Three Hundred Forty Million
Alexei Bessarab
November 27, 1962; Chernivtsi, USSR
Intermittently falling water droplets echo across a hangar three stories underground. A flip of a switch lights up a set of incandescent fixtures, which provides barely enough light to illuminate the room. Three of the walls are lined with cabinets used for holding spare parts, fuel, and anything else that the maintenance workers may need. The fourth wall is covered with a floor-to-ceiling wallpaper of the Cyrillic letters “Б А С У К” (English: BASSOOK), which form the acronym of an ancient secret organization to whom the hangar belongs.
In the center of the hangar sits an aircraft that only such an organization would be capable of producing. Its patched-up fuselage hints at a long past, which is a stark contrast to the powerful thrusters that appear to be from decades in the future.
A pilot, navigator, and flight engineer greet the aircraft and head to their respective seats. As the aircrew adjusts the seats in the blueish-green cockpit to their liking, another pilot enters the flight deck. Since BASSOOK has been unable to train enough crew to cope with the increased demand, the second pilot is a person who goes by “K.” He is a tall man of Ukrainian ethnicity, who has been serving as BASSOOK’s General Oversight Director for almost as long as the position has existed. K squeezes into the copilot seat and pats the back of Captain Marvin Greene, a middle aged Englishman who has been flying for BASSOOK ever since his retirement from the RAF.
“Good to see you again, Marvin.”
Captain Greene is too focused on the preflight checklist to respond to his higher-up.
“How’s she doing?” K asks Yeva Stepanovna, the newbie flight engineer.
“Could be better,” she says, taking her eyes off of the gauges that have been refusing to spool up. “Half our engines don’t work. How does anyone deal with this shi-”
“Hey, hey,” interjects the captain. “At least the other half still works!”
“Gotta love some optimism,” says K, starting to work on his portion of the checklist.
As the flight crew gets to the final stages of preparations, a plethora of footsteps can be heard behind the cockpit, as today’s group of passengers board. When the commotion settles down, K picks up the intercom and informs the passengers that the aircraft is ready. Captain Greene gestures “goodbye” to a service worker on the ground, who runs to the wall and moves a lever. The ceiling folds out of the way and a hydraulic elevator pushes the aircraft to the surface, where it emerges in a conveniently empty storage building of a factory that is providing cover for BASSOOK’s primary base.
The crew taxis the aircraft onto a concrete apron, during which time the aircraft’s invisibility cloak is activated. At the scheduled time of 02:00, Captain Greene picks up the intercom to make a mandated takeoff announcement to the occupants.
“Hello, and good morning, my fellow members of BASSOOK. All parameters are adequate, we are clear to proceed with takeoff. Barring any inconvenience, we will arrive in Havana at 01:30. Also, we have reports of turbulent weather, so don’t get up unless absolutely needed. Enjoy your flight.”
With that, the aircraft begrudgingly leaves the ground using all the power that its vertical thrust jets can muster. Having gained enough altitude, Captain Greene activates the main engines to get the aircraft up to its supersonic cruising speed. Thankfully, the turbojets cooperate with the pilot’s input and the craft is soon blazing over the North Atlantic.
A little over five and a half hours later, the flight’s destination comes into view. As per BASSOOK regulation, Captain Greene got on the intercom once more to make the landing announcement.
“Flight deck to cabin. Please prepare for landing in five minutes. Local time is 01:33.”
When the aircraft exits the cloud cover and the ground grows closer, the situation in the once lively capital becomes clear. Through the infrared imagery coming from the aircraft’s night vision system, the crew could make out only a few intact buildings. The only lights come from the makeshift headquarters that the American army had built to forward their operations.
But for the crew, this is not a new site. Ever since the Cuban Missile Crisis first broke out into full on nuclear war, BASSOOK has been painstakingly trying various changes to the historic flow of time, aiming for a timeline where the conflict stays cold. Time and time again, its efforts have failed. There is always a catalyst to set off World War III, be it an disproportionate response to a provocation or mistranslation of a diplomat’s message. Everyone hopes that the next attempt will be different, but after years of altering minor historical details, that hope has been drying up.
As the aircraft lands, its landing gear suspension lets out a sigh. The hatches open and a group of around forty armed people stumbles out. The first thirty or so are from BASSOOK’s Primary Response & Insurgency Suppression Militia (PRISM). The only colorful thing about them is the rainbow-patterned PRISM patch they have on their chest. Their expressions have been dulled from seeing Cuba repeatedly leveled and their uniforms have definitely seen better days since coming out of an army’s surplus inventory. The last seven to deboard are from SPECTRUM: the Special Purpose Elite Counter-Threat & Reconnaissance Ubiquitous Militia of BASSOOK. Unlike the PRISM members who are lucky to get a full uniform and a rifle that isn’t decades older than them, those who have volunteered to be part of SPECTRUM are prepared for any form of combat. They are entrusted to use BASSOOK’s most powerful hand-held weapon: the Anomalizer.
