Second Front

Chapter 7

Orlov had taken to lurking about below decks, but it was inevitable that he would soon encounter Karpov. Fedorov had urged him to lay low, and to be very cautious about revealing anything he had remembered. The Chief was still simmering about it, lying in his bunk during off hours and running it all through in his mind, as if he was afraid the memories would slip away again, eluding his grasp, and plunging him into the dull unknowing self he had been before that fateful conversation with Fedorov.

He didn’t understand it all—this strange business about the second coming, nor could he understand why he could remember these events, but no one else. Yet that was not entirely true. Doctor Zolkin had been feeling very strange since he had a similar conversation with Fedorov. At that time, just after the ship arrived in this impossible past, he had been bothered by oddities in his computer files, the names of missing men, and then that strange find in his cabinet, the place he kept mementos and other precious things.

It was that bloodied bandage that first brought on the odd inner feelings that he somehow knew what it was, and why it was there. Then Fedorov had come right out and explained it to him. Ever since that time, he had struggled to remember, and at night, he would sometimes have dreams like Orlov, seeing things that he knew he had not lived through when he awoke, but nonetheless feeling that they were, indeed, real lived events. He saw his old friend Leonid Volsky, sitting in a cot bed and lecturing Karpov, and then in another dream, he thought he and the Admiral had been trapped there in the sick bay, until Fedorov came, finally getting engineers to pry open the hatch. He thought it was probably just grief for his old friend. Zolkin had taken the news of Volsky’s passing very hard.

The ears of Chief Dobrynin would also carry whispers from another world to him at times. He would be leaning back in his chair, listening to his reactor plant, hearing it as a kind of music, when suddenly there came an errant sound in the low woodwinds. He would incline his head, listening, hearing and feeling the sound at the same time, and just as a sudden smell could be a powerful memory trigger for others, these sounds worked the same way for him. They meant something—very important—and by listening to them, he came to feel that he had heard such sounds once before, carefully controlling them himself, like a conductor directing his orchestra. Then they vanished, taking that powerful sense of recollection with them… until they came again.

Another man would also begin waking up, Isaak Nikolin. For him it was just something that would come to him while he was grinning over a message he received on his private little network from Tasarov. He had been laughing to himself over a joke the Sonarman had sent him, then, unaccountably, he had a strange feeling of sadness, terrible loss, and it had something to do with his friend. He could not shake it for some time, but it would gradually pass. The next morning at officer’s mess he would look for Tasarov, asking him if he slept well and whether he felt alright.

“Of course,” said Tasarov. “I’m fine. Just hungry for a little more than the same old breakfast once in a while.”

Why the sadness, this sense of Toska, Nikolin wondered? There was Tasarov, fit and fine, and he had nothing to worry about on his account.

So it on would go, this odd simmering of another life slowly bubbling up in the crew, memories, dreams, feelings that they had done all this once, that déjà vu as Fedorov called it when he explained it to Orlov—the feeling that had enveloped him like the plume of bad French Cologne.

“Mister Orlov,” said Karpov as he stepped off the ladder. There he found the Chief, who had been ready to take the ladder up when he saw someone coming down from above.

“Captain… I mean Admiral.” Those were the only words the Chief could get out, for within, he was wrestling with the powerful memories of what Karpov had done, how he had goaded him, duped him into supporting his mutiny, and then how he seemed to gloat when the Chief was busted and sent down to the Marines, while Karpov wormed his way to the bridge again, just like he always did.

All these things were in his mind, and especially that one moment of satisfaction he took when he found Karpov in the officer’s dining room, and then deliberately spilled coffee on him in front of some of the other men. He had then waited outside the door, until Karpov emerged. That was when he really got a little payback, and put his big fist into Karpov’s belly, knocking him breathless to the deck. Damn if he didn’t have that same urge now, but the presence of Karpov here was eerie, different, like a darkness that had become animated, cold and calculating night.

“Something wrong, Chief?”

“Nothing,” said Orlov, edging past Karpov in the narrow passage. “Just work on B deck again. I’ll see to it.”

Karpov nodded, but looked over his shoulder as the Chief started up the ladder, his eyes following him up. The man had an odd look on his face, he thought, white as a sheet. Maybe I’d better give him some leave. After all, rattling lockers and rousting men out of their bunks is thankless work. Orlov never comes up to the bridge these days, at least not on my rotations. Perhaps I best keep an eye on him. He turned, and strode off down the corridor.

At the top of the ladder, Orlov felt he could finally breathe. “Yes,” he said softly to himself. “I’ll see to it… I’ll see to you as well.”

