason, he couldn’t set it down. Some inner voice told him to obey the strange compulsion he felt to get it on board the helicraft. He shrugged. You never knew when a canister of nerve gas would come in handy.

  The helicraft rotors were still turning over. For some reason, it hadn’t taken off yet. He struggled across the rubble-strewn floor toward the opening in the wall that led to the helicraft. Sweat poured down his body as he struggled to carry the heavy canister over the debris. He set it down for a second, and shucked off his greatcoat. There. That was better. The icy air bit into his skin, offering some relief. He’d come back for the coat in a moment. He slung his AK-51 over his shoulder and grunted as he picked up the heavy canister again.

  Outside the building, Alexi heard strange sounds: the leitenant’s strangled screams and the hiss of what sounded like a steam pipe rupturing. And more gunfire: a long burst that stopped abruptly.

  A moment later, he clambered out of the building with the canister in his arms, and saw a strange sight. The pilot lay dead outside the open cockpit door, and the cargo-bay door was straining to power shut, the body of a Union paratrooper preventing it from closing all the way.

  Still holding the canister, Alexi reached awkwardly up to pull the lever that would open the helicraft door. With a whir of machinery, the door fell open and the body of the Union soldier fell out. Alexi climbed into the cargo bay.

  The first thing that greeted him was the smell of hot, boiled meat. The whole cargo bay stank of it. Then Alexi saw the source: Soldatenkof’s body. It lay in a sprawled heap, the flesh bubbled with watery blisters. The eyes had turned a solid, rubbery white, like eggs left too long on the boil. Soldatenkof had been scalded to death. But how?

  A vodka bottle lay on the metal grating beside the corpse. Alexi nudged it with his boot, saw that it was empty.

  “Good riddance to you, Leitenant,” he told the corpse. “But you could have saved a drink for me, you greedy bastard. Especially since you’ve condemned me to death by dying yourself.”

  He knelt—funny that the floor was so warm—and strapped the canister into place against one wall. He didn’t want it rolling around when the helicraft took off. The thing was heavy and could crush a man’s chest.

  When he stood up, he bumped his helmet against the wall. The visor slammed shut—and stuck. Cursing as it fogged up, Alexi undid the chin strap and pulled the helmet off. No sense keeping it on anyway. Either the helmet speaker wasn’t working at all anymore—or everyone else in the squad was dead.

  It had taken only a moment to strap the canister to the wall, but Alexi was already freezing cold. The sweat in his hair was starting to chill, now that he’d taken his helmet off. The moist warmth that had lingered in the cargo bay when Alexi had come aboard had vanished. He needed to collect his greatcoat.

  More importantly, he needed to find another pilot to fly the helicraft, now that the pilot who had flown them in to Tomsk 13 was dead. Funny, though—Alexi was certain one would come along soon enough. . . .

  He peered out through the still-open cargo-bay door, and saw something moving inside the building in which he’d found the nerve-gas canisters. Not wanting to leave the dog behind, he whistled for it—but the whistle died on his lips as he saw what responded: a growler. The thing was about the size of a chimpanzee, with exaggerated muscles and m
etallic spikes radiating out of its spine. It emerged from the building, hunkering along on feet and knuckles like an ape. It blinked—and then its beady eyes focused on Alexi.

  Although it was the first time Alexi had ever seen one of the creatures, it seemed almost familiar to him. Too familiar. The look in the creature’s eye was pure hunger; the saliva dripping from its mouth sizzled when it splattered into the snow. The growler sprinted toward the helicraft, the claws on its feet leaving deep gouges in the cement, its eyes locked on Alexi’s.

  Alexi gulped, one hand clutching his chest, and slammed the button that would close the cargo-bay hatch. The door shut with only a second to spare. The growler slammed into the door, leaving a series of dents in the metal as it ran right up one side of the helicraft and down the other.

  Alexi ran to the front of the helicraft and slammed the pilot’s door shut. He listened—but heard nothing. The growler was probably gone, but he wasn’t about to open either door again or venture outside for his coat. Not now. He’d wait here for the helicraft pilot.

