Afterburn

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Office of the Commander, Black Sea Fleet Sevastopol Naval Base, Crimean Military District Vitse-Admiral Nikolai Sergeivich Dmitriev looked up from his desk as his aide slipped into the office without knocking. The young Starshiy-leytenant looked tired, drawn, like a man who hadn’t slept for a week. That might well have been true, Dmitriev reflected as he studied the man. There weren’t many loyalists left with the Black Sea Fleet these days, and the officers who had stayed at their posts were all working double and triple shifts to try to keep the fleet in something approaching a state of readiness.

A losing cause, Dmitriev thought bitterly. Transfers, desertions, and outright mutinies had left the Black Sea Fleet crippled.

“Comrade Admiral,” Starshiy-Leytenant Anton Ivanovich Kulagin said formally. “There is word from the Krimsky Komsomolets. The American battle group is entering the Dardanelles.”

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