Dream Drive: Yuri Ch. 01

Yuri had been listening about how "his kind" was going to "ruin the Caliphate" and "betray everyone" for over a decade. It had gotten old as soon as it had started.

A particularly loud exclamation of disbelief brought Yuri's attention back to the then and there of the Cipher School.

All the personnel in the Cipher School were Arab, apart from him. Most either liked Yuri, or they maintained a professional demeanor around him. Everyone respected his talents and work. Tariq Ali was the biggest exception to that unspoken rule. He adored riding Yuri's ass, his stubble-covered chin frequently on Yuri's shoulder as he watched over his work.

All because Yuri had been born into a different ethnic group.

Yuri dismissed that line of reasoning. He was as Zibar today as he had been yesterday. Ali's smirk was new. It had to be something else. It had to be about the intercepts, after all.

He frowned. They now knew the strength of every Marine division that was going to hit their beaches, down to the platoon level. They knew the name and type of every ship that would participate in the preparatory bombardments and which types of cruise missiles and EM warfare drones they'd use to cripple the Caliphate's communications in the interior. They had everything on the fleet, except for one thing.

There was no motive.

The decrypts plainly spoke of the target being the Caliphate coast. The sheer amount and nature of the transmissions heavily suggested the fleet had been hastily assembled in the last few weeks, but there was not one single peep as towhy they were going to invade the Caliphate.

Could that be it? Could Ali's smirk indicate that he had managed to unearth the reason? Yuri had only seen Ali achieve something noteworthy once, or twice before and he couldn't remember Ali smirking like that. The smirk was reserved for Yuri's fuck-ups, not Ali's accomplishments. No, Yuri decided. Ali didn't have the GAU's motive in hand. Not unless Yuri missed it, somehow.

Yuri softly snorted.If I couldn't see it, then Tariq Ali definitely couldn't, either.

Suddenly, Yuri was snapped out of his thoughts by the auditorium doors opening. The brass started filing out of it. Yuri saluted. Half the officers ignored him, half gave him the stink eye. The Navy Chief of Staff, a Fleet Admiral, shot Yuri a cursory salute.

I must look as tired as I feel, Yuri thought. He dropped his arm and looked behind the Fleet Admiral. All the other officers had one or two stars, while the Admiral had been a three-star officer, meaning that Yuri didn't have to salute anyone else.

Major General Moussa Houdani, commanding officer of the Cipher School, was bringing up the rear. He stopped short when he saw Yuri. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His face flushed and Yuri thought the General looked uncomfortable.

"Do they believe them, Sir?" Yuri asked.

"What?"

"The intercepts I've deciphered, Sir? Do they believe them to be true plaintext?"

"Oh. Yes, yes, yes they do." Yuri could have exploded with pride. "It's, uh, it's plain to see the truth...sometimes."

Yuri bit the inside of his cheek to keep his mirth from showing. There was one thing missing from the intercepts, after all. "Sir, do they know why we're going to get invaded?"

"Well..."

"Are they going to let the GAU know we know they're coming? That might make them cancel the invasion. Force them to negotiate some kind of treaty with us."

The General seemed to be struggling to say something. Yuri patiently waited for his words. "Yuri, what are you still doing here?"

Now it was Yuri's turn to be confused. "Well, you said I couldn't come in, Sir, so I..."

"You should go home, get some rest."

"No, no, I'm fine, Sir. I want to stay here and work on-"

"Yuri..."

For a moment, Yuri thought he could see tears glistening in his eyes. Then the General blinked rapidly and Yuri told himself he was just seeing things due to not sleeping for almost thirty hours straight.

"Please, Sir, tell me it's not because of the files I had passed on to the American last year."

"The invasion? Oh, God have mercy, no! No, no, no, no, no." He put a tender hand on Yuri's shoulder. "My dear, dear, sweet boy...that's..." He shook his head. "One has nothing to do with the other."

Yuri looked the General in the eyes. He felt uncomfortable with the emotion he could see in them.

"Yuri, go home. Be with your family."

"I don't think that's such a good idea, Sir. We're up on the GAU's primary naval communications and we need to stay on them. If my predictions-"

"Yuri." The General gave his shoulder a soft squeeze before letting go. "That was an order, not an idea. Don't worry about us. Thanks to your brilliant work, we have things well in hand."

