Village Seventeen
The next time Yuri Andreyev saw this village; it could be in flames.
From the ridge trail leading down, Yuri Andreyev studied the quiet settlement below from his horse. Women knelt at the stream, beating clothes against smooth stones. Children chased each other through the dust. Men bent over their fields in labor. No one looked up. None of them knew the Empire was coming.
That he was openly watching.
Making sure the way was clear for the troops.
Yuri let his gaze linger on the women’s laughter—light, unguarded, the kind of warmth he had never known. It pressed against the hollow inside him of never knowing his mother, a feeling he crushed on instinct. He had a mission to perform.
The village sat on a slope on the other side of the creek, a scattering of whitewashed huts with thatched roofs and patched stucco walls. No power lines. No machinery. A horse‑drawn cart with bicycle‑spoke wheels. Barnyard animals wandered freely between the buildings. The air smelled of manure and woodsmoke.
A place forgotten by time. A place the Empire would erase without hesitation.
Overnight.
Yuri scanned the terrain with a soldier’s eye for surveillance cameras and hidden weapons nests. Nothing. No barriers. No sentries. No defenses. That left the villagers themselves as the only warning system. A woman pretending to wash could be watching him right now on behalf of the Federation. He kept his guard high.
Ahead, his guide, Garn Asgaroth, shifted restlessly in the saddle, waiting for him to move. Yuri didn’t. He let his stallion crop the grass, its escape speed his insurance if things went wrong.
He hadn’t been chosen over a thousand volunteers to make a mistake now. Not when this close. This was the last village between him and the Federation’s Barrier Wall. There was no getting caught now.
A cold wind rustled the trees. Yuri recalled his instructors’ final lesson: wait, watch, strike only when sure.
He stroked the stallion’s neck, the gesture automatic. The animal was as loyal as any soldier under his command. More loyal, perhaps.
Garn watched him, puzzled. He didn’t know Yuri’s true purpose. The Empire map labeled this place “Village Seventeen.” Garn called his home “New France.” Neither name mattered. What mattered was whether the Federation had eyes here.
Eyes to see him coming.
Eyes to give the alarm.
Yuri turned to him. “Any Federation ahead?”
Garn frowned. “Federation? No. No outsiders come here. You’re the first.”
“What about their spies?”
“They’d have no reason to be here,” Garn said, shrugging. “You think we’re worth watching? That we’ll do what—build a nuclear bomb?”
“Sometimes the quietest places hide the most dangerous secrets,” Yuri replied, voice calm. “Anyone here take an unusual interest in strangers?”
Garn twisted in his saddle to study him. “You’re asking questions I can’t answer, Outlander. How am I supposed to spot a trained spy? Maybe I’m one. Maybe I’m not.”
Yuri allowed a faint smirk beneath his hood. “If you were, would you tell me?”
Garn snorted. “What do you think?”
Yuri said nothing. His mission was simple: pass through this once‑radioactive No Man’s Land and reach the Federation border beyond. He was the spy here. But the Federation would be watching too. Somewhere in this place, someone else like him might be waiting.
Garn finally asked, “You ready?”
“Yes. Let’s go.”
They started down the slope. At the water’s edge, Yuri caught sight of a naked boy—frail, no older than four—his limbs uneven, his gait unsteady. A mutant like Garn. The child’s mother handed him an apple with a gentle smile below a rusted radiation warning sign leaned crookedly near the water, its lettering half‑eaten by time. A relic of the old war.
Two centuries ago, the War of the Great Conflagration had scorched this land. The Twin Alliance and the Union of the Great Republics had buried each other under radioactive rubble. Diplomacy at its finest. These poor, pathetic people were descendants of the survivors, exiled to colonies like this, left to fade out quietly.
The boy clutched a small wooden horse, its paint long gone. He looked up at Yuri with wide, curious eyes—unafraid, expectant.
Yuri’s grip tightened on the reins.
That sensation—caring—rose, unbidden and unwelcome.
He did not have a son. Never would unless he succeeded today.
Yuri reluctantly forced that thought down. Duty required he ignore weakness. Yet his eyes lingered a moment longer than they should have.
He could not let these villagers’ plight stand in the way of his aspirations. If he did, it would be the end of his career.
He told himself if he hadn’t taken this assignment, someone else would have—someone worse. There were things he would at least not do, no matter what uniform he wore. But he could not let these villagers’ plight interfere with his mission. His future depended on success. The bugles and drums were his calling, his glory, and he intended they play.
Yuri nudged his horse forward, gaze shifting back to the terrain. If Federation spies were here, he’d have to silence them. But not the children. Not the defenseless.
Defend the defenseless. Kill anything else that stood in the way.
They approached the village. The women at the stream fell silent, their eyes switching between Garn and Yuri. They sensed something different about him. It wasn’t the cloaked hood hiding his Aryan features.
