Yvan Dragomilov - Eugene "The" Sorokin

Watching his sons descend the hatch-ladder of the damaged lodka and scuttle from beneath the low-hovering machine with every manifestation of good health, the senior Eugene Sorokin relaxed his grip upon the yoke of the worn kinergic quickblade which was at all times strapped to his right forearm.

Inset upon the weapon's axis, over the back of his hand, a miniscule pilot lamp which informed him that the sighting laser stood ready winked out. Another warning pilot, indicative of the weapon's potential kinergic abilities, would have burned with equal brightness had he squeezed the flat kidney-shaped yoke where it crossed his palm, eliminating safety circuitry and bringing the laser into play. He had not had reason to see it alight this day. He knew now that he might yet.

Right now, however, seeing his sons safe, more important matters occupied his mind. Above all, what he must remember not to say was "You are late," or ask them why. They would tell him. Eugene Junior was a grown man, hard though it was to think of him as such, late marrying, like his father. He, his father, must grant him the adult courtesy of assuming a good reason existed for the delay. It was his great fortune, as far as Eugene fils was concerned, that the courtesy was appropriate.

Movement flickered in the corner of his eye. This annoyed the warrior in him, in especial contrast to the respect he felt for his eldest son's judgment. He had spoken to the hopeless twit responsible with as much sharpness as was decent, if not altogether droomly. Yet already the Oligarch-Honorary Malinovsyn-Korochuvak pair of Cossacks---cut rate models to start with, and in false economy purchased past their prime---were fanning out on either side, attempting in an obvious and artless way to flank the droilodka.

Premier, he swore to himself, he had not wanted their overdressed, stupid owners along, let alone these useless, dangerous, disgusting creatures! Yet the Oligarch-Honorary and Lady Malinovsyn-Korochuvak were "dear, dear chums" of Veronica's old and honored friends---and intimate business associates---of her father's as well. It was said they were quite popular in the Romanovan Droom, although for what reason he himself could never guess. The Malinovsyn-Korochuvak struck him as at best a halfwit and genetic cull. The idiot fellow's wife was worth, if anything. He had encountered camp-followers with better manners, breeding, and taste than this so-called Lady could lay claim to.

Ah, well, of all individuals whose acquaintance he could boast, who was he to judge manners and breeding in another? He himself lacked those qualities of refinement that might have made him better, or at least more civilized, company, and to which Veronica, reared as she must've been on the capital planet, was accustomed. He must strive to accommodate himself as much as was tolerable to the wishes of his young and painfully lovely bride.

At least the Malinovsyn-Korochuvak knew better (or, as appeared more likely, was too much the craven) than to play at soldiering himself. Keeping a tactical eye on that one---intoxicated as he always seemed to be, upon occasion waving weaponry about, as well as upon his ill-trained animals---would have constituted one temptation too many for the Sorokin's trigger-thumb.

Indeed, it had bene for purposes of dispatching the two Cossacks, if need arose, as much as for any imagined threat from the droilodka, that he had warmed his quickblade. Cossacks were unpredictable, never, nor at any price, possessed of overmuch intelligence. This far gone into the senescence which swept over them like a sudden storm, they could be as dangerous to those they purported to protect as to whatever they protected them from. Out of long habit and bitter experience, the Sorokin preferred defending those he loved, or was responsible for, himself. He would not, in good grace, have accepted even human bodyguards, and he had taught his sons this preference, as well.

Hovering at an angled edge of the landing star, the droilodka had a bedraggled, sheepish look about her, as if she knew she had failed in her responsibilities. For one thing, she no longer rested level upon her purge-pressors, but listed to the starboard bow, as if she somehow shared the Malinovsyn-Korochuvak inebriation. Her wire-woven fuselage was in places rent, as he had earlier observed, by horrible energies. How it could be, and yet his sons be still alive and hale, he didn't know, although as soon as possible, he meant to find it out.

And something else---yes, that was it: she was the wrong color! For a moment the warrior's eyes crinkled in his weathered face as he realized Terrible Yvan Redshirt had kept his promise---or had it been a threat?----to decorate the homely vessel by some means he had latterly devised. The golden color must be something subtle and active, for, as he approached the machine, the Sorokin could see it had flowed over onto the damaged portions, giving a contradictory impression of splendid disarray.

"Father!" Eugene fils approached wearing a crooked grin, young enough in his outlook to be pleased by whatever misadventure he and his brothers had survived. As etiquette required, he locked his left forearm along that of his father, avoiding a potential clash between the quickblade wore and that which he did not, but might have. The elder Sorokin recalled a conversation he had overheard in the capital, among amateur scholars and antiquarians, to the effect that this greeting-gesture had, upon a time, been performed with the right arm, indicating that the hand was empty, and the greeter unarmed and harmless. Odd people, ancestors. What value lay in the friendly regard of a harmless individual?

