A/N: Russian characters in this chapter speak, er, Russian unless otherwise noted.
Rain in the Night
Spontaneous pro-government demonstrations arose yesterday across the World Socialist Alliance, as surging crowds of patriotic comrades took to the streets with red banners to show their support for visionary policies that have lifted millions out of poverty and exploitation. From Mexico to Iraq, the world witnessed an unprecedented display of worker solidarity. The demonstrations were clearly in response to provably false statements by the capitalist Allied Nations claiming the WSA lacks the support of the people.
This aggressive rhetoric comes at a time when experts say that global war is more likely than at any moment since the fall of Moscow, as terrorist outrages by reactionary bandits and hostile arms buildups by imperialist powers menace peace-loving peoples across the globe. The Second Great War killed tens of millions worldwide, the vast majority of them civilians, and Allied provocations make it clear that fearful capitalists are still obsessively fixated on revenge for mistakes ordered by Stalin more than fifty years ago.
Today, an inspiring statement by the WSA Supreme Joint Secretariat called on the UN's newly-formed 'Global Defense Initiative' to protect world peace from insatiable warmongers seeking to divide the people. The statement warns the Allied side against any move to escalate the situation in the Mediterranean, as European warships gather off the coasts of Egypt and Yugoslavia. But as yesterday's demonstrations made clear, if war does come, a united people working arm-in-arm is ready to meet any challenge.
-TASS News report, October 20th, 1995
October 20th, 1995 - [LOCATION CLASSIFIED], United States of America - 0600 hours
"Where do we start, sir?" Lieutenant Toyama asked as she settled into her seat.
Since Captain Solomon's meeting with General Sheppard, it had taken weeks to actually get their hands on the UN transport plane which would be Echo Nine's unofficial headquarters for the time being. Currently, the elite team consisted of the two of them. Presumably at some point they would also get a pilot to actually fly the plane.
"First we figure out who on this list we want on board." Solomon, sitting next to her, tapped the black folder on his lap. "Then we just need to contact people whose every move is a state secret, and convince them to volunteer for a team that doesn't officially exist. Pretty simple, really."
"Then maybe we should begin with Boris," said Toyama, opening her own copy of the folder. "According to his profile, he isn't very subtle."
October 20th, 1995 - The Tiber River, outside of Perugia, Italy - 0300 hours
Rain sheeted down onto the waters of the Tiber River, dribbling into his clothes despite the dark poncho he was wearing. Boris Volkov paid it no mind. After growing up in the heaving wreck of postwar Siberia, where heat was a luxury and dryness a blessing, a little rain in Italy was nothing to Boris.
The construction site a hundred metres ahead of him was alive with activity, even in the dead of night and the pouring rain, which was among the reasons the Kremlin wanted it infiltrated. Tall concrete walls encircled the property, concealing whatever was transpiring inside. Heavy machinery rumbled within, sounding like the growl of some beast in its lair, warning any intruder. Lights burned against the darkness and the rain, lighting the FutureTech facility up like a beacon, and beams of searchlights swept the perimeter, announcing the location was watched and guarded.
None of it mattered. He was Boris, top agent of the WSA. There was nothing he could not do.
His sallow, hunched companion was not as confident. Boris knew him only as 'Grigori', almost certainly an alias considering the intense secrecy surrounding the Special Projects 'Psi-Corps' program. Grigori hadn't once lowered the heavy purplish hood concealing most of his features since Boris had met him. He was fidgeting his dark-gloved hands as he crouched with Boris behind a pine tree, shaking out his fingers like a pianist warming up.
"You will distract the guards as we practiced, yes Comrade?" Boris said, keeping his booming voice to merely a low growl for the sake of stealth. "Just like at the border. 'You don't need to see our identification,' haha!"
He mimicked the hypnotic hand wave and unsettlingly compelling tone that had dulled the eyes of the Italian border guards as they entered this forsaken Capitalist pit of a country. Boris did not fully understand what the Psi-Corps did, and a good Russian soldier knew better than to ask questions about State secrets, but he had witnessed firsthand the power of Grigori's abilities on the covert voyage into Allied territory.
"Yes, of course." Grigori gave his head a shake, as though to clear it. "They are coming. You will have your opportunity."
