The Ultimate Form of Expression

Once I make a mistake, I'll own up to it when called upon. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat this quote to themselves in the hope of hearing it for the first time.

I'm not one of those.

I don't care if Volgin wants me to watch out for Prince Ivan. That doesn't mean anything more than the words that comprise it. No, I won't be falling back into bed with comrade Raikov. I'm not a wind-up toy. I'm not a red rubber ball to bounce against his whims.

He thinks he's got some kind of intractable charm, Ivan does. And I'll admit, he's nice to look at on your pillow. He's good at his chosen activity. And he can be a great comrade, for all his shallow affectation.

I enjoyed it, I admit that. Even taking it from him, something I'd never let anyone else do. But he's not worth risking my position or my pristinely uncharred flesh over. He's not full of ambition or conviction. He's not a firebrand.

He's self-obsessed and sex-addicted and did I mention self-obsessed?

I won't say he's not beautiful, when you catch him unaware, wistful, not posing to effect or manipulating his world to suit his reality. But so is Krauss' persian cat. And the cat, at least, is honest about seeking a warm seat on everyone it sees.

Ivan is so many things.

But he's not someone to whisper unspeakable words to in the dead of night.

And he's not as indispensable to the rising sun as he thinks.

I can cut this off, like cauterizing an amputation. We'll both be happier for it.

I can walk away from anyone or anything, and never even flinch. Sure, he'll be sullen, but only because he's used to getting his way with a toss of his head and a punch of his fist, like Lightning the Wonder Stallion.

There are plenty of outlets for both of us. There are ports all over the storm.

I just need to find one and moor my boat.

For someone with my proven innate brilliance, I certainly do some things only a skullfucked idiot would dare to try.

That's irony, or maybe hubris. I don't know.

It's been a week of interesting developments on every front. Each day brings Volgin closer to the Shagohod, but each day puts him farther away, whether he knows it or not.

The woman they call the Boss, and this snorting, barbarian cynic she calls protege...they certainly won't make it easy for him. I'll sit back, nudge things along when they stall. As I always do.

The kinetic law of the world is that it only takes a tiny push, and gravity does the rest. Gravity, centripital force and the inviolable laws of the universe. I am only a medium. Things happen through and around me.

Take that as you will. Either context would not be wrong.

But there are always micro fissures in the fresco, things that add texture and patina, and these are the threads I weave the most haphazardly, it seems.

The small stuff seems destined for complication in my world.

The Fury, and this dinner party of scavenger and homemade pyrotechnics. Irinarhov the Kestrel and his fucking black record. The Boss and her stubbly lap dog.

God, and let's not forget Ivan Raidenovich Raikov.

His wandering eye and my wayward prick are a dangerous combination, which, as we found, expresses itself in marathon depravity.

I don't want to be a repeat offender on this, but what are the odds I won't? Given the chance to top the Major again...or for that matter, let him do his worst to me...

What the hell, of course I will. The future rewards of this job may be legion, but the present pleasures are few.

I think Major Raikov would plead the same.

There's Volgin, of course.

Screwing my rankmate would be a much smaller transgression if he wasn't the proverbial Persian lap-cat of my...well, truth and technicalities aside...commanding officer.

It's certainly a good thing Snake didn't take me out permanently with that CQC, so that I could live on to taunt death by Thunderbolt.

You can't very well undermine a man's whole dream and expect him to kiss you blue for it.

You can't kiss his blue dream well either, without expecting a mine under you.

But you know, I'm bound to piss him off any way this goes down.

And it will go down. One way or another.



...my guns are tarnished. That will never do. Time for a little TLC.

When I come out of the shower, there are words scrawled in the steam.

They are the words "Heinrich" and "Doppelganger".

It's not the best handwriting in the world.


Still is the night, and hushed are the streets
In this very house, my Love once existed

She has long been lost to this town
The house stands immovably still, in the same place.

