CHAPTER 12
Gunboat Diplomacy
The Ilya Muromets, Caspian Sea
October 24, 1637
Captain Leonid Belyaed looked at the weather report. The radio teletype message was an indication that they were getting close to Astrakhan. Astrakhan had a good radio station with a broadcast range of about a hundred miles into the Caspian Sea, so they should be back to the port city by tonight. He handed the sheet back to the radio man. “I assume you sent them our data.”
“Yes, sir. Winds, barometric pressure, humidity, our estimated location, the works. They said they would forward to Ufa.”
This was the return leg of their third trip to Base One, the secret base on the Kazakh side of the Caspian Sea. There was a team of thirty people living there now. It wasn’t a preferred duty station. The only water they had was distilled, and the only food they had was fish and what they had brought with them.
Leonid Belyaed was expecting to load up on canned goods and dry foods in Astrakhan and then make a fourth trip. It was moderately boring, but only moderately. The Caspian Sea was a sea, after all, and the Ilya Muromets was a riverboat. Astrakhan was the Sovereign States’ largest seaport on the Caspian Sea, and food, as well as other goods, from the entire Volga River system was available there.
And it was part of the Sovereign States because the state of Astrakhan had quietly joined the United Sovereign States of Russia two weeks ago. That had pissed off Tsaritsyn and Saratov, who’d been counting on the four southern Volga states acting as a block.
Leonid nodded to the radio man and went back to his breakfast. It was eggs and Caspian sturgeon caviar and fresh bread. Leonid liked being captain of a gunboat.
✧ ✧ ✧
If Leonid Belyaed was happy with his job, that made him no different from Bernie and Natasha. Who, over the last two months, had had plenty of privacy and no interruptions worth worrying about. The two were having breakfast while Natasha read a report on the advances in computers, and Bernie read a mystery novel.
The protagonist of Bernie’s novel bore a marked resemblance to Miroslava Holmes in background and appearance, but was highly fictionalized. Of course, the name had been changed so that Miroslava couldn’t sue over the use of her name or damage to her reputation. Not that she would anyway. Miroslava didn’t care much about money or her reputation. She liked solving problems. Besides, she was off in Kazakh, not sneaking around in Nizhny Novgorod on a secret mission for the czar to catch the Muscovite spy, Med Nayezdnikovna. To the best of Bernie’s knowledge, Miroslava didn’t even have a secret decoder ring.
He snorted a laugh and Natasha looked up from her report. “Those things will rot your brain, Bernie.”
“Too late. It was already completely rotted away by MTV before the Ring of Fire. Ask any of the geeks at either Dacha.”
“Filip actually thinks you’ve done quite well,” Natasha said, then paused before adding, “considering your limitations.” Filip Pavlovich Tupikov was one of the scholars of the Dacha, both Dachas, who’d been involved in the development of everything from indoor plumbing to airplanes, and, quietly behind the scenes, the development of the Sovereign States and was the actual writer of the Flying Squirrel pamphlets that still circulated in both Russias. Russia’s Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine rolled into one, except he avoided the limelight like it was sunlight and he was a vampire. He was also Anya’s present squeeze, and probably future husband. Anya preferred geeks to former football stars. She insisted geeks were at least trainable.
Bernie stuck out his tongue, and went back to his novel. There was no TV in the seventeenth century, at least outside of Grantville, so the simple lack of other options had turned Bernie into a reader. And the many improvements in the art of printing and preparing a manuscript for publication that had been developed or copied from the tag end of the twentieth century made paper books inexpensive enough to be readily available. Even, these days, to the poor. So books like this one flowed down the Volga by the crateload and were sold in shops from Moscow to the southern Caspian sea. They weren’t all that flowed down the Volga, with the manufacturing centers in Murom, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, and Ufa. Russia—both Russias—were developing their own golden corridor. Not quite as robust as the Elbe corridor in the USE maybe, but getting there. And the civil war had barely even slowed things down.
That was half the problem. The cities of the southern Volga River, Samara, Saratov, Tsaritsyn, and Astrakhan were looking at all that improved trade running down the Volga on steamboats, and all too often going right by their towns without stopping to give them what they considered was properly their share.
It was also why Astrakhan had signed up. Even with the steam power of the riverboats, they still had to stop at Astrakhan to transfer their cargo to sea-capable ships. The Ilya Muromets wasn’t really suited to its present mission, but it had higher gunnels than most riverboats to protect its guns and the gunports were watertight when closed, so it could handle the rougher seas of the Caspian Sea better than the average. But most Volga riverboats were taking major risks if they ventured into the Caspian.
