Demon

by John Varley

  "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 away. 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 refuel. 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.

  They had been setting up for it for kilorevs. It was unpleasant. They did not like the stink of kerosene. But they did it, for the Demon.

  And now the code word had been spoken by the radio. The plan had to be executed instantly, so it would be simultaneous all over Gaea. Any other way would be perilous to the Supras, Gaby had been quite emphatic about that.

  "Oh, such dynamite there will have been," one of them said.

  "Bouquets of Chrysanthemums," one gasped, a bit previously.

  "Showers of flowers."

  "Break out the soothing salves," one worried.

  "Casualties are to be expected," another encouraged, referring to the dastardly attack on the nest in Tethys.

  "The sword cuts both ways."

  "That's a pyrotechnicality."

  "Is there film in the camera?"

  They dropped away from the cable and plunged toward the nest of vipers clinging below them.

  The Luftmorder was only peripherally aware of the angels until they got within fifty meters. They had been around so much, his perceptions had simply edited them out, like smart radar erasing the signatures of birds.

  Then they were among the squadron, chittering and chattering, actually coming close enough to touch his vassal aeromorphs. He saw one put something against the side of a buzz bomb. He heard something rattle down the exhaust pipe of another.

  With a screech, he launched himself into the air, fell to ignition speed, and lit up all four engines. Behind him his squadron was following ...

  One exploded. The limpet mine attached to its side tore a hole down to the combustion chamber, and the buzz bomb lurched to the side and went spinning endlessly down, trailing flame and smoke.

  Another never made it away from base. As its engine turned on, the dynamite bomb lodged in its afterburner burst it apart. Only pieces were left to flutter toward the ground.

  The Luftmorder banked hard and began to climb. He felt no hatred, only an overpowering urge to explode every angel in Gaea.

  He worked at it for a time. He loosed a few sidewinders, managed to score one hit on an angel in flight. He sent a missile into their nest. From the look of the explosion, it was already empty.

  And the angels were impossible to hit. He watched as his underlings twisted through the air, trying to get them. Before long there were no angels to be seen. They had flown to the cable and crawled into tiny spaces there. It would be futile to shoot at them, and it might endanger ...

  So great had been his concentration that only then did he notice the base was on fire. Great gouts of fuel flowed from the attachments he had so recently abandoned. It spilled down the side of the cable. He knew it would continue to burn until the Source-whatever that might be-ran dry.

  His brain clicked this piece of information into place, and he formed his next tactic around it.

  He had no fire extinguishing capability. He had not been informed of any other being in Gaea equipped to fight such an inaccessible blaze. Therefore, the base was lost. Therefore, he must defend the upper base. He climbed ...

  Soon he could see that it, too, was on fire.

  Click. Another bit of information filed.

  He called upon his squadron to form up around him. There was a base in Thea. He would take them there, provisionally. He radioed a terse description of the engagement to Gaea, and awaited her Orders, confident that a flight to Thea was the only logical choice.

  He was not worried.

  In the six remaining regions of Gaea that supported air groups, Luftmorders and buzz bombs fell away from burning bases. The Tethys squadron got off with the lightest losses: only two buzz bombs. Crius lost three buzz bombs and their Luftmorder, and milled aimlessly around the flaming cable, unable to think where to go. Hyperion was hit hardest, with six of the nine buzz bombs crashed or disabled in the initial attack.

  The Dione Supras suffered casualties, as they had known they would. In a few decarevs they would gather to mourn them, after enough time had passed to cherish their memories.

  In the meantime, they put their own losses out of their minds.

  It had certainly been a delicious joke.

  "Big Canuck, all the bases are burning. Repeat, all. Every survivor is in the air. Right now there is a great deal of confusion."

  Conal swallowed hard. He knew they'd get it sorted out eventually. Some of them would get here. Perhaps a lot of them.

  He listened as Cirocco relayed the reports of damages, added them up in his mind, and matched them mentally against his own forces. Allowing for the unknown variables-maximum range, and the possibility of fueling stations the Supras didn't know about-it came out pretty good.

  Rhea and Hyperion squads would head for Cronus, and the army. It was their only possible target. His fliers were waiting for them in Mnemosyne. There was the possibility of an ambush there, though he wasn't counting on it.

  Crius could go either way-though if their estimates of maximum range were right, it would do them no good.

  The Thean squadron could probably reach Cronus. Tethys might make it, too. Phoebe couldn't, but would have a shot at Bellinzona.

  Conal's big advantage, tactically, was that he'd be able to take them on in waves. He thought it highly unlikely that the closer ones would orbit in place, wasting fuel, waiting for the stragglers to catch up. He didn't think Luftmorder minds worked that way, for one thing. They seemed to fixate on a target and then go to suicidal lengths to reach it and destroy it.

  He deployed his squads accordingly.

  Orders came. The Luftmorder had guessed correctly... up to a point. He had expected to be assigned the city as his target. But the Orders, relayed through the Thea Luftmorder, were short and explicit. He and his squadron were to fly to Cronus and attack the army. He was to fight until there was not an enemy plane in the sky, and not a bomb left to drop on the army. Only then was he to consider his further survival.

  This was no surprise, at least the last part wasn't. It hardly needed saying, as it was part of the standing Orders. What failed to click properly into his tactical computer was what had not been said. He had not been told to re-fuel at the Thea base.


  He came as close as a Luftmorder could come to disobeying Orders. He decided that, as he neared the base in Thea, he would request permission to re-fuel. This could not in any way be seen as disobedience. All proprieties were satisfied by this decision.

  Then he reached the Thea central cable and saw the base was burning. It explained everything.

  Once again, he was not worried. He pressed on toward Cronus.

  Conal's Fifth and Sixth squads stayed in the radar shadow of the Mnemosyne cable. When the Hyperion Second came streaking by, intent on Cronus and the army four hundred kilometers away, the smaller planes fell on them like hawks swooping from a great height, and tore them to pieces.

  The Hyperion Luftmorder, before dying, managed to warn the Rhea squadron about the trap in Mnemosyne. They would arrive in about twenty minutes.

  The Second and Fourth squads of the Bellinzona Air Force tried a similar trick in Dione, but had to wait to be sure the enemy was not heading for the city. The Thea squadron had a little more warning, and gave a good account of itself. Conal, back at the base in Iapetus, ready to bring the First Squad up in relief, listened as three of his pilots died and a fourth was forced to eject. One of his squad leaders was among the dead, so he combined the six remaining planes of the Second and Fourth into one squad and ordered them back to lapetus for re-fueling.

  He took off for Dione at the head of the First squad-five of his eleven remaining planes in the East.

  Tethys was going to make a try for Bellinzona, that seemed certain. It would be insane for them to push on into Cronus.

  The First squad, from Rhea, was already getting low on fuel when they met Conal's Sixth and Seventh-the Seventh consisting of only two planes which had been assigned to guard the Mnemosyne base while the Hyperion squadron was being attacked. Now the Fifth was refueling, and would not come to help out. There was still the chance of a last wave arriving from Crius, and the base had to be defended.

  Thea began firing missiles from a great distance. Flights of sidewinders came streaking out of the west before the squadron was even in sight.