by John Varley
The bonfires had been constructed with the same principle in mind. Several dozen wagons were filled with dry wood and kerosene. As the attack was announced, these wagons were driven forward, backward, and out to each side as far as they could get before the planes were sighted, then set afire. In the middle of the Cronusian night, it was hoped these bright lights would confuse the attackers as to the size of the army, and provide them with easy and expendable targets.
The main body of the army extinguished all lights, spread out, and set to work with their Personnel Entrenching Tools—shovels, to a civilian—something high-tech had done little to improve. An infantryman from the Argonne would have known how to use them instantly. The ground was hard, but it was amazing how quickly one could dig when the bombs began to fall.
Cirocco found herself doing an amazing thing. As the blue-white dots of the Fifth Fighter/Bomber Wing began circling above them, getting into position for their runs, she ran back down the Highway, shouting and waving her sword.
“Get down! Take cover! Get down, get down! The Air Force is on the way. Keep your goddamn heads down!”
She saw the first deadly orange blossom ahead of her and to one side, still quite far away, and she was grabbed by the arm, lifted, and tossed onto Hornpipe’s broad back. She landed on her feet, and held his shoulders, then yelled into his ear.
“Take cover, you crazy bastard!” she told him.
“I will when you do.”
So they thundered down the highway, startling the troops, waving their swords, shouting warnings that were entirely unnecessary as the landscape began to thunder and burn beneath the pounding of the Ferocious Fifth. She knew it was insane. She had never understood how commanders could do crazy things like that, and wasn’t quite sure how she was managing it herself. She had no illusions about being immune to bombs and bullets, did not think the mad force of her personality could somehow protect her—a theory she had actually seen propounded in some of the more fanciful military texts.
She only knew it wasn’t right for her to take cover now. Better to chance being killed. The troops had to see her and perceive her as unafraid, even though she was shaking so badly she almost dropped her sword. There was no other way to convince them to risk their own lives when she demanded it of them.
God, she thought. Ain’t warfare wonderful?
***
Most of the Titanides took the course Cirocco and the Generals had agreed was the logical thing for them to do. It would take them forever to dig trenches big enough to protect their huge bulk. Their great advantage was speed.
So they ran away.
They scattered in all directions, got as far from the center of the action as they could, and watched, horror-struck, as the malignant beauty of the battle unfolded in the air and on the ground.
Skyrockets screamed into the air from the pyrotechnics wagons, trailing orange sparks, glowing bright red, then exploded. Red-eyes and sidewinders burst like coveys of incandescent birds from beneath the wings of the buzz bombs, trailing red or blue or green fire, accelerated at a frightening rate, screaming in bloodthirsty joy as they suicidally dived into the bonfire wagons or chased skyrockets or, all too often, were not fooled and raced along a few meters above the ground to spread liquid fire over the pock-marked landscape. The aeromorphs themselves were visible only by their blue-white exhaust. The bombs were not visible at all until they reached the ground, and then they made everything else seem insignificant.
A few Titanides, moved beyond endurance, started back, but were stopped by their more sensible comrades.
Only the Titanide healers did not run. Like the human medics, they did what doctors have always done in war. They gathered the wounded, tended them…and died beside them.
***
“Oh Great Mother if you let me live through this I’ll never leave my computer again, never again, never again, never again….”
Nova was not aware she was shouting. She was scrunched up in a trench that seemed about a quarter of an inch deep—and she was sharing it with two foot soldiers she had never seen before.
It was actually quite a bit deeper than that, and when a relative lull came all three of them scrambled out and dug like maniacs. Then the monsters made another pass and they piled in again, a mess of sharp elbows, boots, sheathed swords, askew helmets, and the stink of fear. They held their shields above them and heard dirt clods rattle against the dull bronze.
A bomb hit very close. Nova wondered if she would ever hear again. There was nothing but ringing for a long time. Shards of hot metal fell on them, and steaming soil.
“Never again, never again, never again…”
***
Part of Conal’s mind knew that the Metis invaders had turned north, were headed for Bellinzona. That part of his mind wept for the outnumbered Third Squad.
The rest of him was concentrated on the dark air ahead that, minute by creeping minute, grew lighter. They could see the battle long before they arrived there.
Then they engaged the enemy, and there was no time to think of anything but flying.
He had to let his computer do a lot. There were too many blips on the screen, too much confusion, too much darkness. He twisted and turned, got lined up on something promising…and was overruled by the firecontrol computer, who had identified his target as friendly. Then he splashed a buzz bomb. The whole encounter between them was over in less than three seconds. He did not bother to watch the wreckage fall down into the night, but immediately slammed into a ten-gee turn toward the next target of opportunity.
The battle was actually anticlimactic. He knew it hadn’t been for those who had sat it out on the ground for the twenty minutes it had taken his squadrons to arrive. But by the time they got there the Fifth Wing had foolishly used up much of its air-to-air capacity. Their guns were running out of the little bullet-creatures. They still had some bombs left, and that was gratifying, as it made a much healthier explosion when Conal’s missiles hit them. Each airburst meant one less parcel of death for those in the trenches below.