All of which left the other southern Volga states in an unenviable position. And Bernie was confident that they were going to sign on simply because they had nowhere else to go.
There was a knock at their door and Bernie called, “Come in.”
The door opened and a petty officer in a blue navy tunic with a brass zipper on the front came in. The zipper wasn’t hidden behind a flap of cloth. It was displayed as though it was a set of fancy brass buttons which, in a sense, it was.
It was proof that the Sovereign States industry was up to making zippers. An advertisement that the Sovereign States was a modern nation as much as the USE. Which wasn’t true yet, but they were trying.
He handed Natasha the note from the captain. She was a princess, after all.
“We’re in radio range,” Natasha said, and Bernie frowned. The real limit on radio range was Earth curvature, though there was some “bend,” but not all that much. The new station at Astrakhan had its radio tower set on top of a tall building, and between the two it had excellent height and the Ilya Muromets could raise an antenna to give it extra range. Which it did, except in bad weather or combat.
Between the two, the range of the radio telegraph system was around a hundred miles on the Caspian Sea. Lower on land, but they had multiple stations on land. All that meant that Base One was going to be out of touch with the rest of the Sovereign States until they got a radio linkage through Kazakh. And the people of the great state of Kazakh had better things to do than set up a bunch of desert radio repeater stations to keep in touch with an oil exploration station that most of them didn’t even know about.
“They’ll be fine, Bernie,” Natasha said. “We survived for centuries without instant communications. For that matter, you survived just fine for the last few years with nothing faster than a sailing ship to take your mail to and from Grantville.”
She was right and he knew it, but it still felt like they were leaving their guys out on the end of a very long limb with no way to call for help once the ice closed the northern Caspian Sea.
Astrakhan docks
October 24, 1637
The sun was setting as they tied up, and Chao Wong was standing on the dock waiting for them. He didn’t look happy. As soon as Bernie and Natasha were at the bottom of the gangplank, he leaned into them and spoke quietly but urgently. “The Tsaritsyns have gone crazy. We need to talk, but not here.”
✧ ✧ ✧
Once in his shop, Chao Wong said, “Colonel Greshnev has declared for ‘Czar’ Ivan Romanov.”
“What?” Bernie asked. “Has Uncle Ivan declared then?”
“No. As of the latest report from Moscow, he’s still calling himself Assistant Secretary General. He does have the dog boys on his side, and most of the remaining Boyar Duma. What’s left of it after the purges.”
After Sheremetev went missing, there was another set of purges with Ivan Romanov mostly tonsuring boyars rather than killing them. That is, he forced them to take holy orders, which made them ineligible to be part of the government. Exactly as had happened to Mikhail’s dad.
“Then what is Greshnev thinking?”
Chao Wong shook his head. “Honestly, I think it’s a ploy. He thinks that Mikhail lacks the will to go to war. Even with a small city state that doesn’t actually control most of the territory they are claiming.” Chao tugged on his beard in thought. “When Czar Mikhail and the Czarina first arrived here on his goodwill tour after they got to Ufa, we were overawed by the dirigible. A flying whale is an impressive sight. Especially if you don’t understand the science behind it. But time passes, and the Ufa Dacha isn’t much for keeping secrets. Then when the Czarina Evdokia was lost in Germany and the Czar Alexis was shot down so easily by the rocket men of Ufa, the awe faded.”
“And the fact that we hold the Volga from the Caspian to Kazan doesn’t impress him?” Bernie shook his head.
Chao Wong lifted open hands. “That was accomplished by politics and compromise. Czar Mikhail has given much of his power to the congress. He bought off the Kazakhs with the promise of aid against the Zunghars, and now the better part of his army is off in Kazakh, and the rest is tied down holding the Volga at Kazan. I think that Greshnev and his allies think that Mikhail is overextended and will be forced to give them whatever they want if they threaten his flank.”
Natasha asked, “What have they done, other than declare for Ivan?”
“They’ve seized riverboats, mostly unarmed steamers, for taxes and duties, they say. Oh, and they are refusing to retransmit anything not sent in clear.”
The radio system sent digital signals, so technically everything was encoded, but there was a standard code that anyone could read, so it was easy enough to sort everything by the way it was encoded and pull anything you didn’t want out of the stream.
“The radio team at Tsaritsyn is ours,” Bernie said.
Chao Wong nodded. “My impression is that they are under duress.”
