Wildlife Security Solutions, LLC – Part 0: When Dragons Meet Sharks

Near Khumushkuri, Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, 2014

Drakon ran her fingers through her bob-cut ebony hair, letting her mind wander for a moment to where she actually wanted to be, which was over a hundred kilometers north in the city of Sochi. “I’m so close…how long has it been since I was so close to home?” She asked the blazing orb in the sky.

“About a year, I think. Not since the pick-up job near Mersin. Fucking hell, the Turks were pissed…” came the intrusive response from the only person in earshot.

Grimacing at the answer, Drakon crossed her arms tight. The runway she stood on now was just close enough to her home city to make her hate it. The winds from the Black Sea felt wrong, filtered through foreign trees and filth. The setting sun shone down on the snow at the wrong angle, threatening to burn the eyes of all who looked at it. Even the flightline of their makeshift camp, as rustic and isolated as it was in the woodlands outside the village of Khumushkuri, felt alien enough to sour her mood. Tracing her vibrant blue eyes to the southeast, to the invisible line separating Abkhazia from its Georgian forebearer, her scowl settled deeper onto her lips. “These morons would’ve been better off just staying Russian, not trying to follow those Georgian fuckers into corruption…how many had to die to pull these lost sheep back into the fold?“

“How many came back from the war all broken? My old man’s leg stump still twitches when it rains, the superstitious old bastard. For what?”

Liliya Maksimovna Kharlamov blew a sharp snort of frustration from her nose, letting the cold wrap her back up in the familiar January blanket. Such discomforts should have been second nature to her by now, as a pilot with no nation, the world was opened up to her. And from those skies, she’d seen more of the Earth than most anyone would ever dream. But almost all of that time had been from the cockpit of whatever aerial demon the company had for her, which suited her just fine. Often, she was the angel that swept in from on high to rescue her brothers, which was as much a reward as her paycheck. Such moments also allowed her to rightfully lord over all those who boarded her steed, as she was the only God they would worship so long as they depended on her.

Such ego and superiority was a burden earned by fire, and Drakon could tell every time Wildlife Security Solutions brought in fresh blood that had not lived the same story. The new dogs tended to slobber or howl at her to get even a glimpse of extra skin or an inviting smile. Such was the case this morning, as Liliya heard the caterwauling across the helipad as she inspected every inch of her Mil-8TVK gunship and troop carrier.

Having long since learned to simply tune out such welps, Liliya instead let a smile peek upon her lips as she caressed her stallion. It was a robust beast, with thick armor and far-reaching fangs. But it hadn’t been her machine until she’d painted her mark in its tail. Barely visible under the poorly-disguised registry number, was a small crimson dragon of her own creation. It was a privilege she’d earned through company profit, and by being the best flier Wildlife could afford. Such success had blessed her with the name “Drakon”, as hers was the roar from above that heralded death. 

With the snap of her fingers, Liliya could be in the corporate market, flying oligarchs between their yachts. Or perhaps she could continue filling graves for cash and sell her craft to the tropical cartels deep in Columbia. Yet none of those options inspired her, as the former gave her no fangs, but the latter gave her no pride. Only those who truly knew her understood why Liliya stayed with the company, and she could count all those people on one hand. 

“Shut up, and inspect your gear! I’m not carrying any of you dumbasses back to Headquarters if your drop line fails!” It was a command that made even Liliya stop to see who decreed it. Not because of its volume, as any idiot with a rifle could scream. This voice spoke with the weight of knowledge, responsibility, and experience. She hadn’t expected that from a group of fresh meat. Her surprise turned to frustration when she noted the speaker wore the thick, solid gold band of a naval Chief on his shoulder, above the number ‘605’. Great, the only voice of reason is a fish-fucker…

“Oh look, the next big swinging dick…” chuckled another female voice swinging under the Mil-8’s tail. “How long until you think he’s trying to order us around mid-flight?”

