Chapter 57

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AN: Just an fyi, next week rather than a oneshot collection I'll be releasing the first part of a small story instead.

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"Jorin," Carmelita said, rubbing her muzzle. "I know about him."

Kozlov paused, turning to face her. "You do? How?"

"Let's just say, you've been a mammal of interest for a while now. To the point that two of our detectives, on their own time no less, went out, following you to Ewekraine."

The polar bear seemed expressionless for a second or two before finally speaking. "Why?"

"At the time," she said, thinking back. "They believed that you may have gone there to retrieve Padriach Rattigan. Bring him back after toppling Mr Big, pulling in a new master for his forces."

A mirthful chuckle rang out. "Whereas I went out there worried, knowing bad mammals were making moves. I thought it safer there, and Jorin and I needed to carry on with long forgotten work."

Carmelita nodded before slipping a paw down, pulling out her trusty shock pistol. "It was a homemade version of this technology, wasn't it? At least that's what the detectives saw you experimenting with."

A large grin grew across his face as he looked down at it, paws slowly coming out, trembling. "I… Can I…"

"Sorry," she said, slowly moving it away while holding up her other paw to him. "Just in case."

"Well," he smiled. "Maybe, when we all safe, may I just touch great weapon? Feel…"

The vixen rolled her eyes. "Sure. With the battery system taken out, all the capacitors discharged, made all safe. You happy with that?"

"More than," he said, an infectious grin on his face.

"I mean," Judy cut in from behind, "it is cool, but…"

"Pah, cool?" Kozlov scoffed, as the Panda King spoke up as well.

"Little rabbit," he said. "From what I gather, this is technology he worked on in early stages. Nurtured, like little bird, only to see it never fly the nest. And yet," he gestured over to Carmelita's shock pistol. "That there is like Wright brothers seeing Concorde. I for one can understand if he is more than a little excited."

"It is true that I had part in developing this technology, but that was not main goal," the polar bear waved off. "Indeed," he said, looking back at the Panda King. "It is not merely that it works that makes me so reverent for this device. But that is for later in story."

Carmelita nodded. "I'm guessing we'll get to this and Arc Two soon enough," she mused.

"Arc…" Kozlov began, pausing. "So you know of that, too?"

Carmelita nodded. "You and Jorin, you oversaw a massive anti-air system using this technology, that was what Arc Two was."

"How did you come to this conclusion?"

"I was looking into your house, when mammals attacked it," she said, reaching for her phone only to pause as she remembered she was in the driving seat. "A picture, you and Jorin, this equipment behind you, letters underneath. Someone translated it for me, Arc Two…"

"So they did not spell it out for you, as pronounced in russian, nyet?"

Carm's ears slowly went up. "No. Why would that…"

He shrugged. "You might have heard of it then. Might have pieced more together. But that is for later in story. Now?"

"-How about," Nick suddenly cut in. "The fact that you dumped the thing the cannibal cult is after on Judy here," he said, pointing at her. "Without telling her, warning her, just…"

"She could handle herself," he waved off, Nick glaring back, a rumble beginning to grow in the back of his throat.

A sudden paw on his side cut him off. "It's okay," Judy said, looking up at him. "It's…"

"No it's not," he hissed. "He used you as a disposable…"

"If there had been any terrible risk," Kozlov said, "I would not have asked her to hold it. I felt there was enough that she could manage, that…"

"-Then why didn't you take it with you?" Nick asked, standing up and walking up to the divider, a finger pointed forward. "If it's so important, keep it by your side, take it to…"

"Into what I half thought was trap?" Kozlov asked. "Where better to take it from me than on road? Or waiting outside Jorin's to take it and run off. Otter or beaver under Rattigan's command could take it west, into Pripyat marshes. It would then be his, no way I could get it back. They expected me. They did not expect it in paws of bunny. Around her neck. Even then, biggest risk was snatcher in night. Bat fly in, pull it out. They would not know bunny would have it, and if did… Risk was acceptable."