His highness has written me off, hasn’t he. Now he’s got Grilikov up there, all chummy with Samsonov. What was I supposed to be, Some kind of Brigadier in his little mob here? Well, I have news for him, and maybe very soon. That scrawny little neck of his will feel very good in my nice big hands when I choke the life out of that man, just like I did the same to Commissar Molla. Those two are eggs from the same basket. There’s only one way to break them, and when I break you, Admiral, you won’t like it one bit…. no… not one bit….

Admiral Tovey stared at the strange box that held so many mysteries for them. If he believed Miss Fairchild, that box, and the key she used with it, brought her ship here to the 1940s. It was a very timely arrival, and the services of the Argos Fire had been invaluable to him. Now he had repaid Miss Fairchild in kind. The key that Fedorov had sent to him, the one he recovered from Admiral Volsky’s remains, was a gift to her. Now, amazingly, she discovered this other odd thing about that box of hers. It had a hidden compartment, where impressions were made to receive these keys—seven in all. That thought was very alarming.

“Have a look for yourself,” said Elena, a gleam in her eye.

“My,” said Tovey. “One for each key…” He was looking at a series of small imprints in the material making up the base of that drawer. There were seven, each depression in the shape of a key.

“My key fits very nicely here,” Elena pointed to the second recessed area. “I thought it might be in the number one position, but it only fits here, in the number two spot. I suspect all the others have a place here as well.”

“Why not see where our newest arrival fits in,” Tovey suggested.

Elena smiled. “Yes, why not?”

She took the key, hovering it over the impressions until she thought she saw one that seemed very close, the number four spot, but the fit was not good. One by one, she tried them all, until the last—the number one position.

“It looks like we’ve found our culprit,” said Tovey, watching as Elena slowly laid the key in the number one spot. It was a perfect fit.

“Interesting,” she said. “Here I thought I had the master key, but this one has trumped me. I wish I knew how Fedorov came by it, but it’s enough that we have it at all, thanks to Admiral Volsky.”

“And that was a very high price to pay for it,” said Tovey. “Now then… You tell me this ship arrived here after you used your key in that aperture in the box?”

“That’s how I understand it.”

“Then I wonder what might happen if we were to use this new key in that fashion?”

Elena flashed him a dark glance. “That would be very dangerous.”

“I suppose it would,” said Tovey. “Yet logic leads me to think that if one key moved this ship here, another might take it somewhere else.”

“Agreed, but I’m not sure I want to find out just now. I’ve a raid to look after.”

“Quite so. Yes, I think it best that we put that little experiment off for a time, perhaps until we’ve recovered more of the other missing keys. It could be that they are each just one number in a coded lock, if you follow me, each key moving a tumbler that’s part of a combination. What it might unlock is beyond my imagining., but I might put the question to our Mister Turing. He’s very good with puzzles and codes.”

Elena smiled. “We may never find the key we lost on Rodney.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that. Professor Dorland seemed a very determined man, and I daresay he’s got quite a nice little machine somewhere if he can come and go as he pleases.”

“Yes, that was another unexpected surprise in all of this.”

“Well, if he got himself here for that mission aboard Rodney, and then again for that conference in the Azores, could he go further back to find this key?”

“Possibly. That was discussed, but it’s beyond our control.”

“Well,” Tovey shrugged. “Our nest is filling out a bit, but it seems we still have quite a few missing eggs. The key on Rodney was embedded in the Selene Horse, and we’re told it is associated with St. Michael’s Cave under the Rock. You say one was in the Lindisfarne Gospels, and another in the Rosetta Stone, but you’ve no idea what they may be associated with. I’m tempted to go have a look at those artifacts—quietly. We might find further clues.”

“We might….” Elena said nothing more. “As to this raid, Admiral. When will you need Argos Fire?”

“On the night of the 14th of May. We wanted to go earlier, but now it’s the 14th.”

“Well, don’t worry Admiral. With my ship and crew on the watch, your raid on that dry-dock will come off without a hitch.”

“Until we meet again then,” Tovey extended a hand. “I will be in London soon, and see about the Rosetta Stone. In the meantime, if you could see to the Normandie dock gates at Saint Nazaire, we would be very grateful.”

That raid, the Great Raid, as it came to be called in Fedorov’s history, did go off without a hitch. Argos Fire had to use two RGM-84s obtained from the Funnies, and plenty of support from that accurate deck gun, but they took out the key shore batteries and smashed the searchlights. The helicopters suppressed the AA defense, slipped in with the Argonauts leading a team of British Commandos, and they fought their way into the facility to take out secondary targets. The Campbeltown made her appointment with those heavy locks, her nose laden with explosives. They got in, got out, and with very few casualties, no one captured by the enemy as had been the case in the old history.

So the Hindenburg did not reach its berth there, and was forced to turn about and withdraw to Gibraltar. There the divers set to work on that damaged hull. It would take much longer, yet slowly but surely, that great dragon of the sea was getting new scales.