Drakon hissed a laugh as she looked to her co-pilot and gunner. “We won’t even make drop-off before he’s unhappy with us, Khimera.” 

The second woman laughed in response, running her hand through buzzed blonde hair. “Clip his line off with the tail rotor?”

Liliya smiled briefly at that, but still shook her head, “And lose money because one more shit-for-brains grunt gets left behind? Not a chance. But that doesn’t mean we make the flight easy.”

Khimera smiled wickedly. “Always the right kind of evil. I’m glad the company gave you this beast.”

A moment later, the sea-bred sailor briskly walked up to Drakon, who had moved on to check the rocket pods mounted on the gunship’s stubby wings. “My squad is packed and cleared, commander. We’re ready when you are.”

The pilot looked at him in shock for a moment, before dropping her fists to her hips. “Then we clear up some rules now, Peskar. And no, I don’t care what the company lets you call yourself, you are Minnow until I say otherwise. First, I am your wings and your support, so you accomplish fuck-all without us. I won’t risk my stallion to pick you out of a firefight unless we can make it back. “

Liliya raised a hand to tick off her decrees to the squad’s leader. “Second, mark and call out your positions as accurate as you fucking can, because no one’s picking twelve millimeter slugs out of their skulls on my flight.”

Again, the sailor said nothing in response, so Drakon pressed her index finger into his body armor at the chest. “Third, you or your dogs do any more begging to see us naked, I’m planting my boot up your ass right here as my example. Understood?”

“Understood completely, ma’am. I hope we don’t need to use a single rocket, but I trust your gunner’s aim. We await your clearance.” With that, the Navy man saluted her and turned to run back to his own squad.

“Oh, I might like him!” Khimera chortled, looking at Drakon through the open troop compartment. “Not even a flinch.”

Drakon tightened her glare on the sailor, both annoyed that he’d remained calm and respectful when being degraded by a woman a head shorter than he was, and slightly impressed that the company actually hired someone with some useful skills left. “It just means he’s either competent, or smart enough to keep his arrogance in check.” Liliya noted, before checking her wristwatch. “Finish up, we’re fragged for take-off in thirty.”

*

Thundering rotorblades echoed off the frozen treetops as the Mil-8 crossed the unmarked border between Abkhazia and Georgia. Drakon kept the laden beast low, occasionally blowing the glittering flakes of ice and snow back up into their wake as it darted east, then south, then further east. Just over a hundred kilometers separated the crossing from where she was marked to drop the ground team, but her flight path was almost double that to avoid most every city, village, and random sightseer taking a piss among nature. Such restrictions forced Drakon to select a twilight launch time, balancing the precious remainder of natural light with equally valuable secrecy.

Once they’d taken to the skies, any jovial cat-calling or lewd commenting had ceased. The sailor kept his team in near death-like silence, using gestures and piercing blue eyes to ensure everyone was ready or focused on their tasks at hand. Such professionalism was a welcome reprieve for both pilot and gunner, though Khimera did spare the occasional glance aft to marvel at the gate and build of the sailor. Liliya herself kept her focus only on her stallion, masterfully pulling the Mil-8 between trees and under the mountainous horizon.

The drop zone was little more than a cleared patch of grass well outside Kutaisi, deep in northern Georgia. As the ground troops prepared to leap out of the aft hatch, Drakon noted that many of them carried rocket-propelled grenade launchers, hand-held missiles and other very explosive implements. All save the sailor and one other man, who carried AK rifles and several magazines. Drakon hadn’t been told what her passengers would do, and she knew better than to ask. Her gaze was met by the sailor, who smartly saluted her and Khimera before being the last of the ten men to depart. Seconds later each and every man Drakon had delivered were now invisible in the natural green and encroaching darkness.

The gesture was noted by Khimera, who couldn’t help herself once Drakon had started the return trek. “If they survive, I may have to have some of that Minnow to celebrate.” 

