Chapter 368 The Fall of Kyiv
[The second chapter will be up in a few hours]
Velyka Doblon, Ukraine, November 3, 2017.
A gentle snow was falling on the small vige of Velyka Doblon. The winter cropsy dormant under the white nket that Mother Nature had pulled up to cover the sleepy town and its residents were still yet to wake up for the day. Their livestock was still slumbering in their sheds, dogs and catsy near warm fireces inside the houses, and the roosters were just beginning to stir in preparation for their daily jobs of yelling at the sun and chasing the hens. Everything was the same as the day before, and the day before that, and the people living there thought things would remain the same tomorrow, and all of the tomorrows toe.
They were simple folk, and, being far away from the hustle and bustle of city life, they thought they would remain safe from the conflict on the border with Russia.
Today, they would learn that their thinking was wrong.
The vigers were awoken, not by the sound of roosters, but of barking dogs and boots crunching through the snow against a backdrop of growling diesel engines and the squealing treads of tanks. One dog, not knowing any better, even ran up to the marching Russian infantry, its tail wagging and tongue pping from the side of its mouth in time with its floppy ears bouncing up and down on the sides of its head. It probably thought the people were friendly and wereing to y, but it was mistaken.
They were not.
A gunshot rang out, followed by a brief yelp, and theughing of Russian soldiers.
“Yevgeny, looks like we’re eating dog meat tonight!” one soldierughed and patted the soldier that had shot the dog on the shoulder, congratting him for his good aim.
The order was passed by the colonel in charge of this particr column of Russian troops for them to halt. The troops and vehicles came to a halt just outside the idyllic little vige, all of them wondering what they were stopping for; Kyiv was still quite a distance away from them, after all. But they didn’t have to wonder for long as the next orders were clear: leave none alive.
Theymenced their ughter, and within minutes, the idyllic little hamlet had been left with no survivors. The troops formed back up and marched on, leaving a new ghost town in their wake, one that was filled with the resentful ghosts of the innocents whose blood now stained Russian hands.
Soon, Mother Nature had once again pulled its white nket over the small vige of Velyka Doblon, covering the red mud, extinguishing the few fires left burning, and returning it to its former idyllic appearance, save for one difference.
Nothing lived there anymore. Even the livestock had been rounded up and herded away by the logistics troops apanying the invading column of Russian troops.
......
Tucked away in a hastily dug bunker, five beautiful women kept watch over a sleeping man in a preservation coffinid on the ground behind them. The man was groaning, tossing, and turning as his flesh squirmed like live worms and snakes had been nted beneath it and his bones creaked and groaned. He was undergoing a gic modification, and it would soon bepleted. Even while he himself was being kept unconscious by the sses on his face, his body was still reacting to the painful process of turning one person into another,pletely different person.
He wasn’t even the first to be graced with residency in the coffin he nowy in, either. It had been airdropped to the nyxians and had contained a charred corpse at first. Well, whether or not it could be considered a “corpse” was actually undetermined, as it was a clone of dimir, who was the coffin’s current resident, and had never been “alive” in the first ce. It was grown in a vat using the same principles as an atomic printer, save that it used an organic material’s DNA to grow, hastened by the printer in the bottom of the vat rapidly cing the newly grown cells in their proper locations, all while nourishing them with the bubbling green liquid that filled the ss vat.
The dead, charred dimir was dropped near the militia camp that the live one had just blown up, nting his “corpse” to prove that the intelligence operative was actually dead, should anyone care to investigate. Which they would, as a nyxian that had been embedded in the KGB as an intelligence analyst would raise the rm a few hourster.
And in two or three days, once dimir’s transition wasplete, he would be awoken and begin his next task for the intelligence branch of ARES: recing his target.
......
The same column that massacred Velyka Doblon continued its march, and after a few days—thanks to the work of the Russian KGB and local Ukrainian coborators—arrived outside Kyiv, where it met the other four columns of invaders. Their smooth progress was made possible by the n that dimir drew up and the massive intelligence branch of the Russian government paving the way by sabotaging the Ukrainian militia encampments and assassinating its leadership.
Once the four columnsbined, they rested. The next day, the invasion of Kyiv, and the downfall of Ukraine, would officially begin.
......
dimir, on the other hand, was smuggled back across the border and into Moscow by a trail of nyxians. He reached the Kremlin in the early afternoon and openly marched into Putin’s office. He sat down across from the Russian dictator, put a small ck cube atop the desk, and, in Putin’s own voice, said, “Hello,rade. I need a favor from you. Well, actually, I don’t need a favor from you—I need to BE you.”
He smiled at the dictator, then reached across the desk and dragged him to the top of it, where he put a familiar pair of sses on the struggling man’s face. Then he said to the empty air, “Begin the download.”
dimir settled in to wait for the process of downloading Putin’s mind map to bepleted. Soon, he would rece the man on every level, from his gics to every single secret contained in his head and everything else. In every respect, dimir Putin would cease to exist, and dimir, the Edenian agent would take his ce as the leader of Russia.
He could hardly wait.
......
In Kyiv, the citizens were huddled in basements or in sturdy buildings as the initial bombardment began. The Russian troops had been softening up the city’s defenses for four whole hours as the citizens ran, hid, and died to artillery, bombs, and tank rounds. They started out screaming, but now the regr people had lost their voices and could only silently pray to whatever gods there were that they would survive to see the next day.
Then, the invasion began. After four hours of indiscriminate shelling, the Russian troops made their way to the government building, where they captured the surviving leadership of the country and forced them to capitte.
Seven days. One short week was all it had taken for Russia to bring down Ukraine, from the moment they crossed the border to the moment they captured the survivors in the government building.
Kyiv, and by extension, Ukraine, had fallen.