"Good, good! This will be easy. Then back home to Mother Russia for us!"
Boris grinned behind his thick dark beard, and gave Grigori what was supposed to be an encouraging pat on the back. Grigori stumbled from the impact. Boris was six and a half feet tall and weighed over one hundred and fifteen kilos of Spetsnaz-forged muscle. Grigori, on the other hand, was built like a short, nervous scarecrow, and seemed to be swallowed up by the dark purple slicker that shielded him from the rain.
Grigori righted himself, took a deep breath, and then placed his hands on his temples, closing his eyes.
"There is no resistance…" he murmured.
A hundred metres ahead, two humanoid silhouettes could be faintly glimpsed through the rain. The hired guns of FutureTech, guarding the blood-soaked profits of their arms-dealing employer. At some unseen signal from Grigori, one of them halted, stiffened, and started running off into the night, away from the Russians. After a confused moment, his compatriot followed him, shouting.
"Very good, my friend!" Boris restrained himself from thumping Grigori on the back again. "Now it is my turn! Wait here for me - this won't take long."
He heard Grigori murmuring 'good luck' behind him as he took off for the gap in the perimeter left by the distracted sentries. For such a big man, Boris could move like a panther when he needed to. He was a silent shadow in the rain as he sprinted toward the wall, not breaking stride as he hurled the grappling hook in his hand.
The hook flew upwards, trailing its black rope, and caught at the top of the wall. Boris tugged it to ensure it was secure, then braced his legs and climbed, hauling himself upwards smoothly and quickly. He wasn't even breathing hard when he slipped over the top of the wall without a sound, pulling the rope and hook after him to avoid discovery.
Boris was the first comrade of the WSA to see just what FutureTech was building on the banks of the Tiber River. Analysts had first realised the Allied dogs were up to something when part of Italy simply vanished from the view of reconnaissance satellites passing overhead: a sure sign of the damnable Gap Generators the Allies had bedevilled Moscow with since Stalin's day. Further investigation had revealed that the Allies' most advanced weapons corporation had suddenly bought an insignificant swathe of land next to the Tiber River, muscling out the olive growers living there, and started building something - in total secrecy, and at a furious pace. Something big.
Factor in a meteorite impact months before that had barely registered any comment in the corporate-controlled 'free' media, and there were more red flags than May Day in Moscow. That kind of activity could not be ignored by the Kremlin, not after losing the last war to the Chronosphere. They had sent Boris, and Boris did not fail.
Crouched in the shadows next to the wall, Boris unslung his rifle, a heavily customized AK-74 with a big drum magazine filled with armour-piercing rounds. The WSA's tactical doctrine favoured maximum firepower in all things, even covert ops. Boris was just here for reconnaissance, but if he had to defend himself, he could do so with gusto.
The rifle's modifications included a video camera integrated into its scope, complete with night vision, the better to record evidence of the Allies' latest scheme. Boris knelt, wiped rainwater off the scope, and raised it to his eye. He saw the world through shades of black and green speckled with flares of white light, as he swept the camera over the compound and began recording. There was much to take in.
The FutureTech compound was frantic with activity, even during a rainstorm at three in the morning. Boris saw supply trucks, construction dozers, and engineering crews hustling from site to site, working under blazing electric lamps. They were all well-guarded.
Boris took careful note of the enemy mercenaries, counting at least twelve in view, all moving in pairs. He saw blue-grey urban camouflage uniforms peeking from beneath dark rain slickers, gloved hands carrying M-16 assault rifles with trained confidence. The faces under the black berets looked alert and active even under these conditions. The guards were accompanied by combat vehicles, all-terrain Buggies roving the compound with machine guns mounted in turrets.
He felt his neck prickle. These were not the pudgy low-rent thugs corporations usually used to frighten trespassers or bully activists.
The Construction Yard was the centre of the work, blazing with light shining through the rain, its big crane arm whirring as it lifted heavy pallets of materials. Surrounding it was a steel forest of gantries, frames and scaffolding, sprouting buildings in progress, tarps fluttering in the wind like big waxy leaves. Boris saw the flat asphalt of an airfield and multiple helipads under construction on the right of the Yard, and a blocky residential structure and garage already operating on the left, with steam drifting from the stacks of a Power Plant set up in the rear. Next to the Power Plant was an even larger project that Boris couldn't identify, involving a smokestack and bulbous storage silos. But all of that was a sideshow to the real focus of FutureTech's work.
