CAPTAIN’S
LOG
Yuri Gagarin kicks
his shoes off, loosens his tie, and leans back in his chair. “It’s
hotter than fucking Cuba!” he complains.
“You visited Cuba,
didn’t you, boss?” His companion, still standing, pours a glass of
iced tea and passes it to the young colonel-general before drawing
one for himself.
“Yeah, thanks,
Misha.” The former first cosmonaut smiles tiredly. “Back before the
invasion. Have a seat.”
Misha Gorodin is the
only man on the ship who doesn’t have to give a shit whether the
captain offers him a seat, but he’s grateful all the same: a little
respect goes a long way, and Gagarin’s sunny disposition and
friendly attitude are a far cry from some of the fuckheads Misha’s
been stuck with in the past. There’s a class of officer who thinks
that because you’re a zampolit you’re
somehow below them, but Yuri doesn’t do that: in some ways he’s the
ideal New Soviet Man, progress personified. Which makes life a lot
easier, because Yuri is one of the very few naval commanders who
doesn’t have to give a shit what his political officer thinks, and
life would be an awful lot stickier without that grease of respect
to make the wheels go round. Mind you, Yuri is also commander of
the only naval warship operated by the Cosmonaut Corps, which is a
branch of the Strategic Rocket Forces, another howling exception to
the usual military protocol. Somehow this posting seems to be
breaking all the rules . . .
“What was it like,
boss?”
“Hot as hell. Humid,
like this. Beautiful women, but lots of dark-skinned comrades who
didn’t bathe often enough—all very jolly, but you couldn’t help
looking out to sea, over your shoulder. You know there was an
American base there, even then? Guantan amo. They don’t have the
base now, but they’ve got all the rubble.” For a moment Gagarin
looks morose. “Bastards.”
“The
Americans.”
“Yes. Shitting on a
small defenseless island like that, just because they couldn’t get
to us anymore. You remember when they had to hand out iodine
tablets to all the kids? That wasn’t Leningrad or Gorky, the
fallout plume: it was Havana. I don’t think they wanted to admit
just how bad it was.”
Misha sips his tea.
“We had a lucky escape.” Morale be damned, it’s acceptable to admit
at least that much in front of the CO, in private. Misha’s seen
some of the KGB reports on the US nuclear capabilities back then,
and his blood runs cold; while Nikita had been wildly bluffing
about the Rodina’s nuclear defenses, the Americans had been hiding
the true scale of their own arsenal. From themselves as much as the
rest of the world.
“Yes. Things were
going to the devil back then, no question: if we hadn’t woken up
over here, who knows what would have happened? They outgunned us
back then. I don’t think they realized.” Gagarin’s dark expression
lifts: he glances out of the open porthole—the only one in a
private cabin that opens—and smiles. “This isn’t Cuba, though.” The
headland rising above the bay tells him that much: no tropical
island on Earth supported such weird vegetation. Or such
ruins.
“Indeed not. But,
what about the ruins?” asks Misha, putting his tea glass down on
the map table.
“Yes.” Gagarin leans
forward: “I was meaning to talk to you about that. Exploration is
certainly in line with our orders, but we are a trifle short of
trained archaeologists, aren’t we? Let’s see: we’re 470,000
kilometers from home, six major climatic zones, five
continents—it’ll be a long time before we get any settlers out
here, won’t it?” He pauses delicately. “Even if the rumors about
reform of the penal system are true.”
“It is certainly a
dilemma,” Misha agrees amiably, deliberately ignoring the skipper’s
last comment. “But we can take some time over it. There’s nobody
out here, at least not within range of yesterday’s reconnaissance
flight. I’ll vouch for Lieutenant Chekhov’s soundness: he has a
solid attitude, that one.”
“I don’t see how we
can leave without examining the ruins, but we’ve got limited
resources, and in any case, I don’t want to do anything that might
get the Academy to slap our wrists. No digging for treasure until
the eggheads get here.” Gagarin hums tunelessly for a moment, then
slaps his hand on his thigh: “I think we’ll shoot some film for the
comrade general secretary’s birthday party. First we’ll secure a
perimeter around the beach, give those damned spetsnaz a chance to earn all the vodka they’ve
been drinking. Then you and I, we can take Primary Science Party
Two into the nearest ruins with lights and cameras. Make a visual
record, leave the double domes back in Moscow to figure out what
we’re looking at and whether it’s worth coming back later with a
bunch of archaeologists. What do you say, Misha?”
“I say that’s
entirely logical, Comrade General,” says the political officer,
nodding to himself.
“That’s so ordered,
then. We’ll play it safe, though. Just because we haven’t seen any
active settlement patterns, doesn’t mean there’re no aborigines
lurking in the forest.”
“Like that last bunch
of lizards.” Misha frowns. “Little purple bastards!”
“We’ll make good
communists out of them eventually,” Yuri insists. “A toast! To
making good communists out of little purple lizard-bastards with
blowpipes who shoot political officers in the arse!”
Gagarin grins
wickedly, and Gorodin knows when he’s being wound up on purpose and
summons a twinkle to his eye as he raises his glass: “And to
poisons that don’t work on human beings.”