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“Have you been here long, then?” Lenin asked Goran.
“Months. I’ve heard so much, the amount of help I’d be to the government is unreal.”
“Saying escape and achieving it are two distinct matters...” Lenin said, rolling his eyes in the darkness, “and they must be recording us.”
“Then we shall have to communicate via other means...” Goran muttered. Close your eyes a moment, and try not to think.”
“What are you going to do...?” Lenin asked in a low murmur of suspicion.
“Just to let you know...” Goran said,
Lenin felt himself tilting backwards. Before he could say or do anything, much less let out the cry of panic that had frozen in his throat, he found himself in a different room, or at least, his eyes seemed to be seeing a different room. Somewhere in the back of his head, he felt a restraining pressure, the cold press of the chair against his legs.
He turned his gaze to the room itself. It was Romanova’s office, the sun was just setting through the large window that formed the right wall. Romanova sat behind her desk, leaning back in a great leather chair. A few men were ranged in front of her, some in military uniform, some in suits. Lenin recognised a few. With a flash of anger, he recognised his intelligence chief, Felix, sat on a bench to the side of the room, his second-in-command, Gratya taking down notes. The defence minister, Vasili Zuganov stood in front of Romanova’s desk.
“I have brought you here in order to discuss the present situation,” Romanova began, getting up from her chair in order to walk around, “You have all in some way... expressed a certain... ah... displeasure...” Romanova’s tone grew harsher as she settled on the word, and a deep frown, the same that she’d blasted Lenin with during their meeting established itself on her brow, “...with the current regime...”
The assembled people looked around, trying to get some confirmation from the others. Romanova stood to attention, and tilted her head upwards, keeping her eyes on her audience.
“You all have. And, I’ve contacted you with the purpose of bringing you here today.”
The audience looked shiftily about, all save for Felix, who fixed Romanova with a glare.
“My intelligence-gathering minions have done their work well, then...” Romanova said with an unsettling grin.
Vasili Zuganov spoke up.
“What do you intend on doing?” he asked.
“Well, that remains to be seen to. Obviously, I don’t want to tie myself down to anything that isn’t concrete. Speaking as a soldier, the success of an operation comes entirely from the strength of its participants. I know you are all fed up of Premier Lenin and his mad policies.”
“He’s driving us into the ground, that’s for sure,” a man, a Major-General barked.
“Too much taxes, too much borrowing, too much... Commissars!” someone else agreed.
“He won’t let us set up a proper surveillance system,” Felix said, his quiet voice somehow overruling the shouting and blustering. Lenin felt his fists tighten.
“Too many western Europeans!” Zuganov offered.
“Well, that can change,” Romanova promised, “to my agents, you all seem genuine – and believe me, they’ve done their work – so I’d like to propose a solution to our red problem.”
She snapped her fingers, and two soldiers heaved a heavy holographic generator to the centre of the room. They put it down, and opened it. Romanova flicked a switch, and the large window instantly dimmed, somehow filtering out the light until it became opaque. The room was dark, until the holographic generator hummed itself to life.
It showed the SSR. All over, strategic locations were marked. Romanova began to outline her plan, and the map changed as she did so. The red SSR seemed to bleed a midnight blue as blotches emerged, and began to spread. Soon, the map was reduced to a mere few pinpricks of red where loyalists battled fiercely. Then, Romanova revealed the last detail of her plan.
“The Red Marines and the Commissars will have to be exterminated. Every last one of them.”
And with that, the red withered and died.
The hologram flickered, and morphed into a slowly-rotating hammer and sickle. Romanova titled her head slightly.
“And so, the SSR will be no more. We will declare the Fourth Russian Republic.”
The hammer and sickle smashed into a thousand pieces, replaced by the old tricolour, the Roman numerals IV stamped onto the centre.
The hologram faded, and the window once more became transparent, showing the last traces of orange flitting over the snow-capped mountains. The sky above was dark.
“Why kill the Marines and Commissars?” Felix asked. Romanova turned to look at him, fixing him with an icy glare.
“They won’t surrender. Ever. They’ll keep on fighting, one group through its physical strength, and the other through emotional dedication. Commissars and Marines would form a beacon for the old government and any resistance to the coup, so they must be dealt with.”
Felix nodded, the dawning of comprehension on his brow seemed almost inflated, giving the impression of sarcasm. He proceeded to scribble something in his notepad, before handing the pencil to Gratya, who’d tapped his shoulder.
“Does anyone have any objections...?” Romanova asked. She cast her glances over the room, almost daring anyone to speak out. But no, she had done her work well. Everyone in the room seemed angry enough, or to Lenin, short-sighted enough, to back her coup. He wondered what would have happened if someone had refused. Taken round the back and shot, probably, the bitter thought came to him. He wondered what the hell Felix’s game was. Lenin knew he was a manipulative fellow, but had always taken him to be loyal to the Revolution, certainly seeing as the Revolution had grown around Felix in its early days.
“Then we are in agreement,” Romanova said, a sickly smile smearing itself over her face again. Lenin shuddered in revulsion.