Together with K and the other flight crew, the armed groups make their way to the hidden access port that leads to BASSOOK’s Havana site. Under the cover of a moonless cloudy night, they sneak into the base, entering its maze of passageways, which have been serving as BASSOOK’s hub in the Caribbean since the early colonial days. By the time their eyes have adjusted to the faint red battery-powered lights, they could see that their reinforcement mission had come a little too late. At first, they walk through puddles of emptied rifle casings and see that most of the walls are covered in soot, with a couple posted signs still hanging by a few pushpins. Then they come across the first body: a young Red Army soldier, slumped by his Kalashnikov rifle. A few turns later, and the first signs of BASSOOK casualties are evident. The group is solemnly quiet as the dread of seeing dead comrades isn’t numbed by any amount of timeline repeats. Strangely, many of the bodies have been stripped of their equipment, and not a single American uniform is in sight.
After what feels like an eternity in a horror show, the team reaches a set of massive lead doors that are the site’s last defense against radiation. K forces the door open and the team is met with all that is left of the Havana site’s personnel. A few dozen BASSOOK members huddle in the dark room, accompanied only by the three surviving members of a small detachment of Soviet soldiers that BASSOOK has enlisted as a temporary protection team.
“Thank goodness you are here!” says Site Manager Filipp Nikolaev, running up to greet K. “Our power went out, so we had no comms, and barely any foo-”
“I know,” K says. “Tell me how we did this time.”
Filipp takes a hesitant pause before quietly saying, “Three hundred forty million since the first strike”.
K lets out a long sigh, before speaking, struggling to not let out his anger on Mr. Nikolaev. “Please tell me why the fuck is it more than last time.”
“Th-they stormed our site, sir. We couldn’t stop them this time. Not even the army could. They saw our arsenal and all hell broke loose. There’s never been this big of a missile barrage before. We had to save ourselves, sir. Please understand, sir.”
“No,” replies K.
“But sir, if I may, even the city of Havana fell. Believe me, we put up a fight. Just look at how little of us are left. I even ordered SPECTRUM to scare them with the Anomalizers.”
“I commend that, Filipp,” says K. “If you did anything less than that, we’d be in serious trouble. For records’ sake, you recovered the weapons, right?”
“No, sir. We assumed SPECTRUM dusted whoever decided not to heed our warning. Though they may have been lost in action doing so. Why do you ask? We can send a task forc-”
“Hold that thought,” says K. He storms out of the gathering room and shuts the door. Thirty seconds later, he returns.
“Back to where we were, Filipp. You are lucky there’s no one left to replace you, because if anyone else butchered a response bad enough to lose Anomalizers, they’d be gone immediately. You had one job. Now our secrecy is blown and there’s only a matter of time till they find our other sites. We can’t keep trying to prevent this war if we’re caught in the crossfire!”
“I agree, K. Can’t we just move BASSOOK to a timeline without our site getting attacked? Like the last one?”
“And show to whatever else is out there that we can’t even stop an infraplanetary war? Remember, we’ve made a timeline without the Great War, Filipp. We didn’t give up then, and we won’t give up now. I don’t care if this is the last great thing that BASSOOK does, but I won’t allow us to persist in a timeline where we have American and Soviet blood on our hands. Not to mention the millions we would otherwise leave for dead.”
“Understood, sir. I’ll revise our site’s contingency plans right away. I won’t let a breach happen again, sir,” saysMr. Nikolaev.
“Good,” said K.
K and Mr. Nikolaev salute each other as a polite measure to end a stressful conversation. K turns to address the survivors and the reinforcement group, who have been awkwardly waiting for orders the whole time.
“Alright comrades. Let’s bring the wounded over to Site ‘Friendship’. The Northeast was hit pretty hard, so be mindful of lingering fallout when we get there. Those who can still walk, please pack up as many important assets as you can and wait for us at the landing field.”
A few reluctant grunts can be heard, yet the members oblige, since they know that staying in Havana would lead to their eventual demise. While they get to work, K takes the leader of the SPECTRUM unit aside to detail the final phase of the mission.
“Commander Moreau?”
“Yes sir,” replies Renard Moreau, a veteran SPECTRUM combatant.
“Once everyone else leaves, have your team load the bodies into the Vezdekhod (all terrain vehicle). Take them down to Holguin, we’ll have another plane waiting for you before dawn,” K says somberly.
“Of course, K,” answers Commander Moreau.
“And I’ll need a volunteer to help me with preparing the ‘heat treatment’. The others can give cover to those loading the cargo. If anything poses a threat, you know what to do.”
“Roger that,” says Commander Moreau.
Within a few minutes, the reinforcement team had efficiently cleaned up the site. K and the volunteer are the last to exit the underground compound. A match is dropped into the fuse leading out of the access port and a fire bursts into life.
K climbs into the cockpit of the aircraft once again, where the crew have already prepared the craft for takeoff. All the hatches are closed and the trip to BASSOOK’s Mid-Atlantic site begins. The burning base creates a stunning view for the passengers, almost like a phoenix getting ready to live its next life. As the aircraft re-enters the clouds, K is already deep in thought of what the next timeline alteration will be. The task ahead is daunting, but it’s nothing that BASSOOK can’t handle.
Alexei Bessarab is a sophomore at Rutgers, pursuing a degree in civil engineering. He lives in Hamilton, NJ, with his family and pets. He took a creative writing course to have some form of creative freedom in the midst of his STEM courses, and he really enjoyed every aspect of the class.
Alexei wrote this story in a course taught by Richard Murray, who selected the piece for inclusion in the WHR.