Carnifex (12 page)

Carrera stopped writing in his notebook. "Range?"

Georgi answered, "Up to thirty-seven hundred kilometers, about twenty-three hundred miles, without a pilot, with maximum fuel, and a payload of over one hundred kilos. That is, if it doesn't have to expend fuel getting airborne."

"Maximum payload?"

"At twelve hundred kilometers, three hundred kilograms with pilot. Self lifting. These are approximations."

"Cost?"

"Under three hundred thousand FSD per copy. Possibly as little as two hundred and fifty. That doesn't count R&D costs. We will need thirty or, better, forty million to begin real development."

"Thirty days. Present me a budget." Carrera paused, then continued. "What's the rest."

Pislowski pointed at the largest of the models on the table. It looked to Carrera much like the
Dos Lindas
, but with somewhat different lines.

"The same basic idea for stealthing the gliders can be used to stealth a ship. That is the aircraft carrier you have been restoring. We can create slabs of the polyurethane, carbon fiber, chip composite and . . . "

"No," Carrera interjected, holding up a restraining hand. He was already frustrated beyond belief with the cost of the carrier. "I've spent enough on that bitch. It's not intended to stand in line of battle against anyone who really counts. At this point, stealthing it is not necessary."

Shrugging, Pislowski pointed toward the third model, this one midway in size between the aircraft carrier and the glider. "We've taken to calling this an
Megalodon
, or killer whale. It has nothing like the stealthing features of the gliders; the material would not survive the pressure. Instead, we stole the idea from someone down in the Federated States."

Carrera noted mentally that the Megalodon model was facetted, just as had been the P-71 in the picture shown him by Georgi.

"Bounces sonar instead of radar, doesn't it; just like the bats in that photo?"

"Correct,
Duque
. The submarine itself is plastic . . . acrylic, actually." Pislowski removed the top of outer facetted fairing with his hands. "Inside, it would use either a hydrogen peroxide system, or some other air independent system, for propulsion. Extremely quiet."

Carrera looked long and hard at the model. Under the fairing was a cylinder than bulged out to a larger cylinder in the middle. Noticing his finger edging toward the bulge, Pislowski said, "That's where the torpedoes will be housed, in a rotating carousel turned, probably, by hand. It's only a thought, though."

The diving planes on the model were outsized, almost like wings. Pislowski explained, "The ship can glide forward as it rises or sinks. We have an idea for pumping out the ballast tanks by heating and cooling ammonia inside a flexible, condom-like, sheath. The ammonia would expand, displacing water from the tanks, or contract, allowing it in, and all fairly silently."

"Costs?"

"We have
no
idea, Legate. It depends on too many things that are out of our control. Will the Sachsens sell us peroxide systems? We don't know. Will the Anglics sell us the machinery to make thick acrylic cast tubes seven meters in diameter? Not if they know what we want it for. We can assume these will be expensive, though, especially if we have to develop them for ourselves. I am guessing here; maybe two hundred million each."

"All right," Carrera conceded. "That's a bit high for us. But I do like the idea. Send us a budget request for R and D only."

Pislowski nodded. "There is one other thing,
Duque
. We are getting into the realm of things which countries might classify as top secret. I . . . "

"You think you need a more secure location than the city," Carrera supplied. 'I agree. It will take about a month to prepare things but at the end of that time I want those working on your more . . . mmm . . . let us say your more
clandestine
projects to move to the Isla Real."

The evening breeze cooled even as it kept off the mosquitoes. In the distance could be seen the lights of half a dozen merchant ships plying their trade between The Federated States, Atzlan, and Secordia, at one end, and the various republics-in-name-only, at the other. Still other ships pulled into and out of the Transitway.

"You really think it's going to come to a fight with the Tauran Union, Patricio?"

Carrera sighed and looked at his host. Parilla was short, stocky and dark. Pushing seventy, his hair was still mostly the jet black of the indians and mestizos who made up much of his ancestry. Only a distinguished frosting of gray at the temples betrayed his age.