Frustrated and grumbling, Hitler would soon turn his attention to another dragon, one he never thought he would see in the skies over Germany again. It was Karpov’s brazen overflight of the Reich that had put the idea in his mind, and now he would see the fruits of the orders he had given after that raid over Berlin. As for the Great Raid, he was so upset when he learned about it that he declared such operations illegal acts of war, and gave explicit orders that any enemy commando captured in another such raid was to be summarily executed on the spot.

He fretted and paced, unhappy with the latest reports that also indicated the Allies were planning some kind of new front in the West against him. Canaris seemed to downplay the rumors, but Himmler was a little more insistent.

As always, when things in the war did not go just as he liked, the Führer looked for solutions in the development of new weapons. Now he would go to the marshalling yards to see one, a most unusual development, or so he came to think, but one that could prove very useful.

Chapter 8

Hitler stood in the assembly yard, staring at the vast shape before him. On his left was Hermann Goering, with a staff adjutant, and on his right a technical advisor, there to explain the features and design breakthroughs that would make this weapon so formidable.

“And so you see, my Führer, the applied force resulting from firing the weapon must be balanced by the resulting static and inertial reactions that occur, and these forces must be equal and opposite. We have achieved this with the use of muzzle brakes to deflect the explosive gas when the gun fires, a highly lubricated recoil chamber, and precision hydraulics. The result is astounding. We have reduced the recoil effect to a point where it is barely noticeable, and far beneath the threshold where it might impact stability, pitch, or yaw of the firing platform where the gun is mounted. This will have immediate applications for this new project before you here, as well as naval guns. It will also allow us to mount this technology on vehicles as well, where stability is always a factor in overall performance and accuracy. Soon your tanks will not have to stop to have a good chance of hitting their targets. They will be able to fire on the move, and with much greater accuracy when we combine this with our new gyroscopic gun mounts.”

Hitler listened, nodding his approval, hands clasped behind his back as his eyes played over the gun before him. Yet always they were drawn back to the thing in the assembly yard, massive, looming, extending up the height of many men. This was but a single gun that would soon be mounted on it, a proven design, one of Germany’s tried and true weapons of war. It had so many applications that had been well tested on the battlefield, a flak gun, a tank killer, and now it would be something more, the fearsome 88. This gun had been retooled with lightweight aluminum in every part possible. Stronger than steel, aluminum was much lighter, reducing the overall weight of the weapon from 7400 kilograms to just under 2000. This was important, for the hulking shape in the yard that commanded Hitler’s attention was an airship, where every kilogram mattered when considering the lifting gas had to carry the dead weight of the structural frame, engines, fuel, oil, all weapons and ammunition, ballast, supplies, fixtures, and the crew itself.

“How many can be mounted?” asked the Führer.

“At the moment, we are considering four guns, one forward, one aft in the tail section, one in a rotating turret beneath the main gondola, and one on the top gun platform. This will give the ship a 360 degree engagement bubble, on both the vertical and horizontal axis. Even this was difficult to achieve, so we developed a lighter weight shell, sacrificing a little range and hitting power, but still giving us a weapon that can vastly outrange any gun presently mounted on an enemy airship.”

“Excellent. How far?”

“About 12,000 meters effective firing range. That is twice the maximum firing range of the best 105mm recoilless rifle.”

“But wont this shell simply pass right through the target? There is little armor on an enemy airship.”

“That is correct, but we have special HE rounds with fragmentation airburst effects. This entire system was tailor made for this project.”

“And the other guns?

“The ship will mount sixteen Rheinmetall 7.5cm LG 40 recoilless rifles, with an effective firing range of 6,800 meters. That is the secondary battery. Then we add another eight Krupp 10.5cm LG 40s, with a range of 7,950 meters. The 88mm guns are the main battery for long range engagement of targets on the ground, sea or air.”

“They will not do much good against a battleship.”

“No. my Führer, not to the flotation of the ship, but considering that they have a fast rate of fire, 15 rounds per minute, they can cause considerable damage to the superstructure. That said, the airship was never designed to be a sea control weapon. It can serve ably as a high altitude naval reconnaissance platform, but its main virtue is in controlling the airspace over land.”

Now Goering took over, gesturing to the airship before them with his baton. “There will also be eight twin 20mm flak guns, and sixteen more MG-42 machineguns for defense against enemy aircraft—and all the guns have special lightweight alloys for the bulk of their structure and carriage. The trick is to minimize weight wherever possible. Notice the grilled racks at the lower portion of the gondolas,” he said. “Those are for mounting bombs, and the lighter we get the structure and weapons, the more this ship will carry. Look at it, my Führer. It will be the terror of the skies, a real height climber too, capable of reaching the dizzying heights of up to 50,000 feet. Our own Bf-109 cannot even reach such altitudes, and it is the finest fighter in the world.”

