My name is Nikolai Tarasov. I served in the Tesla Corps, one of the most elite divisions of the Red Army, during the Third Great War in the early 1970s. I was one of the few who survived that terrible conflict. This is my story.
I was born in the 1950s, during the Second Great War. Thanks to the science of Jewish researchers in Germany who made great advances in computer and vehicle technology in the 30s and early 40s, many new and terrible weapons emerged in that war. Any history textbook will tell you of the Iron Curtain, the Mammoth Tanks, the Tesla tanks, and other horrific machines. I remember the day when I was a small child, the day Stalin was killed and the USSR surrendered, when at first there was great horror at the thought that we would once again be subject to the corrupt and decadent capitalists like we were during the oppressive reign of the tsar. Thankfully, we were allowed to remain independent, at the expensive of most of our lands. But ever since then I remained bitterly angry towards the capitalists. We should have won the war. We had the superior military. It was not fair, I thought at the time.
Soon afterwards, the Allies put Alexander Romanov, a previously obscure politician, into power. We considered him a bit of a funny little man, always appearing with his little turtle on television. But then news began spreading. The greatest scientists in Russia and elsewhere were taken to secret laboratories in Siberia. Subtle conscription programmes were set up all over the country. The military factories, previously either abandoned or barely managed, began working furiously again. We were bombarded with messages encouraging us to join the army in preparation for an 'imminent war'. Romanov began talking of making Russia great again in his public speeches. When a conscription centre opened in the suburb of Leningrad in which I lived, demonstrations of the new Tesla trooper corps were given to encourage people to join—the result of years of intensive research, apparently. We were shown advanced insulated armoured suits capable of projecting thousands of volts of electricity. There were several requirements for joining the Tesla Trooper Corps: basic knowledge of electricity and induction, strength to move in the big heavy suits, and of course bravery. I had basic knowledge of electricity from my father who helped develop the Tesla Coils during the Second Great War, strength due to the fact that I had worked in some factories previously, and of course I considered myself brave back then. So, despite the objections of my mother, I signed up.
After a couple of weeks training in a tough and brutal training camp in the Ural Mountains, where I was yelled at every day by trainers who smelt of vodka and given harsh exercise regimes in the freezing cold. Towards the end of my training, I was given a stint in my first proper Tesla suit. It was a big heavy thing, but thanks to a built in motor, you eventually found moving in it quite normal. It was the fact that you could hardly see through that little slot in the domed helmet that annoyed me, but we were told that this was for your protection.
Fighting in the thing was slightly harder. The range of the electricity weapon was quite short, and we were given targets in the snow to destroy whilst being shot at with blanks. I got the hang of it, and was quite amazed when I destroyed my first target. For an average factory worker from Leningrad, I was quite awed by the electricity flowing from the electrodes built into the right arm of the armoured suit blasting apart the cardboard targets.
The end of my training came. The recruits and conscripts who had passed and were congratulated, then we were told a secret: in a few weeks, days, or months, we would invade the United States.
We were in shock. This would mean a new war. But, some of us were quite happy. We would at last get revenge on the lazy, exploiting capitalist bastards; we would liberate the oppressed American workers; and the USSR would be feared once again. I was young then; I had little idea of how the war would actually be like. I had visions of us streaming across the United States, hoisting the Red flag on every building, and freeing the workers enslaved by the capitalists and industrialists. We were to be under the command of the bearded little General Vladimir, who, quite frankly, I never took a liking to. He was always yelling and his battle plans were always quite rusty.
After a few days of lazing around in the barracks, we were given news. The invasion of the United States was to take place in two days. I was to be assigned to the army invading New York, and was immediately flown to a secret base near Greenland from where the invasion would commence. I remember feeling a mixture of excitement and fear. I was still quite naïve about the actuality of war.
The great day came. The day Mother Russia would once again take her rightful place as the dominant power of the world. I was transferred to the Greenland base as planned. I stayed there for only a few hours before we were all ushered into an Antonov An-22 transport plane. We were going to parachute into the middle of Manhattan, our commanding colonel told us. Some of us pointed out that we had no paratrooper training. To this the colonel replied that it was all a matter of pulling the string when we felt it was the right time. Failing that, he said, we should land in water.
The AN-22 started off from the Greenland base on the evening of May 17th 1970. We were all very confident that Soviet victory was inevitable. We had the superior technology this time, superior numbers, and the advantage of surprise. Once America fell, we would introduce the rest of the world to the wonders of communism.
It took a few hours, even at maximum speed, to reach our destination. We were told that a flotilla of our Dreadnaughts may have reached New York ahead of us. In the meantime, the plane joined up with a fleet of our new Kirov airships, which were devastating bomber-airships. They were certainly quite intimidating from my point of view—huge vast bulks crossing the sky, with the hammer and sickle emblazoned on their sides.
Eventually, on the morning of May 18th 1970, the plane entered American airspace above Long Island. I remember looking out of the plane porthole and seeing the metropolis of New York sprawled out before me, with several smokestacks already rising out of various points of the city. In the harbour were several Dreadnaught warships, which were the size of ants from my point of view.
