Demon

"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 go

"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."