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.
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Chekov took another deep drag off the cigarette.
“That is, they were sentenced to life in prison,” Chekov said. “Until one of your father’s ministers quietly commuted their sentences to five years each.”
“I’m so sorry,” Tatiana said in a small voice. Tears glistened in the corners of her gray eyes.
Chekov took in a lungful of the frigid night air and then another drag off his cigarette. He unclenched his fists.
“None of this is your fault, Tatiana Nicholaevna,” he said. “And it is only natural for a girl to love her father, as he so clearly loves you all. But all this misery, this happened because your father is a weak, stupid, bigoted man. As emperor he led his people so poorly that millions now side with madmen and murderers against him. Whatever happens, you need to know that truth if you are to survive in this new world.”
Tears spilled freely down Tatiana’s cheeks now. She gulped once, then turned on her heel and retreated into house, leaving Chekov alone to contemplate the stars and the all-encompassing night.
Tatiana shut the door behind her and leaned against the wall, burying her face in her hands, trying not to sob.
Even in her sheltered palace life, Tatiana knew about the pogroms in the abstract the way one knows about an unfortunate historical event or bit of news. The young, plain-faced soldier with the vocabulary of a scholar had made it real for her, put the human cost right in her face in a way no one else ever had. And as she mulled over the dressing-down he’d given her father, a cold sliver of doubt pierced her soul.
What if he’s right? What if Father failed us all? Heavenly Father, what if we deserve this?
Tatiana dried her tears and squared her shoulders, remembering what had drawn her out of bed.
Where the hell is Olga?
A search of the second floor revealed only her sleeping parents and siblings. Tatiana crept down the stairs, each creaking board setting her teeth on edge for fear it might wake Mama or Papa, or one of the other children. She slipped silently down the hall, past Gilliard’s room.
Heavy breathing and hushed voices punctuated by a low cry from the dining room drew her onward.
“Olga, you have to quiet down,” a deep male voice hissed.
“How can I?” It was Olga’s voice in the whispered reply, but as Tatiana had never heard it before, low and throaty and dripping with something primitive. “I’ve never felt this way in my life, oh, God, Antosenka…”
Tatiana rounded the corner into the dining room. Her sister stood, hands braced on the dining room table, her back to the big, handsome guard, Dostovalov. The tall, mustachioed man fondled her exposed breasts with one hand, while his other caressed steadily between her thighs. He lavished kisses on her neck as she rotated her hips and ground her rear back against him.
Tatiana’s limbs seemed to be made of lead, her tongue too thick in her mouth to talk. She stood, mouth agape, until Olga’s eyes met hers and her older sister screamed, snapping the surreal back to reality, albeit a reality in crisis. Dostovalov stumbled back against a cabinet, rattling the china and wine bottle inside.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” Tatiana asked.
“What does it look like, Tatya?” Olga snapped as she jerked her clothes back into place. Her cheeks were bright red. Dostovalov stood in a corner next to a full wine rack, halfway across the room from Olga, his eyes firmly fixed anywhere but on Tatiana.
Chekov was the first to arrive, he took one look at his friend and strode right over to him and started laying into him in a low voice, Tatiana only caught, “you stupid ass.” Dostovalov kept his eyes on the floor.
Pierre Gilliard followed close on Chekov’s heels, black hair and thick handlebar mustache in disarray, a robe cinched over his pajamas. The sisters and soldiers fell silent instantly.
“Tatiana, Olga,” he said in clear but Swiss-accented Russian. “What is going on here?”
“I’m sorry, Pierre,” Olga spoke up immediately. “I… saw a rat.”
“Indeed?” Gilliard said, looking to Tatiana for confirmation.
Tatiana took a deep breath, allowing the moment to rest on the knife’s edge, waiting on her decisions.
Damn it, Olga.
“That’s right, Pierre,” she said. “Olga and I couldn’t sleep, we came down here to chat so as not wake up Maria and Anastasia. Olga saw a rat and yelled, then Chekov and Dostovalov here ran into the room. I assume because they heard the scream?”
She made eye contact with Chekov and saw in his nearly black orbs profound gratitude.
“That’s right,” Chekov said, his tone level. “And since things seem to be under control here, we should really get back to our posts. Good night.”
Without waiting for a reply, Chekov and Dostovalov beat a hasty retreat.
“Girls, you should head back to bed as well,” Gilliard said.
“What is going on here?”
Tatiana gasped a bit as her father rounded the corner behind Gilliard.
“I’m sorry Papa,” Olga said. “I’m afraid I woke up everyone up for nothing; it was just a rat.”
Nicholas looked at his eldest, then stared at Tatiana for a long second.
“Why were you down here in the first place?” he demanded.
Tatiana’s breath caught a little. Lying to Gilliard was one thing, but to her father.
Perhaps some of the truth…
“It’s my fault, Father,” Tatiana said. “I had a nightmare and couldn’t get back to sleep. Olga came downstairs too, she saw a rat when we walked into the dining room.”
Nicholas held Tatiana’s gaze for several heartbeats. Tatiana allowed her eyes to fall in contrition, thinking it appropriate to the story she revealed to her father. Apparently detecting no duplicity, Nicholas exhaled through his nose and his expression softened.
“I’m sorry you had a nightmare, dear,” he said. “But you shouldn’t wander the mansion at night.”
“I’m sorry, Papa,” Tatiana said.
“I apologize too,” Olga said.
Nicholas’s gaze shifted from Tatiana to Olga then back again.
“All right, girls,” he said. “Back to bed with you.”
Olga preceded Tatiana up the stairs. Tatiana stared at the back of her sister’s head in mute rage as they made their way as silently as possible back to their beds. She wanted to yell at her for cavorting like a whore with a soldier she barely knew, but even a whisper might be audible to their father when he came back to his bedroom. Angry as she was, she wasn’t ready to inform on her sister to their parents.
What the hell is the matter with you, Olga?
Certainly she and Olga had flirted with a number of charming young officers. They’d danced a little closer with their favorites than what was required by a proper waltz, and Tatiana herself had even allowed one of the boys to kiss her when her parents weren’t looking. But what Olga and that soldier had been doing…
Tatiana’s pulse quickened in arousal, just as it had sometimes during the innocent flirtations of her adolescence. This lust, though, made her feel perverse in a way previous thrills never had. She had seen her own sister in the grip of Eros and the only thing more disturbing than Olga’s stupidity was how badly a part of Tatiana now wished she’d gone further with one of her favorites.
“Chekov, what the hell were you thinking?” Dostovalov said in a low voice, glaring at Chekov from across the table in the canteen sometime later. It was early morning yet and they were the first ones through the door. They had already shoveled their stew as fast as possible to avoid letting it go lukewarm. Now they sat, hunched against the cold in the drafty building, conferring in low tones so as to avoid being heard by the cooks.