Weather: Clear skies with a waning gibbous moon and an overnight low 39ºF, afternoon high around 60ºF. Hernandez’s forecast has clouds moving in tomorrow with cooler temperatures, followed by rain and possible sleet the following day.
Health: All personnel are in good health.
Food: 161 person-days plus emergency reserves and trade goods.
Weapons and Ammo: Green on small arms ammo (Pettimore and Cowboy yellow on secondary weapons). Yellow on anti-armor (105 rounds KPV ammo on Comms; SPG-9 w/ 3 HEAT and 8 HE rounds on UAZ-469; 2 HEAT rifle grenades and 1 RPG-18 distributed).
October 18 dawns cool and crisp, but with the promise of unseasonable near-warmth. Hernandez finishes his morning readings from the weather station mounted on ILM and warns the team that the next couple of days, at least, are likely to be craptastic.
From last night’s visit with a few of the American troops living here, the team is aware of several points of interest in Dobrodzien:
We’re back in action, slowly. To save time introducing the community of Dobrodzien and B Troop of 1/116 ACR, I ran the following scene in a text thread on our Discord server. This post is a lightly-edited transcript of that playthrough.
The team’s first impression of Dobrodzien is that it’s… big. The town itself would not have been anything spectacular by prewar standards, but it appears to be supporting a population pretty close to what it had five years ago. Tomaszow and Radomsko each had a larger prewar population in absolute terms, but both cities also had huge swaths of devastated and abandoned ruins. Dobrodzien, at first glance, has surprisingly little war damage.
On the morning of 15 October, the team breaks camp and crosses the Warta over Betsy’s newly-repaired bridge. There are a few scrapes and shudders, but all three vehicles pass without incident. The convoy shakes out into its usual order of march and rolls southwest toward Czestochowa.
The sun is climbing toward what passes for noon in autumn when the point vehicle’s crew spots a village coming up on the side of the road. It’s apparently abandoned. Stopping a few hundred meters out, the lookouts glass the area. The graveyard has a number of fresh graves. A brief conference reveals no particular inclination to stop and check it out. The team goes overland to skirt the deserted community, picking up the crumbling road again on the other side.
Midafternoon brings another noteworthy sight, this one of greater interest. As the team is approaching an intersection, Erick and Betsy sight two armored vehicles a few hundred meters back along the side road, half-hidden in a copse of trees. The team halts, reverses to break line of sight, and dismounts. Pettimore, Ellis, Erick, and Betsy creep in for a close recon.
As is so often the case in the Poland of 2000, the vegetation tells the story. Although brown and withered with frost, it’s had a couple of years to overgrow the vehicles. The team IDs them as British: an FV434 armored recovery vehicle towing an FV432 APC. The APC bears the marks of an RPG hit to the engine compartment and a subsequent fuel fire. The ARV is halted where it hit an antitank mine.
“Freeze,” Pettimore hisses. “Nobody sets out just one mine.”
The team encamps on the north bank of the Warta. Betsy takes charge of the bridge repair efforts. It’s a case of “must have the tools to make the tools” – she and the team’s other technical specialists need to repair the abandoned heavy equipment at the job site before they can get much work done. Worse, all of the machinery has been sitting inactive since ’97 – which means the engines are still set up to run on diesel, so the mechanics also need to convert them to alcohol fuel.
Those not directly involved in repairs find other things to do – hunting and foraging to reduce the net rate of food consumption, brewing fuel to keep the construction equipment going, and, of course, maintaining security while the team is immobile. It’s a few days of hard work for all hands, with much cursing and a good number of minor injuries for Erick and Octavia to tend. But when the reconstruction crew breaks for lunch on October 14, Betsy declares herself satisfied with the bridge’s stability.
The team decides to remain encamped overnight, building their fuel reserves and doing a little more hunting and foraging. As the morning of October 15 dawns clear and crisp, they break camp and, with Betsy ground-guiding each vehicle in turn, cross the Warta.
