This Isn't About Reya

October 14, 1886 RV

The night was uncharacteristically warm for October. In the northern tundra, that meant that the nightly snowfall was more akin to slush than snow. Vlad stood facing the forest with his hood pulled low over his face, though his chin and neck were still cold and damp from the weather.

In front of him, a trail of crushed pine trees and scattered needles led into the heart of the woods. A column of smoke billowed steadily out of the center, perhaps a half-kilometer in. The smoke was underlit by a flickering orange light.

Vlad turned his gaze upward towards the wispy hole in the clouds above the forest and chewed on the inside of his cheek. Without looking down, he waved two fingers towards the trail of debris leading into the woods. A platoon of special forces soldiers silently flowed around him and into the depths of the trees.

He stared at the clouds a moment longer before a voice behind him brought him out of his thinking.

"Redeemed," it said simply.

Vlad shook his head slowly. "No," he replied. "We would've detected them in orbit." He paused and scratched his bristly mustache, his fingers trailing down around the edges of his lips and pressing against his chin. "And they're too disorganized to pull off an extra-orbital strike this well." He pointed from the hole in the sky and traced a line towards the trail of broken pine trees. "It fell through the atmosphere and must have ignited some sort of engine before it hit the ground, because the debris line is perfectly straight through the forest."

"Quoc Quyet?" the voice behind him countered.

"No," Vlad drawled, shaking his head again. "They would never venture this deep into our territory."

There was a short silence.

"Then what?" the voice asked.

Vlad shrugged. "I don't know," he said.

There was silence for another moment.

"Well," the White Admiral eventually said, walking past Vlad and standing at the edge of the woods, "we better go take a look, then." And he strode down the path, the sleet running off of his ceremonial armor in viscous streams.

Vlad watched him for a few seconds before falling in step behind him.

The trail of shattered trees was about two or three people wide and perfectly straight through the woods. The trees were broken about a foot above Vlad's head, but most of the trunks were intact below that. There were no burn marks, no smoke or flames along the path until they came to the heart of the forest and stood at the edge of the crater in the ground.

The special forces soldiers had taken up a perimeter along the edge of the crater, their rifles pointed at its center, from which the smoke was billowing. The trees nearest the point of impact had been obliterated, their splintered remains needling the trees behind them. Scorch marks marred their trunks and the ground between them and the crater, and the earth within it was black and smooth, almost glassy. The trees at the far edge of the crater, opposite of the path, were still burning, and at the center of it all, smaller fires licked insistently around the object that had fallen from the sky.

Vlad stood next to the White Admiral at the edge of the crater and stared at the meteorite intently.

"Meteorite..." the White Admiral murmured, as if he were reading Vlad's thoughts. "I don't think that's what we're looking at here, Chief."

Vlad shook his head, chewing on his cheek again. "But that's what the news will call it," he pointed out.

"If that's what they want to call it, then fine. That's what it is." He looked at Vlad sideways, his grey eyes gleaming in the light of the burning fires. "But we need to know what it is."