Red America, Chapter Four:
Hammer & Sickle
Comrade-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock looked out over the darkness-shrouded city of New York from the safety of her office on the top level of the Empire State Building, and felt a thin, cruel smile involuntarily crease her lips. She could see fires raging through several parts of the city, fires that were the last remnants of her troops' assaults on numerous nests of the rebellious Yankee filth who insisted on resisting the Soviet liberators. She relished the thought that soon she would not be forced to keep slamming her heel down on the people of New York, thanks to the information she had prised out of the mind of the hairy animal called Jim Logan. In his brain had been detailed layouts for rebel bases, supply routes, safe houses and more – enough to cripple the city's rebel movement for good. Proudly she watched huge columns of armour and men pouring forth onto the streets of the city from the fortress established around the base of the Empire State, and relished the thought of seeing her troops in action against the remains of the New York rebel movement – and from there, moving across the country and breaking the back of every last underground resistance cell that had dared oppose the liberating forces of the Revolution.
She lowered her eyes then, and turned back towards her desk, where more mundane matters waited. For now, unfortunately, she had other matters to attend to than bloody, glorious conquest. The proletariat of New York needed bread, and she had to provide it. To that end, she had had two divisions of the Red Army establish soup kitchens in several key locations, which served repulsive-but-edible borscht and other cheap meals that could be paid for with a just few roubles. She had seen the positive results herself, as filthy New Yorkers had shuffled past a table beset with a large cauldron of soup, thankful for any scraps the Red Army could give them. Even their thoughts showed that they were happy – Elisabeth's telepathy had made sure of that. If they did not feel instantly grateful themselves, she had changed their minds for them. It was a minor procedure, after all, and Elisabeth had done it many, many times before during interrogations. She had been tempted to make the stunted Logan over into a weapon for the Red Army using such a technique, but she decided that using such a dangerously loose cannon would do more harm than good in the long run. So, instead, she had psionically beaten him to within an inch of his wretched life and made sure that he would not be a threat for as long as she could. And since he was being taken to the gulag at that point, she saw no further point in wasting thoughts on him. Returning her attention to the forms and papers on her desk, she signed each of them with a tired flourish, instantly condemning another hundred wretched prisoners to death, sending another few tonnes of food to Siberian Cossack commandoes currently occupying Queens, and redeploying a detachment of tanks to Montana in order to shore up the Soviet line. It was dull, it was boring, and it made Elisabeth long for the days when she had been a field soldier. She remembered being inducted into the Red Army as a young girl and earning her first kill during an assault on South American supporters of democracy (in fact, her right forearm still showed the faded, crude kill-tally scars that she had gouged there herself, during and even following each mission). After that, her rise to the rank of Comrade-Colonel had been unstoppable, as she displayed an uncanny knack for leadership and an instinctive grasp of battlefield tactics. And now she was here, seeing over the occupation of a decaying metropolis that held nothing for her but scattered, messy guerrilla conflict. It bored her, frankly, and she often found herself longing to pick up a rifle and bayonet and join her troops on the ground, but she knew she could not. So instead she signed away her life and let others take the glory.
The Revolution demanded it, she supposed. It wasn't an ideal state of affairs by any means, but she knew for a fact that victory would not be achieved without sacrifice.
Just then, she heard a cautious knock at the door, and, grateful for the interruption, she said "Come in." The door opened slowly, and Corporal Robert Drake stepped through into the plushly-decorated office with a stack of documents under his arm. Raising his free hand to his brow, he snapped off a parade ground-standard salute.
"Long live the Revolution," he said, keeping his eyes looking straight ahead.
"Long live the Revolution," Elisabeth replied. "At ease, Comrade Drake." At that, the young man relaxed visibly, and his gaze focused directly on her for the first time. "What do you have to report?"
"Bad news, Comrade-Colonel," Drake said, holding up the stack of documents. "It seems that the Omega Red weapon has been permanently disabled – clean-up crews found his body in the sewers earlier today. He was –"
Colonel Braddock held up a hand. "Spare me the gory details, Comrade Drake. Do we have any adequate superhuman replacements for him?"
