Crescendo Of Doom (8 page)

He looked at the map, seeing the town as the best possible place to get his men now. This should have been as simple as Feldmann said it would be, he thought. We were to have had surprise and cover of darkness on our side, but neither was our friend tonight. The enemy knew we were coming, and saw us plainly with little more than that sliver of a moon out there. Now daylight removes the only cover we might have near those hills. So I’m bringing Altman and Reinhardt down here. We’ll pool the entire company and try to infiltrate through that town now. It’s our only play.

Even as he thought that, he wondered what cards the British still might hold in their hand. Time was also a key element here. The morning will be our only chance, he knew. By noon the British units following the 65th will be making their appearance. Then it comes down to the real fighting. For now, I need to get one of those goddamned bridges over the river, because something tells me the 65th will be needing it soon. We won’t hold here. The enemy has the whole 10th Indian Division on the heels of our retreat. This is nothing more than a delaying action, and soon we’ll find ourselves retreating yet again. Where this time, Aleppo, or back to Turkey?

In either case, von Sponeck won’t like it, nor will Kurt Student. No, they won’t like it one bit if they have to tell the Führer we could not hold as ordered. Who’s ridiculous idea was it to fly us all the way from Cyprus to this god forsaken desert? Even as he thought that, he realized that it was the plaintive cry of every soldier who had ever found himself in a hard place. So tomorrow we fight, he steeled himself. Let’s see what the men can do.

He looked at the dawn, shunning the coming sun. So much for lightning from the sky. All it really came down to was one man facing another with a rifle in hand. The rest is done with mirrors.

Part III

Vendetta

“Revenge is the sweetest morsel to the mouth that was ever cooked in hell.”

―
Sir Walter Scott

Chapter 7

The
ship rose into the slate grey sky, its massive shape casting a deeper layer of shadow on the ground. The rising wind blew fitfully, with cold fingers rippling the canvas.
Tunguska
was aloft, its great round nose inclined upward, rising into the sky as thunder rolled to greet her. Vladimir Karpov stood on the bridge, legs wide and one hand on the guide rail to steady himself. The storm in his mind seemed a reflection of the tumult in the sky above, and when lightning ripped the dark flanks of the clouds, its wrinkled fire seemed to gleam in his eyes.

Take me back, he commanded. Take me back to settle accounts and savor the vengeance I so roundly deserve. It was not a prayer, but an order, and even as the ship gained altitude, the winds rising with growing anger, so the fury in his own chest redoubled. Time was watching him, listening to him, waiting on his command as any other officer or member of his crew might. He could feel his own significance, a criticality in the nexus of this moment, and knew on some instinctive level that he would be obeyed. For he was not just anyone at that moment, not just a simple man subject to the whims of time as the ship might be buffeted by the wind. No, he was the master of all these events, sovereign of fate and time, Vladimir Karpov.

It is all my doing, he thought. I shook the foundations of Fedorov’s history when I launched that first nuclear warhead against the American fleet in the North Atlantic. It was my knowledge and experience in combat that saved the ship and crew, and my victories that brought
Kirov
safely home to 2021. And it was my hand that spared
Key West
, though that does not seem to have mattered much in the scheme of things. The river of time was flowing on to the terrible rapids of a new war, and I would move with it, into the Pacific this time for another round of fire with the U.S. Navy.

I prevailed, until that Demon of a volcano sent the ship careening through time again. Who would have thought I would ever find myself in 1908, out to face our enemies yet again, and right the injustice of history, until I was betrayed yet again by the very same officers I fought for and saved. Yes! Volsky owes me his life, and Fedorov, and Orlov as well. Yet they came for me out of the depths of time in that damn submarine, traitors all.

And yet, had it not been for their duplicity, where would I be now? Surely I would have mastered Togo and his decrepit old fleet, and restored Russia as a true Pacific power again. But I would be old now, thirty years on, as Volkov was when I met with him at Omsk. So all things have a way of guiding the flow of these events. I would not be here now if Volsky and Fedorov had not come for me aboard
Kazan
. Everything happens for a reason, and time has conspired to keep me always in the gyre of chaos, like a maddened conductor scoring the crescendo of doom.