At last there was only the Luftmorder. Conal and two of his pilots closed in on it from behind. He shot off most of its left wing. A Gnat seemed to be trying to fly right up its tailpipes, then delivered a missile, and they all throttled back and watched it fall. The air was full of smoke, and there were a frightening number of fires on the ground.
“This is Big Canuck, calling Rocky Road.”
There was a pause longer than Conal would have liked. Somebody had been separated from his radio, he realized.
“Rocky Road here, Canuck. I don’t see any more enemies.”
“That’s right. They’re all dead. The Fifth is no more. I haven’t heard from my Third Squadron yet, but I know they engaged the Eighth somewhere over Dione, and you people have at least a half-rev breathing space before any survivors could get here.”
“Roger, Canuck. We’ll be digging in.”
Conal was moving at dead slow, just over stall speed, while the computers formed up the First and Second Squadrons. Glancing around, he saw one hole in the Second, and one in his own, the First. He looked at his screen and saw one emergency beacon, stationary, on the ground, just short of Hestia. He dispatched one of his pilots to fly over and see if it was a survivor.
Two planes lost. One pilot lost, possibly two. Two other planes with minor damage.
Conal realized he was soaking wet. He put his plane on complete automatic, sat back, and shook for a few minutes. Then he wiped the sweat from his face.
“Big Canuck, Big Canuck, this is Squad Three.”
Conal recognized the voice. It was Gratiana Gomez, the youngest and least experienced pilot in Third Squadron.
“I read you, Gomez.”
“Canuck, Third Squadron engaged the enemy ten klicks south of Peppermint Bay. Ten aircraft were reported, and ten were destroyed. One got through to Bellinzona, and I have just destroyed it. It dropped three, maybe four bombs on the city.”
There was
something in her voice that disturbed Conal.
“Gomez, where is your squadron leader?”
“Conal…I am the squadron leader. In fact…I’m the Third Squadron.” Her voice broke at the end, and he heard a dead mike.
“Gratiana, go back to Iapetus North and park it.”
There was a long pause. When she spoke again her voice was under control.
“I can’t, Canuck. The aircraft is pretty shot up. I think it might be salvageable. I’m gonna try to put it down on the football field up by the labor camps. I think I can—”
“Negative, Gomez.” Conal knew exactly what she was thinking. Pilots were easy to come by, but airplanes were at a premium. The equation offended him.
“Well…then I’ll ditch it up close to the wharves, where the water isn’t too deep. They can pull it out and—”
“Gomez, you head that thing out toward Moros, and when you’re right over the biggest, flattest piece of land you can find, you punch out of it.”
“Canuck, I think I can—”
“Punch out, Gomez! That’s an order.”
“Roger, Conal.”
Later, when things were sorted out, Conal learned that Gomez had made it safely to the ground. She died an hour later of blood loss from the shrapnel wounds she had not told him about.
***
Nova slowly realized that things had quieted down.
She lifted her head a little. There were fires in the night. She could hear people moaning not too far way. Some were screaming. She moved cautiously around on her elbows, straightened her helmet, and found herself face to face with one of her trench-mates. He gave her a foolish grin. She heard herself giggling. Great Mother, what a terrible thing to do. But she could not shut it off for a long time. The man laughed with her, glad to be alive. Then they turned to the third person in the trench to let him share in the joy.
But there was a little hole under the man’s left arm, and a big one in the center of his chest. Nova held the bloody corpse for a long time, and could not cry, though she wanted to.
Though they never spoke a word to each other, they had shoveled together like mad animals, and huddled together in the dark and the fire, shivering, sharing warmth. And she hadn’t known when the warmth leaked out of him in a flood of red.
***
Cirocco and Hornpipe had been knocked over by the blast wave of a near-miss. Though unhurt, they had decided to stay down. Enough was enough.
Now she strode through the battlefield, limping slightly. Her ears were still ringing. The ends of her hair and her eyebrows on the right side were singed. There was a little blood on her right hand.
She took it all in. There were many dead and injured, but they were being attended to. Sergeants were shouting like it was just another drill on the obstacle course. Dirt was flying everywhere. Many of the trenches were already eight feet deep. Cirocco couldn’t find a single slacker. The Fifth Wing had made believers of them all.
The infirmary was a large tent set up as far away from the trenches as Cirocco had dared. She had debated a long time about whether to mark it with a big white cross. In the end, she decided not to. Gaea had cast herself in the role of the bad guy. She might very well have told her buzz bombs to seek out white crosses.
She entered the radio shack and grabbed a hand mike.
“Big Canuck, are you still up there?”
“I’m not going anywhere. Captain, have you seen Robin?”
“I have no information on that, Canuck.”
“…Okay. Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
Cirocco glanced around, saw no one was watching her.
“Conal, I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything.”
“Right. What do I do now?”
They discussed it, using code words Gaea and her troops would not understand if they happened to be listening in. Conal was the only other person who knew about Cirocco’s plan for the Gaean Air Force.
