The Long Hard Road

Chapter Forty-Four: Final Orders

Space Station Hamilton

Low Earth Orbit

23^rd June 1942

Russia – even without the other Soviet Socialist Republics – was vast. Even with technology literally seventy years ahead of the Russian technology, and an understanding of the technology’s capabilities that even the Germans couldn’t have grasped in time, piercing together the factors of the Russian economy – figuring out what went where – was difficult.

Commander Caroline Salamander stared down at the display, watching as yet another satellite made a pass over Russian territory, marking and cataloguing the factories as they were revealed. Often, a factory was well hidden, designed to be immune from conventional attack. Stalin had moved factories into the Urals even before the Transition, just to prevent a German or Japanese attack from destroying them, and the sudden war with the British had only convinced him to move faster.

She shook her head, ignoring the strange sensation that gave her in zero-gee. She’d lost people before, from when she was in the Royal Navy, but losing a man that way had hurt. It was lucky for the Ministry of Space that Hanover seemed disinclined to take the loss of a single pilot as a sign to close down operations for years, but she knew that there would always be people who would scream at a single death.

“Look at what we’ve achieved, you bastards,” she snarled, and turned back to the display. She had two hundred boulders, created from compressed lunar rock, floating in orbit, attached to the MSVs. She’d never be able to achieve a battleship-style rate of fire, or the kind of attacks that Pournelle had written about, but the boulders would be very devastating indeed to anything under their footprint.

The display of Russian factories changed. Some targets, she knew, had already been designated for missiles launched from submarines, or long-ranged American bombers based in Sweden and Turkey. Other targets were well out of range; she would be targeting them in particular. A massive tank factory, in the Urals, would be one of her prime targets, along with rail junctions and stations, and some bridges.

She scowled. She’d proposed launching the attack at once, with the boulders she had ready for launch, but the PJHQ had overruled that. They’d been worried about the Soviets launching a pre-emptive attack against American and British positions in Germany, even through they were supposed to have inferior tanks to the Allies. Of course, the Russians almost certainly had the numbers advantage.

“Bastards,” she muttered, designating a major tank yard in Northern Ukraine, or what would have been the Ukraine in her time. In this time, it was a very restive SSR; one determined to overthrow Stalin. She knew that SAS units were active in the Ukraine, causing trouble for Stalin and assisting the local population.

I just hope that doesn’t come around to bite us like Afghanistan did for the Americans, she thought grimly, before completing her task and transmitting the targets into the computers, which began calculating the easiest way of launching all of the boulders in the shortest possible time.

Her communicator buzzed against her breast. “Commander, the lunar ship is ready to depart,” Lieutenant Ramah said. “Do you want to observe the proceedings?”

Salamander shook her head absently. “No thank you,” she said. “I have to complete this task. Bid them bon voyage from me.”

“Yes, Commander,” Lieutenant Ramah said. He was wise enough not to argue. “It shall be done, superior female.”

“Oh shut up,” Salamander said crossly. The sudden arrival of space travel, mixed with alternate history, had brought many phases into common use. She disapproved of it, but even a Commander had limits. Lieutenant Ramah signed off; she drifted over to the main computer and checked on progress.

“Wow,” she breathed, as the lunar ship departed. It was a large construction; four massive tanks and a single set of engines pushing it. The five SSTOs had been busy bringing up personnel for the new base on the moon, one that would stake British control of the moon for the rest of time.

Shaking her head, she turned back to her work. A major railway junction, near Moscow, was a major target. Was it more or less important than a series of bridges near Gorky? The PJHQ would check the targets she’d picked, but she knew that they wouldn’t get it quite right; they never did.

“Targets designated,” she muttered finally. “Boom bitches.”

The White House

Washington DC, USA

25^th June 1942

Ambassador King stepped inside the Oval Office with a feeling of relief. He’d been very worried about the invasion of Europe, nearly four weeks ago, and success had been a relief. He’d known, far more than any Contemporary person, just how chancy the entire invasion was. In 2015, it would never have worked, not against a force that knew what the hell it was doing. The Wehrmacht had been brave, but they’d been unable to counter-attack without massive losses.