“Good,” said Hitler, a light kindling in his eyes. “How big is it? How fast?”

“325meters long nose to tail, and with Six Daimler-Benz DB 800 engines that will produce speeds of up to 140kph; faster with a good tailwind. It will have 300,000 cubic meter capacity, three times that of the old Graf Zeppelin, and a third bigger than the old Hindenburg. It will be the largest airship in the world, bigger than anything the Siberians have built, or anything presently operated by the Orenburg Federation—a real dragon, this one. There will be nothing that could match it. And now we must christen it with a suitable name.”

Hitler thought for a moment. “Why, you have just said it yourself,” he remarked. “Fáfnir, the old Norse sky dragon. Call the ship Fáfnir, and the next in this class will be Fraenir, his brother. When will this one be ready?”

“Very soon,” said Goring, a pleased smile on his face.

“Bomb Berlin with an airship will they?” Hitler looked at his corpulent Luftwaffe Chief. “Well, this is what they get in return. Can it cross the Atlantic and get back safely?”

“My Führer, it could circumnavigate the entire earth without refueling if we desired. Of course, the fuel to payload ratio must always be considered. The more fuel, the smaller the payload.”

“Well can it carry enough bombs to make the trip worthwhile?”

“We will be able to configure such a ship as a dedicated high altitude bomber. It will have fewer weapon mounts, but many more bombs. For example, the Heinkel-111 can carry 2000 kilograms. But here, if we forego these new 88 gun mounts, we can add 8000kilos of additional bomb ordnance. Nor will we need the many recoilless rifles I have described earlier on the bomber variant, which saves even more weight. A single Zeppelin can therefore carry as many bombs as an entire squadron of Heinkels.”

“Excellent. Then we have here our Amerika Bomber. Continue with the other aircraft designs as well. I want to see the prototypes as soon as they are ready.”

“We will show you the JU-300 soon, and the Focke-Wulf Ta-400 and Heinkel He-277. Once we determine which is the best, production will begin full throttle.”

“How many of these new airships will there be?”

“Fáfnir is ready this month. His brother ship in thirty days. Once proven, we can ramp up production very quickly. We have all the old factories and facilities from the first war available.”

“Build at least ten,” said Hitler, and Goring nodded, only too happy to comply. “Can we get the helium for that many?”

“Orenburg should be able to accommodate us. They have production sites at Dobycha near Orenburg itself, another at Astrakhan, and a third location called Karachaganakskoye.” He stumbled with that. “Forgive me, but it is often impossible to pronounce these long Russian names.”

“Why not simply extract it from the atmosphere?”

“My Führer, I am told it is extremely rare, only a little over five parts per million in the atmosphere. However, it can be found in natural gas deposits and extracted there. Some sites have as much as 5% helium. After inquiries, we have learned they are in the Caspian region, Algeria, the Persian Gulf, and Iran, and perhaps even in eastern Siberia, which may be why they have been building up their airship fleet so quickly.”

“I see….” That set Hitler’s mind to thinking. Perhaps there was more to Raeder’s Plan Orient than first met the eye and ear. Then the Führer turned to his Luftwaffe Chief, a different question in his eyes.

“Herr Reichsminister,” he said. “I want you to organize a reconnaissance mission over Siberian territory for the maiden voyage of these airships.”

“Of course,” said Goring. “We must ascertain where they are relocating their factories and tank production sites—and the oil. They must be getting it somewhere. My information indicates several sites in Siberia are now involved with oil production.”

“Find them all,” said Hitler, with that tone in his voice that might have been the growl of Fáfnir himself, low and threatening. “Yes, find them all, and I want you to add one more site to your list. It is a small railway depot, about 20 kilometers east of Kansk. The same place our transport planes landed in that stupid operation Volkov planned. That man has had an obsession with that location for the last year. Find out why. He keeps claiming it is a weapons development site, but for all his raids, the only thing he has ever found were plans. The name of this site is Ilanskiy, and I want a full report as soon as possible. Don’t forget this.”

The renowned German Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz had once scoffed at the Zeppelin fleet, and of its strongest advocate, Kapitanleutnant Peter Strasser he once said: “Strasser is slightly mad, and carried away with the idea that airships are more important than battleships.”

Hitler smiled inwardly at that, realizing that this massive airship before him could easily bomb London from heights that would leave it immune to enemy defenses. It could do this to any city in England, while his battleships could not think to come anywhere near the British homeland. Yes, he thought. I will build a fleet of these airships. The only problem will be finding adequate supplies of Helium. We once ruled the skies over England with such ships, but the fact that we were forced to use Hydrogen put an end to the Zeppelin terror during the first great war, and in fact, it put an end to Peter Strasser himself, the man who flew the last raid over England. Live by the sword; die by the sword. We will not repeat that mistake again. I know someone who can give us all the Helium we might need, and all the oil as well.