"Eventually, yes, Raul," he answered. "We might be able to hold it off for a few years. But, in the long run, they're here for the purpose of confronting us, of supporting the civil government in confronting us."

"But why? I don't understand. We're fighting the fight they should be fighting. We're protecting
them.
It doesn't make any sense."

Carrera reached for the bottle of scotch sitting on the table between the two as he answered, "That's an interesting question. I thought for a while that it was the Gauls. After all, they've never quite forgiven the FSC for building the Transitway after they, themselves, failed to. And the Gauls are vindictive, make no mistake about it. But
that
vindictive?"

Parilla held his own tumbler out to be filled. "Okay, maybe not the Gauls. But they
did
send their troops here. They did entice the rest of the TU into sending their troops here."

"All true," Carrera conceded. "But think about the TU; how do they see themselves except as an organ of the World League. And what is the World League an organ of? What do they see as their spiritual foundation?"

Both men looked skyward to where the United Earth Peace Fleet mixed its lights with the stars beyond.

High Admiral Robinson looked drearily from the window of his cabin at the green and blue planet spinning below. The planet spun in both senses, objectively, around its own axis, and subjectively, from the spinning of the ship around its axis to produce a practical artificial gravity. On the whole, the image would have made Robinson ill even if what went on, what had gone on, below hadn't sufficed.

So frustrating that I've lost in Sumer. Ah, well. At least I haven't lost the war
, Robinson thought. He then amended the thought,
Yet.

Robinson turned from the window onto space and looked instead at a map projected on the main screen of his cabin, a local product that—maddeningly, infuriatingly—came from a factory in Yamato, down below. "
Kurosawa Vision Solutions,
" was written in small letters across the silvery frame of the screen.

The map was of Sumer, one of the many wretched, little nation-pustules that dominated the globe below. Once again Robinson played out in his mind the reasons he had decided to assist a group of radical barbarians to confront the major power—some below said the "hyperpower"—of Terra Nova.

We are stagnant on Earth. In one hundred years, or maybe as few as twenty years if
Peace's
engineering officer is to be believed, the Novans will be able to launch ships and do to Earth what Earth did to Terra Nova; colonize it. The big difference being that TN wasn't occupied by people and Earth is. Our system couldn't resist and won't survive. I could nuke them now, we still have some capability. And that knocks Terra Nova back five hundred years so that when they come looking for us in five hundred and twenty they'll have blood in their eye. And this fleet won't be here to stop them because if I nuke Terra Nova the Federated States of Columbia will nuke this fleet to ash. But Earth's
Consensus
won't build another fleet to replace the one lost here. They won't even pay to keep up what we have; for that I am reduced to selling art and, sometimes, slaves.

Robinson sighed deeply and wearily. He had upon his shoulders the whole burden of protecting his civilization and the class, his own class, which ran it. It was a crushing load.

We sell art. We sell slaves, the refuse of Earth's sixth class. And that just to keep my ships running and my crews and their families fed, paid and clothed. Must I run drugs next?

I had hoped to wear down the
hyper
power below with a series of costly and indecisive wars. The problem with that is that they appear to be winning. Who would have imagined a single nation-state with that kind of sheer . . . . ooomph? Formidable swine. What they lack themselves they can buy.

At the thought of the Federated States being able to buy what it needed, Robinson's thoughts turned to the soldiers the FSC had bought. Most were wretched, of course, or, if not, banned by their government from doing anything that might lead to casualties. The FSC paid for the upkeep and deployment costs of these, but nothing more. It got about what it paid for, or perhaps a bit less.

But then there are the others, those little brown Latin mercenaries. Those the FSC pays top drachma for and gets full value, too. I wonder how the war in Sumer would have turned out without that ruthless mercenary Legion. Better; of that much I am sure.

