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Location: Great Russ Federation — Command Vessel, Eastern Mediterranean
Day 5 — 34 minutes to Island Crossing
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The command room was steel and shadows.
Screens flickered green.
Maps scrolled under trembling fingers.
Officers stood stiff in dark uniforms, sweat drying on their collars.
The fleet —
Four destroyers.
One carrier.
Escorted by silence.
All engines pointed westward —
Toward the forgotten island,
Toward the graveyard where wreckage slept.
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Suddenly —
A sharp ping split the quiet.
Signal detected.
Minor frequency.
Shortwave band.
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The communication officer frowned.
Adjusted the dials.
Listened harder.
Static first.
Crackling.
Shifting.
Then —
Morse code.
Slow.
Uneven.
Like a child's hand drawing a song into the storm.
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He turned toward the central command dais.
"Sir..."
He hesitated.
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Admiral Anatoly Gurevich looked up.
Gruff.
Tired.
Cigarette burning low in his fingers.
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"Speak."
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The officer swallowed.
"Intercepted transmission... island quadrant. Low power. Non-directional."
"Morse code."
"...But sir — it's not coordinates. It's..."
He frowned deeper.
"It's... music."
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The Admiral raised an eyebrow.
"Music?"
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The officer nodded stiffly.
Tapped the translator panel.
The code beeped slowly through the room.
Da-da-da.
Da-da.
Da-da-daa.
Daa.
Recognizable.
Old.
Haunting.
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Katyusha.
The war song of the Red Army.
Sung in the fields long before this generation was even born.
A love song for soldiers who never came home.
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A silence fell over the bridge.
Not confusion.
Not fear.
Something colder.
Something nostalgic.
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One of the younger officers smirked uneasily.
"Might be a trick, sir."
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The Admiral chuckled dryly.
"Tch."
"Ghosts..."
He shook his head.
"Even in ruin... they still sing at us."
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He exhaled smoke.
Looked back at the flashing lights of the consoles.
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"Ignore it."
"Let the dead sing if they want to."
"We have real enemies to find."
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The signal faded.
The morse tapping weaker.
Fainter.
Swallowed by the crackling silence.
And the fleet steamed forward.
Unaware.
Unbelieving.
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The clouds rolled low over the island.
Waves gnawed at broken piers.
The broken ship skeletons loomed in silhouette.
Beneath a rusted overhang, half-shielded from the sky,
Lillian "Lilly" Fontaine hunched over the scrap-rigged radio.
Fingers tapping rhythmically against broken wiring.
Morse code.
Short-long.
Long-short.
Not coordinates.
Not calls for help.
Music.
Old.
Faint.
Haunting.
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Across the broken courtyard,
Elias Jerkins leaned against a battered engine block.
Arms crossed.
Grinning slightly.
Listening to the distorted taps that filled the ruined island.
The ghostly transmission of "Katyusha" floated across dead airwaves.
Sung not in words — but in flickering, broken light.
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When the final note died,
Lilly sat back.
Wiped her hands on her ruined uniform.
Her face — all cold efficiency.
Her heart — beating far too loud in her ribs.
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Elias tilted his head.
Still grinning.
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"Not bad, Doctor."
Pause.
"But can you do another one?"
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Lilly glanced at him — eyes flashing with exhausted irritation.
"What song?"
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Elias shrugged, casual.
"An ice cream vendor song."
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Silence.
The kind of silence that cracked between ancient enemies.
The kind of silence that cities were buried under.
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Lilly slowly turned her head.
Her glare could have frozen the sun.
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"You want me..."
She spoke slowly, dangerously.
"...to broadcast an ice cream vendor song across a live warzone."
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Elias nodded cheerfully.
"Might confuse them more than a transmission of Katyusha, don't you think?"
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A long beat.
Somewhere across the courtyard, a rat scurried into a barrel.
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Lilly sighed.
Muttered curses under her breath — French ones, dirty enough to be outlawed in two countries again.
Then —
Against her better judgment —
She adjusted the transmitter.
Tapped out a new rhythm.
Short-short. Long. Short-short. Long-long.
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And from the broken radio tower —
into the listening channels of an approaching Federation war fleet —
a cheerful, broken, ghostly imitation of an ice cream truck jingle stuttered into the evening mist.
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Elias chuckled quietly.
Leaning back.
Listening to the ridiculous symphony echoing over no man's land.
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They were hunted.
Outnumbered.
Forgotten.
But for a moment —
they still laughed.
And in that laughter —
they survived.
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