Earth Year 3226 | Planet: New Moscow | City: Leningrad | Lubyanka Building
Colonel Antony Golubev stalked down the pristine halls, his perfectly polished military-issue officer’s dress shoes clicking on the smooth stone floors of the headquarters of the Unified Soviet Republic of Planets’, or USRP’s, notorious intelligence agency, Комитет государственной безопасности, known by the rest of the galaxy as the KGB. His left eye seemed to flash with an occasional glow as he used his high-class military-grade ocular implant to access the information he would need. In this meeting he was presenting an update on a plan more than two centuries in the making.
He approached a nondescript door like all the others, guarded by two Soul Warriors in the military green armor of NHVD agents. After two hundred thirty-six steps (to Golubev, precision was critical), he stood in front of them and his eye flashed again. Despite the fact that he knew he had authorization to enter, a flicker of fear always found its way into the colonel’s mind when he was near agents of the NHVD, also known as the USRP’s secret police. If something went wrong with his authorizations, they would use their enhanced strength in arms and armor to either subdue him and drag him off to be “questioned,” or they would simply kill him on the spot and determine if he deserved it later. Or not.
Instead, both guards’ left eyes flashed like his and they saluted crisply. Golubev saluted back and entered immediately after the force barrier fell and the door behind them slid to the side on near-silent magrails. Sensing it close behind him, he stepped into a hallway and went to another door with more NHVD guards. He repeated this four more times totaling another one hundred eighty-seven steps until he finally entered a room instead of a hallway. The room was perfectly round with nine three-dimensional projectors in a crescent around a center platform lit from below.
As soon as Golubev stepped on the platform he stood at attention and waited. Standing erect and poised, he made no motion save for the rising and falling of his chest for twenty-seven minutes. At the eighteenth second into the twenty-eighth minute, the projector three to the left of center lit and a man flickered into view, appearing as if he was there in the flesh. The Colonel immediately saluted and Marshal Dmitri Zaitsev, First Deputy Chairman of the KGB, returned the salute. He then ordered, “Report, Antony.”
The two of them went back nearly seventy years in the USRP army and then the KGB, although neither looked nearly old enough for that thanks to the longevity infusions their Soul Crafters create using myst-based materials. The marshal only appeared in his fifties, his blond hair in a short military cut.
Golubev responded crisply. “Comrade Marshal, the crafters have succeeded.” He did not mention that it was only with outside assistance that they had managed it. Sharing that was unnecessary. As was the fact that the source of that assistance was just as mysterious now as it had been when it was offered decades ago.
Zaitsev’s face betrayed surprise but then he smiled widely and his right eye flashed as he said, “Well done, Antony.”
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Two minutes and forty-one seconds later, two new figures flickered into view. Golubev immediately saluted and first one and then the other saluted back.
The marshal spoke first, “General Secretary, Comrade Chairman, we have news and require your sanction to proceed. Colonel Golubev, report.”
“Yes, Comrade Marshal. Project Растущая взаимность can proceed.” They called it Rising Reciprocity for good reason, the least of which was they would finally be granted vengeance for the destruction of and their removal from their motherland.
Chairman of the KGB, Igor Kozlov, spoke first. “The controllers function as specified?”
“Yes, Comrade Chairman,” was the colonel’s reply.
The chairman continued his questioning, the most difficult piece of the puzzle finally solved for. “And our assets? Our influence?”
“All is prepared.” Golubev answered.
General Secretary Grigori Petrov, the current leader of the USRP, asked a question then. “Will they accept it? What vulnerabilities do we have? They must be weakened before we strike. And what of the American Coalition and the Asian Consortium?”
The Marshal answered, “General Secretary, the imperials will accept it. They are capitalists. We will simply play to their greed for individual wealth and power. They have never understood the glory of serving the greater good. Our vulnerabilities are minimal. There is little that traces back to us and even fewer with the insight to see it. Our enemy is too arrogant and will be too preoccupied with internal divisions to believe otherwise. The Americans will be occupied with our other distractions and the Asians have and will have far larger problems by the time of the project’s final trigger, as you know.”
The General Secretary asked the most important question from his perspective, “But will it succeed? And how long until we see results?”
Chairman Kozlov answered that. “Not only will it work, they will help it along by reacting as they always do: carelessly. As for timeframe, it will take between twenty and thirty years for the last of our agents and influences to be in place.”
The leader of the USRP asked, “What of Michael Wilmington and the Americans’ Cruisers?”
“Wilmington is already vulnerable. We could have terminated him long ago, but for Rising Reciprocity. It is important that he fall at the proper time and in the proper way. The American group will be occupied the same as the rest of the capitalists when their economy crashes around them.”
The room silenced, until the General Secretary spoke. “After all this time… the cursed Empire will burn and then the Americans will follow. We will have our revenge. You have sanction to proceed. For the motherland.”
All three echoed back, “For the motherland,” and trio of perfect projections flickered and faded.
Colonel Antony Golubev smiled in triumph but he forced it back into his normal stoic mask. He turned and left the same way he came, counting the number of steps as when he walked in. His eye flashed as he sent numerous messages to his agents throughout the galaxy. However, most went to Earth, to that accursed isle responsible for leaving their motherland a smoking contaminated wasteland.
Thinking of the vengeance that would be theirs in a few short decades, he finally exited the building. His two Spetznaz personal guards silently joined him, walking beside and behind him, as all three headed toward his KGB-assigned transport.
One guard turned to look for threats, his hand ready to call his Soul Weapon at any moment. The other tapped the door to the black streamlined floating vehicle, causing it to rise on silent rails. Without stopping, Golubev entered the vehicle and engaged his mag restraints.
“To Vladivostok,” he called to his driver and turned to the man to his left.
“Well?” asked the hulking blond man with matching spiral inscriptions on each hand.
Colonel Antony Golubev echoed his Secretary General’s words and informed their nation’s unknown powerhouse, second in the galaxy only to Michael Wilmington, “Buckingham Palace will burn."