Nick kept glaring at him. "Yup. The risk was acceptable and Murana Wolford is the mother cussin' Dark Flame Wolf, am I right? Yeah, the trivial little risk of her getting Rustim'd, no biggy after all." He looked into the blank face of the polar bear before carrying on. "I mean come on, if those who wanted… whatever it is could track your brother and his pals down on a mountain in Siberia and kill them all, a little bunny with it right on her would…"

"Things very different now," Kozlov cut in, his voice level. "What happened to my brother could not happen to Hopps."

"Oh really?"

"Da," he said, nodding. "Want to know why?"

The fox threw his paws out. "Yeah, no cuss."

"Then sit down, I will get to that," he said, a rumble growing in his voice. Nick kept glaring at him, Judy reaching out to touch his shoulder. He jerked, glaring back at her, even as she kept herself still. Calm. Gently holding on as he frowned, looked forward, and slowly retreated back to his seat.

The bunny kept holding his paw, his tail kept twitching and swishing, they were silent but the tension hung in the air.

Kozlov settled back down and smiled. "Jorin's story, it could be as long, if not longer, than my own. But I suppose I can give you basics. I got into mess after finding strange item, drawn in eventually learning something terrible came to slaughter my brother and friends. Jorin? He discovered the something terrible first."

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Tahrjikistan SSR, October 1974

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The two of them sat at the small army canteen, slowly eating the local food that had been provided. Jorin happily ate the slightly more locally sourced than usual fare, enjoying the differently flavoured breads, spreads and other dried fruits and so forth. Kozlov, meanwhile, wasn't one who particularly enjoyed heavily spiced food, not that an army canteen like this would serve it. Instead, it was the usual affair of commonly distributed food. In this case whale which, though he did like it as far as staples went, could have certainly been prepared far, far better.

Swallowing down a mouthful, the bear sighed. "And that is how I ended up here." He levelled a gaze at the mammal across from him, pointing a fork. "Now, you."

Jorin shrugged. "As I said before, I come from Artsakh…"

"As I said before, don't know where that is."

"Ancient part of Armyeenia," the wild ass began to say, his voice rising with pride. "Home of Armyeenians like I for millennia. A high garden full of stubborn donkeys, like myself, that any sane or reasonable mammal would have as part of Armyeenia."

The bear rolled his eyes. "Where did Stagen put it then?"

"We rule ourselves, but under the cancerous yoke of the Azeri SSR," Jorin said, spitting on the floor before shrugging, smiling at first but beginning to get angrier, more animated, as his rant went on. "Maybe after we deal with our current problems, we can go and deal with those syphilitic turds that deluded normal mammals are tricked into calling Turks and Azeri's, not the genocidal nazis they really are. Who fantasize and have mass orgies with their newborn children, excited as they imagine running pogroms to drive Armyeenians from every square inch of earth on this planet and…"

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"-I will end his rant there, but is fair to say, was extremely spectacular", Kozlov laughed. "If you have popcorn, just say 'I met a nice turk yesterday' near him, and you will get both worlds most colorful metaphors and Armyeenian version of Inglorious Basterds, in graphic detail." There was a shrug. "But as much as I could describe you his fantasy of going back in time and parachuting into Sushi pogrom to save the day with flamethrower, as I say I am giving you short version!"

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"Well," Kozlov laughed, banging his fist on the table. "We get to that when we get to that!"

Jorin harrumphed, shrugging. "Sure, we do have slightly more important things to discuss. But my people will have our self determination. One day, our own SSR!"

"Da," he said, "Well…?"

Pausing, the equid nodded. "-Right… My journey began a lot later than yours. I studied radio science and electrics in Yerevan. After that, into the armed forces. Development, experimentation. Developing and using new radar systems, increasing use of the technology." There was a pause as he smiled. "Helping a few colleagues work out things I am not allowed to tell you."

"Naturally."

"But," Jorin carried on, rubbing the side of his head with a hoof. "We began noticing something."

Kozlov's interest piqued, the bear leaning forward.

