The 10th of March, 2037, was a cold and rainy day. Frank and Alf had got up early and were now waiting for their comrades in a suburb of St. Petersburg. The whole city had already been shaken by clashes between Rus and collectivists for days - 16 people had so far been killed. Vitali Uljanin had personally come to St. Petersburg to lead the demonstrators through the inner city. That his rivals wanted to demonstrate too, was no secret anymore. For weeks, both sides had called up the people to join their rallies.
An atmosphere of tension had settled in the streets like a black cloud. The local newspapers and television had warned the citizens of St. Petersburg of massive riots, while the media in central and eastern Russia, which were already controlled by the collectivists, had preached hate and violence.
“No Rus will leave St. Petersburg unharmed!”, headlined “The Red-Black Flag”, the official party newspaper of the CASJ, on 10th of March.
Today, Uljanin expected about 200000 people at his rally. Frank and Alfred had hardly slept in the night before the big event and meanwhile they were extremly nervous.
At 11.00 o` clock, the first waves of Rus streamed into the city from all sides. The collecitivist were already waiting at the stations and it came to the first conflicts of the day.
The beginning of the demonstration through Pushkin had been scheduled for 13.00 o`clock. As meeting point, Tschistokjow had chosen a shopping center in the west of the notorious district. Thousands of his supporters had already come and their number was still growing.
Ultimately, almost 50000 people gathered under the banner of the dragon head. Hundreds of armed troopers flanked the marching columns with loaded guns.
Then it began. Flag waving and singing, the huge mass slowly moved forward. Artur Tschistokjow was in the first rank, Peter Ulljewski, his oldest and best friend, walked next to him. At first, the Rus went through a dirty neighborhood full of gray apartment blocks, and started to scream at the top of their lungs.
“Freedom for Russia! Come to Artur Tschistokjow!”, it resounded through the streets out of countless throats, again and again.
The Russian policemen had apparently given it up to risk their health anymore in the conflict of the two rival revolutionary movements, and were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they had even received an order from above to leave the streets to the collectivists.
Artur Tschistokjow looked around. Some Russia flags hung out of the windows of the houses in front of him. In addition, also the red-black flags of the CASJ. Crowds of people stood on the sidewalks, some of them hailed the Rus, others spat on the ground and uttered terrible curses. Soon the demonstrators would reach Pushkin to march through even more dirty and hostile streets.
Shortly afterwards, a big mob of collectivists appeared in the proximity and hate-filled calls came over them like a cold hailstorm. The opponents raised their fists and a wrathful chorus of voices resounded all around Tschistokjow`s followers. But the Rus persistently marched forward, while their rivals were flocking together everywhere.
Meanwhile, Uljanin was speaking in front of 150000 people in the inner city. It was not the number of demonstrants that he had expected, but nonetheless a true sea of red-black banners was filling the center of St. Petersburg. The collectivist leader promised once more “freedom” and “social justice” and took a bath in the cheer of the crowd.
At the same time, Artur Tschistokjow and his followers reached their aim, a large square in the middle of Pushkin. The blond man took the microphone and began with his speech.
“All quiet so far!”, muttered Frank and positioned himself behind a car. Alf and a group of Varangians followed him.
Kohlhaas peered across the street. From a distance, he could hear Tschistokjow`s voice. The general and his soldiers were surrounded by shabby, crumbling houses and sometimes Frank imagined that their windows were angry eyes which were staring at him.
“Secure this side street!”, he shouted at some of his men and the Varangians disappeared.
“Nobody seems to be here”, said Bäumer and got into a truck.
With a loud hum, the vehicle began to move and drove through another street.
”Some of us will remain in the vicinity of the Ulitsa Miri to observe everything”, told Frank his soldiers.
Alfred yawned and started to smoke a cigarette. Obviously he was relieved that this day was peaceful so far.
But only a second later, a loud clang could be heard right in front of the vehicle and a wall of flames rose up. The forepart of the truck immediately caught fire.
“Shit! It came from the roof of the house to our left!”, shouted Frank and jumped out of the truck. The vehicles behind them stopped with screeching tires.
“There! The window!” Bäumer fired with his assault rifle at the house front and somebody was screaming behind a window, while mortar pieces rained down on the asphalt.
