by Tom Kratman
Fernandez stood, closing the book upon a place-saving finger. He followed Carrera back toward the cemetery. Once they were out of earshot of the house, Fernandez said, "The Charlemagne is coming. In about ten days."
Carrera thought for a moment, trying to remember where he'd heard the name before. He halted for a moment, poking his tongue around his molars for a while, while trying to recall. Then it hit him. "The Gallic aircraft carrier?"
"Almost a super carrier," Fernandez corrected. "And she's coming with her full battle group."
Carrera shook his head, doubtfully. "We don't have any reason to think the Taurans are planning to attack in a month."
"Clearly not," Fernandez agreed. "Though I expect the visit is for the air wing to train over our ground. But that wasn't what I meant. I mean that with the second Megalodon Class sub tested and ready for operations now, we have an opportunity to see if we can penetrate the ship's defensive screen to get at it."
"Ohhh. But why tip our hand?"
"I wasn't planning on tipping our hand," Fernandez answered as he kicked a small rock from the roadway. "I thought we could use the second one, with its clicker going, to distract the Gauls while the first one, clicker off, slips in close."
"You talked to Fosa about this?"
"Yes," Fernandez nodded. "He agrees it would be a unique opportunity to test the submarine."
"How are they going to do it?"
"We've got two built," Fernandez answered, "and another that's close enough to completion that we could make it . . . mmm . . . not seaworthy but at least floatworthy.
"Fosa's got two possible plans. Plan A, he says, is where we'll sail one out of the pens, with its clicker disengaged, and conceal it in some little inlet along the Shimmering Sea coastline. The almost finished one will take its place. The other finished one will then sail to a rendezvous point where it will meet with the one we hid by the coast. Plan B is we mount a clicker to the tender we use to shadow them for test dives. Both subs sail with clickers on, but at a predetermined time the one with the tender will shut its off, and the tender will start clicking to simulate the sub's being there."
"Plan B," Carrera said, without hesitation. "If we used Plan A, and someone spotted the sub and someone else, say Tauran Intelligence noticed it wasn't clicking, the secret would be blown."
"Plan B, then," Fernandez agreed. "The two of them will then link up at sea and sail to a point outside of the range of the Charlemagne's escorts and take station, one to a place above the lowest thermal layer—if there's more than one—that's still within depth capacity and one below it. The one with the clicker engaged will be above. There will probably be only one thermal layer, mind you, though with the cold current in the Shimmering Sea and the undersea volcanism there may be more.
"At the point where the escorts notice the one above and come after it, it will break off and head for the Puerto Lindo sub pens. The other will press on until it is within engagement range of the carrier and maybe scoot around a little to make sure they can't detect it. Then it will come home, too, and we'll move the floatworthy one back to the assembly plant as if we discovered some flaw during testing."
Carrera thought as the pair of them continued to walk. Possibility one: We don't test beforehand and when the war comes maybe we surprise the Taurans and maybe we're the ones who are surprised. Two: We test and it's a flop; the Taurans catch us and find out about the Meg Class. Three: We test and get away with it.
It's a better than fifty-fifty bet, I think, because we know we're running the test and the Taurans don't.
Ah, but what about the United Earth Peace Fleet? How do we keep them from spotting us? Marguerite hasn't answered the phone in quite some time now. Maybe that's my fault for shutting the communicator up so long. Anyway, there's no way to probe her to see. And the Yamatan intelligence has dried up. I wonder if she's even still in system.
He asked Fernandez about the problem of UEPF surveillance.
"I don't think they're watching very closely, Patricio," Fernandez said. "And, no, I'm not sure why and, yes, it does bother me. But there should have been something, some kind of reaction, to our operations in La Palma and Santander. For that matter, we've done enough recon flights over Atlantis Base with the Condors that there was a fair chance of visual spotting. But they don't seem to be looking.
"I think it's a good bet."
They walked in silence until reaching the cemetery. There, Carrera nodded and said, "All right. Tell Fosa I authorize him to do it."
