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| copyright 2025 Acacia Gallagher |
Cell 3C, ICC Detention Center, the Hague
Scheveningen, the Netherlands
As Zielinski brought us back to the main camp, I could see Kaspar with his foot on a big rock. He motioned for everyone to stay back. We could hear him arguing with our Shaymak chief, Demytro Melnik, about the temple ahead.
Melnik was the boss who had taken my tools. He was working two kilometers behind us. Turned out he’d ordered drone surveillance of the mountain peak. He didn’t trust the scouts. Plus, he was furious about the ballast getting laid down behind us. That’s why he was in his position. His bulldozers had prepped the mountain subgrade perfectly. But the team behind the bulldozers had used the wrong crushed rock for ballast between the mountain and the steel tracks. He’d ordered coarse granite, no smaller than quarter-inch pieces. What the team had laid down was a cheap-ass pea gravel made out of sandstone. That wouldn’t do.
He couldn’t blame the scouts for that. But he could blame us for the temple.
“You are responsible for the drone!” he shouted loud enough for Kaspar to distance himself for a moment, with the phone at arm’s length.
“Bullshit. This is not good,” Kaspar said into his handset. “They shot down the drone. That is not our responsibility. It was a peaceful drone, no defenses, and we are only scouts.”
The chief’s voice softened a bit. Those of us around Kaspar could only hear one end of the conversation.
“Yes, that is hostile, boss. Of course. You have the pictures from the robot camera. We can see the temple dome. Yes, it is fixed. Agree. Agree. That is a hard job. Fixed anyway. It is fixed.”
They traded some phrases in Russian. Or maybe it was Ukranian.
“Look, there are monks in the stupa, boss. You have seen them walking in the pictures. They have at least six vehicles.”
“No, no. They are all Russian armored, three UAZ models, two Burlak, one KrAZ 214.”
At this point, Kaspar began raising his left hand. He paced back and forth in front of his rock as he talked.
“How would I know? They have Russian armor pieces, all old. That is what I know. If you want more, send me another drone. A better one.”
He had a funny habit, not of smacking himself on the forehead but of slapping on top of his head when he got impatient. He did it now and left the hand in place for a while.
“No, I will not fire weapons from it. Holy cows. Do not be silly. Unless that is your order. Is that your order, boss?”
Then the phone got loud enough to hear his supervisor’s voice. We couldn’t make out the words. At least, I couldn’t. Come to think of it, this part might have been said in Ukranian. Kaspar paced for a while. He propped his right foot on the rock.
When he hung up the phone, he stuck it in a big equipment pouch he kept strapped onto his armor. He nodded to Sokolov, Mendez, and Negasi.
“Hokay, we are off to talk with the men at the temple. No more pussying around.”
“Is that an order from the Shaymak boss, Melnik?” asked Mendez.
“Da.”
“Shit.”
“Why are we going to talk?” asked Gillian, the American.
“Because we are ordered.”
“No, I understand, but what are we going to say to the folks up there?”
It made Kaspar dig his hands in his back pockets for a minute. Not for the first time, I noticed that the unit leaders generally had better suit coverings with places to hold more weapons and tools. Kaspar had assigned himself the improved gear five days before. He’d been thinking about this. He didn’t know how to answer Gillian’s question, though.
“No more shooting down drones by them. That was bad.” He spoke slowly. Kaspar seemed to be reminding himself of what he had just been told. “They are being where they should not be. Those monks, if that’s what they are. No more. No more getting in the way of this construction.”
“But our tracks go right through the middle of their compound. Temple. Stupa. Whatever.”
The American swept her arm upslope. A few of the others turned to see the tiny dot of the temple dome. The rest of us didn’t want to look. We had been worrying about it for most of the day.
“Because we are ordered,” Kaspar repeated.
There was a long moment of the men and women standing around. Everyone sort of digested the mission summary. It was a little like my last girlfriend breaking up with me over the phone. No one wanted to catch my eye or share the moment. As the awkwardness faded, one of the Ethiopian women pointed at me, then at Kaspar. It made me wonder what I’d done.
“In peace?” Gillian asked in a quiet voice.
