Yak Scouts
April 3, 1948
[1]
"Calm down. Calm down you big baby. You haven't even took-off yet." the Soviet pilot said, hoping that the radio wasn't on when she said it.
The moments leading up to takeoff were always the same for Sergeant Helga Baranov: a sense of impending doom. She did the flight check step-by-step (fuel, steering, guns), and only when the bored guy on the radio told her to. Anything else would make her even more nervous.
When she checked the fuel, she had a brief but vivid picture of a spark igniting in the tank from literally out of nowhere, blowing the plane into twenty different pieces. And her along with it.
When she did the steering, she had a brief but equally vivid picture of the fins locking up as she rolled to do a bank. And...then another picture of them locking up as she tried to pull out of a dive bomb.
When she checked the NS-23s, she pictured them falling right off the fucking plane as she lined up on a target. That last one actually made her laugh.
She knew of course that it was just anxiety. She was an anxious person by nature, and if not that, then necessity. She was a fighter pilot, not someone nestled in all the protective cold metal of an "Ogre" heavy tank. You could never be too careful. All it would take is a single Red Eye.
There were times when it became too unpleasant to deal with. She took pills for it, stuff that she crunched up inside of swallowing whole like she was supposed to, and most of the time everything was fine.
But not when she was about to takeoff. Her heart jackrabbited in her chest. Her labored breaths brought to mind a man running from England to Moscow with nary a break in between. Her undergarments were already wet with sweat. She held her left hand in front of her, and it was shaking like she had too much vodka last night.
"There's nothing to worry about. I've got Olga with me."
Yes she did, 2nd Lieutenant Olga Yardovich. It would be just herself and Olga. Probably, it would be enough.
The mission was a little known country-side in Lich. Spies had reported a mysterious fog that they'd nearly gotten lost in. And all the while there'd been this strange mechanical humming sound. Like a distorted tuning fork.
Their task was just recon. Taking a few pictures with the camera on the underside of the plane. Said camera had a nightvision and thermal setting. Hopefully one of those should identify whatever it was the Allies were up to.
It seemed too easy, almost tedious after the harrowing battle that Berlin had been. Helga had shot down four P-38s in 48 hours, while avoiding fire from another. It was the scariest two days of her entire life. It had officially made her an ace...that was nice and everything, but nowhere near as nice as finally landing that damaged Yak and knowing that she was alive.
Now they were in Hesse, doing patrols and recon. Germany was all but taken at this point. Olga waved at her. Smiling, Helga waved back.
The guy on the radio gave them the go-ahead. Olga's plane rolled onto the runway first. After a pause, she peeled away, and into the sky.
Now it was Helga's turn. She pulled into the runway. The guy on the radio said, "For Stalin...and for the people." It was the only thing he ever said with any real enthusiasm.
"For Stalin and the people." Helga said, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. Her voice was shaking and that was bad. The man might think it was her nationalist pride barely being restrained...or he might think she was trying not to laugh at his stupidity, that maybe she was a spy. At any moment, the several NKVD stationed across the airbase might come dashing into the runway, their SKSs pointed at the cockpit of her Yak.
But nothing of the sort happened...of course. She took-off and she was part of the sky now. Once her ascent was done and she leveled off, Helga felt considerably better. More at ease. The vivid images from before seemed like fleeting dreams.
She met up with Olga and the two of them banked right, to the west. They flew over the low buildings of a small hamlet. Helga slightly tense, even though there was no cause for it. This place was almost certainly clear of Allied anti-air; it was too close to their base. They did have to keep an eye out for any irregulars, or partisans.
"We have come far, haven't we comrade?" Olga said. Helga could hear the smile in her voice. Nobody was happier about the policy of women in the military than Olga Yardovich.
It was true enough. Ten years ago, the Red Army had little more than bolt-action Nagant rifles and about a thousand tanks. Now look at them. Their enlisted forces numbered in the tens of millions. And while they still had a large number of troops with SKS semi-auto rifles, more and more AK-47s were being built. Chief Marshal of Aviation, Dimitri Petrenko said that, by the same time next year, it was likely that all forward troops would be armed with AKs.
Allied soldiers had gone from M1 carbines to, to STG-44s, but they hadn't a chance of countering the pride of the Red infantry, the AK-47. Their numbers were significantly less as well, reported at 4 million enlisted. Out of all those damn countries!
The Soviet tank divisions had gone from the poorly armored T-50 light tank to the powerful T-90 "Ogre." The Ogre tanks had completely swept aside the pathetic Chaffee light tank that the Allies used for their tank divisions, and would continue to do so unless the Chaffee tanks significantly outnumbered them.
In terms of air power, the Soviets had the advantage as well. For every fighter the Allies had, the Motherland had three. For every heavy bomber, the Soviets had two.
The only advantage the Alliance had over the Motherland was naval power, but that shit didn't matter when there were no oceans nearby.
Helga's mind turned to the mission, whatever it was the Allies were doing in Lich. The hamlet gave way to a vast forest, which gave way to a rolling mountain range. All was quiet.
[2]
"Where'd all this fog come from?" Olga said suddenly.
Helga blinked. She realized that she couldn't see anything in front of her. It had happened so suddenly; five seconds ago there'd been no fog at all. The sun had been a small half-seen coin on the horizon behind them.
"Decrease speed." Olga said.
"Roger."
"Can you see me? I'm on your right."
"No. I have no visual on anything."
"Damn it. I can't radio the base. Something's jamming me."
Helga tried, as futile as she knew it was. "I can't contact them either."
"Ready the surveillance camera." Olga said. "Let's see if that still works."
