After several minutes and sodas Anna was feeling better. Or so it seemed.
“Decembrists Station, Krasnoyarsk,” announced the train.
“Krasnoyarsk? Jesus, how long was I in there?”
“Perm… yeah since Perm. An hour maybe… perhaps a tad more.”
“Fuck. Ok. So what’s the agenda here?”
“This is one of our bigger facilities from a weapons stand point. We don’t have time to go all the way to Magadan or Norilsk. Unless you insist…”
“Magadan? I thought this was only a Trans-Siberian? Is there an underground Rail of Bones too?”
“Madam, I can assure you one thing… no bones were used to build any of this.”
That actually sounded great. Relieved, Anna said, “Let’s go see this weapon.”
The Presidential party exited the gleaming station and entered a cool Under-Krasnoyarsk city. Apparently the Underground Trans-Siberian line was the highest point in Otto’s world. Cities, due to lack of space had been dug out and they had gone deeper and wider over time. The sprawl was inevitable.
This underground Krasnoyarsk had everything from streets, avenues, street cars, trams, shops, parks, universities and a ton of people. It even had stars in the fake sky. “At night, the LEDs mimic nights and during the day they crank out sunlight,” offered Otto.
“Of course.”
A five minute ride on a Zil limo, brought them to a modern looking office building.
A tall gangly guy, with unsettled hair introduced himself as the Lead Weapons Scientist, Mueller. After the perfunctory exchanges, they went into the conference room. Mueller explained everything. He showed Petrova the weapon. He explained its ins and outs. But there weren’t too many ins or outs. They were done within fifteen minutes.
Anna Petrova was super disappointed for the second time that night. That was insanely anticlimactic. This weapon, was just a new missile based on existing ICBMs. But instead of stock ICBMs the new ICBM looked like a regular commercial aircraft. Essentially they could be sent into enemy territory like a scheduled commercial airliner and go kaboom.
According to Mueller, these ICBM-AVIs could be customized to look like any major airliner in operation like the 777, 320, 737, 330, etc. Before Anna Petrova could protest, Otto interjected “We also got most of the Antonovs, Tupolevs, Sukhois, and Ilyushins.”
“Good.”
“Well we are pretty much done here Ma’am,” said Mueller.
“That’s it?”
“Pretty much Ma’am,” added Otto.
President Petrova sighed. “Ok, have a few obvious questions here. What’s your source of power, how do you get the materials and what about your economy here? What do you guys eat?”
“We mine,” fired Otto.
“You mine?”
Mueller took the lead, “Yes. We mine iron ore, we drill oil and we mine diamonds… pretty much anything we need for research. Trust me it’s not easy.”
“Ughh… no wonder Gazprom is a perennial loser.”
“But these were the Koba’s orders… Stalin himself authorized this.”
“Fine, whatever. What happens when you run out of stuff or you can’t get something here? Say vodka or diapers?”
“Well there is more to it Ma’am,” replied Otto as Mueller shifted uneasily, “it’s not just the ores, sometimes when we can’t keep up with our weapon’s demands, we go overboard… we borrow actual stuff from above the ground…”
“You mean Russia… Russia on the surface?”
“Yep,” nodded Otto.
“You mean you come up and literally steal our shit. Jeez. Like what?”
“Borrow Madam, borrow. We have built a few ‘special corridors’ or tunnels under industrial centers… like say Magnitogorsk for steel, Samara for vehicles, Moscow-St. Petersburg for everything, Komsomolsk for aircraft parts, Norilsk for nickel, Volgograd-Makhachkala for food. We ‘borrow’.”
“Fuck,” said the stunned Russian President.
“But we were,” justified one of the scientists, “… following Herr Stalin’s orders… to do whatever it takes to build this weapon.”
“No… just do it… that’s what he said,” interjected another nameless scientist.
President Petrova continued with the questioning, “Stalin said, just do it? Hmm. So what else do you steal?”
After some murmuring someone said, “People.”
“FUCK. Let me guess you abduct Russia’s brightest to develop this super lame decoy missile?”
“Yes Ma’am. But I wouldn’t call it lame,” it was Otto the rat.
It hit Anna like a Soviet hammer. It was hard. It was cold. It was heavy. It also explained every one of Russia’s maladies. They stole her goods, her people’s productivity, they stole resources, Russia’s resources and then they stole grown Russians… for what…? To build this dipshity lame ass weapon… that was so pre-2001.
Otto began, “Ma’am, I know what you are thinking. We get news down here too. But we are not the reason why Russia has lagged….”
Petrova had had enough with these co-opting retro-Nazis.
Petrova let it rip, “You assholes are the reason… the only reason… why Russia has underperformed and disappointed and imploded for so long. It wasn’t communism or military pending. Neither the noble rouble, nor Afghanistan or even the CIA, that brought down the USSR. It was you. You…. bastards…. you conniving little Nazi bitches.”
“Madam you aren’t getting the point. We were following…” it was Mueller.
“What… Stalin’s orders? Dude get a grip.”
Petrova puffed like a 70s era steam loco hauling a mile of coal across the tundra, “And, and this so called weapon of yours… what a fucking joke? Let’s get real for a minute! Forget the DARPA or the CIA, I bet even excuses like Ukraine and Serbia have something in their panties to shoot your fucking… fugly planes…”
President Petrova pushed on, “…haha… Russian people turn around and bend over… and planes? That was your big friggin idea? Planes? Have you fucking seen the news lately, you fucking retards?”
It seemed like the tirade was getting through as the scientists and Otto bowed and looked about nervously. Mueller tried a fresh sorry.
“Stuff your sorries in your assholes… I want you all arrested… executed right now. Purged. Yes that’s right, purged off the face off the earth. I never thought I would say this. PURGED. I get it. Stalin’s had to do what he did. Coz he was just dealing with morons.”
The President turned to the lead security guy, “GUARDS, are we gonna purge or what?”
The group of guards instantly went into attention and saluted their real President. Allegiances had changed. After weighing the options they had decided to ditch the nerds and back the politician. And now they were ready for their first ever purge. Yeah!!!
Even the President was slightly surprised by the flipping of the guards. While she had found the answers to some of Russia’s maladies, the eagerness of the Presidential guards to carry out a purge was still a mystery.
Sensing a seismic shit storm, Otto and Mueller blurted out something in unison.
“What?”
“We have another project… another weapon…”
“Really?” Anna asked sarcastically expecting more bullshit from this posse of insane clowns.
“The new weapon can ████████████ ████████████ America ████████████ ████████████ ████████████ by the balls ████████████ smash ████████████ ████████████ ████████████ ████████████ ████████████.”