The Lotus Eaters

Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova

After all these centuries the great stone castles and their ancient guns still kept watch over the normally sleepy port and its town. It was a little less sleepy, this day, than usual as the bay was about to be witness to the most complex technological effort the legion had yet undertaken. (Indeed, it was so complex that most of the workers and all of the design staff were expatriates, mostly Volgans, on contract to the legion. It would be many years, decades even, before the native educational system was up to so high a level of technology.)

The first Meg Class submarine should have been ready two years prior. The sad fact was that it was only now that a seaworthy version was ready for trial runs and depth tests. That submarine, SdL-1, Submarino de la Legion 1, christened the Megalodon, rocked gently in the sheltered harbor, tied to a bumpered pier and surrounded by some of the ex-Volgan warships and sundry merchant carriers purchased by the Legion in years past but never restored to full operating condition. Not far away from where the sub lay at anchor a construction crew was building a sub pen, while yet another crew laid a special, double tracked rail line from the factory down to the rising shelter.

One at a time those old Volgan ships were being towed to the Isla Real and sunk or dismantled for fixed positions or cut up locally for scrap. Some of the scrap went into fortifications, both on the island and along the south side of the Gatun River, or for ammunition production. A great many artillery and mortar shells could be made from ten or twenty-thousand tons of steel ship. Indeed, a great many—millions, in fact—were being made from old steel ships.

And precisely none of that steel went into the production of the Meg. In fact, the submarine was about ninety-four percent engineering plastic, by volume, exclusive of any water in the ballast tanks. That had been much of the problem with production of this first, test, model. Prior to the Meg, the largest plastic casting machine on the planet of Terra Nova had been able to cast a cylinder no more than four and a half meters in diameter. Meg's pressure hull was made up of cylindrical and hemispheric sections, milled, machined, and heat bonded together, of six meters in diameter. Thus, the shipyard had had to have designed and built a plastic casting apparatus from scratch. Worse, the only company that had seemed capable of doing so was in Anglia. As a practical province of the Tauran Union, deprived of its own foreign policy, Anglia had balked at providing military technology to Balboa, however much the military nature of the project had been disguised.

Ultimately, in order to get approval for the project, they'd had to declare the Meg Class to be for drug interdiction, then redesign it to have external torpedo tubes, with the torpedoes to be carried inside the tubes, in distilled water, between the pressure hull and the smooth, teardrop-shaped exterior fairing. With that, Balboa had been able to claim, "How can this thing be an offensive weapon? It doesn't even have torpedo tubes. No, no; it's for police work . . . and research." (Which was, at least for this first model, and at least for the time being, true.) This, along with some not insubstantial bribes (and the assistance of some very anti-TU Anglians), had finally secured permission for the creation and export of the casting apparatus.

The power source had been another, non-trivial, problem. Nuclear? There had been two practical possibilities, a Pebble Bed Modular Reactor or a very small nuclear reactor developed by the Hakunetsusha Corporation, in Yamato. The former, however, was too large while the latter depended on convection cooling that would have been problematic in a submarine intended to operate and maneuver much like an airplane or glider. (On the other hand, some of the Hakunetsusha reactors had been ordered for emergency power supply to the Isla Real and the Gatun Line. There was, obviously enough, a serious disconnect between what various government bureaucracies and treaty regimes thought were militarily significant technologies, and what really were militarily significant technologies. In fact, everything was militarily significant, down to and including machinery for canning food.)

Failing nuclear, the designers had had to come up with some other Air Independent Propulsion, or AIP, system. None of the Taurans, naturally enough, had wanted to sell their systems. Ultimately the choice had come down to Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells or Solid Oxide Fuel Cells. The latter had won out, primarily because the concept permitted shapes more suitable for application in a smallish—at thirty-six meters in length, within the pressure hull—submarine.

The fact of the prototype's existence couldn't be hidden in the long run. What Carrera and Fernandez hoped was that the number and capabilities of the final design could be hidden.

But, thought Carrera, standing on the dock to wish good luck to the test crew, if this one just disappears into the ocean there won't be any more to keep hidden. We couldn't afford the waste.

Two years lost, he mourned. Two years. There was a time, just before I broke down, I might have shot one of the engineers to inspire the rest. Now I've fenced myself around with chains to keep me from doing any such thing. That's tactically moral, I'm sure. But is it strategically immoral to possibly lose having an important weapon in time to be of use? No, matter. Even if I had shot one of them, that would still not have guaranteed that they could have completed the job any faster. And it just might have guaranteed we'd never have the subs. Better to be a civilized man. As much as I can be, anyway.

