Doppelganger (22 page)

The pain subsided as quickly as it came, and he noticed no other symptoms, no shortness of breath, and his heart and pulse did not seem elevated or distressed. But a strange feeling came over him, a sensation of terrible dread, accompanied by a chilling cold. The ship was rising, rising, yet the ambient air temperature should not produce such a chill. There was a darkness in that cold, deep and penetrating, and he reached for the oxygen again, thinking all of his distress was the giddy height of the ship.

A thousand thoughts came to him in that moment, like the faces of a thousand demons. Memories flooded his mind, the sound of his voice, high and shrill as he railed at Sergeant Troyak in that first failed attempt to take the ship… Volsky’s fist pounding the table when he finally came to him afterwards… then came the sound of missiles firing, explosions, hot white contrails scoring the sky. He could see ships at sea burning, the orange fire glowing in the night, and then the massive upwelling of a nuclear explosion on the horizon, the anger he had set loose upon the world so wantonly, time and time again. Then he felt as though some skeletal hand was reaching for him, clawing at him, and wanting to drag him away.

“No!” he shouted again, his voice strident as the ship itself shuddered and lightning rippled again in the sky.
Tunguska
was struck by the bolt, its airframe coursing with the energy, and glowing strangely again, just as before.

A sharp sound pulled his attention to the mirror again, where he feared he would see that darkness behind him, something terrible coming for him from places unknown. The mirror was suddenly broken with a web of cracks, his image strangely distorted, doubled and redoubled as he stared at himself.

He forced himself to stand, his hand on the pistol in his holster, eyes wide and fearful, as though the door to his cabin might burst open at any moment and the demons would rush in to devour him.

But they never came.

Lightning crackled in the sky and the storm roared, but if there were demons out that night, they were well harbored in his own dark soul. Then he felt a strange sensation of lightness, a giddy feeling that sent him reeling, and he collapsed to the floor.

Part VII

War Plans

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

- Sun Tsu
,
The Art of War

Chapter 19

They
formed up in the wide brick square before the tall gold dome of the Imperial Palace of Orenburg. Each company of 150 men was deployed in a dense square, their black uniforms making a checkerboard pattern on the lighter stone. Each man wore a black Ushanka gilded with a silver badge, two crossed swords over the letter V, and light gleamed from the long bayonets on their rifles. The deep throated shouts of their officers saw them snap to in well drilled movements, presenting arms, their rifles held stiffly at the leather belts crossing their chest. They stood, in long dark field overcoats and polished boots, tall and trim. Then a trumpet sounded, and every head inclined upwards to the high balcony where a single man appeared, his grey hair catching the pale diffused light in the slate sky above. The man raised two arms in a wide V, and a the men called his name, fifty thousand strong—
Volkov!

The Guard Commander turned, like a carved statue, his arm stiff and mechanical as he slowly raised his sword to his forehead. Then, in one swift motion, he pointed the sword west, down the long broad road leading from the square. Every man turned in unison, the voices of Lieutenants and Sergeants calling out the drill. One by one the companies moved, dark serried ranks marching down the road. The sound of their boots slapped sharply on the cold stone square. The Orenburg Guard was going to war.

There were nine divisions in all, but only seven had been mobilized for movement west. They would march in long ranks through the city, out from the main square and through the central business district, where tall brick buildings hunched in dense city blocks. Out past the outer collectives and workers settlements they would go, the steady rhythmic beat of the march timed out on the division drums. Soon they would reach the tall outer battlements and fortified walls of the city perimeter, where dark grey towers rose at intervals along the wall, overshadowed by the tall zeppelin towers where three great airships rode at anchor. There the trains would be waiting for them, already loaded with the heavy equipment of the divisions—mortars, machineguns, AT rifles and cannon, crate after crate of ammunition, trucks, armored cars and light tanks.

