Vladimir tapped his heel on the ground impatiently while he waited for the gunship pilots to get back. Ordinarily he would have more than enough self-control to strangle a nervous tic, but his current circumstances were far from ordinary. Moscow was gone, his General and friend was readying what was by all accounts a planet cracker, and the Americans still hadn’t struck with a follow up attack. No part of it made sense. Not the least of which was that he knew the Americans had to have some inkling about the weapons experiments going on at this base. Enough funding was going into it, how would they not? And yet Kubinka was relatively unharmed, and their radars hadn’t detected the slightest threat in the sky.

  Something wasn’t adding up. What Vlad hated the most, was that he didn’t know what. Did the Americans strike Moscow with stealth missiles, only to be following up with a conventional air campaign while they were in disarray? Was Moscow even gone? And, again, why hadn’t the Americans struck Kubinka?

  As Vlad’s nervous tapping continued, his thoughts swirling, he finally picked up the heavy thumps of helicopter blades thundering away over the horizon. He kicked off the wall he was resting against and motioned to two nearby Marshallers, who promptly identified landing spots for the three returning gunships. They lit up their flares and batons and started waving at the helicopters as they drifted into the airspace of the base, motioning them down into their respective spots as Vlad watched on impassively. Hopefully, they’d give him more answers than questions.

  He gave the pilots long enough to thump their aircraft onto the tarmac heavily, and not a moment longer. He took after Aleks in that regard, and startled the marshallers as he skirted past them, snatching up a baton and giving a signal to the nearest gunship. He barely made out the copilot giving an acknowledgement from the dark cabin, and moments later the hinds side door was sliding open for him. He clambered inside, and the copilot passed him a headset that he took gratefully. His hearing was long damaged from so much time on the field, but even then the aircrafts thundering rotor blades hadn’t been the most comfortable sound.

  “What do you have for me?” He asked, switching to the aircrafts comm system.

  “Moscows splattered sir, there isn’t a standing structure for miles. It’s just like we feared, the cities been wiped off the map. There’s no way there’s any survivors.” The pilot -Dimitri, he vaguely remembered- responded.

  “So it was nukes after all? I didn’t think the Americans had it in them.” Vlad began, only for the copilot to shake his head.

  Vlad looked between the two men waiting for an answer, and sharpened his gaze when they took too long for his liking. “Well, what did you see? Spit it out.”

  “Well, it wasn’t nukes, sir. It can’t have been.” Dimitri answered.

  “What the hell do you mean? How can you possibly be sure of that?”

  “The damage… it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. The city isn’t just gone, sir. It’s been melted down. There’s a lake of molten material where Moscow used to be. I don’t know what the hell hit it, but I watched the bombings of LA and Korea live on my television. This definitely wasn’t nukes. Maybe waves of nukes could have caused it, but we’d have seen those on radar. I don’t know if you can make anything of that, but that’s what we saw.”

  Vlad rubbed his temple with his hand, deep in thought. After a moment, he spoke again. “And there wasn’t any debris? No mushroom cloud, no fallout, no nothing?”

  “Well, there was certainly some particulate matter in the air. There wasn’t a mushroom cloud, though. Visibility was good too. Moscow was giving off a lot of light. It’s as I said though, there was no evidence of anything nuclear from the air.”

  “And the other pilots will verify this?”

  Dimitri gave a shrug. “How should I know if they watched the bombings? I bet they did though, and I bet they would.”

  Vlad settled back against the wall of the cabin in thought for another moment, prompting the two pilots to exchange a glance. It went unnoticed by Vlad the first time, but not the second. He met their eyes sharply. “What?”

  “Just waiting to be dismissed, sir.”

  It took Vladimir a moment to realize that the gunships engines had died down, as had the thrum of the neighboring aircraft. “Yes, of course. Dismissed.” He ordered, before taking his headset off and placing it with the pilots as they hopped out of the Hind together.

  The two men jogged off for one of the distant barracks, leaving Vlad alone with his thoughts. Aleks had been so sure it was the Americans… but what if it wasn’t? He started to pace.

  The Hind pilots had maintained the same thing. There was no evidence of nuclear annihilation. To be sure, Moscow was utterly destroyed. All 15 million, irrevocably obliterated by some greater force that’d seen fit to wipe the slate clean. But what? If it wasn’t nukes, then what the hell could do so much damage? And then also, who besides the Americans would be so brazen as to attack Moscow? And with the capability to destroy it so completely? Surely it wasn’t a terror attack. The only thing that might have been able to cause the destruction Dimitri described hung in orbit above them, and until Aleks had arrived, only Vlad had the key.