Then the enemy showed its face. Dozens of CLJ men appeared all around them and immediately started to shoot. Some Varangians were riddled with bullets and broke down.
“Ran into the house there!”, roared Kohlhaas and hurried as fast as he could through the front door of an apartment block. Bäumer and some of the others followed him.
The Varangians sprinted up the stairs and jumped into a dark hallway. Then they kicked in some doors and stormed into bleak looking apartments.
Dirty, pale people, scared to death and begging for their lives, were huddling here. Kohlhaas pulled a little girl out of a room and brought her to the hallway.
”Go into the basement and hide there!”, he said in Russian.
Only seconds later, the little girl and her wailing parents ran down the stairs.
Outside the house, down on the street, the CLJ troopers had gathered. Between them lay several dead Varangians on the asphalt, while the truck was burning brightly.
“Secure the hallway! We shoot from up here!”, shouted Frank and waved a group of soldiers nearer.
Some young Russians positioned themselves on the stairs. Frank and the rest of the Varangians went back into an apartment and fired out the windows.
While the Varangians had a shoot-out with the men of the CLJ, Artur Tschistokjow had finished the rally successfully. Now the crowd started to march back, but they were already awaited by their opponents. Every street was blocked with screaming red-black mobs and thousands of hate-filled eyes were staring at the Rus.
“Piss off! Traitors of the workers! Fascist pigs!”, yelled the angry collectivists .
“Slaves of the Lodge Brothers! Treasoners against the Russian people! We`ll get you!”, answered the Rus.
Their leader was no longer able to keep his furious supporters under control. Within a few minutes, the opposing groups threw stones and Molotov cocktails at each other. Finally, the first shots resounded through the streets and the riot escalated.
Over 50000 Rus attacked the mass of the collectivists, who had occupied the streets around them to the last corner. Tschistokjow had not expected anything else and just hoped to survive this day.
A few dozen CLJ troopers tried to storm the building and jumped into the doorway. But their assault ended in front of the muzzles of the Varangian`s guns. Frank`s soldiers shot them down in the next second.
Meanwhile, the dirty house front was covered with countless bullet holes and the collectivists outside were still firing at the windows.
“More and more of those damn rats...”, growled Kohlhaas, crawled across the carpet into a secondary room and took his radio.
He called the rest of his soldiers, who were observing the streets in the proximity, with a wavering voice: “Hurry up! The CLJs have pinned us down in an apartment block in the Tischinaja Ulitsa!”
Bäumer peered over the sill and recognized a big horde of attackers who had apparently decided to storm the house again. Now screams from the staircase could be heard.
The next group of CLJ men had finally entered the apartment block. Kohlhaas scurried to the Russians, who guarded the staircase, and looked do
wn. They were coming.
“A gift from Artur Tschistokjow!”, hissed Frank and let a hand granade drop down.
A few seconds later, he heard a loud bang and the collectivists jumped apart. Then, they ran unwaveringly up the stairs. Shortly afterwards, they had already reached the first floor.
“You are as good as dead!”, they yelled.
The Varangians threw further hand grenades down and this time they hit. A group of explosions let the staircase shake, while some CLJ troopers were torn to pieces.
Machine gun fire followed the detonations and several collectivists tumbled down the stairs. Frank and his soldiers attacked the survivors, gunning them down in a dark hallway. Subsequently Kohlhaas crawled back into the apartment - to be pushed out by Alfred in the next moment.
“They have hand grenades too! Down!”, roared Bäumer and a cloud of dust and debris was hurled out of the room.
In the meantime, the other Varangians had reached the house and attacked the sursprised CLJ troopers from several sides. A storm of heavy assault rifle fire rushed through the Tischinaja Ulitsa and dozens of collectivists were moved down by the elite soldiers.
The rest of the CLJ men fled in panic, while Frank and the others stormed out of the apartment block, back on the street. A little later, the enemy had disappeared.
Kohlhaas immediately gave his men the order to get into their trucks again, because Artur Tschsitokjow and the demonstrating Rus were in desperate straits.
