Chapter 27: Russia's Weight Class

“Misha… I heard you were near the bedchamber at dawn the day before yesterday as well. Is that right?”

“Ah, yes. I was at my dawn prayers when there was a sudden commotion, and I worried something might have happened….”

For the emperor of a nation racking up triumph after triumph abroad, the Tsar’s face was unbelievably clouded with care.

“Whew… God is heartless indeed. He answered exactly half of the devotion you poured into a full year of prayers.”

“His Imperial Highness the Tsesarevich… he’s not well, is he?”

“It’s a state secret, but I suppose it makes no difference if you know. Misha, do you know what hemophilia is?”

“Yes. My teacher explained it to me once. A disease that mostly boys in the royal houses of Europe are born with.”

Nicholas II heaved a sigh deep enough to swallow the floor and sank down into the bathtub.

“That’s right… a disease where the bleeding won’t stop. Even from the smallest wound.”

In this era, a severe hemophiliac rarely makes it past his twenties.

When the blood seeping from the navel of a newborn only days old refused to stop, what must Nicholas II have felt as a father?

“Alexei’s… navel began to bleed, and it wouldn’t stop no matter how long we waited.”

“…….”

“At first I wanted to believe it was just… because he’s a baby, but the doctors made their diagnosis.”

I only listened in silence.

—If the one and only Tsesarevich has hemophilia, honestly, all kinds of thoughts are bound to be running through his head. Even for our dear old dad Niki.

“Misha, this must never leave this room. You understand?”

“Yes. Of course. But still, Your Majesty. Surely there must be a way to cure hemophilia, or at least ease it. In the old days people said smallpox was a calamity beyond human power, didn’t they? And now it’s nearly gone thanks to vaccination.”

“…So it has.”

“Couldn’t hemophilia be the same? Even if there’s no way now, I believe someday it will surely be cured by human hands.”

The corners of the Tsar’s eyes trembled faintly.

“I’ll study even harder too. I’m thinking of asking my teacher to find me more medical books. I’ll do my best to learn what Europe’s finest doctors are researching.”

“Misha….”

Though it’s a hopeless prospect with the Russia of today, the deeper I involve myself in the treatment of hemophilia, the higher my influence over the imperial family climbs.

Above all, knowing what kind of monster would come to sway the imperial family in the original history over this one disease, this was no act of goodwill; it was an essential preemptive claim.

“…Thank you.”

The Tsar’s voice cracked.

“Truly… thank God you’re here.”

The Tsar’s profile as he turned his head and wiped his eyes caught in my sight for a moment, then slipped away.

That this man is the Emperor of Russia is sometimes a tragedy and sometimes a comedy, but at least in this moment, he looks like nothing more than a worried father.

After a brief silence, the Tsar sniffled and changed the subject.

“Ah, that reminds me. A letter arrived from the King of Korea.”

“Korea?”

-It’s the Korean Empire, the Korean Empire.

“Yes. Pavlov apparently received it in person before leaving their capital… and roughly speaking, it said to defeat Japan, and then Korea would never forget Russia’s kindness. That sort of thing.”

—Ooh, now that is our Emperor Gojong’s judgment at work. Fleeing the tiger’s jaws by diving headfirst, full speed, into the lion’s mouth.

“So I’ve been thinking, you see? I never had much interest in Korea, honestly. I barely even knew where it was.”

“And…?”

“But aren’t the Japanese bastards insolent? So while we’re at it, why not look after Korea a bit more actively? All while smashing the Japanese to splinters so they can never rise again.”

Well… it is the obvious call.

If Japan loses its influence on the Korean Peninsula, Russia moving into that vacuum is the natural conclusion.

Of course, that’s only the natural order of things; the war isn’t even over yet, so openly eyeing the prize right now would be a problem.

For now, the play is to act as if we have no designs at all while creeping our influence in bit by bit.

“Your Majesty is right a hundred times over, but if we push too actively in Korea, won’t it provoke Britain? We must remember that the Anglo-Japanese Alliance is still alive.”

“Ah… the British are always the problem.”

“Taking Manchuria is our rightful due. But the moment we show intent to swallow Korea as well, Britain can only see it as Russian expansion. There’s no need to make things difficult for ourselves, is there?”

“Hmm… you’re certainly right, but.”

The Tsar scratched his head with a sheepish look.

Ugh, why is he making me nervous again.

“The truth is, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is already reviewing Korea’s incorporation into the Russian mainland.”

“…What?”

“Everyone’s been so giddy since we repelled the surprise attack, you see. Manchuria we take as a matter of course, and since Korea is effectively our sphere of influence anyway, there are quite a few voices calling to incorporate it into the mainland.”

—Ooh, magnificent. Now that’s our Russia.

