Page 16 of Ascendent
“Good, let them. Russia’s youth must be optimistic for her future.” Sergey had poured a quarter of foreign aid into the universities, trying to get attendance back to pre-coup levels. He was trying to prop up the country’s future while he held the rest of the nation together through aid packages and food supply depots and stimulus packages. Anything to keep her limping along.
Ilya sent him a harried glare. “One wrong moment and the students will turn on you. You know this.”
Students were capricious. His allies, his hope, his future for now, and they loved him for his support, his reforms, his dedication to growth and healing. But he would not be a polar bear hero forever. The end would come, sometime, somewhere, somehow.
He just hoped Russia was more than a house of dusty cards when it did.
“We’re also still working our way through the bases in the Western Military Region.” Ilya tapped at his cigarette pack, pulling out a new one. He rolled it between his fingers, looking down as he spoke. “Moroshkin’s men torched most of the bases they’d held as we retook them. Over half are destroyed.”
“Fuck.” Sergey scrubbed his hands over his face. They may have won the battle on the Arctic, but that didn’t mean Moroshkin’s loyal soldiers had given up in the mainland so easy. The FSB, under Ilya, had fought to retake so much of Russia.
Ilya still wouldn’t look up.
“And? What else?” Sergey snapped.
“And… a lot of soldiers are missing. Over half the district is unaccounted for.”
“That’s over a hundred thousand soldiers!”
Ilya grimaced. His fingers turned the cigarette again. He nodded.
“Did they desert? Did they join Moroshkin’s coup? We don’t have even a quarter of that many locked up.” Sergey paled, and his breath ran thin as something ice cold grabbed his lungs and squeezed. “Did they go to ground? Are they hiding somewhere, planning another move?”
“A lot of Moroshkin’s people died in the Arctic. We don’t know how many.” Ilya said carefully. “But––” He sighed. “Notallof them. And we didn’t capture everyone either.”
“So they’re still out there? A hundred thousand traitors? And we haven’t found Moroshkin! He’s vanished from the Earth! He could be leading them still, Ilya! Could be gathering his forces!”
“Moroshkin is dead,” Ilya growled. “More than a dozen prisoners, former officers of his command, have all confirmed it. He was murdered by his own men after ordering them back to Russia to stop Madigan.”
“But there’s no body.” Sergey pounded the table with his fist. Their coffee cups jumped. “I want hisbody, Ilya. Where did his men dump his body?”
“In the Arctic, they said.”
Sergey cursed, a long string of bitter Russian. “Not good enough!”
Ilya nodded. He held up his hands, a silent surrender, a plea for more time. “We found a pit dug near the Western Military District Headquarters in St. Petersburg. It’s full of bodies. Soldiers, shot execution style. The decomposition tells us they were killed at the start of the coup during the takeover.”
He slumped forward, his chin falling to his chest. He stared at the filigree on the table, the cracked gold leaf, the ostentatious engravings. “Over a hundred thousand of our soldiers are ghosts, and we don’t know yet how many of those were murdered, how many deserted, and how many may be in hiding, still under Moroshkin’s traitorous banner?”
Ilya finally lit his cigarette. He leaned back, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs before he spoke. “And this is only the Western Region. We haven’t yet gotten to the other military districts.” There were four more. The Western, which Moroshkin had commanded, had been hit hard. The Southern District, around Sochi and the Caucuses, and where Sergey had built his insurgency, had been decimated, as had the Central District. Siberia and many of the surrounding oblasts and districts had resisted Moroshkin’s coup. His wrath had been swift and powerful in retribution.
“We’re vulnerable, Ilya. Our military is in shambles. We couldn’t defend ourselves from Latvia if they decided to march eastward. Or Norway!” They were a mess, and the country was holding together through sheer grit and pure determination. The will to survive, and a hope for better. “Our economy is restless. It will only take one incident to derail our recovery. And with our army in shambles, traitors hiding in the darkness, and the FSB running ragged, we can’t keep the lid on anything that disintegrates.” He exhaled. “We arevulnerable, more than we’ve ever been.”
“The United States is still our ally––”
“Jack Spiers is no longer president. We cannot rely on America’s friendship like we could when he was in the White House.”
“Europe?”
“NATO bombed us during Moroshkin’s coup and destroyed many of our western bases. I should ask them to foot the bill for their rebuilding.”
“At the least,” Ilya grumbled.
“It will only take one spark to ignite a firestorm right now. Wemustbe careful.”
Ilya fixed him with a ferocious glare. His cheeks hollowed as he sucked his cigarette again, blew out a long, slow breath of smoke at Sergey’s face. “Don’tgiveanyone that spark then,Seryozha. You may be happy with Pretty Boy, but I know you. You have a shit poker face, and you’re a fucking awful spy.”
“I am not––”
