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  He smiled, then passed another moment of trepidation when he felt the ship shudder, the air quaver around him, and a strange crackling static infested a brief moment of hushed stillness. What was happening?

  “Kymchek? What in god’s name is going on? Is the ship under attack? I thought you told me the zone was secure for this landing operation!”

  Silence. No voice in return, but then the sounds of men yelling, their voices distended and hollow through the voice tube. There was some great commotion underway on the bridge, and Volkov leaned to the nearest viewport, straining to see what was happening outside.

  The sound of a recoilless rifle barrage joined the thunder of the storm with a sharp report. Then came the voice of Captain Grankin, hard and fraught with alarm, through the voice tube. “Ship off the starboard aft quarter! We are under attack!”

  Chapter 8

  Tunguska was a truly massive airship, the largest craft that had ever flown in the skies above the earth. With 225,000 cubic meter volume, it was also the longest craft ever to fly at over 1000 feet. A modern day 747 jumbo jet would seem a small thing in passing. And the ship had power to match its size, with twelve 76mm recoilless rifles, and twelve more larger guns at 105mm. To these Karpov had added two missile racks, one with 36 RS82mm rockets, and one with 24 larger RS132mm rockets. For air defense the ship deployed six twin 20mm gun mounts and eighteen heavy machineguns, though these were mainly used against small aircraft of the day. In a duel between airships, it was the larger recoilless rifles that would do the real damage. The innovative self-sealing lining on the interior gas bags could only be frustrated by a round of at least 76mm, which could defeat the resealing effort and cause a permanent rupture. The 105mm rifles were even better, and came to be called “the bag busters” in the air service.

  By fate, chance, or perhaps through the sheer effort of his own will, as Karpov believed, the ship had appeared in a perfect position to ambush Volkov’s Caspian Division as it was descending to conduct troop deployment operations. There, some 500 meters below the massive airship, a group of four smaller 120,000 cubic meter volume battlecruisers was gliding in a tight square formation. At lower elevation they would separate to gain adequate space for troop deployment, but now they made a perfect target. And Karpov’s eyes lit up with hot fire when he saw them.

  “Thermobaric crews! Make ready to deploy forward weapon! Prepare to climb, Bogrov.”

  The rifle crews were already opening fire on the enemy ships, but Karpov had another terrible surprise for them, He was carrying two of his prized thermobaric bombs, christened “Autumn Mist” in his code lexicon. They would eject from the ship, fall to a designated altitude, and then deploy parachutes to hover in the sky, dispensing a highly volatile mist that could be ignited by incendiary rounds. The Autumn Mist would then become a hot, all consuming fire, and it was a perfect weapon to attack the formation below and deal a heavy blow.

  Reach for the hammer first. Karpov no longer hesitated to deploy the most powerful weapon at his disposal if he saw clear advantage in doing so. The thermobaric bomb was Tunguska’s equivalent of a nuclear warhead, and as the undisputed master of the airship, and the fleet it led, there was no hand to restrain Karpov now, no key around his neck requiring another to turn in agreement. He could unleash hell with a single word, and did not hesitate a moment when he saw the opportunity beneath him.

  “Sir, two more airships off the port quarter, about 100 meters above us!”

  Karpov turned to look for them, seeing the long grey shapes in the sky, nearly as big as his own ship. It was the enemy flagship, Orenburg, and he clenched his fist, eager to engage.

  “Bogrov! Climb! Get me elevation!”

  “Aye sir, flushing number one and three ballast now!”

  The order was given to deploy the forward thermobaric, and its weight in falling also helped to lighten the ship as Tunguska vented ballast in a rain of water. They could see that the other airships, Orenburg attended by the smaller battlecruiser Saran, were also venting ballast, and the race for elevation was on. Yet falling with the rain, Karpov’s deadly weapon plummeted down, the parachutes snapping out to slow the fall just above the center of the airship formation below.

