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
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