“Da.” Kaspar nodded. “Yes, listen to me carefully. All weapon safeties are on?”
“Yes,” said Negasi.
“Da.”
“Agree.”
“Right. Now, everyone who did not fire practice rounds, there is a lock on the weapon safety. Activate it. That is to prevent accidents.”
“Regular safety also prevents accidents, Kaspar.” Sokolov gave him a reproachful scowl. “Unlocking takes a few seconds with no glove.”
“Anyone who did not practice, I want them to have to take the seconds.”
“Yes, boss.” Negasi stood to attention, an untroubled expression on his face. All of the Ethiopians had practiced with their rifles. The order didn’t affect them.
“Si. Yes.” The skin on Mendez flushed red. He muttered an order to the woman next to him. She triggered her safety lock.
“Da,” said Petrov.
Sokolov kept his scowl but he nodded. He exchanged a glance with Mendez. I don’t know what that was about. He tried to catch Szymon Zielinski’s eye, too, but my unit leader was busy punching text into his comm. Maybe the other unit heads thought he was giving us orders. Nothing ever came through the comm but I noticed a couple of my line partners locking down. I hadn’t practiced with my weapon, so I locked down too.
Then for an hour we hiked up a narrow trail left by the original engineering team. It was mostly flat, not graded to the sides, and it followed the natural slope of the mountain. There were big earth mover ruts that would need to be flattened but the nearest bulldozer that would have shaped the earth for us had moved back. It was about a kilometer downslope. At least there had been no rain. That meant the trail was okay, not eroding under us as fast as we could walk. The Shaymak range didn’t get many squalls but, when they came, they made gullies out of our flat roads. It didn’t take much to erode the soil.
Run-off is a problem all around the Shaymak plateau. The peaks are dry. There aren’t many trees high up and they’re usually stunted.
That day, we could see down into the valleys, where it had flooded just before the engineers passed through. The greening in the lower half of the peaks happened surprisingly fast. It’s a natural thing. Also, the artificial irrigation installed to support the railway had kicked in. The lands we built on had been made as fertile as any other converted desert in the world. That’s not a lot, because the plants are still cold desert plants. But it’s something. The water condensers and pumps allow grasses and shrubs to hold down the soil.
In retrospect, it was the irrigation that drew the additional settlers to the area. It wasn’t just nice to have the railroad nearby for its cargo transportation. The locals really needed the extra water. They started new villages along the side of the mountain and farmed as close to the rails as they could. The additional water was, maybe, why the monks at the peak thought they could revive their old temple gardens and support themselves.
Or maybe it was all crazy religion stuff from beginning to end. I don’t know.
“Everyone to the left,” Kaspar ordered when the lines of hikers drifted too far apart.
We had two moments of weirdness on the way to the temple. One was when Kaspar ordered us to line up. We achieved something close to a row. Our suits decided that’s what we wanted and they jerked us into perfect position, a straight line. It was awful. Everyone cursed. A few Russians yelled at Kaspar but I don’t know what they said.
The second crazy thing was a practical joke. Gillian, the American, was hiking up front next to Kaspar because she was part of his unit. One of the Ethiopians, Zala, raised her rifle and took a shot at the lump of ammo on Gillian’s back.
Zala’s smart rifle beeped at her. From where I marched behind, I could see her weapon flash green as it locked down. The AI in it had figured this for a bad shot or a joke.
Nagasi, about a yard in front of Zala, stopped when he heard the beep.He lunged, ripped the gun from Zala’s hands, and threw it on the ground. She stepped back. Me and Zielinski gave them lots of room. It’s not like we were soldiers or anything, but a couple of the scouts had been in their national armies before this gig. Nagasi had been a corporal.
I think, as he stood in silence, that he was realizing Zala wasn’t military. She didn’t have the sense of discipline he expected from her. This whole event, despite the look of it, wasn’t an army maneuver. We were a construction gang. He couldn’t shoot her or send her to the stockade or anything like that. He wanted to, though.
Anyhow, I don’t think Gillian or Kaspar ever knew.
Next, The Mood War, Scene 7
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