There stands also a man, who stares at the air,
And wrings his hands in violent anguish.
It chills me, when I see his face,
The light of the moon shows me my own likeness.

You spirit-double, you pale wraith!
Why do you mock my love-pain,
which has tortured me, here, in this place
So many nights, in times before



So one of those fucktards I call my soldiery crept in here and scribbled up a little joke with his stubby finger. Fine.

Unfortuately, it's not what I think happened.

They thought I had a brain tumor, in the School. Well, the matroness did, until she carried me in to see the "patrons" of the school. The Philosophers seemed too keen on the idea for that- too gleeful, as if whatever I had, these inexplicable flashes and snatches, of voices and visions, was something they knew all too well how to cultivate.

It's probably for the best that Volgin's father was a man of such limited imagination. He gainsayed the idea of further exploration outright, calling it chush, absolute foolishness.

I got a fever that night, a real one.

106, which no adult body could withstand, but at age six I navigated it with discomfort and no damage, with the tolerance of children in my favor.

I recovered quickly, but I can still remember, at the height of my probable delirium, staring at a undefined back spot on the fading wallpaper of the orphans' infirmary, until the wall began to bleed.

Something is eluding me.

No, something conceptual. Not the cosmonaut.

I haven't even started looking for his floating, shrink-wrapped ass yet.

I plan to, after a few minutes of target practice with Gurlukovich. Some one on one time will do him good, and I never make excuses or explanations for doing it.

I am bracing Isaev with sly words, testing the weight of his strings, and feeling out my new recruit by default.

Sergei is quiet, but he watches. Always watches. Always waits. He begs attention with every glance, and his gaze lies unexpectedly heavy on me, follows me faithfully. His eyes look impoverished, in that same old way, a resevoir that can ever be filled. I remember that look, whether I want to or not. Sergei as a little boy.

Still, he looks better, after visiting Khostov. Less beddraggled. Upbeat, when he looks at me.

But then, Sergei is always upbeat. It's not a bad thing in a soldier, despite how much earnestness usually irks me. Sasha is different. I don't pretend otherwise. He's the closest thing I have to a relative, if I could even imagine such a thing.

I try, as I watch Isaev glower and bite his tongue. He tries not to be insubordinate, and I try to imagine.

For several moments, we try. He succeeds by the hair of a fox. I don't.

I can't, and taunting Isaev seems to have hit a nerve. He looks stricken, and this is not what I want. I wanted to provoke a clue about what prompted all that levity before, as I arrived at the range. They had been laughing and engaged by something, so much so that they almost missed my approach.

Would have, if that sniper hadn't been keeping a wolf's eye on the horizon.

Then suddenly, they hush up, as if someone shoved dicks in all their mouths.

That is what's eluding me.

Not the cosmonaut. (He won't.) Or the sniper's worth. (He's good.)

This stupid, small, insignificant thing that I'm not privy to.

At first I think they're talking about Isaev and Imanov- a never proven but categorically accepted theory, and a foregone conclusion as far as I'm concerned, in friendships with that particular brand of closeness.

But it isn't that, I realize, even though Andrei vaguely intimates that it is.

They aren't telling me everything. Knowing the loyalty of my squad, I assume they're looking out for my best interest.

However, I can't let it rest that easily. I'll figure it out.

Just you watch.

I have an uneasy feeling it has something to do with Raikov, like everything unasked for.

As I'm looking for the Colonel's man with murder on my mind, scraps of local intel are finding their way into my pockets like ticket stubs and cigarettes.

Sergei is in the infirmary, and I knew that, but I hadn't forseen Imanov's imminent illness, which displeases me a fuckton, but can't be helped. As much as I'd like to hold a gun to my first Lieutenant's ear and ask him to please feel better post haste, I know there are limitations, even to my persuasive steel charm.

Of course none of this even begins to help with the issue of Isaev's scarf. Fucking cosmonaut.

Words travel on swift wings in Groznyj Grad.

