* * *
"But that's still twice as much as we need," Carrera had railed at the design team.
"Yeah, Duque . . . but . . . see . . . there are things we can do with the extra power. Lasers."
"Laaasssers . . . ," the ship's redesign team had echoed when their chief said that.
"Lasers?"
"Oh, yes. Lasers. Shoot down incoming missiles . . . aircraft . . . cruise missiles . . . even shells. Lasers."
* * *
And so the ship had been fitted with three high-energy lasers; one each bow and stern on projecting mounts, plus one over the superstructure, or island. Add another seventy-five million to the cost. Then, once one has a ship into which one has sunk some hundreds of millions of dollars, one starts to give a lot of thought to protecting one's investment. Guns it had. The lasers helped, too. Armor was right out. That left maneuverability.
* * *
"You want me to spend what on this new drive?"
"But it only makes sense, Duque. The electric, podded, variable azimuth drive would make the ship turn within its own length. And we can get substantially increased speed, too."
* * *
After that, the twenty thousand spent for a bronze figurehead of his lost Linda, with her breasts demurely covered, had seemed pretty cheap to Carrera. In the end the thing had cost just over a quarter of a billion, not counting aircraft. All that just to get eighteen helicopters (three of them equipped for Anti-Submarine Warfare), twelve light attack aircraft modified from crop dusters, eighteen slightly lengthened and widened, and substantially upengined, Cricket light recon birds, eight remotely piloted aircraft, and a demi-battalion of light infantry into some littoral area where they could raid.
Even with that light an aircraft load there had been problems. None of the older Volgan helicopters that were suitable, available, and affordable fit both the hangar deck's 5.3 meters of height and the dimensions of the elevators. Conversely, none of the more modern helicopters produced by the FSC or Tauran Union were capable enough or affordable enough, although they fit the hangar nicely. In the end, they'd decided—rather, the legate of the classis, Roderigo Fosa, had decided, since Carrera had simply given him a budget and said, "You figure it out"—on a newer Volgan helicopter, The Yakamov YA- 72 that was offered for sale for surprisingly little.
Little was not, however, nothing. The twenty-two YA-6s purchased had still run nearly fifty million FSD, with spares.
It is a fine chopper, Carrera thought. But still; fifty million . . . . And it doesn't mesh logistically with the IMs we already have . . .
Sighing at the cost, Carrera approached the ship's bow. Fosa, the legate commanding the classis, or fleet, followed, leading Mrs. Parilla who had been selected to do the honors for the rechristening.
Let's hope somebody hires us to use it.
2/10/466 AC (Old Earth Year 2521), UEPF Spirit of Peace
One might have thought that a figurehead on a starship would have made little sense. Nonetheless, United Earth had for centuries had hundreds of thousands of otherwise unemployed and unemployable "artists." Some of them were even capable of more than flinging dung onto a canvas and calling it "art." Of those, some numbers had been commissioned to create figureheads for the Spirit class of UE starships.
Spirit of Peace had been assumed to be a representative of all Earth's peoples, for only a joining of all the people could hope to bring peace. Thus, her figurehead had been a mixed race beauty. It looked quite a bit like the figurehead for the Dos Lindas, for that matter.
Which is decidedly ironic, thought High Admiral Robinson, sitting in his quarters, half turned from his desk. His uniform trousers were partly undone since he was being fellated by his fleet sociologist, Lieutenant Commander Iris Khan.
Khan, despite having one distant ancestor from the region of Pakistan on Old Earth, was blonde and blue-eyed. Kneeling between Robinson's legs, her eyes stayed upturned, intent on the High Admiral's face, even as her mouth worked diligently to give the High Admiral the quality of service to which his position entitled him.
Normally Robinson used the captain of Peace, Marguerite Wallenstein, for his physical needs. The captain, however, had duty at the moment and Khan had been otherwise unemployed. She would do.
Indeed, she does very well, Robinson thought as he reached out a hand to force Khan's head down and his penis into her throat moments before ejaculation. She stayed that way, her lips against the root of the High Admiral's penis, even when a yeoman entered the quarters with the fleet's morning report. In the UEPF there was no shame in servicing one's betters. Only after the yeoman had left did Khan back off to lick away the still leaking residue. By that time the High Admiral's face was blocked by the report.
"That will be all, thank you, Iris. I'll call you if I need you," was all Robinson had to say.
A few last licks and Khan closed the Admiral's trousers, refastened his belt, stood and turned to go.
Just before she exited the cabin, Robinson ordered, "Send your husband to me. I want to go over some developments down below with him. It seems the local mercenary chief isn't content with merely having a ground army. He's got a major warship now. I wonder what's next."
3/10/466 AC, Obras Zorrilleras, Cuidad Balboa, Republic of Balboa
Cheapness was a watchword for the Legion. Let others pay the expense of being on the cutting edge of military and scientific research; the Legion didn't need that. Instead, the Obras Zorrilleras, the research and development arm of the Legion del Cid, concentrated on stealing, reverse engineering, modifying, and occasionally—after evaluation—outright purchasing of technology. Even so, they did some original work, too.
They'd had some successes. The modifications for the Dos Lindas had come from OZ's naval bureau. They'd had a strong hand in the remanufacture of several smallish nuclear weapons captured in Sumer half a decade before. The small unit tactical communications system, or Comsys, was likewise their design, modified from a wireless cell phone system in broad use around Terra Nova.
The big projects now were stealth, something the Federated States had a near monopoly on and which they would not share even with very close allies like Anglia.
Carrera had some potential uses for stealth, in the air, at sea and under the sea. That made it an OZ priority.
"We've got three things for you, Duque," the chief of OZ, an immigrant named Pislowski from the Jagielonian Commonwealth, said. "Two of these are the same basic technique but applied differently."
Carrera, Pislowski, and three others sat at a cheap conference table deep inside the main building for OZ. The researchers hadn't thought to provide refreshments. Instead, three models stood atop the table.