Krechenstadt
Ajatasutra Ahra, agent of Damis, special dispatch of the Kandarin Federation, walked down the street. No one noticed him. It was a busy street once again, but he could make out the signs of war. Usually caulk over bullet holes here and macadam patches there, but there were still some buildings that were gutted. The Krechens were hardy folk. And he was on a mission.
When he found it the apartment in the cheaply built block was small, but it had had good care taken of it. Though sparse, it was swept with surgical precision. Ahra was certain you could eat off any surface. It had been kept with the care one would give a museum.
Or a memorial, he thought, scanning the room. There were three tiny rooms, a kitchen, a hall, and a bedroom. He peered into the last. There was a divider, separating a larger bed from two small child’s beds. The latter were neatly kept- too neatly kept for anyone to have used them in some time. He heard a rustle, and looked back. Against the evening’s dying light of the apartment’s narrow window, a woman in her mid '30s entered the hall, sat on a bench and stared. Not at the fading pictures on the wall, or the old television set sitting on a shelf- It’s probably all State TV anyway- but at the door. As if she was waiting for someone to come through it. Something she’s lost. I know that. I know the details, even. They’ve all lost something.
He looked at himself. His power suit was still tasked to ‘stealth’- it was one of those wonderful features you could get at great expense. He faded into the walls of the room. Someone not looking, and the woman was not, would pay no attention to him. Of course, if the State police hadn’t been tipped off beforehand, there’d be a good chance they’d have found him.
He stepped out of the bedroom, and into the hall, powering down his stealth systems. <<Good evening, Ma’am.>> At first, she didn’t respond. After about a minute, she turned around. <<Good evening>>, she said with the voice of someone who didn’t care anymore. He thought she should care. Here was a man in black, standing in her house with no appearance of entry, much of his face covered, with funny elven eyes and ears. <<Don’t you want to know who I am, Ma’am?>>
<<Not really. Who are you?>>
<<My name is- my name is not important. I am here to ask you about your family. Marya, is it?>>
<<Yes, that is my name. It used to be Marjeta, if that means anything to you. But, the police->> she started.
<<The police know I am here. I am here with their blessing, but I am not one of them. Tell me about- tell me how you found them. Tell me how you lost them.>>
She hesitated. Now she looked at the pictures on the walls, before turning to the door, and turning to Ahra. <<Pyotr I met when he was seventeen. It was love at first sight. I was still a student and he a cadet at the Timoshenko Academy of Air Defense. But they have rules on these things, so we waited, and wrote to each other. We were married in the fall, after he graduated. It is fortunate he was assigned here, and not far away.>>
<<It wasn’t easy. Nothing in life ever is. We moved here, and eight years ago we had the twins. Dmitri and Lukina. She was smart, very smart for her age, and very kind. He was courageous and honest, he would never tell a lie and wanted to be like his daddy. We were happy then.>>
Happy? Ahra looked out the window. How could any be happy here? In this poverty and pollution? And yet- yet, if what we have seen is true, there is a greater evil. No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than we, and we shall unsay no word we have spoken. He shook his head. Before that which we have seen…the past, with its crimes, its follies, and its tragedies, fades away. I see the Krechen soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land, guarding the fields which their fathers have tilled since time immemorial. I see them guarding the homes where their mothers and wives pray-ah, yes, for there are times when we all pray-for the safety of their loved ones, the return of the bread-winner, of their champion, of their protector. I see the ten thousand villages of Krechzianko where the means of existence is wrung so hardly from the soil, but where there are still primordial human joys, where maidens laugh and children play. I see advancing upon this in hideous onslaught the Xiopothan war machine…I see behind all this a small group of villainous men who plan, organize and launch a cataract of horrors upon mankind…such as that which devastated this city. Never again. <<Please, Marya, tell me about the war.>>
The woman was visibly choked up now, wiping away tears. <<When the plague began, they told us all to go to our homes, to wait it out. Men came around. Brought food, some days. Other days, nothing. Pyotr was away, with the Army. The twins stayed here. Then- then they came. Chittering and screeching. They killed many, many people. I don’t know how they got in, but they filled the building. They took Dmitri, dragged him away, I never saw him again. We hid for a day and a night. Lukina said- she said that she was going to try to get to safety. She told me to be very brave and that she would be safe. They found her body two days later, in the alley behind the apartment house. The creatures left me alone, and when I left the apartment they were gone.>>
She was sobbing, reaching for tissue from a half-empty box on a shelf. <<Pyotr was left to me, but they said he died, at a place called Triyekska, on the river. He was crossing the river with his men, when a bullet struck him from behind. They told me this happens many times in war.>> She pointed to the wall, where three pictures hung, of her husband and children. <<That is all that is left of them now.>>
Ahra was- moved. Hurt, a little. He had seen many deaths, it was true, many by his own hand. He had been trained not to think of the cost, of what every death means to a mother, a spouse, a child of those who were lost. <<Marya, we can help you. You and others in this city, with similar stories. We can help bring justice to those who did this. But you must come with me.>>
He held out his hand, and waited.