Quick intro: This is another story about Dmitri Dyubichev, a recurring character in some of the other stories I've posted here:
- Takes part in the Capellan invasion of Redfield, just before the main BTech timeline kicks off.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qn64txr8oh20v2p/Family.pdf- Deserts from the Confederation and gets caught up in a plot to kidnap body double scientists (and gets tangled in a relationship with a Magistracy of Canopus spy named Ilsa)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kp0jz8efqpfw5ur/Mask%20Does%20Not%20Make%20the%20Man.pdf- Works for the FWL during the 4th Succession War, and stumbles across a doomsday weapon
https://www.dropbox.com/s/375pnqwhuglhfd2/Diamonds%20in%20the%20Rust.pdfThis one picks up a number of years after Diamonds in the Rust. One of the major features of the BTech universe for me is a sense of history and the endless march of time. So I wanted to write a story that captured a little of that, on a more personal scale. Hope you like.
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Artemis Province
Canopus IV
Magistracy of Canopus
13 March 3032Dmitri Dyubichev pushed himself backwards out of the innards of the battered old AgroMech’s back. Its paint had long since abraded away, leaving bare metal whose shine had dulled with age. It was a wonder the damn thing worked at all. It must have been ancient before he'd even been born.
Dyubichev straightened from the waist and massaged the muscles in his lower back. The ‘Mech wasn’t the only thing dulling with age, he mused.
A comet trail of dust was advancing down the road towards the farm. Dmitri squinted and saw the low, sleek shape of a sedan, one of the new Avantis, in dark blue and silver government colors.
Despite the heat, he felt a chill.
He slid down from the back of the ‘Mech, landed heavily in Canopus’s high gravity and stooped to pick up the grey printed T-Shirt he had left there. He pulled it on. It was a size too small, and had an image of the inlaid, intricate circles of the astronomical clock in Prague, on old Terra. It was a complex and difficult clock to read, but for those who knew how, the time on the clock was midnight.
He made his way back to the stone house, through the fields of nodding grain, past the high silo that held not grain, but the silent brooding statue of his 70-ton
Grasshopper, and watched as the car pulled up the gravel driveway and slowed to a halt. The bright torch of Canopus’s sun gave everything a blue, washed-out tint, as though he were in an over-exposed film, that still set his teeth on edge some times. He stuck his hands into his back pockets to keep them still. The driver’s door opened and his wife, Ilsa, stepped out.
Tension sublimated into relief. He walked, not ran, down to the car, wanting to memorize each moment. Ilsa wore a simple, loose blue dress, and her dark hair was gathered underneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. She tossed the hat through the open window back into the car.
He silently took her left hand in his right, her right in his left, and pressed his forehead against hers. They stood there in silent communion a long moment, the wayward wind blowing her hair about them it until it seemed the entire world was encompassed in the space between their eyes.
“Dmitri…” she said at last.
“Just a little more,” he murmured. “A little more.”
Finally, she extracted her hands from his, and put her palms against his shoulders, gently but firmly forcing him back a step. “Careful,” she said. “You’ll hurt the baby.”
All the possible replies collided together at the base of this throat. He had too many words. He had no words.
“It’s a girl,” she said. A beat later, when he made no answer: “Disappointed?”
He shook his head, never taking his eyes off hers, and wasn’t sure if he remembered how to stop. “If she’s anything like you? Terrified,” he said. And finally, kissed her. “Sorry, you’re right. Of course. Come inside. Can’t stand here forever.”