Bridge repair was an extended Tech roll for Betsy, predicated on the team repairing the abandoned crane. Each roll took one shift and restored one ton of load rating to the bridge deck. On a pushed roll, each 1 reduced the crane’s Reliability by 1, raising the possibility of breaking it and needing to take extra repair time. Industrial Light and Mayhem is the team’s heaviest vehicle, an 8×8 MAN KAT1 that weighs in around 10 tons unladen, and between 15 and 18 tons with its current load. Betsy accumulated 16 successes, which was enough – with some careful driving.
The team spends a couple of days in Kamiensk – resting, healing, repairing their gear, brewing fuel, helping out with the local harvest, and analyzing the take from their raid on Shotkin’s headquarters. They can’t stay indefinitely, though. Winter is closing in and they’re only halfway to the expedition’s destination.
The sky is low and sullen as the team loads up. Most of the village turns out to see them off. Father Miroslav leads a prayer for those who still hold faith and blesses the team’s vehicles. With a last round of farewells, they mount up and roll south.
Their first destination isn’t far away. During their route planning discussions, someone suggested a quick stop at Radomsko’s airport to see what else might be salvageable – particularly in the control tower, which seemed to have somehow resisted the decay that’s otherwise widespread in the ruined city.
Luis Hernandez grew up in New Hampshire in the shadow of Mount Washington. Being able to see the peak with the reputed worst weather in the country spurred what would become a lifelong interest in meteorology. After completing his undergraduate studies at CU Boulder, he spent a couple of years working for the National Weather Service, but desk-bound work was eating his soul. When a co-worker mentioned that the Air Force had its own meteorologists, Luis skipped lunch to visit the local recruiter’s office. A line on a list of job options leaped out at him: “Special Operations Weather Technician.” It sounded pretty badass…
Hernandez was one of the few AFSOC personnel still operating in the European theatre by mid-2000. When Task Force Cobalt was being assembled, someone with stars on his collar decided the team might be able to use a shooter with some geek credentials. When things came apart in the days after the raid on Lodz, Hernandez found himself in a HMMWV with Cat Mitchell and two other survivors…
Strength C: Stamina D
Agility B: Mobility C (Paratrooper), Ranged Combat C (Rifleman)
Intelligence A: Recon C, Survival B (Meteorologist), Tech D (Communications)
Before the war, Henry was a saxophonist in the U.S. Army Band, in it for the G.I. Bill benefits. No one was more surprised than he when he was deployed to perform his original MOS as a signals intelligence voice intercept linguist. He spent most of the war in a SIGINT truck behind the lines, trying to pluck Soviet transmissions out of the air.
Bell was captured after the Battle of Kalisz when 5th ID’s headquarters was overrun. He spent several weeks as a Soviet POW before seizing a chance to escape, which was when he encountered the team. Since then, he’s been filling in on a variety of support tasks for Ellis. He’s currently assigned as the driver for Comms, the team’s BTR-70K, though he’s both more adept and happier as a linguist and radio operator.
Strength C
Agility C: Driving D, Ranged Combat D
Intelligence A: Recon C, Survival D, Tech C
Empathy B: Persuasion B (Linguist, Musician)
Key Gear: radio; an AKM he’d rather not have to use
Languages: Russian (native), Korean (fluent), Polish (fluent), German (pidgin)
Shit, man, I just wanted to get out of South Miami and get money for college. How was I supposed to know the Army was gonna have a war?
Alison Ortiz is a short, well-muscled Latina with intense eyes and a prominent burn scar on her left cheek. Cuban-born, she came to Florida with her family as part of the 1980 Mariel boatlift. As a teenager in South Miami, she split her time between the emerging street-racing culture and her parents’ Key Biscayne dive shop.
Alison enlisted in the Army at 18 to earn G.I. Bill benefits. Originally trained in supply and logistics, she took the opportunity to cross over to infantry duty when the Army opened up combat careers to women in late 1996. She figured that if she was going to get sent to war anyway, her chances of survival would be better around actual soldiers than in the middle of a collection of clerks and jerks. In retrospect, it may not have been the best idea, but it’s gotten her this far.
