Apparatus 33 by Lawston Pettymore (bearly read books TXT) 📕

Soviet Navy. As a cruel form of psychological warfare, cooks were ordered to pipe the aromas from these cauldrons into the ventilation structures in the buried, star-shaped Die Kuppel, which Soviet intelligence had informed them was a secret research facility, the words ‘secret’ and ‘research’ being as catnip to any trophy battalion.

Though the perks were highly appreciated, some grumbling was heard that their mission was to bring back shiny German toys rather than participate in the glorious conquest of Berlin. Not helping morale was the slow progress by the sappers to demolish an opening into the bunker with its four, mysteriously flute shaped, open concrete ducts emanating from the central dome.

Each of the four concrete trenches was as wide as a T38 tank, but as yet impervious to the shells that had been fired without effect into the dense concrete bulkheads, that appeared to lead into, or perhaps out of, the submerged bunker.

The sullen April sky hung like a blanket cloying the treetops, deploying a mist of water droplets and sleet, and creating an acoustic ceiling under which sound traveled, even the sound of whispers. The moist silence was punctuated as the sappers warned “strelyat17!” before each detonation, giving everyone a chance to cover their ears and spare themselves the ringing and period of brief deafness that followed.

This morning, however, their 10-day routine was interrupted as the food wagons were serving breakfast. A new sound groaned from the concrete structures, the sound of chains rotating gears, the sound of heavy metal like a T38 tank, but more muscular, and profoundly more hesitating. The concrete bulkheads at the ends of the ducts were visibly moving, a few centimeters per minute, hinged at the top, like the overhead door of a garage.

The motion continued for several seconds until a small gap appeared at the bottom. The riflemen positioned there put their breakfast tins aside, eyes wide open for whatever was coming next.

Evidently, the Soviets reasoned, the occupants could not take another day of living inside what amounted to a sewer pipe pounded by steel ice hockey sticks, and were coming out, or at least asking to parlay, knowing full well that there was never a parlay when it came to Soviet soldiering. Whoever they were, there would only be Russians talking, prisoners obeying, criminals executed, spoils looted.

The rumble of the four concrete barriers, each thirty meters wide and six meters high, resumed, and intensified, groaning like the gates of Pluto and the Sibyl or the garage doors of Olympus had opened for the first time since Aeneas. A crack at the bottom grew to a meter and a half, enough for a man to slide under.

“Finally,” thought comrade Kombrig. “This whore is finally spreading her legs.” Then, aloud, he said, “Comrades, put on your condoms. Let’s fuck this bitch in her ass.” The men correctly interpreted this as an order to don gas mask discipline, and none too soon, the odors wafting from the opening were visibly green, a conspiracy of sewage, rotting, death, and toxic chemicals.

Soldiers on top of the dome watched as the oculus opened like the shutter of a camera, scattering its collection of fake rocks and trees to the side, exposing the darkness below, illuminated only by a few blinking lights and gasses moving ghost-like upward to the sky. Among the aggressively foul odors and smoke were no visible signs of humas.

Comrade Kombrig clambered up the sloping cupola roof to peer inside and size up the order of rape firsthand. The steam stung his nostrils and made his eyes water. Whatever was alive down there could not exist in that toxic soup for more than a few minutes. Were the Germans surrendering or were they sharing their misery? He yelled down some words of comfort in his best German, calling on the inhabitants to come out and join the Russians for breakfast, breathe fresh air, have as much water as they could drink, and even take showers if they wished. Surely, they would wish for showers after bathing in these toxic chemicals.

As he peered in looking for a response, one of his men produced a torch to help illuminate what they expected to be an empty interior, but what instead turned out to be something else that the darkness had hidden. There was a tall, arrow-shaped structure painted in a calico of dirty olives and browns, its arrowhead-shaped tip emerging from the clouds of smoke. Comrade Kombrig considered the structure for a moment, thinking it was shaped like a rocket, but it was much too big to possibly be one.

One of his officers who could read German used his torch and binoculars to read markings on the equipment inside, hoping to document and ascertain the purpose of the structure before it was scuttled or otherwise booby-trapped.

“Chetyre,” he yelled out. A rotating drum on a prominent panel behind a pane of thick glass was counting down, advanced with a click to “3.” The reels of what resembled a kinescope were whirring, surrounded by relays, cables, and flashing lamps.

“Dva,” he yelled. His voice was the drowned by an eardrum bashing whine of spinning machinery and opening of pressure release valves. No conversation was possible. The countdown continued to “1,” accompanied by the sound of booming drums.

The Battalion Commander did not know what the significance of counter ticking to zero could be, but of the possible options, none were good. Zero was never a good thing to be around. Zero is where cataclysm lives. Soldiers who wanted to survive ran away from zero.

“BeeZhat18!” he yelled as the counter reached “nul.” No officer wanted to command his troops to retreat orderly, let alone run in a panic. But he was running out of time and options.

The sequencer, as oblivious to the consequences as any automaton, blindly compared the panel of inputs to its portfolio of expected values and thresholds of turbine speeds, temperatures of preheating and precooling, pressures of plumbing and ignition chambers, door position sensor voltages, and cog positions. At ‘nul’,