Kirov Saga: Hinge Of Fate: Altered States Volume III (Kirov Series) (13 page)

“They blew a main gas bag
amidships!” said Bogrov. “Tried to pump in too much reserve helium! They’re
finished now.”

“All engines ahead full!” Karpov
shouted. “Come fifteen points to starboard! Let’s get after the
Oskemen!”

He took one last look at the
Alexandra
,
seeing the ship falling like a stricken whale descending into the depths of the
sea of clouds. It was a long way down. They were up over 4500 meters, and the
ship was now going into an uncontrolled descent, nose down, trailing black
smoke as it vanished, swallowed by the cloud deck.

The thrum of
Abakan’s
engines was a loud roar now as the airship hastened north. Karpov could see
that
Angara
had halted her rapid ascent by venting helium to her reserve
tanks and pumping air to the ballonets. Now that airship had leveled off and
was also running in pursuit of the
Oskemen
, about 1500 meters above the
enemy ship and an equal measure behind.

“Range to
Oskemen?”
He
looked at his gun director and had an answer soon enough.

“Sir! I make it 5200 meters, and
we’re closing.”

“He’s going to dive, Admiral,”
said Air Commandant Bogrov. “He’s going to try to get into that cloud deck.”

Yes. Petrov was another sort. He
had the nose of
Oskemen
down, and slipped deftly into the thickening
mist. Once masked by the clouds their gunfire would not be able to sight on the
target. Damn, thought Karpov. Now we will need to track them on radar. I must
get to work with a way to radar control these guns.

“Topaz system! Call out enemy
contact by range and bearing.”

“Sir! I have the range at 5000
meters, bearing 290.”

“Gun Master. Fire on those
coordinates. We may not hit anything, but we can damn well let them know we are
coming. Signal
Angara
. Tell them to drop a thousand meters elevation.”

They were gaining on the unseen
contact, but Karpov knew his fish might easily slip off the line. At this rate
Oskemen
could run half an hour or more before we might make visual contact to get guns
properly trained again. Petrov might even get down below the deck to prevent
that unless we come down to look for him. That could be dangerous in this
weather… and there is still that third ship to worry about out there. The
bastard is good. He’s done everything I would have done and he just might slip
away.

The roar of
Abakan’s
engines was fearfully loud now. The men huddled in their heavy woolen coats,
dark Ushankas crowning their heads with the flaps pulled down over their ears,
warming them as they muffled the sound. The airship vibrated with the urgency
of its labor, and then the engine status board lit up with a bright red light.
Bogrov’s eyes flashed as he scanned the board.

“We just lost number six engine!”
he shouted over the din. He knew engineers and mechanics were already running
to the scene, and they would have men out from the aft gondola hatch and down
the ladder to that engine in no time, but it would be bitter cold at this
elevation. They were over two and a half miles up!

“That won’t be fixed any time
soon,” he said with a shrug.

“What’s our airspeed?”

“80KPH, and we’ll hold that with
the other five engines running full out.”

“Topaz operator, are we closing?”

“Range 4800 meters, but holding
steady, sir.”

Bogrov shrugged. “They’ve still
got six good engines, but they’re heavier than we are. At this rate it will be
a long chase if we can hold onto them. We’ve certainly got a fuel advantage.
Angara
is much closer. They should be able to catch the bastards.”

“There’s a third ship out there
somewhere, Captain. Any readings? Is our fighter still shadowing?”

“No sir. They had to return to
Krasnoyarsk.”

“He could be leading us right to
that number three ship. What do you figure they have, Bogrov?”

“Anyone’s guess sir, but they did
have the flagship in the western region for that conference at Omsk.”

“Orenburg?
That’s Volkov’s
ship, and he wouldn’t send it out on a mission like this.”

Or would he, thought Karpov? It
was clear Symenko had more in his orders than the delivery of that diplomatic
pouch. That’s why I should have shot the bastard the minute I knew he was lying
through his teeth. Was he playing for time with that delivery, time for that
third ship to come in at high elevation on us? No time to find out now. I’ll
deal with him later. Then the Topaz operator called out a position update.

“Sir, I think he’s descending.
We’re closing on his position, but the actual range being reported is out of
sync. That can only mean he’s losing altitude.”

“Very well.” Karpov had to decide
what to do. Should he go down after this ship? What could he be up to? Think!
Then he realized what
Oskemen
was trying to do. He wants to offload his
troop contingent. He’s too damn heavy to maneuver in a gun fight, and if he
gets those men landward he can also climb much easier if he needs to do so. But
he’ll have to hover to deploy his cargo basket and put squads down. There’s no
way he could do that if we’re close. It doesn’t make sense.

“Shall I order
Angara
to
get down after them, sir?” Bogrov was waiting, his eye on the altimeter board.
They still had no reading on that third ship. If they both went down after the
Oskemen
,
then that unknown contact could come in on top of them and turn the tables with
the same advantage that had just sent the
Alexandra
to a fiery death.
One of his ships would have to stay at good elevation to prevent that. He
decided.

“Alright, order
Angara
to
descend and pursue. We’ll remain up here on overwatch.”

It was the only decision he could
make given the circumstances, and he hoped that the moment
Oskemen
hovered to debark her troops, the
Angara
would be able to catch the damn
ship in the act and make short work of her.

But it would not happen that way.

Already 3000 meters below them,
well beneath the grey cloud deck. Petrov’s men were standing in tense lines all
along the main gondola, their rifles shouldered, eyes grim and set. A loud
warning claxon blared and a ripple of movement animated the troops. A gunnery
sergeant bawled out an order. “Hook up! Ready on red!”

The light came on and the men
heard the aft gondola hatch open as another alarm bell rang. The Sergeant
yelled out an order. “
Go!”