“I just hope it’s not pickled by so much salt water!” Drakon chuckled. After that, the joking ceased, and the illegal return flight began. Low clouds had swept in to mask any sort of moonlight, which worked both with and against Drakon. But having earned the right to paint her symbol on the tail rotor, Drakon let the Mil-8 talk her through, feeling the shift in the downdrafts as they neared taller trees or a hill, turning with the cross-winds as they dashed between jagged stone fangs. Despite adding a few extra minutes and kilometers to the journey back was thankfully as smooth as the outbound one. By contract, the Mil-8 would return to that same field in four days to retrieve its passengers, who had hopefully expended all their explosives and achieved whatever it was their contract stated. 

The airbase was lit only by a few dim glow lamps by the time the Mil-8 returned, its massive rotorwash echoing through the still night. Skillfully, Drakon set the stallion down and began to power down each and every system. Four days until we fly again…fuck, I hate waiting that long… 

“Think they’ll survive?” Khimera asked bluntly, voice sprinkled with curious concerns.

“If that peskar is smart? Maybe… If he’s just another fish-fucker, then we’ll get a new contract in a couple days.” Drakon replied with a shrug.

Drakon was less than busy during the four-day downtime, giving her time to absorb the pages of her latest acquisition: a proper Soviet biography of Marina Mikhaylovna Raskova, one of the finest female flyers under the Red Star. Only when Liliya had a fleeting moment of peace between pages did she let herself wonder if the professional fish-fucker would succeed or not. Those instances gave her a welcome surprise as well, as she typically cared little for anything outside her cockpit. I swear, if Khimera is rubbing off on me, I’ll gladly toss her to that Minnow…

On the day of the retrieval mission, Drakon’s pre-mission brief contained several alarming indicators that made her blood run hotter. Firstly, Kontrol passed an increased number of Georgian air patrols along the Abkhazian border. This was out of sequence with normal Georgian levels of readiness, but that single fact was not fear-inducing. Drakon knew she would just fly under the gaze of those old Su-25 ground-attack fighters, who rarely flew without daylight, and never flew with live weapons.

Next came the Georgian news reporting of explosions in the city of Kutaisi. The press itself didn’t state what exactly had blown up, but Wildlife had passed to Drakon that a Georgian arms plant and airframe repair facility suddenly stopped existing. And how many of your grunts did you lose blowing those up, Minnow?

The most alarming piece of the brief given to Drakon was the activation of a mobile P-18 air surveillance radar on a hilltop right on the nebulous Abkhazian border. Its placement was perfect, right along the flight path she’d taken into Georgia four days ago, but the report didn’t explicitly say where on the hilltop it sat. Drakon knew from experience that such a radar covered at least two hundred kilometers in all directions, which conveniently covered most of her primary and alternate routes to the extraction point. The immediately available intelligence told Drakon that such a move had been planned for a year, but she didn’t buy it. Fucking kiskas were too lucky, placing it right in my way at just this moment…

Checking her map with Khimera, the gunner traced her finger across a deep ravine that cut through the border, inside the Caucasus mountains to the east and northeast. “We could fly under it?”

Liliya shook her head, pointing to a small speck of buildings huddled around a swollen river swath traveling east-to-west. “Can’t risk being reported, not with the increased air patrols.” Taking a ruler from the planning table, the flier drew a crude line from the hilltop to a spot two hundred kilometers south. It was partly a futile gesture, as she knew the Mil-8 didn’t carry the fuel they’d need to avoid such a large detection bubble. The gunship pilot then paused, staring at the small red circle that marked the estimated area where the P-18 was parked.

“I see you thinking it, Drakon.” Khimera scowled. “And it won’t work. Even firing all the rocket pods at range would take too long. Someone would sound an alert.”

“Except you don’t have to destroy the whole site, der’mo. Just take out the generator truck and it’s useless!” A point Liliya punctuated by pointing at the airstrip’s air surveillance radar. “How many shots do you need to blow up a goddamn truck?”

