The Soldier

Earth has survived a cataclysm, and only fragments of the familiar world remain. Most of humanity died as a result of a combat-modified virus of smallpox. The disease made no distinctions between people and didn’t divide them by skin color—it simply killed them. The remnants of humanity that managed to survive this terrible time of the Black Three Years were left to their own devices, and communities separated from each other by vast uninhabited spaces were forced to build a new social system.
Years passed: most cities no longer exist, there is no aviation, there is little technology, production is destroyed, people are scarce—but nevertheless wars continue, plots are woven, and political intrigues unfold. And the hero of the book, the most ordinary guy from a forest village, steps out into the wider world and finds his place there. Aleksandr Mechnikov doesn’t strive to accomplish great feats; he does what he must and serves the society that raised him, with an enormous desire to survive in the bloody battles for Don, Crimea, and the Caucasus. He is a man of the new era—a soldier, a warrior of the Fourth Guards Brigade of the Kuban Confederation—who lives by his own notions of honor, courage, good and evil.

A plague rolled across the Earth, and an apocalypse still occurred. The world lies in ruins, but time passes: the Age of Chaos recedes. In different ends of the planet, people come together and try to revive the glorious past. Wars resume, conspiracies and political intrigues are again spun—while the hero, the same ordinary guy from a forest village, goes out into the big world and finds his place in it once more.