The Boy Who Fell from the Sky by Jule Owen (grave mercy .TXT) 📕

“I thought you would say that,” Borodin says. He is bored, Dragomirov thinks. “Check your Paper.”

“What?”

“I said, check your Paper.”

Dragomirov unfolds the portable Paper he keeps in his chest pocket. There is a flag on the screen. A message from Central Command. Classified. The usual bureaucratic language, but the gist of it: Give Colonel Borodin your full cooperation. 

“How did you do this?” Dragomirov asks, flabbergasted. 

Borodin fixes him with his steady green eyes. “We are at war. I am in charge of a highly strategic territory. I want to know what’s going on. Have you interrogated him?”

“I interviewed him yesterday. His story is inconsistent. His bioID is giving a strange readout.”

“In what way?”

“He has the bioID of someone who died 381 years ago.” 

Borodin doesn’t show any sign of surprise, doesn’t laugh or even raise an eyebrow. Not a muscle on his face moves.

Dragomirov asks, “You don’t think it’s odd? Have you come across this before, Polkovnik? This kind of anomaly?”

Borodin ignores the question. “Why are you interested in this boy? Why are you here in my territory? Why does the government think it a good idea to send you here?” He says this with such direct rudeness that Dragomirov is amazed. “You were tracking someone else, weren’t you? You weren’t searching for the boy.”

Then Dragomirov smiles, a spider again. “For weeks we have tracked ATLAS terrorists across your territory. I am surprised, frankly, that your people weren’t aware of this. I’m amazed they failed to notice us.”

“You lost the terrorists, Dragomirov.” The word terrorists is accented with his fingers. “You found this boy accidentally. You think he’s like the one you had but lost. He isn’t.”

How does he know this?

Dragomirov is open-mouthed. 

Before he regains his composure, Borodin is on his feet, the coiled energy suddenly released. 

“I am taking the prisoner.”

“What? No. You won’t take the prisoner.” Dragomirov scrambles from the armchair, putting his teacup down with a clatter. 

“I will take him. You read the orders. Full cooperation.”

Dragomirov gathers himself. His eyes are barely level with the buttons on the chest of Borodin’s jacket. There’s no way for him to look this man in the eye, unless he stands on a ladder. It makes him angry. He says, “I want authorisation on this matter from the Security Council. I want them made aware of a reference to a specific FSB case.”

Borodin gazes down at him with what Dragomirov imagines is an indulgent expression. “Go and check with your committees. If you don’t have an answer by tomorrow morning, I am taking the boy with me.” Borodin goes to the door of the hut. “But if you want my advice, I would give up. The war is coming to its climax. Go home and be with your family.” 

Livid with anger, Dragomirov spits, “You will get communication from the director tonight.” 

Borodin half-shrugs, as if the response was inevitable. “Don’t concern yourself with hospitality for me and my men,” he says. “We brought our own shelter and supplies.” He pushes open the door, and then he is gone.

Dragomirov is in the briefing room with Dr Lapin and Major Rostov. He’s agitated. 

“Doctor, what do you need from me to complete your tests?”

“We need to get him back to Moscow to test him thoroughly, but I told you the blood tests I ran yesterday were normal. There was nothing like the anomalies we saw with Lamplighter. His blood is pedestrian, with the exception of the medibot, which is, of course, illegal. There was one strange thing, though.”

“Yes?”

“His medibot is exactly like the type in common use at the outbreak of the First Space War. He is wearing a Lenz and an e-Pin, but they are also of an old design and use protocols long defunct.” 

“You are telling me you think this boy is 433 years old?”

The doctor smiles and shakes his head. “No, no. As I said, it’s impossible. I’m saying the technology is consistent with the identity he is assuming. It’s consistent with the data in his bioID.”

“Meaning this is an elaborate hoax?”

“Why would the ATLAS secret services send a sixteen-year-old secret agent deep into enemy territory unsupported? Why on earth would his cover be time travel?” Rostov asks. 

Dragomirov says, “He is part of the group of maggots with the Lamplighter. I am sure of it. Doctor, you need to keep working on this boy. Maybe they’ve found a way to mask his biological anomalies.”

“Then I need to get him back to Moscow. There’s no more for me to do with the tools I have here.”  

“We need to get this man Borodin off our backs. He knows far too much. It’s strange,” Dragomirov says.

“Perhaps he was briefed by Central Command Centre. Their communication did indicate he has the highest clearance,” replies Rostov. 

“No one knows about this mission but us and the director of the FSB. This whole thing with the authorisation is odd. I don’t believe it,” says Dragomirov. 

“I’ve taken a look at it myself. It’s genuine. I even requested and received a confirmation. But he’s on the same side as us. Shouldn’t we bring him in?” asks Rostov.

“No. I want him gone.” Dragomirov stares at his shoes. He says, “Get me a meeting with the director in Moscow as soon as possible. We need to make sure we control the prisoner. Let’s get Borodin off our backs, and then we’ll get authorisation to send you back to Moscow with the prisoner, doctor.”