Alison was formerly a squad automatic riflewoman in 3-143 Infantry, one of the component units of the U.S. 5th Infantry Division. She was captured after the Battle of Kalisz when her vehicle was struck by artillery fire and spent several weeks as a Soviet POW before the team liberated her. Currently, her usual assignment is driver for the expedition team’s 10-ton truck, Industrial Light and Mayhem.
Strength B: Heavy Weapons B, Stamina C (Load Carrier)
Agility B: Driving C (Racer), Mobility C (Diver), Ranged Combat D
Intelligence B: Survival D
Empathy C
Key Gear: RPK-74; M9
Languages: Cuban Spanish (native), English (fluent but accented), Polish (pidgin)
The following was post-session investigation and analysis handled on our chat server. I’ve transcribed it here with light edits.
Octavia and Erick have no trouble cleaning and dressing everyone’s wounds. There are no secondary infections, and everyone heals with the expected speed (though most of the team crashes and sleeps for the better part of twelve hours once they’re back in Kamiensk, and eat ravenously upon awakening).
Of particular note, despite having taken a serious hit, Comrade also is up and moving normally after a similarly long and uncharacteristically deep nap. His only apparent lasting effect is a patch of white fur over his new scar. He is, however, begging food from everyone except Miko, who he continues to avoid.
With living patients taken care of, Octavia and Erick turn their attention to Rasputin’s decapitated body and severed head.
Whatever healing process Octavia thought she was seeing stopped when she took a hacksaw to the Kazakh. There is some inflammation and initial scar tissue formation around some of the minor injuries to suggest that she wasn’t imagining it.
The fibrous subcutaneous layer (which Erick also observed on Shotkin) is present everywhere. It’s between 2mm and a 0.5mm thick, with the thinnest places being face, joints, genitals, and extremities and the thickest being across the torso. It’s remarkably cut-resistant – Octavia dulls several scalpel blades on it and has to hand them off to Cowboy for resharpening (and the hacksaw blade is just done). Betsy’s 5.56mm rounds penetrated it in several places, and the overall reduction in internal trauma is similar to that seen with soft body armor. In game terms, Rasputin had Armor 1 everywhere – on top of the protection from the vest he was wearing.
Rasputin’s skull also displays some signs of bone growth – it’s about 1mm thicker than it should be. It’s not even, and there are the beginning of spurs and nodules. Inside the skull, there’s also anomalously increased growth and blood flow in the parts of the brain that process auditory and olfactory input.
Inside the chest cavity, once the examiners finally get in there with the assistance of some non-medical tools, it looks like Rasputin was nearly killed at least once or twice before. Scar tracks through his lungs and liver are consistent with rifle-caliber penetrating hits. In both cases, the wound tracks show anomalous healing… and other growth. There are dense, glossy black, tumor-like structures speckled throughout the wound areas. They’re in an advanced state of decomposition compared to the tissue around them. Disturbingly, where they’re densest, there’s also evidence of new organ growth. The damaged lung appears to have a half-developed third lung alongside it, attached to the corresponding bronchial tube. There’s a similar structure next to the damaged-and-healed liver that looks like a fetal liver.
The team doesn’t have a microscope for close examination of blood or tissue samples. However, it’s easy to improvise a centrifuge: tie a small container to the end of a string and have one of the local kids spin it for five minutes. When a control sample from one of the team gets this treatment, the nanites (briefly) precipitate out of solution (and Octavia confirms that Comrade is now carrying them). However, there’s no such precipitate from Rasputin, nor from the sample Erick took from Shotkin.
Rasputin also has one of those ugly circular wounds, very much like the one Shotkin had but not quite as inflamed. It’s in the same spot: left of centerline, just below the collarbone. Upon surgical examination, there’s a weak patch in the fibrous subdermal layer there, and the wound track goes to the aorta. If this was done with something mechanical, it was not medical-grade. The wound was too ragged and irregular for that. Upon closer examination, there’s healed scarring (and pinhead-sized nodules of those tumor-like things) on the surface of the aorta itself. The team is at the limit of what they can resolve with unaided eyesight, but they think the subcutaneous fibers also show evidence of repeated regrowth at the wound site.
