by Eric Flint
The inspection of the facilities was thorough, as Sheremetev put off the trip back to Moscow. But when there was nothing more to inspect, he still could not face climbing those stairs and getting back in the dirigible. It was the knowledge that nothing would be beneath him, just thousands of feet of empty space. He couldn’t admit to the fear, though, not when all the world knew that Czarina Evdokia loved to fly, and Mikhail enjoyed it as well.
“Colonel, I was impressed with the Czar Alexis’ speed. So I want you to fly over Ufa. Circle the city at low altitude and let them know we’re here. I would like to accompany you, but I have business that needs my attention. I will be taking a steamboat back to Moscow.” As excuses went, this wasn’t great. It would take him longer to get back to Moscow by river than it would take the Czar Alexis to go to Ufa, come back to Bor, pick him up, and take him back to Moscow. But he was the director-general and no one questioned him.
Ufa
November 1636
Bernie and Natasha walked hand in hand down the hall toward Natasha’s apartments, talking about cartoons and the printing of flip books in Ufa and looking forward to a little privacy. A commodity in short supply in Ufa in this year of 1636. The lack was bad enough in the seventeenth century in Europe, but Ufa had about three times the people it had room for, even including all the new buildings that were going up at an amazing rate. They reached the door to the room Natasha shared with Anya, confident that Anya was down at the docks with Olga. Natasha reached for the door handle and a shout rang out. “Dirigible!”
Bernie shook his head, took another step, and started pounding his head against the door frame. “Every time. Every single time. I think I’m going to kill Nick.”
“They wouldn’t be shouting like that over Nikita. He’s in here every week or so.”
Bernie was suddenly all business. “You’re right. We’d better go see.”
“Not that there’s anything we will be able to do about it.”
When they got outside, they saw the Prince Alexis sailing overhead at no more than eight hundred feet. The name painted on the side of the dirigible was Czar Alexis, but Bernie had been in the room when Czar Mikhail had explained to his son, “You’re not czar yet, and it will be a while before you become czar.”
Alexis was jumping up and down on the battlements and imperiously ordering his dirigible to land and take him for a ride. The thing was low enough that he could see people in the windows and moving along the catwalks. One guy actually waved to Alexis, or perhaps it was to the czarina, who was next to her son on the wall.
Bernie turned to Natasha. “Do you know where Nick is supposed to be right now?”
“He’s supposed to be in Dirigible Valley doing maintenance and resupply.” Dirigible Valley was a box canyon in the Ural mountains—or at least their foothills—that was almost impossible to reach by land. Also its precise location was a fairly carefully guarded secret. In that box canyon, they had built tie downs and were in the process of building hangars and repair facilities that were to eventually become a construction facility for future dirigibles. Now, three months after they had found the valley, it was a thriving—if small—community with a couple of hundred people who, when not busy building stuff, hunted and fished to supplement the supplies brought in by the dirigible. They chopped wood and made charcoal for fuel for the dirigible and were building the sheds in which new gas bags would be made as materials became available. It was going to be at least another year before they could start on new construction, but even now they had enough of a structure in place so that the Czarina Evdokia was safe while they worked on it in its hangar.
“It would take him at least an hour to get here, then, even if they don’t have the Czarina Evdokia opened up for repairs.”
“So you don’t think we should send him a radio message?” Dirigible Valley was out of direct radio range, but they had put together two repeater stations which gave them a three radio chain to Dirigible Valley. They could get messages to and from the valley in minutes.
“Not unless it looks like they are going to camp here,” Bernie said, pointing at the dirigible in the sky.
The Prince Alexis made another couple of circuits of the city then flew away to the west. By the time it was leaving, Bernie and Natasha had been called to Czar Mikhail’s council chamber.
The discussion was short and sharp. The consensus amongst the boyars of Ufa was that the dirigible Prince Alexis must be captured or destroyed.
Once that was decided, all appearance of consensus disappeared. Bernie and Natasha were pulled into an argument between the Embassy Bureau, Ufa Branch and the Streltzi Bureau, Ufa Branch. Young Ivan Borisovich was in charge of the Grantville section, just like his father was in Moscow. He and the other desks at the Embassy Bureau were upset at the complete dependence on the Czarina Evdokia for communications with all western powers. They wanted a secure route. Meanwhile, the Streltzi Bureau wanted more resources spent on upgrading the armament of the Streltzi and the new peasant levies that were being formed with volunteers from the escaped serfs.
By the time that was done, Anya was back in the room she and Natasha shared. Bernie, who had two roommates, had even less possibility of a private place.
“Bernie, I have a letter from my father,” Ivan Borisovich said as they were finally leaving the meeting.
“Why didn’t you show it to Czar Mikhail?”
“Perhaps I should have, but I don’t want it spread around and some of the boyars talk.”
Bernie stopped and looked at the teenager. They were in a whitewashed hallway with closed shutters and Coleman lanterns placed far enough apart so that Bernie got the impression of street lights. Islands of light in a dim hallway. He and Ivan were between islands. “What’s so secret?”