A massive structure rose behind the Construction Yard, dwarfing every other building in the facility, trucks and dozers and technicians bustling around it, two towering cranes flanking it like sentinels. The U-shaped rotating dish on the intact part of the roof marked the Gap Generator Boris had to bring down. The building's grand scale, high arches, and sharp points reminded Boris of the old Orthodox cathedral he had seen burning as a boy, after a Partisan action in Irkutsk.
The looming edifice was being built, according to Boris' briefing and the GRU's best analysts, on the precise spot where the meteorite had struck earlier in the year.
Boris would find out why. But the first priority was to disable the Gap Generator so that reconnaissance satellites could properly scan this place. Boris felt his pulse quicken and senses sharpen as he moved forward, low and silent in the darkness and the rain, aiming for a gap in the enemy patrols. Whatever was being brewed here, it almost certainly threatened the collective interests of the people. It would be his great pride to help thwart it.
"Stay alert. You know what happened to Second Squad when one of them got caught sleeping, right?"
The rest of the words were swallowed by the rain as Boris slipped behind the patrol, but he noted that the enemy mercenaries had spoken American English. A multinational private army, then.
His lip curled behind his beard as he crossed the open ground between him and his objective, ducking behind a parked truck for added concealment. This was the precious 'freedom' for which the Allies had broken and humiliated Mother Russia: vast fortunes spent on foreign mercenaries and secret weapons while the working people struggled for shelter and dignity across Europe. Boris and millions of others had grown up under occupation so that wealthy capitalists could keep exploiting others.
The late Premier Romanov, whose memory lived in eternal glory for Boris, hadn't only returned Russia to prosperity and pride by founding the WSA alongside his Beijing counterparts. He had also created the chance for vengeance. The war hadn't begun yet, but everyone knew it was coming.
The buzz of an engine and the glow of headlights warned Boris of a Buggy approaching behind him. He sprinted the last few metres out of the open, and ducked behind a tarped pallet of pipes moments before the headlights flashed over where he had been. Beyond his hiding place, dripping and yawning like the mouth of a great drooling creature, was the entrance to the massive structure at the centre of the Allies' latest scheme.
Boris checked his watch, squinting through the green eye of his scope to see the time. Ten minutes before the next satellite pass: more than enough time to quiet the Gap Generator. He would rather have called down a flight of MiGs to bomb the entire site off the Earth, but orders were orders. Reconnaissance and sabotage today. Destruction, maybe next time.
He raised his rifle, checked the scope to make sure it was properly recording everything, and moved in.
Boris' feet left the muddy ground of the construction site, and he was careful to stay silent as his thick boots hit the concrete of a building's foundation. The skeleton of the frame enveloped him, steel beams and columns and girders all around him like he was in the rib cage of a metal monster, cables and pipes coiling everywhere like veins and nerves. He pushed towards its heart, where the Gap Generator's power source would be.
Further in, the skeleton gained flesh on its bones, walls and doorways forming the beginnings of rooms. Insulation bulged between slats, thick and puffy. Boris ducked under a set of water pipes and crouched outside the largest and most important-looking doorway, listening for movement in the core of the structure. Then he swung inside with his rifle raised, and stopped, tilting his head.
As expected, there was a generator at the back of the room, a humming black box the size of a shed. What Boris did not expect was the shrine in front of it.
A pillar of light from a blazing ceiling lamp fell upon the centre of the scene as though from on high. The floor shifted from grey concrete to smooth, polished black stone. The stone rose up into a small pyramid of steps. A sculpture crowned the summit of the pyramid. A slab of the black stone had been carved in bright, crimson red, a six-foot emblem looming over Boris. It showed a scorpion's tail, arching and poised to strike, within a squared-off triangle. Beneath it was an inscription on a golden plaque. Bewildered, Boris lowered his rifle and leaned in to read:
"And the Prophet went forth from his genesis, to gather the faithful in the Land of NOD."
Like a good comrade, Boris did not believe in corrupt churches or outdated superstitions. But it sounded like scripture, like the slogans the bearded priest had yelled in front of his burning cathedral before the Partisans shot him. The old man had died without fear, secure and strong in his faith.
