The power had weight—real, punishing weight.
It dragged at their shoulders, their legs, their lungs. Every step was a negotiation between endurance and collapse. They were no longer riders but ghosts leading two staggering horses through the half-frozen mud. The crude sledges they'd lashed together groaned behind them, laden with crates that seemed to grow heavier with every verst.
Each box was a coffin for their speed, each step another nail in the dream of glory. When the sledges caught on roots or sank into soft snow, the entire line ground to a halt. Pavel would shoulder the ropes, his muscles knotting as he forced the load forward inch by inch. Murat's palms were torn open, the ropes biting into raw flesh. Their breath smoked in the freezing air, their exhaustion visible in every motion.
They crawled north at a pace that mocked the grandeur of Koba's vision. The rifles—once a promise of power—had become anchors dragging them toward a quiet death somewhere in the endless forest. Yet no one spoke of turning back. There was nowhere to turn.
By the second day, the silence was broken by a strange rhythm in the wind. A steady thwack… thwack… thwack—the sound of axes biting wood. Then came another sound, a thin, whining cry that rose and fell with mechanical precision. A saw. A machine.
The forest had changed its voice.
They were close.
Koba raised a hand. The convoy halted. A flicker of something sharp returned to his eyes—the familiar light of focus, of control. "Ivan," he said quietly, "hide the horses and crates. Deep. In a ravine, out of sight. If you hear gunfire, you do not return. Take one horse, go west, and don't stop."
Ivan nodded. His duty was clear—protect the asset, not the men.
Koba, Pavel, and Murat dropped their heavier gear and pressed forward through the final stretch of trees. The sound of industry grew louder—a heartbeat of progress pulsing through the wilderness.
They reached a ridge and stopped. Below them, the forest opened into a wound of smoke and steel.
It wasn't a camp. It was a factory carved out of the earth.
A bunkhouse squatted near a cookhouse, both smeared with soot. A smaller, tidy office stood apart—a foreman's domain. Beyond it, a forge glowed red against the dusk, the blacksmith's hammer ringing like a bell. The smell of hot iron and pine sap mingled with coal smoke. And at the center of it all ran the narrow-gauge spur—a rail line ending in a long siding.
A shunting engine sat cold and still, its metal black with soot. Beside it waited a row of flatcars, empty and silent, their steel wheels catching the last faint light.
Pavel and Murat saw obstacles, dangers, men who might raise alarms. Koba saw a mechanism—an intricate machine waiting to be rewired.
He raised Morozov's binoculars and began to study the system piece by piece, stripping it down in his mind until only function remained.
The bunkhouse: space for fifty, maybe sixty men. A constant rotation of shifts—half in the woods, half asleep. That meant gaps. Predictable ones.
The cookhouse: the social center, crowded and distracted at mealtime. Two hours until the next.
The foreman's office: modest, but from its roof ran a single thin wire, vanishing south into the trees.
Jake:That's not power—it's a telegraph. Their only line out. Their nerve.
Koba:Then we sever it. Isolation first. Always.
He shifted focus to the siding. The little locomotive was old, but sturdy—a workhorse of steam and steel. Coal bunker full, water tank visible. The brake levers on the flatcars were manual, simple, and efficient.
Jake:Class D model. Short range, low speed, but reliable. Everything's built for minimal crew.
Koba:Perfect. Simple systems are easier to steal.
As the light faded, they slipped back through the woods to their rendezvous. The air was brittle with cold and expectation. Koba spread his map on the ground, the lantern's glow flickering across its surface. He didn't ask for input. He issued orders.
"We move in one hour."
The men leaned in, silent, waiting.
"Phase one: Isolate. Murat, Ivan—you take the foreman's office. The telegraph first. Cut the line at the pole outside, then secure the operator. No killing." His eyes fixed on Murat. "A corpse brings the Okhrana. A frightened man brings only questions."
He turned to Pavel. "Phase two: Distract. You and I will start a fire at the eastern woodpiles. A big one. The kind that turns workers into a bucket brigade and commanders into fools. Every man will rush to save his camp. They'll see nothing else."
He straightened, his finger tapping each of them in turn. "Phase three: Acquire. In the confusion, we take their best draft horses—the four Percherons by the stables—and two large timber sledges. The real sledges this time. We load our crates and move them to the siding."
He paused, then smiled slightly, the faintest ghost of satisfaction. "Phase four: Extract. We transfer the crates to a flatcar. I'll start the engine—just enough to roll us onto the main track. It's downhill for the first few versts. Gravity will carry us south before anyone knows what's missing."
The men listened in silence. The plan was mad, intricate, precise. Each step depended on the last. A single mistake would mean death. Yet the logic was undeniable. Every move fit like gears in a clock.
Finally, Koba turned to Pavel. "When the fire starts, the foreman will take charge. He's their brain. You're our disruption. Start a fight, a shouting match, anything to keep him occupied. You'll be the storm inside the storm. Understand?"
Pavel hesitated, staring toward the faint glow of the camp beyond the trees. Another collection of working men—innocent, ordinary—about to be thrown into chaos by their arrival. He thought of the farm. The woman's headscarf. The boy's toy horse. But Koba's eyes held him, steady, pitiless.
He nodded. "I understand."
Koba studied their faces—mud-streaked, hollow-eyed, but alive again, pulled into the gravity of his purpose. They were exhausted, but the despair was gone. He had given them motion again, and motion was life.
"We move in one hour," he said, rolling up the map. His voice was low but charged, like the hum before a storm.
He looked north, where the line of rails glimmered faintly in the dark. "Tonight, we don't just steal from this world," he said. "Tonight, we steal the world itself."
The forest swallowed his words.
And when the hour came, four shadows detached themselves from the trees—silent, precise, unstoppable—moving toward the heartbeat of steam and fire waiting below.