The first men took three brisk
steps and were out through the hatch, leaping from the gondola at 1500 meters.
One after another the two lines shuffled tensely forward, the boots of the
soldiers loud on the deck plating as they moved, grunting with exertion. The
battalion was one of the specially trained air mobile units of the 22nd that
Symenko had unwisely named during his interview with Karpov. It was parachute
trained, and soon the skies were blooming with soft white chutes, like a school
of a hundred jellyfish drifting in the sea, with the great, whale-like shape of
the
Oskemen
high above.

Even as they fell, they could see
the smoke rising in the distance from the place where
Alexandra
had
crashed to earth in a fiery wreck. But many men on that ship had leapt to
safety this same way, and they were already assembling into makeshift squads,
and rushing for the cover of nearby trees in small groups. Only two companies
made it off in time. The rest went to a fiery doom. Yet as the sun began to
lower on the horizon there would be five elite companies on the ground, all
assembled and ready to head south for the place they had been ordered to strike
that day.

Ilanskiy.

Chapter 12

Zykov
looked at Troyak, a
warning in his eyes. He had been working the radio equipment, shifting bands
when he suddenly picked up clear signals. He tuned it in, the hiss of the interference
abating as the sound of sharp voices broke over the speakers. The two men knew
what they were hearing immediately. Those were the hard voiced orders of
officers signaling one another on the ground, and the longer they listened the
clearer the picture became. There was an operation underway somewhere ahead.
Troops were assembling and moving on the ground.

“This doesn’t sound good,
Sergeant,” said Zykov. “I’ve heard three different unit designations already.
There’s at least a battalion out there somewhere. Very close.”

Captain Selikov had taken
Narva
to a position northeast of the village Troyak had pointed out. They were
hovering at 2000 meters as Zykov tried to get through to
Kirov
again,
when the close signal contacts were picked up, commanding his attention.

Troyak had a restless look on his
face. He had been sitting with his men for what seemed like an eternity, cooped
up on a submarine and then finally back aboard
Kirov
again to rejoin the
Marines there. They had one good fight in the Caspian that got his blood up and
put that fire in the belly that he always felt in combat. Now he could smell
another good fight forming out there somewhere, like a man smelling rain at the
edge of a storm.

Their
Oko
panel was now
close enough to break through the odd interference that had been restricting
its range. He already knew that there were four other airships south of them,
very close to Ilanskiy, and then the radar system lost one of the contacts. He
knew exactly what that meant. There was a fight underway. This was not a
unified force of four airships. They were in battle, and one of them had just
gone down.

So what did all this mean? An
airship duel, men on the ground shouting harsh battle orders. He could read the
situation well enough, though he had no idea who might be involved. Yet it was
clear that some of those airships had deployed men here, just as he was
intending, and they were already forming up for a battle that he could smell
coming, just as he could hear it in the radio voices Zykov had stumbled upon.

Somebody was having a nice,
private little fight out here, right in the middle of his well planned
operation. The old military maxim that no plan ever survives first contact with
the enemy was well proven here. They had thought to slip in quietly, riding the
soft grey clouds and then deploying at night. They had thought to make their
stealthy approach in the darkness, infiltrating through the wooded park he recalled,
just behind the railway inn. It was to be a quick mission, the position easily
taken by his well trained Marines. Now what should he do?

Troyak could hear the battle
slang easily enough. There were fighting men on the ground, Lieutenants and
Sergeants bawling out orders, and now they began to hear the mutter of small
arms fire in the background, and the sharp pop of mortar fire through the hiss
and static of the radio. It was clear that someone else had moved men and
equipment to this place on airships, and a well planned raid was underway by
another force. He had no idea what it could be about, though Fedorov had told
him this place was very important.

Could these men know just how
important that railway inn was? Could they know about that damn back stairway
Fedorov had gone down? He remembered how the young navigator, then made a commanding
officer on their first mission to Ilanskiy, had told him that incredible story
of what had happened when he went missing down those stairs. He had gone back
to yet another time, with no nuclear detonation or control rod in the mix. It
had something to do with those stairs, the very same stairs Troyak was now
tasked with taking and possibly destroying here, though now the odds were
shifting against his mission.

They could not get farther south
aboard the
Narva
, not with an airship battle underway there at the
moment. Captain Selikov was very skittish about putting his ship in harm’s way,
though it appeared to be well armed. That said, if anything happened to
Narva
,
there was no way for them to get back to Murmansk, and that would be a very
long walk. So Selikov was probably correct—they had to preserve their line of
communications back to the home base.
Narva
was their only means of
extraction and safe return. It could not be compromised.

Now the situation on the ground
had changed considerably. He could take his men in, deploy from here, but they
would most likely soon find themselves pulled into the fight he could hear
growing in those spotty radio transmissions Zykov was tuning in. He could lay
low and wait things out. That battle would have to resolve one way or another,
but how many troops were involved down there? Would more be coming? His orders
were to report his status and let the Admiral decide whether they were to make
a go of it.

“Alright, Zykov, enough of that.
See if you can punch through a signal to
Kirov
.”

“Good enough, Sergeant. I’ll keep
trying.”

Troyak’s instincts were to deploy
his men and go now. The lure of combat below pulled at him. He wanted to get
down there and join the fray. This was obviously part of the long simmering
civil war Fedorov had told him about. The thought that he might soon have to
take up arms against his own ancestors was suddenly disquieting. There had been
a lot of talk between the Admiral and Fedorov and the old deputy Director,
Kamenski. They had been trying to sort through this impossible puzzle and find
a way to put the pieces back together again.

Troyak knew that if he took his
men down there he would find no friends on the ground, even if every man was a
brother from his homeland. They were all dead and gone before he was ever born,
but they were Russians nonetheless, and he would be forced to make them his
enemies if they came between him and his objective.