Igor Ljubuncic's Blog, page 5
April 3, 2020
The Golden Horde, Chapter 27
Ignoring the wounded, Lee Qiang tuned his mind back to the fight. They had to neutralize the armor first. If they did not, they would all die. He tried to close his fist. It worked. He opened it. A spongy feeling, but his muscles responded. His sleeve was drenched with blood. The fabric was ripped in two places where the shrapnel had cut through. Lee Qiang rose, using his left arm to pull himself up against the greasy side of...
March 27, 2020
The Golden Horde, Chapter 26
Maybe you use some of that gay charm to talk our way out of this? Lee Qiang put a hand on Lips shoulder and loved the fact the man flinched ever so subtly. Not sure if thats going to work here, but thank you for your suggestion. There was a bridge. Flowing lazily under it, the Volga River. Guarding both banks was a shady bunch of troops in mismatched camo and a serious stock of weapons. There were not that...
March 20, 2020
The Golden Horde, Chapter 25
Yefim had rhotacism. Back in Poland, when Lee Qiang had been growing up, such a speech impediment would have earned a child a lifetime worth of beating. Probably in all the Slavic countries. The fact Yefim was still very much healthy and alive in Sector 8 meant the childhood bullying had prepared him well. They sat in the mans house, in what would technically be the living room, drinking too-sweet tea from small crystal glasses. It was surreal. Kaliningrad, Stockholm,...
March 13, 2020
The Golden Horde, Chapter 24
Well, aint that bloody marvelous, Lip whispered. Yes, but what now. What can you tell us, Cliff? The engineer was holding the Geiger counter toward the blast. It did not show any elevated readings, beyond what they expected to find this close to Orenburg. We did receive an initial dose of infrared and gamma. Does anyone have any burning sensation on their skin or impaired vision? A rounds of negatives came back from the group. Cliff nodded. Now, the tricky...
March 6, 2020
The Golden Horde, Chapter 23
Dusk. Rest. Fucking Orenburg was still there around them, a torn postcard of destruction, obscured by the wilderness. At the bottom of what looked like a dry irrigation canal, there was a convoy of abandoned cars all sunk deep in sandy ground. Plastic bags of rubbish poked through the grass, spangles of red and blue against the sunburnt carpet. Higher on the west bank, there was a bus. The rust-splotched husk was lying on its belly, the axles half-sunk into...
February 28, 2020
The Golden Horde, Chapter 22
“I have no access.” “You’re taking the piss.” Why did I think the enemy would be stupid and incompetent? Just because I managed to screw the lead security developer? There could be a million reasons why the system refused him entry. It was unlikely the Alliance space command changed things too often, but they just might. Security codes, protocols, ciphers—there were infinite possibilities. Lee Qiang didn’t have time to indulge in self-pity. This was going to be one hell of...
February 21, 2020
The Golden Horde, Chapter 21
Waiting was the hardest thing for a soldier. Waiting for sentry duty to tick away so you could go back to sleep. Waiting for the weekend pass. Waiting to hear whether you’d qualified for the next stage in the training process. Waiting for news from your family or the estranged loved one. Waiting for the enemy to do something. That was the worst. It was basically admission that your life was no longer in your control. You were a puppet....
February 14, 2020
The Golden Horde, Chapter 20
Fucking Orenburg. Everyone shared the sentiment, even Lee Qiang. Crossing the no-man’s-land of empty fields, flattened neighborhoods, and glassified rubble only partially covered in dirt and weed, he had felt exposed, vulnerable, impotent, feeling half a dozen scopes trailing him, making his skin itch. But no bullets came. They had settled in a less devastated part of the city, with some of the concrete and iron frames still standing, providing some cover from the wind and any chance patrols....
February 7, 2020
The Golden Horde, Chapter 19
The village was not marked on any map. Of course. It was a collection of half-ruined buildings, rubbish, and rust-eaten cars. There was an old tractor in the field directly south of the house strip and its cracked road, but it was sunk half a meter deep into the hard ground. The water tower had more holes than tin. The barn had gaping holes in the roof, probably caused by mortar. Lee Qiang looked at Sveta. She just shrugged. The...
January 31, 2020
The Golden Horde, Chapter 18
Light at the end of the tunnel. A promise of salvation. Or a gruesome, violent death. It was amazing how quickly the human body and mind could adjust to new situations. Going into the damp darkness of the mold-smelling bunker network had felt like exploring one’s own coffin. After four days of tense, numbing blackness, there was almost a peaceful sense to the underground passage. Lee Qiang knew it was his brain trying not to go mad. Now, this. Sveta...