What did an arms company want with religion?
The clack of an M-16's safety lever behind him rendered the question moot.
"Freeze! Drop your weapon and put up your hands!"
Boris winced. He had let the silly sculpture distract him. Just for a moment, but long enough for guards to catch him - two of them from the sounds of things, one yelling orders at him while the other called for backup on the radio.
"I said drop your weapon! Lascia cadere la pistola! We will shoot you!"
Despite his embarrassment, despite the rifles pointing at him from only thirty feet away, Boris smiled slightly. His orders were clear in this situation. Capture was unacceptable, failure was not an option. Even on a covert mission, Boris was fully authorised to defend himself. And in honesty, he had hoped for an excuse.
He dove towards the shrine, gambling. He landed on the stairs in a twisting combat roll and came up kneeling with his back to the scorpion's carved tail, bringing his rifle to bear. He only needed an instant, a split-second's pause, and he got it. The mercenaries - cultists, really - hesitated to fire upon the sacred stone. Boris shot them instead.
His rifle's thunder echoed off the walls and pillars around them, cutting down the two guards with a stream of bullets. One guard wildly fired his weapon as he spun to the floor, spraying bullet holes across the face of his precious shrine.
Boris brushed chips of stone and spent casings off himself as he got back to his feet, and grinned behind his beard as alarms began to howl throughout the base. He could hear boots running and voices shouting, many of them. This was no longer a stealth mission. Which meant Boris could have a little fun.
Grigori, he thought. If you truly can read men's minds, you should get out of here. Things just got interesting!
First things first. He hurried to the generator, knelt behind it, and attached a small cylinder of thermite with a sticky pad. In three minutes, the generator would suffer a catastrophic failure, and the comrades behind the satellites would get their pictures. Boris just needed to distract the pigs until then. He excelled at that.
Leaving the central shrine, Boris made for the low-hanging pipes he had ducked under. He slung his rifle, bent his knees, and jumped upward, catching the pipes, which squealed under his weight. He did an effortless chin-up, and climbed up into the frame of the building, clambering through girders and trusses like he was still a boy playing among the rusting tank scrap near his home.
From his perch, he saw three more guards heading toward the room with rifles raised, followed by a jumpsuited man in a yellow hard hat and a tool bag.
"Looking for me, dogs?" He called down so he could see the surprise on their faces, an instant before his rifle danced in his hands, wiping them out. Their bullet-riddled bodies collapsed, bleeding out on the bare concrete floor. Boris hauled himself up to the next level, climbing on the scaffolding like a jungle gym.
Levering himself up onto the next surface, Boris found himself on a maintenance catwalk running perpendicular to the room he had just left. Following it, he found it led over a vaulting, cavernous space below, looking like a gathering place. Thick corded bundles of wiring and electronics drooped from the ceiling overhead, the guts of the building. Flashing red lights pulsed to the beat of the alarms. The base was on full alert.
The catwalk clanged with footfalls as a goggled man in blue overalls charged Boris, screaming and waving a wrench. Boris shot him. The worker fell facedown at the Russian's feet, wrench clattering next to him.
Boris shook his head. Who were these people? Capitalists killed for profit, but they were less eager to die for it.
Gunfire cut off further questions. The space below filled with scurrying mercenaries, two then four then eight running to take cover behind pillars and crates, M-16s chattering as their bullets converged on Boris overhead. Boris roared a challenge as he returned fire, clenching his rifle as he sprayed bullets from the hip.
"Fools! You can't touch me!"
Two guards fell, clutching their wounds, and the others ducked down as Boris' fusillade pummeled their positions. Boris seized the chance to relocate, sprinting to the end of the catwalk, where a ladder offered escape to the roof. A pain in his ribs, behind the thick body armour under his coat, told him he'd taken at least one bullet.
No matter. Boris did not fail. A glance at his watch as he climbed the ladder told him he only had to hold out another ninety seconds. Then he could escape using the explosion as cover.
Rain soaked his face as he flung open the hatch at the top of the ladder. The storm was getting worse. Good - it would make his getaway easier. He thought for a moment of a treed cat, surrounded by baying hounds, and put the image out of his head. He slammed the hatch behind him, leaving another package of thermite primed with a proximity detonator as a surprise for anyone who might try to follow him, and then crawled onto the roof.