"We began noticing a blip on the radar. At first, we thought it a glitch. It would travel long distances, very low to the ground. At first, we thought it was spy plane." He paused, laughing. "It is funny. Bad mammals coming up from Pakistan, messing around near you in Svin'yalosk. Us at the radar station all knew of the story, back when you were still a little cub, of an American spy plane that…

"-Wait, wait, I remember that one," Kozlov cut in, smiling. Arms out, he smiled. "I am international law breaking U-2 pilot. La-la-la, what you gonna do…"

Jorin picked up a fork, made a rocket noise, and guided it right into Kozlov's nose in a playful boop. The pair laughed at it, Jorin eventually shaking his head and carrying on. "Anyway, the point is, we all knew what a spy plane is. How it behaves. What it looks like on radar." He paused, leaning forward. "We even know what their latest design looks like. Higher, far faster, always going in straight lines at three times the speed of sound as, whatever plane they have created…" He shrugged, smirking. "You can't turn it without ripping yourself apart." He shrugged, before tapping his fork gently on the table. "We think they had experimented with some method of reducing the size of it on radar too… But that is not the point of this story. The point is, we know what a spy plane looks like. We know what a normal plane looks like. A fighter jet? Military plane?" He shrugged again. "We know how they behave on our systems. So, what happens when we find something that doesn't behave like that?"

Kozlov paused, leaning forward. "Maybe," he said, glancing up and rapping his claws on the table. A casual shrug and he lightly suggested something. "-It is new form of spy plane?"

"So, if you are a spy plane, why would you fly incredibly close to the ground? Often just above the treetops. Always at night. Often avoiding every inhabited area, curving around the north of the country, or making odd paths and routes that don't line up with any logical route for a spy plane to take. In, out, circling. Often curling in odd directions to go to odd places."

The polar bear shrugged. "So, maybe it is some kind of test plane? An experimental weapon of some kind…"

"-Then why test it over our land," Jorin asked, hoof tapping onto the top of the table. "They lose it, we get everything they…"

"-I mean," Kozlov cut in, "what if it's one of ours?"

A small grin grew across the equid's face. "Then why is its squawker silent?"

Kozlov paused, blinking.

"-Ah! You don't know. Of course. Every plane in our airforce, indeed every plane period, is fitted with a squawker. A little box that sends out a signal saying 'don't shoot me. I'm friendly!'"

"Da," Kozlov nodded.

"-In fact," Jorin said, smiling. "That plane that was shot down, what was the pilot's name… Guh-arri Prow-lur I think, it was taken down by missiles. But there were also fighters sent after it. It was the first of May, the day the airforce changed the codes over. First of the month, every month. Only, being international workers day, the workers whose job it was to change the squawker on the fighter jets…" He let out a dark chuckle, one that was met by a hearty laugh from Kozlov. "-Anyway, that is how the only mammal killed in that incident was one of ours."

Kozlov's laughter faded as he looked at Jorin, the wild ass shrugging as he held up a glass. "To the workers of the world."

"To the workers of the world," the bear agreed, the two both taking a swig.

"-So now you know that, you understand that if it was one of ours we'd know. We'd hear the squawker. And if it was one of theirs…" He shook his head, throwing his hooves at Kozlov. "You asked, you know why it isn't. So, whose is it?"

Kozlov nodded, slowly pulling up his coat and pointing at the bandage on his side. "One of theirs?"

Jorin nodded. "Of course, I had no clue who 'they' were. Now, this thing, the anomaly as we called it, had an odd radar signature. When we could see it, as again it tended to fly at night, in remote areas, and even then we found that it only appeared at random points. It appears, vanishes, then appears again for a bit further along its trail. Anyway, when we could see it, it would… grow and shrink."

"Hmmm?"

"Its radar signature would expand, then shrink, on and on. Why?" He shrugged. "I don't know. But we and the team, when we did see it, especially after looking back through all our past records and spotting it there, decided to try and figure out what it was. We mainly focussed on the Caucuses, but getting in contact with other radar stations across the country, requesting their data, we pieced together the routes it took. We began to slowly understand things. One, it always flew close to the ground, at night. Often during the new moon, at the very least in the days around it. It tries to avoid the steppes and desert, it goes for the forests, the hills, places where it hugging the ground means radar can't figure out where it is. It doesn't want to be seen. Two, it will often take return trips. Out to somewhere, back again. Via a different route, yes, but the point remains. And three. We believe its base or home, if it has one, is in the far east. We'll often see it aiming to fly towards the sea of Oxhost. Maybe it is based over in Alaska, maybe not. Still, with all that, we came up with a plan…"

"Intercept it," Kozlov said, smiling. "Find out what it was."