  The Chinese, maybe…? But again, they lacked both the means and the motive for such an assault on their sovereignty. No matter which way Vlad thought of it, he couldn’t work it out. They were all missing some part of the puzzle, but one thing was clear: Aleks couldn’t use Gorgon on the Americans if they didn’t commit the crime. Vlad groaned to himself, and ran a hand over his bald head in thought. He eventually shook his head, resigned.

  There wasn’t a way around it. Aleks had to call off the Gorgon strike. He began trudging back towards the hangars and made it halfway to the door, but the crackle of his radio stopped him. Vlad gave a start, and immediately snatched it from his belt. He’d ordered radio silence, only to be broken in case of an attack. If someone was hailing him, there was something wrong.

  “Vladimir responding, what’s the situation?”

  “Commander, we have incoming. Hypersonic speed, eta 30 seconds. How should we proceed?” Vlad stuttered to a stop with a shock, nearly dropping his radio.

  “Thirty fucking seconds!? Where the fuck is it coming from?”

  “Commander, it’s coming from Moscow.”

  “That’s not possible! Is it- is it-” Vladimir wracked his brain, unable to even comprehend something coming from Moscow if it was as slagged as his Hind pilots had just confirmed it was.

  “Whatever it is, sir, it’s huge. This isn’t like anything I’ve seen before, it’s bigger even than an ICBM, it’s-”

  Vladimir switched the feed, broadcasting a full alert. “Kubinka, this is commander Vladimir Lukashenko. We have incoming, I repeat, we have incoming. This is not a drill. Prepare for combat, and mount up immediately.”

  Vladimir’s radio lit up with shouted questions, but he didn’t have time to answer them. He heard the dull rumble of armor roaring to life, and the heavy thump of soldiers starting to race around. Including the pilots he’d just dismissed, already racing back toward him from the barracks to hop into their Hinds. Vladimir wasn’t paying attention to any of that, though. His gaze was locked skyward, counting down along with the eta his radar operator had given him.

  A star appeared in the sky, burning brightly. The burn of a missile, maybe. But so, so much bigger than any he’d ever had the displeasure of seeing. It was coming in just as fast as his radar operator had said, too. The streak was peeling across the sky so quickly he almost couldn’t believe it.

  Vlad quickly switched feeds again. “Aleks, cut the bullshit and get some railguns ready. We don’t have time for Gorgon.” He heard a crash and a shout of alarm, but he didn’t have time to wait for his friend to answer.

  Vlad glanced up again. The light was brighter, now. He ducked his head and turned, starting to sprint into the hangar. It was the only cover for a few dozen meters, and while it’d be useless against a hypersonic missile strike, it was the best hope he had for any kind of safety. He could feel the air pressure buffeting into his back as the thing continued to drop, but he swore he could start to make out the roar of thrusters burning. That meant it was slowing down. What kind of missile slowed before impact?

  “Three. Two. One.” Vladimir huffed, sprinting full tilt for the hangar door. Panicked screams echoed behind him as a bright flash went off, and he dove for the security of the hangar.

  He never met the ground.

  A thunderous boom echoed, sending him flying as the earth and sky roiled around him. Air rushed by furiously, rattling the hangar dangerously as rubble shot from the impact and scattered around him. Vladimir hit the ground a second later, rolling meters until he finally came to a stop, panting for air. Muted cries of panic reached his ringing ears, and he scrambled to his feet, feeling all over himself for shrapnel punctures or anything of the like. Miraculously, he was completely unharmed, aside from his hearing. All he had to worry about now was avoiding choking on the dirt and concrete hovering in the air… that was suffused with an amber glow, and fluttering unnaturally quickly toward the ground.

  A heavy rumble sounded from just past the hangar doors. Like something massive was grinding together atop the tarmac. Vladimir unsteadily got to his feet, then began to stumble carefully for the doors. After a few moments, he hesitantly stepped free of the hangar, not quite able to comprehend what he was seeing. The stars were blocked out by a… thing that knelt in the center of the airbase. Its massive hand glimmered a molten amber, the same color the dust it’d kicked up had glowed with, and once the last specks were settled it turned its gargantuan, rocky head down toward him.