Ellis takes point on analyzing the intel items collected from the museum. He pulls in Pettimore, Cat, Miko, and Bell, and eventually the whole team once they’re done with other tasks.
The Russian translation of the Koran is heavily annotated in a mix of Russian and Kazakh. It’s all the same handwriting, though there’s noticeable deterioration over time in both penmanship and coherence. The older annotations appear to be the writer’s own religious studies – a man trying to reconnect with his ancestors’ faith without benefit of formal tutelage. The newer notes are more like aggressive edits. There’s refutation of some passages, expansion of others, and an overall departure from the original theology (once Erick is done with the medical work, he’ll be able to confirm this from an academic perspective, as will Father Miroslav.
The general tone of the newer writing is consistent with the marauders’ observed behavior. There’s broad rejection of traditions of scholarship, hospitality, and any sense of exploration or discovery. Prohibited behaviors are broadly expanded to include any expression of other faiths – and any technology powered by anything more complex than simple machines or human or animal labor. There are some weird reinterpretations of passages on social customs, twisting them into something that’s almost a caste system written as a madman’s justification for despotism.
The notebook is more of the same – where it’s even intelligible. It’s written in Kazakh with some Russian loan words and a few shreds of Arabic, and no one present speaks Arabic or any Turkic language. Bell and Father Miroslav are able to piece together a few fragments. However, it is illustrated in places, and dates are easy to decipher. It appears to be a record of Shotkin’s interactions with an angelic being named al-Khidr, beginning in April 2000. This messenger revealed God’s displeasure at mankind for the destruction of Creation and charged Shotkin with being the hand of the divine in the local region. God’s new command, according to al-Khidr, was to return humanity to its intended pastoral state by eliminating all traces of the fallen world’s technology. As solidiers of God, Shotkin and his followers received special dispensation to use the weapons and tools of the old world in their efforts to bring about the new.
There are several versions of the star chart from the catchbasin ceiling. From what Cat and Betsy can recall from their celestial navigation training, each iteration grows more refined and accurate. The one deviation is the prominence of Altair – it’s in the right place relative to the rest of the sky, but it’s the pattern’s focal point, and far larger than its relative magnitude would normally show it.
Shotkin also wrote extensively about a process he underwent with al-Khidr, and it gives Erick and Father Miroslav some pause. They know of no direct equivalent in Islamic faith, and the warlord used an unfamiliar term. There’s some debate over whether “communion” is the closest equivalent, but after Bell unpacks some of the text around it, Father Miroslav suggests that “shriving” or “pennance” may be closer. It’s the closest Shotkin comes to pure religious expression in his writing. He’s short on practical details but long on flowery descriptions of the ritual’s exquisite pain and the release of sins and worldly cares. After each such encounter, Shotkin doesn’t write for a few days, and when he does, he often mentions that his “communion” requires extensive recovery – but he can feel himself growing stronger each time.
The dagger recovered from Shotkin is a bronze blade with an openwork hilt. It’s clearly ancient, and the hilt likely surrounded a wood core that’s long since rotted away. Despite its age, it’s still quite sharp. It was well-made once, but it’s seen extensive use and is not as robust as a modern steel blade (Reliability caps at 4). Aside from the layered bloodstains that fleck its surface, it has no detectable properties that are out of character for what it is. Pettimore and Father Miroslav agree it was most likely looted from the museum.
The rescued prisoner, Sebastian Mazur, takes about 36 hours to come back to full lucidity. Physically, he’s chronically malnourished and had started to develop sores on his ankles where he was chained up. He has a number of bruises from the beating he took when he was captured, and he’s not displaying any accelerated healing.
His last clear memory is the flight and capture whose end the recon team witnessed. He and a few of his friends were clearing debris from a field for cultivation when they found a leather rucksack containing a few books. The experience he describes is similar to what the team has seen when the brain fog lifts – they found themselves standing there, suddenly having remembered the concept of book. Once they recovered, they immediately started planning their escape. A patrol of Shotkin’s forces spotted them and they split up. He doesn’t know what happened to the others. He and the two with him were captured and severely beaten, then brought to the warlord.