Jorin smiled and winked. "Yes. A lot of asking, a lot of requests. In the end, we did get one flight to try and go after them. A supersonic jet, with one of a special set of crew onboard. Night fighters, select mammals with excellent night vision. I think it was a badger that did it, but…" The ass slowly trailed off. "He saw something out there. In the end it got away, it easily could. This was in one of the radar blackspots, so we couldn't track it. It was sight only, and this thing was far more manoeuvrable than our jet. We think it must have landed in a clearing or something. -Your report about it interacting with your brother and those other poor mammals…" He stroked his chin with his hoof. "I suspect it can land vertically or something. But, we had some form of proof that it existed. We even started talking to those on the flight path, asking about what they saw."

"I'm guessing they would paw it off as just military tests or something," the bear pondered, as Jorin's smirk grew.

"That is why we introduced ourselves as members of intelligence, testing a new stealthed weapon for low altitude espionage. We needed feedback."

Kolzov burst into laughter, smirking. "Were they scared when you said that?"

He was met with a shrug. "From those who hadn't seen anything, no. From those that had…" Jorin trailed off. "Many just felt, or thought, they were being hunted. Or that something terrible was nearby."

"Pah, old flight instinct," the polar bear waved off.

""Hmmm… Well, those that did see something. Or hear… Burning orange lights, cold coals, as some put it. Many would say they were eyes, but…"

Kozlov scoffed. "Really? But what about those with night vision?"

"Something big," Jorin said. "Something dreadful. Almost silent, gliding through the air, many said they thought they saw flapping wings against the stars."

"There are some big birds out in the wilderness. Wild creatures. I know there are pawful of ones that can think, talk, like us mammals," the bear carried on. "But I'm guessing it's too many sightings for it to be just that."

The mammal across from him nodded. "Some bird or something was what many of them waved it off as at first. Some fanciful rationalisation, or something…" Waving a hoof in front of him, Jorin scoffed. "More than one called it stepnogo sizogo orla, or just sizogo orla…"

"-A grey steppe eagle?" Kozlov scoffed. "What, from the… It was from the song wasn't it?"

"Yup," Jorin said with a shrug. "Apple and pear trees were a-blooming, Mist was creeping on the river."

He ended it there, gesturing to a stone-faced Kozlov for a second or two before standing up, waving his hooves up into the air. A few other mammals had arrived in the canteen and, having overheard his song, stepped in.

"Katyusha set out on the banks, On the steep and lofty bank…"

At which point Kozlov stood up, his bench scraping back and, pulling in a lungful of air, let loose a full and tuneless bellow. "She was walking! Singing a song! About a grey! Steppe! Eagle!"

Taken aback, Jorin smiled and waved his companion down as the next line came around. A line that the bear more than eagerly leapt onto, all while leaning ever closer to the mammal who'd goaded him on, a raised eyebrow and a smirk the cherry on top. "About her true loooooovvvveeeee! Whose let-ters she was keeeeeeeppppiiiiinnggggg!"

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"You are good mammals," Kozlov said in the future. "Who have not annoyed me too much, so I will skip ahead just a little."

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"We were making progress," Jorin explained before sighing. "And then? Shut down. Completely."

Kozlov scratched the side of his cheek with a claw. "Party apparatchik?"

"Whole party," the ass explained, sighing. "It wasn't a liquidation, I think they wanted us to think we'd been caught up in a reorganisation. Splitting our members from each other. Just so happening to lose the records and data we were studying in the process. Thankfully, some of us had kept copies. We carried on looking. Those that could at their new bases, when they could, kept monitoring." A sneer grew on his face. "Not long after our jet caught onto him, not long before we were split up, Sizogo Orla… -We decided to call 'it' that, flew down to the north east of Moscow… If it is based in the Far East that would line up with it flying up, over the far north and Arctic Ocean. Anyway, the point is, Sizogo Orla went there, came back… And, about the same time… The exact same time. I have reports that our loyal premier, Leonid Brezved, cut short a lot of meetings for an important and very sudden surprise item on his agenda about that time."

