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DEMON

EIGHTEEN

“I just splashed one buzz bomb, Captain.” He was unable to keep the pride out of his voice. “Four to go.” He glanced at Nova and she had picked just that moment to glance at him. It couldn’t have a second, but she wore a wicked grin that said you’re okay, and, by God, he thought, we are, aren’t we? It was the closest they had ever been. Then she was watching the sky again.
“We won‘t admire the scenery on the way there,” Cirocco said.
“I think we’re going to be okay, Captain.”
“There’s three pulling around behind us,” Nova said.
“I see ’em.” He had them on the radar screen, and visually. He wondered what they were up to, and where the fourth one was.
“I’m going to check with Snitch, see what he knows about this,” Cirocco said. Conal didn’t bother to answer. He pulled up again, did a wide loop, and almost had a shot at the trailing buzz bomb in the formation chasing him, but didn’t take it as he knew he had better conserve his ammunition. So he led them a merry chase through the skies until they were strung out all over hell, and they broke off and re-grouped as he gained altitude, still worrying about that last one. It wasn‘t on his screen. He had a thought.
“One may be headed your way, Captain,” he said. “Maybe he’ll try an ambush when you’re taking off.”
“I’ll watch for it, thanks.”
Once again they were behind him. He planned his moves, and figured he’d be able to pick off one this time, maybe two, before Cirocco arrived. They were in a line back there, weaving as they chased him. He pulled up, starting slow, and saw the last in line pull up quickly. He didn’t like that. Then the Dragonfly lurched to the left and he had to fight the stick. He looked out his window and saw a ragged hole in the wing, just outside the cannon. As he watched, two more holes appeared, and something whined off the tougher canopy material over his head. He looked up at the deep gouge, then yanked back on the stick.
“They’re shooting at us!” Nova shouted.
He didn’t know quite what he did for the next twenty seconds. The ground was all over the place, off to the side one moment, then overhead, then twisting around them. It must have worked. For a moment one of them was in his sights and he fired, but missed. He looked back, and all three were far behind, but lining up again.
Maybe he should just outrun them. He didn’t think they could match his top speed. Discretion being the better part of valor, and all that . . .
But he was worried about the damaged wing. Dragonflys were incredibly tough, but there were limits.
He shrugged, and pushed the throttle all the way forward.
“In front of you!”
She must have had incredible eyes. He never would have seen it until it was too late—did not see it, in fact, until it was almost filling his vision, just a gaping mouth shooting little gouts of flame at them. But he pushed down on the stick, and they shot under the fourth buzz bomb with about a meter to spare. He heard an explosion and risked a look back. The tactic had not paid off. It had just missed him, and collided head-on with the third one in the row behind him. What was falling toward Mnemosyne didn’t even vaguely resemble airplanes.
“Conal,” Cirocco’s voice came, sounding concerned. “Snitch says they may be armed. I don‘t know how reliable that is.”
“Thanks!” he shouted, and dived as he heard the bullets whipping by him. He aimed for the ground and twisted and turned all the way down. Then something smashed through the fuselage and seemed to ricochet around inside. The cabin filled with acrid smoke, and Nova was shouting and stamping her feet.
“It’s alive, it’s alive!” she was screaming, but he didn’t have time for that. He kept turning, and once again they spread out behind him. When he thought he had a moment he looked to his right. Nova’s face was contorted, and she was stamping at something black that wiggled and hopped and smoked. It had a mouth, and it kept biting at her legs. As he watched, she put one of the unused flak-suit leggings over it and tromped on it.
There was a bang like a firecracker, and Nova’s leg was shoved up so hard her knee hit her chin. The whistling note he had heard since they were hit altered in pitch, and he saw the legging sucked through a four-inch hole in the floor.
He didn’t have time to worry about it. He was almost on the deck. He pulled up, and streaked over the desert at seven hundred kilometers per hour, fifty meters above the dunes. The left wing was screaming its agony.
And still he didn’t have time to think, because they were right behind him and still shooting.
“Well, hell,” he said. “Now I’m mad.” And it was true, he was furious, and he didn’t give much of a damn. So, without thinking about it, he pulled up, still dodging for all he was worth, kept going up until he judged he had just about enough room, then he throttled back and pushed the stick forward as far as it would go.