"Well," Drake began, "one Lieutenant Piotr Rasputin has expressed his desire to step into Omega Red's shoes, Comrade-Colonel. You witnessed his suitability for such a role earlier today, I believe?"
"Yes," Colonel Braddock replied, another thin smile passing over her face as inspiration suddenly struck her like a bolt of lightning. "Yes, I did." She folded her hands into one another on the surface of her desk and then sat back in her chair, mulling a thought over in her head for a moment or two. "Have Comrade Rasputin deployed into the centre of the city without any further delay. I want him at the head of every counter-offensive we mount against the rebel scum. I suspect he will be a fine figurehead for the Red Army, don't you?"
"Absolutely," Drake agreed, a vicious light beginning to shine in his eyes. "It'll be my first priority." He saluted, clicked his heels together precisely, and then turned on one heel and began to move towards the door with long, even strides.
"Before you do that, however," Elisabeth said, causing him to pause in mid-step and look round uncertainly, "make sure that he has been fitted with the tendrils that I presume have been recovered from Omega Red's body. They have proven effective in close combat, and I would hate to see them go to waste. Give Comrade Rasputin adequate time to practise with them, and then make sure he is deployed to a visible location. I want the Yankees to see that they cannot vanquish the Soviet Union so easily."
Drake nodded. "Yes, Comrade-Colonel." Then he inclined his head forwards slightly, as if he was unsure of whether he should stay or not. Elisabeth nodded towards the door of her office, in answer to his silent query.
"Dismissed, Comrade Drake," she said. "Bring me good news next time." When Drake had disappeared, Elisabeth buried her head in her hands, exasperated, before she let loose a howl of frustration and swept a pile of document folders noisily onto the floor in a moment of white-hot anger. She had been counting on Omega Red to be a key player in the crushing of the New York rebel network, and now he was nothing more than cold meat on a slab. She loathed having to rethink her plans – it meant that she had failed, and she hated failure intensely. Still, she reasoned, she could either wallow in her failure, or she could learn from it and make sure she never did anything like that again. The latter option seemed infinitely preferable.
Before she did that, though, she decided that she needed something to take her mind off the situation that had just been presented to her. Closing her eyes, she sent a telepathic order to one of the lackeys that were crawling through the building like lice on a mangy dog. Bring me amusement, she stated simply. I wish to relax for an hour or two. While her subordinates scurried away to find her something to attract her attention, she busied herself with more paperwork, wondering who – or what – they would bring her.
It took fifteen minutes for them to knock on her door. Elisabeth had sensed a pack of them dithering outside, wringing their hands and wondering whether or not to rap their hand against the door's oaken surface, so she had given them a slight telepathic nudge in order to let them know that she was not going to send them on a one-way trip to Alaska for disturbing her. When they bucked up the courage to enter her office, Elisabeth saw the uniformed soldiers had brought with them a manacled and chained prisoner with a power-dampening collar clamped around his neck. His blond hair was matted with dirt, and from the way his prison uniform hung on his frame, his body was obviously suffering from an early-to-middling stage of malnutrition. Still, Elisabeth liked the restless spark of defiance she could sense in his mind. It… aroused her. Walking over to where the man was standing flanked by her underlings, she took his stubbly chin in between the forefinger and thumb of her right hand, and glanced toward the nearest soldier, a thuggish-looking man with close-cropped black hair, a gruesome web of scars covering the right side of his face, and a nose that looked to have been broken and clumsily reset dozens of times.
"What is this one's name, Private…" She squinted at the name sewn onto the soldier's uniform. "Private Wisdom?"