A slow growl began to grow from Kozlov. "So, it goes from the very top, huh?"

"To some degree," Jorin nodded. "Though, I will say this. Some of our mammals got to asking the Kremlin staff. Simple questions, not like the intensity you managed." He chuckled a bit. "We could have really done with you on our side back then. Either way, they say he went out full of bluster, as normal. He came back shaken, pale, almost your colour!"

"Well, I suppose there are no yellow bears."

"Ha. Either way, more questions and we found out something interesting too. His change in plans was spurned by the arrival of a small contingent from the far south of our great country, and…"

"-That is why you came down here."

Two hooves slammed on the table. "You are good!"

Kozlov just smirked, waving a paw back at himself. "I wouldn't have made it this far if I wasn't."

Jorin nodded. "I was trying to identify who those mammals were, as that wasn't the first time. From what we heard, they would come, the Premier would go out. He would then come back, shaken. Not just our big bear today but our little kitty before."

"Koshkchev?"

"And Stagen before him. In fact, there were reports they arrived the day after the Great Patriotic War started…"

"-After Stagen opened up Tiggurs tomb!"

Jorin looked at him blankly. "You'll need to fill that in for me."

"Which I did. But you have already heard it, so I shall skip past."

"All the more interesting," Jorin mused. "Either way, I was able to pull favours and slip on through down here… We had a few recorded flights to and from somewhere across the border, it seemed to be a popular destination for our grey steppe eagle. But, as well as scanning the skies where I could, I was also an ear to the ground. Trying to find the ground crew as it was. Those that communicated between whatever our enemy is, or whoever is inside of it, to those who should blast it out of the skies. I soon began uncovering some hints, but not many. And then, one day, you show up. On a blood fresh scent trail and with a mammal I'd suspected was somewhat leading you on. I figured he was drawing you and your comrades into a trap. So I left messages to be sent out in case I didn't return and then, as our comrades before us had…"

Kozlov nodded. "And I am grateful. Ever grateful. And now you know that these two are very much linked. And you know about what happened to my brother, the talismans, whatever they are. They have one, but sought to protect the one the Tsars had." He paused for a second. "I am now curious, if the Tsars were in contact, how our enemies ever let the revolution occur."

"Tsar, Premier, maybe all are under the control of this strange enemy."

"And who are they? Inside their craft. More of the same?"

"Until we catch it, who knows?" Jorin threw up his paws. "I heard in the States, when one of their weather balloons went down, they covered it up enough that the dumb locals began thinking it was alien from outer space." The polar bear scoffed, the ass leaning forward. "No really! They think they picked up a little green 'mammaloid' from outer space, took him to this airforce base, and cut him up into itty bitty little bits for dissection."

"T-chork," Kozlov giggled, shaking his head, only to pause. "And you… This?"

Sighing, Jorin shook his head. "It is as good as any other idea we've had. After all, a cannibal cult is involved in this. What else is? Maybe Sizogo Orla crashed to earth back in Tigruska, in 1908. All I know is, we will only find out if we carry on this search, with what we've both learned. Together."

For a few seconds the table was silent until, finally, Kozlov rose. "Everything I have done is to find out the truth. What happened to my brother. I am not stopping here. My truth is your truth now, so let us fight for it together. To uncover and destroy this rot, that has our nation, our people, in its evil grip." A paw forward, the bear looked on definitely. "Until the end, comrade Jorin."

A hoof was laid down into it and gripped tightly. "Until the end, comrade Pyotr."

