Vor: The Playback War

by Lisa Smedman

  “That is what I hope to learn,” Raheek said solemnly. “The Shard are certain to eventually seed our own system with these devices. It’s only a matter of—”

  “Of time?” Alexi asked, rejoining the conversation. He stared at Raheek, trying to remember something. The alien was trapped on Earth because . . .

  An image came to him: a spaceship, crashed on a rooftop in Vladivostok. And of one of these blue-skinned aliens hurling a weapon that tore open Alexi’s chest. . . .

  Alexi pushed the second half of the thought aside. Ridiculous. He was alive, wasn’t he?

  Juliana glanced up at the sky, then at Raheek. “If we figure out how to disarm the bomb, how are you going to get home again?”

  “My people will come for me,” Raheek said. “But they will not risk another ship and crew until they are certain the bomb has been disabled.”

  Alexi picked up the logic thread. “If we don’t succeed in disarming the bomb, and it goes off, you’ll be killed along with the rest of us.” He paused and stared at the forest that surrounded them. The Maw had yet to rise in the east, but light was filtering down through the snow-covered trees.

  “There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” Alexi continued. “Juliana is useful to you. She flew you here in the helicraft, and I’m assuming you’re taking her with you now because she studied computer science at university and might be able to figure out the crystal’s programming. But why me? I’m just a history teacher—”

  “A history teacher who figured out that the bomb must have landed in the same spot as the Tunguska meteorite,” Juliana interjected.

  “Oh.” But that had been Alexi’s sole contribution, as far as he could see.

  Raheek cupped Alexi’s chin in overlong fingers—warm to the touch, despite the cold, Alexi noted—and forced him to look into its eyes. “There is something more about you,” it said. “An answer, hidden in your subconscious. I sensed it, the first time I saw you. I knew you would lead me here. That is why I followed you.”

  “You followed me?” Alexi asked. Then the pieces came together in his mind. The impenetrable darkness he’d seen on the helicraft as it pulled away from Vladivostok, and again in the shadows of the ruined buildings of Tomsk 13, and the countless other times he had seen and dismissed it. It had been Raheek, using its magical powers.

  Powers that had no rational explanation. But there seemed to be a pattern to the hypnotic properties of the swirling tattoos on the other Zykhee, and Raheek’s own abilities: to make them see a cloud of inky blackness, instead of its own body; to heal; to terrify. A pattern that suggested that the aliens were capable of manipulating human minds.

  “What are you?” Alexi asked. “Some sort of psychic?”

  “The closest word in your language is mystic,” Raheek answered. “I use the flame that is the essence of all and the darkness that is the void to shape the energies that surround us.”

  “What word would you use to describe what you do?” Alexi asked. “Psychic powers? Religious belief? Magic?”

  “Sounds like mumbo jumbo to me,” Juliana muttered. She caught Alexi’s eye and nodded at the alien’s staff. “It’s probably an advanced form of tech. Think how your assault rifle would look to an ancient Roman. Like magic.”

  She stamped her feet and hugged the greatcoat closer to her. “It’s too cold to stand here,” she said. “Let’s move out. I want to see this bomb. We can talk as we walk. I’ll take point.” Her eyes fastened hungrily on the forest ahead. Alexi could see that she was driven by her curiosity, needing a closer look at the bomb. If Alexi had a choice in the matter, he would have been traveling in the other direction—any smart soldier put as much distance between himself and unexploded ordnance as possible. But if what Raheek said was true and the bomb really could destroy Earth, there was no place left to run.

  Juliana trudged past Raheek and Alexi and continued on along the path that the alien had made in the snow on its first visit to the impact site. Within a few minutes, the flat gray base of the pyramid came into view over the tree line. Alexi, trailing behind the alien, paused to stare at it in wonder. But Juliana and Raheek pressed on. In a few moments, trees screened them from sight.

  The snow was falling more thickly now, silently dusting the shoulders of Alexi’s jacket and softening the trail of footprints in the snow. He glanced at the trail behind them, which was starting to fill with snow. Would they be able to find their way back to the helicraft? Alexi wondered if it even mattered. With no fuel, the downed craft was useful only as a shelter. If no rescue came—and Alexi had no reason to expect it to—they would eventually freeze to death or starve, shelter or not.

