The motor launch cut through the grey, choppy waters of the Baltic, and every wave felt like a judgment.
Ahead, the naval fortress of Kronstadt rose from the sea, a beast of granite and steel bristling with coastal guns. It wasn't a destination. It was a gallows.
Jake pulled his thin coat tighter, the cold spray on his face like a final, unwanted baptism. He wasn't sailing to a meeting. He was sailing to his own trial.
When they docked, there was no welcome. Just a wall of men.
Hundreds of sailors stood on the pier, rifles slung over their shoulders, their faces hard and weathered by the sea wind. Their eyes were cold, filled with a deep, uncompromising suspicion. These men had overthrown their officers; they would not be fooled by pretty words.
Lenin and Trotsky stood apart from them, near the gangplank. They were the architects of this stage, watching with the detached air of men who believed the outcome was already decided. Trotsky wore a faint, knowing smirk. Lenin's face was a mask of iron patience.
They had set the stage for Jake's public humiliation, and they were eager for the show to begin.
No one spoke as Jake stepped onto the pier. The silence was heavier than any shout. They walked him from the docks to the main yard, a vast, open space surrounded by brick barracks and workshops, smelling of rust and coal.
Thousands more sailors were waiting. An entire army of the sea, their collective gaze a physical weight.
The giant sailor, Stepan, emerged from the front rank. He moved with the slow, deliberate power of a bear, stopping a few feet from Jake. His voice was a low rumble that carried over the wind.
"We have heard the Priest's words," he said, giving a curt, almost dismissive nod towards Lenin.
He turned his full attention back to Jake, his eyes narrowed. "Now we will hear from the Demon."
He took another step, closing the distance. "But we are tired of talk. We are tired of promises."
"Show us your truth."
The challenge was absolute. A raw, public demand. Produce a miracle, or be cast out as a fraud.
Trotsky's smirk widened. This was the moment. The crude thug from the Caucasus would try to win over the pride of the fleet with his street rhetoric, and he would fail spectacularly.
Lenin simply watched, his arms crossed, a cold observer at a scientific experiment.
Jake felt a thousand pairs of eyes on him, dissecting him. He didn't look at Lenin or Trotsky. He didn't even look at Stepan.
He looked at the crowd.
Then he turned and gave a silent gesture to the two men he'd brought with him. They hurried forward, carrying a simple wooden crate between them. They set it down at his feet with a dull thud.
"I didn't bring words," Jake said, his voice quiet but carrying in the tense silence. "I brought a gift. For the defenders of the revolution."
He knelt and pried open the lid. Inside, nestled in straw, were two dozen glass bottles filled with a dark, oily liquid.
A murmur of confusion rippled through the sailors. A few of them laughed. Bottles? He brought them bottles? Was he mocking them?
Jake ignored their reaction. He stood and pointed to the corner of the yard.
A derelict armored car sat there, a relic from a failed Tsarist assault, its steel plates scarred and rusting. It was a monument to their enemy's power, a symbol of the modern warfare they feared.
"They hide behind steel," Jake said, his voice rising, clear and hard. He held up one of the bottles, the dark liquid swirling inside.
"This is how we make the steel their coffin."
He took a lit cigarette from one of his men, touched it to the rag stuffed in the bottle's mouth. It caught with a soft whoosh, the small flame dancing bravely in the wind.
He took a few steps, his arm cocking back.
And he threw.
The bottle flew in a high, perfect arc, a tiny comet against the grey sky. It shattered against the armored car's thick turret.
For a single, silent heartbeat, there was only the sound of broken glass tinkling on the cobblestones.
Then the world became fire.
A deep, gut-wrenching WHOOMPH erupted from the armored car, a sound that was felt as much as heard. A monstrous sheet of gelatinous flame exploded across the steel, clinging to the vertical plates like a living thing.
It didn't drip. It didn't run. It crawled.
The fire spat and roared with an unnatural hunger, consuming the old paint in a black-smoke hiss. The thick steel plate beneath it began to glow, first a dull cherry, then a brighter, angrier red.
A wave of intense heat washed over the front rows of sailors, a physical blast that made them stumble back, shielding their faces.
The entire yard was frozen. The laughter, the skepticism, the suspicion—it all vaporized in the impossible heat. Their faces, lit by the hellish orange glow, shifted from doubt to stunned shock, and then to a kind of wild, savage awe.
This wasn't a trick. This was power.
Raw, undeniable, and utterly terrifying.
Someone in the back shouted, his voice cracking with excitement. "Koba!"
Another sailor, his eyes wide, yelled, "The Demon's Fire!"
Suddenly, the silence broke. A low rumble started, growing into a roar as the name was picked up. "KOBA! KOBA! KOBA!" A thousand deep voices chanted in unison, a raw, primal coronation that shook the very bricks of the barracks.
They were crowning him their champion. Their demon. Their king.
Lenin's face was a mask of fury. He saw his authority, his entire ideological platform, melting away in the heat of that fire. He could not let this stand.
He strode forward, his small frame radiating an immense, cold fury. He placed himself directly between Jake and the roaring crowd, raising his hands for silence.
"Good!" Lenin projected, his voice sharp and commanding, slicing through the chant. "The fist of the Party is strong!"
He was trying to seize the moment, to reframe the miracle as his own. "This is the strength Koba brings to our cause! A weapon to be wielded by the scientific will of the Central Committee!"
He was desperately trying to shove the demon back in its cage, right after it had shown them all its terrible power.
But the sailors weren't listening to him anymore.
Stepan, his face alight with a warrior's joy, pushed past Lenin as if he wasn't even there. He walked right up to Jake and clamped a massive, calloused hand on his shoulder. It wasn't a gesture of comradeship. It was a pledge of allegiance.
He looked from the glowing, half-melted husk of the armored car back to Jake, his eyes burning with a new and terrible purpose.
"The Demon has given us a weapon," Stepan declared, his voice cutting through Lenin's speech, silencing it completely. "Now, we will use it."
He turned his fiery gaze from the fortress walls towards the distant, hazy skyline of Petrograd.
"Tell us, Comrade Koba," he growled, the title now holding a weight it never had before. "Who burns first?"