Metro 2034

CHAPTER 1 The Defense of the Sevastopolskaya

They didn’t return, neither on Tuesday, nor Wednesday, nor Thursday – the last appointed date. The outer guard post was manned around the clock, and if the guards would have just heard the faint echo of a cry for help or seen the weak reflection of a lamp on the wet, dark tunnel walls, there, where it goes to the Nachimovski prospect, they would have sent a strike team immediately.

Tensions grew with every hour. The guards – excellently armed soldiers and especially trained for missions like that – didn’t close their eyes for a second. The stack of playing cards, with which they usually killed time through the missions, collected dust for about two days in the drawer of the guardhouse. Their casual conversations gave away to short, nervous talks and now fatal silence reigned. Everyone hoped to be the first to hear the echoing steps of the returning caravan. Too much depended on it.

All inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya, whether five year old boy or old man knew how to handle weapons. They had transformed their station into an impenetrable fortress. Even though they barricaded themselves behind machinegun-nests, barbed wire, yes even tank-stoppers made out of tracks, this impenetrable fortress was threatening to fall in a blink of an eye. Their Achilles’ heel was the shortage of ammunition.

Had the inhabitants of other stations experienced what the Sevastopolskaja had to endure on a daily basis, they wouldn’t have wasted a thought about defending themselves, but fled like rats in flooded tunnel. Even the powerful Hanza, the federation of the stations in the ring line, wouldn’t have ordered additional forces in case of an emergency – due to costs. Sure, the strategic importance of the Sevastopolskaya was enormous. But the price was too big.

So was the price for electricity. So high that the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya, that had created one of the biggest hydroelectric power stations in the metro, let themselves be supplied by the Hanza with ammunition and were sometimes even able to turn a profit. But many of them didn’t just pay with bullets, but with a crippled, short life.

The groundwater was a blessing and a curse for the Sevastopolskaya. Like the waters of the river Styx flew around the rotten boat of Charon, so was the station surrounded by water. The groundwater gave a third of the ring line light and warmth, because it sets the shovels of dozens of water mills in motion. These had been created by skillful engineers of the station using their own plans, in tunnels, caves, underwater creeks, to put it blandly: where one could be made.

At the same time the water gnawed incessantly on the pillars, gradually loosened the cement out of the cracks, passing by very close behind the walls of the station like if it was trying to lull the inhabitants to sleep. The groundwater prevented them from blowing up unnecessary parts of the tunnels. And exactly through these tunnels, hordes of nightmarish creatures move towards Sevastopolskaya, like an endless poisonous centipede crawling into a grinder.

The residents of the station felt like the crew of a ghost ship on its way through hell. They were damned to fill the holes constantly, because the frigate has been leaking for a long time. And a harbor, where they could find protection and silence, wasn’t in sight.

At the same time they had to fend off one attack after another, because from the Tschertanovskaya in the south and from the Nachimovski prospect to the north of the station, monsters crawled through the vents, appeared from the murky sewers or stormed out of the tunnels. The whole world seemed to be against Sevastopolskaya, trying to erase their home station from the metro’s map. But they defended their station with tooth and nail, like it was the last fortress in the entire universe.

But no matter how skillful the engineers could be, how tough and relentless the training of their fighters was – without bullets, without light bulbs for the spotlights, without antibiotics and bandages they wouldn’t be able to hold the station. Of course they delivered electricity, and Hanza was willing to pay a good price. But while the ring line had other and own suppliers; the Sevastopolskaya wouldn’t survive a month without supplies from outside. Their supply of bullets reached a dangerously low count.

Every week armed caravans were sent to Serpuchovskaya to use their earned credit to pay the merchants of Hanza for everything that was needed and return immediately. As long as the earth would turn, as long as the underground rivers flowed and as long as the metro would hold, nothing would change that.

This time the return of the caravan had been delayed. And so much so that there was only one explanation: Something unexpected must have happened, something terrible, something that even the heavy armed caravan guards, nor the long and fair relations with the leadership of Hanza couldn’t prevent.

The whole situation would have been a lot less unsettling if at least they could communicate with the Ring line.

But something was wrong with the telephone line to the Ring; they had lost the connection on Monday and the squad that was sent to find the faulty part of the line returned without any results.

The lamp with the green lampshade hanged low over the round table. It illuminated yellowed papers on which graphics and diagrams were drawn on it in pencil. It was a weak bulb, maybe 40 watts, but not because you had to save electricity – that was certainly no problem in the Sevastopolskaya - but because the owner of the office didn’t like glaring light. The ashtray was full of cigarette butts – all self-made and of bad quality. Biting, blue-grey smoke collected itself under the low ceiling.

