The Romanov Rescue
- Автор: Кратман Том, Watson Justin
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Baen
- ISBN: 978-1-9821-2570-7
- Жанр: Альтернативная история
Электронная книга - «The Romanov Rescue». Краткое содержание книги:
As WWI comes to a close a German general, an escaped prisoner of war, and the crew of an airship converge to effect THE ROMANOV RESCUE. Can there be a world without communism?
Mankind’s history is bound up in the fabric of fate, a strong cloth, tough and closely woven.
It is the beginning of 1918, the last year of the greatest war in human history, to date. All the belligerents stagger on their feet. Starvation is an ever present reality, while disease waits in the wings. In Russia, no longer a belligerent but, instead, rapidly descending into civil war and chaos, a lone family—Father, Mother, four beautiful young girls, and a brave but sickly boy—await their own fate, shivering and hungry in the dark, hoping and praying for salvation.
Their relatives in England have turned their backs. The guards set over them do little but torment them. They look Heavenward, but God doesn’t answer. They know they’re a threat to the new regime, a threat that will, in time, be eliminated.
But even the strongest fabric has flaws. An escaped prisoner of war, caught, injured, and punished, but still highly capable, might be one. An airship, returned and at loose ends after a failed mission to Africa might be another. A German general, taking a wrong turn on his nightly walk and suddenly coming face to face with the reality of the monster rising in the east, would be a third.
Follow, then, as the general gives the orders, the prisoner of war raises the men from among his fellows, and the airship launches itself forward, to contest fate, to tear the fabric of time, and to effect The Romanov Rescue.
About the Carrera series:
Unseen by any of the others, two little beady eyes watched out from a small out of the way cubbyhole. The eyes belonged to the ship’s senior rat, thought of as Number One, keeping a wary watch out for the archnemesis of all maritime rats, the ship’s cat.
With rather better than human vision, the rat watched the strangers’ preparations with a keen interest, eager to see if any of them would prove detrimental to the continued health and prosperity of rat-kind.
The crew, when they came, did so with the quiet caution of rats scurrying softly across the wooden deck. Mokrenko had been shifting his eyes steadily, to try to keep his night vision going. It really wasn’t enough. It also didn’t help one stay awake all that well, when there was nothing for the eye to see.
He caught himself nodding off a half a dozen times. Twice he’d jerked himself awake so violently that the back of his head smacked against the bulkhead of the storage room.
Indeed, it was only when he heard a human whisper, slightly above the ratlike sound of dirty bare feet on the deck, that he came fully alert. He was about to pull on the rope leading to Shukhov when the pioneer began pulling on his own. He jerked it slightly anyway, to let Shukhov know he wasn’t alone and the fight was about to start.
Mokrenko’s right thumb reached for the safety, making doubly sure it was off. He left thumb went for the ring of the dynamo flashlight on his chest. His heart began to pound for the impending action. Please, God, don’t let that fuck up my aim.
Mokrenko heard, “Prostul doarme; bate în cap.” He spoke not a word of Romanian, but the meaning became clear as he heard the whoosh of something moving fast through air, followed by the sound of wood smashing into sheet metal.
Mokrenko pulled the ring furiously, creating both a whirring sound and the beginnings of a flash of light. It wasn’t much, on its own, but given the previous total darkness it was just enough to make out eight rather surprised thugs with clubs and knives, standing on the other side of the foremast, between the two rows of cabins.
Shukhov’s light joined Mokrenko’s in a tenth of a second. Between the two, there was enough to fire by. The M1911s barked, once, twice, a half dozen times each. Mokrenko couldn’t be certain of any given hit, but he saw two of the crew fall back like limp sacks overstuffed with shit.
He emptied the last two rounds, hitting, he thought, nothing, and then pulled the ring again. “Attack!” he shouted to Shukhov, drawing the full yard of his shashka as he leapt to his feet. Mokrenko realized he was shaking, not with fear but with rage. That smashed mess kit reinforced that they’d intended to kill him.
And now, you filth, I intend to kill you.
Mokrenko and Shukhov saw as many pirates go down to the twin tightened ropes running across the deck as had fallen to the pistols.
