Crescendo Of Doom by John Schettler Page B

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 was 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—