Things get a little hazy for Sebastian after that. He witnessed something, but even the combined powers of Ellis and Father Miroslav can’t convince him to look directly at those memories. From the fragments he can remember and communicate, he was witness to at least one ritual in the starmap chamber, attended by Shotkin, Rasputin, and Shotkin’s personal war-band. Shotkin invoked al-Khidr as a divine messenger, guardian, and patron. Witek, one of Sebastian’s captured friends, was an offering to al-Khidr. Sebastian says al-Khidr “took” Witek, but can’t or won’t elaborate on how Witek was “taken” and becomes near-violent if pushed on al-Khidr’s appearance or identity.
Between that and his rescue, Sebastian and Renata (the girl who Shotkin sacrificed in front of the team) were kept chained in the alcove off the maintenance tunnel. They received maintenance rations of food and water. Shotkin occasionally spoke to them, but Sebastien characterizes it as a madman’s sermons from an unholy book and couldn’t make any sense of it. The fragments he relates align with the team’s decryption/translation of Shotkin’s writing. Sebastien believes he and Renata were under constant surveillance during their captivity – “they were always watching us,” he says.
Sebastian is mildly agoraphobic in the daytime. At night, he refuses to go outdoors for fear of seeing stars. “They won’t stop watching me,” he repeats over and over.
This series of posts spans one session of planning, two and a half sessions of gameplay, and some asynchronous private chat conversations, all focused on concluding one story arc. In play, both groups were active simultaneously, with focus shifting between the two every 15 to 30 minutes of realtime or every one to three rounds of combat. For narrative purposes, Parts One through Four of this series will alternate focus somewhat asynchronously.
Combat in this session was run using the CQB rules for Urban Operations, with a fairly abstract map.
In the museum’s administrative wing, it’s decision time. By now, someone surely is aware that the marauders’ headquarters is under siege. The infiltration element hasn’t encountered Shotkin, Rasputin, or any prisoners yet.
Cat, holding position on the door to the lobby, spots something large and low-slung moving in the street. She can’t be certain, but it’s the right size for the marauders’ BMP-3. The infiltration team has nothing that can penetrate an infantry fighting vehicle’s armor.
“We’re on a clock,” Ellis decides. He pulls back his cuff and rotates his wristwatch’s crown. “We’re going to see what’s down there. Fifteen minutes and we’re leaving.”
There’s a rapid weapon swap. Pettimore takes point with Thoughts and Prayers up, despite the close confines. Miko is close behind him with a flashlight and his machete. Ellis takes up the middle, taking over the KS-23 that Miko recently liberated from a downed marauder. Erick and Cat bring up the rear with shotguns ready.
The bottom of the stairs lets out into the museum’s mechanical room. It’s dirty, greasy, rusty, wet, spider-infested, and far too tight for comfort. Pettimore takes a knee and motions for Miko to lower his flashlight. In the single passageway between machinery and storage shelves, layers of footprints in the muck tell the story of frequent and recent passage. There’s some evidence of bare feet, too – and drag marks. The Marine points them out and frowns.
The tracks lead to a set of heavy double doors. Cat casts her light around, landing on a grime-covered sign bolted to the wall. Pettimore sweeps a hand across it: Schron Przeciwatomowy.
“Fallout shelter,” Miko translates.
With guns pointed, the team pulls back the doors. The space beyond is cavernous. Rows of benches sit empty, with crumpled ration boxes and discarded clothes and bedding drifted around their legs. At the far end of the space, the flashlight beams barely can pick out another set of double doors, these cracked open about a meter. Nothing but darkness is visible beyond them.
The team advances into the shelter. They’re halfway down its length when gunfire erupts from the doors at the far end. Something smashes Ellis’ chest and he goes down. Miko drops his flashlight; the rolling beam picks out sickly yellow-white mist boiling up.
