Mark

Taiga, night. First — interference on the air, then — both engines fail on all four "Skifs" at once. Too synchronized for coincidence. Ejection at two hundred meters, canopies in the treetops, impact, silence.

Mark unbuckles, falls into the moss. The mat is so dense that a bird takes off.

One hundred nineteen million for the machine, and it, damn it, crashes into a fucking tree!

(Engines. Both. No flash, just died. Four machines at once. This is not a failure — it's sabotage.)

The radio crackles: Timur — safe, Artyom — responding. Kirill is silent.

Moth, damn it, respond.

Three seconds of crackling. Then a weak, angry voice:

...responding, comrade captain. Tree. Hurts, but I'm okay. Can't take off the canopy, I'm hanging.

(Alive. Everyone's alive. We can breathe.)

Received. Assembly at my square. Alive — means lucky, I won't write a report.

Inventory: two pistols — with Mark and Timur, first aid kit, three rations, flasks, radios, knife. Base — almost a thousand kilometers to the northwest.

Mark lays everything out on the tarpaulin and squats down.

Alright, listen up, you bastards. Two guns, three meals for four people, a thousand kilometers of forest. This is not a flight — it's survival. Radios — check-in every hour. Food — for eight days. Fire — in the pit, no smoke: I don't fucking know whose hands moved our engines. Shooting — only at targets I approve of. Crows don't count, Volkov.

(Three rations, four mouths. Without game we won't make it. We go along the stream — it'll lead us to the river, river — to people. The plan is bad but better than standing and loving each other.)

Timur picks up a piece of cladding with a melted edge:

Commander, the cut is even. Like something burned it out.

I know.

(We weren't just shot down. We were opened up. Someone was testing a way to jam hypersonic sound. This isn't taiga — it's someone's testing ground.)

Mark stands up, adjusts his pistol and looks over his three men — dirty but alive.

Storm team, assemble. Thunderstorm — lead; Moth — close by so I can see your face. Gravel — last in line. We head northwest along the water.

(Friends are alive; enemy unknown; food for four days. Smiling is only allowed in two cases — so not now. Now - we move)