  Vladimir was wholly unable to wrap his head around the enormity of the thing. It had to have been dozens of meters tall even kneeling, and it appeared to be made up of metallic plates, crisscrossing ornately over metal-booted greaves, up an armored torso, and across its massive armored arms and chest. It’s real… skin?, he imagined, had to have been the rocky plating that covered its face and head, that same amber glow beating softly from beneath its plates. Its head was larger than a house, and rounded, like a large, oblong boulder. There weren’t any eyes he could make out, just a glowing mouth, and large, wedge shaped rocks that seemed to shift and move out the back of it’s head. Unless… no, those were its sensory organs- and at that thought they went completely straight, and the giant’s massive head locked directly onto him.

  Its antennae shifted erratically, almost vibrating as its attention focused intently on him. It was… studying him, Vladimir realized, and he took a hesitant step backward, unable to make out the massive things intent. What could he-

  “Sir, are you clear? Should we open fire?”

  The rest of the world came racing back to him. The thundering blades of the Hinds, still somehow secure within the bounds of their makeshift landing pads. The distant rumble of armored vehicles and tanks taking position, and the dull thud of hundreds of footsteps doing the same. He had tons of ordnance painted on the titanic thing before him. The thing that’d come from Moscow. His first thought was yes. The titan beat him to it.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  The baritone rumble rattled his bones, so deep and so powerful it felt like the world was quaking underfoot. Vladimir heard the distant crinkle of glass on concrete as the reverberations of the things voice -Russian, he noted- rocked the atmosphere around him. He had a thousand thoughts racing through his head, none of them pleasant. The massive things antennae twitched all the while, but it stayed perfectly still. It was waiting for him. So, instead of trying for answers he wasn’t likely to receive, he tried for a different track.

  “What are you?”

  It was placid, innocent. Unlikely to provoke an aggressive response from the titanic thing before him. And apparently, it wasn’t a question it’d been expecting. The thing's massive head tilted curiously, as if observing some minor, odd development it had little real interest in. Just enough, though, that its attention had been piqued. He didn’t know how to feel about that, but the look went away just as it’d appeared.

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  “That doesn’t matter. This base houses an experimental weapons research division. You’re planning on using that to start a global nuclear war. That isn’t going to happen. Tell me where the facilities are, and no one dies. Attempt to stall, and annihilation will follow.”

  The voice was thunderous. Commanding. It was almost impossible to think, it reverberated through him so ferociously. Still though, Vladimirs mind whirled impossibly fast. And still, those antennae kept up their rapid shifts. Who said anything about global nuclear war? Annihilation? Whose? Moscow had been hit first, his family had been hit first! Who was this thing to tell him about annihilation? And how did it know Kubinka was a weapons research center? Moscow-

  Vladimir made a sharp intake of breath, but otherwise made no outward move that’d signal to the giant what he was thinking. Moscow certainly would have held that information. And this-

  “Sir?”

  “Hold.” Vladimir ordered, thinking. And coming to a decision, however ill-advised.

  “I’m not sure who the hell you think you are, or where you’re even from, but I currently have hundreds of tons of ordinance locked on you. If you so much as twitch, annihilation will follow, it just won’t be mine. I’ll be damned if some behemoth monster flies in from my cratered capital and orders me around on my own base. I don’t care how big you are, you aren’t invincible.”

  Vladimir noticed a tension suddenly boil into the air. He wasn’t sure how- he doubted the thing had muscles under all that rock- but the threat of violence suddenly permeated the likes of which he’d only felt on the battlefield. He initially thought he’d spoken wrong- and then the titan made up his mind for him.

  “Of course I’m invincible. I’m a god.”

  The rumble had an undercurrent of anger to it, now. He’d meant to make a show of strength, but had his words been an affront to it? And a god? Alien, assuredly, but he had a hard time assuming that an alien could be so big. Let alone speak perfect Russian. He didn’t know what to make of the thing, but he did know that it couldn’t be good if it was looking for Aleks. And, of course, it had to have been. Experimental weapons at Kubinka? Vladimir just oversaw base operations. Aleks had all the knowledge on the MoDs operations, and on Gorgon. And still, the antennae continued to twitch, although more erratically now. He’d pissed it off… and it was losing focus. For all the threat it exuded, it was willing to talk. For now. He could use that. Even so, he started backing up cautiously. Couldn’t be too careful while goading a supposed god, after all.

  “You don’t look like any god I’ve ever heard of. Are you from space?”

  “I’m the god of Earth. Do you seriously think that I’d drop out of orbit to waste my time and abilities with you humans if I had the universe to explore?”

  Well, that was interesting. Not that he could believe it. Then again, he hadn’t imagined that a couple dozen meter talking rock would’ve dropped into his airbase on the night that his capital got nuked either. At hypersonic speeds, no less. Was he hallucinating? Was he drugged? His hairs standing on end certainly felt real. There was a low rumble to the earth now too, as the titans fury increased- the thing didn’t care for people. And here he was intentionally pissing it off, throwing it off kilter.