Khimera nodded to that idea. “Depends on how straight you can keep your nose, crazy suka.”

However Drakon was about to counter her gunner’s sass was quickly lost when her hip radio chirped “Scramble! Scramble! Scramble!”

“Oh, that fucking Minnow!” Liliya shouted as the two women ran to the Mil-8. They were joined in the sprint by a few nameless crewmen Drakon hadn’t bothered to learn. Under normal circumstances, Liliya would in fact yell at them to treat her gunship with dignity, but such an urgent order demanded she take to the skies as fast as possible.

As the massive overhead rotorblades whined to life, the Mil-8’s on-board radio clicked on, “Drakon, ground team reports ambush by Georgian guard units, need immediate evacuation or elimination. Full weapons authorization granted by contract. Udachnoy okhoty!”

Spinning around in her chair, Khimera acknowledged the order, while also clicking on the Mil-8’s master arm switches, demonstrating how she’d earned her name by assuming multiple roles. Such a feat always impressed Drakon, as the gunship was designed to require a three-man crew. Yet she and Khimera had always made do with no need for the additional deadweight, a respect Drakon gave dutifully upon her gunner with a nod.

The gunship roared into the air two minutes later, and Drakon immediately pointed it northeast into the baseline of the Caucasus mountains re-tracing her original intrusion route as best she remembered it from the curves of hills and man-made paths carved through the empty lands. Now fully loaded with weaponry, the beast grumbled and pushed back against her commands as they stayed extremely low to the ground, kicking up surf as they crossed into the Gali Reservoir before turning south towards the protective mounds of the neighboring hills. All the while, Drakon cursed under her breath, knowing full well that she was being watched from a long distance. Adding to her frustration was the unfamiliar terrain of the northern ravines and mountainous cutouts, forcing her to keep looking down at the map on her thigh as much as she did forward into the jagged, snow-capped stones. Unforgiving crosswinds smashed in her stallion seemingly from every direction, but Drakon kept her white-knuckled grip on the throttle and control yoke, forcing nature to respect her presence.

She could tell they were nearing the P-18 thanks to a panel over her head, solid amber lights chiming on whenever the radar saw her between the peaks. This also worked for Drakon, giving her a general bearing of where to aim Khimera. “Warm up the anti-tank rockets!” the pilot ordered as she turned the Mil-8 southeast for a dozen kilometers.

“Priobretennyy! I see the radar!” Khimera declared, pointing to a flattened hilltop a few kilometers away, where the ridgeline dipped down before clawing into the clouds to meet the mountain peaks. It was hard to see, even with a misting of snow along the rocks, but the movement of the radar’s spindly array gave it away.

On instinct, Drakon let the gunship drop until its wake blew all the snow off the rocky ground below. Small pebbles and dust kicked across the glass screen at her feet as they pushed forward. Nothing was going to hide the thunderous thumping of her rotorblades now, so the attack had to be swift.

Sparing a moment to look up at the hilltop, the pilot caught the waddle of a man running through snow from his mindless walk, back toward the control van next to the radar. At a guess, she had to pray they were close enough. “Shoot!”

The AT-2 anti-tank rocket screamed out of its tube and began to spin, keeping its electronic nose locked onto the targeting laser Khimera pointed at the P-18’s crew cabin. It was a race to see who would reach it first, human or weapon, but it was also a moot point. The AT-2, designed to rip into thickened tank armor before detonating, had little trouble punching through the large truck’s cabin of simple aluminum. The subsequent explosion tore the manned vehicle into slivers of metal and flames, the sheer force of pressure and heat torquing the radar’s transmitting array into a non-functioning shape.

The cockpit’s receiver confirmed the P-18’s destruction, and Drakon wasted no time pushing forward again, weaving east and south and east again back toward Kutaisi. While Khimera kept a constant watch for anything in the grass or skies over the course of the next hour, Drakon’s eyes were quick to spot the plume of black smoke rising to the north of the city when they reached it. Instead of flying straight towards the black pillar and risking all sorts of calamities from the cityscape at her nose, Drakon pointed the Mil-8 into the Sataplia Nature Reserve to come around the disaster area from the east.