When the truck convoy of the Varangian Guard sped over the cobbled pavement with a loud noise, racing straight towards another bunch of collectivists, Uljanin`s men jumped apart and screamed in horror. Now the mass of the Rus came into sight and general Kohlhaas saw, that his comrades were already encircled by thousands of collectivists. The truck convoy stopped and the Varagians swarmed out.
“If we fire at the crowd, we`ll hit our own men!”, warned Bäumer, pulling his hot-tempered friend back. Frank nodded and gave another order.
”Bayonets!”, he shouted.
With a loud war cry the Varangians swooped down on the collectivist mobs and put them to rout.
A deafening cheering surged through the ranks of Rus, although some of them were seriously injured and tumbled around with bleeding heads. Soon the demonstrants were able to march on and to leave Pushkin again. For today, their opponents had enough.
Nevertheless, some Rus were still ambushed on the way home by Uljanin`s men, but all in all, the rally of the freedom movement had been a success.
The CASJ had finally not been able to avert the Rus from marching through the streets of Pushkin. But also Tschistokjow`s followers had suffered some casualties.
About 60 Varangians had been killed by CLJ troopers whose losses were, however, significantly higher.
“Now they respect us!”, remarked Kohlhaas after the bloody street fight and spoke of a great victory. The Belarusian TV did the same and also the newspapers of the country.
“Collectivist terror gangs stopped!”, headlined the state newspaper, while the collectivists were vowing vengeance.
Two days later, Frank and Alfred returned to Ivas. This time, Svetlana from Minsk came with them. Bäumer really seemed to have fallen in love.
Since the early morning hours, Frank was hearing the happy laughing and giggling of Alf and his new girlfriend. It was a torture for his ears and he slowly he became angry. The two behaved like two turltedoves.
Silently grumbling, the general shut the door of his room after he had placed the television in front of the bed. Around noon, he visited HOK to play Battle Hammer.
It was a nice and relaxing game, although Kohlhaas was beaten again by his corpulent friend who wiped his orcs off the table.
“I should read the rules again...”, admitted Frank sheepishly, when the game was over.
HOK just grinned. However, the computer freak essentially had much more time to study all the rules of Battle Hammer meticulously. Ultimately, the defeated rebel grabbed some of the new miniatures, HOK had bought for him on the Internet, and went back home, where he was already awaited by Alf and Svetlana – the happily grinning couple. That was weird!
They had baked a cake and presented it proudly as he came into the kitchen. It was a surreal scene: The sweet Svetlana and the huge Alf in front of the old oven. Frank couldn`t suppress a laugh.
A little later, he started to paint some of his miniatures, trying to ignore the affectionate chatter in the kitchen as good as he could. Nevertheless, he was not able to concentrate on his work completely.
“Tomorrow I`ll do something with Julia”, he promised to himself before he went to bed.
”What a surprise, the general is back!”, said Julia with a grin, as Frank, neatly combed and well dressed, picked her up at the front door.
“Yeah sure!”, came back quietly.
She hugged him and suggested to drive to Kaunas, the next larger town, to go into the theater.
“The theater in Kanaus? But...” The rebel paused.
“Yes, they play “Romeo and Juliet” today. I would like to see it”, explained the beauty.
“What is that for a play?”, asked Kohlhaas skeptically.
“Oh, I really love it! It's about a forbidden love between two young people”, said Julia with an expectant smile.
“Forbidden love?” Frank was confused.
“Yes, isn`t it romantic? And I have never seen it in a real theater. Only once as a movie!”
“We could also hang around in Steffen de Vries cafe...”, suggested the young man and appeared helpless.
“No way!”, he heard. “Just be spontaneous once, and don`t behave like a bonehead, Frank.”
“Why I`m a bonehead?”
“You always want to go to Steffen de Vries, this is more than boring. I can take the car of my mother. But you should wear a real suit, Frank.”
Kohlhaas twisted his mouth. “But why?”
“If you go to the theater, you should be dressed appropriately, Sir”, said Julia and was as precocious as her father.
“Hmph!”, muttered Frank.
“Yes! We`ll do it tonight!”
“Driving to Kaunas to watch “Romeo and Juliet?”
“Yes! What did you think? That's an order, soldier!”, she joked, stroking Frank gently through his hair.
“Hmm...”, was his eloquent response.