“Ah, Ambassador,” Truman said. “Come on in.”

King took his usual seat. He was surprised to see General Groves, General Eisenhower and Ambassador Quinn present as well; the meeting must be important. Truman nodded absently at him, and then gave orders for the room to be sealed.

“As you may have heard,” Truman said, nodding to King, “the Germans appear to have a working atomic bomb.”

King felt the room spin around him. Groves had had remarkable success, just from knowing the future, and he expected that whoever was on the German side would have had similar access to information, even to the level that Oliver had provided them. He had a very quiet suspicion that Hanover had passed the information to Oliver for him to pass on to the American Manhattan Project; it had simply been too detailed.

“It seems very likely that they will have been able to duplicate our success,” Groves said. The heavyweight general – a less charitable person would have said fat – scowled around a thick cigar, which was blowing puffs of foul-smelling smoke around the room. King had attempted to convince Truman to ban smoking from the White House, on general principles, but he had failed.

Groves unlocked a secured briefcase and started to pass papers around. “Once we had the information, creating the atomic bomb became an engineering problem, rather than a scientific problem. We took the fastest possible route compatible with security, producing what I am assured is a Thande Fission Breeder Reactor.”

King shuddered. The British scientist had designed the ultimate fast-fission breeder reactor, simply as a scientific project. To add to the compilations, he’d then published the design, where it had provoked the Iran War. No one in their right mind would have used the design – it made the Chernobyl design look safe – but the Mullahs hadn’t been in their right mind. It didn’t require any effort to imagine either Himmler or Stalin having scruples about building an entire network of them – and so the United States of America had had to go down the same road.

He scowled angrily. The German u-boat that had sunk the Queen Elizabeth had killed two Americans from the United Nations Nuclear Commission, which had been given some extra teeth following the Iran Crisis. Either of them could have made the process far safer, rather than risking Groves’s team on the job. As it was, there were some parts of Nevada that would not be safe for a very long time indeed.

Groves coughed. He had absorbed a radiation dose himself. “We built nearly a dozen of them,” he said. “Two of the round dozen are not ready to operate yet, but we will have enough material for around fifty bombs in five years.”

Eisenhower frowned. “The Axis of Evil will not be around in five years,” he said. “I need something that we can use at once, should the Axis deploy the rumoured nuclear weapon.”

“You do not believe in it?” Truman asked. “It would have thought that it was hard to risk disbelieving in.”

Eisenhower coughed. “If they had such a weapon,” he said, “it could have utterly destroyed the landing in the Netherlands. If they have it, then why not use it. Is it lost somewhere, waiting for us to stumble across it? Is it in Himmler’s hands? Stalin’s hands? Some resistance group we don’t know anything about?”

“Or the so-called Free German Army,” Groves said. “I don’t trust their political leader; he smiles too much.”

“Ambassadors normally do,” King said. He had to admit to some concern over Ambassador Ernst Schulze’s determination to end the European Union – and French influence – before it had even begun. Schulze had been exiled from the mainstream of German politics… and King had always wondered why. “It’s part of the job.”

“You would know,” Eisenhower said dryly.

Truman sighed. “I’m running a madhouse here,” he said tiredly. “Generals, Ambassador, we have to work on the assumption that the weapon is real.”

“Then we have to strike first,” Groves said. “We know where the Waffen-SS is based; we have Fat Lady on its way to Europe. One single explosion and the problem will be solved…”

Eisenhower hit the table hard enough to bruise his fist. “General, you are talking about… contaminating a vast stretch of Russian territory that we’ll have to fight our way through. You’ll do that over my dead body.”

Groves glared at him. “That could be arranged,” he said. “We cannot risk them letting off even one nuke.”

“Does this position of President not come with some authority?” Truman asked icily. There was instant silence. “General Eisenhower, who isn’t President yet, is correct to say that we dare not start…”

“Irradiating,” King supplied helpfully.