  The gun crews on the ships below saw the chute deploy, yet it seemed deceptively harmless, perhaps a ballast weight dropped by the other ship, or a range marker for their gunners. The topside crews had only just reached their gun mounts, surprised as they were by the sudden appearance of the massive airship above them. It seemed as if Tunguska had just emerged from a cloud, its flanks rippled with eerie phosphorescent lightning that looked like Saint Elmo’s fire. Then, on Karpov’s command, the forward gondola loaded incendiary rounds and took aim on their own falling parachute. Karpov was lighting his match.

  The resulting explosion was terrible to witness, a massive fireball that expanded to quickly engulf the nearest ship, the unlucky Battlecruiser Salsk. It was a ship about the size of Karpov’s old command on the Abakan, at 120,000 cubic meter volume. Its gunners barely had the time to load and train their topside guns when the explosion engulfed the ship, expanding in a horrific plume of hot fire. Salsk was immolated by the weapon, and the shock of the pressure wave struck the other airships a heavy blow. The tail of Armavir was also on fire where a plume of flame caught it and spun the airship about. Both Anapa and Sochi rolled heavily, yet being forward of the main explosion, they were spared the all consuming fire.

  Salsk had her canvas shell seared off in just seconds, gas bags exploding as the temperatures literally melted away the self-sealing linings. When the intense fireball diminished, Karpov could see the skeleton of the ship glowing hot from the blow he had delivered. Burned and savaged by the heavy shock wave, anyone alive on Salsk would soon be asphyxiated as the searing fire consumed all the oxygen in the immediate vicinity of the explosion.

  It would have been a much heavier blow if the weather had been calm. As it was, the deadly Autumn Mist sprayed by the falling bomb was too dispersed on the wind, and the explosion was only half as intense as it might have been in calm conditions. But it was enough. Karpov had his first kill, as Salsk withered away and began to fall, all buoyancy lost, the ravaged frame of the airship bent and afire. Karpov could see that the tail of a second ship, Armavir, was also engulfed in flames, and he knew that airship would soon lose its ability to steer and maneuver.

  “Come hard to port! Concentrate fire on those forward ships! Give them the bag busters!”

  The gunners on Tunguska were quick to respond, feeding shells to the bigger 105mm breech loading rifles on the main command gondola and firing. The skies bloomed with the black roses of the explosions around the enemy ships, but the gunners were getting many direct hits against the ponderous targets below. Karpov could see the outer canvas of the forward ships torn by the shells, the glow of fire within, and then the trail of heavy smoke from the wound, the vaporous blood of an airship in distress.

  One ship, the Anapa, was still descending, perhaps from loss of lift due to the many holes Tunguska had punched in her outer shell, the rounds penetrating to the gas bags within. Yet the second ship, Sochi, was trying to climb, hoping its lighter weight might outpace the elevation gain of the bigger dreadnought above it. For a moment it seemed as though the ship would succeed, blowing all its ballast in a desperate attempt to gain rapid elevation and get out from under the serried rows of the gondola mounted rifles on the massive enemy above. But Karpov saw what they were doing, and had a quick reprisal in mind.

  “Forward gondola!” he shouted. “Ready on RS82 system. Target that ship and fire!”

  Seconds later the hiss of the 82mm rockets filled the air as a stream of twelve fired out from the rocket mounting. With the rear of the firing tubes venting to open air, the elevation gain of the enemy, quickly rising to come even with Tunguska, actually played in Karpov’s favor. The rocket rack had limited downward angles of fire, or the hot fire of the engines might be directed back at Tunguska’s underbelly. It wa
s meant to be fired dead ahead, with the rockets eventually falling on ground targets as a saturation artillery weapon, but in this case it proved a remarkably effective anti-airship weapon.

  The rockets seared into Sochi, striking her brow as she climbed and shredding the canvas with the fire of their explosions. The upper girder structure of the interior frame was blasted apart, and the ship suddenly seemed to be breaking in two, with the intact nose section bending downward as the central frame failed. Then fire blazoned in the gash ripped by the rockets, and Karpov knew he had struck the ship a fatal blow.

