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:
Because of the darkness, the Loredana had only three sails set on the top three yardarms of the foremast and was creeping ahead under sail power alone. It might as well have been a fish underwater for all the noise it made gliding across the now glasslike sea. Because it didn’t make any noise, the passengers were able to hear everything around them quite well. What they heard…
The Kerch was no longer, “His Imperial Russian Majesty’s Ship,” which prefix the Empire, in fact, didn’t use. Neither had the Bolsheviks whose side the crew had taken yet gotten around to coining naval titles. Perhaps they never would. Nonetheless, though painted gray, the ship was redder than a party banner.
This was why the crew of the Kerch had taken some sixty-three officers, most from the Four-ninety-first (Varnavinsky) Regiment, though the Forty-first Artillery Battalion and the Twenty-first Caucasian Mountain Artillery Battalion had their representatives there, too, then tied them, attached iron weights to their legs and threw them overboard to drown.
Not a one of the officers so treated was in any sense nobility, either.
A few of the men were shot off the side by the crew, and that was a series of sounds that was very plain. Most, however, were simply tied, weighted, and dumped. Generally speaking they sank quickly. At least one, however, either preternaturally strong or just lucky in partially slipping his bonds, still struggled, more than half panicked, calling for a help that, of course, the only ship he knew of in the vicinity, the Kerch, was most unlikely to give.
“Shit, they’re murdering somebody,” said Mokrenko, “a lot of somebodies.”
Lieutenant Turgenev, standing with the Cossack on deck, nodded, unseen in the darkness. Turgenev was, while still a little weak from hunger and loss of fluids, otherwise completely recovered from his seasickness.
“Do you see their running lights?” the lieutenant asked.
Mokrenko strained for a bit before answering, “Ye… yes, sir. I see them.”
“One’s still struggling, at least one. Keep the crew and our men quiet. Have Natalya steer just to the left of the running lights; I think that man is to the left.”
A fresh spurt of calls for help seemed to confirm this.
“Yes, sir, but…”
“I’m going in,” Turgenev said. “I’ll save him if I can.”
“Sir, you’re being an idiot. You don’t have to do this.”
The lieutenant sighed. “Sergeant, if I don’t, I’m never going to be able to sleep at night again without hearing that in my head. Maybe I’ll fail, yes, but I have to try.”
“Well… shit!” Mokrenko exclaimed. “Fine, then, if you think you fucking must. But tie yourself off to a rope, before you go in. Be a better chance for you and for him. Hell, if you’re not attached to the ship you’ll never catch up to us… and we can’t afford the noise of furling the sails.”
“Right.”
Turgenev lowered himself over the side, with a length of rope looped around his waist, trailing by nine or ten arshin a life buoy from the running end. He started with a kick off from the hull, then assumed an Australian crawl stroke to eat up the distance.
The problem with that was two-fold. In the first place it made noise and, while Turgenev didn’t think the ship could hear, he didn’t want to take a chance. The second problem was that the noise prevented him from hearing, where the sounds of the victim or victims were his only guide.
“Shit,” he muttered, then took up a breaststroke, which was not only quieter, it better allowed him to keep his head above water.
“Heellllpppp! Heeeellllppp meeee…”
Turgenev altered his direction slightly to aim more closely for the sound.
“Hellll…”
There he is, less than a dozen feet from me, I think, but I cannot see a thing.
There came some vigorous splashing then, uncoordinated, spastic, as if panic had taken over completely. Turgenev thought it would be enough sound cover for him to take up a more energetic stroke. He did, with furious, calorie burning reaches and even more powerful kicks…
Only to reach… nothing. He couldn’t even tell if the water was disturbed by anything but his own swimming.
If he’s not here then he’s… Turgenev took a deep breath, then another, and dived down, then circled around, his feet propelling him as his hands reached for… nothing. Shit.
Oddly enough, it was the victim who found him, not he the victim. Just as the lieutenant reached the last of his oxygen, a single hand locked into a death grip on his left arm. There was nothing to do but go up, pulling himself with his one free arm while pushing with the kicking legs.
Turgenev broke the surface and only just managed to explosively exhale and draw in about a quarter of a breath before that dead weight on his arm pulled him under again.
Now it was Turgenev’s turn to panic. He knew he didn’t have much air left and he felt his body demanding it with a pounding heart and aching lungs. He struggled, he kicked, and just when he thought his fight was over that death grip on his arm loosened.
I’ll be damned if you’re going to die now, you son of a bitch, after all you’ve put me through.
Twisting once again, under water, with nearly the last of his strength and endurance, the lieutenant aimed back down again, once again feeling around for…
I’ve got him, he exulted. Now how do I save him?
Swimming is a miserably inefficient way of getting around, really. Pulling oneself along with a rope is much, much better. With one hand firmly on whoever the hell it was who’d nearly drowned him, he moved his other hand to the cord looped around his waist, and from there made his best guess of which cord ran to the life buoy. Once he’d made his determination, he looped the fingers of the other hand around the cord that ran to the life buoy, closed them, and began to pull, dragging himself and his charge upward, praying that he’d have enough oxygen and strength left to make it.
Ouch, the lieutenant thought, when he hit his head on the lifebuoy, which wasn’t as soft as all that, really. In a half second, he was gratefully breathing fresh, salty air, even as he dragged the other man upward into the air, then threaded one of his arms through the buoy.
There came a series of wet, gagging coughs, accompanied by spasms as partially filled lungs forcefully emptied themselves.
“You’ve got to be quiet, friend,” Turgenev advised. “I don’t know if that ship can hear us.”
Around more coughs, slightly suppressed, a weak voice said, “Thank you… whoever… you are. I’ll… try to be… as quiet… as I can.”
“Who are you?” Turgenev asked.
“Lieutenant… First Lieutenant… Sergei Babin… Four-ninety-first Infantry Regiment…”
“We’ll talk later, Sergei, because I think… right about now…”
And with that, the cord from the Loredana to Turgenev snapped up through the water, then began to drag him, the life buoy, and Lieutenant Babin through the cold water with a startling speed.
Babin sat in the galley, nursing a cup of not very good tea with a healthy dollop of not very good rakia added to it. His uniform was drying so, for the nonce, he was wrapped in a couple of blankets. Despite this, he looked utterly miserable. Mokrenko and Turgenev sat with the rescued man, while the medical orderly, Timashuk, checked for temperature and pulse.