“Does your Minnow like climbing trees?” Asked the pilot rhetorically. Woods are cover, but also a trap. Who forced you in there, you idiot?

“Nyet, but I see what does! Heavy trucks outside the woods, looks like BMPs!” Khimera retorted, eyes never leaving her targeting scope.

“Clear them out!” Liliya ordered, pulling the Mil-8 higher and lifting its nose. 

“Thunder!” Khimera called, rattling off a dozen high-explosive rockets at the Georgian barricade. Two troop transports were lifted off the ground and tossed aside in blazing fury, the third simply collapsed on itself.

Among the rapid chaos, the pilot soon became aware of the three-peating ‘chirps’ of the radio assembly between pilot and gunner. Drakon nodded for her gunner to attend the radio, making the latter curse repeatedly for having to take her eyes off her killzone. “Minnow, report!”

“Position comprised! Holding new LZ for pickup half-kilometer north in small clearing, look for black truck!” Reported the ground team. Drakon noted the strain in the sailor’s voice, it made her wonder just how much had gone wrong.

This moment of distraction allowed a Georgian rifleman clear aim, and bullet impacts rang out against the Mil-8’s belly. On instinct, Drakon pulled back on the stick and stomped on a rudder pedal to swing the beast around and out of danger. This also took the gunship’s nose out of line from the Georgian defenders, so Khimera could not shoot back. 

Drakon paired the rotation with a dive, putting several small rises between the Mil-8 and the return fire. It didn’t matter now if they wiped out the whole column, she had no doubt their intrusion was now broadcast across Georgia. With only a thought, Drakon could easily turn back northeast and leave the entire ground squad to be captured or killed, and no one back at Kontrol or in the company would ever know. But such cowardice wasn’t why she was named Drakon.

Dropping low enough to blow down the short mountain grass, she pushed the Mil-8 forward and around the outskirts of the forest until the rising smoke was on her shoulder. Only when she couldn’t see it easily did she pull the stallion higher into the air and pivot it again to sweep in and grab the ground team while sprinting from west to east. Once over the treeline, Drakon flew the Mil-8 sideways, its nose pointed south while the beast side-stepped left.

“Black truck!” Khimera called as soon as she saw it. Minnow had found a sizable clearing within the forest’s heart that Drakon could easily set down in. Yet instead of being secure, the flashes of rifle fire and tracer rounds criss-crossed to and from the boundary line.

“They’re pinned! Light those fuckers up!” Drakon ordered. A split-second later, the rapid ‘thoom’s of automatic cannon fire tore ancient trees from their roots and sprayed bits of earth and man into the air. At the same time Drakon lowered the Mil-8 to the ground, but kept her stallion’s engine at full power for the quick retreat. 

She could feel the rear hatch open, the tremor sending a wave through the entire gunship. With each man leaping back on, the Mil-8 rumbled, allowing Liliya to count each survivor. To her surprise, there were ten thumps before the rear hatch light on her control panel showed the door being closed again. 

“Lucky bastard…” Drakon admitted.

“I knew he was good! No one has an ass like that and isn’t good!” Khimera barked with a laugh, switching from the cannon back to her rocket pods and blasting the treeline one last time with blistering fire.

“Enjoy it when we get back, kiska!” Drakon countered, pulling the Mil-8 back into the air. What Liliya hadn’t seen at that moment was the presence of another BMP slowly pushing its way through the woods toward them. On its roof, a Georgian defender hoisted his Strela anti-aircraft missile launcher to his shoulder and lined up the shot. It took only a moment for the Strela to find the massive gunship’s heat signature upon which he fired.