For a moment, wind was a greater hazard than the enemy. The bare steel of the roof's beams and trusses was slick, crowded with protrusions and obstacles like bundles of rebar and stacks of acetylene cylinders. Boris reloaded his weapon as he crept carefully, climbing to the peak of the roof. From here, he could see the whole base spread below him: the ideal firing position. Behind him, the great 'U' of the Gap Generator pulsed a bass hum as it rotated.
Through his night-vision scope, he could see dozens of enemy soldiers and vehicles swarming below him, surrounding the building. Two were ascending in the elevator of the great crane nearby, heading to an overwatch position with sniper rifles at the ready.
The snipers were the greatest threat, so Boris killed them first. He raked the crane elevator with a long burst, tracer rounds flickering out from his position, stabbing through the metal and windows and people and bursting the motor of the device in a shower of sparks.
The enemy immediately returned fire, the ground below coming alive with muzzle flashes flaring through the darkness. Boris heard the bullets passing over his head, felt one of them pluck at his sleeve, and dropped prone for added protection as he turned his sights on the other crane on the opposite side of the building. Sure enough, two more snipers were taking up shooting positions on its long, reaching arm. He shot them, and their screams rose above the wind as they plummeted downwards.
Sparks flew as machine gun rounds slammed into the Gap Generator behind him and ricocheted off the metal he was lying on. Boris didn't flinch as he aimed at one of the armed Buggies who were the next greatest threat. He hammered the vehicle with a sustained burst of fire, armour-piercing rounds slamming through its thin armour and breaching the fuel tank. The fireball lit up the night, the sound of the explosion momentarily drowning out the howling alarms and Boris' booming, triumphant laugh.
He was outnumbered, but the environment itself could be his ally. As the enemy kept covering fire on him, he saw a squad of guards running toward the building, admiring their neat, drilled formation through his scope. Scooting down a wet steel beam like a playground slide, he pressed himself against one of the stacks of acetylene cylinders left for the welders and heaved against it with his broad shoulders.
The cylinders clanged as they toppled and rolled over the roof's edge, like stones being dropped on medieval besiegers. Yells of pain and the flash of an explosion below rewarded Boris as the heavy weights found their mark.
"Who is next?" He called out, daring the entire base to take him on. More bullets answered him, and he replied in kind, hosing the enemy with another long burst. A detonation behind him announced that someone had tried to flank him from the booby-trapped roof hatch, and died for their daring.
Boris had never regretted killing, not since gutting that first drunken German soldier as a boy. It was a joy to fight for Mother Russia, and joy surged in him now as he relished the last few seconds of combat before his explosives marked this mission accomplished. The enemy gunfire died down below. Perhaps the pigs realised they couldn't stop Boris.
Something clanked down behind him. Boris turned and had a moment to see the green, glowing grenade between his feet before it burst into a cloud of sparkling green dust, covering him.
Boris roared in pain and wiped at his eyes. It felt like sand was behind his eyelids, and when he opened them, the world was tinged with green, more vivid and sickly than his night-vision scope. His face burned as though splashed with hot water. He was no longer having fun.
No sign of the gas grenade's origin. The rooftop was silent and empty, except for the pattering of rain, Boris' hurting gasps, and the deep bass hum of the Gap Generator spinning. He raised his rifle, squinting, then tilted his head.
The Gap Generator was still spinning. His explosives should have silenced it by now.
Boris coughed, feeling a sharp stabbing inside his chest, like there was glass in his lungs. But- there! Outlined by the rain about fifty feet away, a vaguely man-shaped silhouette, large and shadowy, impossible to make out even through night vision, somehow camouflaged despite standing in the open. Screaming, Boris opened fire.
Sparks flew from the figure, like he was shooting the thick armour of a tank. A buzzing red light flashed from it in response, and hot pain flashed through Boris' right arm. Something thumped down in front of him as the sizzle of cooked meat reached his nose. He looked down, coughing again.
A hand lay on the ground, still holding the trigger of a ruined rifle, molten metal glowing and hissing in the rain. Boris stared at it a moment, then lifted the smoking, bleeding stump of his right wrist in front of his face.