It was his horse.
Yuri Andreyev’s Empire had no horses as livestock. They existed only as racehorses and polo ponies. Deciding to outfit himself with the quickest means of escape from here possible, Andreyev chose Strider, the fastest horse in the Empire and winner of the Triple Crown.
In a land of broken-down nags, he was riding a creature of unsurpassed perfection. Heads were turning around in awe and wonder to peer at the big, speedy stallion with its fine, shiny coat, powerful, surging, grain-fed muscles, and noble, tossing head. Windows were being opened to witness the sight.
And that produced interest in its rider. Anyone wearing a hood in a mutant province did so to hide some hideous deformity, and so many wondered what it was or how he could afford such a fine horse.
Spies must be able to hide from each other and, for Yuri, a hooded cloak was the best means to do so. He had selected all black to match his horse in case of a nighttime escape. Therefore, he accepted their curious stares now as the price of escape.
They crossed the stream. The huts up close were patched with scavenged metal and sun‑bleached boards.
Garn rode ahead, his four arms moving with practiced ease—one hand on the reins, one adjusting his hat, one resting on the saddle horn, one hanging loose.
His defect was a condition known as ishiopagus. It was the same for most of those who lived here. While Garn had four arms, there was likely someone else ahead with none.
They reached the stream below the village, where the women watched, their gazes switching between Garn and Yuri. He noted nothing suspicious, but appearances could deceive.
Yuri shifted slightly in his saddle, taking in the surroundings. “What about weapons?” he asked
Garn glanced back. “Knives and bows. That’s all. Why—worried?”
“Only when I don’t know what’s in front of me.”
Garn shrugged. “If you’re expecting anything more, you’ll be disappointed.”
Yuri nodded, though he didn’t believe him. Garn’s evasiveness could be ignorance—or something else. Yuri watched the women again, searching for anyone doing anything out of place. Nothing that shouldn’t be.
Their horses splashed across the stream, Yuri watching the women for anything suspicious.
Ahead, a single adobe brick wall was the closest thing to a line of defense—easy pickings for a LAS gun—and the thatched roofs and stucco sidings would easily burn. His fellow Storm Troopers, so named for their lightning attacks, would pass through here in minutes.
Entering the village, the people themselves were not what he expected. He had ridden through seven villages so far to get here since leaving the Empire’s borders and he had seen none of the three-headed horrors and crippled wrecks of humanity he had been briefed to expect. Yet they weren’t what they should have been either. A little girl with pointed ears and a curly pink tail clutched a rag doll missing a limb. A boy with patchy red hair toddled into the road until his mother—her skin patterned like reptile scales—pulled him aside. An albino man with white hair and red eyes stood in a doorway, staring too intently.
Siamese twins, disfigurements, and other abnormalities, he’d been told, were the norm here. Yet looking over the villagers this close, not everyone’s defect was obvious. Most showed no physical deformities that prevented them from fully functioning or passing as somewhat “normal.” They still had defects, of course—everyone did. However, the serious cases that the Empire had prepared him for were nowhere to be found. The same was true in the other villages. It seemed that everyone appeared serviceable, except for a few individuals with unusually long or short limbs. The real monsters, he suspected, had died off.
The Empire's enslavement and forced sterilization would put an end to their corrupted lineage and did not require his permission. Then the world could finally move on from this. History would continue—but without them. The scars and reminders of the past war would finally disappear.
Yuri looked upon the children with regret at awaited them. They had no idea what storm was coming. Garn saw his uncomfortable expression and mistook it for disappointment.
“What were you expecting, Andreyev? A parade?”
Yuri didn’t answer. His attention shifted back to his mission. Every detail mattered. The Federation would want eyes here. If Garn wasn’t telling him everything, Yuri would find out himself.
The albino was staring at him suspiciously, not for his horse, but to spot his own deformity of which everyone here was hardly lacking.
Yuri felt the danger of that stare. No doubt, the albino was making guesses of his own about him.
Stay steady. Stay focused. He was just two days away from completing his mission.
He knew the Federation could disguise an operative easily—hair dye, contacts, a fabricated mutation. The albino could easily be one of them. Their missions could collide. Their fates could cross.
If so, too bad for him.
He kept riding, but his hand drifted toward the weapon beneath his cloak, the motion instinctive, but unwelcome. He didn’t want this confrontation—not here, not now.
The path of an officer was paved through accomplishment. Yuri’s actions here could shape not just the albino’s future—but his own. The die had been cast. The threads of their destinies tangled in this moment. And right now he was deciding whether to let the albino live... or die.
Training versus conscience.
The albino stepped closer.
Yuri’s fingers brushed the grip of his weapon.
Seconds. Mere seconds to decide.