“I think,” Conal said, “if you’re gonna do it, you ought to do it as quickly as possible.”
“I agree. Give us…two more revs to get as solidly dug in here as we can. You and your people go back to Iapetus and re-arm and re-fuel. I’ll take it up with the Generals.”
***
Robin had spent most of the battle half-buried under a dead Titanide.
She and four others had dug a foxhole, the bombs had started to fall…and the Titanide had fallen right at the edge of it. Its body slipped slowly down, not quite covering Robin. She thought it had probably saved her life. When everything was over and she was able to struggle out, she saw the amount of debris the huge, dead hunk of meat had soaked up. One of her companions in the foxhole had a chunk of metal in her leg, but the others were unharmed.
She managed to locate Cirocco, who had time for a brief embrace before hurrying off toward the Generals’ tent.
Robin and Nova were oddities out here, and Robin was acutely aware of it. They were not in the army, as everyone else was. They had no assigned duties. Nova was not even in the city government anymore. In a sane war, one fought entirely by strategy and tactics of masses of soldiers and airplanes, Robin would never have been brought along. But her presence here was necessary.
The trouble was, she couldn’t tell anybody why. She didn’t even entirely understand it herself.
So now she wandered through the carnage, looking for her daughter. A few other people were wandering as aimlessly as she was, but they had that shell-shocked look. Robin was shaken, but in control of herself. She had come to terms with her fear twenty years ago, when she first allowed herself to feel it. She had been very afraid while the attack was happening, shocked and sorrowful at all the casualties, but now that it was over she felt only disgust at the atrocity of the attack…and worry for her daughter.
She found her digging a trench. She had to call three times before Nova looked up. Then the girl’s lower lip quivered, she climbed out of the hole, and went to Robin’s arms.
Robin felt only tears of happiness. And she felt a little silly, as she always did, putting her arms around a daughter almost a foot taller than she was. Nova wept uncontrollably.
“Oh, Mother,” she said, “I want to go home.”
Eight
Cirocco spread her clock-face map on the rickety table. A Captain held a lantern over it as she drew in two more Xs.
“The Cronus and Metis wings of the Gaean Air Force are wiped out. That means this whole half of the wheel, with us right in the middle, no longer contains any enemy air power. The nearest threat to us is all the way over here, in Hyperion. Bellinzona is still threatened by the Thea Wing. Now, if you were Gaea, what would you do?”
General Two studied the layout, and spoke.
“She must know by now that one of our groups outmatches one of hers.”
“But I don’t think she knows our total strength,” Cirocco said.
“Good. That might make her wait. An attack on Bellinzona from Thea is a possibility. But you say her main objective is the army.”
“It is.”
“Then…we’ll get a good deal of warning if the Hyperion Wing takes flight. You said our spies in Hyperion are excellent.”
“They are.”
“If I were her,” General Eight said, “I would start massing my planes. Shift the Hyperion group into the empty base in Mnemosyne, for instance, if that base is still usable.”
“It isn’t.”
“All right. And the Hyperion couldn’t make it to the Cronus base without being attacked by our Air Force. So I’d tell them to sit tight. I’d move the Thea wing to the base in Metis. Iapetus is out of the question, for the same reason as Cronus. How many buzz bombs can use one base?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Hm. Well, if more than one wing can land at one base, I’d start moving those more remote ones in closer. Phoebe, Crius, Tethys, into Metis and Hyperion. We don’t know the range, either, do we?”
“No. I suspect we’re at the outer limits of
the Hyperion group’s range. But we’ll get closer. I thought she might launch them at us now, while we’re still recovering, and move Rhea up to take their place. But I think what she’ll do right now…is nothing. So far, I’ve been right.” She pointed at the map again. “We have to defend the army, the city…and the base in Mnemosyne. The base in Iapetus is expendable—in fact, I’ve given orders to blow it up if they try to take it.”
“Why would they try that?”
“Because they’re going to be hungry. I propose a surprise attack. If it works, it might give us total air superiority.”
She watched the effect of that magical phrase. In large army engagements for two centuries, those words had been the key to victory.
Naturally, they wanted to know how she planned to do it. She told them.
Nine
“Begin Operation Hotfoot. Begin Operation Hotfoot.”
Perched on central cables from Hyperion to Mnemosyne, those Dione Supras who were gathered around the little radios began to chitter excitedly.
The dream-demon had said the radios would speak, and my, didn’t they ever? The Supras had sat entranced as the pristine gibberish issued from the clever machines. Mentioning exotic bafflers like Canuck, poesy like Rocky Road, speaking of metal Squadrons, Luftmorders, and a fellow named Roger, the radios had become a great source of fun to the Supras. They played rhyming games.
“Big Canuck, are you in position?”
“Intromission.”
“Inquisition.”
“Pig and puck.”
“Rig a duck.”
It was great fun.
The dream-demon and her insubstantial companion had explained what a hotfoot was. It appealed to the Supras. Not the mission—to which they were already committed—but the code name, and the practical joke. Supras had a rather rough sense of humor.