“What about you?” Lapin asks. 

“We’re going to stay and continue to hunt down Lamplighter,” Dragomirov says.

Rostov stands, ready to go and execute orders. 

Dragomirov looks at him. “There’s something else, Major. We have a weak link. Someone is leaking information, and it’s getting back to Borodin. Let’s make sure it’s no one here.”

“I’m on it,” Rostov says.

22 The Silent Prayer

The night falls suddenly in the forest, like a heavy cloak being thrown over a lamp. 

A few miles from base camp, an odd group of men and women sit around a fire. There are a few grey heads and wrinkled faces, some much younger, too. They are the strangest army in the world. 

A priest, one of the grey heads, dressed in a threadbare dog collar, leads the group in prayer. They hold hands. The tall, gaunt man they call Lev, short for Angel Leventis, opens his eyes during the prayer and winks at an elderly woman with garishly dyed red hair and skin so gnarled her face is like one of the trees surrounding them. She sits next to a heavy man with a skinhead and a scar on his face.  A wizened old man whose head nods slightly watches them, and beside him sits a man in his late thirties with a massively well-developed upper body, arms the size of most thighs, and no legs. His face is set in an expression of concentrated piety, and he holds the hands of his wife on one side and his teenaged son on the other. 

Oblivious, the priest gives thanks for their food, for their lives, for their opportunity in history. The priest asks for God’s protection on one last mission before they and all the other rejected peoples of the earth go underground to save themselves from Wormwood. 

“May we humbly try to emulate the ways of the first Tekton. May we follow his advice. Because we believe his ways were consistent with the ways of God.”

“Amen.”

The prayer finishes. 

Not a word is spoken, but everyone hears.

23 Evgeny the Spy

Klokov is searching for the cook. 

Kapral Churkin says there is a mole in the camp. All the other men in their platoon think if anyone’s a squealer, it’s the soft, fat cook, Evgeny Shukshin. Speaking English, after all, is deeply suspect. The way he behaves with the foreign boy prisoner is odd. Plus, he makes them eat those disgusting biscuits. They are all ready to serve him up to Dragomirov, but they have to find him first. 

He’s not in the cookhouse or in the mess. He’s not down at the wash block or in the barracks. He’s not in the open-air shelter or where the men play cards at night near the fire. Or down by the boats. 

There are not many other places he might be. 

Klokov stops, his hands behind his head, scanning. Not far from the helipad, on the cleared land next to the edge of the forest near the water, the district governor’s men have set up camp. They have a roaring fire going under a fish-laden spit. They have tarpaulins and hammocks. A couple of the men are cutting wood at the edge of the jungle with machetes. Another is gutting and washing more fish in the river. 

Then Klokov spots the cook walking across from their camp, with one of the governor’s men, in plain sight, running a hose from the base camp well to their temporary camp. They are deep in conversation. They run the hose all the way to a cauldron hanging above the fire. 

Klokov is convinced Evgeny is the mole. But he wants to hear what he’s discussing with the solider. He quickly retreats to base camp and then slips into the forest, taking a circuit all the way around the boundary of the settlement, until he’s next to Borodin’s camp. The fire is on the edge of the clearing. The fat cook is still talking to Borodin’s soldier. His name is Yolkov. Their voices carry. Standing with his back to a large kapok tree, Klokov listens. 

“I like to put thyme inside the fish skins. These river fish have a strong taste. It takes the edge off,” says Evgeny. Delving into his pocket, he pulls out some leaves. “Here, I took the liberty of bringing you some from the cookhouse. Shall I show you?”

“Please do.”

Evgeny uses a knife to make pockets in the sides of the cooking fish and stuffs in the herbs.

“Thank you, Evgeny. And thanks for the potatoes and the water, too. The colonel thinks we ought to be self-sufficient, but he’s not the one cooking for fifteen men in the jungle with no provisions. We have a proper camp thirty miles north. We were only meant to come down here for the day. In and out, was what he said. I’m not even a cook, but suddenly like that” – he clicks his fingers – “I’m meant to know how to do all these things.” 

Evgeny nods sympathetically. 

“Do you always camp in the jungle? I would have thought Borodin would have a more civilised base camp.”

“Oh, he does, back in Uelen. A proper barracks, parade ground, a nearby town with restaurants and shops. It’s civilised. But we’re hardly ever there. Borodin likes to tour his territory. Recently, we’ve trekked over every inch of this godforsaken snake and spider pit of an ant-infested excuse for a strip of jungle, looking for god-only-knows what.”

“Is it true they call him the Cat, your colonel?”

Yolkov nods. “We all do.”

“On account of?”

“His eyes. The way he walks. And the fact he’ll track any living thing in the jungle. If it’s here, he will know it.” Yolkov grins. “The men say at night he doesn’t sleep but wakes and goes a-hunting. Comes back in the morning with bloody teeth.” 

“Ha!” 

“Of course, it’s nonsense.”

“Of course it is! Pot is full.” Evgeny switches off the hose using a nozzle at the end, lays it on the ground and checks the fish,