“Wait… Your Majesty, since the moment we beat the surprise attack?”

“Yes. I’m told the Deputy Foreign Minister was the first to submit a memorandum.”

They hadn’t even won the war; from the moment they blocked a single surprise attack, their eyes had already glazed over with visions of victory spoils, and they’d been going around trumpeting plans to devour the Korean Peninsula too?

“Hahaha, it’s only a matter of time anyway. It’s all land that will be ours in the end, is it not?”

“Yes… that’s true. I just thought it seemed a bit too hasty.”

—What country did you think you were living in? This is Imperial Russia, Misha my boy.

Then again, wasn’t it Russia that ran wild trying to gobble up nearly all of the Black Sea and the Balkan Peninsula in the Second Eastern War, and pressed the great powers’ berserk button?

—These guys genuinely think, ‘We won the war, so we can just do whatever we want, right?’ That is not how a normal person’s brain works.

Yeah, yeah, I nearly forgot; thanks for the reminder.

Note to self.

This country’s problem is not Nicholas II.

The problem is that Russia itself is one gigantic Nicholas II.

…I’m dying to scream some foul curses. Seriously.

* * *

Cut the funding pipeline, and the war ends.

It was an iron rule unchanged in the 20th century or the 21st, but the nation called Japan had no intention of meekly kneeling before it.

“If the foreign loans are blocked, there is only one way.”

The air at Imperial General Headquarters hung heavy, as if oxygen were a thing that didn’t exist.

Vice Chief of the General Staff Kodama Gentaro tapped Port Arthur on the map with his finger.

“We must take Port Arthur. Army and navy attacking simultaneously.”

“…A simultaneous attack?”

“With the Pacific Fleet trapped inside the harbor, if we smash the fortress from the land, the fleet loses its escape route. The navy maintains the blockade outside and picks off anyone who runs.”

One by one, the eyes of the staff officers poring over the map gathered on Kodama.

“Once Port Arthur falls, command of the sea returns to us. With command of the sea, the supply routes open. With the supply routes open, we can attract foreign loans again.”

The logic was flawless.

The only problem was whether the first premise of that logic, ‘if we take Port Arthur’, could actually be achieved.

The fortress Kondratenko had spent half a year overhauling, the harbor ringed with minefields and coastal batteries, the fortress where Makarov’s fleet stood waiting.

Could the navy and army really take it by attacking at once?

No one voiced that question aloud.

Because voicing it offered no alternative.

“However, there is one more thing to try first.”

Kodama lowered his voice.

“We must shake Russia from within. Mobilize every intelligence network we have left and scatter funds to the revolutionaries.”

If the rear wavered while the decisive battle raged at the front, Russia would have no choice but to accept a peace settlement.

This one genuinely sounded plausible.

But astonishingly, the result was nothing like what anyone expected.

The intelligence network Akashi had painstakingly built over years had already been ripped out by the roots by the Okhrana.

And even the few contact channels that barely remained went to ground one by one, or refused contact altogether.

“The Socialist Revolutionary Party has refused.”

“The Social Democrats as well. They say now is not the time….” “And those calling themselves Bolsheviks?”

“Contact is impossible. As if they knew in advance that we were coming.”

The revolutionaries’ logic was utterly pragmatic.

Take foreign money and stage an uprising in the middle of a war Russia is winning, and the people will not rally.

And should it fail, it only hands the Tsar a pretext for repression.

Sound reasoning, beyond rebuttal; but had those people ever weighed circumstances this coolly before acting?

As if someone had scattered directives one step ahead of them, the doors slammed shut all at once.

“Internal disruption has failed as well.”

At the report, a laugh tinged with self-mockery escaped Kodama’s mouth.

“I see… so they mean to play it this dirty to the very end?”

Now the only thing left, truly, was to punch straight through.

The general assault on Port Arthur received the final sanction of Imperial General Headquarters in late August.

But there was one man who openly rose up against the operation.

“This is nothing but a suicide order. Are you telling me to order my men to walk into a killing ground and die?”

In Togo Heihachiro’s eyes was not fatigue but unmistakable fury.

“Break through the minefields and sail into the range of the coastal batteries? Even armchair theorizing has its limits.”

“Commander, the situation has changed. This time, simultaneously with the army….”

“Tch. Ordering the navy and the army to commit suicide together; even madness ought to have limits.”

Togo notified them that he would never attack, but Imperial General Headquarters, already with its back to the wall, doggedly wrung consent out of the Navy Ministry.

Two days later came the notice relieving Admiral Togo of command of the Combined Fleet.

“Just as well. Now I won’t have to answer for the defeat.”

The last words he left, treading the deck of the flagship Mikasa, settled with uncommon weight.

September 1904.

