John Schettler - Crescendo of Doom

As Security Chief, Kymchek also stood in as fire control officer on the Orenburg when the ship was engaged. He had coolly directed the gunnery during the earlier engagement that had dispatched the Siberian battleship Yakutsk , but that ship had been heavily outnumbered, and had no chance of survival. The enemy they were facing now was an order of magnitude bigger. How in god’s name could we fail to detect that airship? Were the radar crews and watchmen blind? It was massive, bigger than anything he had ever seen. By comparison, the big battle underway ahead of them with Old Krasny would be a side show to the action that would now be fought here. That ship dwarfs Big Red, he knew. What could it be, a new ship we knew nothing about?

That was simply not possible. Kymchek knew his intelligence network was simply too good to miss the deployment of a ship like that. He peered through his field glasses, struggling to find insignia, and there, at the heart of the prominent double headed eagle of the Siberian State, was the Serial number: T1. The T Class airships were small heavy cruisers at 100,000 cubic meter volume. The Siberians had two in that class, Tomsk and Talmenka , and the Orenburg Federation deployed three with Tashkent, Talgar and Taraz . That serial number belonged to Talmenka , but that ship was deployed far to the south, well away from this action, and this was not the old T Class he knew. While the shape and design of the airship was similar to the heavy cruisers, this ship was more than twice their size! It was bigger than the Narva class airships deployed by the Soviets, and by god, it was even bigger than the Orenburg!

T1! The new T class the Siberians had built this year… This was Tunguska! It could be nothing else. Yet that ship was reported lost over the English Channel just last week. How could it be here? Were all his network reports in error? Impossible!

“All guns to bear on that ship!” he pointed, and the rifle crews began to return fire in the chaos of the command bridge. The sharp report of the guns was deafening, the shell casings ejecting and falling from the ship as they fired, and smoke from their fire wafting up to the bridge level above.

Kymchek was on the voice tube to Volkov with the bad news. He knew he would have to answer for what was happening here now, and did not know how he could explain the presence of this ship, other than to say the obvious.

“Sir! That ship out there—it’s the T1— Tunguska!”

Volkov heard the clamor on the bridge, and the firing of the guns on the main gondola. Then Kymchek’s voice was loud in the tube again, and his eyes widened with surprise.

“Tunguska? Karpov? How is that possible? What in hell are you saying, Kymchek?”

“Sir… The reports we had… Well that must have been a deception, false information. There is no other explanation.”

The heat rose on Volkov’s neck, his eyes bulging with anger. “Damn your soul, man! False information? Are we that stupid?” Yet even as he shouted this his mind began to piece together the truth of what must have happened. Tunguska had been over Germany, rashly bombing Berlin before it made for the English Channel, apparently bound for London. Then the news was on the BBC of the airship lost in that storm, but they had never found evidence of the wreckage.

Yes, that was it. Karpov! That bastard must have been in league with the allies all along. He had just come from that meeting with Sergei Kirov, and there must have been some secret arrangement made with London at the same time. Perhaps he never sailed west at all, but turned about to come here. Could Karpov have learned of my plans? We were pulling airships off the front lines and assembling the fleet for this operation just a day after we got the news that his airship had gone down. The news was still fresh. Probably too fresh to really blame Kymchek for this lapse, though I’ll give him hell in any case.

But what to do now? The roar of the battle was growing and he felt the ship shudder with a direct hit. He craned his neck, seeing the forward gondola had taken the blow, with smoke and fire there.

Karpov! That son of a bitch! Look what he did to the Caspian Division. The skies were black with the smoke of Salsk and Sochi as they fell to their doom. Armavir was burning badly from her tail, unable to maneuver, and descending as rapidly as she could. Anapa had fallen off and dropped elevation as well, intent on fulfilling its mission and putting her valuable troops on the ground. Armavir was trying to get down, but now he saw the skies dotted with the tiny dark shapes of men leaping from that ship. The flutter of parachutes followed, and Volkov took some solace to think that battalion might also get men on the ground. He would need everything he had to press a credible attack on Ilanskiy.

That is the key, he thought. I must get the ship to Ilanskiy. Once I control that place on the ground, I’ll have the one thing Karpov prizes most.

“Kymchek! Break off this attack. Make for Ilanskiy, all engines ahead full.”

“But sir… That will take us directly into that storm front!”

“Damn the weather. All ships to Ilanskiy! Signal the Southern Division ahead to do the same. The fleet will regroup there. Understood?”

“Aye sir, signaling fleet regroup orders now.”

Aboard Tunguska , Karpov smiled when they scored the first hits on the Orenburg . The enemy flagship had been trying to climb, and maneuvering to bring all its gondola mounted guns to bear. Tunguska took a direct hit from the lighter 76mm rifles on the ship’s forward gondola. Then she returned a well aimed 105mm round there, and took her revenge.

Yes, revenge, vengeance, vendetta. That was what Karpov had in hand now. Was Volkov on the Orenburg? Was he looking at what I just did to those little airships of his below? Look at those fires!

Bogrov turned, a warning in his tone. “They’re breaking off, sir. It looks like they’re going to run for that squall line.”

Karpov saw the unwieldy bulk of the Orenburg veering off, the ship’s great nose coming around, and heard the fitful thrumming of engines.

“Shall we come round and pursue?”

Karpov thought quickly, his eyes moving from the silver-grey mass of Orenburg to the more distant battle where he could vaguely see Big Red in action at lower elevations ahead. Another ship was burning there, and reports indicated that they were going to lose the heavy cruiser Tomsk . He looked at the storm front ahead, thinking that the weather had its own dark pact with the tempest that had sent him here from 1909. If he pursued, what might happen to Tunguska ? Was that front energetic enough to affect the ship’s position in time? Might he vanish from the scene right in the midst of the fight here, even as he had appeared to the great surprise and bewilderment of his enemy?

“No!” he ordered. “Do not follow Orenburg . Avoid that storm front. Make for Big Red, and all ahead full!”

“OldKrasny” was hanging in the skies above the small hamlet of Karapsel, half way between Kansk on the River Kan and Ilanskiy to the east. The day was late and the setting sun finally fell low enough to send its amber gleam beneath the cloud deck. The light painted the dull red canvass in a tawny shade of port as the airship battled on.

The skies about Big Red were ripped by explosions. The ship’s aft gondola had been hit, the number four engine burning there. And above, on the broad flanks of the ship, three holes had been torn in the outer skin of the airship, one a large gash where singed canvas still fluttered fitfully in the wind.