The Lotus Eaters

Sub Pens, Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova

Fernandez, Fosa and Carrera, all three, were waiting inside the concrete pen as Chu climbed out of the hatch atop the sail and descended the brow to meet them. Alongside, a crew was in the process of fitting the new boat, name still undetermined, with diving planes and torpedo pods.

"What happened?" Carrera asked.

"We penetrated their screen," Chu answered, "but the frogs killed Orca."

"Was it Orca that destroyed the Tauran frigate?" asked Fosa.

Chu nodded his head, wearily. "Yes, sir, the frigate and a frog sub we made as being an Amethyst Class. The frog fired first. Orca had to fire in self defense. And later, Miguel only shot up the frigate after a bunch of them had him boxed in and were salvoing torpedoes on his ass.

"We hung around shadowing their carrier in case war broke out. It didn't seem to have happened, so we came home."

"No," Carrera said, "war didn't break out. I'm not sure why, really."

"I'm sure," said Fernandez. At Carrera's raised eyebrow he added, "I've got my sources, Patricio. Their general, Janier, isn't ready. He even tried to call off the pursuit of Orca. And apparently the FSC is not happy with the Gallic 'allies,' either."

Carrera didn't enquire further. Fernandez had his sources. He did say, to Chu, "It was still touch and go for a while. There was a Maracaiban fishing trawler about thirty miles from where the Gallic frigate went down. It heard the automatic distress signal and went in to assist. The Gauls sank it before it could get close. Maybe they thought it was a Q ship. Anyway, big stink around the whole of Colombia Latina."

"How are they explaining away the lost frigate?" Chu asked.

"They're not. Their story is that it was an unprovoked attack by us. Our story is that it was an unprovoked attack by them to which our sub responded in self defense."

"It was," Chu said.

"I know," Carrera agreed, "but—"

"—but," Fernandez finished, "since you're the only one who can prove that, and since, officially, you weren't anywhere near there . . ."

"It doesn't really matter, anyway," said Carrera. "People who want to believe our story would, even if they had proof of the Gauls' version of events. People who want to believe the Gauls would, even if I had you swear to them on a stack of bibles that they fired first. There's so much information these days, and so much of it is conflicting, that people have grown jaded and simply believe whatever their prejudices tell them to. Hell, language itself is losing its ability to inform or persuade . . . or even to communicate."

Chu scratched his head through long-unwashed hair. "Yeah."

He then remembered something he'd been wanting to tell Carrera and Fosa for days. "There at the end, sirs, there's something happened you need to know about."

"What's that?" Fosa asked.

Chu's voice was full of admiration as he said, "Toward the end, Orca put on a burst of speed to try to evade some of the torpedoes coming for it."

Fosa shrugged. Yeah? So?

"Well . . . Quijana apparently turned on his clicker when he upped his speed."

This time it was Carrera who shrugged, while Fosa's face was lit by a smile.

Fernandez understood, too, being a man who worked with secrets. "He kept the secret," he explained to Carrera. "He kept it at the cost—certainly the risk—of his life."

Fernandez ahemed. "Speaking of secrets, Patricio, if you don't mind, I've got to go look into something in Ciudad Balboa."