August 2, 1910.
Gatchina Military Aerodrome, outskirts of Saint Petersburg.
'Fire,' Alexei reflected while observing the column of black, dense smoke rise over the aerodrome's wooden hangars, is essentially a simple chemical reaction: a rapid exothermic oxidation. A disorderly and violent transfer of electrons in passing.
But when that fire consumes the only existing blueprints of a variable compression aviation engine and threatens to melt a nation's future, it ceases being basic chemistry to become geopolitics.
He was six years old, recently turned. He stood on the packed dirt runway, dressed in a light summer coat, holding his sister Tatiana's hand.
Around him, chaos was perfectly orchestrated, like a tragic opera. The local regiment's firefighters ran toward Hangar 3 with hand pumps and sand buckets, shouting orders nobody heard. The imperial escort Cossacks had formed a defensive perimeter, with carbines drawn and nervous horses, looking toward the surrounding birch forest as if expecting a Japanese cavalry charge.
But the enemy didn't come from the forest. The enemy had already been inside, had taken tea with the mechanics, and had smiled before lighting the fuse.
"Will the big bird burn?" Tatiana asked. Her voice was tremulous, proper for a thirteen-year-old girl seeing a disaster, but her gray eyes didn't look at the flames with morbid fear. Her eyes scanned the crowd of mechanics, soldiers, and onlookers, searching for anomalies.
"The bird is made of wood, fabric, and flammable varnish, Tanya. It burns quickly, unfortunately, sister," Alexei responded with a coldness that froze the governess's blood behind them. "What concerns me isn't the plane. It's the precision lathes we use to grind the cylinders. It took us six months to import them."
At that moment, an explosion shook the ground. A fuel barrel had burst inside the hangar. A tongue of white fire, blinding as a photographic flash, sprouted from the broken windows.
It wasn't orange fire. It was white.
"Magnesium," Alexei said, recognizing the element's spectral signature.
Igor Sikorsky emerged from the hangar wrapped in a cloud of toxic smoke, coughing violently, his face stained with soot and grease. He carried a roll of papers clutched under his arm, protecting them with his body as if it were his own child.
"The fuel!" Sikorsky shouted to the firefighters, his voice hoarse from smoke inhalation. "Move the kerosene barrels away! Don't use water on the test bench! It's metal that's burning!"
Alexei released his sister's hand and walked toward the engineer. An Okhrana guard tried to stop him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
"Your Highness, it's too dangerous..."
Alexei stopped and struck the guard with a look he had practiced in front of the mirror, imitating portraits of Peter the Great.
"Remove your hand," he ordered with a soft but absolute voice.
The guard, surprised by the authority emanating from the child, instinctively obeyed and stepped aside.
Alexei reached where Sikorsky was trying to catch his breath, leaning on a toolbox.
"Igor Ivanovich," Alexei said. His tone cut through the fire's noise like a knife.
"What initiated the reaction?"
Sikorsky wiped his tearing eyes with his ruined shirt sleeve. He looked at the Tsarevich with a mixture of desperation and rage.
"It wasn't an accident, Your Highness. I checked the valves myself this morning. It was magnesium. Someone put magnesium shavings inside the test bench's gearbox."
The engineer pointed toward the white inferno consuming the hangar's depths.
"When we started the engine for the stress test... the friction ignited the shavings. It reached three thousand degrees in seconds. The engine block melted like it was wax. We tried to use the extinguishers, but the spray only made the magnesium explode and disperse."
Magnesium. A combustion temperature of 3,100 degrees Celsius. Reacts violently with water, separating the hydrogen and feeding the fire.
It was indeed sabotage designed by someone who understood metallurgical chemistry. They didn't simply want to frighten the engineers, they wanted to destroy manufacturing capacity irremediably.
"Sabotage," Alexei diagnosed. "Someone has stopped sending lawyers with lawsuits."
Alexei looked at the roll of papers under Sikorsky's arm.
"Did we save the blueprints?"
"The master blueprints, yes. And the propeller calculation notebooks," Sikorsky nodded, tapping the scorched paper. "But the Neva-2 engine prototype is molten slag. Days of work... lost. We'll have to re-machine every piece."
Alexei looked at the flames.
Certain greedy bankers had a particular way of operating. If they couldn't buy the technology, they had to ensure nobody else had it. They had coldly calculated that destroying the prototype would delay the Russian air program for a time that could be years, enough time for their own laboratories wherever to catch up.
But they had made a miscalculation. They didn't understand the concept of redundancy or a time traveler's determination.
But... who were those behind this enterprise that seemed to be created by another time traveler?
"The prototype doesn't matter," Alexei said, patting the engineer's leg (the highest he could reach). "The Neva-2 had intake flaws anyway, you were going to have to redesign it. What matters is that now we know they're here. Physically here."
Alexei turned and returned to Tatiana. His sister hadn't stopped observing the crowd. She was pale.
"Tanya," Alexei said in a low voice. "Did you see who came out first from the hangar when the smoke started?"
Tatiana nodded slowly. She raised a gloved finger and discreetly pointed toward a group of mechanics being superficially interrogated by aerodrome police near the perimeter fence.
"That man," she said. "The one with the gray cap and new boots. When everyone was looking at the fire and shouting, he wasn't looking at the flames. He was looking at his pocket watch."
Alexei followed the finger's direction. A young man, with a worker's appearance, looked impatiently toward the exit, touching his vest pocket. He was timing the destruction. Evaluating the mission's success.
"Well spotted, General," Alexei said.
The Tsarevich signaled to the Okhrana captain, who came running.
"Captain," Alexei said, his voice lacking any childish inflection. "See that man with the gray cap. Detain him. Take him to Gatchina Palace's basements, not the local police station."
"Under what charge, Your Highness?"
"Treason in wartime," Alexei pronounced. "And search his pockets before he gets rid of anything. Look for bills or whatever you find."
The captain nodded and moved with his men. Alexei watched as they surrounded the suspect. He saw the exact moment the man realized he had been discovered, the failed attempt to run, the rifle butt blow that knocked him down into the mud.
Alexei looked back at the fire. The magnesium continued burning with a white, pure light, indifferent to the destruction it caused.