Eric Flint: 1636:The Kremlin games

“So,” said the czarina, “we look like we are sailing on by for as long as we can, then we attack them as fast as we can.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. That is what I recommend and if Ruslan Andreyivich doesn’t listen to Ivan, it just might work.”

“No, Ivan,” said Captain Ruslan Andreyivich Shuvalov. “It’s a worthy thought and I thank you for it. But it’s not in the czar’s character nor in the up-timer’s. If it was Cass Lowry with the princess, maybe. He would want to charge in, and might even convince her guard captain that it was the best move. But not Bernie and not the czar. They will be looking for a place where they can hide and negotiate. Ufa’s not a bad place for that. Though, I suspect the czar has underestimated the effect of the steamboats.”

Ivan wanted to argue. He was eighteen, after all. But he was a soldier and he owed much of his present position to the patronage of his friend Tim’s family. The captain not only outranked him in military terms but in social terms as well. Besides, the captain had a point. Taking the dirigible would be a considerable risk. Ivan would try it if it were him, but it wasn’t him making the decision. And the captain had another point. They needed everyone working on the dirigible. It would be called upon soon. Either to follow the czar and report on his whereabouts or to ferry the boyars out here. Possibly both. So he let the matter drop.

“Yes, sir,” Ivan agreed. “The forward right side engine bushing replacement is going slowly, but the other three engines are fine and the propeller cowlings are providing extra force. The spark gap radio is still not working and I think we are going to need it. But…” Ivan continued his report.

From Murom to the confluence of the Oka and Volga rivers is about a hundred and thirty miles. They had left Murom at about eight in the morning as the sun was coming up. They had stopped for an hour at the telegraph station. However, they were going downriver, which gave them an extra two miles per hour. So they reached Nizhny Novgorod just before sunset.

The riverboat-more of a barge actually-was flat-bottomed and most of the time carried cargo. It carried quite a bit of cargo now and Czar Mikhail stood on top of the boxes for freight and waved to the people of Nizhny Novgorod as they went by.

Not knowing what else to do, the guards on the walls waved back. There was no question of shooting. The czar’s face was on every ruble note in Russia and there were a lot of notes. There were also a fair number of telescopes by now, and some of them were owned by the citizens of Nizhny Novgorod. The man standing on a box of freight and waving at them was indeed Czar Mikhail and many of the guards on the wall bowed.

The barge and the one following it rounded the bend into the Volga, turning east, and kept going, with the czar of all Russia continuing to wave. The ship was drifting to the north side of the river as it reached the tributary that led to Bor, only a mile or so away. Casually, it turned into that tributary and the czar kept waving. Now he waved to the workmen from the dirigible station. The men and women who had built the dirigible Czarina Evdoka now got to see the real thing, for the czarina had climbed up onto the box beside her husband in full royal regalia and was waving as well. There were even a few cheers.

Whatever silly thing they were doing, it wasn’t attacking. You don’t attack a place by standing in the open in plain sight and waving like a silly idiot. But sometimes you might divert attention from an attack by standing on a box and waving… if the circumstances are just right.

The barge the czar was on went right on by the dock at Bor, but the barge behind it didn’t. It hit the dock a little hard and the troops aboard it were almost jarred off their feet. They would have but for the captain’s warning at the last minute.

“ Move! ” came the very carrying squeak of young Lieutenant-now General-Lebedev.

Ivan had heard that squeak before. His friend’s voice tended toward the falsetto when he was excited. And suddenly he knew. He knew that the czar was here to take the dirigible, that Tim for whatever reason was on the czar’s side. And he knew. Knew for a certainty that he could stop him if he moved now.

And he froze.

Ivan had the vice of his virtues. General Sherman’s vice. The vice of a very smart man who, when taken unaware, will tend to overthink the problem rather than act when action is what is needed. It was why, in another universe, Sherman would be Grant’s subordinate, not the other way around. And that-not any silliness about good blood or bad blood, not even the accident of fate that had put Tim in the right place-was what made Tim, not Ivan, the czar’s general. Whose side was Ivan supposed to be on? Tim was on the czar’s, but Tim’s family was on the boyars’. Ivan could see in his mind what he had to do to stop Tim’s attack and what he could do to aid it and did neither. Not because he lacked courage or even moral courage. But because he needed time to think things through when they hit him out of the blue.

Captain Ruslan Andreyivich Shuvalov didn’t have that flaw, but he didn’t understand what was going on either.

“What the devil is he doing?” Ruslan wondered. The czar was sailing by, waving at everyone, and most of Ruslan’s people were watching him do it.

There was some minor disturbance down at the docks, but what did Czar Mikhail think he was doing?

It took Ruslan minutes he didn’t have to realize… “Oh my God. He’s the decoy! The czar of all Russia has let himself be used as a decoy!” And the decoy had succeeded. He’d locked Ruslan’s attention away from where it was needed.

At that point, Ruslan raised his rifle and sighted on Czar Mikhail. Then he stopped. It wasn’t because his target was the czar. At least not mostly. It was respect for the czar all right, but for the czar as a man. A man he had always thought of as good, but never until that moment thought of as brave.

Instead, finally, minutes too late, Ruslan turned to try to save his command. Grabbing a dozen men who happened to be standing near him watching the czar and the czarina wave from their barge, he shouted “Follow me!” and ran for the attackers.

“On me!” Ruslan shouted, blinking into the setting sun’s glare. “Push them back onto their boat!”

And he fired into the crowd of soldiers quick-marching up the street from the dock.

“Keep moving,” Ruslan heard a high, squeaking voice shout as he pulled the chamber from his AK4 and stuck it in his pocket. He pulled another chamber out, and looked up as he inserted it into the rifle. “Fire, fire!” he shouted. And his men did, all twelve of them.

Some of their rounds hit, for he saw men fall. But then that high, squeaking voice came again.

“Column halt! First rank, kneel! First and second rank, ready your weapons.” And the first and second ranks, at least thirty men, leveled their rifles at his scratch troop.

“Aim!”

And Ruslan heard his men turn and start to run. Ruslan looked back, looked at the troops across the street, then followed his men. Then the high, squeaking voice again. “Fire!”

That was the last he knew.

It was the ricochet that brought Ivan out of his frozen state. He couldn’t change sides this fast. He just couldn’t. But he also couldn’t fight his friend Tim and the Czar of Holy Mother Rus. So what can I do? he wondered. I can get Nick. Nick had been a friend since Ivan arrived, even though Ruslan had taken command on their arrival. Nick hadn’t held that against Ivan. He hadn’t even held it against Ruslan. And Nick was someone Ivan could talk to, so it was to Nick, not Ruslan, that Ivan went.