  He glanced around at the stunted trees. The snow lay heavily on their branches, bending them toward the earth. Except for one pine whose branches were green against the sea of white. The trunk of the tree was scuffed, as if a deer had stopped to rub its antlers against the bark.

  Amazing, Alexi thought, that wildlife still existed in Siberia. Even up here, far to the north of any urban centers, patches of black marred the snow. A number of the trees were stunted from acid rain—or acid snow, to be more accurate—and more than one showed the twin trunks that were a hallmark of pesticide poisoning. Alexi wondered if this part of Siberia had ever been used as a dumping ground for toxic waste.

  The tree that was bare of snow was about ten meters away. Squinting, Alexi could see that a trail through the snow led up to it and away again. He walked toward the tree, toying with the idea of following the animal if the trail was still fresh. If they could shoot a deer, the meat would help them survive. Assuming the deer wasn’t radiation-poisoned or filled with toxins.

  The marks on the tree were too high for a deer to have made them. They looked more like teeth marks. And they were fresh; sap oozing from the wound in the bark had not yet frozen. The trail in the snow was also fresh; only a light dusting of the falling snow lay over it. But it hadn’t been made by the hoofprints of a deer. Instead it looked almost like Raheek’s footprints. Bare feet—only much larger. Bigger even than the footprints of a Cyclops. And clumped in widely spaced pairs, as if the person that made them had been hopping. Alexi had seen footprints like that once before—but where?

  Gunfire shattered his reverie.

  Running back the way he had come, he fumbled the strap of his AK-51 off his shoulder with cold-numbed hands. By the time he had brought his weapon to bear on the forest ahead, someone was already almost on top of his position. A blue-skinned figure, holding the limp form of Juliana in its double-jointed arms. A livid purple crease in the alien’s side leaked lavender blood.

  Alexi had a sudden, horrible premonition of what Raheek was going to say next. It felt as if this was a movie that Alexi had seen once before, as if the alien were speaking from a script.

  “There is an automated weapon, sixty-three paces ahead,” Raheek told him. “A weapon of Earth. Go no farther, or you will cause it to fire.”

  Alexi stared at Juliana. She hung limp in the alien’s arms. The chest of her greatcoat was dark with blood. Red trickled down into the snow in a steady stream.

  Alexi rubbed his arm. It had suddenly begun to ache, as if wounded. The pain triggered an almost-memory.

  “Raheek,” he said. “Use your magic. Heal her.”

  The alien set Juliana down. The snow crunched gently as her weight settled into it.

  “I can no longer embrace her with healing energies,” Raheek said. “She is dead.”

  Alexi shook his head. No. No. This was all wrong. This wasn’t the way Juliana was supposed to die.

  She wasn’t supposed to die at all. . . .

  22

  A lexi paused, halfway up the slope of rubble. He glanced back over his shoulder, up at the night sky. The Maw hung over the skyline of Vladivostok, separated from the moon by the skeletal remains of a ruined building. Above them, a star blazed with a fierce red light. It was brighter than the other stars—the unfamiliar constellations that had sprung into being du
ring the Change. And it seemed to have a faint bulge at one side.

  Alexi couldn’t shake the feeling that the star was watching him. That it had just noticed him, and would come streaking down to obliterate him if he didn’t . . .

  The thought was gone. An explosion rattled the ground beneath him, and the rubble he was crouched on shifted slightly. His glasses slid down his nose, and for a moment his surroundings became a fuzzy blur. Pushing his glasses back up his nose, he looked up to where Boris had heaved open the door to what used to be the ruined building’s second story.

  “Come on, Alexi,” the big man shouted over his shoulder. “This will make a fine vantage point.”

  A sense of dread gripped Alexi, preventing him from climbing any farther. Unable to speak, unable to articulate or even understand his fears, he shook his head and began scrambling back down the rubble.

  “Hey!” Boris shouted. “Where are you going?”

  Alexi didn’t have time to explain. Someone was coming his way.

  No, some thing was coming his way.

  As he ran back the way they had just come, Boris’s voice crackled over the speaker in Alexi’s helmet.

  . . . wish you luck, Alexi, but . . . rubles says you don’t . . .