“Which means we’re out of touch until we get near Saratov. Do they hold all the stations or just the one at Tsaritsyn?”
There were five radios along the Volga that were in the territory that was nominally the state of Tsaritsyn. There was another on the Don River, but that was controlled by the Don Cossacks.
“And what about the Don station?” Bernie asked.
“Tsaritsyn holds the radio nearest our border. As for the Don’s radio, I don’t know.”
“I wish we had a Hero,” Bernie muttered.
“We do, dear,” Natasha said. “You are my hero.”
He grinned at her. “Thanks, but I meant the airplane.” Then he paused. “Why don’t we have an airplane? Why didn’t Mikhail divert one?” He turned to Chao Wong. “When did this happen?”
“Yesterday afternoon is when we heard about it. We had a boat return after being ordered to heave to for boarding near the state border.
“Then we sent a set of radio messages and we were informed of the change in allegiance. But they didn’t announce it until the riverboat returned, and there are at least two more that may have been boarded and seized. As to when Mikhail found out about it, I don’t know. For all I know, he doesn’t know about it yet.”
Bernie looked at Natasha “Do we wait?”
“No, Bernie. Mikhail sent you here. He knows who you are.”
“Sent us here, love. He also knows that you’re smarter than me and understand Russian politics in your bones. So I ask again, do we wait?”
Natasha considered. “No. We teach Tsaritsyn a lesson and a hard enough lesson that the others will learn it as well.”
Bernie gave her a formal salute. “Aye aye, ma’am.” And it wasn’t a joke.
“Okay, we’re going to need to top up on ammunition and fuel.”
✧ ✧ ✧
That took some time. While the Ilya Muromets was an excellent vessel, it wasn’t the only armed riverboat on the Volga. Most of them had some armaments.
While Natasha and Captain Leonid Belyaed were organizing supplies and troops, Bernie considered the tactical situation. If Czar Mikhail hadn’t heard about it yet, he would soon. And that meant Tim would be running the fight from upriver.
Ufa airport
October 25, 1637
General Boris Timofeyevich Lebedev climbed out of the Scout’s front seat smiling. Tim had just learned that he liked flying in airplanes even better than flying in dirigibles. He did wish the Scouts were a bit quieter, but the view was outstanding, especially on takeoff and landing.
He thanked the pilot and mounted the horse that a soldier was holding for him, and five minutes later, he was at the war room in the Kremlin.
✧ ✧ ✧
“Can you pull more troops from Kazan?” Czar Mikhail asked as Tim entered the room. The map showing on the wall was of the Volga from Kazan to the Caspian Sea. The map table showed the map that included all of Russia, including Moscow and the state of Kazakh. And his army, as well as Ivan’s, which was in Kazan.
“I’d rather not, but I could,” Tim said as he headed for the stove in the war room. It was a chilly day out. “Honestly, it’s not Kazan I’m worried about, but an end run of some sort around Kazan.” Between Bernie and Cass Lowry, football terminology had made its way into the Russian military lexicon. “I have agents in Iakov Petrovich Birkin’s army and I’m sure he knows it. The problem isn’t what I’m hearing. It’s what I’m not hearing. He’s planning something. I’m sure of that, I’m just not sure what.”
“Tsaritsyn has declared for Czar Ivan Romanov.” Mikhail’s emphasis on the czar was pointed.
“Well, your uncle didn’t ask them to.”
“I know that. Uncle Ivan may be a worse crook than Sheremetev, but he’s not an idiot. On the other hand, if they make it stick, it could help him a lot. If he can start seizing territories without firing a shot, that will strengthen his position drastically.”
Tim nodded thoughtfully and Czarina Evdokia put his thoughts into words. “People might think that Mikhail isn’t the only Romanov who can gain territory without having to take it by force.”
Tim didn’t nod, but Mikhail did.
“What about Bernie and Natasha?” Tim asked.
“Out of touch. The radio network doesn’t have much spread down the Volga. And Greshnev has seized the radios in the state of Tsaritsyn, so we don’t know what’s going on in Astrakhan either. For all we know, they’ve agreed to Greshnev’s scheme or been conquered. The same thing is true of the Don Cossacks. We don’t know if they are on Greshnev’s side or our side, and they have a radio chain that goes to Moscow without going through our network.”
“Why not use that? We have tie-ins to the Russian network.”
“Gee, why didn’t I think of that,” Czar Mikhail said rather sarcastically. “We’ve sent messages up our chain, but haven’t heard back yet.”
