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CHAPTER 22

War and Baseball


Just across the Volga from Kruglaya Mountain

December 28, 1637

“You know, Tim,” Ivan Maslov said as he diverted power from the fans that powered the air cushion. “This is a really stupid idea.” Tim had told Ivan the plan once he got back to Ufa. They’d had Christmas dinner at the palace, even at the same table as the czar and czarina. While they were dining, they’d been photographed. The photographs would be converted to print versions and spread all over Russia, especially Muscovite Russia. It was all done with malice aforethought. It had been a glittering affair full of fine fabrics and electric lights, demonstrating that Czar Mikhail was not hiding in a cave somewhere out in the back of beyond, which was the way Muscovite Russia was trying to paint the situation.

The thing about air cushion landing gear was that it would let you travel on the land, water, or on a frozen river. And the “reason” they were here was so that Ivan, who was familiar with the steam train, could check out the terrain from ground level. They were going to ride horses since the Volga was frozen anyway, but at the last minute a Scout had become available, and they’d decided to use it for comfort.

It was comfortable compared to horseback in December in Russia in the Little Ice Age. It had an enclosed and heated cabin. And by traveling on the air cushion they would be seeing the ground from ground level. The leak had said they’d be on horseback, which was the “proper” way to do it. But the Scout would let them fly away before the enemy got close enough to attack them.

✧ ✧ ✧

General Birkin shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But, sir, they—”

“I said no, Captain. I know what Maslov’s here for. And I know Lebedev’s plan. But I also know that that damn steam train of theirs is stuck on the far side of Kazakh with a busted wheel. By the time they get the wheel fixed and get it back here, it will be spring.”

“And if they find the prepared road?”

“That’s why we’re moving now,” Birkin said. Then he looked at the captain. The captain was a political appointee. An ally of Assistant General Secretary Romanov. “Captain, I am not going to become known as a sender of assassins. If you’re smart, you won’t want that reputation either.

“We move now. I want the lead element out of the fort by nightfall, and I want them at the first waypoint by dawn.”

That first waypoint was roughly twenty miles north-northwest of the fort that everyone but Birkin called Birkingrad. It had stocks of food and equipment hidden under trees. There was another one just like it twenty-three miles further northeast. Then another eighteen miles further. They were pre-stocked and made ready to allow Birkin’s army to make much better time than would be possible otherwise.

The waypoints didn’t go all the way to Perm, but they went far enough so that Birkin would have a lead on the forces at Kazan, or Ufa for that matter. That way they could take Perm and force Lebedev to divide his forces. Almost more importantly, they would provide a much needed morale boost, and at the same time threaten Shein, preventing him from joining Mikhail.

Lebedev would have to attack him. And Birkin was confident that if he was defending, Lebedev would lose.


In the air, over Birkingrad

December 28, 1637

The second Scout was flying at three thousand feet. Its undercarriage, even its air cushion skirt, was painted blue gray to make it hard to see from the ground. At this height, even its noisy engines wouldn’t be heard from the ground. Its whole purpose was to warn the generals so that they could take off and get away from the assassin teams that they expected Birkin to send. What it saw instead was troops of cavalry leaving Birkingrad and heading northwest, away from the Scout that held the generals.

✧ ✧ ✧

Ivan was handling the radio when the report came in. “They’re where?”

The report was repeated. “Leaving Birkingrad and riding quickly north-northwest.”

“Stay up and give us the best track you can,” Ivan Maslov said. Then he looked over at Tim and said, “Boss, I don’t think Birkin cares about us or the steam train.”

“Where’s he going, Ivan?”

“It can’t be close. He’s going to want time to fortify. And that’s not easy in winter.”

The Scout was moving along on the air cushion, with just enough prop to pull them forward. Tim looked around them, looking for a longish straightaway with no trees in front of it. Then he gave up and turned around using flaps and rudder. They went back to the Volga and Tim took off. Then he headed east for twenty miles, then north for ten. By then they had a track on the cavalry contingent and flew back west on an interception course. Not for the cavalry themselves, but for their route. That is, Tim flew the little Scout to where they would be around midnight if they kept going that way. That took about an hour, and then he headed back for Birkin’s army. Tim was looking for campsites hidden under the trees.


Kazan

December 28, 1637

“All they’re leaving is a token force,” Tim told Abdul Azim, the effective mayor of Kazan, that evening. “That’s all you’ll be facing by next week. A force small enough so that they wouldn’t have any chance of taking Kazan, even if we left nothing but the town guard here. Most of his army, almost all of it, is headed toward Perm.”