Robinson thought back on the extraordinarily clever scheme Captain Wallenstein had come up with whereby sympathetic citizens of Tauran states had given themselves up as hostages to force their governments to pay ransoms to the insurgents in Sumer. It had been clever, but it had ended when someone started kidnapping Taurans for ransom and then feeding them feet first into wood chippers for the nightly news, even after the ransoms had been paid. The supply of volunteers had dried up very quickly after that and even real hostages had not been bargained for anymore. He was reasonably certain that the mercenary Legion had been involved in all that.

But there's never any
proof.
Bastards.

And then there was the humiliation inflicted on the cosmopolitan progressives of Terra Nova by the Legion, from torture stings to simply ignoring the Kosmo press no matter how loudly it howled.

Never mind, I must think to the future.

"Computer, change display," Robinson commanded.

"To what, High Admiral?" the artificial, and vaguely feminine, voice had answered.

"World view. Show me incidents over the last thirty-five local days."

The image changed. Robinson studied.

Nice to see that things are taking a turn for the worse for the FSC in Pashtia. And the piracy along the western coast of Uruhu is encouraging . . . 

"Computer, connect me with the intelligence office."

A male face appeared in one corner of the screen. A male voice answered. "Lieutenant Commander Khan here, High Admiral. Did you want me, sir, or my wife?" Iris Khan's husband meant,
do you need another blow job or do you actually require intelligence support.
He wasn't offended or judgmental about the matter, either way. The UE was very casual about both sex and marital relations. Moreover, it was considered bad form to use someone's wife for sex and not at the same time watch out for the husband's career.

"Khan, tell me about piracy on Terra Nova."

"Yes, High Admiral." Khan played with his computer to bring up some data. "Though piracy exists all over Terra Nova, there are four main nexus for piracy down below." One is the islands and coasts on both sides of the Republic of Balboa. This is mainly concerned with retail robbery of yachts and then reusing those yachts for drug smuggling, along with occasional kidnapping for ransom. A second is the eastern shore of Uhuru which, because of the nature of the trade there, tends to take entire ships and cargo. Ships plying that trade are smallish. A third is the Straits of Nicobar, which is not generally concerned with drug smuggling or theft of cargo but more with ship's safe robbery and kidnapping for ransom. There is some religious element to the Nicobar piracy, at least in the sense that a bare majority of the pirates are Islamic and seem to use Islam as a justification for piracy. They would still be pirates if they worshipped Odin. The last nexus is around the area of Xamar, on Uruhu's western coast. This is not new but has grown substantially over the last several years. Xamar piracy is also, officially, Islamic in intent though, once again, they would be pirates even if they were pagans."

Khan, the husband, pulled up more data from his screen. "Officially, piracy costs the economy down below about twelve to sixteen billion FSD annually. It is believed, however, that the actual incidence of piracy is understated by a factor of about twenty . . . though it is doubtful that the costs are quite that understated."

Robinson scratched his head. "Interesting. Thank you, Khan. Tell me, did your wife enjoy our session?"

"She says she did, Admiral, but wishes you had pinched her nipples more and come in her mouth rather than her throat. She likes that sort of thing."

"I'll remember that for next time. In the interim, I want both you and she to look into the long term potential for both squeezing funds from and ruining a large scale economy through unchecked piracy. Robinson, out."

"This is becoming tedious,
sayidi
," said the Helvetian banker representing a Tauran shipping firm, the Red Star Line. The banker looked rather like a gnome, short and stout and bearded. It was his job to negotiate the release of a dozen merchant sailors taken from a Red Star Line refrigerator ship two weeks prior. The sailors, bound and filthy, lined one corner of the sparsely furnished office near the center of the city.

Within the office tea and dates were served by tall, slender women with amazingly large, dark eyes. The women, some of them slave girls, likewise set out a tray of thin bread made from the flour of the chorley, a non-Old Earth species that resembled a sunflower that grew just above ground level, accompanied by local
shoug
, a mix of ground peppers ranging from "Holy Shit" to "Joan of Arc," with a
very
small admixture of "Satan Triumphant."

Of the women, the eyes were all that could be seen, that, and the seductive swaying even their robes could not conceal. They didn't matter though; the gnome had little use for women.