So here I am, on another ship, a place I could never have imagined myself that night, so long ago now, when
Orel
blew up. And as for Volkov, that gutter snipe would be dead in 2021 if I had not opened the doors of fate that eventually sent him searching for Fedorov along the Trans-Siberian rail. So all of this was my doing, and to settle accounts I will start with Volkov. He thinks I am gone, lost, perished in that storm, but let him think again! Another storm awaits me, and I can feel the wind taking me as we climb.

Even as he thought that, there was a crackle of fire in the sky, as lightning rippled through the clouds. Karpov felt a tingling static, and something compelled him to look for the ladder up from the main bridge gondola.

“Admiral off the bridge!” called the Boatswain as he went, and the eyes of the crew followed him as he climbed, just high enough to gaze up into the massive interior of the airship. He perceived a tangible odor of ozone, sharp in the air around him now, and was awed to see a faint green glow emanating from the duralumin skeleton of the ship. It was happening again! It was happening just as he knew it would. Ahead full and on ‘til eternity!

The ship lurched in the heavy winds, and he steadied himself on the ladder, slowly descending to the main gondola again, announced by the Boatswain.

“Steady as she goes,” he said, and Air Commandant Bogrov gave him a wide eyed look. The elevator man was tensely laboring at his wheel, struggling to keep the ship aligned properly in the storm. The crack of lightning sounded again, a whiplash that sent the wind howling with pain. Tunguska shuddered as it rolled in the sky, climbing, climbing through decades to a future time, and a moment of destiny that Karpov was determined to write into Fedorov’s history books.

“All hands stand ready. Gun crews to battle stations!”

Karpov steeled himself for combat, knowing, with every fiber of his being, that he would lead the ship to a place in time that was precisely where he needed to be to savor his moment of vengeance. A man was never adrift on the sea of time, he knew. He was always precisely where he belonged, and it could never be otherwise.

There came a dull roar, perhaps the wind, perhaps the cold draft of infinity. The ship trembled in that moment, and then slipped through to another, vanishing from the skies of 1909, an emerging somewhere else. There it hung in the skies above Ilanskiy, a massive, looming presence, until shadows formed in the sky beneath the ship, and the dull boom of thunder resounded like a kettle drum.

No, not thunder, Karpov knew, but the roar of cannon fire!

“Gunners, man all weapons! Crews deploy topside, and ready for action! Mark your targets on my command!”

Bogrov turned to Karpov, a look of surprise and astonishment on his face. What was the Admiral saying? He had been fighting to maintain control of the airship as it rolled in the livid sky, and suddenly Karpov was barking out orders as if they were going into combat.

Then the shadows around the ship congealed to solid shapes, long grey cylinders in the sky and his surprise was complete. Airships! Suddenly the sky below them was filled with airships! His eyes widened with shock as he saw the dark eagle wing insignia emerging from a sharp letter “V” on the tail of the nearest ship.

“Ahoy! Airships off the starboard bow!” His voice betrayed credulity as he instinctively shouted out the warning.

Karpov had already seen them, his field glasses raised to his eyes, and his voice was hard with an order. “Forward gondola. All guns to bear on targets ahead. Fire!”

Mother of god, thought Bogrov. What was happening? He knew that insignia as if it were branded on his own skin, the sharp “V” for Volkov, the black wings of an imperial eagle, dark on the dull grey canvas. These ships were Orenburg Federation vessels! Where had they come from?

The sharp crack of the recoilless rifles, all 105mm guns, punctuated the moment, and Bogrov knew that his next order would be to come about and bring the main guns on the command gondola to bear. The ship was in just the perfect position to attack the formation ahead, about 500 meters above the enemy airships, and just behind a squadron of four ships.

