After several minutes and sodas Anna was feeling better. Or so it seemed.
“
“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
“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
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.