At 17.45 o`clock, the daughter of the foreign minister took Kohlhaas with her to Kaunas. A romantic play was waiting for the fearless street fighter who was still confused.
Meanwhile, Julia was talking and laughing and laughing and talking, during the whole ride.
“Anyway, it can`t be worse than the Sapporo front”, said Frank to himself and followed Julia into the theater of Kaunas.
The Freedom Movement of the Rus expanded its promotional activities in St. Petersburg now on a grand scale. Day by day, Tschistokjow`s supporters distributed leaflets or hung up posters. The constant clashes with the collectivists didn`t scare them anymore.
Occasionally, the local chapter of the Rus even organized some smaller rallies in the suburbs of the metropolis. So the freedom movement was growing at breakneck speed, but the streets of the inner city were still dangerous places for Tschistokjow`s men.
On the other hand, Uljanin was fuming with rage, when he heard, that St. Petersburg was still not completely in the hands of the CASJ. Hence, he called up his men to proceed against the Rus with an even more brutal street terror. Moreover, he put bounties on the leading activists of the freedom movement. Even gangs of non-Russian immigrants, he tried to recruit as thugs for his CLJ units for good pay.
So a new and much bigger wave of terror came over Tschistokjow`s followers in St. Petersburg, and they were brutally attacked in the following weeks. The collectivists burned their cars, assailed them in dark corners and parks or just shot them in the open street.
The members of the freedom movement finally tried to answer in the same way, although the CASJ was much stronger and po
werful than Tschistokjow`s organization.
But in the end, the terror of the red-black mobs did not lead to the desired goal. Many citizens of St. Petersburg recognized the true face of Uljanin`s movement and a growing number of them started to support the Rus.
Even some collectivists, who had initially joined the CASJ with some kind of idealism, finally left Uljanin`s organization and changed sides.
At the beginning of April, the Rus made three rallies simultaneously, each with several thousand participants, in the suburbs of St. Petersburg and earned a lot acclaim from the people. The attacks of the collectivists had meanwhile slightly declined in the outskirts of St. Petersburg.
However, Frank, Alfred and about 100 Varangians were on the road in the regions around Smolensk. They showed presence in the smaller towns in the east of the city, trying to intimidate their political opponents.
In return, the collectivists had already started to implement their plans. Homeowners, middle class entrepreneurs and even the few remaining farmers were expropriated forcibly. Who did not oblige and didn`t give his property voluntarily to the new rulers, was confronted with brutal coercive measures. Furthermore, people who were known as Russian patriots or publicly practiced the Christian Orthodox faith, were treated as “enemies of equality”, what meant that they were imprisoned or liquidated. It were hundreds of thousands.
Soon, masses of refugees fled towards the western part of Russia or to Belarus and the Baltic countries. Artur Tschistokjow hosted his compatriots with open arms and many of them joined his organization, in order to fight against the collectivists.
On the 7th of April, several regiments of the Volksarmee occupied the cities of Luck, Rivne and Zytomyr in the Ukraine. It was another blitz that hit Uljanin`s unprepared men hard. Finally, Peter Ulljewski and his DSR units followed the regiments of the Volksarmee and smashed the structures of the CASJ with merciless rigor.
In the meantime, Vitali Uljanin had flewn to New York to meet the Council of the 13, in order to make a report about the development of the collectivist revolution in Russia. All in all, he was in cheerful spirit, because he could exhibit a lot of great victories.
His men had only suffered a few minor setbacks, but that did not change his conviction, that the hated Rus would soon be destroyed and whole Russia would be in the hands of the CASJ.
“What`s about these cities, that have been taken by Tschistokjow`s men?”, asked the World President, the most prominent member of the global brotherhood.
The collectivist leader hesitated for a moment and thought about an appropriate answer, then he confidently replied: “Well, here and there, these reactionists have taken some towns. That`s right, but it is not important and nothing but a temporary phenomenon. The collectivist movement is expanding to western Russia and the Ukraine, as I have planned it. Even in China, we have already...”
A gray-haired member of the council with a broad beard interrupted him: “Brother Uljanin, we thought that you would bring Russia more quickly under control and we are, if I may remark this, somewhat disappointed that there is still so much resistance!”
“Tschistokjow and his Rus are ridiculous! In the long term, they are chanceless against the power of the red-black masses”, answered Uljanin in anger.
