Vor: The Playback War

by Lisa Smedman

  The Union officer was listening intently. “Thanks for the history lesson—but I don’t think it’s what the Zykhee wants to hear,” she told Alexi. Then she turned to speak to the alien. “The Union forces can help you to pinpoint whatever it is you’re looking for. Our moon bases monitor—”

  “Silence.” The alien ignored her. Instead its eyes bored into Alexi’s. “The meteorite protected itself from harm by throwing the explosive force of its impact back through time. That explosive energy emerged in the segment of time you number one thousand nine hundred and eight.”

  Flecks of red danced inside the dark blue irises of the alien’s eyes. Its voice was slow and hypnotic. “Where . . . is . . . Tunguska?”

  “I don’t remem—”

  Alexi’s mouth was suddenly dry. He felt a strange tickling in his temples, and the air in the helicraft cockpit grew hazy. The shimmering whorls of air looked almost like human faces—faces whose expressions urged him to think back, to remember a lesson he’d given long ago. . . .

  Like a forgotten name that suddenly springs to mind, the information popped into Alexi’s head.

  “The Tunguska meteorite landed near the Arctic Circle,” he said. “I don’t remember the exact latitude, but the longitude was an easy one. A nice round number: 100 degrees east.”

  “Good.”

  Alexi’s vision suddenly cleared. He blinked, feeling like a student who had just been praised for getting the correct answer to a question he hadn’t even studied. He lifted his glasses to rub his eyes.

  The alien turned to the Union officer. “Do you understand the coordinates that were just given? Can this craft reach that location?”

  “It could,” she said. Then she tapped a finger against the fuel gauge. “But only if you don’t plan on getting back again. That’s kilometers from any town—right in the middle of the Siberian wilderness.”

  “It is the middle of everywhere,” the alien answered solemnly. “And of every when. You will take me there.” Its eyes bored into hers. The flecks of red were gone, but the gaze was every bit as hypnotic and intimidating as before.

  The Union officer stared at the alien a long moment, then nodded. “I’ll take you there,” she whispered. Then she turned the helicraft onto a new course.

  19

  W e’re losing altitude!” the Union officer shouted. “The rotors must be icing up. And it’s getting dark. If I don’t find a clear spot in the trees to put the helicraft down in the next few minutes, we’re dead.”

  Alexi twisted around in the copilot’s seat and peered out the cockpit window. The ground below was a vast expanse of snow-covered forest. Not a clear spot in sight.

  But that didn’t disturb him nearly as much as the blue-skinned hand that rested on the back of his seat.

  Or the fact that another big chunk of time seemed to have gone missing.

  He looked up into the face of the alien. The creature held the blade-tipped staff in one long-fingered hand and stared impassively out the window.

  “We must reach the impact site,” it said.

  “We’re not going to make it,” the officer answered.

  The helicraft drifted down toward the trees. Its engines were revving at a higher pitch, as if straining to carry a load . . .

  “It’s the growler,” Alexi said suddenly.

  Both the alien and the Union officer glanced at him sharply. The officer turned her attention back to the helicraft controls, but the alien continued to stare at Alexi.

  “What do you mean?” it asked.

  “I don’t know,” Alexi said. But he felt twitchy. As if he should be doing something. Something back in the cargo bay . . .

  Alexi undid his seat belt and rose from his seat. As the helicraft bucked and wove its way through the air, he staggered back across the unsteady floor of the cargo bay. Something compelled him to drop to his knees on the floor and fumble with a small hatch on the belly of the helicraft that was normally used for dropping butterfly mines. With chilled fingers he undogged the ice-cold hatches that held it shut, then wrenched the hatch open.

  Cold air whistled in through the manhole-sized opening in the floor. Bracing himself on hands and knees, Alexi lowered his head out through the hole to peer outside. . . .

  And found himself eyeball-to-eyeball with a snarling growler.

  The thing had wrapped its arms and legs around the helicraft’s landing gear. It clung there, muscles bulging, oblivious to the cold wind that was whipping its fur. Alexi recognized it at once by its curving white tusks: the growler from Tomsk 13. The one that had wrenched open the cargo-bay door while its companion scalded Soldatenkof and the pilot to death. The same one that had—no would—kill Alexi. Unless . . .