“Thank you,” Truman said. “We dare not start irradiating vast regions that our men will have to fight their way through,” he said. “We know” – he waved a hand at Groves’s face – “of some of the dangers and I will not expose American troops to that.” He sighed. “I have discussed the matter with the British Prime Minister. In the event of the Russians using a nuke against our troops, we will destroy Leningrad.”

King spoke into the dead silence. “No,” he said.

Truman lifted an eyebrow. “You think that we should not retaliate against them?”

“No,” King said, ignoring the very childish look that flickered across Groves’s face for a short moment. “I question, however, the choice of target. Leningrad, or Saint Petersburg as it was known in my time, is a place of considerable cultural value. It’s also very close indeed to Finland, which is one of our allies.”

“If only in a nominal sense,” Eisenhower said. King nodded; the OSS had been supplying the Finnish resistance with weapons, and the USAAF had managed the occasional bombing raid to support attacks against Soviet positions, but the never-to-be-sufficiently damned logistics had prevented Patton’s dreams of a march across Sweden into Finland.

“And they would hardly be pleased at us scattering radioactive waste across their country,” King said. “Perhaps Stalingrad would make a better target.”

Groves narrowed his eyes. “That’s out of range,” he snapped.

“Not if we fly from Turkey,” Eisenhower said. “We’ve been launching attacks on Russian positions from Turkey anyway, and we have drop tanks for the B-29s now. That’s how we bombed Japan.”

Truman nodded. “General Groves, please see to moving Fat Lady to Turkey, under conditions of strictest security. We won’t tell the Turks anything; their treatment of the Kurds is disgusting.”

“Aye, sir,” Groves said. King nodded; the Kurdish Genocide had sent thousands of Kurds into the Republic of Arabia. Perhaps in the long run that would be for the best, but for the moment… well, it made dealing with Turkey hard. No one had truly imagined what could happen with cameras the size of a coat button, or how the vivid imagery would affect public opinion.

“Thank you,” Truman said. He nodded at Eisenhower. “Ike, what’s the current status of the invasion plans?”

Eisenhower nodded and unfurled a long map of his own. “We have nearly sixty divisions in all, a mixture of armoured and infantry, moving into position in three separated locations,” he said. “There have been a series of skirmishes between our forces and Russian forces, but so far the Russians have seemed disinclined to attack us, and of course we haven’t pushed back hard.” He scowled. “Some of them have been division-sized clashes.

“General Flynn has been taking the opportunity granted by relative peace and quiet to reinforce our logistics,” he continued, pointing to supply dumps on the map. “We have nearly thirty thousand trucks now, all committed to moving supplies around through Germany to the front. Thanks to that effort, we’ll be able to smash the Soviet armies in the field, and then drive on Moscow.”

King narrowed his eyes. Like all of the future personnel, he’d become something of a history fan in the years since the Transition. “General, can you make it to Moscow before the fall rains?”

“We’ll give it a damn good try,” Eisenhower said. “The Germans of the other timeline could make two hundred miles in a week if they pushed themselves, we’ll be moving faster than they ever could. Given all of the unrest in the two SSRs closest to the front, we might well have allies there.”

“We have to treat them as friends,” King said.

“We’ve made arrangements to extend Operation Chowhound up there as well,” Eisenhower said. “We can make it to Moscow in a month, if we really press ourselves.” He tapped the map. “There are two main problems, and the atomic wild card. The Soviets have a powerful defence line near Warsaw, and they have a second line along the Russian border with Belarus and the Ukraine. We will have to smash the forces in both places, destroy them or capture them.”

“Once they are destroyed, then all we’ll have to do is make it to Moscow, and the so-called Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will come apart,” Truman said. “That would be the end of their manpower, now that the Siberian divisions are trapped in the Far East.”

King smiled. “The blasted city still hasn’t fallen?” He asked. “Perhaps we should use the nuke there.”