It came at him, huge and silent, air shimmering around it as it revealed itself. A seven-foot hulk of a man in sleek, gleaming black armour with sharp red trim, shiny and segmented like a scorpion's carapace. The armour was unmarked by Boris' armour-piercing rounds, and his disarmed thermite hung from its waist.
An iron hand closed around Boris' throat and lifted him up into the air, wheezing, feet dangling below him. The other hand was not a hand, a multi barrelled cluster of weapons sprouting from the armoured wrist.
Through blurred eyes, Boris got a glimpse of a grim face with severe Slavic features and buzz-cut blond hair, criss-crossed with fresh surgical scars. His left eye was icy blue, but his right was covered by a glowing green electronic lens attached to some kind of headset that encroached onto the man's flesh, puckered scar tissue marking the line between man and machine.
Boris, growling like an enraged bear, hit him with his remaining hand. Once, twice, three times, throwing all his strength into it, blows that could and had killed strong men. His hand throbbed with red pain as it struck a jaw that felt like solid steel. The enemy commando didn't flinch.
A memory flashed in Boris' mind: the failed experiments with cybernetic soldiers from Stalin's time.
"What… are you?" He gasped.
The cyborg surprised him by answering in Russian, his voice tinged with a synthetic buzz.
"The future."
With that, the cyborg commando turned and hurled Boris into the Gap Generator. The massive whirling metal 'U' swatted him like a fly, shattering his ribs and knocking him off the roof. Boris saw the facility spinning below him as he flew through the rain, his scream broken up by a jagged cough as he plummeted down. The world went black as he hit the ground on his back.
Agonised, throbbing consciousness returned, seconds or minutes later, he did not know. Boris lay coughing on the ground in front of the enemy structure. The upper half of his body felt like it was on fire, especially his back. The lower half felt nothing at all. He lifted his remaining hand, and saw that his watch had shattered in the fall, and his sleeve had been torn open by a bullet. The skin beneath was speckled with jagged shards of something shiny, hard, and green, like his flesh was turning to stone. Or crystal.
Grigori, he thought, trying to focus his thoughts even as blackness beckoned his mind. If you are still out there. Warn Moscow. Warn our comrades. Something horrible is happening here.
The enemy surrounded him, looking down. Guards, engineers, scientists in white coats, seemingly from around the world. The cyborg loomed triumphantly overhead, atop the peak of the building that was so much like a temple, the Gap Generator still turning behind him. Boris saw his rifle's scope, and all its recorded information, glint in the light as the cyborg pocketed it.
"Observe, brothers and sisters. One of the deadliest soldiers in the world, Boris Volkov, sent here to sabotage our dream. But behold! How easily our enemies fall before the Technology of Peace!"
They parted like a sea, bowing their heads as someone stepped into their midst. The speaker was a bald man with a goatee who radiated authority with his presence, hardly raising his voice as he addressed them. The long, dark coat he wore was completely dry. The rain had stopped the instant he had appeared, as though commanded by a miracle.
"You should be honoured, my Russian friend." The man spoke intimately to Boris as he leaned over him, as though to a confidant. "Your body's changes are but the first draft of a great evolution. A divine process. You are among the first of billions to bear witness. This is the beginning of a glorious future for all humanity. Brotherhood. Unity. Peace."
In unison, the cultists circling around him snapped to attention and pumped their fists in the air, a punching straight-arm salute as they chanted.
In his last, nightmarish moments, as his flesh rippled with gelatinous change and his mind sank into a final green agony, Boris was reminded of an image from history: the Fascist movements that had briefly arisen in Europe between the wars, black-shirted thugs chanting and shouting in rapture to their leader.
"ONE VISION! ONE PURPOSE!
THE TECHNOLOGY OF PEACE!
PEACE THROUGH POWER!
PEACE THROUGH POWER!
PEACE THROUGH POWER!"
They were the last words Boris Volkov heard as a human being.
A/N: Looks like Boris won't be recruited to Echo Nine after all. The lesson of this chapter: even the world's deadliest commandos can be outmatched by Kane and his followers. Maybe the characters appearing in the next chapters will have better luck?
FutureTech is based on an Allied corporation that's up to no good in Red Alert 3. In this continuity, they're a front for the Brotherhood of Nod.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter!