Chapter 189: A Place in the Sun
Saint Petersburg: June 1940
Vladimir was enjoying the first act when he got the tap on the shoulder. His eyes lingered more than momentarily on a particularly talented female performer, and then he dutifully turned and followed his Guardsman to one of the dressing rooms that had been commandeered by his staff, as was the pattern wherever the Tsar travelled.
Berens, Dimitri, and Markov were gathered. It was rare to see the big three of the military establishment together outside of major cabinet meetings, so Vladimir’s interest was piqued, memory of the Soprano’s finer features fading, especially when Dimitri held out a briefing folder.
“Apologies for interrupting what I’m sure was a fine performance” said Dimitri.
Vladimir just approached the trio and extended a hand for the folder, beginning to flick through them.
“Have you ever wondered who decided people should apologise before asking Monarchs to do their job? What has you all gathered like this?” He kept flicking.
“I do not want to pre-empt tomorrow’s meeting, but the staff have been considering the question you posed last week.”
“The Japanese matter?”
“Precisely.”
“And you think you have a solution?” Vladimir posed. Even before he finished the last words, he found the first map in the briefing pack, key statistics hastily pencilled in the margins. He found a second, the margins in Japanese this time. It all started to become clear.
“Is Minister Yoshida…”
“Still in the city, signing of the revised trade pact was this afternoon, he's due to depart first thing tomorrow morning.”
Vladimir was sprawling the documents out on a makeup table now, devouring the key points.
“Invite the Minister to a meeting tomorrow morning, there are items Russia would like to discuss with its ally before the Foreign Minister departs for Tokyo.” He accidentally dropped a second map onto the carpeted floor, it picked up a thin layer of powdered makeup and fragrance from the veteran fibres. Frustrated, he shoved the documents back together into their folder.
“Before then, brief me.”
Honolulu Harbour: August 1940
Jason Chambers stubbed out his cigarette of the guard rail of the Pacific Jewel and flicked the last stub of paper into the water below. Honolulu harbour was abuzz with activity as the Jewel and ships like her plied their trade. Smaller ships made the run from San Francisco, dodging the CSA air force and making for Hawaii. Here, they disgorged their holds of refugees and loaded them up on larger vessels like the Jewel capable of carrying families to safety in Australasia or Russia, if they had the hard currency to pay for passage that was.
In earlier days, the movement had been more tightly controlled. The big ships had made for the PSA coast directly, escorted by screens from the PSA fleet and even the occasional piece of air cover.
But the PSA fleet was on the bottom, and the Union and Italians had turned the bay and approach into a graveyard for anything big enough to merit a torpedo. These days there weren’t even PSA soldiers at the port anymore...most had been able to barter passage away or melted into the civilian population. Better that than wait for Reed to throw an invasion together after ‘Frisco was finally gone.
And so Jason watched the crowds streaming up gangplanks; the occasional shove but mostly just a grim shuffle under the paradisiacal Hawaiian sun.
A few yelps from behind him drew him out of his reverie. To any observer, it looked like a group of mildly drunk caucasian idiots had started an impromptu game of deck badminton, but one where hits were few and insults many. To Chambers, they were
his mostly sober idiots.
The ship whistle sounded, marking it as midday. Chambers checked his watch, and sure enough, the hands had aligned at 12. He waited anyway. He wasn’t sure why, probably just because he figured keeping the lawyers happy made it more likely he’d see the promised pay at the end of all this.
12:01, 12:02...he waited to 12:05 by which point the game had started to die down and the guys were all looking at him a little expectantly.
“Well follow me then boys.”
The interior of the Jewel had never been converted from her original luxury configuration. The trans-pacific liner wasn’t here to truck thousands of refugees in steerage...it normally carried those worthies that had enough gold or credit to travel under chandeliers while the pianist played on in the grand atrium.
And play on he did, on a Viennese piano, as as a hundred men streamed into the grand room, arraying in neatly formed rows that contrasted hilariously with their assorted civilian garb. A few others were already heaving up olive wooden pallets and dumping them on the ceramic flooring.
Chambers leant on the Piano, and set a hand on the musician’s shoulder. The tunes died off, and Chambers addressed his idiots.
“Ok boys, got some news for you. In a shocking turn of events, I understand that the Russian Empire in the Pacific States of America are now at war.”
There was some laughter from among the group, Hawks decided to play into the joke
“How could you possibly know that Boss? I haven’t heard anything come through on the radio or 'nuffin?”
“Because I’m a genuine, bona-fide psychic Hawks, now shut up.” More laughter. He figured that was probably good, didn’t want anyone feeling twitchy. He went for the papers stuffed into the buttoned pocket on his shorts.
“And because His Imperial Majesty also happens to be a psychic, he had his staff write me some orders before we all took this little holiday, saying that in the event of war all reservists of the 215th “Amerikanski” division were to be called up and report to their units. Which I guess happens to mean that you’re all back in the army now. How about that for some foresight, no wonder the Russians seem to be winning all the damn time!”
More laughs now.
“Now normally I imagine being called up in a foreign port would have problems…”
“Like the fact we have no guns” offered Hawks.
“...like the fact we have no guns” confirmed Chambers.
“However” he grinned, kicking open one of the green painted boxes to reveal a brace of straw packed submachine guns
“It just so happens that the Jewel was carrying a shipment of armaments and surplus uniforms for sale to the PSA. Seeing as we’re now at war though, I guess we better get on with seizing them as war booty and issuing them to the rest of the men. I got a good feeling there will be just enough to go around."
A few more chuckles. Chambers figured the mood was relaxed enough now for him to drop the heavy stuff.