The room seemed to wobble, and Lenin felt a wave of queasiness, until the room re-established itself, the plush interior of Romanova’s office deteriorating into the dark and reek of the basement prison.
“Well... that was interesting...” Lenin concluded. Goran hummed an agreement.
Oleg watched a machine. It looked a little like a microwave oven, with a turning plate inside. The plate held on it something that resembled a jaw. A laser shone at the jaw, melting a miniscule spray of metal that was being steadily poured onto the jaw. Oleg leaned on the counter, his chin resting on his forearms.
“Hey.”
Freida had walked in through the door. Oleg had commandeered the room as his office, and had been busy building prosthetic limbs for the past few days. A half-finished arm lay on the floor.
“What’s that doing there?” Freida asked.
“I was half-way through when I realised I’d put a left hand on a right arm,” Oleg grumbled, snarling at the arm. Freida snorted a laugh.
“How are you?” she asked, resting a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s hard being a soldier, isn’t it?” Oleg asked with a wry smile, shifting his head to look into her eyes. He could see his reflection in their green irises.
“Not as hard as being a Marine, she smiled, “Come on, chin up.”
Oleg smiled weakly. He yelped suddenly as he felt his feet leaving the ground, and dashed his head on the machine.
“I forgot you could do that,” he said, resting his head against hers. She’d picked him up, and almost cradled him in her arms. He put his arm around her shoulder, and smiled again.
“Would you trade it all in, though?” Oleg asked, “Everything we’ve been through? The Revolution, this invasion, all the wars... would you trade it in for a normal, almost mundane life?”
Freida looked into his eyes, and shook her head, almost imperceptibly.
“No,” she stated simply, and kissed him.
They remained there for some time.
Oleg sighed, and jerked his head at the machine as it beeped.
“Looks like Colonel Von Goose-step-Pickelhaube’s jaw is finished,” he said, “Erm... put me down, please...” Freida let him down, and leaned in to examine the jaw as Oleg removed it from the machine.
“How does that work..?” she asked.
“Laser cladding...” Oleg explained, “Design what you want, feed it into the computer, and it builds it for you. Laser melts this little spray of metal, which falls in place, building up a layer. Mad, when you think about it. But it’s a nice structure for Oberst Pfirsich Von Bratwurst.”
“He carried on operating, you know,” Freida said with a sad smile, “Erwin carried on operating for half an hour after losing his jaw.”
Oleg stopped, his mouth slightly open. Behind his goggles, Freida could see his eyes blinking in disbelief, and could almost hear the cogs of his brain clunking as they processed the information.
“Woah,” came the final product of the calculations, before Oleg walked off, inhaling through clenched teeth, “That’s brave.”
Freida followed in his wake. They walked through the factory, now empty, and down to the basement stairway.
“Before we go down,” Freida said, gripping Oleg’s bicep, “I wanted to ask you something.”
“Yeah?” Oleg asked, leaning on the railings.
“Have any of your soldiers been wearing any new iconography?” she asked, “Like, odd badges, or the like?”
“Not that I’ve noticed...” Oleg said, stroking his chin with his welding gloves, “What sort of badges?”
Freida looked around, as if she was about to confide a great secret. She kneeled down, and began to draw something in the dust that had settled on the factory floor.
“Like this...” she said, tracing out what looked like a large rectangle divided into three smaller, horizontal rectangles. To finish, she drew the Roman numerals IV onto the rectangle, right in the centre.
She allowed Oleg to look at it before hastily scrubbing it away.
“Why the secrecy?” Oleg asked.
“When I asked about it, the Army Colonel in charge of my base got shirty. He wouldn’t explain any of it, or why an awful lot of his regiment are wearing that symbol.”
Oleg racked his memory.
“That looks like the old tricolour, before the Revolution...” Oleg mused.
“Yes!” Freida almost cheered, “It was red, blue and white!”
“Still no clue, sorry.”
Freida nodded. “Listen,” she said, “While I’m down here, there’s something else I’d like to do.”
“Surely we can find somewhere more private..?” Oleg blathered. It was now his turn to cast furtive glances about, and his cheeks visibly reddened.
“No, you plank...” Freida said, trying to keep a straight face, “I had something else in mind. Oleg, this war, this Revolution... just... just this world... makes me realise that everything changes. Everything we do is just a futile struggle against the growing chaos, but we can grasp snatches of calm, of safety and security, and I’d like to do that... Oleg; will you marry me?”
Oleg looked into her eyes. His jaw sagged open a little. Where Freida had almost heard the cogs of his brain clanking merrily along earlier, all there was now was an infernal grinding as the cogs jammed.
“Yes,” he stated blankly, thunderstruck by the sudden proposal, “Yes.”
“Yes?” Freida repeated, the beginning of a grin born on her face.
“Yes!” Oleg replied, pumping his fists, “Yes!”
Freida leapt up and clasped him to her chest. He wrapped his arms around her, and they hopped a little, laughing and cheering.
Freida’s assistant looked on from the stairs, quizzically scratching his temple.
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