Yuri's mouth fell open. The General turned and started walking towards the mess of officers debating the messages. Yuri moved after him. "But, Sir, we need to keep abreast of any changes they make in their encryption protocols. I can rest on a cot in the gymnasium for a few hours and resume my duties at a hundred percent."

"Go home, Yuri. You're on leave for the next few days. Spend them with your family."

Colonel Ali emerged from the multitude of officers with several of them in tow. He shot Yuri another smirk. Yuri couldn't quite keep from glaring back.

"Peace be with you, Yanuk," the General sadly said over his shoulder.

Just like that, the General was swallowed up by a sea of uniforms that were pleading for him to tell them it wasn't true. Ali remained behind. His smirk grew into a wide smile. It looked positively beaming. "Should I call the MPs to remove you, Yanuk?"

Yuri bit back a growl and turned to march down the side corridor that led to the mess hall and gymnasium. For a few minutes, earlier this morning, he had actually allowed himself to daydream of getting the respect that he was due. And when Ali had gotten to work at Yuri's instructions without protest, Yuri had even begun to hope things were going to change between the two of them. How silly that had been.

"Give my best to your family!"

Yuri nearly tripped on the flat, marble floor at hearing those words come from Ali. Usually, the man had only the vilest things to say about all Zibar and relished in likening Yuri's family to pigs. Yuri turned on his heel, but Ali was already obscured by the press of uniforms.

Some officers bumped against Yuri's shoulder as he stood in the middle of the corridor. He turned around again, fought back a wave of dizziness, and walked to the mess hall.

Several Air Force officers were seated at one of the tables, leaning back as a serving woman in a burqa placed steaming cups of tea in front of them. As soon as she moved away, they leaned back in and resumed a heated debate about the merits and flaws of GAU's combat drones.

Yuri watched the serving woman move and decided she was Alyah. He caught up with her. "Peace be with you, Alyah. Could you, please, tell Sasha that I'm here for my bag?"

Alyah nodded and disappeared behind the door that led into the kitchen. Yuri leaned on the wall and faced away from the officers. The hall was silent. He knew what that meant and he grimaced. He told himself not to look their way. He told himself to just hold on for a few moments longer and-

"What's a Zibar doing here at this time," one of the Air Force officers demanded. Yuri tried to ignore him. "Hey! Warrant Officer! I'm talking to you!"

Yuri huffed softly and turned to face them. He sketched a salute. "Sir?"

The officers looked amongst themselves and chuckled. "Is that any way to salute? Who taught you to salute?" The Major looked to be in a foul mood for some reason. Probably had something to do with reading all the intercepts that said he was going to lose to the GAU soon. "Stand at attention, soldier!"

Before Yuri could comply, Sasha's deep voice interjected, "He's not a common soldier, Al-Warra. So why are you trying to treat him as one?"

"This has nothing to do with you, Sasha," Major Al-Warra replied, not taking his eyes off Yuri.

"Yes, it does," Sasha said and came forward to put his arm around Yuri's shoulder. The chef was a round man, as wide as he was tall, and reaching around Yuri required him to press his side against Yuri's. Yuri could feel the cool sweat that covered the man's body at all times.

"Who do you think got you those drone operator manuals you requested last year? It was this guy, right here." Sasha patted Yuri's shoulder. "And if it wasn't for his tireless and brilliant work, we wouldn't know about the storm coming our way." The officers' jaws dropped. "That's right, he's the one that broke the GAU's codes. You should be saluting and thanking him, not badgering him."

Major Al-Warra's face screwed up in disbelief. "A Zibar?"

Sasha snorted derisively at the major. "A great man." Yuri felt his eyes begin to mist. He blinked them clear. "Even if he is a Zibar." Yuri rolled his eyes. "And he has more important things to do than bandy words with the likes of you." He addressed Yuri. "Here's your bag!"

Sasha effortlessly lifted a large, bulging messenger bag and plopped its strap atop Yuri's shoulder. Yuri nearly buckled under the sudden appearance of seventy pounds of weight on his shoulder. Fortunately, he had been forced to run uphill with greater loads than that during basic training, so he stayed upright.

"You got it?" Sasha asked, not referring to the heavy bag. Yuri's eyes flicked meaningfully between the Air Force officers and Sasha. The big man waved his hand dismissively. "Don't worry, Al-Warra's in the know." He turned to address the officers. "If you ever want the newest and best in the world of entertainment," Sasha nodded at Yuri, "he's our man."