The seventeen sailors on the test crew, along with Miguel Quijana, the captain of the second boat, the Orca, still being assembled, were all graduates of the Legion's Cazador School. They waited expectantly in two ranks. Carrera rarely had patience for the kind of formality that suggested. He put his arms out at about shoulder height and beckoned with his fingers for the men to cluster around. They didn't need to be told a second time. They immediately broke ranks and formed a small semi-circle around their Duque.

Carrera looked at the first sub's captain, Chief Warrant Officer Chu. Formerly a "yacht" skipper under Project Q, which had done so much to crush the Islamic pirates of Xamar during the war against the Salafis; Chu had been hand selected by Carrera and the classis commander, Roderigo Fosa, for this first submarine because he was one of the most mule-headed, determined squids in the classis. Chu, along with thirty-three others, had spent the last year detached from the Legion and floating around the world, often literally, their roles rotating between unpaid "volunteers" to various civilian undersea research projects and "Officer Under Instruction" with three different submarines in the Volgan Navy, plus one each in the navies of Yamato and Zion. A couple of them had also spent some time understudying at the plant of the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell manufacturer, in the Federated States.

"You and your boys ready, Captain?" Carrera asked.

With a small smile the warrant answered, "As much as we're going to be without some hands on, Duque."

Carrera nodded his head slowly. I understand that.

To the crew as a whole he said, "Boys, I can't tell you everything that this is about. I can only tell you that it's important, maybe as important as anything we're doing to defend ourselves."

From their expressions, Carrera knew what the sailors were thinking. Tell us something we didn't know. If this weren't important, you wouldn't have shown up. For that matter, neither would we.

* * *

They'd all been down on submarines before. What none of the crew had ever experienced, however, was diving in a submarine that had never been on a dive before. They were sweating, and it wasn't just from the heat of the surface they were about to leave.

Standing in the stubby conning tower, or sail, Chu's first order, before ordering the boat's water jets engaged was, "Engage the clicker."

The Meg was an immensely quiet boat. It was more nearly undetectable by active sonar than any submarine of which the Legion was aware—or for that matter, of which the Imperial Navy of Yamato or the Navy of the Volgan Republic were aware. It had an extraordinarily low magnetic and electronic signature. It didn't put out much heat. The "clicker" was to advertise the sub's presence by simulating the sound of an imperfectly cut gear in the jet propulsion units, said units being presumably inadequately isolated. Click . . . click . . . click. Except that the clicking was so fast, consistent with what it was trying to simulate, that it came out as more of a whine except at very low speeds.

As long as they think they can find us by that, thought Chu, they'll be most unlikely to look for a better way.

* * *

Carrera knew about the "clicker"—the idea had, after all, originated with Obras Zorilleras and been pushed by Fernandez's crowd—but he couldn't hope to hear it as the submarine eased away from the dock and began heading out of port, its impellor pumps churning the water slightly behind it.

There were other sailors at the dock. Likewise, off in the distance he could see some cadets from the Sergeant Juan Malvegui Military Academy peeping out through the battlements of the old fort on which the Academy was situated, trying for a glance at their ultimate military commander. Carrera knew they were there.

And I swear to You, God, if these people weren't watching I'd get on my knees and pray for that crew. As is, they'd think I'd gone soft. Will You accept the wish for the reality? Best I can do under the circumstances. Watch out for them anyway, will Ya? And please don't blame them for Hajar. That was all me.

* * *

Miguel Quijana didn't get on his knees to pray for the crew of the Meg, either. He did, however, cross himself as the sub moved off.

Carrera noted that. Interesting character, Quijana, he thought. I hope we didn't make a mistake.

* * *

The other sub skipper had been the subject of considerable discussion between Carrera, on the one hand, and Fosa, on the other. As the only survivor of the patrol boat Santisima Trinidad, self sacrificed to save the flagship, the Dos Lindas, when it was attacked in the Straits of Nicobar during the legion's pirate suppression campaign, Fosa felt he owed Quijana something. Carrera, on the other hand, had had significant doubts about the boy.