“Gas, gas, gas!” Pettimore yells. Suppressive fire goes out as the team backs out, pulling on their gas masks. A metallic thud echoes through the shelter as the doors at the far end of the space are hauled shut.
Ellis coughs hard and tries not to fold over at the pain from ribs that, if not broken, are most certainly going to be a spectacular mass of hematoma in the morning. He pulls out a handful of his spare KS-23 rounds and holds one under Cat’s flashlight. “Tear gas round,” he says. “Bet they’ve got another one of these.”
“You’re lucky you still have a chest,” Pettimore observes. He plucks a different round from Ellis’ hand. “I read a tech brief about these slugs. They’re designed for vehicle stops. If it’ll go through a Volga’s engine block, I’ll bet it’ll go through that door. Wish we had a breaching charge, though.”
Cat snorts. “Hey, you guys remember when we were planning this op and Ellis asked Betsy to build one of those for us?”
Ellis wipes at his watering eyes. “I did? I did. Yes.”
Cat unslings her pack and produces a duct-taped assemblage of broken tent poles with a kilo of C-4 at its heart. “So, I don’t actually wanna haul this back to camp…”
With four guns covering her, Cat advances to the far door. The tear gas fumes burn on her exposed skin. Working as quickly as she can, she emplaces the charge and retreats, unspooling the fuse behind her. “Close the doors,” she advises. She takes a knee, starts the fuse, and quickly covers her ears…
WHAM-crack!
The team swings the shelter’s entrance open. They don’t need their flashlights to assess the results of Betsy’s prior work and Cat’s deployment of it. Beyond the now-open doors at the shelter’s far end, flames dance. “Assholes rigged the doors with a frag and a Molotov,” Erick observes.
“That means they’re not right there right now,” Ellis says. “Move it.”
“Hold up,” says Pettimore. He releases the magazine from Thoughts and Prayers, pulls the charging handle to eject the chambered round, and returns the cartridge to the magazine. He returns the magazine to his chest rig, then reaches into a separate utility pouch. The magazine he withdraws is striped in silver paint pen. He seats the new mag and runs the Dragunov’s bolt. “Okay. Good to go.”
Beyond the doors, an old subterranean utility corridor runs east-west. It’s lined with generations of pipes and cables. To the east, it opens out into what looks like a storm sewer. To the west, it continues only a few meters before ending in an old collapse. The nook that the collapse forms, though, shows signs of recent habitation – and several sets of chains set into heavy bolts driven into the stone and concrete.
The storm sewer is old but still stable. Narrow walkways run along either side, flanking a broad semicircular channel that’s currently about half-full of runoff from the ongoing rainstorm. The tracks in the muck lead south.
The team pushes up cautiously. As they advance, they begin noticing irregular speckles of light on the ceiling. Beyond the reach of their flashlight beams, a greater darkness yawns. Firelight glimmers off the surface of a retention basin.
Across the channel, something stirs. It’s a carpet hung across a side entrance. At a gesture from Ellis, Miko slips into the water and crosses to check it out. He’s easing the tip of his machete forward to sweep it aside when he spots motion at the entrance to the retention basin.
The museum basement and what lay beyond it.
The team drops flat as gunfire erupts from both sides of the entryway. Cat grunts as a round finds her, but she props herself up and begins returning fire along with Erick and Pettimore. Ellis rolls into the channel and starts working his way forward, only his head above water. Miko yells and dashes forward, bringing his machete down. The blade rings off a gun barrel as his target parries.
Beyond the archway, the team spots Shotkin standing on a metal inspection platform that extends over the water. Behind him is a slab of concrete or stone, its purpose obvious in context. In front of him are two of the prisoners whose reception the team witnessed during their earlier reconnaissance mission. Both of them are unresisting – unresponsive, even – despite the erupting gunfight and the lack of visible restraints.
“Got you,” Pettimore hisses. He comes up to a knee and steadies Thoughts and Prayers.