For an instant they were weightless, then the gee forces pulled them, harder and harder, up against the straps. They were aimed at the ground, not very far below. Five gees, six, seven. Ten gees, and their faces were red as the ground, with agonizing sluggishness, rotated around them. Outside, the wing complained, and inside, Conal wondered if he had cut it too close. The outside loop was as tight as he could possibly make it. All he could do was hope the buzz bombs followed him, and hope he would soon see a slice of sky creeping over the nose.
He saw the sky appear through the floor, then grow. Dimly, he thought he heard two impacts behind them, and he managed a smile, but his thoughts were moving slowly. If he had worked it right, those buzz bombs had just flown into the ground. Then he was flying level, upside-down. The sand was so close that if he lifted his hand, he could have touched it.
Gingerly he nursed the Dragonfly higher, until he had room to flip over again. He glanced at Nova, who looked green. He would have felt the same way if he’d had the time for it, but the wing was chattering at him now. He took it up slowly to one kilometer, having to throttle back three times as the left wing began to flap. The little plane felt like a car jolting over a rutted road. He glanced at the wing again, saw it was being held on by one thin strut, and cut the engine. They were crawling through the air in silence.
“Out!” he shouted, and watched her throw her door open. She had forgotten the harness release, so he hit it, shoved her, saw her push up and out, then leaped in the other direction and was falling.
He counted to ten—at seven his teeth started to chatter, when he realized he had never parachuted before—and pulled the cord. The chute billowed out, jerked him hard, and he let out a deep breath. He looked around, saw the twin columns of flame where his pursuers had crashed, and then spotted the bright orange blossom of Nova‘s chute.
He was five for five.

Gaea turned purple when she heard about it.
“He endangered my baby!” she roared, and began to stamp up and down the already churned grounds of Pandemonium. Everyone had to hustle to get out of her way. Many of them were successful.
“Who does he think he serves, anyway?” she thundered. “No chances, no chances are to be taken with that child! Didn’t I make that clear?”
There were affirmative shouts. Bolexes jostled closer for the shot, climbing over each other like beetles in a jar.
She raised a hand into the air and there was silence but for the whining of the cameras. She clenched it into a fist the size of a station wagon, and lightning crashed down from the sky to make a purple nimbus around her. Face contorted with rage, she drew her arm back like a javelin thrower and hurled something that might have been a bolt of hatred in the direction of Mnemosyne.
High on the central cable, the Luftmorder’s fuel tanks exploded. Sidewinders and red-eyes caught fire and found themselves streaking in their death lunges, to explode when their fuel burned out. Four buzz bombs also caught fire. The event was noisy and bright, and looked very much like the traditional Japanese pyrotechnic shell known as Bouquet of Chrysanthemums. When it was over, there were only nine Luftmorder combat groups in Gaea.
Robin, Chris, and Cirocco saw the show, and Cirocco edged around it warily, but nothing came down from the cable to chase them. Cirocco laid the wings back almost flush to the fuselage, and headed for the place that was full of black smoke. She kept calling for Conal, and getting no answer.
She slowed down at the twin columns of smoke, and began to circle. They all dreaded to find that one of the pyres marked the graves of Conal and Nova.
A flare crawled up into the sky and burst, and three minutes later Cirocco was setting down lightly. She had no sooner cut the motors than Chris and Robin were out, hurrying toward the two figures.
Conal had somehow managed to twist his ankle. Cirocco would not have thought it possible in the soft sand—then she remembered she had never gotten around to the parachute training she kept meaning to give him.
He had an arm draped over Nova’s shoulders and she had an arm around his waist, and they managed to move in the one-quarter gee about as quickly as one person could walk. Nova had four inches on him, and he was wearing a silly grin, and Cirocco wondered just how badly that ankle was really hurt.
“Do we have any time, Cirocco?” he asked.
“It depends. What’s up?” She thought about Adam, and knew they’d have to hang well back if they might be attacked by buzz bombs again. Then she thought about buzz bombs, and her eyes went nervously to the skies. They made a hell of a target out here.
“There might be something in the fuselage we ought to take a look at. It’s right over there.”
“I’ll get it,” Nova said, and dropped him. He squawked, overbalanced, and sat down in the sand. They watched Nova running toward the wreckage of the Dragonfly.
“They were shooting at us,” Conal said. “Snitch was right.”
He told them about the attack, how he had shot down one and made two crash and lucked out on the other two. Cirocco told him about the explosion, which Conal and Nova had seen from a great distance.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what caused it,” Cirocco said. “But it was in the spot where the buzz bomb base used to be. And it wasn’t just jet fuel, either. There was a lot of explosives, and maybe some solid rocket fuel.”