“MISSILE!” Drakon shouted, pulling the Mil-8’s nose skyward and away from the incoming rocket plume. At the same time, Khimera began dumping anti-missile flares from the gunship’s belly. The Strela was even older than the Mil-8 it targeted, so the missile chose instead to attack one of the flares and detonated barely ten meters away from the helicopter.

Drakon felt herself go weightless for a moment as the blast lifted the entire gunship higher into the air. Clenching her teeth and wrenching the throttle and yoke into submission, she let the Mil-8 drop just enough to regain its own power before pulling the machine into a tight turn away from the forest and back towards the northern mountains.

Drakon’s heavy breathing and the thumping heartbeat in her ears had masked all other sounds at first, but after a moment, she registered the odd sound of a wet cough and choking somewhere close by. Sparing a moment to look to her right, Drakon’s adrenaline rush became horrified despair as Khimera clutched at her own throat, trying to ebb the rush of blood painting her flightsuit a deathly dark crimson.

“Nadia! No! Don’t you fucking dare die!” Liliya screamed, now commanding the Mil-8 on trained instinct alone instead of complete awareness of her surroundings. Ignoring the rush of cold air whistling into the cockpit through several jagged holes in Khimera’s canopy door, Drakon put full power to forward motion. To save weight and, possibly, her co-pilot’s life, Liliya dumped all unspent missiles and rockets from the Mil-8’s stumpy wings. “Stay with me, Nadia! Keep your eyes open!”

The cockpit’s aft door swung open, and into the commotion stepped Minnow. Instead of asking any number of stupid questions about their status, the sailor quickly pulled Khimera from her chair and took the bandages from his calf pocket. “Keep us steady! I’ll try and get the bits of slag out!”

Despite the utter chaos and pool of blood on the floor of the gunship, the man Drakon had derided as a Minnow was still calm and controlled. Sparing only a moment to look back, she saw trained hands trying to block the wound from bleeding further while also removing a sliver of shredded steel from Nadia’s neck. Her gunner’s pale complexion had become white from shock, and vibrant brown eyes now trembled in pain. Equally infrequent, the sailor would lean forward into Khimera’s seat to retrieve whatever he could, going so far as to take Khimera’s checklist pad and rip pages from it to pack into the dressing.

Seconds stretched into centuries as they fled for home, Drakon’s attention now unequally divided between watching her gunner bleed out and trying not to smash the entire Mil-8 into a cliffside. “Get ahold of field station, let them know we’re coming!” She shouted at the sailor, no longer caring that her voice shook with anger and fear.

Pressing down on the field dressing with one hand and using his other crimson-stained hand to manipulate the gunship’s radio set, he was quick to find the emergency channel set in his own mission brief. “Morskoy; Akula! Objectives completed, one wounded on the aircrew!” The sailor reported, nodding when he received a response before setting the headset down and calling to Drakon. “They’ll be waiting for us…she may just make it!”

A promise that turned an already-grueling flight of delicate maneuvers and subtle course changes into a marathon against the icy fire growing in Drakon’s stomach. Were this any other mission, her orders would’ve had her lay waste to the entire Georgian response, and let the politicians weasel their way out of a larger war if they want! Yet the company had been clear in its contract, and her wounded stallion had to bring the ground team home. Pushing the Mil-8 at its maximum power for so long had brought the stallion a wheezing rattle in its engine’s normal rumble, but Drakon didn’t care at the moment, as she could see the runway on her nose now. Several vehicles were gathered at the end to meet them, and she set the gunship down with an atypically hard ‘thud’ at the end of the concrete. Immediately, Drakon unbuckled herself, ignoring the voice shouting at her through the radio.Vaulting around her pilot’s seat, she took to Nadia’s side opposite the sailor. 

Liliya didn’t bother to read the sailor’s eyes, as the ghostly-pale skin and the unmoving chest of her co-pilot told Liliya everything she needed to know. “When?” Was the only question Liliya could muster, her normal Drakon ferocity now heavy and drained of feeling.