Two of the latter, felled by Shukhov, lay on the deck bleeding. Dead or not, Mokrenko wasn’t taking any chances. The shashka swept down, guided by hand and by the marginal light of the dynamo lights, slashing one crewman across the throat so deeply that the head lolled back, unsupported by muscles or tendons. A fountain of blood shot out across the deck. The other rolled on his back, putting up defensive hands and pleading, “Te rog nu mă ucide.”
Mokrenko lopped off one hand, raising a shriek, and, when the remaining hand went to staunch the flow of blood, pointed the shashka down and plunged it into an eye, then twisted it farther down into the brain.
He risked a glance to the side to see Shukhov fighting to get his sword free of the skull it was buried in.
He’s not going to be any goddamned help!
At that point, Mokrenko resheathed the sword and drew his spare pistol. With his left hand still working the dynamo light, he proceeded to empty the thing into the backs of the crew still trying to escape in the throng across the deck. With each round fired he muttered a Russian curse: “Bitch”—bang!—“asshole”—bang—“cunt”—bang—“swine”—bang… bang… bang… bang… bang.
He put the pistol back into his pocket, immediately regretting it as the muzzle was more than a little warm, then used the shashka to slash and stab. Shukhov joined him and likewise began to hack apart the crew to make sure.
“Never mind that,” Mokrenko ordered. “Your pistol, one of them, is still loaded? Good, stand guard. Lieutenant Turgenev? Sarnof? Come on out and get topside, please, sir. Shukhov cover me while I reload.”
While the lieutenant and Sarnof took over the top deck, seizing and pistol whipping into unconsciousness the one sailor they found up there, Mokrenko and Shukhov reloaded, then worked their way down the ship, kicking open doors. There was nothing, though; the crew, if they were anywhere, had retreated to the stern.
“Come out, you swine,” ordered Mokrenko, in Russian, standing by the galley’s main hatch. “Come out, Captain, but throw your pistol out, first, or we’ll cut you down where you stand.”
Captain Vraciu’s pistol was thrown to the deck almost instantly.
“Now get on deck.”
One by one, under the irregular light from the dynamo lights, the just under half of the crew still remaining came out of the galley, to be follow by the captain.
“Lieutenant!?” called Mokrenko.
“Here,” answered Turgenev, from the top deck.
“They’re coming up, sir, what’s left of them.”
“We’re ready. Send them up one at a time.”
“You first, Captain,” ordered Mokrenko.
“You cannot do this to—”
The captain never quite finished, as Shukhov smashed him across the face with the butt of his pistol, tearing open the captain’s cheek and breaking his nose. The captain fell with the force of the blow, but only stayed down for a moment before Shukhov’s well-placed boot took him in the midsection.
“Up, you crawling filth,” the pioneer ordered. “Crawl up that ladder!”
The girl, Natalya, stepped forward from the crowd. “Am I to go with them?” she asked.
“No, Natalya,” said Mokrenko. “You stay with us.” Something about the girl—Maybe her educated accent—struck him as out of place as a kept slave on a Romanian ship. He tested his theory by asking her, in his own very limited French, “Do you want to stay with us?”
“I do,” she answered in the same language, then thought, Oh, that was probably a mistake. No one’s supposed to know. Bad things happen to me when they know.
“I need to get something,” the girl said, disappearing briefly into the galley and emerging with a large cleaver.
At about that time the shaken, shocked, bleeding captain stuck his head above the hatchway. He found immediately a loop of rope was placed around his neck and pressure applied.
Oh, God, no; they’re going to hang me. Not that, please, not that.
In fact, the captain was, at least for the nonce, wrong. The rope around his neck, though he could have been hanged with it, and though it did run over a yardarm, was only to maintain tight control. As soon as his feet were on deck, the tension was released. Even so, he felt his hands being roughly pulled behind him, before being tightly tied with a piece of rope. At that point, Sarnof moved to the captain’s side, put out one leg, and pushed the captain forward, tripping him to fall face first onto the deck. Then Sarnof knelt on the captain’s back to remove the rope from his neck.