Nova returned, breathing hard, and held out the remains of the thing that had tried to bite her.
It looked a little like an exploding cigar, after the explosion. It was about four inches of flexible, hollow tube. One end was scorched and the other was ragged, splayed out. Nova pointed to the ragged end.
“There was a head there,” she said. “It must have been hard, because it clanged when it hit the floor. It was jerking around like—”
“Like a fish in the bottom of a boat,” Conal said.
“It didn’t have any eyes. But it had a mouth, and it kept snapping at me. I stomped on it and its head exploded.”
Cirocco took it from Nova. She handled it gingerly, and sniffed the burnt end.
“It’s sort of a rocket bullet,” she said finally. “I guess it was supposed to explode when it hit. It must have had one hell of a hard head to get through the Dragonfly hull. But, see, if it twists it can aim itself a little after it’s ignited.” She grimaced, then looked at Nova, “You say it blew up under your foot.”
“Part of a flak suit was over it.”
“Still, it wasn’t enough of a charge to blow your foot off.” She sighed, and tossed it away. “But it blew a hole in the floor. Friends, a buzz bomb could carry one hell of a lot of those little abominations. I don’t like it one damn bit.”
She couldn’t think of anything to do but load them all back into the Mantis. She listened to Conal’s description of the radar-jamming that had happened, and of the shape of the buzz bombs he had shot down. Most of the changes sounded to Cirocco like they were meant to confuse radar—that complex of characteristics known as “stealth.”
Then they took off and headed east again. Soon they located the angel, and followed at a discrete two kilometers. Cirocco kept one eye on the radar and the other on the sky.

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DEMON

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EIGHTEEN

“You’ll have to take a close look at those one day,” Conal said, when he saw Nova staring out at the south-central Mnemosyne cable. “I doubt you’ve ever seen anything quite like it.”
“It looks so small from here,” Nova said. “Just a thread.”
“That thread is about five kilometers thick. It’s made of hundreds of strands. There’s animals and plants that live on them and never come down to the ground.”
“My mother said Cirocco Jones climbed to the top of one once.” She craned her neck and discovered the point where the cable joined the arched roof of Mnemosyne. “I don’t see how she did it.”
“She did it with Gaby. And it wasn’t one of these. These go straight up. The one Cirocco climbed angled like those ahead of us. See how they bend up and go into the Oceanus spoke? You can’t quite see into the spoke from here. She tells me they’re what hold Gaea together.”
“Why is everything so dead here?”
“It’s because of the sandworm. He could pick his teeth with Mount Everest.”
“Do you think …” She had to pause, and yawn hugely. “ . . . you think we’ll see him?”
“Say, why don’t you get some sleep?”
“I‘ll be okay.”
“No, really. You ought to. I‘ll wake you if anything important happens, and if nothing does, then you can spell me in a couple revs.”
“How long is a rev?”
“Near enough to an hour.”
“All right. I will. Thanks.” She turned slightly in her seat.
“How’s the hand? You want those bandages wrapped again?”
“It’s okay. I banged it while I was hanging onto the wing.” She gave him a sleepy, friendly smile, then seemed to catch herself at it. Conal suppressed his own grin; she was definitely improving. She had to remember to be surly. Maybe she’d forget entirely one of these days. Could happiness be too far behind?
She closed her eyes and fell asleep in no more than ten seconds. Conal envied her. It usually took him at least a minute.
Feeling a little guilty, he studied her as she slept. Her face was relaxed, and she looked even younger than her eighteen years.
She still had a little girl’s face, with a lot of cheek and a protruding lower lip. Conal could see her mother‘s features in her upturned nose and large jaw. With her eyes closed that unsettling resemblance to Chris was hard to find.
He resolutely turned away when he found his eyes straying to the full curves of the breast, the round hips, the long legs. Suffice it to say she had a child’s face on a woman’s body.
“Advisory,” the computer said. “Hostile aircraft have been known to—”
Conal hit the override, and glanced at Nova. Her eyes fluttered, then she made an un-ladylike sound and nestled deeper into the cushions.
Once again, a nuisance. The damn computer had a long memory. The results of Cirocco’s air war with the buzz bombs had been fed into it, so now it tried to warn Conal of a base that had been empty for eighteen years. The buzzers had liked to congregate at central cables. They could hang for years, nose down, waiting their chance. They had to hang like that, as they couldn’t start their engines without first having some forward motion. Primitive ramjets, that’s all they had been, nothing like the ultra-refined torch that hummed quietly in the back of the Dragonfly.
