The Lotus Eaters

Balboa City, Intersection Via Santa Josefina and Via Belisario Carrera, Balboa, Terra Nova

Drivers honked with gleeful abandon. Honking right back, Mitchell used the greater mass and intimidation power of his rather beat up vehicle to force his way through traffic to a spot not far from an office building's door. Wordlessly, Carrera got out. Equally wordlessly, Mitch drove off and turned the corner.

The sign on the door said, "Balboa Yacht Corporation, S. A." The sign was a bit of misdirection. Not only did the BYC have little to do with yachts, it rarely had much to do with the sea, though there had been at least one significant exception to this.

BYC was a front, a wing of Obras Zorilleras, or 'OZ,' the Legion's research and development arm. More specifically, it was that section that dealt with the aerial combat and the air defense of the Legion and the Republic. Moreover, it dealt with them in their material, tactical, and systemic aspects, all three.

BYC was a front in more ways than one. The door with the sign did lead to a suite of offices that could, for example, tell the prospective yacht purchaser, "Oh, no, señor, we are much too busy—Julio, you lazy swine, did you finish the drawings for the Duke of Belgravia?—as I was saying, señor, we could not hope to—Marissa, you wretch, I said get in touch with Borchadt Marine Engines now!—Where was I, señor?" and keep that up indefinitely or until the prospective buyer walked off in disgust.

Of course, there was no need to do that with Carrera. He nodded as he passed by on his way to a small office. That office, in turn, served as a cover for the door that led to the real BYC suite. The real BYC suite was normally entered from an alley off of a completely different street.

* * *

The offices were plain, if not bare. There was little decoration on the off-white painted walls. The desks and chairs were functional, but no more than that. There was but a single telephone in the suite. Of its computers, all but one were sealed off from the outside world.

"Miguel," Carrera said to Legate Lanza, chief of the Legion's Ala, or air wing, as he emerged from the front put on by BYC.

"Duque," Lanza nodded back. Balding, his waist thickening, a bit stoop-shouldered and generally showing his age, Lanza was dressed in mufti, gray trousers and an embroidered silk, short-sleeved, guayabera dress shirt.

Carrera asked, "What have you got for me?" In truth, he'd made his plans so far in a partial vacuum. It could all fall apart if there proved no way to nullify his likely enemy's air power. That knowledge, rather, that uncertainty, was a frequent cold spot in the pit of his stomach.

"A concept," Lanza answered, "and some recommendations. You know our people here?"

Carrera shook his head. "I know some of them but go ahead and do the introductions anyway."

"This way then, boss." Lanza inclined his head and turned away towards a hallway.

* * *

The group was small and entirely composed of ex-Volgans, ex-Jagelonians, and a single ex-Sachsen. All but one were pilots. Of the pilots, two had sub-specialized in military intelligence.

"Duque," began one of the latter, a compact Volgan who went by the name of Grishkin, "let us begin by telling you what we think you are going to face if it comes to war between you and the Tauran Union, or war between you and the Tauran Union allied with Zhong Guo. We are assuming in this that the Federated States will not support you. If they would, you need not worry about an air threat at all."

"That's about the way I see it," Carrera agreed, running fingers through his hair. "Go on; worst case it."

"Very well," said Grishkin. "Basically you are looking at an aerial assault from as many as five medium aircraft carriers, three Tauran and two Zhong. In all, that's only about three hundred aircraft, only about two hundred and forty of them combat aircraft. You could, conceivably, handle this if you're willing to spend the money and devote the personnel to the problem."

"But it won't just be aircraft carriers, correct?"

Grishkin nodded. "We think not, Duque. We think that, if it came to a general war, you can count on the Taurans paying any price to gain access to air bases in Santa Josefina, to your east. Moreover, since the collapse of the Volgan Empire, Cienfuegos to your south has become an economic basket case. Mere sharing of language and culture will not be enough to prevent the Cienfuegans from opening their legs to Taurus and giving them whatever they want. And you must assume that Maracaibo, being itself a new Tsarist-Marxist state, will ally with the TU happily and eagerly."

Carrera nodded. This was nothing too far off from what he had considered on his own. Moreover, he had at least a partial solution.

"Assume," he said, "that I can redirect sufficient of our foreign born legionaries to their home countries to punish any nearby Latin state badly, with an insurrection, for opening themselves to the TU."

"Except for—"

"Yes," Carrera cut him off. "Except for Cienfuegos. I have no appreciable number of volunteers from there. They're a closed society, so infiltration would be very difficult. Basically, I've no useful connections, no good way to punish them, yet, for what amounts to cultural treason. I'm working on that."