  “Well for starters, you seem awfully keen to know more about my military base for a “god”. How do you even know this base houses experimental weapons technologies, anyway? And why did you come from Moscow?”

  The tension in the air gained form- literally, as a wall of earth erupted from the concrete and cut off his retreat. Vladimir immediately regretted insinuating the thing wasn’t a god. Even if not in form, any technology that could move the ground wasn’t something he wanted to trifle with. Worse was the rapidly shifting antennae. He almost thought he had them figured out- emotion, maybe? A snarl of rage shook the heavens and earth, interrupting his thoughts.

  “Because-”

  And then the titan cut itself off as its antennae stabilized, and electricity arced between them. Vladimir wouldn’t have caught it if he hadn’t been intently watching it, and in fact, he scarcely believed that’d even been what he’d seen. Except the tension was gone now, and his wall of earth vanished faster than he could process, leaving him stumbling backward in alarm. What just happened? Its antennae were still now. Focused.

  “Is it because you destroyed Moscow?”

  And then they shot back in alarm. Not a very good liar, was it? Except, that meant-

  “What? No! Why would I ever want to get involved in your petty little human affairs? That rarely ends well for anyone.”

  The thing was shocked. Genuinely, he had to assume. But still, its antennae were focused.

  “Can you blame me for thinking otherwise? You seem hostile for a supposed ‘god of earth’.”

  “Enough talking. Your weapon. Where-”

  “You know the funny thing about threats? They start losing their efficacy when you don’t follow up on them. Why did you come from Moscow?”

  Vladimir felt the ground heave underfoot, and distant screams echoed as a fireball bloomed. He quickly unhooked his radio, shouting into it.

  “Hold fire. I repeat, hold fire.”

  “Are you serious? A spear of earth just impaled one of our APCs! It had to have been that fucking-“

  “I said hold your goddamn fire.” Vladimir ordered, before narrowing his gaze. The giants antennae had flattened against the back of his head in rage. Fuck.

  “Satisfied? I came from Moscow because I emerged there. I was investigating the same anomaly that prompted your dumbass to target other nations. And that prompted me to target you. Now tell me the location of your fucking facilities. And if you interrupt me or dodge my question again, then another spear will shut you up.”

  Those antennae were still steady. Was it…? No. That was impossible. It couldn’t tell what he was thinking, could it? Vladimir almost hesitated to test it further. But something had flattened Moscow, and this thing knew what it was. And it was hunting Aleks. Even if it hadn’t crushed Moscow itself, he had a duty to uphold. Both to his General, and to the half-dozen men this thing had just slaughtered. Just one more test.

  “You really want to know what weapons we work on here?” He asked. The titans antennae lost some of their tension as he caught its full attention. This was his last chance. Give up Aleks, or goad it one more time? Fuck. He had a duty to uphold. He resumed his backwards creep.

  “There aren’t any. This is just the nerve center. You want to find the weapons we’re working on? You’re going to need to look a little higher.”

  Those antennae twinged again, but not the aggressive flutter they’d had before. It was subtler. A finer motion. It knew he was lying. It gave a rumbling growl of annoyance.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  But it didn’t trust itself. Or it couldn’t quite tell. Or maybe, it was giving him one last chance to give up his General. His friend.

  “You’re the god of earth, right? I bet you can figure it out.”

  Those antennae went rigid again in surprise, and then the titan looked into the night sky, searching. Electricity flickered rapidly between its antennae again, but he didn’t give it a chance to refocus this time. He was, after all, just inside the hangar again.

  “Fire! Fire, damnit!” He roared, before dropping his radio and diving for cover.

  As he dove, he noticed the titan had somehow managed to lock back on him. Was it that fast? How’d it-

  A wave of tank shells slammed into the titanic thing, cutting off his thoughts as the shockwaves rattled his bones. Vladimir tucked into a roll and came back to his feet sprinting for the Gorgon control room just as the doors swung open, and there was Aleks, a man-portable railgun in each hand. They were powerful anti-vehicle weapons, capable of cracking a tank like an egg, and only able to fire a few shots before overheating. Totally experimental. And, looking at them against Aleks’ profile, he knew they would be totally useless against the magnitude of the threat he’d just declared war on outside.

