Chapter 21: The Barents Sea Scalpel

Lieutenant General Mikhail’s pupils shrank in an instant.

He was, of course, aware that these three divisions shared a common trait: the soldiers within them all hailed from Hongta Province or the Buryat Republic. As it happened, Hongta Province was home to a mixed population of Rassians and Buryats. Entrusting them with the defense of this sector meant they would fight to the death without hesitation.

On the sand table, Mikhail watched as Zhang Shan placed several artillery markers, representing the artillery brigade, into the mountainous region behind Hongta City, forming a pocket formation.

"The Eighth Division is one thing, but the other two were formed only two weeks ago! Those green recruits don't know anything besides how to pull a trigger." The seasoned Lieutenant General looked at the prince—whom rumor always painted as unreliable—as if seeing him for the first time. "Your Highness, do you realize what your proposal implies?"

Zhang Shan met his gaze without flinching. "I am perfectly aware! We are fighting a war of annihilation. The Yamato people across the line have no mercy and offer no forgiveness; they seek only to slaughter our men and seize our women. If we do not win, every single one of us may die."

Mikhail turned solemn.

The seemingly callow prince before him was no mere playboy who could only talk strategy on paper. He was a soldier who had truly experienced the loss of family and had personally commanded a regimental-level engagement. Since the Boriya family, as heads of state, had paid a blood price, no one in the entire principality should be allowed to stand on the sidelines.

He and the officers and staff behind him stood in silent salute.

"Your Highness, I will make them understand the consequences of failing to hold the line."

"Good!"

...

The Boriya Grand Principality’s military development was highly distorted. It possessed a massive navy, a legacy left by the previous emperor. It had tonnage, but in reality, it consisted entirely of obsolete hulls from the Great War. For the sake of imperial dignity, the current Emperor, Constantine, covered two-thirds of the maintenance costs. Theoretically, control of the fleet also rested with the Emperor.

The Air Force was quite respectable. Perhaps due to skewed technological development or temporal anomalies, Zhang Shan’s father had discovered a brilliant aircraft designer two years prior, a man by the name of Polikarpov. For his sake, the Grand Duke established the Boriya Aviation Consortium. Relying on Polikarpov’s designs and the latest engines purchased from Arika, they produced the I-16—a machine that could be described as brute force incarnate. Regardless of its other performance metrics, its flight speed was the best in the world at that moment. This made the Boriya Air Force quite formidable.

Strangely, the Grand Duke was somewhat stingy with army equipment but generous when it came to aircraft, pouring a massive fortune into acquiring over 300 I-16s. This allowed the small principality to achieve a degree of air superiority over the Yamato forces.

In this war, within a range of several hundred kilometers along the contact line, fighter aircraft from both sides engaged in a deadly dance.

On this day, as the sunlight over the grasslands was torn apart by man-made behemoths, Boriya pilot Profiev felt the sweat-soaked leather collar against the nape of his neck. He glanced at the trembling needles on his dashboard and looked south, suddenly spotting twenty-odd strange "dragonflies" flying north—the dazzling aluminum reflections of Yamato warplanes.

"Enemy aircraft at one o'clock! Boys, follow me!"

The I-16's M25-A engine emitted a sharp, explosive roar. The green belly of the aircraft brushed the tops of the clouds as it emerged, then dove violently. At this point in time, the speed and altitude of the I-16 were, to the Yamato Type 96 fighters, nothing short of a dimensional strike. They were like a flock of geese suddenly attacked by a group of eagles, forced to break their formation instantly.

Profiev pulled the trigger, and the four ShKAS machine guns on both sides of his "ice cream cone" fuselage roared in unison. In an instant, the enemy aircraft with the rising-sun insignia in his crosshairs twisted into a bloody smear amidst the gale. He yanked his control stick, the friction between his wing skin and the airflow creating a piercing shriek. As he passed the enemy, his peripheral vision caught the distorted silhouette of the plane, a tongue of orange-red flame and shards of aluminum sweeping past just five meters from his left wing.

The enemy wingman attempted to retaliate; the sound of machine-gun fire came from above. Ridiculously, the speed of their bullets seemed unable to keep up with the I-16’s sudden, plunging dive. Profiev, tempered by real combat at the Span-Ya "Military Academy," only managed to see the serpent-like tracers from the enemy's twin synchronized machine guns when he turned his head.

They were hopelessly off-target.

With a gentle pull of the stick, Profiev completed a beautiful "hit-and-run." His teammates were also scoring kills. The bullets from those large ice-cream-cone-shaped planes easily plowed scorched, jagged furrows into the bodies of the Yamato aircraft. One Type 96 fighter suddenly shed a broken propeller blade, the wailing of its smoke-trailing wing cutting through the air, piercing enough to make one’s eardrums ache.

As acrid smoke seeped into the cockpit, the Yamato pilot smelled the blood from his own clenched teeth. The oil pressure gauge on the right was plummeting. He could hold on no longer and bailed out.

The vast disparity in aircraft performance made the battle one-sided. The Type 96 had poor maneuverability and a flight speed far inferior to the I-16. Faced with the simple, brutal tactics of the novice I-16 pilots—climbing mindlessly and then diving to strike from above—they were utterly helpless.

One after another, the Yamato Type 96s were shot down.

Just then, Profiev, having already downed three, cursed to find he was out of ammunition.

"Suka, I'm out of ammo!"

"Sir, pull back! I'll cover you!" his wingman signaled.

"No need!" Profiev was truly daring. He set his sights on a Type 96 that was frantically twisting to evade another Rassian fighter and dove from a different angle.

Closer! Closer! Even closer!

The gale whistled in his ears! The roar of machine-gun fire was like the cries of hell's messengers! Profiev heard none of it; he saw only the crippled but still-fighting Type 96. In a split second that seemed frozen in time to those watching, he banked his plane, relying on its sturdy build, and used the sharp edge of his wing to slice across the skin of the enemy aircraft.

"Crash!" The enemy plane became like a pile of kicked-over building blocks, losing balance at high speed and spinning wildly before tearing itself apart.

A cheer erupted over the Rassian comms.

As the final few Type 96s fled south in a panic, the airspace fell into an eerie silence, broken only by the whistling wind, like the labored breathing of the Grim Reaper.

Profiev did not know it, but this maneuver was the very one that had become famous among military enthusiasts before Zhang Shan’s time: the "Barents Sea Scalpel"!