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:
Past that, we look for courage, but how? A nasty obstacle course, when we finish building one, might do. Moving forward under low fire from the heavy machine guns might help. But it’s got to be low fire, just a few feet above the earth, to make it worthwhile. We may lose someone. And… this is even riskier, maybe a count of three delay on using their grenades? No, not three… no, yes, three, maybe even four, because they’ll count faster than light.
And then we ask—sure, why not just ask?—who wants to be in on the rescue. I can talk up the risks, both in training and in the execution. So let’s let them select for who has what we’ve looking for.
And then…
Officers’ Mess Tent, Camp Budapest
The food was still nothing special… except that in terms of the terrible hardships of the Great War it was special. Kostyshakov’s perforated buttocks were healed. Better, the men had put on an average of fifteen pounds, more or less evenly split between fat and muscle.
“Sir,” Cherimisov told Kostyshakov, “at the end, if we’ve got too many, we just put them in the ring and let them fight over it.”
“Now that’s an interesting approach,” Daniil said. “Maybe. Let me add one more thing. Once we’ve got everyone qualified, we’re going to be having each of the rifle companies undertake a long series of live fire exercises. That should help find the witless and identify the courageous.
“Also, at this point I’m beginning to doubt the Germans are going to come through with their machine pistols. In that case, the assault platoons will be going in with flash and stun grenades and fixed bayonets, no ammunition except in their pouches. So pay attention to the ones who do well and poorly on the bayonet assault course, once we’re done with that.
“And one other thing; maybe, just maybe, we’re doing this wrong and we should think about some utterly miserable, very hard, gut-testing selection course before we do anything else.”
Cherimisov spread some ersatz butter on a piece of toast while thinking that over. Looking at the butter killed any urge to smile he might have felt. “Well… yes, sir, it has some things to recommend it. I’ve given it some thought. But who runs it? Take a couple of weeks just to set it up and get the testers ready… if they can be gotten ready. After all, while we have some good noncoms and officers, they’re all new to this, same as us.”
“I think you can do it in less time,” Daniil said. “I think you can set up a selection course in a week. We just need to identify, oh, your four lieutenants, your first sergeant, three Feldfebels, and maybe a couple of sergeants.”
“I already know who I want for lieutenants and Feldfebels, sir. And for first sergeant I want Mayevsky out of First Company.”
“Mayevsky? Jesus, won’t Baluyev scream over that one?”
Range V (Grenades), Camp Budapest
As it turned out, it hadn’t been as easy as all that. Certainly Romeyko had managed, with Weber’s help, to produce cardboard, wax, and a drill, as well as a broad metal bit for the drill. So far, so good.
The first problem had been that drilling tended to deform the casing. Their first attempt at fixing this, carving and putting into each casing a wooden mandrel, had worked, well enough, anyway, but the process of drilling destroyed each mandrel produced, such that they’d need a fresh one for each grenade to be modified. Baluyev really didn’t think there was time for that.
Smirnov had been the one to figure that problem out, in the form of, “We’re fucking idiots—begging your pardon, sir—but we don’t need to be whittling on wood. Every grenade comes with its own mandrel, in the TNT that’s been cast into it. We just need to drill them before we unscrew the heads.”
That had, in fact, worked well. While the TNT was not especially hard, it was also not especially compressible and had nowhere to go.
The old grenades had just been emptied of flash powder and exploded, to prevent confusion.
After perforating the casings and then unscrewing them from the grenades’ handles, the next step was cutting away the excess TNT. It was time consuming, but not that hard. What it was, though, was inherently sloppy and uneven, as the TNT was rather difficult to get out of the casing once it had been drilled.
What that had meant was that the top of the casing had to be completely cut away, to be replaced by more cardboard.
“Not a problem,” Baluyev had pronounced. “The way they’re carried remaining vertical will protect the top from rough handling… enough.”
Still, it had taken an hour to cut away enough TNT from one grenade to add the flash powder.
“Too long,” the lieutenant finally said. “Too long and too hard.
“Ideally,” he continued, “we’d melt the explosive out, then recast it in smaller cylinders. But…”
“I’ve heard the fumes are stone killers, sir,” said Poletov.
Nodding soberly, Baluyev replied, “I’ve heard the same thing; munitions workers turning yellow as canaries and take all kinds of damage to some organs. No melting and recasting.”
Smirnov offered a possible solution. “What if we take it all out, sir, then pulverize it and make a mix of TNT and flash powder? We can make a double wall of waxed cardboard, one right up against the holed metal casing, one inside to hold just the right quantity of TNT and flash powder. And we’ll save time not having to cut the top off. We hold the top of the inner tube in place with poured wax, just a little. The detonator section holds the bottom in place.”
“Let’s give that a try, then,” Baluyev agreed.
They’d nicknamed the pig Matilda, hence Baluyev’s, “Stop complaining, Matilda, this may hurt a little but it’s better than being turned into chops, ribs, and salo.”
What Matilda thought about this was inscrutable. Besides, she was busy consuming the mush they’d given her.
“Grenade One,” Baluyev announced to the recorder, Poletov.
“One lot, two dolya powdered TNT,” the man answered, “two lot, four dolya flash powder.”
Again, the lieutenant unscrewed the cap, letting the porcelain ball fall out. He gave the ball a sharp yank, moving the grenade’s roughened steel rod through its friction-sensitive igniter, thus torching off the short fuse.
Baluyev wasn’t, at this point, especially interested in letting the fuse burn down while the grenade was in his hand. He immediately tossed it around the corner to where Matilda stood, munching her mush.
It seemed longer, but it was only about four seconds before the party was rewarded with a satisfying, but not catastrophic, boom and bright flash.
Baluyev tore around the corner to see a very dazed pig, staggering aimlessly. The pig paid him no attention at all.
Good, at least temporarily blinded, but where’s the grenade? It’s gone. Shattered? Just because the pig isn’t bleeding doesn’t mean…
“Hey, sir,” said Smirnov from the lip of the trench, above, “the grenade got knocked up here.” He held it up to demonstrate that, “The casing is still entirely intact.”
“Hmmm… must have been greater resistance to the blast underneath that overcame the otherwise equivalent blast above. Still, what works, works.”
“Hey, sir, do you think we can get a reprieve for Matilda for her services to the army, the state, and the tsar?”