“Yes, sir,” Colonel Toby said. Logistics remained a problem for any army, but with IFFs and on-board databases, it was possible to plan ahead with greater certainty than ever before.
Flynn nodded and wandered towards one of the Challenger tanks that was being repaired after having struck a mine. The town had been almost destroyed by the Russians; it was a charred ruin. The Russians had dug a grave for the townsfolk, and simply shoved them all into the pit.
“Bastards,” he muttered. “This place is never going to be the same.”
“You say that as though it was a bad thing,” Colonel Toby said. “Perhaps something new will come from this devastation.”
HMS Warspite
Black Sea
25th April 1942
Admiral Somerville studied the display – that almost seemed commonplace to him now – and grinned to himself. The Black Sea had been closed to the British when the war had broken out… until the Gallipoli defences had been forced open. The Russian Black Sea Fleet had tried to keep the British out… tried and died in the attempt. Even Contemporary forces alone could have thrashed them in a fair fight… and Somerville wasn’t interested in a fair fight.
“We are entering missile range now,” Tom informed him. “The Paris Commune is ahead.”
Somerville shook his head. Only the Russians – in an attempt to seem the leaders of world communism – would name a ship after a revolution that had been unsuccessful. Parizhskaya Kommuna, a dreadnaught that dated from before the First World War, was the only surviving Russian capital ship on the Black Sea.
“Stand by to attack,” he said. “Load main guns.”
“Aye, sir,” Tom said, relaying the orders to Captain Holland. His voice was a question; they could have killed Parizhskaya Kommuna almost as soon as the Mediterranean Fleet entered the Black Sea.
“I don’t want to waste missiles,” Somerville explained, watching the threat board. Parizhskaya Kommuna didn’t seem to have radar, or any of the small bits of 2015 technology that had popped up in the Axis Powers. “Stand by” – he watched the display as the guns sighted on the ship – “fire!”
Warspite shuddered once as her main guns fired. Somerville knew that there had been plans to refit the old battleship with missile launchers, replacing the main guns, but they had had to be shelved for lack of time. As the drone started to relay images of Parizhskaya Kommuna, the ship exploded with a monstrous gout of fire.
“Excellent shooting,” Somerville said. “Has everyone got their targeting assignments?”
“Yes, sir,” Tom assured him. “The missiles are locked on their targets now.”
Somerville nodded. The Mediterranean Fleet had spread out; four of her missile-launching ships had headed east, as close to the Caucasus ports as they dared. The other ships closed in on Sevastopol, the home of the Black Sea Fleet. Time slid past as the ships prepared to fire and then…
“Sir, we have aircraft rising,” Tom said. “They’re not ragged any more.”
Somerville scowled. The Russians had been grossly incompetent in the air for the first year of the war. The Germans must have been teaching them new tricks.
“They must have seen us,” he said. “Open fire.”
Warspite’s main guns fired, along with the other battleship and the three missile-armed cruisers. On the drone’s image, the city seemed intact… until the first salvos crashed down on the port. Entire sections literally disintegrated under the impact of high explosive and FAE bombs; parts of the city caught fire and triggered ammunition dumps.
“The enemy planes are incoming,” Tom snapped. “Request permission to declare weapons free.”
“Weapons free,” Somerville snapped, and the anti-aircraft ships went into action. They had begun their lives as old American destroyers, before being converted to carry thousands of radar-guided machine guns and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. They put up a curtain of bullets, ripping through the Russian planes and hacking them out of the sky.
“They’re brave,” Tom muttered, as the Russians came on, trying to bomb the British fleet. They fell in their hundreds, falling from the sky and died; the attack force vanished in the fire.
“The Russians are always brave,” Somerville said. “They just make bad warriors.”
He glanced at the display. Hundreds of missiles were seeking out targets within the Caucasus Mountains, hammering away at Zhukov’s supply line. As he watched, their icons came to a stop, destroying their targets. Others headed into the Ukraine, destroying the Soviet occupation forces they’d pinpointed.
“They may or may not revolt,” he said grimly, “but we’ll give them the best chance we can to succeed.”
The Kremlin
Moscow, Russia
27th April 1942
Molotov winced. In the none-too-recent past, they would have had problems linking the various sections of the USSR together – he remembered the Civil War with bitterness – but now they were able to hear about events almost as they happened. The massive program of landlines and enhanced radio systems had ensured that they heard about everything – including the beginnings of riots in the Ukraine.
“This is a plot,” Stalin snapped. He saw plots everywhere and was normally right. “Lavrenty Pavlovich’s forces are destroyed!”
Molotov scowled. The attacks in the Ukraine had been diabolically targeted; they had hammered the NKVD battalions in the region, and the Russian regiments that had been working up in the Ukraine. Only Ukrainian regiments, the ones being impressed into service for Iran, had been spared; many of them were in near-revolt.
“Comrade,” he said, taking his life in his hands, “we have to withdraw from Iran.”
“Even if that were possible,” Stalin snapped, “we cannot give up a single bit of soil!”
Molotov, who knew that the Russian troops were in headlong retreat, shuddered. The British attacks had been cunning; they had almost succeeded in interdicting the supply lines to Zhukov. In fact, with the impact of a RAF air raid on Baku, the USSR was suddenly short of oil and fuel.
“The Germans discussed peace with the enemy,” he said. “We can make the same offer, while withdrawing to territory that is indisputably ours.”
“We cannot show weakness in front of Trotsky,” Stalin snapped. Molotov scowled; three high-ranking NKVD officers had been assassinated, and five more had been shot for incompetence. Trotsky’s campaign against the state was taking its toll, particularly with the other stresses on Mother Russia.
“We could keep the negotiations private,” Molotov suggested. “The rebels against the workers and peasants would never find out.”
“The British would tell their puppets,” Stalin snapped. “Himmler himself informed me that they rejected the peace proposal in no uncertain terms.”
“Perhaps,” Molotov said, who trusted Himmler as far as he could throw the Kremlin. “Comrade, we cannot leave the entire force in Iran – and at the same time fight against the Americans in Sweden. We have to hold the British back, which we can do in the Caucasus Mountains, while concentrating against the Americans.”
“They are the most dangerous in the long-run,” Stalin said. “What about the deployment of the other weapons?”
Molotov shuddered again. “Comrade, they have made it very clear that they will retaliate against one of our cities with an atomic weapon if we use gas,” he said.
“True,” Stalin said. Molotov hoped that he’d dissuaded him. “Lavrenty Pavlovich must gain results, or his head will roll.”