Helga pressed a button. A small viewfinder opened up to the right-side of the cockpit, revealing objects with thermal imaging. They were 2,000 meters above sea level.
The ground below her was a drab grey, the buildings a slightly lighter grey. Not the large buildings of a city, but the relatively small ones of a military base. "Done."
"See anything?"
"Just buildings with little heat signatures...wait a minute..."
She saw red shapes that were probably vehicles. Either trucks or tanks. She saw an odd-shaped one that wasn't a halftrack or a tank. The radio static grew louder as she flew over it.
"You see that triangle-shaped vehicle?" Olga asked. "I think that's our culprit."
"Why isn't it stopping us from talking?"
"Maybe it can't stop short range?" Helga could almost hear Olga shrugging her shoulders. She was a pilot, not a technician.
"Should we get commence a strafe, comrade?"
"No. Our mission is just recon. We'll pass over twice, and then get out of here."
She snapped pictures of the radar jammer, then the tanks surrounding it, manually writing down their coordinates, in a small notebook in a tiny alcove in the cockpit.
Then she saw something interesting. It was a relatively tall tower, with the tip like a large tuning fork. The prongs turned in a slow circle. Its heat signature was significant. There was another one about 50 feet north of it. She'd never seen anything like it; it was perhaps what was making the fog.
"You seeing this comrade?" Helga asked.
"Yes, and such a strange round shape too. Like a ham radio. And a white-hot signature too!"
Helga furrowed her brows, not knowing what the hell the lieutenant was talking about.
Then she did see it. Her first impression was, yes...it did look like a giant ham radio, except the heat signature was intense. Not white hot, like the lieutenant said, but a bright and searing green.
There came a strange sound. Like a high-pitched engine turning on. It increased in pitch and intensity. It didn't make sense that she could hear it from all the way up her. Those people must be going instantly deaf down there, even with ear protection.
As she watched, the gigantic machine went from green to nearly white-hot.
"What the hell is going on?" Helga cried out.
Olga said something. Something Helga couldn't hear.
There was a bright flash of light that blinded the camera. When it was over, the humming was dying down, and Helga heard something coming from the console in front of her but couldn't make it out.
She focused on the noise from her Yak. What the hell was it? Her eyes ticked back and forth.
On the ground, there were new objects. They were trucks with missiles on them. She'd not ever seen them before. Perhaps artillery weapons, like the old Katyusha design? No...one of them just aimed their battery toward the sky.
Her eyes opened in fright as she realized what they were, and what the noise was. It was a missile lock.
"Olga! Watch out they have—"
But then she was cut off as Olga's Yak exploded.
The breath was taken out of her lungs.
All the old anxiety were coming back: her heart was racing, her body trembling as though she'd brushed a live wire.
She was paralyzed with fear. Then remembered the missile lock.
[3]
She rolled and tried to do a hard bank. She might have been successful had she done it sooner. Because she didn't do it too late, the Yak wasn't destroyed immediately. The left wing was clipped and she immediately went into a right-ward tailspin.
The world spiraled around her. Her organs bounced and jostled around. She hadn't eaten any food, but she was fairly certain she would puke anyway.
She jammed the stick to the left as hard as she could.
"Stop rolling! Stop rolling damn it!" Her hands began to cramp and her shoulders ached.
At first it didn't seem like it would work, and she'd drill right into the ground. But slowly, the spin lessened in speed. It was a good thing she'd been at high-altitude when this happened. She wouldn't have had time to do this otherwise.
When it finally stopped spinning, the plane was perhaps 60 meters from the ground. Helga immediately opened the canopy and hit the eject. She was sent careening into the sky. At the last second, the plane started to roll again. The edge of the canopy glass slammed into her left leg and completely shattered it.
[4]
She woke up in a daze, obscured in darkness. Her left leg was a wall of agony.
A heavy canvass was over her. It was a long time before Helga realized it was the parachute. She didn't even remember deploying the parachute.
She slowly moved the parachute away, trying not to move her left leg too much. It stung if she so much as breathed.
It took her about ten minutes to finally move the parachute completely off her. When she did, she expected to be surrounded by at least a dozen enemy troops.
Instead there were a half-dozen, and while they didn't completely surround her, they formed a semi-circle that would make it difficult to target them all at once. And her TT-30 pistol only had eight rounds. And she wasn't even a good shot under normal circumstances.
They were German soldiers (of course), with the black cross with the blue trim, to show they were Allies. They carried not STG-44s but black rifles with long curved magazines much like the AK-47. Other than that the design was not familiar.
All of them leveled their guns at her. One of them was an officer, with a cap instead of the iconic stalhelm. His hair was brown and his eyes were a piercing green.
"Nicht bewegen." One of them said.
"What?" Helga said. Her voice was dry, without strength. She removed her helmet slowly.
One of them, the officer spoke in slow, horrible Russian. "That means 'don't fucking move'. I added the 'fucking' part, you know...for increased flavor."
"Your Russian is terrible."
"So is your flying."
Helga actually burst out laughing. All the German soldiers tensed up, save for the officer. Helga suddenly remembered Olga, what had happened to her. All the laughter dried up in an instant, replaced with distant but piercing grief. The tears were close. The mission was supposed to be so easy.
The officer said. "We're going to take you into custody."
"What was that strange machine? The one that made that noise? Where did all those anti-air weapons come from?"
The officer sighed. "I'm afraid I don't have to answer any questions of yours, communist." He gave her a slightly arrogant, slightly lecherous smile. "But because I enjoy your face, I'll tell you this. That 'strange machine' is the key to our inevitable victory."
Helga said nothing. Her left leg was throbbing torture.
The officer gestured to his comrades. "Take her."
Helga Baranov closed her eyes.