The head of the station, Vladimir Ivanovitsch Istomin wiped his forehead, raised his hand and looked with his one eye at the clock – for the fifth time in half an hour. He crackled with his fingers and stood up burdensomely. “A decision must be found. We can no longer delay it”.

On the other side of the table sat an older, but strong built man with a lined camouflaged jacket and a worn blue beret. He opened his mouth to say something, but he had a coughing fit. Grumpily he narrowed his eyes and cleared away the smoke with his hand. Then he said: “Well, Vladimir Ivanovitsch, I repeat it again: We can’t withdraw anymore forces from the southern tunnel. The pressure on the guards is enormous – even now they almost can’t hold it. Last week alone they had three wounded, one of them heavy and that even with the fortifications. I won’t sit here and watch how you continue to weaken the south. Especially when we need to have six scouts patrolling in the vents and the connecting tunnels at all times. And in the north we have to secure the arriving caravans, and we can’t spare a single fighter there. I am sorry, but you will have to search by yourself”.

“You are the commander of the outer guard post, so you search!” growled Vladimir. “I deal with my own business. In one hour a group must leave. We both think in different ways. This isn’t just about our problems here and now! What if something worse happened?”

“And I think, Vladimir Ivanovitsch that you are over reacting. We have two unopened crates of 5.45 caliber ammunition in the armory which will last us over one and a half week. And then I still have something at home under my pillow.” The colonel smiled, so that his big, yellow teeth could be seen. “I can surely get another crate together. Bullets aren’t our problem, but people.”

“And now I tell you again what our problem is. If we don’t get any shipments anymore, we will have to close the gates to the south, because without ammunition we can’t hold the tunnels anyway. That means that we can’t maintain two thirds of our mills anymore. Just after a week the first mill break down and Hanza doesn’t like a loss in current delivery at all. If they are lucky they will find a new supplier immediately, if not… but what do I care about the electricity! For almost five days now the tunnels are stone-dead and not a single pig in sight. What if something collapsed? Or broke through? What if we’re cut off?”

“Hold your breath. The power lines are all right. The counters are running, so Hanza seems to be getting their power. We would have noticed a collapse immediately. And if it was sabotage, then the power line would have been cut and not the telephone line. As for the tunnel – what are you afraid of? Even in good times nobody strayed away from the tunnels, got lost and ended up here. Alone at the Nachimovski prospect: Without an escort you can’t get through. Foreign merchants haven’t risked coming to us for a long time. And the bandits already know – after all we let one of them go alive every time. So don’t panic.”

“Easy for you to say,” growled Vladimir Ivanovitsch. He lifted the eye patch over his empty eye socket and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“I’ll give you three men,” said the colonel, now a little milder. “More isn’t possible, all things considered. And you should stop smoking. You know it’s not good for me and furthermore you are poisoning yourself! I would prefer some tea to be honest…”

“But please, it is my pleasure.” Vladimir rubbed his hands together, took the telephone receiver and barked: “Get tea here, for me and the colonel.”

“Let the officer on duty come as well,” said the commander of the outer guard posts as he took off his beret. “Then we will clear the matter with the search party.”

At Istomin’s you would always get a special tea, a fine selection from the VDNKh station. On its way shipped from the other end of the metro, Hanza taxes the famous mushroom tea (Vladimir Ivanovitsch’s favorite) three times. That made it so expensive that Istomin wouldn’t have indulged in his weakness for the tea, if not for his good connections in Dobryninskaya. There he had served in the war with someone, and so when the caravan leader returned back from Hanza, they always had a neat package for him. Istomin always picked it up personally. One year ago for the first time, his shipment of tea didn’t come and alarming rumors spread that the entire orange line was being threatened apparently unknown mutants from the surface. They were almost invisible, practically invulnerable and could read your mind. It was said that the station had fallen, and Hanza, fearing invasion, had blown the tunnel past Prospect Mir. The price of tea went through the roof and then for some time you couldn’t get any, which made Istomin seriously worried. But a few weeks later the waves calmed down and the caravans continued to bring the famous tea along with bullets and light bulbs to the Sevastopolskaya.

Wasn’t that the main specialty anyways?

While Istomin poured the colonel’s tea into the porcelain cup with a cracked golden edge he closed his eyes and enjoyed the aromatic steam for a moment. Then he poured himself a cup, sank heavily into his chair, and started to stir a Saccharin pill into the tea with a silver spoon.

