Ch-8

June-January 1920-1921

The roaring twenties have officially started and with our infrastructure slowly spreading its tendrils of Rail, Road, and Telegraph wires to interconnect my lands.

The Major lines Runs from Vladivostok, to Heilong-Jiang(Regional Capital of Manchuria) then UlaanBaatar(Mongolian Capital) then it ends at the front with the Soviet Union. Which add up to about 3,000 miles of telegraph wire, and with it enough Train Tracks and tar for roads to follow along with it.

With the front directly connected to the capital the next stretch will head directly north along the coast which is about 3,500 miles, it's purpose is to monitor the coast for any invasion from the Japanese when the war arrives.

After that it will be interconnecting the large cities, Major resource deposits like gold and oil then the last will be small isolated villages and towns.

Speaking of isolated towns and cities, the first of the Zeppelins have been completed based off my design and improvements. First Helium has been used to replace Hydrogen so to it's danger

We caught our first Soviet spy this year, well found.

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Karol Makarov He was starting to regret his posting here, "The Ice Box" it had been nicknamed by the other soldiers, while the bonus was great and the subsidies higher education was a god send as his younger brother was heading to one of the many new technical schools that were popping up over the past year.

But for him he is stuck for the next year and a half in a frozen hell hole, as far as he knew the most northern military base currently in the world.

But at least he wasn't one of the Soviet guards he was issued for free; a Parka and other extreme environment clothes, altered kit to fit his massive gloves, and a personal heating unit while on day patrol for him and his dogs.

As the half tracks had trouble running in the cold, so some natives came and trained them in Arctic survival had come and taught them at the beginning of there deployment, the biggest lesson was on dog sleds as in the event of a true emergency and the radio fails they need to send out a message and for regular patrols for Soviets or lost peoples.

And he wasn't a dog person before but now the dogs were his best friends and the rest of the guys agreed. Instead of walking in the zero temperatures with the dogs you could go miles with no problem and carry a radio like in the trucks (also if you are lucky the CO will let you bag a reindeer.)

[The "Ice Box" guards would go on to develop a new special forces unit of dog sled teams for Artic combat and have they would be known as the дворняги or the Mutts and there unit symbol is a Husky sitting in an Igloo.]

So like he did every Thursday he wasn't on patrol with the dogs along the half frozen river, which was a complete white out environment meaning with the fresh snow and white clouds you couldn't see the horizon.

So when you see a brown blob of a on the banks you notice it quick, Karol then slowed the sled and looked through his binoculars at the blob. There he saw the low quality uniform of a Soviet soldier, the mans frozen hands still holding onto his mosin.

Karol, then deployed his radio antenna to send out messages.

Karol-"Ice Box, this is Private Karol Makarov I've got a body on the river bank. Currently uncmofirmd death but I'm pretty sure he is dead but I'm requesting permission to approach the scene to confirm."

The radio then crackled for a moment and came to life as the communication officer came on the line .

Coms-"This is Ice box, hear you loud and clear you have clearance to approach but exercise caution."

So Karol then ushered his dogs forward he approached the man and pulled his NK-19 (Ak-47) from his shoulder harness and aimed it at the man.

Karol's voice then broke the muffled silence of the river bank and yelled out at the man.

Karol-"YOU ARE TRESPASSING ON THE SOVEREIGN LANDS OF IMPERIAL RUSSIAN, MAKE NO SUDDEN MOVES."

Karol spiked his sled and unclipped the lead dog Laika, a massive Husky to help him.

The man now that he was close had been dead for awhile now, his body was practically frozen solid and his lower half was actually frozen into the ice sheet.

Karol let out a sigh of relief and moved back to sleds and radioed HQ again, "Private Karol reporting in, the man dead and been dead since last night he's half frozen into the river, please advise."

Comms-"Good to hear private, bras wants the body to be freed and brought back to base as soon as you can."

Karol not into the radio, "Fuck that's going take a couple of hours." Grumbling for a couple of seconds he then reported back "Afrim Comms, I'll radio back when the bodies free."

Karol the grabbed a large sledge hammer axe and his personal heater and heated blanket for the dogs while he chops at the ice, and so he did for the three hours at the foot thick ice.

Finally after rolling the body onto the sled, he Radioing again, "Got the soldier out of the ice and heading back to base on 15, over and out HQ."

Karol then headed back to the HQ, where he dropped off body and went to rest for night and get warm.

The officers began to investigate the situation, that was when the journal was found.

The "Spy" as it turned out was simply a Zealous young man who had believed he could traverse over 5,000 miles of Siberian wilderness Ill equipped too infiltrate a supposed secret cabal of scientists which were the real reason behind the advances in technology as no woman could be as smart as the Czarina.

So it was no surprise that the man died to the elements, after alerting the Intelligence department the journal was sent to Vladivostok (mostly for its hilarity) and the man's body brought to the Soviets to be returned to his family.

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The incident while funny was a wake up for the intelligence department of Imperial Russia, Czarina who knew how the world was changing. With spies and espionage being the defining feature of the coming century and military intelligence was doubly important.

So putting a full 6 charges into espionage which had completely altered her mindset in how to manage spies and protect her nation. So a new division of The Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order or Okhrana which are basically secret police.

Lucky since the revolution many of the old Guards so to seal have been trickling into the nation and have slowly come forward too help my rule.

With them a bare bones spy agency was born, with there talents and knowledge in spy craft and my new knowledge that has quadrupled the effectiveness of them, with Ana building futuristic devices like hand held radios and code that was way more advanced than current cryptography.

They are currently focused on locating any foreign nationals that are dangerous to my rule and to infiltrate various agencies for other spies.

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Points Spent:

Survival-1

Espionage-7-New

Politics-1

Efficiency-1

Industry-1

Engineering-2

Electronics-1

Aviation-1

Code-1

Education-1

Harmony-6

Reliability-1

Civil-Engineering-3

Art-3

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