Carnifex

given him a budget and said, 'You figure it out'—on a newer Volgan helicopter, The Yakamov YA- 72 that was offered for sale for surprisingly little.

Little was not, however, nothing. The twenty-two YA-6s purchased had still run nearly fifty million FSD, with spares.

It is a fine chopper, Carrera thought. But still; fifty million . . . . And it doesn't mesh logistically with the IMs we already have . . . 

Sighing at the cost, Carrera approached the ship's bow. Fosa, the legate commanding the classis, or fleet, followed, leading Mrs. Parilla who had been selected to do the honors for the rechristening.

Let's hope somebody hires us to use it.

2/10/466 AC (Old Earth Year 2521), UEPF Spirit of Peace

One might have thought that a figurehead on a starship would have made little sense. Nonetheless, United Earth had for centuries had hundreds of thousands of otherwise unemployed and unemployable 'artists.' Some of them were even capable of more than flinging dung onto a canvas and calling it 'art.' Of those, some numbers had been commissioned to create figureheads for the Spirit class of UE starships.

Spirit of Peace had been assumed to be a representative of all Earth's peoples, for only a joining of all the people could hope to bring peace. Thus, her figurehead had been a mixed race beauty. It looked quite a bit like the figurehead for the Dos Lindas, for that matter.

Which is decidedly ironic, thought High Admiral Robinson, sitting in his quarters, half turned from his desk. His uniform trousers were partly undone since he was being fellated by his fleet sociologist, Lieutenant Commander Iris Khan.

Khan, despite having one distant ancestor from the region of Pakistan on Old Earth, was blonde and blue-eyed. Kneeling between Robinson's legs, her eyes stayed upturned, intent on the High Admiral's face, even as her mouth worked diligently to give the High Admiral the quality of service to which his position entitled him.

Normally Robinson used the captain of Peace, Marguerite Wallenstein, for his physical needs. The captain, however, had duty at the moment and Khan had been otherwise unemployed. She would do.

Indeed, she does very well, Robinson thought as he reached out a hand to force Khan's head down and his penis into her throat moments before ejaculation. She stayed that way, her lips against the root of the High Admiral's penis, even when a yeoman entered the quarters with the fleet's morning report. In the UEPF there was no shame in servicing one's betters. Only after the yeoman had left did Khan back off to lick away the still leaking residue. By that time the High Admiral's face was blocked by the report.

'That will be all, thank you, Iris. I'll call you if I need you,' was all Robinson had to say.

A few last licks and Khan closed the Admiral's trousers, refastened his belt, stood and turned to go.

Just before she exited the cabin, Robinson ordered, 'Send your husband to me. I want to go over some developments down below with him. It seems the local mercenary chief isn't content with merely having a ground army. He's got a major warship now. I wonder what's next.'

3/10/466 AC, Obras Zorrilleras, Cuidad Balboa, Republic of Balboa

Cheapness was a watchword for the Legion. Let others pay the expense of being on the cutting edge of military and scientific research; the Legion didn't need that. Instead, the Obras Zorrilleras, the research and development arm of the Legion del Cid, concentrated on stealing, reverse engineering, modifying, and occasionally—after evaluation—outright purchasing of technology. Even so, they did some original work, too.

They'd had some successes. The modifications for the Dos Lindas had come from OZ's naval bureau. They'd had a strong hand in the remanufacture of several smallish nuclear weapons captured in Sumer half a decade before. The small unit tactical communications system, or Comsys, was likewise their design, modified from a wireless cell phone system in broad use around Terra Nova.

The big projects now were stealth, something the Federated States had a near monopoly on and which they would not share even with very close allies like Anglia.

Carrera had some potential uses for stealth, in the air, at sea and under the sea. That made it an OZ priority.

'We've got three things for you, Duque,' the chief of OZ, an immigrant named Pislowski from the Jagielonian Commonwealth, said. 'Two of these are the same basic technique but applied differently.'

Carrera, Pislowski, and three others sat at a cheap conference table deep inside the main building for OZ. The researchers hadn't thought to provide refreshments. Instead, three models stood atop the table.

How refreshing, Carrera thought. He loathed briefings, meetings, and all the rest of the modern world's bureaucratic time-sinks. Refreshments tended to make it worse, not better, since they invited people to stay too long and talk too much. On occasion, Carrera thought of enacting a regulation requiring all meetings and briefings in the Legion to be conducted standing and in the rain.

Pislowski smiled, pointing a finger. 'It was that bloody Volgan's idea.'

The Volgan—his given name was Pyotr –smiled back. He then picked up one of the models, a strangely proportioned aircraft. 'As my friend has said, it was my idea. Technically. Better to say I was the one who pulled together some things I'd seen and read over the years. Some of that came from Jagielonia. This is a glider we've nicknamed the Condor.'

'They build many gliders in Jagielonia,' Pyotr continued. 'Their interest goes back many decades. Even when I was doing design work for the Volgan Empire, it occurred to me that a glider has many advantages over an aircraft, even for combat purposes. It is fuel efficient. It is easy and cheap to maintain, even if it has an engine, as some do. It is quite easy and cheap to train people to fly a glider. Because a glider is so cheap and easy to fly, there is no great reason to require that the highest caliber men be chosen as pilots. Ground support requirements are only a tiny fraction of what is needed for a high performance aircraft. A glider is also relatively difficult to pick up on radar.'

'Still there are disadvantages,' Pyotr admitted. 'A glider cannot carry much of a load. It is slow and not very maneuverable. It must be raised to a considerable height by some means, most commonly another aircraft. It depends upon natural updrafts in the air to keep going. With an auxiliary engine many of these disadvantages can be at least partially overcome. But with an engine, the glider becomes much easier to acquire, either on radar or by infrared from the heat of the engine and exhaust. Georgi and I have an answer to that.'

Georgi, the senior of the two Volgan designers, spoke up. 'Sir, do you know anything about radar?'

Carrera answered, 'Assume not.'

'Yes, sir. Radar is microwave energy, traveling through the air. It can also travel through other things, ground and water, for example, but with less range and accuracy. When the energy reaches something with a density different from air, it reacts. In effect, it radiates back from whatever it hit that was different from air, if the material it hits is capable of radiating back. Some materials radiate back poorly or not at all. These change the microwave energy into heat. Is the Duque familiar with the Federated States Air Force's P-71?'

'I know of it as a name. I've seen pictures.'

'Here's a picture you didn't see,' Georgi said, handing over an eight-by-ten black and white of a remarkably odd-looking aircraft.

Carrera took it and looked at it carefully. He asked, 'What's that dark ring around it?'

'Bats,' Georgi answered. 'Hundreds and thousands of stunned, crippled or dead bats. They couldn't see the plane and flew into it, usually killing themselves. You see, bats use sonar which is, in some ways, similar to radar. The P-71 presented no surfaces to bounce back the sonar signals to the bats. So they couldn't 'see' it and flew into the plane. The P-71 presents a very small radar, or sonar, cross section. Too small for bats to see.'

Pyotr took up the briefing, once again. '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. These gliders will be quite small. For shape, the important things are to have no sharp edges, no flat surfaces pointed toward the radar. For materials, there are two . . . oh, tricks, that we can use. The first 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. We plan to build gliders based on a spun carbon monofilament and resin shell. The shell itself can be made 'lossy'—'

'Glossy?' Carrera interrupted.

'No, sir.