Atonement

[Vogel]

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"Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will."

Well, that was quick.

Beletsky watched the display with a smirk; two of the guards' signals went dead, but it looked like they had taken the rogue down with them.

He glanced at the black display representing the camera feed and scowled. What a show it probably was! Maybe the man gave up and had a nice clean shot to the base of the spine? Maybe he fought tooth and nail, like a rabid animal, and it took entire magazines to put him down?

"Damn electronics," he spat under his breath.

He smacked the transmit button nearby and spoke into a microphone.

"Alright, good work Comrade Private, now bring the body to the nearest security checkpoint for disposal."

Nothing.

"Comrade? Come in, please."

He tapped his finger on the desk. What, was he too busy wiping the blood off of his face? Maybe. Oh how he wished he'd seen it...

Still nothing.

He called up the camera out in the hallway and checked the door. Still shut, even though the marker indicating the remaining guard was rummaging around inside.

And then the screen went black.

"<System report, Maintenance Section Iota, secondary observation systems power source unavailable.>"

Power source unavailable? Then use backups, of course!

"<System report, Maintenance Section Iota, reserve power engaged.>"

The screen remained black.

Beletsky felt a bead of sweat roll down his brow. Quickly, he punched in commands to display all security cameras, IR sensors, motion sensors, and whatever additional methods of tracking he could remember.

The vast majority of them remained dead. In fact, just about everything in Section Iota aside from the basic bug scanner was inoperable, and it wasn't because the power source had been incapacitated.

It had simply been cut off.

Beletsky's eyes darted back to the overview map and stared incredulously at the room that the rogue had tried to hide in.

Sector Power Hub.

"Comrade Private..."

Beletsky looked at the marker indicating the last guard and didn't even notice his jaw drop.

It had already moved across half the sector.

"Comrade Sub-lieutenant!" a booming voice shouted from a speaker nearby, "What in the name of Katz is going on down there?!"

"Wh- what, oh!" Beletsky yelped, jolting in his seat, "Comrade Colonel! So good to see you, I mean-"

"You blithering fool, answer me!" the irate man belted out, face turning red on a screen window.

"W-well, I, there's been a-" Beletsky stammered, tugging at his collar.

"A what?! Weapons fire, system failures, is there some war in the works that I wasn't informed of?!"

"Y-you see, Comrade Colonel, I was trying to... to... There's been a-"

---

Hefty, these new soldiers of the Dream, weren't they? Fat and bored, it seemed.

Still, they were no different than a sack of flour in the end.

Konstantin hustled down the hallways, a semi conscious Private slung over his shoulder like so much baggage. His mind was a maelstrom of disjointed thoughts, but somewhere in the insanity there reigned a cold, calculating thought process. The well-drilled thoughts of a soldier.

He needed to cut the head off of the snake. To do so for the whole station would be impossible, but perhaps he could chop off a limb?

Bounding through a supply room, Petrovin noticed a pair of startled technicians looking up at him, tools raised defensively.

"Medical emergency, Tovarischi," he panted, skipping over a stray box and bolting through the other exit.

"Good luck, Comrade!" one of them shouted after him.

Such good people, Coalition citizens were!

---

"A what, Sub-lieutenant?"

At that very moment, the door leading into the small security center flew open with a hydraulic hiss, and through it came first a body, and then a pistol.

Beletsky's entire career was about to be decided in the next few moments. It was up to him, he knew. And think of the reward when he was able to put down the nefarious traitor and earn a glorious medal of the Revolution!

Except the actual revolution had other plans. Before the Sub-lieutenant could spin his chair about and bring the gun from his holster, Petrovin had already fired. This time the place of impact was directly in the left eye socket.

Beletsky's illustrious career ended where it began: sitting down.

Konstantin caught a glimpse of some officer or another shouting on a screen. Most likely the Area Director.

He had a few seconds.

Letting his Nagant drop to the floor, next to the unconscious guard who was now serving as an impromptu doorstop, Petrovin ran to the console and roughly shoved Beletsky's husk out of the seat. Tense to the point of being unable to completely sit himself down, the crazed soldier began punching keys as quickly as he could find them on the board.

There was only one way he'd get off this deck. And there was only one way they could stop him.

Sure enough, the security systems were redundant; any attempt to deny access could be overridden by another station console, and any system shut down from here could be brought up from another spot. All he could count on was the time lag it took to do so.

And what better time lag than booting up the entire thing?

Even as the officer on the screen shouted to those beyond the scope of the camera, Petrovin's fingers were working with coordinated purpose. For once, in the grand scheme of things, the Coalition had been unable to predict its own problems ahead of time, and in the milliseconds it took them to compensate, the blow was struck.

The room went dark. In fact the whole deck went dark. Only the faint, red glows of emergency lights, independent of any primary system, remained.

"Boot that up, svoloch'i..."

Konstantin kicked off from the console and made a mad dash for the doorway, scooping up his precious Nagant revolver along the way.

The Marines would be here soon.

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