The men were silent, and for a moment the melancholic sound of the spoon hitting the cup was the only sound in the dark, tobacco smoke clouded office.

Suddenly, the ambience was drowned by a shrill ringing bell, coming out of the loud speakers and the tunnel: “Alert!”

The commander of the outer guard post jumped surprisingly agilely from his place and stormed out of the room.

At first a lonely rifle shot sounded off in the distance, than a Kalashnikov joined in – one, two and then three.

Military boots hammered on the train platform and you could hear the bass voice of the colonel and how it – even from some distance away – was shouting the first orders.

Istomin reached out his hand after the shiny Militia-machine-pistol hanging on his cupboard, but then he held his back, sighed, sat back at the table and took another sip from the tea cup. On the opposite side of the table the colonel’s tea steamed solitary and right next to his beret – he had forgotten it in his haste. The head of the station made a grimace and began again, this time half loud, to argue with the absent colonel. It was still about the same topic – but this time he found new arguments, so that he didn’t think of in the heat of the moment.

At Sevastopolskaya many dark jokes circulated over just why the neighboring station was called Tschertanovskaya; you could read the word “Tschort” (devil) too clearly out of its name. The mills of the hydroelectric plants extended rather far into its direction and although it was supposed to be abandoned, nobody in their right mind thought about occupying or acquiring it. The teams of technicians that had built the outer generators and regularly maintained them under supervision were always careful to not closer more than a few hundred meters to Tschertanovskaya.

Almost everyone on an expedition to the generatorse who wasn’t a fanatic atheist secretly made a cross with his hands, and some even told their families goodbye.

The Tschertanovskaya was an evil station; everyone felt it from the station from even half a kilometer away. At first, in their naivety, the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya sent heavy armed scouting parties to extend their reach.

If they came back at all, the parties would be heavily injured and at least decimated by half. Then they sat stuttering, slobbering at the fire, so close that they clothes almost caught fire, but they never stopped trembling. They struggled to remember their experience – and one report from Tschertanovskaya is never like any other.

It is said, that beyond the main tunnel of the Tschertanovskaya, side tunnels plunged down into an enormous labyrinth of natural caves and allegedly were swarming with monsters. The people of the Sevastopolskaya called the place “the gate” – an arbitrary term, because nobody in the metro, who was still alive, had entered this part of the metro.

Although there was a story from when the line wasn’t developed – supposedly a big recon unit passed through the Tschertanovskaya and discovered “the gate”. Over a transmitter – a kind of cable telephone – the radio transmitter communicated that it fell down, almost vertical, at the end of a small corridor.

They didn’t get any further. In the coming minutes the leaders of the Sevastopolskaya heard shrill screams full of horror and pain. It was strange that the recon team didn’t shoot – maybe they knew that conventional weapons wouldn’t protect them. The last man of the group to be silenced was a mercenary without a conscience from the Kitai-Gorod station, who cut of the small finger of defeated enemies as a souvenir. He seemed to be some distance from the microphone that had slipped out of the hand of the radio operator, because you couldn’t hear his words clearly. But after listening closely, the head of the station, understood what the man was sobbing while he was fighting for his life: A simple prayer. One of these simple prayers that religious parents teach their small children. Then the connection broke off. After this incident all further tries to reach the Tschertanovskaya were stopped.

Yes, there have been even plans to abandon the Sevastopolskaya and return to Hanza. This cursed station seemed to be one of those borders that marked the end of human rule in the metro. The creatures that pushed against these borders brought the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya many problems, but they weren’t invulnerable and a good organized defense could fend off the attacks with light to no casualties – as long as they had enough ammunition. Some of these monsters could only be stopped with high-explosives and high voltage traps. But in most cases, the guards had deal with less terrible – but still dangerous – creatures.

“There is another one! Up there, in the third pipe!”

The upper searchlight had broken out of the frame and dangled twitching like a hanged man on the cable, scattering its hard light at the scenery of fortifications: Sometimes it illuminated cowering silhouettes of creeping mutants, other times it hid them in the darkness or blinded the guards with its glaring light. Treacherous shadows raced around, became smaller and bigger, appeared as distorted faces so that you couldn’t distinguish the humans from the mutants.

The post was in a good position, because in this place two tunnels ran into one. Right before the apocalypse the Metrostroi (metro workers) began their repairs, but they were never able to finish it.