“Sheremetev has been cracking down on the service nobility and Father says Georgii Petrovich Chaplygin has had enough.” Ivan kept walking, and Bernie turned to walk with him. “He’s running this way and would like a guide. He has three villages as pomesti and he lost about half his serfs when Czar Mikhail declared the end of serfdom. So he wasn’t thrilled with Czar Mikhail but…well, Father didn’t say, but something must have happened.”
“How are we supposed to make contact with some guy on the road?”
“I know where his villages are. And he moved all the serfs into one village. He intends to bring them with him.”
“Does he realize that they will be free once they get here?”
“I’m not sure,” Ivan said. “He’s not a bad man, Bernie. He cares for his family and he’s loyal. It’s…”
Bernie shook his head, half in disgust, half in resignation. The attitudes that were common among the service nobility, and not all that uncommon among the serfs, made no sense to him. “So what, exactly, does he want?”
“Like I said, a guide.”
“And just how are we supposed to…? You’re not planning on going, are you?”
“No. But I could show Nick on a map and then he could drop a guide.”
“Just fly over and toss a guide out at five thousand feet?”
“I thought that the dirigible could land…”
“On the basis of a letter from your dad, who got it from some guy he knows, you want us to land the single most expensive and irreplaceable piece of equipment we have in enemy territory, at a predetermined location. What if your dad’s friend is lying? What if he lets his plans slip to his cousin, who turns him in? Look, Ivan. I trust your dad’s judgment, but he’s asking a lot. Let me talk with Nick and see what he thinks.”
On board the Czarina Evdokia
“So what do you think, Nick?”
“I think Able Airwoman Valeriya Zakharovna is going to get to play with her toy again,” Nick said. Then, after a short pause, “No. She’s going to have to teach someone else to do it. I don’t want her wandering around in the woods where Sheremetev can get hold of her. Besides, she shows up in a village in Russia claiming to represent Czar Mikhail, no one is going t
o believe it. But we can map out a route for them to take, and then drop them a pathfinder with maps who has over flown the route.”
“How long?” Bernie asked.
“At least a month.”
“Why so long?”
“First we have to find someone. Then we have to teach them how to land. Val almost broke her ankle the first time she did it. We’ve since learned about the landing roll and the five points of contact.” Nick pointed out the window and down to a stand of trees near the city. “Tim’s going to have to fortify that, or cut it down.”
Bernie followed the pointing finger. They were overflying Kazan to help with the mapping of the defenses. The Volga was starting to freeze up now. Once the rivers froze, they became paved and graded highways for troop movement. By January at the latest, General Birkin would reach Kazan with an army. Bernie made a note, then went back to the previous discussion. “Who do you figure to send?”
“We’ll ask for volunteers,” Nick said. “We won’t tell them what they are volunteering for. Just that it will be dangerous and involves jumping out of a dirigible. I doubt we’ll have any trouble finding people willing to try.”
Bernie laughed. “As long as you don’t expect me to do it!”
They didn’t have any trouble. Young men are young men and the urge to prove themselves is universal. The month of November passed and the rivers froze. Sheremetev’s main army began to move. Meanwhile, more and more people were arriving in Eastern Russia. And the constant search for places to put them only got harder.
As well, controlling the members of the great houses who had defected from Sheremetev was getting harder and harder.
“This isn’t working,” Czarina Evdokia said. “The bureaus are too busy squabbling to get anything done.” The government of Russia was—in theory—a totalitarian system. The czar told the bureaus what he wanted and the bureaus did it. That had probably been pretty much how it had worked in Ivan the Terrible’s day. But Ivan had been a homicidal maniac who had ruled Russia through terror as much as anything. Boris Godunov hadn’t been a lot better. Then the Time of Troubles had been anarchy. Mikhail had been chosen as czar because he was young and weak, and the government had become a literal bureaucracy—rule by the bureaus, with first Mikhail’s mother, then his father, exerting more control than Mikhail had ever tried to exert. With Mikhail’s escape and setting up in Ufa, they had entered a new phase. Mikhail had promised a constitutional monarchy, where the people of Russia would elect their own government. The problem was that, aside from some theoretical knowledge held by people like Filip Tupikov, no one knew how to do it. By now, even Filip was ready to admit that theory didn’t match reality.
Bernie wasn’t much help, because up-time he had paid no attention to politics and down-time he had mostly been drunk after the Battle of the Crapper. He hadn’t paid any real attention to how they were trying to form a new nation. Besides, he had left for Russia before the Germans and up-timers voted on the New US constitution, much less formed the CPE or the USE. All Bernie could add to Filip’s theory was that “politics are corrupt” and “political promises are always lies.”
But how they were corrupt, he didn’t know. Though Bernie was starting to suspect that the problems they were having with politics had something in common with the problems he had explaining plumbing right after he got to Moscow. It wasn’t that they didn’t understand how to work the system, just that they used different terms. “I agree that it’s not working, Your Majesty. But unless we can ship in Mike Stearns, I don’t know who we’re going to get to explain it to us.”
“Brandy!” Natasha said. “She wasn’t that interested in politics at first, but starting in late ’32, after Gustav and Stearns formed the CPE, she started talking about it in her letters. Also, Vlad said he used her to explain to him how the politics of the CPE and the USE worked.”