“That will take months.”

“A month, depending on how many of those camps they’ve hidden away in the woods. And how strung out he’s willing to let his army get.”

“He’ll take a small force ahead,” Ivan said. “Maybe a thousand men, all cavalry, all with good mounts and with spare mounts for those whose horses go lame on the trip. Use that to take Perm, then hold it while the rest of his force makes its way there. It’s a clever move. We should have seen it.”

“It’s not that clever, Ivan. It doesn’t pay enough attention to either radios or aircraft.”

While the Sovereign States were busy switching over to heavier-than-air aircraft, the Muscovite Russians were sticking with dirigibles, and large dirigibles at that. They were close to completing their second large dirigible at Bor. It would carry eight tons of cargo and as many as forty troops. On the other hand, after working on the thing for the better part of a year, and starting with a lot of extra parts that they had from the construction of the Czar Alexis, they would only have the one.

That meant that in the meantime Birkin didn’t have much in the way of aircraft, and while he knew about the Scouts and the Heroes, he didn’t have actual experience with them. And when you looked at them flying a thousand feet in the air, they just didn’t look all that impressive, not compared to something the size of the Czarina Evdokia .

“Okay, Ivan. He sends an advance contingent, all cavalry, all equipped with AK4.7s. When do they get to Perm?”

“A week. Ten days at most,” Ivan said. “And remember, Perm hasn’t declared either way. Not for us, not for Moscow.”

“Which means if we land a force there, they might just tell us to go away.”

“Which is why Birkin is taking a thousand men ahead,” Abdul Azim said. “He’s not going to take no for an answer.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t see any way for us to prove that until his army reaches the walls of Perm, and that will be too late,” Tim agreed.


Ufa

December 30, 1637

“That’s the situation as I see it, Your Majesty,” Tim finished his report.

“I may have a solution. At least part of one,” Czar Mikhail said.

He pushed a button on his desk and a few moments later, his secretary opened the door. “Matvey, find Vera Sergeevna Ruzukov. And quickly. Also that fellow who got stuck in the boiler with Stefan Ruzukov. I don’t remember his name.”

“Efrem Stroganov, sire,” Matvey said without hesitation. “The Stroganov family aren’t fond of your actions in regard to serfs, and they are also concerned about your ‘coddling’ the native tribes.”

The heirs of the Mongols still lived in Siberia. They were divided into clans and tribes. And, as Bernie and Brandy had pointed out, lived and fought like the Native Americans—or, as Bernie put it, “wild injuns.” The Stroganov family had been paying Cossacks to advance eastward, setting up outposts, and suppressing the native tribes. In return for paying the Cossacks, the Stroganov family got first crack at the tribute that the Cossacks extorted from the native tribes. That was the big difference that Vladimir had pointed out between the Mongol tribes and the Native Americans. In America, the immigrants from Europe had produced massive population growth, so when they went west they were after land. Farm land, range land. As the Cossacks went east, they were mostly after tribute: furs, wood, all the natural products of Siberia.

That, however, was changing. The Emancipation Proclamation was having an effect. Serfdom, which had mostly died out in the Germanies, was still common in Russia and Poland before the Ring of Fire. The USE had been getting runaway serfs from Poland, and since the Emancipation Proclamation, so was the Sovereign States. The constitution had simply added to and focused the effect, encouraging immigration to the free states. Those people wanted land. Czar Mikhail was of a mind to buy the land and turn it into free states. The Stroganov family wanted to use the Cossacks to take it and turn it into slave states.

They hadn’t been thrilled when they learned of Vladimir and Brandy’s trip into the back of beyond. If the czar already had agreements with the Mongol tribes, it would make it a great deal more difficult to abuse them.

“I know, but they aren’t going to like the idea of giving Perm to Uncle Ivan.”

✧ ✧ ✧

Vera Sergeevna Ruzukov arrived first. She was in the house chamber in the Kremlin. Vera was about five foot five with dark hair and a stocky body.

It was over an hour later that Efrem Stroganov arrived. Plenty of time for Tim, Ivan, and Vera to be fully briefed on the situation. Vera already knew most of it. Efrem Stroganov had been a guest in their house several times since the day he and Stefan had taken shelter in the boiler.

“Come in, Efrem,” Czar Mikhail said. “Have you met Generals Lebedev and Maslov?”