“Remember. The job here is an important one. Flash a smile, gold, or a gun if you need to, and get the locals stood down and cooperating. Argent will handle Pearl, so we’ve got the city itself.” He paused a moment, to let the tone land just right.
“Remember, if we don’t do our job, then there’s more than a quarter of a million people out there that are gonna be mighty regretful when the Japanese turn up and do it their way...or when Comrade Butcher himself decides to come introduce himself.”
They all understood. The silence confirmed it. Reed had taken something from every single one of them. It was why each of them ran. Heck, it was half the reason most of them came back. Better the Ruskies than Reed any day.
“Well then get your men geared. We’re moving in twenty.”
Taken from "War, Tyranny, and Liberation, 1920-1970"
As 1940 played out, the primary military focus of the Russo-Japanese alliance was on securing the situation in the Pacific where Germany’s collapse left the alliance scrambling to achieve functional control over a collection of islands that spanned the South and Central Pacific. In this, the Japanese took the obvious lead, but in a sign of symbolic support, two divisions of Russian naval rifles would participate in the island clean-up operations. Notably sailing from Japanese dominated Singapore to assist with operations in areas where larger numbers of Germans were expected to be present, including Ceylon and the German holdings in the Indonesian Archipelago. It was reasoned that the Germans were, all else being equal, more likely to surrender to Europeans than the Japanese, a fact the Japanese command did not begrudge as long as control would pass to them in short order after the surrender was complete.
Occupation of the German colonies greatly reduced what had long been the greatest threat to Japan in the Pacific, that of Germany.
But as one threat was being suppressed, Saint Petersburg could see another re-emerging. With the Pacific States on the brink of collapse, it was considered only a matter of time before Reed ruled America from coast to coast. Once that happened, the Islands of Hawaii, a barely held bastion of the PSA, long since emptied of military strength to reinforce the defence of LA and SF, would surely be in his sights. If Hawaii was reclaimed by the Americans, there was every possibility that in a future war, the CSA (and possibly allied Internationale) navies would employ it as a jumping off point for operations into the Pacific.
By contrast, Oahu, with its well developed military infrastructure and significant Japanese population, likewise seemed to hold tremendous potential for the Imperial alliance. With it, Japan could push the influence of its naval and air power right up against the US West Coast, much improving the depth of its defensive potential in the event of a Pacific war.
In the end, it was the Russians that proposed the operation, and who took many of the risks executing it.
American exiles in Russia, organised into a reserve rifle division, were embarked on a number of trans-pacific liners that were being regularly used to bring refugees from the PSA from Hawaii to Vladivostok (and to take volunteer fighters and supplies back).
They made the journey under the guise of potential volunteers, before the Russian declaration of war was delivered by the Russian Embassy in San Francisco on 14 August 1940. Within an hour of the declaration being delivered, the Russian reservists had been ‘called up,’ armed themselves with weapons shipments intended for the PSA, clothed themselves in ‘surplus uniforms’ and disembarked.
Fighting was limited. The Island’s authorities were taken by surprise and opted to surrender. A few confused gun fights broke out with security troops at Pearl Harbour, but with the harbour long since emptied of ships and the islands drained of their fighting power, resistance was sparse.
In military terms, it was a sucker-punch. Technically speaking, no rules of war had been broken, but it was a lawyer’s play that would probably have grated at the sensibilities of Prussian or British officers of the Weltkrieg era.
But America was in the closing days of a fierce, unforgiving ideological war. The PSA leadership was desperately holding on around San Francisco, and the mutual antipathy between the Internationale and the Imperial powers was such that no real scandal was made of the matter.
The CSA would holler, loudly, in the chambers of the Internationale, about the appropriation of its territory, comparing the matter to Canada’s seizure of Alaska in the opening days of the 2nd American Civil War. But their fleet was in the Atlantic, the PSA was still fighting, the Canadians were watching their border, and the Internationale had a hundred other battles more in need of fighting. No one wanted to kick off a war in Europe over a few breakaway islands. Not yet anyway.
With the 1st Air Fleet and a number of the IJN’s battlewagons steaming for Pearl, ownership of the islands visibly slipped from American hands for the first time 1898 (and earlier, if one regards the bayonet constitution as the beginning of their dominance).
The Canadians, for their part, sent private congratulations to Saint Petersburg and Tokyo, hoping that the move might presage a greater willingness for the Imperial powers to become better involved in American affairs to the detriment of the CSA.
But it was Tokyo’s reactions that mattered most in the Russian capital.
Tsar Vladimir III said:
From the Diary of Tsar Vladimir III
“Some might question why we were so quick to concede the most important parts of the Hawaiian chain to Japan. The reasoning has little to do with weakness and obsequiousness on our part, as much as the hotheads hankering for a second Tsushima might charge.
Consider for a moment how the STRATEGIC situation has changed, once one takes account of the Japanese mindset.
The Imperial Japanese Navy, with its tremendous influence over the Government, will never consent to giving up its new range of operations.
The Japanese Government, having raised their flag over a territory with a significant Japanese population, will be politically incapable of relinquishing it without a fight as long as the Navy holds its stance.
Withdrawal for Japan is now impossible. This is no puppet state which they can simply swear off. They have told their citizens that this is their land and, (as much as the locals may disagree) their people.
For the Americans, public acceptance of the occupation is likewise impossible, especially as they try to establish domestic legitimacy. They may not start a war over it (and it is doubtful the Internationale would ever support such a move unless they were prepared for a European conflict) but any rapprochement with Japan will be impossible as long as the rising sun flies over Pearl Harbour, just as talks with Canada are always stillborn over the matter of Alaska.
Japan has gained great ability to make war on the Americans, but in doing so has lost its ability to befriend them, to access their resources, or normalise relations with the wider Internationale.
They’re committed now.”
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