The Fall of Night

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Fall of Warsaw

Warsaw, Poland

Shalenko watched dispassionately as the forces slowly invested the Polish city. Warsaw had once seen two brutal uprisings against the Germans, and the Polish forces had been trickling into Warsaw ever since the first blows had been struck in the war. It actually worked in his favour; the Poles would have thousands of their soldiers trapped neatly in a pocket, which he had surrounded before preparing to reduce it.

Modern war hadn’t changed city-fighting much. The Americans had taken Baghdad easily; they had just been able to walk in with only a handful of causalities. Holding the city had been a different matter. The fight for Qom, in Iran, had rivalled Stalingrad; after the first nuke had detonated, neither side had been interested in showing quarter. Even today, Qom was still partly ruins.

“Ensure that our broadcast continues to go out,” he ordered. The sound of fighting was getting louder; the last thing he wanted was more civilian deaths than he needed. “Inform Nikita that he can begin the offensive as soon as he is ready.”

“Yes, sir,” Anna said.

“Citizens of Poland, this is an emergency announcement,” the voice said, over the radio. “There is a military emergency in progress. Remain in your homes. Do not attempt to interfere. Do not use the telephones, radio transmitters or the Internet. If you require medical assistance, stay calm; help will come to you. Do not disobey this warning. Listen only on this channel for further instructions. There is a military emergency in progress.”

Zyta Konstancja hit the button hard enough to almost break her finger. The radio had been one of a set intended for transport to some third world hellhole or another; her sister had worked for Polish International Aid before the local government had evicted all western aid workers. Her sister had been upset, even before Zyta herself had gone to work for her own living; she had always wanted to aid people who had needed help. Melania Kazimiera hadn’t been put off by what had happened to some aid workers, but Zyta herself had been privately relieved when the workers had been sent home.

Melania herself was older than Zyta, mother of two children, both born after she had returned. Zyta had, on impulse, gone to stay the night with her sister… and then the ‘military emergency’ had begun. The Polish television stations had gone off the air, along with most of the power lines to the city, but rumours spread fast; the Russians had invaded Poland. The news had spread quickly; Melania’s husband had gone off to join off with the rest of his army unit, wherever it was. Everyone, Zyta included, had been terrified when Russian aircraft had bombed the city; their precision weapons had taken out most of the government buildings. They hadn’t heard anything from her brother-in-law yet.

Melania’s voice was very tired… and terrified. If it hadn’t been for her children, Zyta suspected her sister would be a nervous wreck, but she was trying to put on a brave front. There had been some riots in the streets — no one seemed to know whose voice it was on the radio — and the police had tried to contain them, but most people were trying to stay at home.

“Zyta,” Melania asked, “when is this going to end?”

Zyta glanced down at the television. It was supposed to be permanently linked into the global information systems; the modern media depended upon them to function. The builders were more than just a television company, no matter what its detractors said; it relied completely on the Internet and the developments in compressing and transmitting streams of data right across the world. Critics might have sneered that left or right-wingers could have their information adjusted to their personal bias, but anyone who subscribed could access a massive store of information. The global network was overloaded; the help service had been unable to regain anything beyond the single bland radio transmission.

“I don’t know,” she said. The rumour mill had reported that the Russians had invaded and sacked Tallinn, in Estonia, only to report moments later that it had been a peaceful entry into the city. She didn’t think that it was possible for word of anything from that far away to spread so quickly; it might have been a mistake or a lie or…

A distant rumble of gunfire echoed across the city. There had been noises in the distance all though the night, some of them carried by the wind, from explosions to heavier weapons. The power failure meant that most of the city’s support services had failed; after the first riots, most people remained indoors, out of sight. Zyta knew that that wouldn’t last either; she’d followed the advice of her sister and checked their food supplies. They had, if they were lucky, enough for a week; once that time had passed, they would have to venture out into the streets to find food.

And hope that we can pay for it with money, she thought. Most citizens of Poland used credit or debit cards for larger sums of money, except the banking computers would have gone down along with the power supplies. She had a debit card, one that would be useable right across the world, but if there was no power, she might not be able to use it. If not… the thought of trading her body for food was disgusting, but she had her two nieces to support; if she had to do that, she wondered if she would. I think that…

A scream echoed across the sky, followed by a series of explosions. They sounded far too close for comfort; the Russians seemed intent on scaring them to death. Someone was moving outside, running down the deserted streets; she’d heard some of the men in the apartment block talking about taking weapons and going to join the defenders. Few of them had placed any faith in NATO — or at least the Germans — and they had wanted to aid the defenders. She could only hope that they were only trying to appear tough; they might have been assholes who had kept eyeing her, but they didn’t deserve to die. More explosions followed, nasty sounds; Melania whimpered as the sun rose.