“About ten minutes ago.” Akula answered. “I’m sorry.”

Liliya’s hands balled into fists, and she slammed those into the Mil-8’s floorboards. The small splash of blood that leapt up her fingers elicited a fiery roar from her throat, drawing the attention of Akula’s men as they departed the gunship’s aft ramp and circled the wounded stallion in shock. One of them tried opening the Mil-8’s copilot seat, only to have the door itself come off the hinges in his hands and clatter to the helipad. Akula barked an order for his men to disperse, but Liliya cared little for anything else. Carefully, Liliya tucked her arms under Nadia’s lifeless body and pulled it upright. Needing no cues, Akula did the same on the other side, tucking Nadia firmly into Liliya’s arms, then opening the pilot-side door to ease their exit.

Once Nadia’s body had been laid in the field medic’s tent, Liliya let her brain register the feeling of crimson stickiness along her skin and between her fingers. She also became acutely aware that she’d been followed. “Thank you…for trying to save her.”

Without warning, Liliya’s next response was her fist against the sailor’s cheek, which surprised the larger man but didn’t stagger him. Instinctively, his hands mirrored Drakon’s, but he released his fists quickly. Such restraint didn’t go unnoticed by Liliya, but her fire was too unbridled to acknowledge it at the moment. “That was for your life, you fucker. Tell me it was worth it.”

“It’s never worth it to lose a comrade,” he began, “but these are the risks we take. She died well, and you brought everyone home.”

Liliya was silent for a moment, then allowed herself to nod once. She’d been fully prepared to hit this man again, or be hit for daring to strike him, neither would be new occurrences. Yet this sailor neither lashed out in response, nor cowered at her rage. This steadfast calm surprised Liliya, and her shoulders sagged at the unmoving company. 

It was then the fire inside her cleared enough to pierce the fog in her thoughts. “The extraction was too risky, but I did it anyway. I put her on this slab.” She snarled as the words spilled from her lips. “So tell me, fish-fucker; what was her death worth to the company?”

“We destroyed a prototype light-attack platform the Georgians were building, and a large stock of old Soviet air-to-air missiles.” the sailor began, before looking back at the damaged Mil-8 and its still-smoking exhaust pipes. “Whatever comes next will be that much safer.”

Liliya snorted at that, turning her gaze to match his, toward her wounded stallion. “If I were in a fucking gunship, she’d still be alive.”

“Or would you both be dead in your next operation because the Georgians sold their machines to someone else?” he countered. “New weapons mean that those bastards are trying to break into markets they have no business in. Now, we’ve set them back years, or maybe permanently.”

Liliya gave the sailor an icy stare, but allowed herself a curt nod. “So you think the company is planning more ops out there?”

He nodded, “I’d bet my pennant on it. They wouldn’t send you and a fully-stocked Mil-8 for a single sortie.”

In a surprise to Liliya herself, a small measure of a grin crossed her face. “And what is that pride worth?”

Raising an eyebrow at the challenge to his assertion, the sailor pulled a small billfold from a front pocket and drew out a five-thousand ruble bill, which he laid on a nearby cart. “If I’m wrong, consider it my donation to Nadia’s memorial, or a bottle of fine spirits for you.”

Drakon looked at Akula with a mix of dumbfounded respect and dark mirth. After a beat where words competed to coalesce into a thought, all she could do was chuckle. Meeting the taller man’s eyes, she extended a steely hand in a gesture she hadn’t allowed anyone to share since welcoming the now-fallen Khimera. “Liliya Maksimovna Kharlamov.”

He took the hand with equally strong grip, “Mikhail Aslanov Rybakovl.”

*******

Another slice of backstory for the Wildlife Team, and one that I’ve worked on for longer than any others. This was a challenge not only of character but of situation, and I wanted both to flow as smoothly as I could picture it, and hopefully I did.

I hope you all enjoy.

Grlzli’s Side-story

Volk’s Side-story