“Ah, no, Your Majesty?” Efrem said. The question was in his tone, and it was “What the hell am I doing here?

“We have some fairly bad news for your relatives in Perm,” Mikhail said. “But we suspect that they aren’t going to want to believe us. In fact, won’t believe us until it’s too late.”

“What bad news, Your Majesty?”

Mikhail waved to Tim, and Tim proceeded to brief Efrem. “Two days ago, a force of Muscovite Russians consisting of most of the army investing Kazan left. We, mostly by luck, had a Scout above and tracked them. General Birkin has been setting up bases to allow his forces to move quickly by marching from one already prepared base to the next.”

Tim looked at Efrem Stroganov to see if he understood the technique. It had several advantages in moving an army quickly, and one massive disadvantage that meant it was almost never used. It telegraphed your move, told the enemy where you were going, and how you were going to get there, assuming they found the bases.

Efrem nodded.

“General Birkin is very good,” Tim continued. “He focused on keeping the supply points hidden, rather than defensible. And we haven’t found them all. From the ones we have found, we’re fairly sure that he’s going after Perm.”

“That’s stupid. He could just head for the convergence of the Kama and the Belaya.”

“Not in the open,” Tim said. “Any works that they could put up quickly, we would pound with rockets and cannon. But that’s not the only reason to take Perm. It also cuts off Solikamsk, and so Shein. Preventing him from joining or even allowing trade across the Urals. And your family has done an excellent job of fortifying the place.”

“So my family will stop them.”

“No, you won’t,” Tim said bluntly. “First, while you have a small force of Cossacks backing you, most of your miners are serfs or outright slaves, who you can’t count on, or even trust, with guns. Almost as bad, both the miners and the Cossacks are mostly not in Perm. They are in copper mines as much as fifty miles from Perm. It’s going to take you time to call the Cossacks back to Perm from the mines, and what are you going to do about the serfs and slaves who are working those mines? You know that as soon as your Cossacks leave them, they are going to run south to Ufa. At least, a lot of them will.”

Efrem Stroganov looked at Tim, then at the czar, then at Vera. “I believe you,” he said. “But my family won’t. They trust my word, but not necessarily my judgment. They will convince themselves that you are lying to me. They will insist that I am influenced by my friendship with Stefan and Vera. And they may be right. I don’t think they are, but I don’t know how to prove it.”

“How do you feel about flying?” Czar Mikhail asked.

“Your Majesty, I’ve never been in any sort of aircraft in my life.”

“Then this is a good time to start,” Mikhail said. “In fact, as I think about it, I think now is a good time to repeat the Kazan maneuver.” He grinned.

“What?” Efrem asked, just as Ivan Maslov said, “That’s not necessary, Your Majesty.”

It was a beat later when Tim said, “No, he’s right. It’s a risk, but not an unreasonable one.”

Mikhail looked at Ivan. “General Maslov, you will stay here and organize the relief force, assuming we reach an agreement with Efrem’s relatives in Perm. The mission will consist of Tim, Vera, me, and two of my personal guards.” He looked at the clock on the wall. It read 10:32. “We will be leaving at noon. See to it, Tim.”

It was a dismissal, so Tim and Ivan left to perform their appointed tasks.


In the air, between Kazan and Perm

December 30, 1637

The Koshchey was loaded with fuel oil, and flying at four thousand feet. And Efrem Stroganov couldn’t see anything but forest and plains covered in snow. Earlier, he’d seen the track of horses leaving Birkingrad and going to the first waypoint, then to the next. He even saw the follow-on force on the march, but now they were well ahead of Birkin’s advance force. And the truth was, at this point, it was still perfectly possible that Birkin’s army would turn south rather than north and make for the confluence of the Kama and the Belaya.

Czar Mikhail was standing in the door to the cockpit. He looked at the pilot. “Take us down.”

“Your Majesty—” the pilot started.

“Take us down, Captain. We, all of us, need to see the camp.”

And down they went.

As she thought about the orders, the pilot considered what she knew and was learning about Czar Mikhail Romanov. She realized that if they didn’t get a good clear view, he’d make her do it again, even lower, and every trip increased the risk.

The Koshchey went by the depot at fifty feet above the ground and at a speed of a hundred and twenty miles per hour. There were twenty people in the camp, mostly cooks. One guard got his AK4.7 up in time to fire three shots. None came close to the airplane.

But Efrem got an excellent look at the camp. He even saw the guard shooting at them.