“I’m going to the top,” Zyta said, suddenly. Her friends had advised them to find a bomb shelter if they could, or to remain inside, but there hadn’t been any shelters or basements anywhere nearby. She had been told to stay off the roof — it wasn’t safe at all — but she couldn’t stay in the apartment any longer. “Stay here.”

She left the room before Melania could stop her, stepping into the apartment corridor and heading for the stairs. The elevator had been out ever since the power had failed; she could only hope that no one had been caught inside when it died. There were no lights, not even emergency lights; the only illumination came from the windows. One of them was broken, leaving glass scattered all over the floor; a faint smell of urine rose up from one corner. Wrinkling her nose, she walked quietly up the stairs; there could be any number of human animals around. She hadn’t seen a police officer in hours… and she hadn’t felt in so much danger since a nasty incident when she had been younger. The sense of threat was almost overwhelming; she almost stopped before pushing her way forwards up the final flight of stairs and bumping into the final door. It was locked.

She almost broke down into giggles, then saw the opened padlock and removed it, before opening the door properly and stepping out into the open. The smell of smoke hit her first, almost before she saw anything; the smell was drifting right across the city. Smoke… and something else, something she was almost reluctant to place a name to; she sensed the body almost before she saw it. The landlady had kept a small garden on the roof of the apartment… and someone had shot her. Her body lay in the middle of the garden, stone dead. Zyta checked it, closing the eyes automatically, and stood up completely.

“My God,” she breathed. The sight was overwhelming. Words threatened to fail her as she turned, trying to grasp the entire scene. “What is happening?”

It was like a war zone — no, she corrected herself, it was a war zone. She couldn’t see any actual soldiers, but she could see smoke rising from the east, with aircraft flying high overhead. The aircraft were large, they seemed to be like jumbo jets, but very different in purpose; they were unloading weapons down onto the ground below. Zyta had very good eyesight; she could see one of the bombs, a massive black speck, falling towards the ground… and expiring in a thunderous explosion.

Moments later a force of Russian jets thundered by, at very low level. A missile reached up to touch one… and it fell out of the sky, slamming into a building and exploding, the others retreated, launching their weapons down towards the source of the missile. Light flared up within the city; the force of the missile’s impact shattering buildings and killing hundreds underneath. The noise of an alarm echoed across the city, and then it died; she could hear shots from the battle outside.

She stared, suddenly heedless of her own safety. The shooting seemed to be coming from right outside the city, far too close to her; she saw a force of helicopters diving down and firing at what she hoped was a defence line. Explosions flared up, time and time again; she hoped that it was better than it looked. It looked as if there would be no one left when the Russians had finished; flames were already spreading through some of the newer parts of the city. Sections built after Poland had become independent again were on fire; she wondered if the Russians had targeted them deliberately, just out of spite.

The building shook. She fell to her knees as a missile detonated, far too close to her for comfort; a massive Russian aircraft had just blasted a building. She’d seen, very briefly, Polish soldiers on the roof; the Russians had flattened the entire block. She forced herself back to her feet, only to see that things had become much worse; Russian helicopters were moving over the city… and a massive cloud of smoke and fire was advancing into the city. The Russians were directly assaulting the city, she realised; the defenders had been forced back into the city, some of them breaking and running. Civilians were running as well; she could see them fleeing the fighting that had suddenly enveloped their lives, hundreds, thousands… perhaps more of them cut down in the streets in a haze of blood and gore. The Russian military machine had come to stay; she saw a helicopter flying low… and firing a spread of rockets into a building. She couldn’t hear as much fighting any longer; the shooting seemed to be dying down as the Russians brought up their heavy weapons and pounded the defenders…

Silence fell.

It was as if someone had turned off a switch. She could still hear Russian aircraft in the sky, see Russian helicopters hovering high overhead, but the shooting seemed to have stopped. She felt relieved, wondering if the war had suddenly come to an end, then felt cold. The shooting had stopped because there were no longer Polish soldiers to shoot at. Even Russians wouldn’t shoot bullets around at random; all Poles might maintain their distrust of Russians, but they weren’t stupid. How else had they gotten away with it for so long?

…And perhaps they wouldn’t want to trigger off a rebellion in their rear. She clung to that hope with all the enthusiasm she could muster; the thought about how bad a Russian occupation could be was terrifying. She’d heard what some of the older people had said, talking about their childhoods when Stalin’s hordes had pushed one bad master out of Poland and replaced the Nazis with the Communists. The Russians had been fellow sufferers under the Nazi yoke, but they had shown no mercy to Poles. Polish women had been raped; Polish men had disappeared in the night or had been pressed into service, fighting for Stalin. She shuddered; there was no reason to expect the Russians to be good masters, not after the way they had acted last time.