  Still holding on to the landing gear, the growler twisted its body around. A clawed foot lashed out at Alexi, raking the belly of the helicraft near his head and leaving a jagged gash in the metal. Alexi yanked his head back inside.

  “Juliana!” he screamed at the cockpit. Funny—when it came to a crisis, the name just sprang naturally to his lips. “There’s a growler hanging on to the helicraft’s landing gear!”

  The answer was a muttered cursing as the Union officer continued to fight the controls. The growler’s violent motion had unbalanced the helicraft, causing it to slip to the side. The sudden sideways motion threw the blue-skinned alien sprawling into the copilot’s seat.

  Alexi grabbed for the hatch and tried to swing it shut. In the same instant, the growler’s hand punched up through the opening. It flailed about, hooked claws seeking to rend and tear, like a cat that has thrust its paw into a mouse hole. Then a claw caught on the hatch, ripping it from its hinges with a loud screech of tearing metal, and tossed it against one wall. The hatch sailed into something that gave off a hollow metal sound, followed by a sloshing noise.

  Alexi’s eyes widened in horror as he saw the object that the hatch had struck: a metal canister about the size and shape of a beer keg that was strapped to one wall with a one-word, stenciled inscription in blocky white letters: TABUN. The nerve gas.

  The canister was old—probably a relic of a previous war, like Alexi’s AK-51. It was speckled with rust and ready to burst a seam if it was dropped. Whatever had possessed Alexi to carry it on board? He must have been crazy. The nerve gas inside it was enough to wipe out an entire company. If the canister burst, the helicraft would be filled in seconds with the fruity smell of the Tabun as it evaporated. A split second later, that sensation would be followed by progressively less pleasant ones. First by the complete shutdown of Alexi’s respiratory system, then paralysis, then an explosive overload of his sweat, excretory, and salivary glands as his heart went into overdrive and then ground to a stop like a car driven headlong into a brick wall.

  It wouldn’t be pretty.

  The growler’s curved claws were flailing within a meter of the fragile-looking canister, gouging holes in the floor beside the storage lockers. Then the muscular hand fastened on Alexi’s helmet, which had been rolling across the cargo-bay floor. One claw punctured its heavy steel like a spike going through foil. Then the hand closed into a fist, crushing the helmet like an aluminum can.

  Alexi’s AK-51 slid across the floor. He grabbed it and struggled to his feet. A roaring noise and smoke filled the cargo bay as he fired a burst at the arm. One bullet ricocheted and struck the canister of nerve gas with a hollow thud. Instantly, Alexi stopped shooting.

  Raheek ran back into the cargo bay, weapon raised overhead. In a motion so fast that it was a blur, the double-jointed alien whipped the staff around, its blade tearing a line down the growler’s overmuscled arm. Steaming in the cold air, drops of greenish blood sprayed onto the floor of the cargo bay.

  The growler’s hand retreated through the opening in the floor. Then Alexi heard a tearing noise underfoot. Part of the floor bulged up suddenly, as the growler’s fist punched into it from below. Claw tips punctured the bent metal, and the floor began to shake violently. The creature was literally tearin
g its way into the helicraft.

  Alexi and the alien looked at each other.

  “Do something!” Alexi shouted. “Use your magic!”

  The helicraft began to sink toward the ground. The growler’s weight and the iced-up rotors were dragging it down. In another minute or two, they’d be on the ground. And assuming they survived the crash, they’d be faced with a rage-crazy growler tearing its way into the helicraft.

  The alien began to chant in its own language. A flicker of red sparks ignited in Raheek’s midnight blue eyes. Its long-fingered hands rotated empty air, as if sliding across the surface of a ball. With a sudden rush of air, a sphere of light with swirling energies trapped inside it popped into existence between them—and grew. In the space of a heartbeat it was the size of a basketball. Terrifying faces swirled within it, and a shrieking that turned Alexi’s limbs to rubber echoed in the cargo hold.