Kaiser Wilhelm was very squeamish about bombing England in the first war, but I have no such scruples. They will bomb Germany, and I will bomb England. What a marvelous launch platform these airships would be for our new rocket weapons when they are developed. In fact, not even the Americans will be safe any longer. My Luftschiff fleet can cross the Atlantic, hover off the coast of New York above their fighter cover, and we can launch our Vergeltungswaffe 1, the new V1. I am told Project Cherry Stone is coming along nicely. I have not yet decided what to call them. The Maikafer is a good name, the little May Bug that rules the summer nights, but that is not so threatening. Perhaps I will simply call them my Schwarzkrähe, the Black Crows.

Yes, our Zeppelin fleet can do a good many things! What has the mighty Hindenburg done for me in this war? It is more trouble than it is worth, guzzling valuable fuel, foiled by torpedoes and these damnable naval rockets. I still cannot believe they were developed by the Soviets as Volkov tells me. Why didn’t they use them to defend Moscow? Volkov says they are not much good against land targets. Their warheads are not much bigger than our own heavy artillery. But against ships, they have proved very effective. Might they also pose a threat to my airships? I must consider that possibility, as I am told these rockets also shoot down aircraft.

Raeder never finishes anything, does he. The one thing he had right was the importance of seizing Gibraltar, and then Malta, but after that, his plan to leap into Syria came to naught. Even though we bullied Turkey into allowing us to use their railroads, the system was in such bad shape that we would have to spend a year upgrading it to make it worthy of any sustained military use.

I am beginning to see what Halder argues at OKW. Logistics! It was a lack of adequate supplies that stopped us in Russia last winter—that and the damn weather. It was a lack of supplies and material that limited our intervention in Syria, and the same problem now plagues Rommel—that and this new British tank. Hopefully our new shipments of Lions and Panthers will redress that shortcoming, and I am particularly fond of the latest new model, the Tiger.

For now, look at that magnificent airship out there. Soon the British will find out about it, and they will probably roll their eyes, thinking we are fools to waste our time building such things. Once we had Zeppelin bases all over Germany, at Towdern, Hage, Seddin, and Nordholz. The assembly plant buildings at Friedrichshafen and Potsdam still remain, and they are now being completely renovated. Soon our new Luftschiff fleet will be second to none, and I can have these airships fairly quickly. The entire fleet of ten I have ordered now could be built for the cost of a single battleship, and ten times faster. We were launching two every month during the last war, and that will be the case here again—very soon.

I must speak to Admiral Raeder on this. We will want to reestablish the Naval Airship Division—not with these massive dreadnoughts like Fafnir, but with leaner, faster and smaller airships to be used for fleet reconnaissance. I am sure he will warm to the idea, and they will give the British fits! We can use them to scour the seas and find the Royal Navy, and better yet, to spot the convoys for Döenitz and his wolfpacks, or even attack them. What a marvelous base Iceland would make for our airships. I was a fool not to seize that island in 1940. Now the Americans are there, and the navy tells me there is no way they can keep our troops supplied if we did invade. That may be true, but these airships could have done that job.

Perhaps the Army could use these airships in a similar role in Russia. Yes, they are perfect for scouting out the vast hinterlands of Asia. That is why Volkov built so many, though his fleet has been outmaneuvered and badly beaten by this upstart Siberian. When I send Fafnir and his brother to find out what he has in his pockets over there, we will see how bold he is.

Yet I foresee one potential problem—the airship sheds. It was Churchill who ordered preemptive attacks against our sheds and hangers in the first war. They are massive structures, and easy to spot from the air. They will certainly become prime targets for the RAF, and Volkov has warned me about the Allied bombers on more than one occasion. I could always have them built in occupied Russia, well out of reach of the Allied Bombers. Volkov uses small mooring towers with specialized crews for refueling and maintenance. Those could be built anywhere.

I am told the British Wellingtons have a service ceiling of only 18,000 feet. The Lancasters and American B-17s fly much higher, but our airships can go higher yet, so we could hover over our cities, and shoot down at the bombers with this new 88mm gun I am shown here. That will be a nasty little surprise for the RAF, because they have no fighters that can reach Germany, and even if they did, they could not climb high enough to bother our new Zeppelins.

Why didn’t I see all of this before? Volkov is very clever, and he certainly saw the usefulness of Zeppelins long ago. Very well, I will order the designers to produce the Naval scout model, but first I’ll want this first lot of dreadnaughts. Fafnir’s maiden voyage will prove their worth. I have already given orders that any Zeppelin Master from the first war that still lives is to begin the training programs for the air crews and service personnel required. That will all be left in Goring’s hands, and though he is a bungler when it comes to strategy, the one thing he does get right is logistics.

