The enemy’s airstrikes and long-range strikes were slowly growing in intensity, while the Russian air cover was diminishing. The division had few tanks and armed helicopters left; this last stand would be borne on blood and flesh and little else.

The major general, dragging a leg broken by shrapnel, came out of the shelter using a rifle as a crutch. He saw that the new trenches were still shallow, unsurprising given that the majority of the soldiers here had been wounded in some way. But to his astonishment, neat breastworks about a half meter tall stood in front of the trenches.

What material could they have used to build a breastwork so quickly? He saw that a few branch-like shapes stuck out from the snow-covered breastwork. He came closer. They were pale, frozen human arms.

Rage boiled through him. He seized a colonel by the collar. “You bastard! Who told you to use the soldiers’ corpses as building materials?”

“I did,” the divisional chief of staff said evenly behind him. “We entered this new zone too quickly last night, and this is a crop field. We truly had nothing else to build with.”

They looked at each other silently. The chief of staff’s face was covered in rivulets of frozen blood, leaked from the bandage on his forehead.

A time passed. The two of them began to walk slowly along the trenches, along the breastworks made from youth, vitality, life. The general’s left hand held the rifle he used as a crutch; his right hand straightened his helmet, then saluted the breastworks. They were inspecting their troops for the last time.

They passed by a private with both legs blown off. The blood from his leg stumps had mixed with the snow and dirt into a reddish black mud, and the mud was now crusted over with ice. He lay with an anti-tank grenade in his arms. Raising his bloodless face, he grinned at the general. “I’m gonna stuff this into an Abrams’s treads.”

The cold winds stirred up gusts of snow mist, howling like an ancient battle paean.

“If I die first, please use me in this wall too. There’s no better place for me to end, truly,” the general said.

“We won’t be too long apart,” said the chief of staff, with his characteristic calm.

JANUARY 12TH, RUSSIAN ARMY GENERAL
STAFF HEADQUARTERS

A staff officer came to inform Marshal Levchenko that the general director of the Russian Space Agency wanted to see him—the matter was urgent, involving Misha and the electronic battle.

Marshal Levchenko started at the sound of his son’s name. He’d already heard that Kalina had been killed in action, but aside from that, he couldn’t imagine what Misha had to do with the electronic battle a hundred million miles away. He couldn’t imagine what Misha had to do with any part of Earth now.