"I'm sure," Grishkin shrugged. "That still means you're going to be facing up to twelve hundred sorties a day, from the east, from the west, from the south, and from the sea to the north and south. That's a lot of God damned ordnance dropped on your head, Duque."

"Look," Carrera said, waving one hand, brusquely, "I already know it's going to hurt. Give me something I can work with to cut down on that pain. Give me something I can use to get some maneuver time and space to defeat a landing or landings."

"There is a way," Grishkin answered, for the first time smiling.

"I'm listening."

Grishkin looked at one of his compatriots. "Fuckoffski," he said, "you're up.

"My name is Yakubovski," the latter reminded. His face was completely devoid of humor, grimmer than cancer, in fact. "They make a little joke and call me, 'Yabukovski.' In effect, that means, 'Fuckoffski.' " The Volgan gave an evil smile. "I'll get them all, later, in my own way."

"There are basically two ways an air force can come at you, Duque," Yakubovski said, "en masse and by what is sometimes called a 'conveyor belt.' They much prefer the latter. Indeed, just assembling the former, gathering and organizing a major strike, is so wasteful of fuel—which cuts into ordnance carried, wears out the planes so badly—while they're hanging around waiting for the rest of the strike package to assemble, uses up so much time, and is so hard to coordinate, that air forces will usually only do it to establish initial air superiority or supremacy, or to support a major effort on the ground.

"The conveyor belt, on the other hand," Yakubovski continued, "has none of those flaws. Small strike packages are quickly assembled and easily controlled. They do not overstrain fuel and ordnance units on their way out, or maintenance units when they return. Airfields are orderly and efficient. Aerial refueling is easy. Conversely, aerial refueling of up to twelve hundred aircraft in a few hours is impossible for the TU. Even the Federated States cannot handle so much.

"However, the conveyor belt has its own flaws. It cannot be used efficiently until air superiority or, in preference, air supremacy, is established. If one tries, one finds that an altogether inefficient mix of aircraft must be used, fully a third of them equipped not for ground attack but for aerial combat. Still others must carry munitions for suppression of air defense."

Yakubovski stopped speaking for a moment, searching Carrera's face for a glimmer of understanding. The latter, on the other hand, kept his face blank while leaning back in his chair and staring upwards at the junction of off white-painted wall and white hung ceiling.

After perhaps a minute's quiet, Carrera asked, "You're trying to tell me that if I can maintain the ability to engage and destroy small strike packages . . . hmmm, define small."

Yakubovski didn't miss a beat. "About fifty or sixty aircraft, maybe half of them strike aircraft."

"Okay. If I can meet and defeat something that size, then they'll have to go to larger, less efficient, strike packages, that are also less deadly on a per aircraft basis?"

"Yes, which for all the reasons mentioned, plus the difficulty of planning and coordinating a major strike, will not come all that often."

Carrera lowered his head, closed his eyes and held up one finger for silence. He pictured, in his mind's eye, a major air raid coming in to Balboa . . .

"So I need to be able to defeat a raid of sixty aircraft?" he mused.

"Something like that," the Volgan agreed. "If you're willing, it might be well to plan for twice that. In fact, we have."

"What does that take?"

"Besides the barrage balloons you are calling 'Project Sarissa,' and the lavish air defense suite you are building, either two hundred or so fairly modern fighters or three to four times that in obsolete fighters with some improved capabilities. We recommend the latter."

"Why?"

Grishkin answered. "Partly it's cost, Duque. Two hundred modern fighters, on their own, without even counting training and maintenance, will cost more billions than you can lightly afford. Six or seven or eight hundred obsolete fighters cost . . . well," Grishkin handed Carrera an advertisement, torn from a newspaper printed on yellow paper.

"You're shitting me," Carrera said. "Under twenty-five thousand FSD for a depot rebuilt Artem-Mikhail 82 Mosaic-D? That's a typo, right? They left off a zero or two?"

"No, Duque, it's not a typo. In fact, it's practically an attempt at piracy. Larceny, anyway. I ran down—I have my contacts after all—the original source for the aircraft and the markup in that advertisement has been quite high. For that price we can get the aircraft, several replacement engines, and spare parts for years of operations. And for a few hundred thousand FSD, each, we can upgrade the things to where they would have a reasonable chance of killing TU fighters and strike aircraft at about two for five. If you are willing to risk men in training, we might get that up to three for five."

"They'll bomb the shit out of our airfields and we'll never get a plane off," Carrera objected.

Grishkin laughed and wagged a finger. "Oh, no, Duque. The AM-82 is very rough field capable. Moreover, we can get true vertical takeoff for them, or at least for some of them, in the form of a Zero Length Launch system. This is basically a trailer mount with a blast shield and some Rocket Assisted Take Off, or RATO, bottles mounted to the plane. They've been done. They work. Nobody's ever really used them because guided missiles took over. In your case, and Balboa's, they might make more sense."

