Twenty-three-year-old Junior Lieutenant Nikita Orlov sat at his desk in the command post, high on a peak overlooking the sea and the base. His black hair was close-cropped, save for the longish waves that hung down over his forehead, and his full, ruddy lips were set in a square jaw. His brown eyes were alert and gleaming as he reviewed local intelligence and faxed news reports from the previous night-- and stole frequent glances out the open window.

The young officer loved getting up before dawn, learning what had happened while he slept, and then watching the sun peek over the horizon and burn across the sea toward the base. He loved the waking of the world, even though each day no longer held the promise it did when he was a boy and then a cadet: that the Soviet Union would stand as the most enduring empire in the history of the world.

As keen as his disappointment was, Nikita loved his country as passionately as ever, and he loved Sakhalin. He had been sent here straight out of the spetsnaz academy, in large part to get him out of Moscow after the incident with the Greek Orthodox church-- but also, he had always felt, to keep him from sullying his father's good name. Sergei Orlov was a hero, valuable as a flight instructor to impressionable young pilots, useful as propaganda at international symposia and conventions. Nikita Orlov was a radical, a reactionary who yearned for the days before Afghanistan destroyed the morale of the world's greatest military, before Chernobyl damaged the nation's pride, before glasnost and perestroika caused the economy and then the union to come apart.

But that was the past. And here, at least, there was still a sense of purpose, still an enemy. Captain Leshev-- perhaps suffering from a touch of cabin fever after three years in command of the spetsnaz troops on Sakhalin-- spent a great deal of time organizing shooting competitions, which were his passion. That left Orlov in charge of most military matters, and he felt that someday Russia would once again face Japan militarily, that they would try to establish a presence on the island and he might have the honor of leading the shock troops against them.