Now, at last, he could wave these quickbladed Cossacks aside. Others aboard the lubberlift had seen the boys descend and were venturing from within the hexagonal conveyance. He hoped they would have the sense to give him a moment with his sons. Accepting the gesture of greeting, whatever its origin, he added to it, clapping his eldest son and heir upon the shoulder. He noticed that the boy winced, as if bruised.

"Father!" Hardly had the Sorokin opened his mouth to ask about Eugene's injury, when he was greeted with the same most-welcome word by his youngest. Zakh hurtled towards him. How good it was to see the boy up and about after his illness! But first came an awkward moment. Zakh was 12, perhaps too young for warriors' forearm clasps, maybe too old for a father's....

Premier take it! The Sorokin reached down (not quite as far as he used to, he noticed with a mortal pang all fathers share), seized the boy and lifted him into his arms, squeezing him till they both squeaked. By the time this was accomplished, along with a ducking of the head which was not quite a kiss, and the boy set back upon his feet, his brother Adam's casual pace had brought him to his father's side, although so far without a word of greeting.

The Sorokin nodded at his middle son and clasped his arm. Adam made him feel a touch of guilt. In honesty, he had never been as fond of the boy as of the others. It was bound to be that he would love one more or one the less. He had striven to prevent Adam seeing it, but such deception was, the warrior knew, at the close range family life afforded and over a lifetime's risk of betrayal, all but impossible. It grieved him such deceit seemed needed, as it must have grieved his not-altogether unloved nor unperceptive middle son. Thus, it was Adam he first spoke to: "I trust, good steward, I will discover affairs at home to be in somewhat better array than here."

Adam blinked, wordless and hurt-looking. Premier's eyes, he had not intended to put it thus, a paternal and even worse, sarcastic rebuke. It'd been no more than a comradely humor, commiseration over whatever circumstances had damaged the droilodka, and, more, an excuse to praise the careful administration of the Holdings into which young Adam of late, and upon his own initiative, had thrown his most passionate and concentrated effort.

Young Eugene blinked as well, but for another reason. An unsettling thought occurred to him which, until now, had not crossed his mind. He was as disturbed at its lateness in arriving as he was at the thought itself. "Premier's ghost, Father, I am inexcusably remiss! Are your communicators in working order? I believe we were attacked upon the way here and have only realized that something similar may have taken place at home!"

Lacking better means of retraction, the Sorokin took Adam by the shoulder and looked him in the eye, but it was to his eldest he answered: "Be not alarmed, son. When you were overdue, I used the lasercom here. It and its relays are in fine repair. The one thing they worry about at home is your well-being, concerning which we shall soon put their minds at ease." He winked, inviting his middle son to share a mild joke at the expense of the eldest. "In particular the mind of Mistress Maria Petrovka."

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"How dreadful!"

Guryev Malinovsyn-Korochuvak was Oligarch-Honorary of a "planet Korochuvak" which did not in fact exist. This sometimes-useful legal fiction, unique to the imperia-conglomerate, was no less strange, nor less useful, than the legal fictions of a thousand other civilizations, both before and after the 32nd century. He peered over the top of his mask---a chartreuse fabergé with protruding front teeth, a single arched eyebrow, and an insolent sneer which he himself was not quite up to---at the damage done the fabric of the droilodka. A pale man, with watery, weak-looking eyes, a narrow nose, and thin, purplish lips, his sparse carroty-colored hair jutted out over his ears.

It would have been more pleasing to the Sorokin's sense of the acceptable to assume the man feigned uselessness and stupidity for some sinister or cynical purpose of his own. Folk literature from a myriad of worlds abounded with such ironic conceits. But folk literature was not life, and the Sorokin had encountered enough of this disgusting kind at the Droom to resign himself that the Malinovsyn-Korochuvak was just what he seemed to be.

It was not, though the senior Eugene, that the man was in any degree effeminate. That was not the word. The woman was rare who could exhibit such effete mannerisms and turns of phrase as he did and hold her head up. (No handy word like "wanque" came to mind for the few women who did.) Nor was it that he was a member of a decadent and inbred aristocracy. His family had been elevated to the Oligarchies only in his father's time, like many among the peasantry of a million worlds who were much like him. The Sorokin dismissed the fellow as a natural-born nonentity. It bothered him, wondering why a bright, aggressive, powerful, unstoppable individual like Zaytseva should have known who he was, let alone stooped to befriend him. What use was he to Zaytseva? Something more was here than met the eye. Or maybe something less.

Crowded beside the Malinovsyn-Korochuvak, squeezed tight as they were between the pair of Cossack guards, the Lady Malinovsyn-Korochuvak (the Sorokin could never remember her first name, nor had he any wish to) followed her husband's intoxicated gaze towards the wire-ends shining golden in the starport floodlights. Anyone else from the Droom of the Cosmopolity of Romanova would have offered an urbane comment, or at least evinced a delicate, civilized shudder. Lady Malinovsyn-Korochuvak shrugged and dug at her ribs where her traveling dress bound her.

