The Lotus Eaters

BdL Dos Lindas, Naval Harbor, Isla Real

Aircraft took off and landed in steady streams from the airfield at one end of the arc of land that made up the tail of the tadpole shaped island. A very few ignored the airstrip, landing or taking off from the ship anchored in the harbor that the tail formed.

The ship was old and, more than any warship afloat on Terra Nova, battle scarred. The worst of the scarring was on her portside rear quarter, where she'd once been the recipient of an anti-shipping missile that had nearly destroyed her . . . and had destroyed many, many of her crew.

To one side of that scar, enclosed in clear polycarbonate, an ancient sword—at least the core of it was ancient—that had made the trip from Japan on Old Earth to Yamato on New was welded to the hull. Likewise inside the polycarbonate was the shadow of a small man, the hand of the shadow touching the hilt, the tsuka, of the sword.

That was the holiest spot on a ship that every man of the crew considered generally holy.

Above the polycarbonate case, welded sword and thin shadow was a flight deck, roughly seven hundred feet in length. Along one side of the flight deck a mix of light attack, reconnaissance, and rotary wing aircraft were lined up. As the ship was under blackout they were only visible at a distance as shadows, back-illuminated by the lights of the fleet base, itself on the northern edge of the island by the bay.

Above the flight deck, in the superstructure on the port side amidships, Legate Roderigo Fosa, commander of the classis, or fleet, trusted his own eyes more than any technological marvels. Below the bridge crew watched radar and sonar screens, as well as the closed circuit, light amplifying televisions that showed both the surrounding waters and the crew working the flight deck.

Further down in the bowels of the ship a different crew kept track of the movements of the fleet, which fleet consisted of one heavy cruiser, the Barco de la Legion Tadeo Kurita, mounting twelve six inch, long range guns in four triple turrets, three corvettes, equipped for air defense and anti-submarine work, two patrol boats, and several service ships carrying everything from parts to petrol, from beans to bullets.

It was a nice little fleet and, if it was small compared to some well—

"It's still the size of the fight in the ship," muttered Fosa, "not the size of the ship—or fleet—in the fight."

Not that the ship was heading to a fight. Oh, no. It was ostensibly headed to an anti-drug patrol, in support of and in concert with the Federated States Navy and Air Force.

"And I'll perform that mission," Fosa muttered, even as he contemplated the real mission, the stealth mission.

* * *

There are three primary factors that affect an aircraft's radar cross section. These are size, materials, and shape. Although it is the least important factor, if two aircraft have exactly the same materials and shape, but are of different size, the larger will have a greater radar cross section. For shape, the important things are to have no sharp edges, no flat surfaces pointed toward the radar. For materials, there are tricks that can be used. The first trick is, construction wise, the tougher. Radar 'notices' the change in density of an object in the air. To the extent that that difference is tiny, radar is apt not to notice. The second trick is to make the aircraft 'lossy,' a chemical property referring to the conductivity of a material. Lossy materials convert radar energy to heat. In the case of the Condor auxiliary propelled gliders developed by the Legion, lossiness had been achieved by use of a spun carbon fiber and resin shell.

The heat was, of course, itself a problem and had been on Old Earth for over five centuries. Even on Terra Nova, thermal imagers had made it possible to detect even fairly faint heat differences at considerable distance.

Without knowing the real capabilities of all their potential enemies, the Legion has assumed the worst, made a virtue of a vice, and created what was probably the stealthiest aircraft, if one of the lowest performing ones, on the planet. Outside of that spun carbon fiber and resin shell, they had built up a thick layer of one of the best insulating materials known to man, polyurethane foam. That foam was fairly dense toward the shell, but became increasingly less dense as one moved outward from the shell. Indeed, the 'dielectric constant' of the things was, where foam met air, no more than 1.01, which is to say one percent more dense than the air surrounding.

Moreover, since overkill was one of the Legion's core values, within that foam were embedded a very large number of very tiny concave-convex chips. These, arriving at their final position within the aircraft randomly, tended to reflect and diffuse whatever radar energy they met, or collect and then diffuse that energy . . . and in directions as random as their own random placement. Objects on the glider which could not be made of carbon fiber or polyurethane had been more carefully designed—no randomness permitted—to be most likely to direct radar energy away from any transmitter. For propulsion the Condor had a pusher propeller, smoothly polished and made of the same carbon fiber-resin material as its shell. Heat from the engine was further dissipated by being mixed with cold air and released from dozens of small vents on the upper portions of the wings.

It had been just such a glider—albeit one under self-guidance—that Carrera had used to carry the bomb that destroyed the Yithrabi city of Hajar, effectively closing out the war with the Salafi Ikhwan.

* * *

"This is just a recon mission, Montoya. You understand that?"

Warrant Officer Rafael Montoya, tall, brown and skinny, nodded his answer to Fosa, then added, "Yes, sir, I know that. And the sooner it's over the better."

"Well, we won't be in position for you to launch for three or four days. Sleep well beforehand."

Montoya laughed, white teeth shining in his brown face. "Skipper, if you were going to recon someplace, someplace where you had absolutely no idea about the defensive capabilities, the sensors, the weapons, the rules of engagement . . . tell me, sir, how well would you sleep for the few days before?"

Fosa did not smile, but then he rarely did. "Warrant Officer Montoya," he said, "if you find that you cannot sleep at least eight hours in every twenty-four until you launch, let me know and I will have you drugged to sleep. And the rest of the time, except when eating or defecating, I expect you to be in a flight simulator."

"Aye, aye, sir," Montoya answered. Fosa wasn't the kind of man to argue with.

Fosa turned a glaring eye to the warrant. "Mr. Montoya, you have your orders and yet you are still here. Now run along, like a good lad, and follow them, while I continue with the ostensible counter-drug mission that is our excuse to get you to where you can launch."