A new sound echoed through the streets. It was dull, a long engine rumble, mixed with metal and clinking notes. She wondered what it was, even as a long burst of gunfire echoed out and faded almost as quickly; had the fighting started again?

“Tanks,” a voice said from behind her. She jumped and tried to pretend that she hadn’t jumped; she turned to see an older man standing behind her, looking into the distance. She felt a spurt of fear; he was older, larger and probably stronger than her and Polish society seemed to have broken down completely. If he had evil intentions, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to stop him from doing whatever he wanted to do, but he seemed intent on watching the scene as it unfolded. “There are tanks coming our way…”

She saw them, now; massive black machines, moving along in a single line, escorted by green-clad men holding assault rifles. The blocky tanks bristled with weapons, some of them armed with machine guns, others with the more familiar heavy weapons she knew; they advanced carefully, prepared for trouble. She tried to imagine that they were Polish tanks, but she couldn’t cling to the belief; there could be no mistaking the marking on the front of the lead tanks.

They were Russians.

“My God,” she said, as the next sight came into view. “What’s going to happen to them?”

A line of men — and a handful of women — were marching behind the tanks; no, not marching, they were almost slouching. They looked beaten, defeated; they had their hands firmly cuffed behind their backs and were escorted by Russian soldiers. Some of them were injured, blood pouring from their wounds; others just kept their heads down and tried not to be noticed. Some wore Polish uniforms; others wore civilian dress. The civilians seemed to be the most brutally wounded, but there was no mercy; they all had to march. The women looked traumatised; had they been punished in the oldest way? Some of them had had their uniforms ripped and torn; they shuffled along, their eyes lowered. They looked terrible.

“They’re prisoners,” her new friend said. His voice was bitter. “The Russians don’t like people who dare to resist them, particularly people out of uniform; that entire show is meant to humiliate us and remind us that we have been beaten. It’s also a warning; that could happen to you as well.”

He sighed. “Once again, years of independence have come to an end,” he said. “God damn the European Union!”

Zyta looked up at him. “Who are you?”

“Names would be a bad idea at the moment,” the man said. He winked at her; she noticed that his hair was shading towards white. “I was here the last time the Russians were here, back when Jaruzelski was in power and we were starving. The Russians… well, some of them blame what happened to the Soviet Union on us Poles and think that if they crack down on us, they won’t fall again. Names would really be a bad idea, Zyta.”

Marya started. “You know my name,” she pointed out. “It would be fairer…”

“Fairness is a foolish concept,” the man said dryly. The line of Russian infantrymen seemed never-ending. “The world is full of people who would like the world to be fair, and it would be a nice thing if the world was fair, but the truth is they want the world to be fair in their favour. ‘Fairness’ is only valued if you think that ‘fair’ will give you what you want.”

He smiled grimly. “And, on a different note, what you don’t know, you can’t be made to tell,” he said. “I wonder if the Russians will remember me from last time.”

Zyta blinked. “Last time?”

“Never mind,” the man said. “Call me Jacob, if it helps. I dare say we’ll see each other again.”

“I hope so,” Zyta said.

“Good girl,” Jacob said. “Now, go back to your sister and stay calm; we’ll talk again in due course.”

Zyta nodded again and stepped back to the stairs. They were covered in dust and pieces of plaster from the explosions, almost ruined. She picked her way down carefully, until she reached her floor; the smell had, if anything, grown worse. She held her nose and stepped into her sister’s apartment; Melania looked up at her, her face very pale. Zyta stopped dead as she took in the sight; a set of bullets had smashed through the window and broken objects. She knew that they had been very lucky.

“There’s something new on the radio,” Melania said. Her voice was shaking. “You have to hear it.”

Marya looked at the radio. The message was repeating constantly. It wasn’t long before she heard the beginning of the message. “Citizens of Poland, this is Minister Molobo, the senior surviving government elected official,” it said. The voice sounded cracked and broken. “Our position is grim; the Russian response to the unprovoked German offensive launched into Belarus, using our bases, has resulted in the occupation of our capital city and most of our country. The Germans, having sabotaged the military systems they themselves gave to us, have fled, leaving us alone.”

Zyta and Melania exchanged glances. Unprovoked German offensive?

“The Russians have assured us that their occupation of a number of vital positions within the country is only temporary,” Molobo’s voice continued. It gave no sense that the speaker knew that he was speaking nonsense. “The Russians, at the request of the elected Polish Government, have taken over the defence of Poland from the German hordes. All military units are ordered to report at once to the nearest Russian military outpost, where they will be issued new orders for the offensive against Germany…”

Molobo spoke on, but Zyta wasn’t listening. “He’s mad,” she said. “No one is going to buy that line of… shit.”

Melania looked back. “That’s not the problem,” she said. Suddenly, she started to break down; Zyta placed a hand on her shoulder. “What’s going to happen to the children?”