"No, Rod," Carrera had said, "I do believe him when he says that his captain booted him off the boat just before slamming it into the side of the suicide ship that was coming for you. That's not the problem. The problem is that some people don't believe it, that he knows some don't, and that he might be inclined to, shall we say, 'reckless' behavior to prove he didn't desert his ship. And that worries me."

"There've been fights, you know," Fosa had added.

"And I won't deny," he'd admitted, "that the doubts eat at the boy's gut. But I know him. I took him on as an orderly after the Trinidad was lost. He's not the reckless sort. Give him a chance, Patricio. He deserves it."

* * *

The tree-shrouded island at the mouth of the harbor was passing to starboard. Chu ordered a slight change in direction to the west, following the "research vessel" that would accompany the sub on the surface, in case things went wrong. Just as the Meg was about to put the island between itself and the docks, the captain looked behind.

He's still standing there, watching us. Odd . . . very odd. What does he think; that he'll be able to pull us up by sheer will if we have a hull breach or engine failure? Well, knowing the bastard, he probably does.

Once outside the protection of the island and the harbor, the waves, which had been practically non-existent, picked up noticeably.

Well, no time like now to check the basic seal between hull and sail," Chu muttered. Still maintaining his spot in the conning tower, he ordered, "Bring her down to two meters."

What did that Volgan bastard say was the difference between a leak and a flood? Oh, I remember: "You find a leak; flooding finds YOU." Or the Yamatans? "If you find water coming in and suddenly smell the overpowering stench of shit, Chu-san? That's a flood. Surface, if possible, and then change trousers."

Assholes, the lot of 'em. But what great guys.

* * *

Some of the Volgans who had trained Chu's boys had had odd senses of humor. Prior to one particularly deep dive they'd stretched out a piece of thin blue cord from one side of the pressure hull to another and tied both ends down, at a little below waist height. By the time the Volgan submarine had reached apogee, the string was touching the floor, that's how much the surrounding pressure had compressed the hull.

One of Meg's crew, Guillermo Aleman, had done the same across the control room. The string was still taut, of course, the boat was practically on the surface. Yet it was a reminder to everyone of just how far down they intended, eventually, to go.

In theory, using the thickness and type of plastic that had gone into the construction of Meg, a spherical diving chamber could submerge to about twenty-four hundred meters before collapsing. The sub, however, was not spherical but cylindrical and it was believed they could do no more than a fraction of that depth safely. They couldn't have done even that fraction if the boat had been driven by a shaft running through the hull, rather than the six externally-mounted, electrically-driven impellor pumps it used. These breached the hull only in the form of leads cast right into the sections concerned.

But only a tenth of theoretical depth for today, Chu thought, as he descended a ladder and then reached overhead to pull the hatch shut behind him. He dogged the hatch, thinking, A tenth and we'll call ourselves lucky.

* * *

The boat's exec—another senior warrant, though junior to Chu—evacuated Chu's chair as soon as he saw the senior's boots. Chu sat, leaning onto the arm of the chair and cupping his mouth and chin in one hand.

Chu said, "Chief of Watch report rig for dive."

It was a tiny crew; the boat's exec, Junior Warrant Officer Ibarra, served as Chief of the Watch for the nonce. Indeed, the crew and sub were so comparatively small that the usual procedures were quite truncated and simplified.

The XO glanced at the buoyancy compensation panel and reported, "I have a straight board, Captain."

A straight board meant that there were no illuminated circles, indicating open hatches. Had there been such, instead of a series of dashes forming a straight line, there would have been one or more circles, indicating an undesired opening.

"Dive the boat. Make your depth twenty meters."

"Aye, Captain, twenty—two zero—meters," answered Ibarra.

From the diving station another submariner announced, "Make my depth twenty meters, aye, sir." Another, beside the diving station, added, "Chilling the rubbers, aye, sir." A third said, "Helm, fifteen degree down angle on planes. Making my depth twenty meters."

The exec said, without facing Chu, "Forward group admitting ballast, Captain . . . aft group admitting ballast."

They could feel the boat sinking, a feeling that was not yet remotely comfortable. Automatically, the crew leveled the boat as it reached its depth. As the boat leveled off at the depth ordered, Chu again thought of odd foreigners with odder senses of humor. "Check for leaks," he said.