  Alexi didn’t know where he was running to. Or why. He gave a wide berth to the street where the heavy-assault suit had been downed—the one that was lying in a crater in the road, making the street impassable. The crippled assault suit had been the squad’s objective. Unable to move its legs, it was a target the rad grunts actually had a chance of taking out. But elsewhere in the city, other assault suits were chewing their way through the Battalion of Death, helping it live up to its nickname.

  After a couple of blocks, Alexi slowed to a walk. He was exhausted, after three days and nights of fighting with only brief snatches of sleep. The battle of Vladivostok had become one long, painful blur. The AK-51 was like a lead weight in his hand, and his armored vest was as heavy as a waterlogged blanket. He could barely put one foot in front of another. All he wanted to do was just sit down somewhere and rest.

  But something drove him on, some sixth sense that he had to keep moving. He couldn’t stop now, he thought, glancing up at the sky. Not with that beady red eye glaring down at him.

  He found himself in a street outside Vladivostok’s athletic stadium. The charred remains of a Chem Grunt lay in the street. The tanks on the soldier’s back had ruptured, and their spilled contents had spread across the road and were on fire. Tiny blue flames flickered across the oily-looking surface. Alexi was just deciding whether to circle around the edge of the flaming puddle or cut through the stadium when he heard the unmistakable whir and grind of a heavy-assault suit approaching.

  He ducked behind a burnt-out automobile whose tires had been melted into gooey black puddles on the cement. Which way was the suit coming from? It was impossible to tell; the entire city was filled with the sounds of battle. The chatter of automatic rifles and the dull whumff of exploding mortars echoed off the buildings, or was funneled by the rubble-strewn corridors of the streets, making it impossible to pick out the sound of the assault suit.

  Alexi raised himself above the burnt-out auto for a look, but ducked back as quickly as he could.

  Christ! The assault suit was closer than he’d thought. It had paused, standing arrogantly with its feet in the puddle of burning toxins. By the light of the flames at its feet, Alexi could make out every detail of the suit. The metal monster was a bright green, with leitenant’s bars painted on the shoulder and what looked like a yellow thunderhead—or perhaps a mushroom cloud—on its chest. An inscription had been lettered in vivid red across the thunderhead: VENGEANCE .

  Funny, why would a Union soldier write her nickname in the Cyrillic alphabet? Was it actually a Neo-Soviet suit? Alexi had heard rumors that the Neo-Soviet Union was working furiously to develop its own version of the weapon, but had yet to see one in action.

  Alexi took another quick look. No, those shoulder flashes were Union, all right. The soldier inside that suit was Alexi’s enemy. As soon as she spotted Alexi, he was dead meat.

  That thought made him pause. How had he known it was a woman inside the suit, when the mirrored faceplate completely hid the soldier’s features?

  No time to think about that now. This assault suit was heavily armed, with a machine gun built into one arm and a rocket launcher gyro-mounted on the opposite shoulder. By some miracle, the soldier inside it hadn’t spotted Alexi yet, even though the suit was facing his hiding place.

  The suit had been headed in the direction Alexi had just come from. Toward his squad. When it reached them, it would chew through them like a meat grinder. Alexi could even picture the way in which each of them would die. Boris would be blown right out of that second-story vantage point he’d chosen, someone else would be machine-gunned down from a fire escape, and the leitenant would shoot at least one of the squad members in a misguided fit of rage. Probably poor Vanya, Alexi thought. The musician had already been unlucky twice today, first by getting a bad batch of antirad pills and second by losing his favorite music tape—one he’d carried with him for nearly two years. And bad luck usually came in threes. . . .

  Alexi decided that it wasn’t his problem. Without rad grenades, there was nothing he could do to prevent the deaths of the others in his squad, anyway. He decided to save his own skin instead.

  He heard the whir of gyros as the assault suit started moving. Or was that the sound of its machine gun swiveling in his direction? Whichever was causing the noise, it was time to get out of there.

  Sucking in a lungful of air, he planted his feet like a sprinter at the starting line and made sure the strap of his assault rifle wasn’t hanging free. The last thing he needed was for it to catch on something and slow him down. Then he bolted for the stadium.

