Ruthless V6-Prologue-The Failed State

Deep in the frozen East, a man trudged through layers of snow.

Every breath Lev Kazanov took came out as a visible cloud of vapor. The temperature was well below zero, and it was a relatively mild day, considering this was winter.

But the environment hardly bothered him. He was a native of this godforsaken land, though he had been gone for years, evading civil disorder and consequent mass death.

Now I’m home, he thought. I missed you. Gods know why, but I missed you. You’re in my blood…

More importantly, he was ready to restore order. Lev was prepared to make his country grand and significant on the world stage again. For that purpose, he had become a Ruler.

And I’ll do much more than that before I’m through. The world will remember this place. He shook his head and gently admonished himself. Stop hiding your ambition. The world will remember me too.

Lev smiled as he approached the hill in front of him. At least this would be a break from walking through snow drifts. Even for his System-enhanced physique, it wasn’t easy moving through this endless snow while also keeping his eye out for monstrous seals, tigers, and any other local hazards that the System might have enhanced.

He began to ascend the hill and found, to his relief, that the snow was much shallower here. That freed up some of his attention, so he opened up his Skill’s display to make sure he was on the right track.

The Skill presented as an image like a radar screen, with six blinking dots visible ahead.

Another five hundred meters north, he estimated.

Lev kept walking, breathing normally even though the hill became rather steep as he drew further up. The System had been good to him.

He reached the top and took a look around—and saw more snowy hills to come.

Well, that was fine. Every bit of travel, any additional obstacles in his path, made it less likely that someone else had beat him to the punch. The items he had come to acquire were delicate, in a sense, despite being heavy and well protected. Tampering was possible—and could be disastrous.

Lev walked another hundred meters before he came to the next hill, climbed it, and went on. He hardly allowed himself to feel the frosty air by this point, or the distance he had traveled.

The destination would be over the next hill, he told himself—even though he knew, very explicitly, that it would not.

Lev crossed the snow and two more hills. When he finally summited the last one, he took a minute to admire the view. He could see the beach from where he stood. The endless expanse of the ocean had been visible before, but the beach had been hidden by hills and tree cover.

Now Lev could see everything. He could feel the power of nature as the tide came in, and in the distance, there was the fin of what appeared to be a massive whale. The creature’s head breached the surface and opened its mouth wide as if to gulp at the fresh air, and Lev’s heart skipped a beat as he remembered that whales did not have quite such sharp teeth—or quite so many rows of them.

It was a shark. A giant shark. A megalodon?

Right, the new world is a dangerous place…

He looked down and saw there were no more hills nearby for him to climb. For now, at least.

He took a step forward and prepared to open up his display again—only to hear a loud ding.

The display popped up unbidden this time. It was a proximity alert. Lev was very close.

About ten meters, he decided after a moment.

He walked that short distance and found himself at ground level in the deep snow again.

Lev created a small fireball and melted away a bit of snow. Nothing there.

He moved the fireball from side to side to clear a bit more. Something glinted in the sunlight. Lev focused his efforts there, melting toward the glint, continuing until he had exposed something as large around as Lev’s own height.

Embedded in the ground, there was a massive iron and steel disk, like a manhole cover made for a science fiction setting.

Lev smiled. He knew exactly what he was looking at.

At last, I’ve found them, he thought. Now he would only need to pry open the launch gate to get at what was inside. He would uncover and open up the other launch gates at his leisure, now that had located them. They looked undisturbed.

He stepped forward, brushed off the last bits of snow, and reached down to grab around the edges of the disk.

“Step away!”

Lev jumped back as the voice caught him by surprise. He tilted his head to look up and saw an old gentleman, gray haired, gray bearded, with the characteristic light brown complexion of the Itelmens, and garbed in a tattered old Russian military uniform. The man was staring at him and holding what Lev recognized as a PP-2000 submachine gun. The muzzle shook slightly as the old man pointed the muzzle at Lev’s chest.

Lev had to resist his natural inclination to be intimidated—had to remind himself that bullets probably could not do him much harm anymore. He had spent almost his full Orientation, and much of the time since, developing his resistances to various forms of attack and environmental damage, as well as building up his physical defenses to cover those areas where his specific resistances would not assist him.

If bullets can kill me, I don’t deserve to be a Ruler anyway.

“What, did you get that old thing from your grandfather?” Lev asked in a contemptuous snarl. “You know that guns aren’t any good anymore. Not since the System changed all of us.”

He knew this was the way to deal with these old Russians. They folded to anyone with an imperious attitude. Arrogance was equated with authority.

The old man did not say anything for a moment, just shook slightly at Lev’s words. He almost felt bad for the old man, but the gun pointed, theoretically lethally, at Lev’s chest helped to suppress those feelings. The silence gave Lev the chance to notice that the old man was wearing a white cloak on his back.

That was why I didn’t see him at first. He was camouflaged. Was this fool a sniper before the System came? For one of the rebel outfits out here?

Eastern Russia had been in civil disorder for many years before the System came. Ever since Russia became a failed state. The people out here were survivors, at the least. But the stubbornness that came with that meant that one had to be even firmer with them.