  Who was lying dead in the snow outside. Alexi looked out the window at his corpse. Stupid idea. There was no one to fly the helicraft, to help Alexi escape from Tomsk 13. Alexi faced the equally grim prospects of either being torn to pieces by a growler like the rest of the squad or freezing to death as he waited inside the helicraft for Neo-Sov reinforcements. And once those reinforcements came and found Soldatenkof dead, Alexi would be court-martialed and shot.

  Alexi walked back to the cargo bay and began pacing back and forth to keep warm. He was wearing nothing more than his combat shirt and padded trousers. If the growlers didn’t get him, he’d freeze to death.

  He stopped to look down at Soldatenkof’s body. The stench of the scalded flesh was disgusting, but the armor itself was intact. The pants would be much too small, but the jacket just might fit. And if Alexi could pass himself off as Soldatenkof, even for a little while, he might be able to buy himself a reprieve from his death sentence. . . .

  Alexi stripped the jacket off. Bits of flesh came away with it. He wrinkled his nose in disgust as he shook them out.

  What to do with Soldatenkof’s body? Tossing it outside in the hope that a growler would eat it was one possibility; it would be easier for Alexi to pass himself off as Soldatenkof if the leitenant’s corpse wasn’t present to contradict him. But with Alexi’s luck, the growlers wouldn’t like the vodka-and-sweat stink of Soldatenkof any more than humans did.

  Alexi instead dragged the corpse back to the storage lockers in the rear of the helicraft. He tried one, but the door was stuck. Odd—Alexi didn’t see any lock on it, but it was as if the locker had been welded shut. It probably held supplies that common soldiers weren’t allowed to have—more vodka for the leitenant, perhaps? He opened the locker beside it instead and pawed through the clothing it held, spilling a pair of dirty combats and an ushanka onto the floor. Then he stuffed the body inside. It was a gruesome task; the scalded flesh was slippery under his hands.

  As he was closing the locker, a cold draft of air blew in from the front of the helicraft. Someone—or something—must have opened the cockpit door. Alexi spun around, his heart pounding. But it wasn’t a growler; it was a human climbing into the cockpit. A woman, wearing the silver-gray bodysuit of a Union paratrooper.

  An enemy soldier.

  But she seemed to know her way around a Neo-Soviet helicraft. Or she was a quick learner. She immediately settled into the pilot’s seat and began manipulating the controls. The helicraft rose—then sank suddenly and tipped to one side—then rose smoothly again into the air as the woman became more familiar with the controls. Alexi flattened himself against one wall of the cargo bay, praying she wouldn’t see him.

  At the moment, the Union paratrooper was busy flying the helicraft. Alexi didn’t dare disturb her—not until they were higher in the air and she had better control. He thought briefly about confronting her, trying to force her to fly to a location of his choice—but he had no leverage. He didn’t know how to fly one of these things. If he shot her, he was a dead man himself.

  There was a chance that the situation would improve once they landed. But for all Alexi knew—especially given the fact that Union soldiers had parachuted into Tomsk 13—there might be Union-held territory close by. Which meant Alexi would become a prisoner. If the enemy thought he was an officer, perhaps he’d be worth keeping alive.

  He flattened against the wall of the cargo bay a second time as the Union soldier—a captain, judging by the wide rank bands on the sleeve of her bodysuit—looked out of the cockpit’s side windows. As he saw her face in profile, Alexi felt his knees go weak. The officer looked like the woman he’d killed in Vladivostok—the one inside the bright green heavy-assault suit.

  Alexi must have been mistaken. It couldn’t be the same woman. The assault suit had been painted with the single stripe of a leitenant, and this woman had a captain’s rank on her sleeves. The soldier inside the assault suit must have been no more than a look-alike—a sister or cousin of this woman, at most.

  When the officer turned her attention back to the controls, Alexi picked up Soldatenkof’s jacket. Wrinkling his nose at the smell, he pulled it on and did up the fastenings.

