Chapter 90: The Sea Demands Its Share
Location: Gorakhpur — Shergill Aeronautics & Defense Complex
Date: 18 February 1972 — 11:20 Hours
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The hangar didn't slow down for anyone.
Two S-27 airframes stood open under hard white light, panels lifted, internal structure exposed. Engineers moved around them with quiet urgency—checking, arguing, correcting. A crane shifted overhead, someone called out a measurement, another voice corrected it immediately.
Nothing paused.
Even when senior officers walked in.
---
At the far end, a steel table had been cleared.
Karan Shergill sat there, flipping through a few sheets. Aditya stood nearby, listening to an engineer who had already stretched a simple issue too far.
"…so under sustained load, the vibration shifts slightly and—"
Karan didn't look up. "Tolerance?"
The engineer stopped. "Point eight percent."
"Then it's fine. If it crosses one, fix it. Not before."
Aditya added, "Start with that Number next time."
A couple of engineers smirked. The man nodded and stepped away.
One of the officers watching quietly said, "Efficient."
"Or expensive, if you get it wrong," another replied.
The delegation settled.
At the front—Admiral S. M. Nanda.
He pulled a chair, sat, glanced once across the hangar, then back at Karan.
"You run this place like visitors don't matter."
Karan shrugged. "They don't. Output does. Everything else adjusts."
A few exchanged looks—not offended, just recalibrating.
Nanda leaned forward. "Let's not circle this. Army has what it needs. Air Force is building around you. Navy is still waiting."
One officer added, "And that's becoming harder to justify."
Another said, more bluntly, "Because from where we stand, we're last."
---
Karan set the papers aside.
"If I'd started with you six months ago," he said, "you wouldn't be asking for aircraft."
"What would we be asking?" one officer shot back.
"Why they stopped working halfway into the Arabian Sea."
That landed hard.
Chairs shifted. One officer's jaw tightened.
"That assumes failure."
Karan looked at him directly.
"At sea, things don't fail slowly," he said.
"They just stop working. And when that happens—you don't get a second try."
The room sharpened.
Aditya stepped in, anchoring it.
"Six months ago, production wasn't stable," he said. "Engines worked, materials worked—but not consistently."
"That's manufacturing," an officer replied.
"At sea," Aditya said, "that becomes survival."
A naval engineer in the back nodded without realizing it
-
Another officer leaned forward, pushing again.
"So we wait while you perfect things?"
Karan shook his head. "No. You come in when it holds."
"That sounds the same."
"It isn't," the naval engineer from the back said quietly. "Earlier it would've failed in deployment."
The officer glanced back, then didn't argue further.
Karan tapped the table once.
"Everyone thinks building the aircraft is the hard part," he said.
Nanda asked, "Then what is?"
"Making sure the tenth behaves exactly like the first," Karan said.
"Because that's when testing ends—and reality starts."
Nanda held his gaze for a moment, then nodded.
"Alright," he said. "Show us."
The projection came alive.
The S-22 Makara filled the wall.
Even the engineers working nearby slowed—not stopping, just watching while their hands kept moving.
"Carrier-based?" one officer asked immediately.
"Yes," Karan said.
"Explain it properly," Nanda said. "No presentation."
Karan stood, pointing at the wings.
"These decide whether the aircraft gets off the deck… or doesn't."
That pulled everyone in.
He traced the forward position.
"When the wings are forward, you increase lift..
Narration (for readers)
Lift is what allows an aircraft to rise. On land, long runways give time to build speed. On a carrier, that space doesn't exist. The aircraft has to generate lift quickly—or it never leaves the deck.
---
"You're heavy, fully loaded, taking off from a short moving surface," Karan continued. "There's no margin for error."
One officer nodded slowly. "So this reduces the chance of failure."
"Exactly."
---
He shifted his hand.
The wings swept back.
"Now you reduce drag. The aircraft stops fighting the air and starts working with it."
Another officer leaned in. "So it becomes faster after launch."
"It becomes efficient," Karan said. "Which matters more in combat."
Aditya stepped in, pointing to the intake.
"Engines need controlled airflow," he said. "Too little, they starve. Too much, they destabilize."
A naval engineer asked, "So these intakes regulate both?"
"Yes."
"And if they fail?"
Karan answered directly.
"They fail immediately. No warning."
The engineer held his gaze, then nodded once.
Karan moved toward the rear.
"Twin engines."
"Speed?" an officer asked.
"Survival," Karan said. "One engine fails—you still come back."
That shifted the room.
Nanda said quietly, "Redundancy."
"Yes."
Aditya continued, "Afterburners give rapid acceleration."
"Meaning?" another officer asked.
"If something goes wrong, you don't wait around to understand it," Aditya said.
The room wasn't resisting anymore.
It was evaluating.
One officer pointed at the landing gear. "That's heavier than necessary."
Karan smiled faintly. "It is."
A couple of quiet chuckles.
"Carrier landing isn't landing. It's impact management," he said.
He pointed to the tail.
"Hook engages. Structure absorbs. Aircraft survives."
A naval engineer said softly, "Controlled crash."
Karan nodded. "Exactly."
Nanda asked, "Fatigue cycles?"
"Higher than what you operate now," Aditya said. "We designed for repetition, not ideal landings."
Karan stepped back.
"You asked why we didn't start with you," he said.
No interruptions now.
"Because this only works if everything behind it works."
He looked at them, one by one.
"Materials. Engines. Tolerances. Supply."
"If one thing breaks, the whole system starts failing."
Nanda exhaled slowly.
"And now?"
Karan met his eyes.
"Now we're close to holding that line."
---
Nanda leaned back, thinking.
"If this performs the way you're describing…"
He didn't finish.
---
Karan did.
"You stop reacting to the sea," he said.
"You start deciding how you operate in it."
That stayed.
---
The meeting ended without formality.
Officers stood, already discussing among themselves. One naval engineer had walked over to an Aeronautics team, pointing inside the wing assembly, asking something mid-motion.
The hangar didn't pause.
It never had.
One officer asked Nanda quietly, "So we're behind?"
Nanda looked back at the hangar.
At the aircraft.
At the people who didn't wait for permission to build.
"No," he said.
Then added—
"We're stepping into something that isn't going to slow down for us."
And this time—
no one questioned it.