"What are you reading?" Carrera asked, really noticing for the first time that Fernandez was carrying a book.
Holding up the thing, front cover toward Carrera, Fernandez said, "Memoirs of Belisario Carrera, Annotated and Abridged. Interesting stuff."
"It was right here, you know," Carrera said, sweeping an arm around the clearing.
"What was?"
"The first fight between my multi-great grandfather-in-law and Old Earth."
"Ohhh. It was here that they killed the slaver, Kotek Annan?"
Carrera pointed at a spot not very far from Linda's memorial. "His head stopped rolling right about there, according to family legends."
Fernandez stopped dead, then opened the book and thumbed back forty or fifty pages. When he found what he was looking for, a description of that first fight, he read the passage and then reread it. Then he furiously skipped chapters to get to the section about the second fight, the one in the city. This he read, too. For a long moment, Fernandez chewed on his lower lip, as if searching for something.
"What happened to the shuttle?" he asked, excitement in his voice. "The one they took out on the ground at the old UN station in Ciudad Balboa?"
Carrera shrugged. "Dunno. I imagine the Earthers recovered it. I doubt old Belisario knew how to fly one. And his people were all simple campesinos."
"Yeah . . . maybe. But, give the old boy his due; he was no dummy. Why would he leave the earthpigs with a repairable shuttle? Would you?"
"Now that you mention it, no," Carrera said.
Fernandez smiled broadly. It was so unusual an expression for him that Carrera was slightly shocked.
"Would you happen to know where are the unabridged memoirs?" Fernandez asked.
Carrera pointed down the road. "The original originals, I'm not sure. But there's a mostly complete copy at my old house a couple of miles down the road. I wouldn't recommend them, though."
"Why's that?"
"Handwritten, and old Belisario's penmanship was not of the best. Likewise, the paper he used was awful . . . crumbling, now, mostly. I understand that the PhD candidate who did the annotated version used up a lot of research assistant's time trying to preserve them and sucked up a lot of computer time trying to decipher them.
"I was going to try to publish them, myself, back before the war. I finally gave up on the old boy's penmanship."
"Would you mind letting me see the copies?" Fernandez asked.
"Would you mind walking a couple of miles?"
Fernandez shook his head no.
"Can you tell me why you're interested?" Carrera asked.
"I'd rather not; not just yet," Fernandez answered, thinking, Because it's such an outside shot I'd look like a fool if it doesn't pan out.
Carrera shrugged. "Come on, then."
Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova
The new submarine pen was intended to base a naval maniple of nine boats and their crews, any three of which could be presumed to be out on patrol or training at any given time. The concrete overhead was a full three meters in thickness and that on the sides not much less. Nine portals led to the Puerto Lindo bay while dual railroad tracks led from the factory, then entered the rear of the pen before descending into the water. With only two Meg Class submarines present, the pen seemed empty and cavernous.
Cavernous it might be, thought Warrant Officer Chu, watching as Meg 3 was railed into the water. Quiet, however, it is not.
The boat, about ten meters by forty,
moved on four specially modified and linked flatbeds on two straight and parallel sets of track. This was deafening in the confines of the pen. Huge armored doors slid to either side to permit the vessel entry. That added to the screeching of the rails the sounds of machinery and grinding gears. Lastly were the sounds of preparation, by no means soft, though now drowned out by everything else.
Amidst all that noise, the squish-squish-squish of the thoroughly soaked Fosa walking up behind Chu and Quijana, the skipper of Number Two, the Orca, went completely unnoticed until he slapped palms onto the shoulders of his sub skippers and said—rather, shouted, "I don't believe even the UEPF can see anything with all this shit coming down."
"This place gets twenty-four fucking feet of rain a year, sir," Chu shouted back. "Sometimes more. I don't even know how the antaniae can find each other to fuck."
The armored doors ceased moving, much reducing the ambient noise level.
"You think this will work, sir?" Chu asked, in a more conversational volume.