  Two enemy airships down, one wounded and possibly out of the fight. The battle was opening well for Tunguska, but the Orenburg had recovered from the shock of the surprise arrival, and was beginning to return fire.

  * * *

  Kymchek was on the main bridge, horrified by the scene below as he watched Salsk, and then Sochi die their agonizing deaths by fire. Rockets! Why didn’t we think to mount Katyushas on this ship? Too late now. It will have to be up to the gunners, but we need more elevation. That monster out there just dropped heavy ballast, and it’s climbing fast. Any advantage we had will be lost, and god help us if that beast gets above us. My god! Look at those guns!

  As Security Chief, Kymchek also stood in as fire control officer on the Orenburg when the ship was engaged. He had coolly directed the gunnery during the earlier engagement that had dispatched the Siberian battleship Yakutsk, but that ship had been heavily outnumbered, and had no chance of survival. The enemy they were facing now was an order of magnitude bigger. How in god’s name could we fail to detect that airship? Were the radar crews and watchmen blind? It was massive, bigger than anything he had ever seen. By comparison, the big battle underway ahead of them with Old Krasny would be a side show to the action that would now be fought here. That ship dwarfs Big Red, he knew. What could it be, a new ship we knew nothing about?

  That was simply not possible. Kymchek knew his intelligence network was simply too good to miss the deployment of a ship like that. He peered through his field glasses, struggling to find insignia, and there, at the heart of the prominent double headed eagle of the Siberian State, was the Serial number: T1. The T Class airships were small heavy cruisers at 100,000 cubic meter volume. The Siberians had two in that class, Tomsk and Talmenka, and the Orenburg Federation deployed three with Tashkent, Talgar and Taraz. That serial number belonged to Talmenka, but that ship was deployed far to the south, well away from this action, and this was not the old T Class he knew. While the shape and design of the airship was similar to the heavy cruisers, this ship was more than twice their size! It was bigger than the Narva class airships deployed by the Soviets, and by god, it was even bigger than the Orenburg!

  T1! The new T class the Siberians had built this year… This was Tunguska! It could be nothing else. Yet that ship was reported lost over the English Channel just last week. How could it be here? Were all his network reports in error? Impossible!

  “All guns to bear on that ship!” he pointed, and the rifle crews began to return fire in the chaos of the command bridge. The sharp report of the guns was deafening, the shell casings ejecting and falling from the ship as they fired, and smoke from their fire wafting up to the bridge level above.

  Kymchek was on the voice tube to Volkov with the bad news. He knew he would have to answer for what was happening here now, and did not know how he could explain the presence of this ship, other than to say the obvious.

  “Sir! That ship out there—it’s the T1—Tunguska!”

  * * *

  Volkov heard the clamor on the bridge, and the firing of the guns on the main gondola. Then Kymchek’s voice was loud in the tube again, and his eyes widened with surprise.

  “Tunguska? Karpov? How is that possible? What in hell are you saying, Kymchek?”

  “Sir… The reports we had … Well that must have been a deception, false information. There is no other explanation.”

  The heat rose on Volkov’s neck, his eyes bulging with anger. “Damn your soul, man! False information? Are we that stupid?” Yet even as he shouted this his mind began to piece together the truth of what must have happened. Tunguska had been over Germany, rashly bombing Berlin before it made for the English Channel, apparently bound for London. Then the news was on the BBC of the airship lost in that storm, but they had never found evidence of the wreckage.

  Yes, that was it. Karpov! That bastard must have been in league with the allies all along. He had just come from that meeting with Sergei Kirov, and there must have been some secret arrangement made with London at the same time. Perhaps he never sailed west at all, but turned about to come here. Could Karpov have learned of my plans? We were pulling airships off the front lines and assembling the fleet for this operation just a day after we got the news that his airship had gone down. The news was still fresh. Probably too fresh to really blame Kymchek for this lapse, though I’ll give him hell in any case.

  But what to do now? The roar of the battle was growing and he felt the ship shudder with a direct hit. He craned his neck, seeing the forward gondola had taken the blow, with smoke and fire there.