Yuri noted Sasha said "our man". It meant that the officers were in on their little arrangement. Sasha winked at Yuri. He probably thought he was doing Yuri a favor by introducing him to more people from the circle, but Yuri didn't appreciate it. Their ring's activities were illegal and punishable by court-martial. The more people that could implicate him directly, the worse he liked it. And here was a whole bunch of Air Force officers who knew about him. He forced a grin onto his face, all the same.

The Caliphate was subject to a comprehensive GAU embargo. The Bloc nations did not support this embargo, but there were numerous difficulties which prohibited the Caliphate from engaging in any significant dealings with them. First, there was the problem of openly shipping things through GAU-infested waters and territories. Then, there were the Bloc nations that did not appreciate an Islamist government as a trade partner. On top of it all, price gouging and ill-timed fluctuations in the currency exchange rates frequently brought foreign trade to a crashing halt.

Shortages of medications, food and various supplies were a part of daily life. The part of Caliphate society that was hit the least by all this was the military. It had carte blanche to import anything it needed to ensure the sovereignty of the Caliphate, without any regard for where it came from. The Caliphate Intelligence Service had an elaborate network of multinational companies it routinely used to procure such critical supplies and covertly deliver them to the homeland. The network also covered up the sales of the Caliphate's oil and ore, which was how they paid for those supplies.

Even without the embargo, the Caliphate would be isolated from the global entertainment markets since foreign media was deemed immoral and subversive. If any company wanted to distribute media in the Caliphate, they'd have to submit it to the Morality Board, which routinely denied permission, classifying everything as satanical. The few things that they did allow to be distributed were so bad that Yuri couldn't imagine getting paid enough to waste his time on them.

As a result of this media ban being in effect, new movies, music albums, video games and books were valuable goods in the Caliphate. They worked almost like a currency.

One could trade a copy of the newest piece of entertainment for almost anything, since the person receiving it would, in turn, be able to make copies and trade them for things they needed. Once you had a copy of something good, it held value until you ran out of people who wanted to see it, but hadn't yet.

Person-to-person was the method of distributing good media in the Caliphate. Emails with large attachments were routinely screened for subversive material. Foreign file-sharing sites and services were blocked. Domestic ones were taken down as soon as they cropped up, their creators imprisoned for long stretches of time. The Cipher School trained the Morality Board's enforcement arm and they were very good at their job.

During his first few months of military service, Yuri had insinuated himself into a circle of military quartermasters that traded valuable goods amongst themselves. Most of them didn't want to have dealings with a Zibar, but Yuri would hack into servers belonging to entertainment companies worldwide and download all sorts of contents that would otherwise never be seen in the Caliphate. In exchange for copies, the quartermasters let him join in on the fun. Whenever he needed something, one of the other members of the ring would write it off as faulty and give it to him.

Usually, Yuri dealt with Sasha, as the man had first dibs on any imported food items. He was also the most reliable source of insulin in the Caliphate. No one knew where and how he got it, he just did.

Sasha squeezed Yuri's shoulder. "Well, have you got them?"

"Yeah." Yuri pulled a microdrive out of his pocket and handed it to the chef.

Sasha held it up, in open view of the Air Force officers, and said, "I'll never get what my kids see in a cartoon about a bunch of talking animals, but...damn if it doesn't get me some alone time with the missus!" Sasha's belly laugh echoed across the mess hall. Some of the officers joined in, politely.

Sasha clapped Yuri on the back. "Thanks for this! Peace be with you, Yuri!"

"Peace be with you, too, Sasha. Thanks." Sasha turned around and went back into the kitchen. Yuri could feel the eyes of the Air Force officers on him as he left the mess hall.

He rushed down the side corridor to the gymnasium. He looked around before going to his locker. He retrieved a flat, plastic box and crammed it into the messenger bag. He took out a book on asymmetric encryption and leafed it until it stopped open on a page. There was a collection of bright yellow stickers stuck between the two pages. He took one and replaced the book in his locker. After taking another look around, he applied the Intelligence Service's officialClassified Materials Within seal across the bag's zipper.

He left the School by way of the gymnasium, not wanting to squeeze past all the officers and frazzled secretaries in the office part of the complex. There were some officers in the gym, praying. Yuri didn't know if they were praying a late Zuhr, Asr, or a simple dua for God to grant them strength in the coming ordeal. They were facing the Qibla and he tiptoed past them to the side exit, unnoticed. He walked across the small parking lot, that was chock full of jeeps, and got to the side gate. He saluted the duty Lieutenant there.