Fosa answered, "I think so. Neither the Taurans nor the UE are likely to know that Number Three is unfinished. I looked at it before they started to rail it over. It looks perfectly complete from the outside. So if they see it come in and another boat leave they'll probably assume that the boat leaving is Number Three, going out for a test cruise. We've got good reason to think the earthpigs can't see down even fifty feet into the water, so when you go past a hundred they'll surely lose you. When the Orca goes out to probe the Gauls, that's all they should be looking for, just the one.
"Just in case, though, you boys have full torpedo loads?"
"Yes, sir," Quijana answered.
Chu added, "They finished backfitting my torpedo pods last month, sir. A mix of regular, supercavitating, and light for close in defense work."
The dark gray nose of Number Three appeared in the portal opened by the armored doors. Even in the dim light, rain could be seen coming down in near solid sheets. The noise picked up again, noticeably.
"We've fooled 'em before," Fosa shouted. "I think we can again. Arrogant folks, don't you know. And it's not like we're really all that important."
* * *
While Fosa went to watch the new, unfinished sub being railed into the water, Chu called Quijana aside for a little chat.
"Miguel," he said, "I want you to remember that, to date, the submarine force, such as it is, has a perfect record. The number of dives and the number of surfacings are exactly equal. Don't fuck that up."
Quijana scowled. "You're afraid I'll try to use this as an opportunity to make up for my 'cowardice' aboard the Trinidad?"
"Oh, stop." Chu shook his head. "You're not a coward and, no, you're not stupid. Still less are you immoral enough to put your boat and crew at risk over a purely personal matter. But . . ."
"Yes?"
The older man sighed. "Miguel, you've got more talent for submarines than I do. So think I and so thought the Volgans and Yamatans and Zionis who trained us. But you know why you're being the stalking horse while I go in for the test? Because I was afraid that, under pressure, if things go wrong, you might hesitate for just that fraction of a second that might get you all killed. Not hesitate because you're afraid . . . but hesitate because you're afraid of being afraid . . . or showing that you are."
At that, Quijana's scowl deepened.
UEPF Spirit of Brotherhood, orbiting Terra Nova
Frowning at the distraction, John Battaglia, Duke of Pksoi, initialed the electronic tablet showing the daily intelligence report without really reading it. This was understandable; printed, the thing would have run to several hundred pages. What was less understandable was that he barely glanced over even the much shorter summary. If he had, he might have noticed that the intelligence office was unconvinced that—even though a Federates States airship had downed the skimmer from Harmony—that it had been the FSC behind the attacks on Santander. He might also have noticed that the Balboan submarine program had apparently launched another boat.
Then again, Battaglia might not have noticed. Those things were trivial and he was already completely taken up with the coming return of the new High Admiral and his own somewhat precarious political position.
If that twat, Wallenstein, hadn't taken the admiral's staff with her, there would be people to handle this sort of trivia for me. Irresponsible bitch! More philosophically, he thought, Then again, if she were here with the admiral's staff I wouldn't have to worry about it at all.
Pushing the report aside, Battaglia raised his eyes and asked his aide, "What's on the schedule for today?"
"Sir," the aide de camp answered, "a shuttle is laid on to visit the Kofi Annan and the Mitterand. If there's time, the Margot Tebaf is also standing by for a morale raising visit."
The aide managed to keep her tone neutral through all that. It didn't pay, generally speaking, for Class Two's to question the wisdom of morale visits by Class Ones.
Unlike Battaglia, the aide had read the intelligence report in its entirety. And, while she had noted that the wretched little "Republic" of Balboa, below, had moved a new submarine from the factory to the sea, she knew—having looked at the specs of the thing—that there was no way it could pose any threat to her own fleet. It never even crossed her mind, no more than it would have Battaglia's, that one tiny little submarine, stuck down below, could matter in the slightest.
Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova
"Engage the clicker," Chu ordered, from his post in the sail. Almost immediately a small box mounted to the hull began emitting a regular clickclickclick, simulating a slight irregularity in a jet propulsor, badly insulated from the escape of sound. It sounded exactly like what one might expect of an inherently complex naval system, built in—and to the usual standards of—the undeveloped or semi-developed parts of the planet. The sound from the clicker was faint. Chu could only just hear it, and then only if he concentrated.
"Take us out."
There was a slight disturbance in the water around the sub's bow, and a marginally more noticeable one aft. The boat eased itself forward, very slowly and aimed directly at the gate. In a control room overlooking the interior of the pen, one of the sailors pressed a button. Immediately, the armored gate—it was as well armored as the rear portal over the rail lines—began sliding open with the expected deluge of sound. Chu's Meg passed through the open gate and made its way toward the middle of the bay.
About two thirds of the way to the middle the captain ordered, "Course one-eight-seven. Take us past the island." The boat began a slow veer to port.
* * *
There was a single trixie, bright green and red quasi-feathers clear against the blue sky, circling the tree-crowned island as it passed astern to the left. Almost immediately, the waves, which had been practically non-existent, grew to a height of a couple of feet. A medium yacht would have noticed them; on the Meg they had no real effect.
A small yacht, its passengers engaged in fishing just at the mouth of the bay, sheltered behind the small island, saw the sail of the Meg pass by about half a mile away. The passengers, sport fisherman from the Federated States, to all appearances, waved at Chu, which wave he returned.
Chu then disappeared into the hull of the Meg. A few minutes later, the sail began to sink into the waves.
Fort Muddville, Balboa, Terra Nova
Though built around a large infantry brigade, Janier's command included both air and naval components, as well as some foreign detachments. As such, the brigade staff was a joint-combined staff. As such, each staff section contained officers, warrants, and non-commissioned officers from the other services, and some from other states in the Tauran Union. Lieutenant de Vaisseau—Lieutenant of the Line—Surcouf was the Gallic senior naval type on de Villepin's intelligence staff.
Surcouf shook his head, wonderingly.
"What's that?" asked de Villepin.
"Oh, the latest little Balboan submarine just left the pen at Puerto Lindo," the lieutenant answered. "A
test run, I suppose, since it's brand new. Our people doing observation aboard the yacht just waved it out. I honestly don't know why those people even bother; the things are so outrageously noisy that we could find this one, or any of its siblings, any time we like. Seems like such a waste of money and manpower."
"Think we should dispatch the southern frigate"—there was a frigate at each terminus of the Transitway—"to track it?" de Villepin asked.
Surcouf thought about it for a moment before answering, "No . . . no, sir, I think not. If Ney tracks it they'll know they're easily spotted. Then they might actually start thinking about and then fix the problem with the noisemakers they think of as water jets. Better this way, I think. Big surprise for the Balboans if it ever comes to a fight."
"Fair enough," de Villepin agreed. "What's Charlemagne's progress?"
"Four days sailing; then she'll be here."
De Villepin nodded, then said, "It's kind of odd, isn't it, that the locals aren't reacting to the approach of the carrier. It's not like it's a secret. And one would think that it would at least alarm them some, cause some limited mobilization. But nothing. Not even an increase in telephone traffic."
"I agree it's odd, sir. But who can understand these people, anyway?"
Maybe nobody, de Villepin thought. I wish I could, though.
SdL Megalodon, Shimmering Sea, Terra Nova
The string across the open was noticeably bowed. The depth meter read six hundred meters. Location was roughly sixty miles out in the Shimmering Sea. The crew was alternately sleeping, or snacking, or playing games at their battle stations, while waiting for the clock to run. A small buoy on a wire linked the Meg with the surface, receiving the Global Locating System signal while Chu and company listened for any code words that would indicate a change in plans.
"Time, skipper," announced Guillermo Aleman.
"Retrieve the buoy," Chu said.
* * *
On the surface the captain of the tender that always accompanied test runs noted the time. "They'll be taking off soon," he muttered.