“Fire one of those Parabellum rounds at me, and I will make you eat it,” Lev said, baring his teeth. He meant it, too. Even if he doubted that a 9 mm bullet could kill or seriously injure him now, the round would still hurt like hell striking his skin. If it penetrated the skin, he was liable to do worse than just knocking the old man around a little and making him swallow the bullet.

“I—I can’t let you open that hatch, sir,” the old man said. He was already starting to lower the weapon now, to Lev’s relief. Deescalation was working. “I have a duty, you see—to the people around here. I look out for our safety.”

“I mean to be the Ruler in these parts,” Lev said. “I’ll be looking out for their safety myself. You’re not doing them any favors by threatening to shoot me for accessing this hatch.”

Lev let loose a bit of aura to show the old man that what he was saying wasn’t just bluster. The gray beard winced and staggered at the feeling of pressure, knees shaking, until Lev relented. But still, he did not completely drop the gun and run away.

He actually has a fair bit of spine, Lev thought.

“Please, sir—er, Ruler—I think that you do not know what you are doing with this.” He gestured at the disk. “If you open that up, someone could get hurt. The Earth has shifted. Even if you wanted to use the weapon inside of there, we do not know if the contents have been damaged. You could blow us all to kingdom come. Please.” The man gave Lev a meaningful, pleading look.

I should want men like this to serve me, Lev thought, suppressing his mild irritation at being stopped. He’s trying to be responsible.

“Listen, old fellow, trust me. I do know what I’m doing, accessing the inside of this hatch. Before all this, believe it or not, I was a nuclear engineer. If anyone knows how to keep this situation safe, and actually get some good use out of what’s inside of this hatch, it’s me.”

The old man nodded slowly, with visible reluctance, and he lowered his weapon completely until it pointed at the ground.

“Is there anything I can do to assist the new Ruler, then?” he asked meekly after a long moment.

“You should probably get a bit further away from here,” Lev replied. “Just in case the containment here was breached by the movement of the Earth after the System. For your safety. If there’s something seriously wrong, I’ll store it in my Small Bag of Deceptive Dimensions, but I have a feeling you don’t have the Radiation Resistance Skill.”

The old man shook his head. “No, sir, I do not.”

Lev nodded. “Well, I do. And I don’t want you in any danger. Go stand—” He looked back over at the hill he had just climbed over, which was about twenty meters away. “Back there? I’ll call you if I verify that it’s safe. I do appreciate having someone here watching things, believe it or not.”

“Yes, sir.” The old man stood up a little straighter, and a shadow of a smile flickered over his face. “Good luck in your, uh, mission.”

The Ruler gave the old man another nod and a smile.

“Thank you,” Lev said simply.

He watched as the old man turned and walked away, waiting until the gentleman was halfway up the hill before he pivoted back to the disk in the ground.

I should have asked his name, Lev thought.

But there would be time for that later, of course.

The truth was, he had mostly been interested in getting the old man further away so that he couldn’t have a sudden change of heart and try to interfere with Lev’s business again.

But it was good to get off on the right foot with a local, especially an armed local.

Lev bent down, and with his bare hands, he grabbed hold of the edge of the disk. Then he pulled. The upward motion did absolutely nothing at first, so Lev stretched his legs, then planted his legs carefully beneath the rim of the disk before he resumed. This time, slowly, straining his muscles, he managed to force the hatch open, sliding it sideways into its groove.

He marveled at his own Strength, his newfound capacity to force his way past thick, solid steel. He might not be on the high end for Rulers, but compared to his old self or even most humans now, he was incredibly powerful.

He slowly bent the metal of the disk in such a way that it would not be able to easily slide closed again, then let out a long exhale and relaxed. He looked down into the opening that he had revealed. As expected, Lev found himself staring into a dark tube. Without much hesitation, he slid down through the opening, until he found himself face to face with what was inside.

What he saw was taller than himself, and undoubtedly more than fifty times heavier, but it was also somehow smaller than Lev had imagined.

But these had the potential to deliver death to millions, he thought. Still do.

The missile was in pristine condition, as far as he could see. Perhaps a few patches of rust—in keeping with old Soviet tradition—but it looked serviceable. Even a little damage would not have been a major problem for him to fix, but it seemed that would be a non-issue. Maybe the government had placed their highest quality missiles here.

This region was closest to the United States out of all Russia’s nuclear weapons storage locations, after all.

Lev’s real, secret worry had been that someone else might have gotten here first and stolen it out from under his nose—or simply tampered with the fissile material inside. But that too had turned out to be a non-issue.

This close, Lev could actually sense the radioactive contents of the device.

He ran his hand over the side of the bomb, that smooth cylindrical base. Success had paralyzed him for a moment. He didn’t know what to do or think. In a moment, he would deal with this bomb. Then he would climb back up out of this hole.

Soon he would place everything around it, for kilometers around, under his protection—within the field of his aura.

For now, though, he just basked in the victory. The bloodless coup. The acquisition that would make him a man to be feared around the world.

Perfect.