Suddenly, we were having parachute packs thrust into our arms. The colonel told us briefly how to put them on and how to open them, and then the back doors of the plane opened. I fixed the domed helmet of my suit down and began charging up my electrodes. One-by-one, all of my fellow soldiers began jumping out of the plane, opening their parachutes shortly after they jumped out. When I leapt out of the plane, I immediately felt a rush of adrenaline. I felt a mixture of sheer horror and excitement as the world began to rush out towards me. Manhattan turned from being the grey blur that it was from the air to a large mass of skyscrapers, some of which were ablaze from the Dreadnaught bombardment. The wind began blowing me south as I descended, which took me closer to the scene in the harbour. I witnessed a missile—it was hard to tell whether it was a Dreadnaught or V3 missile—glide out of nowhere and slam into the Statue of Liberty, rising on her stand out of the harbour. The statue crumbled as if it were made of children's bricks as soon as the missile impacted, with the base collapsing immediately afterwards. For some reason, I felt a feeling that I think was regret. It was a nice statue, I thought as I watched it crumble.
I then snapped out of my thoughts. The ground was coming up closer now. Memorising the brief lesson I had had on the layout of New York at the Greenland base, I positioned myself to land around the southern tip of Manhattan, intending to land either in Wall Street, Battery Park or at the foot of the World Trade Centre. All of those positioned me close to my allies. I continued to descend, low enough to spot individual people in the street now, I noticed the Dreadnaughts in the harbour suddenly explode at their amidships and sink. I was greatly surprised at first, then I suddenly remembered one of my briefings before the mission. We had been informed about the Allied special agent Tanya Adams, a highly trained commando who was normally equipped with C4 explosives and dual machineguns. We had been told to avoid her at all costs if we spotted her, as she normally made short work of even the most elite soldiers. I quickly decided that only she could be responsible for the sinking of our battleships. In any case, I thought, it was inconsequential. A squadron of Kirov airships was coming in, and they were continued with the Dreadnaughts task.
I was now descending into a street—Wall Street, I think it was—with a Rhino tank and some fellow Tesla troopers advancing forward. The street was crammed with abandoned and overturned vehicles, some of them ablaze. I noticed some people cowering beside their vehicles, crying what I assumed to be mercy pleas. I did not know. My English was very bad.
I landed on the pavement, with the parachute and my suit softening the impact. Quickly, I took off my parachute and dumped it there and began marching down the street. Suddenly, a young black youth ran up to me, shouting what were clearly obscenities. "You commie bastard!" I remember him crying. He ran up to me with a knife and attempted to stab me. Of course, my armoured suit made sure that his futile attack had no effect. I swatted him aside, knocking him unconscious, and continued on.
Suddenly, a yellow cab about twenty metres ahead exploded, and a squad of about three GI soldiers began charging towards me, yelling incoherently. It was then that I took the first life of the war. I raised my right arm and activated my electrodes, sending a bolt of electricity forward, aiming at the rifle of the nearest GI, which conducted electricity the best. I watched as electricity surged through the body of the GI, his eyeballs popping and his skin frying. For a moment I felt slightly sickened, wondering just how much pain he was in. Moments later he dropped dead, having been fried with 20,000 volts.
The other two GIs ignored me and charged towards the other Soviet troops in the street, firing madly. A nearby conscript soldier dropped dead before he could release the safety catch of his AK-47, but quickly the other Tesla troopers zapped the GIs with their electrodes as they approached. Meanwhile, I looked down at the smoking body of the GI, his uniform smouldering. I was a little bit jarred, to say the least. I had no idea that killing somebody would bring me so much regret. Regardless, I proceeded, just as a V3 missile soared overhead and slammed into the Wall Street stock exchange ahead, blasting that capitalist shrine to rubble within moments. The other troops in the street cheered as the building collapsed and I naturally cheered with them.
I continued by the smoking rubble of the stock exchange, having just had my first experience of war. For the next hour I continued to patrol the streets of southern Manhattan with my fellow Soviet soldiers, trying to take as little lives as possible. However, the second life I had to take was that of a policeman who tried to slow me down.
We were then told that a supply base that we had set up in Brooklyn had been destroyed by an Allied strike force led by that bitch Tanya, and that we had to fall back. However, we were also told that the invasion was proceeding as planned in other parts of America, with Los Angeles and San Francisco taken, and Washington DC on the verge of surrender. As I walked along with a group of conscripts, I saw the damage caused by the invasion all around me, with every building I saw suffering damage of some kind. Even if the invasion somehow failed, I thought, the damage cost was so great for the Americans that they would have to eventually submit to Soviet supremacy. All the streets I was in were crammed and littered with abandoned vehicles, some overturned or on their sides, some ablaze.
Eventually, I boarded a hovercraft at a pier near Battery Park by the East River. I was told that I was being ferried to our newly constructed base in Washington DC. As the last soldier shuffled aboard the hovercraft, the doors closed and it started down the East river. I asked what had happened to President Dugan and the other American leaders. The officer in charge told me that Dugan was stilled holed up in the White House, and then told me that we had a surprise for him.
The hovercraft cruised into the harbour, and I took a last look at New York. I looked at the pile of charred rubble that was once the Statue of Liberty and the various damaged or burning buildings on the skyline. I soberly realised that the war—and my struggle—had only just begun.