Eric Flint - 1636:The Kremlin games

With ninety percent of the inhabitants of Bor still gawking at the czar and his family, mopping up took much less time than Tim had thought it would. Even with one of his men dead and three wounded, he was able to get the column moving quickly, by leaving the wounded under the command of Filip, who had a flesh wound of his own.

Once they reached the hangar, his men came to a halt without orders. Tim had heard how big the Czarina Evdokia was, but hearing and seeing were not the same. He spent several minutes assigning guards and trying to figure out where to assign guards. While he was still in the process of this, he saw Ivan and Nick approaching.

Ivan had run to the hangar because that was where Nick was being held, only to find David Sikorski, the Oprichniki assigned to this force, already there, getting ready to shoot Nick on the basis of “we’re in trouble and the only thing to do with prisoners is to kill them.” This was only one of the many obnoxious things the little man had said over the months they’d been assigned here.

Ivan talked him out of killing Nick by pulling his own pistol-a gift from Tim as it happened-and pointing it at David’s head. “I find I disagree with your position on killing prisoners when in dire circumstances.”

“I have my orders,” David said.

“I have my gun,” Ivan pointed out.

Nick started to laugh. “I think gun trumps orders.” Before David could move, Nick had pulled the pistol out of his hands.

David looked at Nick, then looked at Ivan, then ran. Ivan considered shooting him, fairly seriously, but he just couldn’t bring himself to shoot an unarmed man in the back. And, apparently, neither could Nick.

“So, Ivan,” Nick said, “what’s been happening?”

“Czar Mikhail has arrived,” Ivan said. “Sort of. He’s out in the middle of the channel.”

“This I have to see.”

“Ivan, Nick, come over here.” Tim couldn’t help smiling as he recognized his friends.

“Have you heard anything about Princess Natalia?” Nick asked. “I’ve been worried ever since they arrested me.”

“She’s on the barge with Czar Mikhail,” Tim said. “They’ll land as soon as we’re secure here.”

“And then what?” Ivan asked.

“That depends, Ivan. What’s the status of the Czarina Evdokia?”

“Mostly ready to fly. Certainly it can be made ready to fly by morning.”

“Very good, then. Czar Mikhail and Czarina Evdokia are going to take possession of their dirigible,” Tim said. “Nick will be placed in command and you can be my assistant.”

And that’s how Ivan came to defect, albeit accidentally.

It took a few more minutes to settle things, and Ivan got another shock when someone referred to Tim as “General.”

“That’s the signal,” Czar Mikhail said. The captain of the boat nodded and waved. There was a change in the sounds of the engines and the barge started backing up. It took a few more minutes and another change in direction to get the cargo barge docked.

The crowd followed the barge, and Czar Mikhail and Czarinia Evdokia continued to wave to them. As the crowd poured onto the docks, Bernie got a bit nervous. The czar was the czar, after all, and a crowd like that could have assassins sprinkled though it. Or just the random nutcase. Even if it didn’t, crowds were notorious for changing moods when they didn’t get precisely what they wanted. They should have had the docks guarded before they called the barge in. More poor planning. It came, Bernie knew, from lack of real experience. Unfortunately, most of the real experience was on the other side.

But the czar carried it off. He waved, he shook hands, patted people on the back, and these weren’t pushy fans at a rock concert. They were working Joes, seeing their monarch mostly for the first or maybe second time in their lives. They didn’t want to hurt him or the czarina. Just being noticed was a big deal. They got through the crowd and the people followed them as they walked up the dock to the shore and then up the street toward the hanger complex where the big dirigibles were built. It was a massive building, a cathedral of the air.

Impressive, but not pretty. An example of brute force and the massive investment of labor filling in the gaps of knowledge. But it stood, and it held a massive airship and the parts to make another. Finally, when they reached the hangar, the czar’s forces noticed and stopped the crowd, politely but firmly explaining that the czar and czarina needed to talk to their advisers.

In the massive hangar where Czarina Evdokia met her namesake, there was quiet. Tim, Nick, Tim’s friend Ivan, Filip Pavlovich, and a grizzled old Streltzi who had effectively become Tim’s sergeant major, were standing around talking quietly. They looked over at the new arrivals and started in their direction.

That was apparently when Anya noticed that Filip had been wounded because suddenly she was gone, moving like lightning to Filip’s side.

When Bernie got there, Nick and Tim were watching the scene, while Anya, oblivious to them all, fussed over the slightly wounded Filip, who was eating it up.

“I’m an astronaut or the closest thing Russia has in this century,” Nick said, in a tone of profound disgust. “And a war hero.”

“I’m a war hero too, and the youngest general in the history of Russia,” Tim agreed. “Even if the czar only gave me the rank because he didn’t have an army to give me.”

“And who gets the girl?”

“The nerd!” they said together in a harmony of disgust.

“What is the world coming to?” Bernie agreed, amused.

A few hours later, with Anya still fussing over Filip, they got down to business.

“Somebody tell me, please,” Nick whined, “why we’re going to Ufa. It’s the back of beyond.”

“Because we need a place that’s far enough out that it will be difficult for Sheremetev to just roll over it.”

“Ufa is on a river,” Ivan pointed out. “Doesn’t sound safe to me.”

“You’re right,” Tim said. “But who says we’re going to stay in Ufa? It’s just a… staging area. Well, not just a staging area. Ivan the Terrible built a fort there, you know. And it’s about as far upriver as you can go in one of the steam barges. You can get a little past it, yes, but it’s the last fortified position out that way. If we were to stop, say, at Nizhny Novgorod, one, Sheremetev would have to come after us. And two, it would be real easy for him to get here.”

Ivan nodded. “That’s true. So what you want to do is use Ufa as your border with Old Russia.”

“Exactly,” Czar Mikhail said. “Meanwhile, we will find a place that is difficult to reach save by dirigible and build a safe haven there. So what we want to do is ship as much to Ufa as possible by boat and barge, and then from Ufa we’ll take what we have to on to.. whatever place we find. That’s the basic outline. The details will have to be filled in as we go along. That will be Tim’s job. And yours.”

“Because you must!” David Sikorsky shouted. “The Boyar Duma has ordered the arrest. Director-General Sheremetev wants these people stopped!”

“One of those people,” the commander of the Nizhny Novgorod Streltzi snarled, “is the czar of Holy Rus. And if he wants to go, I’m letting him go.”

David pulled out his emergency pistol. “The patriarch has proclaimed that the czar is under a spell!”

“Didn’t look like it to me,” the commander said.

“Can you imagine Czar Mikhail standing on a barge, waving to peasants? Of course he was under a spell! Send a radio message. You’ll get confirmation from Moscow.” David rubbed his eyes. It had not been a good evening so far.

After making his way to the Volga River, stealing a rowboat, rowing across the river, and having to walk a mile back to Nizhny Novgorod, he had to deal with these uncultured cretins. He had bribed his way into the commander’s office and had some support among the officers. Much of the service nobility was unhappy with the changes that Czar Mikhail had proclaimed since his escape from the hunting lodge. The loss of serfs would ruin some of these men and probably do some harm to all of them.