So then, Raeder has his new ships, and now Goring will have a nice new Zeppelin fleet to darken the skies of our enemies. And I have one very special mission in mind for a ship like Fafnir. Our Uranprojekt will be the weapon that will shake the world to its foundations. Yes… I will give Fafnir the fire of death and destruction, and he will be the dragon that comsumes our enemies—everywhere. Not even America will escape our retribution. In fact, New York may be a much better target than London….

Chapter 9

Captain Putchkin was very tired that day. He took his post on the bridge of the Angara as always, but with little enthusiasm. He had drawn overwatch duty again for Ilanskiy. It was his duty to stand the watch with his Topaz Radar, covering all the taiga north of the city, the direction most enemy raids had come from. One of the bigger ships, the Sevastopol, would be moored at Ilanskiy itself, and Abakan had the south watch.

That nice fat Soviet ship gets the mooring tower this morning. Which means they’ll likely haul up fresh eggs, bread and sausage for breakfast, and perhaps even a few nice girls for the officers. For us, there’s only this endless taiga. How far does it go? One day I must take my airship way up north to the Arctic Sea. Few men have ever seen that territory. But for now, patrol duty, endless, routine, mind numbing patrol duty.

He was a man in his mid 40s, grey at his temples just beginning, a little belly as well, but his father and mother had both been heavy, and he was likely to turn out the same way.

“Elevation?” He said nonchalantly to his Elevatorman, Pavel Kornalev.

“Passing through 2000 meters. Ballast secure and releasing on schedule. Engines one and three running smoothly.”

“Very well, climb to 3000 meters. Ahead two thirds on engines two and four. Up elevator five degrees. We’ll take it nice and easy—God knows we have plenty of time out here. Helmsman, come to zero-four-five degrees northeast. We’ll cruise on over to the Biryusa River and then make our next turn.”

That was the routine, 045 Degrees northeast to the Mirnyy Nob, a sharp bend in the Biryusa River near that village. Then they would just turn north, follow the course of the river up to the Big Bend, and the village of Biryusa itself. They’d then make a turn to port on 330, taking a short cut across the taiga until they saw the river again. This time it would lead them due west, until it made a sharp turn to the north. At that point, they would be about 130 kilometers north of Kansk, completing the first half of their patrol. From there, they would steer 225 southwest until they hit the much bigger Yenisei River, and follow that south until it split. They would take the smaller left fork, a tributary called the Kan River, and that would lead them right to Kansk, with Ilanskiy just a few minutes to the east.

It was just routine now—too much so. Doesn’t Karpov know that Volkov still has men on the ground out here? Yes, we never could account for all the men he airlifted in here in those raids. Most were killed or captured, but I’ll bet my left thumb that some made it clean away into the Taiga. I wouldn’t like their lot, trying to survive out there, and live off the land, particularly in winter. But summer can be even worse. The permafrost melts in places, and the bogs make overland travel damn near impossible. Yes, the bogs, bugs, bears and tigers—Siberia is no place for a man to live with any comfort.

So his morning began that way, finding those rivers, drifting along their winding courses, seeing the sun gleaming on the water, stark in contrast to the green of the forest and taiga below. It wasn’t until they reached the Big Bend in the Biryusa that things got interesting. The buzzer on the bridge gondola sounded noisily, and the Captain looked over his shoulder to see which station was calling. He thought it might be engineering, something with that gimpy tail that had been damaged in that battle with Volkov’s ships. It had been repaired, but was never quite the same as far as he was concerned. He had been an officer on this ship earlier, and now he got the promotion to Captain, his first real command, and he had taken to noticing things like that—any odd quiver or vibration in the rigging of his airship. It was his now, all his.

“Forward Radar Station,” he muttered aloud. “Now what’s this about?” He went over to the intercom, punched the button and spoke. ‘Bridge. This is the Captain.”

“Aye sir, we have a contact to report—just came on the screen, sir. Single contact, bearing 350 true north of our position, range 80 kilometers. Working on elevation now.” He was not reading from an Oko panel, as they were too few to deploy on a small cruiser like Angara. This was just the modified RUS-2 radar set that Karpov had designated Topaz, with a maximum range of about 110 kilometers for airborne surveillance. It was not really very accurate, and the operator was using a combination of the reading received, his own experience, and a good deal of guessing. Yet one thing was certain. Something was out there.

“Speed?” asked the Captain

“Reading now sir. I have it fairly low and slow. About 3500 meters, maybe 80KPH.”

