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."
4/10/466 AC, Isla Real, Quarters #1
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.
4/10/466 AC (Old Earth Year 2521), UEPF Spirit of Peace
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.