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"Of course, who know when end might come? We had seen others wiped out before. We knew that those high up were involved. If Sizogo Orla took offence at the death of its minions, it could order those in charge of our country to wipe out all those potentially involved and maybe all those who potentially knew those potentially involved. Or it could just do the job itself. Jorin chose to stay where he was, despite his new heroism. His access to radar gave him some safety after all. As for I? I let my superior claim an undue amount of fame from it. What little fame was allowed, given that cannibal cult, even if foreign, did not strike our countries reputation well at the time. If he was to be targeted… All better for foxes I guess. In any case, after year of staying to the towns nothing really happened. So we began to see ourselves as safe. Jorin and I, and all those he had worked with, started meeting up. Together. Our aim. To track Sizogo Orla down. We were there to hunt eagles, and to do that we needed radar. Radar that leapt over what we had so far, and left it in the dust."

"My friends and allies have been planning this long before our victory, comrade," Jorin said, slowly opening a map of the Soviet Union up. Kozlov peered in, closer, noticing all sorts of lines and shapes drawn on it. Indeed, it was all coloured in almost like a very detailed geological map, though Kozlov had seen enough of those to know that this wasn't it… Even if he could make out features like lakes or the mountains. He tried to study it, the wild ass next to him quickly putting him out of his misery. "Sizogo Orla avoids detection by flying very low at night, mostly but not quite always avoiding detection by radar." He tapped his hoof on the map. "This is a chart showing, in relatively broad bands, the heights at which aircraft can fly below our detection."

"Ah," Kozlov smirked. "So, you map this against where you see him?" He led on, only for Jorin to shrug.

"You get something that makes no sense. Sometimes we see him in places where our detection is awful. Here for instance," he said, tapping on a small speck of line. The map indicated that the detected flight path was in an area where anything flying under five hundred metres would be able to avoid radar. Yet…"

"It's over a valley, yes?" Kozlov asked, noting that it was in the hills just north of Lake Baikal, over a well eroded river course. "The area inside hidden by the hills around it."

Jorin nodded. "So I suspect that maybe they chose to go peak to peak here. But, if you look at this course…" He moved over and began joining the dots on a line that led their mysterious grey steppe eagle down towards the Caspian, as if ready to fly clean over it and towards the Caucuses. "A few detections as it flew past Magnitogorsk. A tiny one as it passes over the tail end of the Urals. But then, over the vast wide western end of the Kazyakh steppe? The kind of flatness they almost always try and avoid but in this case could not?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing," he agreed. "Until…" He followed the route down until he reached a few blips around Turyev, at the mouth of the Ural river. "And here, at aurochs city, they were detected again. Only for a moment, at very high altitudes. Were the detection continuous, we should have seen him for miles. As it was, just here and here."

"Why?"

Jorin shrugged. "I don't know. Our best guess is some form of climatic condition that causes whatever radar shielding they have to fizzle out, for however long or short that is."

Kozlov was left rubbing his chin, thinking, as the map was pulled around, a hoof planted in the sea of Oxhost in the far East, the Amur to its west and the Kamyakta peninsular to its east.

"Do you notice something odd about our radar coverage here?" he asked. "Or over any stretch of water. I mean, look at the Caspian."

"...The altitude gets higher the further from shore you get."

"And why?"

Thinking for a second, the bear clicked the claws on one paw. "Because it is not flat. It's curved…"

"Exactly," Jorin agreed. "The further you go out, the more the curvature of the earth blocks our view. Now, as I said, they seem to be most active in this region. Many routes start or end somewhere around here or further out, and who knows how many go the other way."

"I…" His eyes slowly went wide. "Do you think the Americans are under their control too?"

Jorin froze. "I… -Maybe, maybe. Maybe you have people like us over there, hunting this cabal down too. Ha. If this is aliens, or ancient lizard people…" Kozlov let out a laugh at the randomness of that as the ass carried on. "-Then both of us coming together to defeat them at the end, what a story it would make."

"Da," Kozlov agreed. "So I guess the plan is to try and get more radar, maybe on buoys, cover the sea. The more you cover here, the more chance you have at seeing it when this special weather hits."

"Exactly, though not quite."

"Hmmm?" The polar bear mused, as Jorin pulled out a pad of paper, drawing an arc. The earth, curving, a radar station drawn out.