  “Vladimir! What the fuck-”

  The staccato rumble of auto cannons pounding away at the mammoth thing interrupted the larger man, in time for them both to feel the crackle of the concrete underfoot as the titan clambered back to its feet under the onslaught. The buzzing of drones around and over the hangar caused the two of them to cringe, only for the buzzing to cut out suddenly. Immediately, they were surrounded by the heavy bangs of what initially reminded him of hail. He was clued in to what it really was as attack drones began to drop just outside the door of the hangar. Vladimirs gunships opened up with autocannons of their own, but he could easily make out the harmless plink plink plink of the shells ricocheting off the gods -because how else should he describe it?- armored shell.

  “That thing is hunting Gorgon. We don’t have time, and I don’t think we can stop it. But it came from Moscow, and whatever the hell it is, we can’t let it have that weapon.”

  Vladimir ripped a railgun out of Aleks’ hands and started to try and race back out to help his troops, before Aleks grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “But the Americans-”

  Vladimir wrenched himself free, and spun around to face Aleks. “Fuck the Americans! They don’t have the ability or the guts for a strike like that. What kind of bet do you want to take that it does?”

  Another rumble of earth left the two men reeling, and then a terrible schink schink schink ripped through the air, followed by a calamitous series of detonations that rattled their bones. The two dropped to the ground on instinct, shielding themselves from potential debris as a nearby hangar exploded.

  Aleks looked at Vlad, wild-eyed. “The gunships!”

  “Yes, I imagine that was them.”

  More autocannon fire raked through the air, followed by the furious thump of rotor blades.

  “Not all, apparently.” Vlad answered drily.

  Another cannonade of shells rang out, followed by the sputtering out of several man-portable anti tank weapons and a helpless barrage of small arms fire. And then, over it all, the crackle of lightning. On a cloudless night. The acrid stench of ozone flooded the air.

  “How are we going to-”

  A flash of light, then. And a roar of thunder unlike any that’d shook the earth before. Aleks and Vlad watched through the hangar door as an arc of lightning crackled along the ground, glassing concrete and evaporating soldiers, before slagging an APC and continuing on down the tarmac. Panicked shouts echoed, followed by thunderous detonations as more vehicles were annihilated out of sight.

  “I already told you, I don’t think we’re beating that thing. We need to get a message out.”

  Aleks looked him up and down incredulously. “You seriously think the Chinese will help us? They cut us off after the Europeans stymied us in Poland, and that was before they had their little war with the Americans. You don’t think-”

  “I didn’t mean a literal message. I’m pretty sure that thing was reading my mind while I was talking to it. I imagine it has radio and satellite communication covered too. No, we’ll need something a little bigger than that if we want to get anyone else's attention.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, it did mention that it was pissed off about nuclear war…” Vlad answered, trailing off.

  Another arc of electricity, and another roar of thunder. The two men laid low, creeping forward on their bellies to watch out the doors in horror as a lash of electricity from the titans weapon ripped through another line of tanks, causing them to burst like pustules and sending smoldering slag across the tarmac. It was then that Aleks understood Vlads recommendation.

  “Are you suggesting I launch on the Americans!? Didn’t you just say that came from Moscow?” He asked, nodding toward the thing quickly stomping down the tarmac toward the rest of their forces.

  “Do you have a better idea? They likely have advance warning, and they’re the best positioned to intercept out of any nation we could aim at. If they have any inkling at all that Moscows gone -and they do- then they’ll be ready. And then they’ll get eyes on this base, and hopefully someone will have an answer for whatever the fuck this thing is.”

  Aleks continued to stare at him wide-eyed for a moment, but he could see the gears turning in his head. After a moment, his look softened, and he gave a singular nod.

  “It’ll take time, though.”

  More bursts of lightning lashed out, and the two cringed as the remaining gunships came crashing down around the airfield. There was a heavy thump as immense thrusters flared, and they watched in awe as the monstrous thing went airborne before immediately reversing thrust to land in the middle of their troops and flash a bubble of lightning into being around it. Waves of soldiers burst into ash, and the ground carved around it as the energy field expanded.

  “Well, we don’t have much. I’ll make as much time for you as I can.” Vlad answered, scrambling to his feet and shouldering the railgun.

  Aleks stumbled up himself, not wholly out of practice, but then again he had been out of the field far longer than Vlad.

  “You can’t be serious!”

  “I studied it while it studied me. And besides, you’re the only one with authorization. We don’t have another option.”

  Aleks took a moment to consider that -just a breath- and then he gave Vladimir a salute. “For Moscow, eh? May god help us.”

  “I don’t think this god has much interest in that. For Moscow.”