Up until then Ligacheva had hoped Barankin was still alive and unhurt; now she prayed that he was already dead, that he would not feel what was happening.
The thing lifted Barankin’s head, and the boy shouted, “No! No!” shattering Ligacheva’s hope that he would not feel anything. Then the twin blades swept down and sliced into Barankin’s back, and the shout turned into a wordless scream of agony.
It didn’t last long, though; a second later the creature lifted up Barankin’s head, the boy’s severed spine dangling, and let the headless body fall to the ground.
A pool of blood began to spread.
Then Ligacheva fainted, and that was all she saw until strong arms pulled her half-frozen from the snow-human arms, friendly arms.
The villagers, Taro’s people, had smelled the smoke from the burning truck and followed the orange glow. They saw the bodies, the blood, the tracks; pragmatically they made no attempt to follow the tracks back to the source. If something was out there that could wipe out an entire squad of the modern Russian Army, they weren’t interested in pursuing it armed only with knives and a couple of rifles.
They didn’t see any yellow-skinned creatures. They didn’t see anything that could explain the slaughter.
They did, however, recognize some of the marks in the snow on the ridge, marks where something had fallen and been buried, and they found Ligacheva and dug her out.
She was too far gone to talk, to tell them what had happened, so they took her back to her own people at the pumping station; this all took place in what seemed like a single feverish moment as the lieutenant slipped in and out of consciousness.
She saw the familiar corridors as she was hurried inside to the infirmary. She glimpsed Galyshev’s face, red with anger and fear, as he bent over her bed and tried to coax sense out of her. And then she woke up in a different bed, looking up at a different ceiling, a cleaner, whiter, more brightly lit one, but she never remembered the trip, and it wasn’t until the doctor told her, hours later, that she realized she was in Moscow, that they had flown her out at fantastic expense in a special emergency flight.
The massacre on the windswept Siberian ice seemed like some hideous fever dream, but one she could not shake from her thoughts; the image of that jagged double blade biting into Barankin’s back, the crunching sound as the blades cut through the boy’s ribs, the sight of that creature lifting its bloody trophy high so that it gleamed in the firelight, would not go away.
When at last they put her into a clean uniform and sent her to see General Ponomarenko the vision of Mikhail Barankin hung before her, like some unholy apparition, as she answered the general’s questions.
She stood at attention during questioning; in light of her condition they did allow her to hold on to a rail for support as she spoke. She thought she understood why she was not permitted to sit. When she had finished her description of the nightmare she had watched from beneath her blanket of snow, she did not stop, but went on to say, “An entire army squad has been wiped out. Someone has to answer for it. I know that. The circumstances of my promotion and transfer just make it that much easier to hold me responsible, and I accept that. You need make no pretenses.”
Ponomarenko smiled humorlessly and leaned back in his chair. He took a long drag on the imported cigar he held, then took a moment to carefully knock the ash into an ashtray before he looked back at Ligacheva.
”I make no secret of it, lieutenant,” he said. “I did think your promotion was a mistake. Your actions in the field, and the results, only confirm my belief.” He took another puff on his cigar, then leaned forward.
”You’re wrong, though, about one thing,” he continued. “We aren’t looking for a scapegoat this time. We don’t want simple retribution. We want more than that. We want to know what really happened, and what’s out there. And whether you have told us the truth or not, Lieutenant, you know more of what happened out there than we do.” He stubbed out the cigar and pointed at her. “So, my dear,” he said, “we don’t want your blood. It’s worse than that.” He smiled coldly.
”We want you to go back.”
Chapter 5
“What in the hell?” the technician said as he looked at the computer display. He frowned. Then he glanced up at the technicians seated to either side of him. They were quietly scanning through data downloads from spy satellites much like the one he had been receiving.
No one else seemed to see anything out of the ordinary; no one else was making comments or even looking up. That meant that whatever was responsible for what he was seeing, it wasn’t a whole-system, network-wide problem. Whether it was accurate data or a glitch, it was local.
He looked back at the screen, considered for a moment, and typed in a command.
He studied the result, tried another command, and another, then finally switched back to what he’d started with.
The results didn’t change. The computers said that he was, indeed, seeing what he thought he was.
He stared at it for a moment longer, then pushed back his chair and picked up a phone. It buzzed once before a voice said, “Yeah?”
”General Meeters,” the tech said, “I’ve got something on my screen down here that I think you should see.”
”Talk to me,” Meeters said.
”It’s satellite infrared of the Yamal Peninsula in northern Siberia. The oil fields. A big hot spot. I think you should have a look.”
”Why?” Meeters asked. “You think it’s a well fire? We haven’t heard anything.”
”I don’t know what it is, General, but I really think you should look at this.”
Meeters frowned. “I’ll be right down.” He dropped the phone and rose from his desk.
He was a week behind on his paperwork, and this wasn’t going to help any-if he’d known how much paperwork was involved he wouldn’t have celebrated when he made brigadier six months ago. Still, he knew his people wouldn’t call him down to the surveillance room if there wasn’t something there worth checking out.
He slammed his office door on the way out; moving quietly on this particular corridor was not considered good form, as no one wanted to do anything the guards might consider stealthy or suspicious. Meeters strode boldly and openly down the corridor to the surveillance room, where the guards let him pass without a word.
Shearson was the technician who had made the call; Meeters had recognized the voice. He headed directly for Shearson’s station, where he looked over the tech’s shoulder at the readout on the screen.
”What have we got?” he asked.
Shearson glanced up, confirmed that it was indeed the general who was asking, then tapped a quick series of keys. The screen immediately displayed an outline map of the Yamal Peninsula, with the known towns and installations neatly labeled. That was all done in fine black lines superimposed on bands of vivid color.
”This is the infrared, sir,” Shearson explained. He pointed to a bar scale in the corner that explained the colors-dark green, blue, indigo, and violet were areas below freezing, and most of the screen was awash in deep, dark violet. Warmer areas were chartreuse, yellow, and so on up through orange and two shades of red.
The marked villages and pumping stations were mostly little patches of chartreuse, with a few shading to yellow. None of them showed a single pixel of orange.
However, centered on the screen, in empty wilderness a few kilometers from a greenish dot marked ASSYMA PS #12, was a fiery red spot.
”So what the hell is that?” Meeters demanded. “Is there visual?”
Shearson shook his head. “It’s night there,” he said, “and there’s heavy cloud cover. Probably snowing.”