The chairman of the Council looked at him with cold eyes, drumming his fingers restlessly on the tabletop.
“Maybe you underestimate the leader of the Freedom Movement of the Rus, brother Uljanin...”
“No! Certainly not, Excellency! But I promise, that this man and his movement will be wiped out in the near future”, admitted the leader of the CASJ.
“And you are sure that you don`t need any further assistance of the GCF?”, inquired the World President.
Uljanin looked at him defiantly and seemed almost offended. He rubbed his hands and tried to withstand the arrogant gaze of the head of the World Union.
“No! There is no reason for it, Sir!”
A banker from London asked for the word and the chairman of the council nodded. “How is the situation in St. Petersburg?”
”St. Petersburg?” Vitali Uljanin looked nervously around for a few seconds. “The city is almost in our hands...”
“Almost?”, he heard the banker say gleefully.
”Yes, the Rus are down and out. They play no important role in St. Petersburg.”
“Thank you, brother Uljanin!”, said the chairman of the Council of the Elders. The interlocution was over.
Shortly afterwards, the collectivist leader left the room and heard the elders chatting and laughing behind the thick oak door. The goateed man appeared extremely displeased, because apparently the wise seemed to have doubts concerning his abilities.
“Soon they will see the might of my revolution!”, he
whispered angrily and walked slowly towards the foyer of the magnificent lodge house.
Some weeks ago, Artur Tschistokjow had equipped Prof. Hammer with a secret research laboratory. The German scientist, whose family had been detained by the GSA, after his escape from “Central Europe”, called himself an “ardent admirer of Tschistokjow”.
The Global Security Agency had put the old man under pressure for months, even threatening to kill him if he did not cooperate. Finally, Prof. Karl Hammer had decided to flee to Belarus. His inventions were found to be extremely interesting for the small army of the renegate state. First of all, however, everything was still in the preparation phase and a small team of scientists had been provided to support him. The inventor was still working on his plasma gun and in April he presented a first prototype which had been completed thanks to the generous financial donations of the Belarusian state.
Only a small group of trustworthy Rus knew about Prof. Hammer and his researches. Frank was one of them, as the leader of the Varangian Guard. Likewise, Thorsten Wilden and defense minister Lossov. On the 18th of April, the men drove to Druja in Latvia, because the German physicist wanted to show them the new weapon.
A steel door opened and gave access to a weakly lit underground passage. Pale light filled the long corridor and the visitors passed another door, before they were greeted by Prof. Hammer.
Frank did not know what to make of the technical mumbo jumbo around him. A futuristic-looking weapon, perhaps three times as heavy as an ordinary assault rifle, had been clamped on a metallic framework. The muzzle of the weapon was aiming at a thick steel plate.
“Now I'm really excited!”, said Wilden quietly.
Frank looked at him questioningly. “Does this guy want to shoot at this massive steel plate? That`s crazy.”
Artur Tschistokjow nodded at them and smiled expectantly.
“I have to adjust something...”, murmured the scientist and fumbled around on the strange weapon.
Defense minister Lossov asked the president what the old man was doing, but Artur did not know it and just shrugged his shoulders.
”They are to protect the eyes”, said Prof. Hammer and gave his guests some goggles.
“That`s what I call a freak!”, whispered Frank.
Wilden nudged him lightly and did not want to be distracted.
”The plasma gun!”, called the professor with a happy smile and positioned himself behind the weapon. For some seconds there was a strained silence, but then followed a loud hissing and a bluish flash lit up.
For a second, Frank remembered the glaring light of the holo cell. A faint crackling scurried through the room, then the guest stared at the steel plate – speechless and gaping.
“It works! It works!” The scientist jumped up and down like a hyperactive Rumpelstiltskin, while the other men were still silent.
The strange weapon had eaten a fist-sized hole through the steel plate. It was unbelievable! Frank had never seen something like that.
“Great!”, said Artur Tschistokjow with admiration.
Professor Hammer fired the plasma gun again and some shots later, the steel plate resembled a Swiss cheese.
“This weapon can
even destroy a tank!”, muttered Wilden.
“But with a single plasma gun, we can`t do anything. The question is if we can produce them”, returned Frank.