“Vladimir’s letters have discussed the structure and politics of the German government quite a bit,” said Czar Mikhail. “Mostly in terms of what it meant in regard to the likelihood of the CPE or the USE invading Poland. Father was pushing hard for us to invade Poland after Gustav finally went to war with Poland in 1635. That’s probably a big part of what pushed Sheremetev into actually having him assassinated. Anyway, Vladimir seemed to have a good understanding of the politics of the USE, and for that matter, the State of Thuringia-Franconia. He would be the one—” Mikhail paused at a look from his wife. “—in consultation with Brandy, of course, to help us figure out how to make politics work.”
“Let’s send them some letters. The dirigible can drop off letters at Nyenskans in the Swedish Ingria,” Natasha offered. “The USE is recognizing both our government and Sheremetev’s, at least to the extent of extending ambassadorial status to both Vladimir and Iurii Petrovich Buinosov-Rostovskii.” The USE wasn’t extending ambassadorial status to General Shein’s Siberian state. From what they had heard, some of the English merchants were assuring Shein that England would recognize Siberia as an independent state next summer, in return for concessions.
There had been ongoing moderately cordial relations with Shein since he had taken Solikamsk in August. Aside from declaring Northern Siberia as independent from Russia and making sure that he had a route to the Volga, though, Shein had taken no action, declaring his neutrality in the conflict between Czar Mikhail and Director-General Sheremetev. It wasn’t what they would have preferred, and after discussing it with Natasha and the rest, Bernie figured that Shein’s position was unwise at best. If Sheremetev won, he would waste no time in crushing Shein, and if Mikhail won…well, he was less likely to crush Shein, but the general would not have much credit with the new government of Russia.
“Speaking of letters, how are negotiations going with Siberia?” Bernie asked.
“Shein says he will let us move goods through Siberia if we will take letters from him to the Swedish Ingria on the Baltic for transmittal to England and the Netherlands. We’re still negotiating the tariffs.”
On the Czarina Evdokia, over western Russia
Fedor Yurevich looked out at black nothingness and wondered if this was a good idea. The dirigible was five thousand feet up and Fedor couldn’t see a thing.
He looked over at Jump Mistress Valeriya Zakharovna, and she smiled. “Just remember your five points of contact. We’re dropping you about a mile upwind of the village. You ready?”
Fedor managed to jerk a nod, even though he wasn’t ready at all. She slapped his shoulder and he jumped. The harness jerked him up. It always came as a surprise. At least, it had in the two training jumps he had made before this. But once he was out, there was a feeling of freedom and peace that was like nothing he had ever felt before. He pulled on the wooden dowel attached to a cord that went up the risers to one of the two gaps in his chute, and his chute started a slow turn. He looked around, checking for landmarks and seeing vague shapes. The landscape looked different at night. He’d known that, but it looked more different than he expected, and he couldn’t make out where he was or where he was going. He saw a light in the distance and steered for it.
Two minutes later, he landed on a trail and started gathering up his chute. Parachutes were expensive.
Fedor reached the village of Adelino about mid-morning the next day. He had gotten turned around and ended up three miles west of the place. Georgii Petrovich Chaplygin was a well organized man. He had his villagers set up and prepared for a winter trek. He was also arrogant and supercilious, and Fedor didn’t like him at all. They were forced together, however, and over the trip developed at least a grudging respect for each other.
Fedor wasn’t the only pathfinder sent out to support defections. Some had better relations with the people they were sent to guide, others had worse. Some few were captured by the dogboys or turned in by the people they were there to guide. Over all, though, they did a good job of weakening Sheremetev and strengthening Czar Mikhail.
Russia House, Grantville
December 1636
“We have another request from Czar Mikhail and a letter from my Aunt Sofia,” Vlad told Brandy as he plopped down on the couch in their private sitting room. It was a bit baroque for Brandy’s taste, but much of its furnishings were made by the Russians here in Grantville. Gifts they couldn’t refuse.
“What does Czar Mikhail want?”
“He wants us to write up a report about how to create a constitutional monarchy.”
“We can probably do that. I mean, we have all the theory and we’ve been right here while the CPE and the USE were formed. Tell you what, though. You should talk to Ed Piazza and Helene Gundelfinger. Also Karl Schmidt…” Brandy went through a fairly long list of people who were involved in local and national politics that they knew and could call on, ending with “…about how to actually get things done in a constitutional government.”
“Then I’ll try to translate that to a form that will make sense to my friends back in Russia’s bureaucracy.”
“What about Aunt Sofia?”
“That’s good news. She thinks she might be able to get us a shipment of mica. All she really has to do is get it into the Swedish territory on the Baltic.”
“That is good news, but I worry about her. If Sheremetev catches her…”
“There is nothing we can do about that,” Vladimir said. “We might as well do what we can. So, the report?”
It took them a while, but they managed to put together long letters on how it’s done in the real world, which is a lot more messy than theory would suggest and had quite a bit in common with the ways the bureaus interacted. The real world techniques included things like trading your vote on this issue for someone else’s vote on that issue.