So what now, Ocelot? I ask myself, worrying my lip as I stride through the glassed-in corridor, eyes narrowed, watching for the faintest sign of Raikov's deceptive seraphimism.

There's the Irinarhov issue gnawing at the edges of my mind, and I plan to set that straight in the most spectacular way- but The Fury is haunting my thoughts as well, and looming ever more primary. The Cosmonaut wants me to track him down, obviously. For what, I have yet to discern to any satisfaction. Isaev's scarf is part of that- of baiting me and my men, goading us into action.

He doesn't know me very well, obviously, because I didn't need a gracious invitation from a coyly flirtatious lunatic. I'll show up regardless of being on the list.

I'm wishing I'd just gone to mess as I round the corner of the East Wing atrium, still in search of Major Fucktoy and his merry come-hither swagger.

It's been a dire week, and I'll be glad for an end, no matter how messy. There hasn't been much to recommend it, apart from a sunny winter sky that's lingered from day to day.

I'm ambivalent anything but finding Raikov, but the East Wing is unsettlingly barren this morning.

I've been having waking dreams about some floating idiot in camo gear, and I have the worst feeling that this is a new version of an old scene; a repeat of that experience back in charm school- the one I don't talk about in company, or anywhere for that matter- even to myself.

I remind myself to forget it again, and I remind myself that Raikov's office is right across the security bridge from the locker bays.

I'll find him. He knows it, I know it. Mother Russia knows it.

I click the trigger of my gun once.

At this very moment, I'm standing and looking at my men. It's roll call in the yard, and snow is polkadotting their red berets like some cheesecake pin-up whore's bikini. It's too fucking cold out here for it to melt.

"Let's get this over with," I hear myself mutter to Major Raikov, who sweeps in late, as usual. No doubt he was delayed by more special assignments from our special-needs Colonel.

He smiles at me, as he takes his place. Smiles, like he just ate a canary whole. I search his the corners of his too-pretty mouth for feathers.

I want to ask if something is actually amusing to my comrade, or if his mouth is just stretched into that gesture from early morning cocksucking duty.

Krauss shows up, before I can brace him. He still looks like a Nazi. Different uniform, maybe, but it's the man inside that creates the color.

What a jaunty limp he has. He starts in with the whole gentlemanly cosseting, addressing Raikov, knowing his easiest angle with the shrewdness one might expect of a war criminal. Flattery will get him everywhere, it seems.

I know my comrade major better than that, however. What Krauss doesn't know is that Raikov is no idiot conceived by a finger.

Krauss has reasons, it turns out, for the codgerly sweet-talk. He wants Ivan Raidenovich to bring him the cosmonaut, the freak of nature who came with the Cobra Unit. He thinks Raikov will be blithely malleable like that, just a piece of glittery bait-meat for the lunatic's appetite.

I don't blame Krauss for his misapprehension. It's an honest mistake.

Raikov looks like a mindless soldier doll, with a ballet dancer's hair and poise, but no wits to speak of under that platinum crown. I could see Krauss eyeing him as a mark for exploitation.

As it is, Krauss spins his sugar, then tries his powers.

Raikov takes all the compliments he feels suit him, and spurns the German's charming threats. No surprise there.

I'm left to deal with the insane cosmonaut.

It's nothing to me, one way or another, and I volunteer my squad for the job. I'm used to picking up after the Colonel's pet, anyway.

Everything seems copacetic, until I look over my men again. There's a difference, and I can't pin it down. I narrow my eyes, I survey. I finally trace it to one man.

It dawns on me that I don't know this one.

It seems impossible, but here he is, older than the others. New. Unmatched. Like a bantam fighting rooster in a of phalanx of china pheasant.

No one enters my squad without my express permission, that's the party line. In truth, however, there are exceptions. The Colonel can override my authority, though he's never card to.

Or, for that matter, someone with Colonel Class security clearance.

I can feel my smirk painting my face like ice water in the chill, fixing in place.

I have a creeping bone to pick with the Major, and I don't mean that the way he hopes I do, either.