"This, Comrade-Colonel, is Alex Summers," Wisdom said, a contempt-fuelled sneer crinkling the mass of scar tissue that obscured most of his face. "We've had this one in custody for years – he led a resistance cell in New Jersey, but it didn't last very long. Guess the guy just wasn't a very good leader." The words seemed to slither off Wisdom's tongue, as if they were calculated to sting the Summers man as much as they possibly could. Elisabeth liked that. She stepped forwards and stroked the prisoner's face with the back of her hand. He flinched slightly, as if he was expecting another beating, but she didn't want to inflict more pain on him just yet. No, she had other plans…
"Leave us," she said in a clipped, formal tone, and after a moment's hesitation, the four soldiers withdrew without a word. When they had gone, Elisabeth drew herself closer to the man called Alex Summers and let herself bask in the bubbling anger radiating from his mind. Oh, this would be so much fun. "Do you know why you're here, Mr Summers?" she asked conversationally, letting her right hand trail down his stomach to his groin. Her spider-light touches did exactly as they were intended to do, and she smiled at his conflicted expression. Still, he didn't answer her right away, so she decided he needed some prompting. With her left hand, she slapped him sharply across the face. "Answer me, please. Do you know why you're here?"
Alex Summers did nothing except spit in her face. Elisabeth felt the bloody spittle hit her cheek, and wiped it off without a word. "I know why I'm here, murderer," Alex said. His voice sounded as if he'd been gargling with cut glass for a week, and Elisabeth supposed that had something to do with the jagged scars criss-crossing his vocal cords. "You're going to kill me because you're bored, aren't you?"
Elisabeth let a smile play across her lips. This was turning out better than she had anticipated. She liked it when prey struggled. "Oh, I'm afraid the soldiers have been filling your head with lies and deceit. I'm not going to kill you, you silly boy. No, I want to do something far more fun." She leaned in closer and kissed him on the mouth when he wasn't expecting it, slipping her tongue gently between his lips, and she was gratified that he did not pull away as quickly as she'd thought he might. He even leaned into it a little before he drew back, disgust and revulsion flooding through his mind. Spitting again, as if to get the strawberry-shortcake taste of her lips out of his mouth, he glared at her with admirable strength – admirable because even after all that the gulag had done to him, he still had strength of mind enough to let her see that she didn't own him.
That would change soon enough, she decided. Sliding her hands through his unruly blond hair, she gazed deeply into his eyes and drew closer to his face, close enough to smell the scent of his sweat and the delicate tang of his anger. "Don't resist, Mr Summers," she whispered. "I don't like it when people don't do as they're told."
"Fuck you." Alex Summers' voice was still defiant, like a harp string drawn taut. Elisabeth smiled again, as if he had just proclaimed her to be his new god.
"Precisely what I had in mind," she chuckled coldly. Nodding towards him almost casually, she sent a psionic pulse screaming down his synapses, driving him to his knees. She could tell that his limbs had been so overcome by the pulse that he had no control over them for the moment – which she regretted, but she imagined that control would return once his barriers had been thoroughly shattered. As he lay crumpled on the floor, she sank to her knees as well, and took his face between finger and thumb again. "Now do you see why it's easier for me to win?" she asked, like a schoolteacher admonishing an errant pupil. Alex Summers tried to slur a curse at her, but all he managed was a spittle-choked gurgle. "Good boy," she replied, and drew him as upright as she could before she kissed him again, parting his lips with her tongue once more. There was less resistance this time, and by that simple gesture, Elisabeth knew she had him. It would take a little longer before he moaned her name unbidden, that was certain, but she had him nevertheless, and she knew that she would enjoy his company until then. "Good boy."
Elisabeth stood on her balcony, letting the chill evening wind blow through her unfettered hair. She still had not bound it back up after finishing with the Summers man, and had decided instead to leave it free for a while, just for a change. Not that that was based on any sentimental recollection of her recent conquest, of course – she had simply watched, impassive, as he had begged her not to let him go back to the gulag when the soldiers had arrived – begged her with every fibre of his being to let him stay with her. The sounds of his screams had echoed down the corridor outside her office for several minutes, ending abruptly when Elisabeth had heard one of her soldiers drive his rifle butt into the man's face quickly. A shame, she decided. Not a great shame, but a shame nonetheless. She had enjoyed the prisoner's company – he had been a great pleasure to subdue – and it was unfortunate that she would not be able to do it to him again.
