# Acceptable.#
# Do you want us to remain inactive? The men are eager to strike.#
# Let the idiots clean up the mess they’ve made. We will remain inactive.#
# Inactive, sir? That’s hardly worthy of us.#
#It’s not just inactivity… it’s masterly inactivity. Let them dig and let them fail…or do you doubt the power of the Spirit?#
#With all due respect, sir: hell no!#
#Let her come to me now. The horror… the pain… it will never end. I need her help, Top.#
#[static]#
#Kilo One to Renegade, we have too much noise, adjust transmission.#
#Renegade to Kilo One. Relocating.#
#Kilo One to Renegade. Continue transmission.#
#No way, Kilo One. I’m lucky if I can make it out of here alive.#
#Renegade, you have been paid for taking this risk.#
#Not enough, Kilo One. Commencing exfil and moving to grid Sierra Papa. Shit! I see them coming. How could they have spotted me?#
#Report back when you’ve reached a safe spot.#
#I’m getting the hell out of here. Don’t know who you’ll send in as bait but he better be good. Renegade out.#
#[static]#
A Shellful of Memories
The old apartment blocks look depressingly gray in the heavy rain. A Lada Niva with the SBU crest on its doors drives along Davidova Street, its windscreen wipers fighting a losing battle with the thick raindrops. It stops in front of an apartment block. Tarasov, wearing a water-proof raincoat over his leave uniform and carrying a suitcase, gets out. He waves to the SBU driver and hurries towards the entrance where a lonely boy plays with a ball. The ball shoots out into the rain after an ill-directed kick. Tarasov skillfully kicks it back to him.
“Thank you, officer,” the boy says catching the ball and curiously studying the medal ribbons on Tarasov’s uniform. “Do you fire real weapons in the army?”
“We do.”
“And did you ever kill someone?”
“No.”
“I guessed so,” the boy laughs. “My parents keep telling me that our army is no good.”
He starts kicking his ball against the wall again. Tarasov hides his bitter smile and leaves the boy to his game. Stepping inside, he doesn’t mind the smell of garbage and pesticides. It was like that even back in his childhood. Just like the elevator, still operational after five decades without any apparent maintenance. A short, silver-haired woman opens the door, plumped up by age, with only her deep blue eyes telling of her former beauty.
“Misha! What a surprise,” she cries out as she embraces Tarasov. He returns her hug.
“Good to see you, mother.”
“Please tell me you are on leave, sinok,” his mother says helping him out of his raincoat. “It’s been ages since I saw you last, my son.”
“Five months and three weeks, to be exact.”
“Yes. Are you well?”
“I’m… normalno.”
Throughout the trip from the air base, Tarasov had been trying to find the proper words to greet her with. His feelings were mixed: the grief and exhaustion of the last mission, the happiness and relief of being home again, the concern and anxiety about his new task — it is too much for him to put into a few words. Eventually, he says exactly what is on his mind.
“Is there beer in the fridge?”
His mother rushes into the kitchen. “I wasn’t expecting you. Why didn’t you call? I don’t have any decent food for you and you must be ravenous. Such a shame on me!” Tarasov takes off his shoes and makes himself comfortable in a chair in the living room. Only now does he start to realize that he is actually home. His mother arrives with a glass and a bottle of Obolon beer. “I still have a few galushki from yesterday… do you want some? Of course you do…”
“Uh-hum,” replies Tarasov gulping the chilled, bitter drink. The rather ordinary Obolon tastes so good it’s as if he had never had beer before.
“I see you were thirsty.” His mother looks down at him, radiating happiness. “Tell me, how are things in Zhitomir?”
“Boring,” Tarasov replies, wiping the excess foam from his lips.
“But what have you been doing there all the time?”
“I told you many times before, mother. We’re a logistics division, repairing trucks.”
“Couldn’t you at least come home more often? You are an officer after all.”
“That’s why I can’t… you know how it goes. While the cat’s away, the mice will play.” Tarasov admits to himself that what he just said does actually fit his situation in the Zone.
His mother turns to the TV. “I heard Baskov and Fedorova are getting married,” she says.
“I don’t really care about celebrities, mother.”
“But I do love their songs. By the way… will you meet Tanya while you are home?”
“No. She wrote me one of those letters a few weeks ago.”
“What letters?”
“You know, mother,” Tarasov explains patiently, “a letter beginning with ‘my dearest’ and ending with ‘I hope we can still be friends’.”
“Is that so?” His mother sounds disappointed. “I’m sorry to hear that. I took her for such a decent woman.”
“Maybe she got impatient.”
“My mother waited four years for your grandfather. I don’t understand…”
“Girls are different nowadays. Tanya wrote she joined a dating site on the internet. Just for fun, of course. Then she hooked up with a dentist from London and fell in love with him. How romantic! Can I have another beer?”
“Such a negodnitsa… I’m sure you will find another one.”
“Why, you don’t keep them in the fridge?”
“I meant another girl. You are still young, and have a safe job in the army,” his mother says as she follows him into the kitchen. “They do keep you safe, don’t they?”
“Oh yes,” Tarasov reassuringly says and opens the fridge. “The only danger is of being bored to death.”
“Mishka, my son…”
“Where’s the bottle opener?”
“On the table.” She eagerly gets it for him. “You know, when Fedorova and Baskov were on TV last night, I prayed for your happiness…”
Tarasov cuts into her words. “Mother, I’m home for a single night and I have to leave early in the morning. Could you do me a favor and switch off that damned TV?”
“The army is a bad influence on you… you were such a sweet boy before.” Shaking her head, his mother goes back to the living room and picks up the remote. “You never used to use such profanities.”
Tarasov cannot resist laughing, but suddenly feels compassion for his mother living alone in a sea of concrete buildings, having only television and the neighbor’s gossip for company and above all else believing that her only son tends to trucks in a dull garrison.
“Mother,” he says as softly as he can, “please, could I have some coffee?”
“But of course, why…”
Tarasov walks back to the living room and finishes his second beer. With the TV switched off, he can hear the rain rapping on the window. He steps to the big cupboard where his mother’s memories are neatly lined up in a china cabinet: cheap souvenirs from trade union holidays in the Crimea, faded postcards and other trinkets from the long-gone Soviet world that formed the backdrop to his parents’ lives.