  In the last moment, Alexi was forced to look away. He sagged against one wall, holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the howling ball of energy. Out of the corner of his eye he saw it streak out through the hatch on the floor.

  An anguished roar came from below. All at once the helicraft surged upward, making Alexi feel as though his stomach were trying to sink into his boots. He sprang for the hatch, knelt next to it, and cheered in triumph as he saw the growler fall.

  But the ground wasn’t very far below. During the struggle with the growler, the helicraft had sunk to within about twenty meters of the treetops. Instead of splattering against the ground, the growler simply caught a branch with one massive hand and swung itself down, branch by branch, to the base of the tree. Completely uninjured, it began moving along the ground, loping after the shadow of the helicraft. After a second or two, the shadow drew ahead of the growler. Powerful though the growler was, it couldn’t keep up with the helicraft. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t catch up when the iced-up rotors forced them to land. . . .

  Alexi ran for the cockpit.

  The Union officer grinned at him. “Good job!” she shouted. “No wonder the helicraft was so sluggish. But I still have to set her down. The temperature’s dropping; it’s getting dark. The rotors will ice up completely, and we’ll crash if I don’t.”

  She gestured at the ground. “There’s a clearing a few kilometers ahead. I think we can make it. But it will be tight.”

  “Turn around!” Alexi shouted. “We have to go back and finish it off.”

  She gave him a look that told him what she thought of his idea. “Forget it!” she said. “If we turn around, we’ll go down in the trees.”

  “You don’t understand!” Alexi shrieked. With an effort, he forced himself to speak clearly and get his racing emotions under control. But it was hard to sound rational when premonition was pummeling his pounding heart. If there was one thing he was certain about, it was that failing to take out the growler now would be the death of them all.

  “I have . . . a premonition about these things. A soldier’s sixth sense. I can . . .” He practically wept with frustration. How to explain, without sounding utterly foolish?

  The alien laid a blue hand on the Union officer’s shoulder. “Turn the helicraft around,” it said. “Alexi is correct.”

  “But—”

  “Turn it around!”

  The command was as sharp as a gunshot. Amazingly, the Union officer obeyed. She banked the helicraft in a tight turn. But her lips pressed together in an angry line.

  Alexi ran back to the cargo bay. Now he was blessing himself for stowing the nerve-gas canister on board. He wasn’t such an idiot after all; Tabun had its uses.

  He rolled the canister on its rim, poising it beside the opening where the hatch had been.

  “Hover just above the growler,” he shouted back to the cockpit. “And after I get this thing out through the hatch, fly away as fast as you can.”

  From the cockpit, the Union officer gave him the thumbs-up sign. After a second or two, the growler appeared below, framed in the ruined hatch. As the helicraft came to a hover above it, the growler leapt nearly six meters into the air, flailing with claw-tipped hands. Alexi rolled the canister over the rim . . .

  And watched it fall.

  It landed no more than five meters away from the growler. The canister burst open, showering the ground with a spray of greenish liquid. Then a gas began to rise.

  The growler spun around, gave a deafening roar at the approaching gas—then suddenly went rigid. In less than a second, it collapsed in a quivering heap.

  The helicraft was losing altitude again. Now its rotors were stirring up the evaporating nerve gas. The gas rose lazily toward them in deadly wisps, like thunderheads in an angry sky. . . .

  “Get out of here!” Alexi said, waving his arm frantically.

  Without realizing he was doing it—not that it would save him, anyway—he held his breath until the cloud of gas-poisoned ground slid out of view. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.

  The helicraft tipped violently to one side.

  “Buckle up!” the Union officer shouted. “We’re going down. And it’s not going to be a smooth landing!”

  Alexi scrambled forward, throwing himself into the copilot’s seat before the alien could claim it. With trembling fingers, he snapped the buckles shut and braced himself as the ground rushed up at them.

  20

  M insk, you useless excuse for a soldier! Did you hear what I said?”