  Karpov! That son of a bitch! Look what he did to the Caspian Division. The skies were black with the smoke of Salsk and Sochi as they fell to their doom. Armavir was burning badly from her tail, unable to maneuver, and descending as rapidly as she could. Anapa had fallen off and dropped elevation as well, intent on fulfilling its mission and putting her valuable troops on the ground. Armavir was trying to get down, but now he saw the skies dotted with the tiny dark shapes of men leaping from that ship. The flutter of parachutes followed, and Volkov took some solace to think that battalion might also get men on the ground. He would need everything he had to press a credible attack on Ilanskiy.

  That is the key, he thought. I must get the ship to Ilanskiy. Once I control that place on the ground, I’ll have the one thing Karpov prizes most.

  “Kymchek! Break off this attack. Make for Ilanskiy, all engines ahead full.”

  “But sir… That will take us directly into that storm front!”

  “Damn the weather. All ships to Ilanskiy! Signal the Southern Division ahead to do the same. The fleet will regroup there. Understood?”

  “Aye sir, signaling fleet regroup orders now.”

  * * *

  Aboard Tunguska, Karpov smiled when they scored the first hits on the Orenburg. The enemy flagship had been trying to climb, and maneuvering to bring all its gondola mounted guns to bear. Tunguska took a direct hit from the lighter 76mm rifles on the ship’s forward gondola. Then she returned a well aimed 105mm round there, and took her revenge.

  Yes, revenge, vengeance, vendetta. That was what Karpov had in hand now. Was Volkov on the Orenburg? Was he looking at what I just did to those little airships of his below? Look at those fires!

  Bogrov turned, a warning in his tone. “They’re breaking off, sir. It looks like they’re going to run for that squall line.”

  Karpov saw the unwieldy bulk of the Orenburg veering off, the ship’s great nose coming around, and heard the fitful thrumming of engines.

  “Shall we come round and pursue?”

  Karpov thought quickly, his eyes moving from the silver-grey mass of Orenburg to the more distant battle where he could vaguely see Big Red in action at lower elevations ahead. Another ship was burning there, and reports indicated that they were going to lose the heavy cruiser Tomsk. He looked at the storm front ahead, thinking that the weather had its own dark pact with the tempest that had sent him here from 1909. If he pursued, what might happen to Tunguska? Was that front energetic enough to affect the ship’s position in time? Might he vanish from the scene right in the midst of the fight here, even as he had appeared to the great surprise and bewilderment of his enemy?

  “No!” he ordered. “Do not follow Orenburg. Avoid that storm front. Make for Big Red, and all ahead full!”

  Chapter 9

  “Old Krasny” was hanging in the skies above the small haml
et of Karapsel, half way between Kansk on the River Kan and Ilanskiy to the east. The day was late and the setting sun finally fell low enough to send its amber gleam beneath the cloud deck. The light painted the dull red canvass in a tawny shade of port as the airship battled on.

  The skies about Big Red were ripped by explosions. The ship’s aft gondola had been hit, the number four engine burning there. And above, on the broad flanks of the ship, three holes had been torn in the outer skin of the airship, one a large gash where singed canvas still fluttered fitfully in the wind.

  The ship seemed to gasp, and then a rain of water fell from the bulbous nose as more ballast was vented. Big Red was struggling for elevation now, with at least two interior gas bags pierced by enemy shells and leaking helium, one on the verge of collapse.

  Three enemy airships hung in the violent airs about her, two ‘S Class” airships at 120,000 cubic meter volume, the Samarkand and Sarkand. Above, and slightly behind was the Angren, a ship of equal size in the same “A Class” as Karpov’s old flagship Abakan. The last ship in this division, heavy cruiser Tashkent, had taken a full broadside from Krasnoyarsk, and was damaged so badly that it was forced to break off and run north for the open taiga. And Angren had taken hits as well, a deep gash gouged in the brow of the ship where crews had struggled to put out a fire that threatened to burn away the outer skin.