It was Ivan Volkov’s Praetorian Guard, his elite Orenburg Guard Legion, each man wearing a red shoulder patch identifying them as one of the chosen. As infantry went, they might match any other in the world, save perhaps the elite Brandenburgers and the tough grenadiers and fusiliers of the German Grossdeutschland Division. Most had fought for years on the Volga front, rotating in and out of regular divisions, until they were selected out in a special draft and sent to the capitol for extended training as guardsmen. Only these seven divisions would leave the city, for Volkov always kept at least two divisions close by, his personal security force at the heart of the warren of stone buildings and military bunkers in the Grey Zone. Trucks, trains, and airships came and went, bearing officers, men and the machinery of war as Ivan Volkov feverishly rushed to complete his general mobilization.

His armies stretched from the Ob river to the east, back through Chelyabinsk and then across the lower Urals to the upper Volga. There he posted his largest army, the 1st, all of twenty divisions standing watch on the long broad flow of the river as it wound down as far as the industrial city of Samara. Four other armies remained in the main force, the 2nd Army posted south of Samara to Saratov, then 3rd Army extending down to Volgograd. From there the line dog-legged southwest to the Manych River, the 4th Army sector, and then 5th Army took over at Salsk, where there had been heavy fighting for the last several months all the way along the line as far as Kropotkin on the Kuban River. Each of these armies were smaller, with ten infantry divisions, and a few supporting mechanized elements. The reserve 6th Army was on the Ob facing down the Siberians. Together they numbered 70 infantry divisions, with another five armored, five mech and several armored cavalry brigades. It was a force three times the size of every man Great Britain would put in the field during the war, and it would soon be further swelled by even more troops arriving from the vast hinterland provinces of Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan.

Beyond Kropotkin, a patchwork force raised from local militias had been battle hardened into the Army of the Kuban, where they fought to slow the Russian advance towards the rich oil fields of Maykop. Here the divisions bore regional names instead of sequential numbers. There were Rifle Divisions from the Taman Peninsula, Krasnodar, Armavir, and the Talmyk and Kuban cavalry. On the shores of the great inland sea, Volkov’s Black Sea Marines stubbornly anchored the line at Tuapse. They had been pushed out of the major sea port of Novorossiysk a month earlier, and now they were digging in for another expected enemy assault, but none came.

The long line was faced by an equal number of divisions on the Soviet side, but in recent weeks, offensive operations by the Red Army had tapered off in the east, and trains had been moving men and materiel west to the German front, where two-thirds of the Soviet army was engaged. Yet the need to keep at least sixty divisions and twenty other brigades on the eastern front meant that those troops would not be available to face the heavily mechanized juggernaut of the Wehrmacht. And considering the fact that every man now standing to arms under the black and red banners of Orenburg was one more man that should have been filling out the ranks of divisions raised to fight Germany, Volkov’s forces weighed heavily in the equation.

And so it begins, thought Volkov. The men assemble in their perfect uniforms and overcoats, and the drill is well rehearsed. Then off they go to the hell this war will soon become. How many of these men will survive?

Even with its forces stretched over two long fronts, the manpower resources of Russia were vast, and the number of rifle divisions that would be raised in this war boggled the minds of German planners at OKW. Hitler was hugely overconfident. In the beginning he had boasted that, where Russia was concerned, ‘it was only necessary to kick in the door, and the whole rotting structure would collapse.’ And now the hard boots of the German troops kicked off their long planned campaign, the bloodiest and most costly military engagement in human history.

It started early, in late May of 1941, a month before the German Operation Barbarossa actually began in our history. Hitler has planned for a sharp, brutal, fast paced war that he hopes might last only six months, thought Volkov, yet even in these altered states, the bloody hand of war might still be at the throats of his generals for a good deal longer than that, and then comes ‘General Winter.’ If things progress as in the history I know, by April of 1942, a million German soldiers will lie dead in Russia—
a million…
That was more deaths than all the wars the United States had ever fought throughout its entire history, including the 600,000 dead on both sides in the American Civil war. Yet that first million dead in feldgrau will just be the opening round of this Great Patriotic War. Three more years of bitter fighting might follow—
if
Russia survives this first year. I must see that Kirov is defeated quickly, and that never happens. Then, once I’m in charge, I’ll consider what to do about the Germans.