The residents of the Sevastopolskaya had transformed the junction into a fortress: Two machine gun-nests, one and a half meters thick protection walls made out of sand bags, tank-stoppers out of tracks, high voltage traps and a carefully thought out alarm system. But when the mutants came in waves, like on this day, it seemed as if the fortress could fall any minute.

The machine-gunner mumbled in a monotone voice to himself. Bloody bubbles came out of his nostrils, and he looked surprised at the shiny red wet palms of his hands. The air around the Petscheng (it is a heavy machine gun) flickered in because of the heat, but now the damned thing was jammed. The gunner made a short grunting sound and leaned against the shoulder of his neighbor, a colossal fighter with a closed titan-helmet and turned silent. In the next second they heard a bloodcurdling scream and the creature attacked.

The man with the helmet pushed the blood-smeared machine gunner out of the way, stood up, raised his Kalashnikov and fired a short burst. The disgusting, sinewy, grey-skinned animal had already jumped; spread its claws and flight membranes, flying at them shrieking. The hail of bullets ended the scream and the dead animal continued to fly into the same direction. Then the 150-kilo body slammed into the sand bags and created a thick cloud of dust.

“That’s it.”

The seemingly never ending onslaught of creatures that came out of the sawed-off pipes on the tunnel ceiling, just a minute ago, stopped. The guards left their cover carefully.

“A stretcher! A doctor! Bring him to the station, fast!”

The colossal man that killed the last animal attached a bayonet to his assault rifle and approached the dead and injured creatures that were lying around on the battlefield leisurely. He pushed down the head of the first animal and ran the bayonet right through its eye, then repeated the process until he was sure that every creature was dead. Finally he leaned himself against the sand bags, looked to the tunnel, raised the visor of his helmet and took a sip out of his canteen.

The reinforcements from the station arrived after everything was already over. Even the commander of the outer guard posts came limping, breathing heavy, cursing at his illness and with his jacket open. “Were do I get three men now? Am I supposed to cut them out my body?”

“What are you talking about Denis Michailovitsch?” asked one of the guards.

“Istomin wants to send a recon team to Serpuchovskaya. He is afraid for the caravan. So where do I get three men now? Especially now…”

“Still nothing new?” asked the man with the canteen without turning around.

“Nothing”, reassured the old man. “But not a lot of time has passed. What would be more dangerous? If we weaken the south now, there might be no one left to greet the caravan when it arrives.”

The other one shook his head and went silent. He still didn’t move when the colonel asked if any of guards would join the three men team.

There were enough volunteers. Most of the guards had enough of sitting around and couldn’t imagine anything more dangerous than guarding the southern tunnels.

From the six volunteers, the colonel choose who he thought to be expendable. A reasonable thought: none of them would return.

It had been three days since they had sent the recon team on the railcar. The commander thought that the others were whispering behind his back and looking at him with distrust. Even the most intense conversations ceased when he entered, and the tense silence that followed seemed to be a silent request: Explain it to us, justify yourself.

But he only did his job – ensuring the security of the outer guard posts of the Sevastopolskaya. He was a tactician, a strategist. They didn’t have enough soldiers anyway. What right does he has to waste them on doubtful and senseless expeditions?

Three days ago he was absolutely convinced. But now, because every afraid, disapproving, doubting look was hallowing out his certainty, he was starting to doubt as well.

A recon team with light weapons didn’t even need a day on the way to Hanza and back – even accounting for possible fire fights and delays through the independent stations.

The commander ordered to let nobody enter, closed the door to his small office, pressed his hot forehead against the cold wall and started mumbling. For the hundredth time he went through all possibilities. What happened to the merchants? What happened to the recon team?

The people of the Sevastopolskaya weren’t afraid of humans – except maybe of Hanza’s army. The bad reputation of the station, the inflated stories told by the few eye witnesses about how dear the inhabitants had to pay for their own survival – all that was spread by the merchants throughout the metro using word of mouth.

And soon that proved results. The leaders of the station realized quickly what advantages a reputation like theirs would bring them and took the fortifications of the station in their own hands. Informants, merchants, travelers and diplomats were allowed, with an official permission, to spread the most horrible lies about the Sevastopolskaya and the neighboring stations.

Only a few were able to look behind this curtain of smoke and lies and realize the true potential of the station.

In some isolated cases during the last years, unaware bandits tried to break through the outer guard posts, but the war machine of the Sevastopolskaya, lead by former generals, destroyed them without problems.

The recon team on the railcar had gotten clear orders: If they were to encounter any threats, they were to avoid any confrontations and return immediately.