Perm

December 30, 1637

The sun was setting as they landed outside Perm. The settlement was located on the southeast bank of the Kama River. The land was hilly, but the river was flat, so the Koshchey landed on the Kama, then pulled up onto the shore near the north gate. It was a well-built settlement set atop a hill, and the Stroganov family had used fresno scrapers and labor to build up the bastions. They were the piled-earth sort that would shrug off cannon fire, and they were twenty feet high with shoulder-high stone walls topping them. This place would be hell to take if it was defended.

But they’d gotten ambitious and overbuilt the town. They didn’t have enough men to guard the amount of wall they had. A thousand men could hold off an army. A hundred men couldn’t man the walls, not if the attackers struck in several places at once.

It wasn’t a surprise. Tim had full reports and an excellent map of the place in Kazan. Still, it was impressive.

The first man out of the plane was Efrem Stroganov. After him came the two guards, then Czar Mikhail and, finally, Tim. The pilot and engineer were staying on the plane.

By the time they walked to the gates they were met by Anatoly Stroganov, the patriarch of the Stroganov family.

“You didn’t tell us you were coming.” Perm had a radio telegraph station. In fact, it had one with the tubes for the radio and an aqualator for encrypting and decrypting messages. Which only made sense, since it was on the route from Shein’s territory to Ufa.

“It came up suddenly, Uncle Anatoly. May I present His Imperial Majesty Mikhail Romanov, Czar of all Russia.”

“Your Majesty.” Anatoly Stroganov bowed, looking daggers at his nephew.

“It’s not really his fault,” Czar Mikhail said. “General Birkin is planning to take Perm. And we drafted your nephew so that we would have a witness you would believe.”

“Birkin?” Anatoly Stroganov looked around. Quite a crowd had gathered. Airplanes landing on the Kama River and coming to rest next to the gates of Perm wasn’t an everyday occurrence. “Such accusations shouldn’t be made in public.” Now he was looking daggers at Mikhail. Mikhail looked back calmly and lifted an eyebrow. After a moment, Anatoly added, “Your Majesty.”

“It’s not an accusation. It’s a fact, and everyone in Perm is going to know in about five days.” Mikhail shrugged away the notion that he should have been discreet.

“It’s true, Uncle Anatoly. I saw Birkin’s army, and I saw the supply depots that he hid along their route.”

“We can discuss this inside,” Anatoly gritted out.

✧ ✧ ✧

Anatoly Stroganov wasn’t happy that the czar had announced the attack in public. He didn’t want to be in the United Sovereign States of Russia. He wanted to be in Russia, the real Russia, his Russia. His slave brought them small beer. He had no intention of manumitting his slaves or serfs and Mikhail’s Emancipation Proclamation had already cost him a fortune. At the same time, both the Sheremetev clan and Ivan Romanov were thieves. His copper mines would rapidly become their copper mines if Birkin were to take Perm. “If.” Anatoly didn’t want to believe that if.

Efrem showed him the places on the map where he’d seen with his own eyes Birkin’s army and Birkin’s camps. But Anatoly wasn’t convinced, because he didn’t want to be convinced. Maybe Efrem had been fooled somehow. Perhaps he’d been corrupted by Czar Mikhail and all those freed serfs and slaves.

After the better part of an hour of back and forth, Efrem shouted, “Then come see for yourself if you don’t believe me!”

And immediately Anatoly started wondering if it was some sort of trap. Anatoly wasn’t actually a stupid man in spite of the fact that just now he was acting the proper fool.

It was just that he knew how to operate in the world before the up-timers came and he didn’t know how to live in this one. So he looked for ways to pretend that this world was still the world where Mikhail was a weak, ineffectual monarch controlled by his family. The tangled web of self-deceptions kept requiring more and more outrageous self-deceptions. Those self-deceptions built up until now he was afraid that his nephew was trying to kidnap him to Ufa so that Czar Mikhail could steal Perm from him.

And that was a bridge too far even for his paranoia. He trusted his nephew, and had for years. Nervous and upset, he went with his nephew and boarded the Koshchey .


Camp between Kazan and Perm

December 30, 1637

They saw the Hero fly by. They shot at it and missed, not that it mattered. Whether they hit it or not, the fact that it had flown so close to the camp meant that the camp was known.

General Tim knew they were here. And General Birkin was about to get screwed with his pants on again, and them with him. The cooks and guards in the camp didn’t have a clue how it was going to happen. They weren’t generals. Heck, most of them couldn’t read.