Still, as she had so often learned, sacrifices had to be made. And sacrificing Alex Summers to a lifetime of back-breaking hard labour wasn't exactly a hard one to make. He had disobeyed Soviet law, and for that he had to be punished. Elisabeth could think of no better punishment than to let him see a glimpse of what he could have had if he hadn't been so utterly stupid, and then snatch it all away. He'd be berating himself for the rest of his short, painful existence, and that, she knew, would be worse than anything the Soviet soldiers could inflict on him. Self-inflicted pain was always worse, after all, because you knew all of your own weak spots instinctively, and Alex Summers would be forever regretting not being able to touch her body again. That was the worst punishment of all.
Before Elisabeth could think on that subject further, however, a sharp knock sounded at the entrance to her office, forcing her to confront the busy realities of her position. Hurriedly tying her hair up into a hasty ponytail, Elisabeth said "Come in," as she sat down at her desk and picked up a pen in order to look at least partially busy. The oak doors opened a fraction and through them slipped a statuesque young woman, who was clad in an ankle-length black greatcoat and carried a black peaked cap under one arm. She had tooth mark-like scars around the edge of her flame-red hairline, and Elisabeth knew that these were the result of having her hair burned away in a fire less than two years before. The hair had been restored by Soviet surgeons, but the scars remained. This, Elisabeth had instantly realised, was KGB intelligence's best interrogator. This was Major Jean Grey.
"Good afternoon, Comrade Braddock," Major Grey said, in an oddly sweet-sounding voice that was completely at odds with her severe demeanour. Despite her inferior rank, she still radiated an air of authority that made Elisabeth wince inwardly. She had never liked the KGB – she thought they were all sneaky bastards who ought to have been shot at birth. "I have been informed that you are currently holding an important rebel leader?"
"He is on his way to the local gulag, Comrade Grey, but yes, we have him," Elisabeth replied in a clipped, businesslike tone. "I and a subordinate have already interrogated him. He has provided us with all the information we need – we are currently in the process of deploying troops to crush the rebels, using the details I obtained from his mind."
Major Grey held up a hand to silence her. "Do not presume to tell me that you have taken all you can from this prisoner's mind, Colonel. There are ways and means to gain even the smallest scraps, if you know how to get to them. Now – return him to me, and we will see if you truly have taken everything you can from him."
Elisabeth fought to keep her teeth from grinding together. This was something she did not need. She didn't like having her authority questioned – especially not by a black-coated ghoul from the KGB. Still, she knew exactly what happened to people who didn't do as the KGB told them, and even she wouldn't be exempt from that – it wouldn't be the first time that somebody in her position had been dragged kicking and screaming to Alaska, after all. "Very well," she said, trying to stop herself from leaping across her desk and jamming her fist down Major Grey's smugly-smiling throat. "I will have him recalled from the gulag and brought directly to you."
"Good," Major Grey replied icily, just as the doors to Elisabeth's office creaked open again, and her adjutant Lieutenant Drake stumbled hastily inside, as if he had only just realised who was with his superior officer. Major Grey noticed his fumbled entry, and gestured towards him with a gloved hand. "Do you… normally let the rank and file do that?"
"This is Comrade Drake," Elisabeth replied, rubbing her brow tiredly. "He's my assistant."
"I'd have him reprimanded for that, if I were you," Major Grey suggested helpfully. "Perhaps a few hours cleaning out the troops' latrines would help him keep time better." She made sure to give Lieutenant Drake a scathing glare while she spoke, from which he cringed like a beaten dog. Satisfied she had made her point, Major Grey turned back towards Elisabeth and sat back in her chair. "May I wait here while you bring me the prisoner?"
Elisabeth felt her fists clenching. "Certainly," she said with a great deal of difficulty, before she reached into a cabinet behind her and drew out a crystal decanter and two glasses. Perhaps some alcohol would soothe her nerves, she wondered. "Would you like a glass of vodka?"
Major Grey's face creased into a sincere-looking smile for the first time since she had elbowed her way into Elisabeth's office. "Yes, thank you. That would be divine…"