Of course there was also the Nagornaya on the route – not a place as terrible as Tschertanovskaya, but still fatal. And then the Nachimovski prospect, which doors to the surface couldn’t be closed and had been overran by monsters from the surface. To blow up the entrance was not an option for the Sevastopolskaya, because the stalkers were using the surface access of the Nachimovski prospect for their expeditions. Nobody dared passing through the station on their own, but until now every railcar was able to deal with the creatures that occasionally lurked there.

A cave in? The groundwater? An act of sabotage? A sudden raid by Hanza? It was the colonel, not Istomin that had to answer to the wives of the missing recon team, while they looked into his eyes unsettled and asking, hoping to find a promise or consolation. He had to explain it to the soldiers in the garrison. At least they didn’t ask any unnecessary questions and were – until now – loyal to him. And in the end he had to calm down everyone who gathered at the stations clock after work and wanted to know how long the caravan had been gone. Istomin had said, that he had been asked why the lights of the station had been dimmed. Sometimes he had even been asked to bring the lights back to full power.

Even though nobody had even thought about powering down the electricity, the lighting was set to maximum. It wasn’t the station, but the hearts of the people that had gotten darker and even mercury lamps couldn’t change that.

The telephone line to the Serpuchovskaya was still dead. That took a feeling away from the colonel that was rare for the rest of the metro: The feeling of being close to other humans. As long as the communication was functioning, as long as caravans came and went regularly, as long as the journey to Hanza wouldn’t take more than one day, all residents were free to come and go whenever they wanted.

Everyone knew that just five tunnels further the real metro began, civilization – humanity.

Arctic scientists probably felt the same when they agreed – out of scientific interest or because of the high wages – to endure the fight against the cold and loneliness for months. They were thousands of miles away from the mainland, but the radio remained at their sides at all times and once a month they could hear the sound of an airplane dropping off canned meat.

The ice floe on which the Sevastopolskaya precariously balanced had broken loose from the mainland of humanity and every hour drove it further into a dark ocean, into emptiness and uncertainty.

The wait went on and the colonels concerns turned into certainty: he would never see the three men from the recon team that he had sent to the Serpuchovskaya ever again.

To pull off another three fighters from the outer guard post and expose them to the same uncertain dangers was impossible. He couldn’t afford their certain death, which wouldn’t give them a way out either. He thought that is was still too early to close the southern tunnels, open the hermetic doors and form a big strike team. Why did he have to make this decision? A decision that was wrong either way. The colonel sighed, opened the door a bit, looked around hastily and called the guard to him.

“Do you have a cigarette for me? This time it’s the last, next time don’t give me one, no matter how hard I plead. And don’t tell anyone.”

When Nadia brought the pot with meat and vegetables the guards became alive again. Potatoes, cucumbers and tomatoes were considered as delicacies and except for a few markets in the Sevastopolskaya, the Ring, and Polis, nobody offered them anymore. This wasn’t just because of the lack of water, and the difficulty of cultivating the seeds. Almost nobody in the metro had enough electricity to grow crops that needed sunlight, like vegetables.

Even the leaders of the station didn’t get vegetables except for the holidays, because it was mostly grown for children who needed the nutrients. Istomin had to argue heavily with the cooks and convince them to add a few potatoes and tomatoes – to improve morale.

When Nadia laid down her combat rifle and raised the pot’s lid, the wrinkles on the faces of the guards started to smooth over immediately. Nobody would have wanted to talk about the missing caravan or the lost recon team now – it would have ruined their appetite.

An older man with a cotton wool jacket and small metro emblems sewed on to it, stirred around the potatoes in his bowl and said smiling: “Today I had to think about the Komsomolskaya the entire day. I would really like to see it again. Those mosaics! The most beautiful station in all of Moscow, I think.”

“Oh stop it Homer.” said an unshaven, fat man with a warm fur ushanka.

“You lived there and it is obvious that you still like it. But what about the stained glass at the Novoslobodskaya? And the wonderful pillars and the ceiling fresco at the Mayakowskaya?”

“I always liked the Ploschtschad Revolyuzii.” admitted a shy man, just out of his teens, appointed as a sharpshooter. “I know it is stupid, but I liked those dark sailors and pilots, the border patrols with the dogs… even when I was a child.”

“I don’t think it is stupid at all.”, agreed Nadya while she collected the scraps of the stew.

“Especially since some of the male statues were very handsome. Hey brigadier! Get on it or you won’t get anything!”

