"Kalashnikov's", Zvezdny Gorodok

[arvg]

song

Katz entered the bar early, his bodyguards taking positions at the doors, leaving the Premier alone with the bar in the small hours of the morning.

He helped himself to a cup of coffee at the worn wooden bar, turning to look at the multi-levelled room that held such memories.

The battered hull plate of the Terra-IV set up as a large table. The ancient earth jukebox. The wall of heroes where the faces of McIntosh, Richtofen, Karchov and others stared back at him. History, the history of the SCRA, the glorious fighter corps of the People's Coalition.

Across the room the bloodied Ontario flag hung, like a proud war trophy next to an array of trophies brought back by El Coyote's Havana raids. A piece of a SCUD missile hanging from the ceiling with the words "From Russia with Love!" penned upon it.

They had a rich history, and a proud one, a tradition of pride, of unrelenting determination. Of perseverance.

He drank from a mug which read "Ikon my Ikon, all hail the Volkhan!" Ironic, given all it had taken to fell the despot. Yet another trophy on display in the Klash.

Thornvoldsson, Rictopfen, Karchov, Weiss, Totenkopft, Ares, Razin, Gonzales, Heinz, Guillentra, Medvedov and others, shadows of the past, replaced with men of the future.

In their place were Quintella, Rhade, Ulrich, Broch, Ling and a new breed of Loyalists. Ready to keep moving forward with the Coalition, with the idea, with the Revolution.

He remembered when he had first come into the bar, sitting smoking a cigarette as a mere Junior Lt. readying for a patrol in a Partisan, half expected to die on his first mission. Now he was the Architect of the Revolution, the True Ikon. He wondered which of the new kids would rise to eclipse him, and become the future leader of the Great Coalition People.

He toasted the ghosts in the room.

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