"We've been planning this for a few years now, starting when those mammals still had sway over the decision making. We couldn't do anything too overt, too obvious. Even now, to be fair. We needed an excuse, a really good one. And a one-shot machine that would do the job in one spot."

Kozlov looked at him utterly bemused, right paw half raised up but just hanging there.

"-I know what you think," he carried on. "Radar is point to point, you need lots of coverage."

"Or…" the bear said, beginning to smirk. "You raise your transmitter up. High mast… -No, high balloon, up in the stratosphere…"

"Oooohhhh…" Jorin almost squealed, a big smile on his face as he squirmed a little. "I like that, I like that. But no. Not enough range…"

Kozlov's brow furrowed before his eyes widened. "Hang on, if the wave is big enough, can you not bend them around the earth? That's how western propaganda networks and spy channels can get in, is it not?"

"Not quite," Jorin said, now looking like a little colt about to jump into a swimming pool of sugar cubes. "That's one way of transmitting over the horizon. But it's not the longest range way, and it isn't very good for radar. It easily picks up noise, which for something as tricky as our little Sigozo Orla…"

"But then how?"

Jorin smiled as he drew a new arc, up above the previous one. "With short wavelength high frequency waves," he said, drawing on from the transmitter, up to the upper arc. "You can bounce the wave off the ionosphere," he said, doing just that, the wave returning back down to the surface. "And get a return frequency to do the same." He returned it back up, to the transmitter. "Look for any movement, you have a target."

Kozlov looked at it, taking the paper and turning it around, claws tracing the line back and forth. "And this works? It can detect something like…"

"We already have a prototype system up and running," Jorin said, returning to the map and pointing to somewhere near the mouth of the Dniepr. "A transmitter, a receiver, testing the technology over our own land." He smiled. "We were able to detect rocket and missile launches all the way over here in Laikador." He pointed over to a spot in Kazyakstan, Kozlov beginning to smile.

"And that's how you sell it. Missile detection."

"Yes," Jorin exclaimed, smiling. "And of course, developing it over our own land gives us one other key advantage."

"Hmmm?"

"The westerners can't detect it and block the signal, as we did to the British system." Kozlov burst into laughter, banging the table hard, all as his companion sniggered a little too. "Anyway," he carried on. "Seeing as we're getting this funded as a missile and plane detection system, the first of the systems will be deployed in the west, facing west." He tapped at an area north west of Kiev, just south of the Pripyat marshes. "Of course, our base of operation will be over here." And with that, he tapped an area in the far east of the country, near Khomyakolsk-on-Amur. "We've seen the test system spot our little interloper plenty of times before, same as regular systems. We'll narrow him down. And we'll avenge your brother, friend. We'll avenge them all."

"It took some time to get the radar system up and running. The Western system was the priority, and the test system, facing east across our land, was still potent enough to get some detection on the entire other side. Enough that those in the far west felt vindicated enough in their defense to hold back the main system. For a while, at least. But it was soon up and running, and together we stood there as it turned on."

That they did, standing together in front of the massive transmitter array. Kozlov didn't understand the specifics, but that meant nothing compared to the awe he saw. There had been jokes that the operating system in the West had earned the name 'Steelyard' from the NATO analysers who'd detected it. The name was fitting. One-hundred and fifty meters high, seven hundred long, a vast fence spanning across the sky, the entire front face covered in metal basket like cages, all of them to be energised with the massive amounts of power the system would release.

He'd almost thought he could hear, feel, the signal being beamed out. Jorin certainly showed it to him on a small radio of his. An ever present, constant, fast tapping, ringing out. Kozlov noted that it was like a woodpecker. Jorin agreed. That was what many in the West referred it to as they picked it up on their own radios.

In that case they were the woodpeckers, and they would rise up and defeat the eagle. Whatever it may be. Whoever was behind it.

They stood there together in front of another worker, taking a pair of pictures that were printed off for both of them. In front of their great steelyard, the woodpecker almost completely hidden from view due to the framing. But it was the name they knew the system as that was noted down on the memento.

Arc-2.

Duga-2.

And the two mammals there, eagle hunting.