  The Union officer’s attention was divided between the view out the cockpit window and the controls, with their Cyrillic lettering. She didn’t see the patch of darkness that coalesced just behind her in the cockpit—or the blue-skinned alien that stepped from it.

  The creature’s head slowly turned. Right, to look at the Union officer. Left, to look at Alexi, who stood rooted to the spot in amazement. Then it walked back into the cargo bay, the blade-tipped staff in its hand gently thumping on the metal deck.

  Alexi’s first impulse was to grab his AK-51. But for some reason, he didn’t shoot. And not just because a stray bullet might hit the woman who was piloting the helicraft. Something in the alien’s eyes made him hold his fire. Some hint of compassion for Alexi, a mere human. He had a flash of himself lying in the snow, of the alien looking down at him. He let go of the assault rifle with his left hand, and rubbed his upper right arm. It had developed a sudden ache, like the phantom pain of a missing limb. Except that it was still very much intact. The AK-51 rattled as his right hand began to tremble.

  At first, Alexi thought the alien was also wearing a bodysuit, like the Union paratroopers. Its body was smooth, hairless. But then he realized that it was naked. And utterly alien—with its double-jointed arms and complete lack of nipples or genitalia. Alexi’s mind skipped over pronouns—he? she?—and settled upon the word it instead.

  The tall, blue-skinned alien had to be a Zykhee—a member of the alien race that had attacked Novyy Proezd 30. A brutal race that had killed every human it encountered. The same race as the tattooed alien Alexi had killed in Vladivostok. But for some reason, Alexi couldn’t wrap his mind around the concept of this particular alien being his enemy.

  Its dark blue eyes bored into Alexi’s.

  “You know where the meteorite fell,” it said.

  Meteorite? Alexi’s thoughts whirled as he struggled to keep up. What meteorite?

  In the cockpit behind the alien, the Union officer’s head whipped around. Her eyes widened as she saw the alien.

  The alien glanced at her over its shoulder.

  “And you,” it told her, “will take me there.”

  The helicraft slipped to one side, and the Union officer returned her attention to the controls. “I won’t be taking anyone anywhere if I don’t get this thing under control,” she gritted.

  Alexi saw her looking with determination at the compass, fighting with the unfamiliar controls to keep the helicraft on a heading. He could see that she already had a destination in mind. Probably the rally or pickup point for her paratroop squad.

  The alien’s attention was completely focused on Alexi.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alexi told it.

  “You will,” the alien said.
“The holy flame burns brightly in you.”

  Alexi suddenly remembered where he’d heard those words before—in the sobor, in Novosibirsk. This was the creature that appeared to him there—the one he’d drunkenly mistaken for a guardian angel.

  “I’m no priest,” he told the alien. “I’m a soldier. And before that, a history teacher.”

  The alien ignored his protests. “We knew the meteorite would strike your planet, somewhere on this continent, closer to the pole. We would have monitored its impact point precisely, had our ship not been disabled by your attack. When we were forced to land upon your planet, we thought all was lost. But then the ancient souls whispered to me that a human would lead me to the site. And I found and followed you. Now look inside yourself and tell me. Where did the meteorite land?”

  Alexi just stood, blinking. This was crazy. The alien seemed so expectant, so . . . intense. It looked at Alexi like a religious zealot staring at an icon of the Christ child—like someone fervently expecting a mute painting to speak. But Alexi was no savior. He was just a soldier. Just a man—without any flames inside him, holy or otherwise.

  But the alien expected him to say something.

  “The only meteorite strike in this area that I know of was the one near Tunguska,” Alexi said slowly. “But it was—”

  The alien’s hands tightened around its staff. “Where is Tunguska?”

  Alexi shook his head. “I was going to say that it can’t be the one you’re looking for. It struck the earth more than a century ago, in 1908.”

  The alien leaned toward Alexi. “Was the meteorite itself found?”

  “No. That’s what made it so memorable. There was an enormous blast, but no pieces were ever found. Some scientists actually suggested that a microscopic black hole—or a chunk of antimatter—had struck the Earth. But they ultimately decided that the meteorite must have vaporized explosively, just meters above the Earth.”