Volkov stood in the window, watching his dark clad Guard march off, and thinking about all that was coming. He knew every battle as well, and every mistake and wrong turn on the road. Yet this campaign might end up very different.

Yes, there will soon be misery at Stalingrad, Volgograd as Kirov calls it today. But I will be the wolf at the door this time, and not the German Army. And this time I must attack from the east. It will be no good trying to cross the river directly into the city. The fortifications there are simply too formidable. We’ve sat on opposite sides of that river for years now, trading artillery rounds each day. No. The only way I will take that city is by double envelopment. I’ll launch my attack with the fourth Army in the south, and pull their reserves to that line. Meanwhile, my Guardsmen will move by train to the selected crossing points north of the city. All our intelligence indicates that line is very lightly manned. Kirov does not think we can cross there, but my Guardsmen will prove him very wrong.

Volkov rubbed his hands together, thinking. Once they get me a bridgehead, then I’ll move the armor from both 3rd and 4th Armies across, and we’ll push for Serafimovich on the Don. This time I’ll put my 22nd air mobile units to good use instead of throwing them away at Ilanskiy. The Southern Air Corps can get several battalions in, and they can cut the rail lines Kirov will need to rush reinforcements to that sector. With any luck we can get over the Don before he can react strongly, and that will put us in a good position to cut Volgograd off, if I can scrape up enough reinforcements to support the attack. This time the Russians will be trapped there instead of the German 6th Army.

He smiled at that, yet he was under no illusions that it would be as easy as he hoped. His troops were already blooded in battle against the Soviets. The Bolshevik zeal was equal to his own, and the standing army Kirov now fielded was even greater than the one that faced the Germans in the history he knew.

And there has been no purge, he thought. That officer Corps is intact, the bumbling fools are still there along with some very good men. Many were simply promoted out of privilege and favor, but some are real army men, and they know how to fight. I know the men who will rise like cream and win this war for Russia: Zhukov, Konev, Malinovski, Rokossovsky, Vasilevsky, Chuikov, Yeremenko, Vatutin. A pity I can’t get to them and eliminate them all now. Some are already in high level positions. Other are simply division or corps commanders. I should have foreseen this earlier, and ordered Kymchek to round them up. Yet, it is likely that other men would rise in their place, just as I so easily supplanted Denikin here. That said, I must see about some attempt at assassination where these men are concerned.

I have raised a fine army here, though there are limits to the manpower at my disposal. My front line troops are as good as anything Kirov can put in the field, though his tank production will become a major problem soon. Yet I must rely on the tribesmen of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to flesh out my reserve armies, and who knows how well they will stand up in a war like this. Even the Germans are about to get a nasty little surprise when they realize that they cannot easily stop the newest Soviet tanks.

 In that regard, I must shift all my production to advanced weaponry as soon as possible. I have tried to help the Germans, pointing them in the right direction in their early missile trials, and removing obstacles. Yes, I could hand them the plans for a high performance missile tomorrow, but they could never build it. That technology relies on microelectronics, metallurgy, composite materials, and even propulsion fuels and explosives that could not be duplicated today. Yet I can help them take the right steps at the right time, and get them down the garden path six months to a year early.

Yes, if the Nazis can get missiles and jet engines developed soon, then things might be different. They might be able to stop the Allied bomber offensive, and save their heartland from aerial destruction. As for the tanks, the Germans will do well enough on that score. Yet this development of a new British tank is most troublesome. Damn, I wish Kymchek were still here. He would have photographs and hard information on this tank by now. I must find out where they are building it, and how it was designed. For my part, I will stick to the tried and true. We have all the plans for the T-34, and I can move directly to the 85mm gun. Yet my industrial capacity can only take me so far. It is likely that I will not have the strength to produce these tanks in the numbers that will be required.