This is a fan translation of Invasion (Вторжение) by Mikhail Akhmanov, currently only available in Russian and, because of the author's passing in 2019, unlikely to ever be published in English. This is the first book in a six-book series called Arrivals from the Dark (Пришедшие из мрака), which also has a six-book spin-off series called Trevelyan's Mission (Миссия Тревельяна).
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
Chapter 17
Earth, Brussels
The office of the head of the CosmoSpiegel, on the forty-first floor of the Skyship high-rise, was crowded. Everyone in it, over a dozen department heads and senior staff, surrounded Pierre Angelotti, like moons around a giant planet many times their mass, gravity, and volume. Angelotti himself had left his chair and moved to the window, blocking a third of it with his enormous bulk. Sid Chapman, the editor-in-chief, supported him on the right, while Claude Parillaud, the head of advertising, did the same on the left; behind them, sweating from the effort, the boss was being pushed up by Peter Rourke and Ashley Kovacs, two hardened international journalists. The secretary Michelle was handing out coffee and ice martinis, and was glancing at the window in-between. At that, her pretty face wrinkled in fear.
"Hellstrom!" Angelotti bellowed. "Where are Hellstrom and Duke? I want this filmed! Immediately!"
Hellstrom was the CosmoSpiegel's best photographer, a master of keen stories, and Duke was the cameraman who prepared issues of the journal for TV and the Ultranet. Both were Chapman's subordinates, and he, with a full awareness of his responsibility, assured his boss, "The footage is already prepared. Duke's brigade filmed from the roof, and Hellstrom from the helicopter. Excellent shots. We made them in the first twenty minutes."
"And this thing has been hovering above us for two hours now," Parillaud noted.
"Two and a quarter," LaGrange, the head of the newsroom, clarified.
The "thing" in question was an enormous craft of an unusual shape, hovering three hundred meters over the Brussels business district. Where it had come from and who it belonged to were not mysteries of the century; it had been over nine hours since the alien starship landed in the Antarctic. Based on what the news agencies were saying, there were over a hundred of these vessels hovering over the major cities of the world.
"Who do we have in Paris?" Angelotti asked.
"Montesi," Chapman replied.
"What about Moscow? Beijing? New York?"
"Dvorzhetsky in Moscow, Hope Gosset in Beijing, Dick Strauser in New York. Thirty six more people in other cities, even in that Icelandic hole… what do you call it?.. right, Reykjavik."
"Filming the Binucks?"
"Naturally. Our best diggers and photojournalists are everywhere."
Angelotti snorted in pleasure.
"Michelle! Vodka martini, my dear. Stirred, not shaken. And something… Would someone finally move my chair to the window! I'm tired of standing."
They moved the chair and helped the boss in it. Rourke and Kovacs sighed in relief.
"That Binuck looks like a big shoebox," LaGrange said.
"More like a jerrycan," Parillaud countered.
"What's a jerrycan?"
"A container for gasoline, Maurice. I still use it. I have a '22 Cadillac."
"Oh!.."
"Quit talking nonsense! Where's Gunther Voss? Where is that damned Gunther Voss?" Angelotti roared again.
Chapman shifted from one foot to another in confusion.
"Who knows, boss? He hasn't shown up in the past day and hasn't been answering his calls."
"'Who knows!'" Angelotti mocked him. "What do I pay you for, Chapman? You have to know everything!"
"Voss answers only to you," the editor-in-chief muttered. "At least that's what he believes."
Angelotti took a deep breath, about to bellow something else, but then Maurice LaGrange, a balanced and political man, bent down to his ear.
"Don't worry about Voss, boss. You know his style: he disappears for a few day, but digs up something sensational, and our circulation will jump to the skies."
Thinking about such a jump, the boss of the Spiegel dreamily squinted and spoke slowly, "Well, not really the sky… At least to that Binuck jerrycan!"
He pointed at the window with his huge finger, and the alien machine shuddered, rocking in the air.
"Careful, boss," Kovacs said with a smile. "You never know–"
"Falling!" Michelle suddenly shrieked, dropping the tray with glasses. "It's falling!"
"Damn! It really is falling!" Parillaud exclaimed, recoiling deeper into the office. He tripped over the rug and barely managed to stay on his feet. "It's falling right on top of us!"
LaGrange grabbed his hand, "Don't be so skittish, Claude, you're not a little girl. It must be some maneuver."
The employees of the Spiegel started talking over one another; Michelle crouched in terror behind the boss's chair. Angelotti, turning his thick neck and opening his mouth, stared at the window, looking at the huge machine descending from the sky.
"Madonna mia! By Christ's wounds! It doesn't look like a maneuver…" he began, and, at that moment, the craft, brushing the roof of Skyship Building, started to break apart in the air. The building shook, windows blew out with a clinking sound, cracks ran down the walls, concrete chunks fell from the ceiling, the houses on the opposite side of the street started to sink.
Michelle's terrified cry, the panicked screams, and the car horns were the last thing Pierre Angelotti heard. He did not hear the thunderclap of the explosion that turned the Brussels business district to rubble.