  Alexi hadn’t been much of an athlete in school. During his three months of basic training in the induction center, he’d always been the slowest of the new recruits. The noncommissioned officer who had overseen his physical training had yelled himself hoarse, trying to berate Alexi into keeping up with the others. But Alexi’s former gymnastics teachers and praporshchik would have been proud of him now. He flew like the wind over the short distance between the burnt-out auto and the front doors of the stadium, leaping the turnstiles with the grace of a hurdler.

  A machine gun opened up in the street outside. Bullets spanged off the turnstile, sending its arms whirling round. As Alexi ran down the wide corridor that led from the entrance to the stadium’s floor, he heard the crunching thud of running footsteps and the screech of metal as the turnstile was wrenched from its mounting. Christ save me, he thought. That assault suit is coming straight for me.

  Why me?

  Assault rifle held in one hand, Alexi took a tight corner, then clattered down a flight of metal steps. Too late, he saw that he was headed for the open expanse of the stadium floor. The rows of seats to either side of him offered a tempting hiding place, but their flimsy plastic offered no protection. The second the soldier inside the assault suit saw Alexi, a single burst of machine-gun fire would punch through those seats like paper. The assault suit wouldn’t even need to use its rockets.

  Alexi hit the floor of the stadium and sprinted across it. The artificial turf was pitted with crater holes and had been scuffed away by the force of the explosions that had heaved the bare concrete underneath. Alexi ran a zigzag course around these obstacles, ears cocked for the sound of the assault suit behind him.

  Machine-gun bullets stitched a line of holes in the artificial turf just to the side of Alexi. And a crater was just ahead. To zigzag around it, Alexi would have to run into that deadly stitchery of lead.

  Legs pumping, lungs on fire, body surging with adrenaline, Alexi leapt into the air. His jump carried him to the far end of the crater in the floor, just barely. The toe of his boot just caught the edge, then slipped.

  Crashing to his knees saved him. Like a soccer player who had
tripped over the ball, Alexi tumbled out of the way of the hail of lead.

  In an instant he was back up on his hands and knees. He crawled under the nearest of the seats, shimmying in through the gap between the bottom of the bleacher and the floor. Dragging his assault rifle behind him, he rolled behind a concrete pillar that shielded him from the next burst of bullets. Then he got to his feet and ran.

  Behind him, he heard the crunching footsteps of the assault suit as it thudded down the stairs. Alexi wound his way through the scaffolding that supported the seats over his head and found a door that led out onto a lower level of the stadium. As he wrenched it open, he risked a glance behind him.

  Motors whining, the assault suit lurched into high gear and ran across the stadium floor. It crossed the crater Alexi had leapt with an easy stride, then crashed shoulder first into the hollow metal tubes that formed the scaffolding of the bleacher seats. Muscling its way through them, it smashed the metal tubes to either side like toothpicks.

  Breathing heavily, Alexi ran up a sloping corridor, the assault suit hot on his heels. He saw a door and ducked through it, out onto the street.

  The cold air gave him a burst of fresh energy. He ran the length of the block, and was about to turn right at the first intersection he came to. But something made him pause and reconsider. He was running away from the assault suit. But at the same time he had the strange feeling he was running toward something, as well. Without understanding why, he continued straight ahead.

  Bad move. Seconds later, he heard the heavy footsteps of the assault suit behind him as it emerged from the stadium and pounded down the street.

  Only the fact that the street was choked with rubble saved Alexi. The block was a long one, but the heaps of broken concrete and fallen utility poles gave him cover as he ran its gauntlet. The heavy-assault suit, unable to get a clear shot, held its fire. But it didn’t give up the chase.

  Panting with fear, Alexi turned right at the next intersection. He should have kept running, but his lungs were on fire, and he was starting to get dizzy. He was forced to slow to a jog. This street had less debris on it; Alexi could pay attention to what was behind him, instead of to the uneven ground underfoot. But instead of looking over his shoulder to see if the assault suit was still pursuing him, he glanced up at the sky. There—the faint whistling noise that he could hear above the explosions that rocked the rest of Vladivostok. It seemed to be coming from the red star that Alexi had seen in the sky earlier. The reddish glow had grown a tail, and was now larger than any other star in the sky. A meteorite, falling to Earth. It wanted Alexi to stop, to admire the spectacle that it made as it fell from the heavens. . . .