“There are Marines too close to it for comfort,” Groves said. “I have a request.”

Truman lifted an eyebrow; King gaped at him. “I… see,” Truman said. “What is the request?”

Groves frowned. “I would like to fly the first mission with the atomic bomb,” he said.

“Out of the question,” Eisenhower said sharply. “You know too much.”

Groves shook his head. “I don’t know anything that they won’t already know,” he said. “I… Mr President, the atomic project has killed me.”

Truman lowered his eyes. “How long?”

“The British doctor thinks that I’ll last around a year, if I’m lucky,” Groves said. “Sir, I’m the most experienced officer on the subject of atomic weapons, and I know how to use them. I’m also expendable.”

Truman studied him for a long moment. “Very well,” he said finally. “I’m going to regret this, but you may fly the mission, provided that the pilot of the B-29 agrees. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Mr President,” Groves said. “I won’t let you down.”

Forward Base

Polish-German Border

25^th June 1942

Captain Dwynn stepped through the security checkpoint and entered the main office of the general commanding, General Flynn. The Forward Base was well established; it had once been a German base before the British Army took it over. There were forces, ranging from infantry to small tank groups, further to the east, but the five divisions based near Frankfurt were the most powerful force in the region.

“Captain Dwynn,” General Flynn said. He held out a hand for Dwynn to shake. “Thank you for coming.”

Dwynn knew that it was going to be bad. Generals didn’t shake the hands of Captains without a very good reason – and the reason was normally a suicide mission. “Your orders did say that it was urgent,” he said. “I brought the team, as per orders.”

“Thank you,” Flynn said. Dwynn shuddered; it was going to be very bad. “I have a rather dangerous mission for you.”

“I’ve been doing that every since I joined the SAS,” Dwynn said. “I was at Singapore, Iraq, Palestine, Norway and the Netherlands. Where next?”

“Back to Poland,” Flynn said. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is simple. Himmler, we believe, has a nuclear weapon. Your job is to find it and destroy it, whatever the cost.”

“Mission Impossible with a vengeance,” Dwynn said. “Where is the little bastard?”

Flynn tapped the map with a laser pointer. The red dot swept over the map before halting at Brest, deep within the Soviet Union. “Brest,” he said. “Far from being as exciting as the name suggests, they are based in an NKVD complex here. They’re very well hidden, but once we have some intelligence on them, we knew where to look for them.”

Dwynn blinked. “Intelligence, sir?”

“None of your business,” Flynn snapped. Dwynn didn’t mind; operation security was important. “The source is classified beyond my clearance, Captain, which should give you some idea of how dangerous it is.”

“Yes, sir,” Dwynn said, wondering who would order a commanding general left in the dark. The Prime Minister himself? “What intelligence is available on the target?”

“Not as much as I would like,” Flynn admitted, passing over a folder of satellite transmissions. “We sent a drone up to take a look, but they shot it down. Some new kind of rocket.”

“Fuck,” Dwynn said. He skimmed through the folder quickly. “Uncle Joe is allowing him his own private camp?”

Flynn nodded. “According to the source, Stalin believes that he can control Himmler, and I suppose that he could destroy him. Still, removing or destroying that weapon is of prime importance.”

Dwynn made a sudden realisation. “There’s no proof that the weapon is actually there,” he commented. Flynn nodded. “Oh, sir; that’s just dandy. No one can prove a negative, can they?”

Flynn shook his head. “We don’t know for certain that the bomb is there, Captain,” he said. “Quite frankly, some analysts suspect that the bomb doesn’t exist. The source – before you ask – claims that it does, but that could just be German misinformation.”

“Bother,” Dwynn said, rather proud of himself for using just that word. “Sir, we’ll do this, or die trying.”

Flynn nodded. “Good luck, Captain,” he said. “I wish you the best of luck, and so does the Prime Minister.” He passed across an envelope. “In fact, he sent you a personal note.”

Dwynn laughed. “I’ll know how to thank him when I come back,” he said.