  Alexi blinked as the flashlight mounted on the leitenant’s helmet glared into his eyes. It was dark and the Maw was high overhead; it had not yet set. Alexi had been looking at his watch—his hand still held the button that illuminated its face. He glanced at the time. It was 10:08 P . M . Strange—he could have sworn it had said something closer to nine-thirty, just a moment ago.

  He looked down into Soldatenkof’s glaring eyes. The vein in the leitenant’s temple was throbbing—never a good sign. “Sir?” Alexi asked.

  “The Hotel Versailles, Corporal. The battalion’s temporary headquarters and weapons depot. Run back there and fetch some grenades.” He slapped a hand ominously on the pistol holstered at his hip. “Understood?”

  Alexi nodded rapidly. “Yes sir!”

  He turned to go—then realized he had no idea where he was. At some point during the long, exhausting battle for Vladivostok, his mind must have taken a brief nap—without letting his body know first. The last thing Alexi remembered clearly was taking out a heavy-assault suit with a rad grenade he’d found lying in a sewage-filled basement. And now the squad was down by the waterfront, near the Monument to the Fighters for Soviet Power in the Far East. The gigantic statue of World War II-era soldiers loomed over them, moonlight throwing an eerie shadow of long-dead soldiers on the paved square.

  Boris, Nevsky, and Piotr sat with their backs against the monument, and Irina was wrapping a roll of gauze around a gash in her left calf—which explained why she hadn’t been designated as runner. Vanya was bent over a broken water fountain, vomiting his dinner into its dirty bowl. It looked as though he’d gotten another bad batch of antiradiation pills.

  Boris looked up and correctly interpreted the look of confusion in Alexi’s eyes. He jerked a thumb at the road beside them. “Just follow ulitsa Svetlanskaya,” he said. “The hotel’s at the end of the road.”

  Then he turned to Nevsky and whispered in a voice that was deliberately pitched so that Alexi could hear. “One hundred rubles says he doesn’t come back.”

  Alexi chuckled. Maybe he wouldn’t come back. Maybe he’d just keep walking, all the way to Moscow. Nobody would think much of his disappearance. After all, soldiers went missing in battle all the time. Just like . . .

  He pushed the thought away. Tatyana wasn’t just missing. She was dead. She had to be. A whole year had gone by. If his sister had deserted, she would have contacted him by now.

  It took him several minutes to get to the Hotel Versailles. At several intersections, he saw other squads of Neo-Soviet soldiers from the Ba
ttalion of Death moving through the city. But although explosions and gunfire could be heard in the distance, there wasn’t a Union assault suit in sight.

  As he jogged along, Alexi used the microphone in his helmet to radio the battalion headquarters. No sense getting killed by friendly fire. When a message finally came that the password had been heard and understood—five times, and he could keep quiet now—Alexi was at last satisfied that his helmet mike was working, and they knew he was coming in.

  The hotel was palatial, with a sweeping drive. It took several long minutes for Alexi to pick his way between the anti-assault-suit explosive caltrops that were scattered across the broad pavement. Inside, the lobby was wide and deep, with a vaulted ceiling. Before the war, the hotel must have been quite something. Alexi could easily imagine a room there costing his monthly teacher’s salary. But now the hotel roof was pocked with holes from the fighting, and its plush rug was ankle-deep in broken glass, splintered wood, and chunks of plaster. The only “guest” was the Neo-Soviety military, whose soldiers had fortified the hotel against attack with sandbags. And they were neither paying for—nor appreciating—what remained of its beauty.

  Part of the building was being used as a medical dressing station. Alexi wound his way past rooms filled with wounded soldiers on stretchers. He knew he was getting close to the supply depot when he passed a room in which soldiers were hurriedly breaking apart wooden crates and unpacking the mechanical parts and weapons they contained. Alexi paused a moment, watching and trying to figure out what the parts would be, once assembled. Then the soldiers lifted a mechanical arm from one crate and what looked like a hollow head from the other. On the front of the head was a red star and the words URSA 1. Alexi suddenly realized what it was: a heavy-assault suit, half again as large as those the Union had. A Neo-Soviet model, big enough for two soldiers: a pilot and gunner.