The Last War: Akula Kosmicheskiye--Prologue

The Revered Leader, a man who had portraits of Peter the Great, Stalin, and Khrushchev in his Kremlin office and who?s brother controlled the Ministry of Defense with an iron fist, was not about to give up his hard won power, power seized from his own uncle in the wake of the German war. He had been an imposing, inspiring figure when the Xeh?dethans invaded, rallying the Soviet Commonwealth to overcome the impossible odds. For two centuries, Russia had been laughed at, her misery a private joke of the great powers. No one was laughing now. Americans may have led the UN, but it had been the Russians who bore the hardest burdens. Russian warships had first taken advantage of the confusion in the ranks of the Xeh?dethans when the Japanese cruiser Nagumo rammed their flagship, snatching victory from almost certain defeat. The joke among Soviet officers was that the American president was hiding under a desk in a bunker in Colorado while the Russians were breaking the Xeh?dethan?s back. Timoshenko had asked for a telescope and a radio be brought to him while he watched the battle from the Kremlin walls.

Shaposhnikov had once admired the man, but events during and after the war had disturbed him. Silently, with almost no one noticing, Timoshenko had seized control of Eastern Europe in a fortnight. No one spoke up at the time-the Xeh?dethan War was still on and the UN wasn?t assured victory yet. Let the Russians have Bulgaria. We can deal with them later. Timoshenko was preparing for the next war before this one was even over.

He sought out the leaders of other nation-states with similar goals to Russia?s. The United Islamic Republic, long a cauldron of hatred toward the West, was the easiest and most powerful ally to be won over. Others soon followed. The Chinese, however, were not interested. They would have to be watched, for their involvement in the coming conflict could easily tip the scales in favor of one side or the other.

The Anti-Unification League, as the UN?s new nemesis was known, was born in Baghdad in the heart of the UIR. It was a concession Timoshenko was more than willing to make. He knew who really ruled this cabal of aggressive malcontents. The AUL, however, still lacked the necessary might to take on the UN, which had at its disposal the greatest collection of military force the world had ever seen. It would take a miraculous defection to turn the tide.

Even now, France, master of most of Europe, was in the grips of revolution. With France would come the European Union. France had betrayed Russia at the end of the German war by agreeing to the German demands in the east while they retained the Rhineland and absorbed Belgium. They preferred to remain a part of the UN after the Xeh?dethan War, hiding in the coat tails of the Americans. There were enough dissidents in France who longed for the old days, when Europe bowed down before the will of Paris, that inciting a rebellion was an easy matter. That most of the European Union?s space fleet (the French always maintained the lie that the fleet belonged to all of Europe) had mutinied and sided with the UN was unfortunate. This war, however, would be fought and won on Earth.

Not that space would be unimportant. Far from it. The UN controlled space; there was little Russia could do to prevent that. The combined fleets of the AUL were too small, the UN fleet vast. Had the Chinese sided against the UN, the odds would have been different. That they remained neutral at least did not improve the odds in favor of the UN. The UN would attempt to use its superiority in space to its advantage, attempting to strike at Russia from orbit. While Russia?s defenses were formidable, the more ships that could be diverted from Earth, the better. That was where Shaposhnikov came in.