Off in the distance he thought he saw lightning in the sky, but the dull crack of gunfire followed the flash, and he could dimly see the darkened shapes of more airships. A battle was raging there, and the dull red tint of one ship told him they were not alone in this fight.

“Ahoy! More ships off the port bow, and below. I think that’s Big Red out there!”

It was.

* * *

Old
Krasny
, Big Red, was fighting for her life at that moment. The news of the sudden incursion by the Orenburg fleet had shaken the morale of the Siberians. Karpov was gone, lost in that storm over the English Channel, and chaos had ensued. A big attack opened on the Ob River line, with at least five enemy divisions thrown into the fight. It was a major push to break through north of Novosibirsk, the place where Karpov had smashed the last enemy attack with his daring and innovative thermobaric bomb.

Then the airships came, the skies darkening with the first division of the Orenburg Northern fleet. The Siberians had only one ship in that sector,
Yakutsk
, and it was soon engaged by all of four enemy airships, the fleet flagship
Orenburg
among them. Brave
Yakutsk
but up a good fight, but was overmatched and blasted from the sky. Yet she had managed to make the enemy pay for her death, putting enough damage on two enemy airships that they were detached and sent home.

The remainder of that division hovered in the sky above the smoldering wreck of
Yakutsk
, as if they intended to feed on the carcass of the ship, watching until the hot fires laid the ravaged skeletal frame bare. Yet the ship had not died in vain. It put up just enough of a fight to buy the Siberian fleet a little time to rise for battle.

Aboard the
Orenburg
, Security Chief Kymchek had reported that the first enemy ship had fallen. With
Pavlodar
still burning when it was detached, and
Talgar
down at ground level with
Saran
to off load its troop contingent before returning home for repairs, Volkov’s main division was light, until reinforced by four more ships from the Caspian fleet. Two hours later, Admiral Zorki arrived with four battlecruiser class airships:
Armavir, Anapa, Sochi
and
Salsk
. They joined battlecruiser
Saran
and the fleet flagship
Orenburg
, and moved east in a massive formation of six airships, heading for Ilanskiy. Out in front of this formation, some 300 miles ahead, was the Southern Division under Admiral Gomel, with four more airships, battlecruisers all about 100,000 cubic meter capacity. This force,
Sarkand, Tashkent, Samarkand
, and
Angren
, would soon find an engage the hasty defense mounted by the enemy northeast of Ilanskiy.

There were two Siberian airships, the heavy cruiser
Tomsk,
a smaller 100,000 cubic meter ship
,
and the big battleship
Krasnoyarsk
, “Old Krasny,” as it was called by the Siberians. Big Red loomed over the scene, her massive bulk expanding with 180,000 cubic meter volume. That fight was raging in the sky when Volkov gave the order to begin air landing operations with the four ships of the Caspian Fleet. He would retain
Orenburg
and
Saran
on overwatch while he monitored both operations from the command capsule aboard the fleet flagship. It was an detachable armored chamber, hidden like an egg within the underlying bulk of
Orenburg
, just forward of the main gondola. From here Volkov could sit in relative safety, peering through observation ports, and receiving status updates from Kymchek over voice tubes and telegraph.

One day I will have to get a proper intercom system set up on this ship, he thought, but there were more urgent plans before him now. They were riding high, at 10,000 meters in darkening skies. Rain had followed them, a long cold front sweeping east in the wake of the fleet sortie. He had won his first battle, laying
Yakutsk
to rest easily enough, and the damage to his two heavy cruisers was not serious. But they would be out of the action for some time, though that was of little concern to him. He would now outnumber the enemy fleet ten to five in the immediate vicinity of Ilanskiy. They still had two more ships further east near lake Baikal watching the Japanese front, and he would deal with those in due course.

For now, two to one odds suited him very well, and so he ordered the Caspian Fleet to descend for troop deployment while the Southern Division dispatched the two enemy airships that had sallied out to challenge them. So there he sat, a cup of brandy in one hand, a pair of field glasses in the other, safely sheltered in the hidden armored sphere of his command capsule.