The sky over Port Arthur was blanketed in gun smoke.

The 40,000-odd men of General Nogi Maresuke’s Third Army, who had trudged their way there without even proper supplies, began their charge against the Port Arthur fortress.

At the same moment, the Combined Fleet under Togo’s successor approached Port Arthur’s outer harbor.

It was the Japanese military’s final gamble, a bid to smash it from sea and land at once.

The result was exactly as Togo had judged.

The Port Arthur fortress that Kondratenko had spent half a year overhauling had long since become a monster of steel and concrete.

Trenches, barbed wire, and machine-gun positions plastered it layer upon layer, and even under the raining shells, the fortress’s skeleton did not so much as budge.

Kaboom!

“Charge! Charge! The fate of the Imperial Nation rests on our shoulders!”

“Take this ground and the Imperial Nation can fight again!”

The infantry regiments charging Hill 203 fell in rows to machine-gun fire.

Once, twice, three times.

Each time they repeated the same charge at the same hill from the same direction, only more hapless corpses piled up in layers.

“Charge! Tenno Heika Banzai!”

The sea was no different.

The moment the Japanese fleet approached the outer harbor, mines erupted and the coastal batteries spat fire.

Makarov’s fleet waited at its leisure inside the harbor, then singled out only the fleeing enemy ships for bombardment.

In three days, the battle was over.

It was too one-sided a slaughter to be called “over”, but in the end, the curtain came down.

“…That the war can no longer be continued is the shared judgment of the cabinet and the military establishment.”

“For now, if the Prime Minister were to resign….”

“And if I resign, is there a way forward?”

Of course there wasn’t.

It was only that if they didn’t do at least this much, they were all genuinely going to die; so let there be an empty formality, if nothing else.

A change of cabinet, sensing the sharp collapse of public sentiment and the ruin of the treasury.

With Japan’s defeat, the balance of the Far East could only be shaken to its very roots.

* * *

When word spread that Japan’s final death throes had ended in crushing defeat, Petersburg plunged once more into a cauldron of festivity.

Cries of “Long live the Tsar” rang down every street, and the nobles threw banquets, soaking in the joy of victory.

Everyone but me.

Because the more I read of the postwar assessment reports Section Chief Yakov had sent up, the less I felt like joining any festivities.

The Foreign Ministry’s plan to monopolize Manchurian concessions, the review on incorporating Korea into the mainland, the proposal to re-establish the Viceroyalty of the Far East.

At this rate, these people must be itching to convene a Northeast Asian edition of the Congress of Berlin all over again.

…They haven’t grown one bit.

-What can you do? Being born with the blood of the Russian imperial house is the crime.

No, if I were actually the legitimate heir, I wouldn’t even have this worry.

Because I could simply become Tsar myself.

But as an illegitimate son, however high I climb from here, the future is plain as day.

Remake the Okhrana into the KGB?

Seize the military establishment and shake it?

Even then, it amounts to no more than swapping out a few pillars of this rotten building.

And no matter how sturdy the replacement pillars, if the ground gives way, the whole thing sinks together all the same.

—What we need is one really big score.

Just as he says, the current approach can delay Russia’s death, but it can’t save its life.

‘Dead within ten years’ would merely become ‘dead a little later’, nothing more.

While I sat sunk in thought over whether there might be some better angle, Section Chief Yakov knocked and came in.

“Young Master, you said before that Japan might attempt covert operations to shake us from within, yes? I did some digging in that direction.”

“Did anything suspicious turn up?”

“Ah, nothing on the Japanese side. As you said, they have almost no intelligence network left, so their attempts at covert operations were negligible.”

“But?”

“In the course of the investigation, one thing turned up with rather curious timing. Probably just a coincidence, though.”

Yakov opened his notebook and held it out toward me.

“There’s a religious figure who’s been building enormous influence among Petersburg’s society ladies lately. A wandering monk from Siberia; rumor has it he possesses healing powers, and there’s hardly a soul in the upper-class salons who doesn’t know of him.”

“What’s his name?”

“Let me see… Rasputin. Grigori Rasputin, it says.”

I was looking for something big, and something truly big just walked in.

“…Chief, would it be all right if I looked into him a bit more myself?”

“Pardon? The timing was curious, so I did investigate, but there was no connection to Japan whatsoever. Is something bothering you about it?”

“Just a hunch.”

Our Russia is not so easy a mark that one Russo-Japanese War going well will fix the sorry state of this country.

A position handed to me by someone else has clear limits.

If I need a position, there’s nothing for it but to make one myself.

Fortunately, this country is Imperial Russia; an inhuman hellscape in all but name.

Ingredients of the very finest grade were already lying around everywhere.

~~~

Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/cdZPxPVrXW