"Just like old times, eh, Gene?" As the Olicharch-Honorary and his Lady gathered their voluminous clothing about them, ducked with a measure of awkwardness beneath the droilodka's belly, and climbed the hatch-ladder, passing beyond their hosts' immediate responsibility to those he had delegated aboard the vehicle, the Sorokin turned towards the only individual who ever called him by nickname. Pushed along by yet another Cossack, one of the rare domestic conversions (more reliable, it was claimed, less prone to turning ugly, it bore a quickblade upon is forearm in response in at least a semblance of its owner's defense), Aidos Zaytseva leaned back in his chair as far as his paralysis would allow, gazing upward at the damaged hull. "Wreck and ruination! Perverse as it might be, I find it almost stimulating----do you not find it likewise?----I suppose because it reminds me of my lost....youth."

The Sorokin, occupied with his own thoughts and having felt no such thing, gave the question a vague shrug. Lifting him from the chair, which would soon be useless in any case, and carrying the crippled Poobah up the ladder in its heavy-muscled arms, the unlucky Cossack stumbled, almost spilling Zaytseva. A soldier's expletive followed, evoked, surely, by these reminders of the crippled man's youth, after which the Sorokin heard Zatseva add something to the Malinovsyn-Korochuvak about repenting of having brought the creature, having intended soon to replace it. Having suffered considerable experience with Cossacks in his own youth (and less anxious than Zaytseva would to be reminded of it), the Sorokin was not sure he'd risk saying such a thing in front of it.

Last to enter, the Sorokin followed his bride. Ever practical, after her own impractical fashion, the Lady Veronica had consented to forego the presence of servants during the brief trip to the planet's surface and what they had all assumed would be an even briefer voyage to the Holdings. The lubberlift of the vessel which had brought them to Genrich, a mere carrack of fifteen plazcannons' prowess, had scarce afforded sufficient room for those who'd come, although he supposed the servants might have shared a dangerous ride down with the sailors who had piloted the thing to its shackle, Veronica's servants---half a dozen of them, all human---and the considerable baggage their mistress brought with her would follow upon successive journeys from synchronous orbit, which would also bring other illustrious guests accompanying them from Romanova.

As the hatch-ladder was permitted to raise itself and the passenger-guests seen safely to their seats----Zatseva's wheelchair lay folded upon the deck nearby the owner---the Sorokin took his eldest son aside. "Open the panel upon the forward surface of the steering pedestal." Young Eugene raised his eyebrows but did not as yet offer a reply. The Sorokin went on: "Within, you shall discover an old-fashioned keypad I installed myself, secretly and by hand, some forty years earlier. Push out the sequence U-568013." He repeated the digits. "This will permit us to override the safeties and halt this vehicle whenever and wherever we wish."

"Will we wish to?" Eugene asked his father.

"If we have an uprising upon our hands----I find that hard to credit but must proceed upon the evidence---it is best to deal with it without delay."

"Yes, sir. You will want me to pilot the lodka?"

"That we shall leave to Adam. Had you thought to bring a quickblade?"

"Why, no, Father, I never anticipated...."

"It is my fault, this oversight. We shall speak of it again. Sometimes, Eugene, things must change if anything is to stay the same. Meanwhile, I shall speak to the Malinovsyn-Korochuvak about borrowing his quickblade. He will not likely want to join us a'hunting." The warrior grinned. "I cannot say how good a weapon it will prove, but you may rest assure it will be pretty?"196Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3XJePqCUez
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The loan was arranged with Oligarch-Honorary Malinovsyn-Korochuvak as the elder Eugene had desired. The quickblade, indeed, proved pretty as he had predicted. As far as the Sorokin knew, this was the 2nd time young Eugene had ever strapped a quickblade upon his arm, the previous occasion being picnic practice at the Holdings when Gabdrakhimovishin yet lived. He knew that his eldest son, a peaceable man within his heart (as his father and mother had brought him up), with a peaceable man's interests, cared little for the things and had less experience with them.

Still, he was confident Eugene would follow where led. Even now, with the quickblade's power supply locked out at the elbow, the boy was familiarizing himself with the much-embellished weapon (if anything, his father's guess had fallen short of the reality), aiming the designator at an empty portion of the hull aft of where the passengers had been seated, squeezing the yoke, thumbing the trigger to see where the still brighter flash of the blade-simulating beam struck.

The senior Sorokin relaxed. Eugene would acquit himself, did it come to a fight, as well as any. This was what counted, after all. The virtues and skills of soldiery were overrated. Ask anyone who had done some soldiering.

This settled, the Sorokin glanced about to make what disposition in his mind he might of the meager forces available to him: himself there was; young Eugene, an amateur; likewise, Adam, piloting; the 3 Cossacks---the Malinovsyn-Korochuvak's aged pair and Zatseva's---for what they were worth. The rest, including his wife and youngest son, sat as safe as they might be (which, to judge from all appearances around him now, was not much) within the droilodka. Only when he had accomplished what he could, did he pause in his thoughts to wonder again.

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Eugene "The" Sorokin

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