Shotkin raises his face to the ceiling and the sky beyond it. “Al-Khidr, come to us now and strike down these intruders who defile your sacred altar!” he shouts in Russian. There’s a flash of bronze as he reaches around and cuts the throat of the teenage girl standing at his right hand. She offers no resistance. Blood begins to pulse as Shotkin pushes her into the pool.
Pettimore screams in rage and fires. Shotkin staggers back but snatches the shirt of the remaining prisoner and pulls the young man in front of him.
Erick and Cat concentrate their fire on the marauder with the submachine gun who’s holding the left side of the entrance. He pulls back at the hail of bullets. Ellis comes out of the water almost at his feet and narrowly misses him with a round of buckshot. The marauder rips a burst into Ellis’ chest but the agent’s armor holds. A second 6-gauge blast tears through the marauder’s vest and the organs behind it, dropping him.
Pettimore puts a round into Shotkin’s forehead. The Kazakh staggers but still doesn’t fall. Unbelievably, he draws a revolver and begins returning fire.
Miko’s opponent empties his shotgun but can’t connect with a machete-wielding teenager in his face. Miko cuts him down and starts running toward Shotkin.
Pettimore breathes and fires again. The Kazakh warlord collapses. His prisoner staggers and falls forward into the pool.
Miko swings his shotgun around and moves in cautiously. Pettimore and Erick start running toward the platform, moving around the other side of the drainage channel. Without speaking, they drop whatever encumbering gear they can remove quickly and slip into the pool, moving toward the two prisoners.
Pettimore feels a surge of motion against his leg. Something pulls the girl’s body beneath the dark surface in a rush of displaced water. “Out of the water, out of the water now!” The two men haul themselves and the surviving teenager out of the basin.
Pettimore stands, unholsters his MEU(SOC), and empties it into Shotkin’s head. Then he reloads and trains his sidearm on the water. Just for a moment, not long enough to take a shot, he catches the impression of a pair of large, unblinking eyes beneath the water. A swirl of long, powerful limbs. And a sense of cold, dispassionate disappointment. Then it’s gone. Quietly, Pettimore intones, “I see you, monster. I see you, and I rebuke you.”
Ellis reloads and looks at his watch. “Three minutes,” he orders. “Miko, with me.” Miko looks up from where he’s looting Shotkin’s body. The two move to the carpet-draped entrance again and cautiously clear it. Beyond is a small maintenance alcove converted into one-person living quarters and a study. They toss it ruthlessly. A rickety bookshelf yields a Russian translation of the Koran, heavily annotated, and a couple of notebooks. Miko also turns up half a can of radium-laced luminescent paint.
Cat looks at the can in Miko’s hand as he comes out of the side chamber. “That explains something.” She jerks her chin at the softly-glowing motes scattered across the ceiling. “This is a star map.” Her hand comes up and she traces the invisible lines connecting a few constellations. “Looks like it’s centered on… Altair.”
“How’d he get up there to paint it?” Ellis asks rhetorically. He turns to Miko. “Hey, do those dead guys have another Molotov left?”
Miko checks. “One here.”
Ellis flicks a hand in the direction of Shotkin’s burrow. “Burn it.”
Pettimore prods Shotkin’s still form with the toe of his boot. “You see that?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Erick says. “That ain’t normal. Get the video camera.” He pulls a scalpel from his medical kit and begins peeling back Shotkin’s remaining scalp, narrating as he goes. “Skull is thicker than it should be. There’s some sign of irregular bone growth. Something weird here – hey, zoom in on this. Blade’s having a hell of a time cutting it, it’s like there’s something woven just under his skin. Aaaand… ew. Left side of the torso, just below the collarbone, we have a circular wound about four inches across. Unknown mechanism of injury. Some inflammation and scarring, like it’s recurring trauma.”
“Looks like a lamprey bite,” Pettimore comments. “But bigger.”
“Time’s up,” Ellis declares. “Get a blood sample for the doc and we’re out of here.”
The ambush and infiltration elements link up without further incident. As they head back to Kamiensk, taking a roundabout route to deter tracking or pursuit, they can hear gunfights erupting in the city…