That did not sound good, thought Putchkin. It was much too slow for a plane, and what would a plane be doing out there in any case. No. It was another airship, and any sighting of that sort could mean only one thing, trouble. “Very well, Elevatorman, up bubble 15 degrees and take us to 4000 meters immediately. We have unexpected company. The ship will come to action stations.” He leaned to a voice pipe up to the main body officer’s station. “Mister Suslov, to the bridge. Action stations!”

Then the captain walked through an open hatch to his radio room. “Signal Kansk. We have an unidentified contact to our north at 80 kilometers. Use a chart. Ask if we have any traffic up there I might not know of.” He strode away, unhappy. Cruiser Captains were always the last to know anything—Topaz Men—that was what they were called in the fleet. The dreadnoughts all had that fancy new radar set, the Oko system. What a wonder that was. It could see an airship out to 200 kilometers, smaller planes at 150, and it could track them unerringly, up to 40 separate contacts. A Topaz set could detect, but it would not track accurately. But that reminded him.

“Radioman, also put in a signal to Kansk. Tell them they had better get Sevastopol off the tower and up to 4000 meters.”

It looked like breakfast was over back there, and they had better get the girls down the tower ladder and be quick about it. Trouble at 3500 meters means you get your ass to 4000 meters. They climb, and you clime right with them, always to maintain that minimum 500 meter edge. Stretch it to a thousand for good measure, but he’d wait until they climbed through this leg, and then see what the contact did in response.

Damn, he thought. Haven’t we kicked Volkov hard enough out here? What’s he doing here now, testing our readiness with a single airship out making a probe? What kind of airship? How big would this one be? We kicked his ass roundly the last time we fought. That Karpov is one lethal son-of-a-bitch when he gets to war, and that’s no brag. He’s well west now, some 800 kilometers west at Novosibirsk on the Ob Rover line position. That has to be it—the Ob River line battle. Volkov has been pushing there again, building up men and equipment for the last month. He’s going to mount another offensive there, sure as rain, and so that’s where Karpov is with the dreadnoughts. So in that light, this traffic up north makes sense now, doesn’t it? Somebody is edging in for a look around.

He strode back onto the main bridge, ringing up the radar post in the nose of the ship. “Radar—anything more?”

“Contact still at 3500 meters, range about 70 kilometers now.”

“Very well, keep me informed.”

Five minutes, 10 kilometers off the range. We’re closing on one another at 160KPH combined speed. So that means we might get a visual on this one in under half an hour. Has he seen us? Does Volkov have radar sets too? If he has, he’s not moved a muscle to climb. Cheeky bastard, this one. I’d better get forward to the observation section. Telescope time soon enough, and then after that, the rifles. But I hope to God this isn’t anything big. We’ve got elevation now, but that could change, and Angara isn’t a high climber. Yes, that could change very quickly.

Putchkin sweated out the next 20 minutes, getting that feeling of adrenalin anxiety in his gut. He paced in the observation section, called up to radar every ten minutes, then settled in behind a telescope, waiting. Visibility was good, with just a scattering of white fluffy clouds. Then he saw it, a glint in the sky, right where he expected it beneath a cottony cloud, dead ahead.

That’s an airship alright, and it looks to be a big one. But I’ll lose the damn thing in that cloud if he climbs. “Signalman,” he shouted over his shoulder to the radio room behind him. “Put out a challenge in the clear. Hail that bastard and demand identification.”

“Aye sir.”

He heard the man’s voice reading out the hail, the tension building with each moment. He didn’t expect anything would come back, but was shocked when he heard the crackle of another voice on the radio, inclining his head, one eye on the distant contact.

“Siberian airship, heave too and surrender. Prepare to be boarded. This is Deutschland Luftshiff Fafnir, and you are hereby taken as a prize of war.”

“What? To hell with that!” said Putchkin aloud. “Prize of war? Surrender, is it?” He slapped the telescope hard, stomped back through the radio room to the main gondola bridge, and looked for his first officer, Suslov. The man was leaning down to get a look at the contact from the bottom windows, but he saluted when the Captain came in.

“What in god’s name is this doych land loof shit? Where in god’s name is Fafnir?” Airships were always named for cities. Everybody knew that, but he had never heard of that place. Suslov just scratched his head.

“It looks big, Captain. Perhaps we ought to climb.”

“We’ve got damn near 700 meters elevation on them now, to my eye, and they’re turning, about 9 klicks out. No need to worry yet.” The Captain had a very good eye. His Radarman could not yet give him an accurate range, particularly this close, but his Mark One Eyeball was well experienced. They had turned, so he would turn as well, and maintain this cautious safe gap interval. Even a good 105mm recoilless rifle could only range out seven klicks on a good day like this. If I keep this interval, they can’t lay a finger on me—nor I them.