Carrera shrugged. Maybe. Air war was not really his forte.

"Explain to me how you see an air war developing," he said.

Grishkin pointed. "Fuckoffski, you're up again."

Yakubovski stood and said, "Still using the TU as a template, Duque, the first attack will probably come en masse. Your Air Defense Artillery would unmask, briefly, but shut down, run and hide as soon as the individual systems and batteries have any reasonable excuse to. The TU would then pound a lot of empty jungle. Oh, sure, they'll hit legitimate targets, too. We aren't saying this will be easy.

"After a day or two of that, maybe three at the most, the TU would declare "air supremacy" or make some such meaningless public relations point.

"At that point, expect the TU to go to the more efficient conveyor belt type of operation. After putting up with that for a few days, you unmask your air defense, lift your aircraft, and attack with very heavy odds in your favor to engage a smallish TU strike package. Hurt it badly, even if it hurts you, too.

"The TU then has to revert to larger, all capacity, aerial task forces. The Legion hides for a while.

"After a bit, you could expect the TU to again declare 'air supremacy' and go back to conveyor belt operations. Once again, the Legion hits a small raid and hurts it.

"At about that point they'll try to get clever and do small raids but with a larger air to air group waiting to ambush. You ignore all such attacks until the larger group is not in evidence. Small fishing boats, coast watchers, and spies, plus whatever technical intelligence you can develop, will be important here. The effect is still virtual attrition on the TU, since planes not bombing are . . . well . . . not bombing, which is fine."

Yakubovski sighed. "I know, we all know, you've never told us your end game. Still, a blind man could see that, if you can drive out the TU and if the TU later lands, you must attack and crush that landing. Now imagine you can time it so that your artillery prep for that counterattack begins just as a TU air raid is departing."

"The TU's going to say, 'Oh, shit,' and start trying to assemble a major strike package. But the ground pounders are going to be screaming bloody murder for support. Politically, that will force the TU air forces to start scrambling and trying to assemble whatever can be assembled to help the ground pounders. Then your AM-82s lift. Your barrage balloons lift. Your ADA unmasks. The TU comes in, but in small groups and facing something truly awful, old planes, but a lot of them, and with good weapons, and a thick air defense umbrella.

"You're going to pay, of course. We're undecided about whether the air force you must build will be annihilated, or just butchered. The smart money is on annihilated. But you can get the time, through expending their lives and planes, to fight and win a battle on the ground."

Carrera looked questioningly at Lanza. His return look as much as said, They convinced me, boss. Though the idea of my boys being sacrificial lambs is not something I'm too comfortable with.

"How far along in planning are you?" Carrera asked.

"Very far," Lanza answered. "Costs, Tables of Organization and Equipment, training programs, instructor requirements, land usage, facilities . . . give us the money and we can start tomorrow. The boys have even done the redesign work to bring the Mosaic almost into our day and age."

* * *

"Something still bugs me," Carrera said. "Two things, really. I don't understand: Why so cheap and why so many?"

Grishkin shrugged, answering, "For the latter question, the Red Tsar never threw anything away and neither did his allies and clients. For the first question . . . basically, nobody wants them anymore so their value is reduced to not much more than the metal . . . and even metal prices are down. Everyone's looking for the most modern planes, whether or not they can maintain them and whether or not they've got the training system and the social system to procure sufficiently high quality human material for pilots. Over much of our world, it's a prestige thing, mostly, a way to keep the sons of the ruling classes amused and give them more reason to strut and better ways to talk girls into bed.

"The average air force, in the world, is nothing but an expensive indulgence. There are only a few air forces that even matter. One of those, sadly for you, is the Tauran Union's."

"Yeah . . . no shit." Carrera hesitated, perhaps only due to an innate conservatism, before agreeing, "Fine. Lanza, get your cost estimates to the Estado Major. We're going to go for it.

"And God help the poor kids who will, I have no doubt, volunteer in droves for this."

* * *

Carrera looked genuinely happy as he slunk out the entrance to the real offices of BYC, into the trashy alley, and then into the nondescript car driven by Mitchell and guarded by Soult. The latter two shared a look that said, Dunno why but it can't be bad.

"Estado Major building, Mitch," Carrera said.

"Sure thing, boss," Mitchell said, turning the key and bringing the engine to life. "Umm . . . boss, if you don't mind my asking, why so chipper? It just ain't like you."

"Two reasons," Carrera answered. "One is I've got a little more hope of survival than I did have. The other is I'm going to cut a little cancer out of the system at the Estado Major. Meanwhile, ignore me for a bit. I have to work myself into a fury."