Doctor Who_ Bunker Soldiers - Martin Day [17]
A few streets away, a patrol vehicle moves through the litter and the silence, barely disturbing either. The soldier pauses just long enough to confirm its position, and then heads for the edge of the living area. In stark defiance of wartime regulations, an inert-gas light blinks on and off outside a shop closed for business, but the light barely pools on to the street, still less pollutes the air over the city.
The soldier approaches the door, one of countless dormitory entrances in this place. But it is the right one – chances of success will be optimised if this person is subverted.
The first and only problem is encountered when the door-breaking device refuses to come up with the correct access code.
The soldier finds a window that hints at curtained light beyond, and taps at it.
There’s a voice from within, expressing irritation and surprise. The soldier accesses an official phraseology, dredged from an organic databank, and stands, wondering how best to deal with the coming confrontation.
The door opens a crack. The soldier is not recognised, but is deferred to. Although the words do not flow comfortably, his appearance speaks of authority and power.
The door opens still further. Biocomputers assess the situation, pause for a moment, then order a strike.
An arm snakes into the residence, snapping a neck and pushing the body to the floor.
A weak link has been found and exposed.
The soldier steps over the corpse into the residential unit, and presses the control to close the door.
Result of action:
GHR-678-AAD (provisional assignment) has been attacked and compromised. Mission success index: 52.7%.
By the time Isaac arrived in the debating room, Yevhen was already there. He sat, hunched, at the table. Parchment maps of the city, and the countryside around Kiev, were laid out before him. He stared at them, unblinking – as if all the metaphysical and alchemical secrets of the world were contained within the ink and information beneath his fingertips.
Isaac sat down facing Yevhen, saying nothing. He had long since accepted that there would never be any semblance of courtesy or comradeship between the two of them.
At length, Yevhen looked up from the maps. He had the drained expression of one who has not slept, or whose sleep had been haunted by nightmares. ‘The governor?’ he asked, his clipped tones sounding even more brutal than usual.
‘I am sure he will be with us soon,’ Isaac said. He leant forward a little to better examine the source of Yevhen’s unwavering interest, and was surprised to see that the map was not of the Church of the Virgin, as he had expected, but of the cathedral.
Yevhen noticed Isaac’s attention, and quickly shifted another map on top of the one he was studying. It showed the rivers, mountains and forests of Russia. From a point just south of the great wall of the Ural mountains, a line of black snaked across the landscape – the path of the Mongol hordes. The line crossed the River Volga at the city of Bulgar, proceeded west towards Riazan and Kolumna, north to Kostroma and Torzhok, and then, mercifully, moved south past Moscow – mercifully, for each city touched by the black line had been obliterated. It was as if a great creature was walking though the land, and wherever its feet touched there was nothing but death, destruction and the smoke of vain prayers.
The line arced westwards again, and passed through Chernigov and Pereislav. Kiev was next, less than a hundred miles away.
Isaac stared at the awesome path carved by the Mongols through Europe. The principalities of Russia had already fallen, and beyond Kiev lay only the quaking states of Poland, Bohemia, Austria and Hungary. At no point had the progress of the horsemen been even halted; at no battle or capitulation had any knowledge been gained that might assist in future struggles against the horde. The situation was worse than hopeless, though Isaac knew it would be unwise to articulate such a conclusion.