“Radioman. Tell them this is the airship Angara, Siberian Aerocorps. And then tell them to go to hell. They are violating Free Siberian airspace, and if they do not immediately withdraw, they will be fired upon.”

“Look at that thing,” said Suslov in a low voice. “My God, Captain, It’s a real monster. Big as Tunguska—bigger!”

Putchkin had his field glasses up watching the contact skirt the edge of that cloud. If he climbs in there, then up we go, another 200 meters. We’ve got the ballast to drop, and Angara is very nimble. Yes, they can out climb us in the long run with those big fat airbags under that nice pretty canopy, but in the short run, we’re faster in a climb, and more maneuverable. I can dance up to the top of that cloud, sit there, and when they stick that big snout of theirs through the top, I’ll blast them to hell.

It was a good plan, but he would not get the chance to carry it out. He heard a sharp crack in the distance, and then seconds late the sky near his ship erupted with a dark black rose of an exploding shell. It was just close enough to flay the main gondola with shrapnel, and he instinctively grabbed his balls. Fire from below had a way of making a man very uncomfortable, but the round was perhaps 500 meters short.

Yet it shouldn’t have been that close at all, he thought with some alarm. What’s he got out there, some new 105 with better range? “Five points to starboard,” he said. “That was a little too close. Elevator man, ten degrees up and all ahead full. Take us up through 4500 meters.”

He looked at Suslov now, astounded. “Well don’t just stand there gawking, Mister Suslov, “answer that goddamned round!”

“But sir, we won’t hit them at this range, not even close.”

“Answer it, by god. Use the 105 in the nose!”

Suslov gave the order, and Angara cracked out a single round in reply, if only to say they were none too happy with what the other ship had done. There came an immediate reply, that hard distinctive crack, and then the hiss of a fast round coming at them, followed by the thump of canvas penetration, then a shuddering explosion.

“Mother of God!” Putchkin shouted. “They put that one right into our guts. Damage control, report!” He was on the voice tube now, but he already knew they had lost a gas bag, the high, whining hiss of the helium leaking was the telltale sound to worry about. That was from a hole in a gas bag that was just too big for the vulcanized rubber lining to reseal. A machinegun hit, even up to a 20mm round would sound more like a man letting air spurt out from the end of a balloon, fart like, and then come to a sibilant hissing kissing sound as the wound resealed.

God bless the Vulcan bag lining, but we just got hit with a bag buster, and a damn good one. The range has to be over ten klicks now.

“Captain, we’re losing buoyancy. I can’t climb now with just the engines. We’ll have to drop ballast.”

“Then piss it out man! Climb! Climb!”

The Elevator man sounded the claxon, and pulled the emergency ballast drop lever. Water would cascade from the nose of the ship, lightening it there and helping to get the nose pointed up quickly.

Crack, came another round, and another hit. By God, we’ve got to be twelve klicks away, well beyond rifle range. All they could possibly have up on top is a 105, but it’s one hell of a gun. They’ve blasted us again, we’ll lose another gas bag with that one.

“Captain,” came a watchman. “Damage control says that hit the reserve Oxygen. We’ve got a fire!”

Those were words that would freeze their blood of any airship Captain, no matter how salty he was. Fire was the last thing he ever wanted to see, for they carried limited amounts of water, due to its weight, and to fight a fire you had to be quick, and generous with whatever water they had. They would have to divert ballast water if this was serious, and something told him it was.

“God-damnit!” he swore. “Radio man, put out a distress call. Note we’re under fire and taking damage. Request immediate support—our position. Sevastopol had better damn well be up at elevation by now. Tell them there’s a big fucker from Fafnir out here, wherever the hell that is.” He was still thinking the ship’s name was a city. “By God, that looks to be a German insignia there. Can you see that, Suslov?”

Suslov leaned to peer through the lower gondola window panes again, squinting through his binoculars. Then the next round came right on through that window, and exploded.

That little disagreement was going to send alarms all through the Siberian Aerocorps. Three more airships were pulled off the Ob River line, and moved to the scene, but when they arrived, the mysterious ship, Fafnir, was long gone, it’s mission accomplished… For the moment….

A month later, and 3500 miles to the west in London, Admiral Tovey was thinking over the situation in Russia, and with worrisome thoughts. Things were not good. The Soviets had stopped the Germans, even drove them back in their Winter Offensive, but it was high spring now, and the Germans were on the move again. The Soviets desperately needed supplies while they struggled to re-establish their factories on Siberian Territory. There was really only one way to get them there in quantity by sea, and it would now lead to one of the hardest fought convoy sagas of the war.

“What’s next in the number sequence for Murmansk?” he asked a staffer when he reached the Admiralty.

“Sir?” The young man looked at a clip board, flipping up a page. “Number 17, sir. Teeing up now at Reykjavik. Convoy PQ-17.”