The tall, broad-shouldered fighter who sat alone, approached the campfire with leisurely steps, took his ration and returned to his place – if possible close to the tunnel, and if possible as far away from the people.

The fat man pointed his head at the broad back of the man, who just returned into the darkness and whispered:

“Does he ever go to the station?”

“No, he has been sitting here for over a week” answered the sharpshooter as silent as the other man. “He sleeps in a sleeping bag… Maybe he needs it. Three days ago, when the creatures almost devoured Rinat, he killed every last of them. With his own hands. For fifteen minutes.

When he returned, his boots and rifle were full of blood. And he looked very satisfied doing it.”

“That’s not a human, but a machine,” said the gaunt machine-gunner. “I wouldn’t like to sleep near him. Did you see what happened to his face?”

The old man, who was called Homer, shrugged his shoulders and said: “Strange, I really only feel safe when he is around. What do you want from him? The guy is alright, he just got hit. For what do we need beauty, it is for the other stations. And by the way: Your Novoslobodskaya is the tip of a mountain of bad taste. And I can’t even watch those stained windows when I am sober… stained windows, laughable!”

“And a Kolcho-mosaic over half the ceiling is no bad taste?”

“Please tell me where you saw a Kolcho-mosaic in the Komsomolskaya?”

Now the fat man got going. “The whole damned soviet art has only one theme: The life on a Kolchose and our heroic pilots!”

“Seryoscha, leave the pilots out of it,” warned the sharpshooter.

Suddenly a hollow, deep voice said: “The Komsomolskaya is shit and the Novoslobodskaya as well.”

The fat man was so surprised that he wasn’t able to say a single word and he starred at the brigadier who was still sitting in the dark. The others stopped talking as well. The stranger did almost never participate in any conversations.

Even when someone asked him something, he answered, if at all with one word.

He still had his back turned at them, continuously looking into the mouth of the tunnel. “At the Komsomolskaya the ceiling is too high and the pillars are too thin, the whole station lies in the open. Also it is very hard to barricade all passage ways. And at the Novoslobodskaya all of the walls have cracks, it doesn’t matter how often they repaired them. You can destroy the entire station with one grenade. And the stained windows are already broken. Way too brittle.”

One could have countered this argument very well, but nobody dared to raise their voice. The brigadier was silent for a while, than he said casually: “I am going to the station. Come with me Homer. Shift changes in one hour. Arthur you are in command.”

The sharpshooter stood up hastily and nodded his head, even though the brigadier wasn’t looking at him. Even the old man stood up and gathered his possessions, even though he wasn’t finished with eating. When the fighter returned to the campfire he was already in full gear and carrying his enormous rucksack.

As the contrasting figures – the colossal brigadier and the thin Homer – gradually entered into the lit part of the tunnel, the sharpshooter followed them with his eyes. Then he rubbed his cold hands together and realized he was shaking.

“I’m feeling cold. Someone put more coals on the fire.”

On their way the brigadier didn’t speak a single word. He only asked if Homer really once had been working in the metro and if he had ever drove a train. The old man looked at him with a distrusting look at first, but then he nodded his head.

He said he drove trains at the Sevastopolskaya, but he never mentioned that he used to maintain tracks before that. That was a embarrassing subject.

The brigadier greeted the guards with a military salute.

Those stepped out of his way and he entered the office of the head of the station without knocking.

Istomin and the colonel stood up surprised from their chairs and walked into his direction. Both looked tousled somehow, tired and lost.

While Homer remained shyly at the entrance, stepping from one leg onto the other, the brigadier took off his helmet, put it right on top of Istomins papers and scratched his clean-shaven head. You could see once again how badly distorted his face was: The left cheek had contracted like after a heavy fire injury, the eye above it was a small crack and a big violet scar ran from his mouth to his ear. Although Homer knew this sight; chills still ran down his back, like he had seen it for the first time.

“I will go to the Ring line myself,” said the brigadier.

He hadn’t even greeted any of them. Deep silence followed. Homer already knew that the man was an extraordinary fighter and that had earned him a special reputation with the leaders of the station. But it took him until now to realize that compared to other inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya the brigadier didn’t follow orders. He wasn’t waiting for a permission of the two old and exhausted men; it almost seemed like he was giving them orders and expected them to follow them. And again – how many times now? – Homer asked himself: Who was this man?

The colonel looked at Istomin. His face darkened as if he wanted to argue.

“Whatever you want, Hunter,” he said. “Nobody can talk you out of it anyway.”