On the other hand, they didn’t need to know how. This was a secret base and General Tim knew about it. That was enough. Before the plane was out of sight, one of the guards was on his horse riding hell-for-leather to the next camp along the route.


In the air, between Kazan and Perm

December 30, 1637

The Koshchey did a second flyby and this time they were ready. They spotted the Hero a good thirty seconds out and watched it as it dove. A Hero, in spite of its name, wasn’t a fighter plane. It wasn’t designed for aerial combat. It would be dead meat if it ever faced a Gustav in the air. So its dive was actually pretty shallow. The Hero-class aircraft had a cruising speed of ninety-seven miles per hour, eighty-four knots. But cruising speed is just that: drop your nose 5 degrees and you’re going faster. Drop your nose 15 degrees and you’re going to pick up speed even with feathered engines. With throttles full on and a down-angle of 20 degrees, the Koshchey reached a hundred and fifty miles per hour. Then, as the nose came up as they got closer to the ground, they started to slow. They made their pass over the camp at eighty feet above the ground and traveling at a hundred and eighteen miles per hour, one hundred and two knots. This time thirty rounds were fired at them by good marksmen. No bullet came within a hundred yards of the airplane.

✧ ✧ ✧

As they slowly climbed after their pass, trading forward momentum for altitude, Anatoly was convinced. There is an old rhyme that applies. “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”

Anatoly knew that Birkin was coming. He knew that he didn’t have the troops to stop him. But he was still convinced that he could play the two sides against each other and keep his independence.

And he was right. He was right, because Czar Mikhail decided to let him be right, at least for now. It was the best way to stop Birkin.

The agreement they finally reached was that Perm would let a unit of militia from Ufa visit it, and help in the defense of the walls, but Perm wouldn’t become a member of the Sovereign States, at least not now. Czar Mikhail promised that the troops would leave once Birkin was stopped.


Ufa

December 31, 1637

The iceboats were sail powered. Balanced on three skates, they had streamlined compartments that would hold cargo or people, and these were carrying twenty men, each with full kit, in brand-new uniforms produced in Kazan over the summer. Twenty men per iceboat and ten iceboats set out for Perm. For the first two days, they made excellent time with a decent breeze from the southeast. On the third day, the wind died and the men put on their ice skates and pushed the boats on. It was a lot more work, but they still made pretty good time.

✧ ✧ ✧

On the evening of the thirty-first of December, Tim was talking with Bernie, trying to describe the maneuvers that General Birkin and he were engaged in.

“Not football, Tim. Baseball. Birkin tried to steal second base, and you have him in a hotbox.”

“What’s a hotbox?” Tim asked.

“That is, Birkin tried to get to Perm before you could respond, taking the better part of his army with him. But you got there first, and he’s going to have to turn around and come back. But now you’re putting another force in his way, to prevent him from getting back to first base. Which is Birkingrad.” Bernie spent a few minutes telling Tim about baseball, and Tim agreed that this was a better metaphor than any football play he could think of.

“What do you think he’ll do?” Bernie asked. “Go on for second base?” Bernie pointed at Perm. “Or try to get back to first?” He pointed at Birkingrad.

“He won’t do either. He’ll turn west and head for Bor and Nizhny Novgorod.”

“That’s even farther.”

Tim smiled. “Yes, it is.”

Bernie looked at the map. Birkin’s army, the thousand-strong lead element, and the thirty thousand following, were going to be out in the open with no supply base within reach. No supplies, no way to reinforce. Facing much smaller forces, yes. But forces that were entrenched, and in better positions to receive supplies and reinforcements.

“What about your mission?” Tim interrupted his musing.

“We fly to Saratov tomorrow with a refueling stop at Samra. On the second, we go to Casanski, which is on the Don. We’ll refuel there from fuel oil we’ve flown in, and then Kamyanka, where Colonel Gregori Denisov has arranged things with Ivan Sulyma. We have fuel oil stocks there as well. Vinnytsia is more of a question mark. Gregori and I visited it and, well, they’re pretty hunkered down, but they have promised us landing rights.”

“After that?”

“After that is Cluj, and according to latest reports, Gretchen Richter is headquartered there and has an airport complete with aviation fuel. And we can go on to Prague and Grantville, using known airports.”

“Good luck.” Tim took Bernie’s hand and shook it firmly.

“Thanks, Tim. I wonder how Vlad and Brandy are doing out in the eastern wilds.”


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