“Maybe the Japanese can help us. It would be worth an inquiry”, answered the foreign minister.
“Some industrial plant should be modified to produce weapons like that, but I have no conception of it!”, whispered Kohlhaas.
“We will discuss this at our next meeting”, interrupted them Tschistokjow, giving his German friends a wink.
The Belarusian president was entranced by Prof. Hammers invention and told his confidants to keep their mouths shut. Everything else could lead to a catastrophe.
A whole team of selected physicists, chemists and technical experts from Belarus and the Baltic countries was sent to Prof. Hammers laboratory to support him. And while the German scientist was in his concrete cave, always inventing, musing, improving and working, the political struggle on the surface went on with old hardness. In spite of Uljanin`s tirades of hate and the brutal street terror of his supporters, the collectivists lost more and more ground in St. Petersburg. They failed to oust their enemies from the suburbs of the metropolis.
Nevertheless, the CASJ saw it only as a matter of time, until they had finally worn the Rus down. Moscow and the whole Russian East were already firmly in its hand.
In return, Tschistokjow`s followers tried to expand their acivities to the east and started several propagandistic counterattacks wherever it was possible.
So they made another rally in Voronez, where the city was shaken by riots for days. Shortly afterwards, Frank, Alfred and the Varangians stormed the collectivist headquarter of the newly founded CASJ chapter in Kursk and captured some of Uljanin`s functionaries. Then they destroyed the structures in the CASJ in Gubkin and Belgorod in the south of the city. At the end of the month, the area was finally cleared of collectivists.
Soon after, they made their way to Orel, where CLJ troopers tried to occupy the city. When they heard of the approaching Varangians, they retreated and camped in the outskirts. Artur Tschistokjow immediately sent a regiment of the Volksarmee to Orel and the collectivists finally fled eastward.
In the Ukraine, the region around Donez was meanwhile in the hands of the CASJ. Red-black flags were waving on the roofs of the town halls and “Administrative Councils of the CASJ” controlled the public life in the cities.
In the meantime, Uljanin was organizing strikes in Maryopol, Berdyansk and Zaporizza, and spoke to the masses. In early May, the collectivists had also conquered these cities.
In the south of the Ukraine, the CASJ almost met no resistance. The few local groups of the freedom movement in this region were far too weak to stop the collectivist advance
Apart from that, the people in central and eastern Russia were still hoping to finally experience Uljanin`s promises of “equality” and “social justice”. So far, the CASJ hadn`t ended the social crisis. To the contrary, the large-scale expropriations led to famine in the rural areas and to a much bigger social disaster in the cities.
And even Uljanin`s melodious phrases didn`t change anything. Many stomaches were still empty – beyond all promises of a rosy future.
Nevertheless, the collectivist leader was still preaching that the “reactionary enemies of the revolution” were responsible for the misery. Primarily the Freedom Movement of the Rus was blocking the path into a better collectivist world without any forms of injustice. Artur Tschsitokjow tried to make the best of the situation and hoped that Uljanin`s revolution would lose its impetus in the long term.
After a further propaganda offensive and several demonstrations, the Rus took over the power in the northern Ukrainian cities of Nizyn, Pryluki and Sumy. All the town halls, administrative centers and press houses were occupied by gray uniformed trooper squads in a bold operation.
On the 12th of May, 2037, the Belarusian president visited his supporters in Kiev and spoke in front of several thousand people in an old football stadium in the outskirts. Moreover, he reorganized the local chapter in the largest city of the Ukraine and prepared it for the conflict with the collectivist movement, that already controlled the rest of the country. Frank and Alfred had meanwhile gone to St. Petersburg again, in order to support their comrades there.
For the 18th of May, Tschistokjow had planned a demonstration in the north of the metropolis. After weeks of preparation, he finally managed it to mobilize no less than 30000 of his followers. This time, the collectivists avoided an open confrontation and left it at their usual attacks on smaller groups of their opponents at railway stations or in side streets.
Artur Tschistokjow evaluated the cautious approach of the enemy as a first success and he was right. Since the bloody street fights in March, the St. Petersburg collectivists had become much calmer, at least, in terms of open attacks on the demonstrating Rus.
Into the Witch`s Cauldron