"Warrant Officer Yuri Yanuk requesting transportation home, Sir!"

The Lieutenant returned his salute and checked a clipboard before saying, "Wait right there, Mr. Yanuk!"

"Yes, Sir!"

The Lieutenant picked up his phone and said, "I've got Yanuk at the side gate. ... Yes." He put the phone down and turned his attention to the jeeps coming and going while Yuri just stood there, not knowing what this was about. He tried to interrupt and ask, but the jeeps were carrying high ranking officers, the Lieutenant seemed to be quite short on patience and Yuri had trouble coming up with what to say, so he stood in place and waited. Soon, he was swaying on his feet, blinking his eyes to keep from nodding off. He started counting his yawns, just to have something to do, other than wait.

"Warrant Officer Yanuk?"

Yuri snapped awake and turned around. A young Arab soldier stood there, holding a small parcel. He looked Yuri up and down, affected a sneer of disdain, and held out the parcel.

Yuri glared at him. The days of him being a "bright kid" with "lots of potential" were long gone. He was a hero of the Caliphate. A code-breaking demigod amongst men. He was not going to take shit from grunts anymore.

The young soldier stared back. His smirk stayed on his face, even as he gave in and sketched a quick salute. Yuri sighed, his flash of anger evaporating with the gesture of appeasement. He was too tired to chew the man out, so he just snatched up the parcel. He did take note of his name, though. He'd have a talk with the General about the soldier, when he came back.

The soldier gave a dismissive chortle and turned around to walk back inside.Oh, yeah, we'll definitely have a chat about discipline, you and I, Yuri thought.

"Yanuk," the Lieutenant called out.

"Yes, Sir?"

The Lieutenant pointed to the jeep that was pulling up to the gate. "That's your ride."

"Thank you, Sir." Yuri put the parcel into a side pocket of his bag and got into the front seat of the jeep.

The Arab Corporal driving the jeep made no face, or comment, to driving a Zibar Warrant Officer, even when they were stopped at one of the checkpoints that led through the wall surrounding the Zibar enclave of the capital.

Members of the Islamic Militia manned the posts. They were mostly rubes, fresh from the sticks, called to the capital to serve the Caliphate and God. Yuri could tell that they lacked the brain cells to process what they were seeing; a Zibar in uniform. Fortunately, though they had been given guns, they had also been given military oversight, so Yuri had a Captain to talk to.

He still had to present his credentials to the man and answer several stupid questions about how he had come to serve in the military. Yuri found himself wishing, for the umpteenth time, that they'd stop rotating the officers so much. Explaining himself thrice a week was thrice a week too often, as far as he was concerned. Once the Captain asked about his bulging bag, Yuri showed him the bright yellow seal and the man looked nonplussed.

"Are you sure you want to go inside the enclave," the Captain earnestly asked.

Yuri blinked. He was too tired to fathom the man's thought process. "Yes."

"With that bag?"

"Yes."

The Captain looked like he was going to burst if he didn't say something to Yuri. After a short, silent deliberation, the man decided to follow military regulations and let Yuri through without searching his bag.

Yuri walked into the enclave. The area immediately visible from the checkpoint was, as usual, short on signs of life. Yuri could hear the squeal of playing children and the chatter of people, but it was all faint until he rounded the first corner. Then the sounds and smells of the enclave exploded in his face.

There were children running after a ball in the middle of the street. An old man was shooing them away, telling them to go play farther down the street, where they couldn't kick the ball into view of the checkpoint. The children kept ignoring him until he reached for the ball. Then they kicked it down the street and chased after it, laughing at the old man's exasperation.

A little farther down the street, a large group of women was engaged in stirring cauldrons suspended over small propane fires. A fine dust rose from the cauldrons to settle on their hair and clothes, making them look a little like ghosts. Most wore simple cotton masks over their mouths and noses.

Yuri knew that inside the cauldrons, chickpeas were roasting in sand, along with lemon rinds and laurel leaves. Later, they'd be run through sieves to separate them from the sand and then they'd be doused with a liberal amount of aniseed liqueur and left to slowly dry for two months. It was a Zibar wedding tradition to wrap them up in paper and hand them out to the guests as they were leaving the reception.