The map on the wall was of the territory in question, showing just the western edge of Kazakh and the top of the Caspian, but also the top of the Black Sea. Tim looked at it and thought about what he knew about Bernie Zeppi, Princess Natasha and, especially, about Captain Leonid Belyaed. Bernie had proved that he kept his head in a battle. His ability to command others was less proven, but he knew enough to let the professionals do their jobs.
Again, for just a moment, Tim wondered when he’d become one of those professionals. But he knew the answer. Gradually, over the last couple of years. He really was General Tim now. And Captain Leonid Belyaed was a professional, one who’d been at Regev and learned its lessons well.
“I’ll take a riverboat back. Send the Scout to establish contact with the Ilya Muromets, but I honestly think that Princess Natasha, Bernie, and Captain Belyaed will be able to handle it.”
In the air, south of Saratov
October 26, 1637
The weather was closing in a little as the second Scout made its way south from Saratov. Saratov didn’t have an airport, but it did have a river and a stock of fuel, the gasoline-alcohol mix that the Scout’s engines preferred. The alcohol wasn’t added because of a lack of gasoline. It was added to push up the octane and avoid backfires. On the other hand, it did reduce the power output a fair amount. Today, Konstantin Golov was piloting the Scout and Yakov Davydov was the spotter.
The Scout had a chain drive from its engine to the fan for the air cushion landing gear, and it had a radio and headphones for pilot and spotter. But it was a simple plane, designed to fly slowly and to look around for enemy forces. It had nothing approaching a pressurized cabin, which gave it an effective ceiling of around twelve thousand feet, but that didn’t matter. Its carburation was also iffy, so the single 110 hp engine started losing power at about eight thousand feet.
Konstantin Golov had it at nine thousand to try to give Yakov the best view. They were looking for riverboats.
“Come in, Astrakhan,” Konstantin heard Yakov say. Then the click as Yakov took his finger off the send button, then nothing but static. “Come in, Ilya Muromets.” Click. Static.
“You see anything, Yakov?”
“Nothing, and the weather’s closing in. We should head back.”
Konstantin looked around. The clouds were closing in, but they were pretty and it was darn cold, so Konstantin figured they were probably snow clouds, not rain clouds. So he wasn’t all that concerned with icing on the wings. Konstantin was bright, cool headed, and exceedingly well read on the subject of flight. What he wasn’t was an experienced pilot. He had experience in dirigibles, but his total time at the stick of a Scout was seven hours. He could take off. He could land. He could navigate, turn and bank, all the things that, according to the book, meant you were a pilot. But seven isn’t five thousand, and all the book learning in the world won’t make it so.
He knew from his books that snow pulled water from clouds, making them less likely to cause icing than the lower, warmer, rain clouds. And besides, it was important to restore communications between Ufa and Princess Natasha. So they kept going south for another ten minutes until the snow clouds had closed in. But with the clouds closed in, he wasn’t quite as sure of his airspeed, and he fiddled a bit until he thought he had it right.
He almost did.
But though the nose was a touch above the horizon, he was actually losing altitude gradually, and as he sank through the cloud, it went from a snow cloud to a slush cloud. That is a cloud with quite a few snowflakes, but also quite a bit of the sort of supercooled water that forms sleet and ice on wings. As the thin sheet of ice formed on the wings, the aircraft got heavier and sank faster and Konstantin Golov still couldn’t see crap except a pale gray soup all around his plane.
His instruments told him he was mostly level, and the Scout had 5 degrees of dihedral, so it ought to self-level, but it didn’t feel level. He made an adjustment, then another.
And the ice on the wings was changing the flight characteristics of the wings, and not in a uniform manner.
Fifteen minutes later, they came out of the clouds, a thousand feet of height above ground, and in a bank of about 30 degrees, losing about thirty feet a second.
They came out over open prairie, and that should have saved them. The Scout was a forgiving plane, and the air cushion landing gear made it even more forgiving. But it wasn’t just the upper wings that were covered in ice. It was the lower wings and the skirt. With a coating of ice, the skirt couldn’t inflate. And, worse, it blocked the flow of air, so there was no air cushion. Which would have led to a belly landing if the pilot was more experienced, or if the wings weren’t covered in ice.
Instead, Scout Two hit the ground at a 15-degree down-angle, traveling at just under two hundred miles per hour. It spread over about a hundred feet of prairie and wouldn’t be found until after Konstantin Golov and Yakov Davydov were nothing but bone.