* * *

The Meg had an odd—really a unique—method of flooding and evacuating its ballast tanks. Like the pressure hull, these were cylindrical. Basically, the boat took advantage of the very low boiling temperature of ammonia. The ammonia was kept inside of flexible tubing made of fluorocarbon elastomer with a seven hundred and fifty angstrom thick layer of sputtered aluminum, followed by a five hundred angstrom layer of silicon monoxide with an aerogel insulation layer. Heating elements inside the tubes—called "rubbers" by the sailors and designers, both—heated the ammonia into a gas, which expanded the "rubbers" and forced out the water. To dive, the ammonia was allowed to chill to a liquid rather than heated to a gas. Chilling was really only a factor when quite near the surface, and then only if the water was warm.

* * *

"Engineering, no leaks, Skipper . . . Power room, no leaks, Captain . . . Forward sonar chamber; she's dry as a bone . . ."

So far, so good, thought Chu. "Make your depth fifty meters."

* * *

Quijana sat apart from Carrera. Whether this was because he was shy, because he had an exaggerated notion of the importance of rank, or for some other reason, Carrera didn't know.

Quite possibly he's embarrassed to still be alive when his shipmates are dead, Carrera thought. Should I invite him over and make it clear . . . or at least hint . . . that I don't think he deserted his boat? He thought about that for long minutes before finally deciding, No, it would be too obvious that that was what I was doing. Which would embarrass the poor shit even more.

* * *

He thinks I am a coward, Quijana thought to himself, seated at the edge of the dock above the water, his legs dangling free over the edge. How could he not? How could he not when I, alone of all my crew, survived the battle in the Nicobar Straits?

And, too, was I not relieved when Pedraz booted me over the side? I know I was, even if I'll only admit it to God. Are you a coward, Miguel? Or are you just afraid that you are? Didn't you volunteer for submarine duty precisely to prove to yourself that you're a man? You know you did.

I remember that day. I see and feel it in my dreams, the smoke and the flying tracers, Pedraz's boot in my ass. Then sinking in the water and struggling up to the surface. A last glimpse of the Trinidad, engines smoking, as it charged for the enemy's hull. And then the blast, a plume of smoke and debris, the shock wave that knocked me senseless until I was picked up by the Agustin.

And so I've done everything I can to convince myself, not others but myself, that I am as good as any other man, as brave.

But has it worked? No, not entirely. I still wonder. Perhaps I always will.

* * *

The sun was beginning to set in the west when Carrera, still sitting at the dock, became aware of the presence of some small number of others behind him. He wasn't sure how he knew, but those presences seemed small. He turned and saw half a dozen boys from the nearby military academy, standing quietly with trays of food. They all looked pretty thin to Carrera.

"We didn't want to disturb you, sir," said one of the boys; his nametag read, "Porras." "But we saw you out here waiting pretty much all day and . . . well . . . we scrounged you and your driver and guards some food. From the mess. The mess sergeant said it would be all right."

Carrera nodded his head at the boy, then at his companions. "Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate that. And . . . I think I have been remiss. I should have thought to feed the men with me."

That last was true enough for the purpose, but wasn't all the truth. In fact, Lourdes and Mitchell's wife had packed a lunch for the small group; they'd just not been especially interested in eating it, given the miserably wet Puerto Lindo heat.

"Would you boys care to join me?" Carrera asked.

"Oh, no sir . . . we couldn't, sir . . . we haven't got perm—"

"Ahem," Carrera said, "I'm sure your commandant won't object. As a matter of fact, consider it an order."

Porras answered for the group. "As long as you put it that way, Duque—"

"I do"

"—we'd be pleased to join you."

"Good, and while we're at it," his voice changed to a shout, "Captain Quijana, join us if you will."

* * *

"Oh, no, sir," said Porras, around a half a sandwich. "This place is great. It's hard, yeah, but it's still great. Always enough to eat. No cost to my parents. They don't even have to clothe me. And the money saved sure goes a long way back home. And we get to train. With weapons."

Carrera nodded while thinking, I hate poverty. Unfortunately, you can't just pull people out of it without ruining them. The most you can do is help them help themselves. And even that's tricky.

One of the boys added, "My parents have more money than Julio's, Duque, but he's basically right. This is a good education, better than my parents could have afforded for me."

Well that's something in my favor, Carrera thought. I wonder how far it will carry me given that I'm going to use these boys like expendable property.

One of the boys pointed out toward the island at the mouth of the harbor. "Duque," the boy said, "look; the submarine's returning."

"Thank God," Quijana whispered.