He was glad they were all dead.
Still, wouldn’t it be funny if . . .
He glanced at the central cable, and saw a tiny speck falling toward the sand. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and it was gone. He kept looking at the cable, then shook his head. It was easy to forget how gigantic it was. What did he expect to see? Buzz bombs clinging to the side?
On the other hand, just what the hell could that speck have been?
He fiddled with the radar, but nothing came back. He glanced up at the angel carrying Adam. Nothing wrong there.
On impulse, he fed power to the engine and climbed rapidly to six kilometers.
And the radar pinged.
“Alert,” the computer said. “Four—correction, five unidentified aircraft approaching. Correction, three unident—correction, four—”
Conal overrode the voice, which was just a distraction. The graphic display would tell him a lot more.
But it didn’t. He saw two blips clearly, down on the deck, moving rapidly in his direction. Then there were three, then another popped into being, “RADAR COUNTERMEASURES IN EFFECT,” the computer printed on his screen.
That would seem to indicate Dragonflys, or Cirocco returning in the Mantis. He supposed she could be flying three planes on autopilot, but what for, and why hadn’t she mentioned it to him? But buzz bombs couldn’t jam radar.
“Hold on there, Conal,” he muttered to himself. The plain fact was he had never seen a buzz bomb. He had never fought one. And believing that things always stayed the same in Gaea was a quick way to be dead.
“Wake up,” he said, shaking Nova’s shoulder. She was alert very quickly.
“Cirocco, I have some unidentified blips on my screen. At least four, probably five. They don’t reply to transponders. They are closing on me at about . . . five hundred kilometers per hour, and they are employing radar countermeasures. I have climbed to six kilometers in case . . . in case they take hostile action. I—” he paused, and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Hell, Cirocco, what should I do?”
They both listened, and heard nothing but static. Nova was searching the sky above them, but he doubted she would see anything. Then, bless her, she turned quickly and began digging out the rest of their flak suits.
“Cirocco, do you read?” Again, silence. She was probably out of the plane, gathering weaponry, doing a check-out. Maybe she could hear him, and was on her way to the radio.
“Cirocco, I’m going to lead them away from Adam, and then I’m going to shoot them down. I’ll leave this channel open.” Nova was handing him a helmet and leggings. He put the helmet on, then waved the rest away. “Forget about that, we don’t have time. Tighten your straps and hold on.” The instant she had the strap pulled tight around her lap, Conal pulled back on the stick and pushed the throttle forward. The little plane leaped forward and curved up like a rocket.
Nova was looking forward, and side to side.
“The ones on the radar were under us,” Conal said. “They were hugging the ground. So they’ll be behind us now, and I don’t think—”
“Right there,” Nova said, pointing forward and to the left.
It was heading straight for them, plunging like a hawk, growing bigger.
Conal turned right and pulled back, and they flipped over. The buzz bomb screeched by them, howling. Conal had a glimpse of a shark’s mouth, gulping air, and of wings that arched high and then swept down and back. They were buffeted in the heated air from the buzz bomb’s tailpipe, then Conal got them turned around and dipped a wing for a better view.
“Why didn’t you shoot?” Nova asked.
“I . . . I forgot I had guns,” he confessed. “You see them down there?”
“Yeah. The first one is pulling around, the other four—”
“I’ve got ’em.” The four were climbing in tight formation. It took Conal back to a cold winter day. He had been ten, and the Snowbirds, Canada’s precision flying team, had put on a show. They had flown wingtip to wingtip, turning as a unit. And they had climbed just like these were doing, and at the top of the climb the buzz bombs spread out, trailing black plumes of exhaust, quartering the sky.
Conal had picked them all up on radar now. The images were clear; the computer, fooled at first, was learning the new radar signatures. And it was a damn good thing he had radar, he realized. It was amazing how quickly the devils flew out of sight.
He felt rather helpless. The two of them watched the radar blips twist and turn without apparent pattern. Conal felt he should be preparing some maneuver, as the buzz bombs so obviously were. But he didn’t know anything about aerial combat.
He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, and started to work it out.
What did he know about buzz bombs?
“They’re big, clumsy, relatively slow, and they weren’t equipped for air-to-air encounters.” He could hear Cirocco’s voice in his memory. She had not talked a lot about the creatures. “Their big tactic was ramming. I had to watch out for that, since they didn’t seem to care whether they lived or died. One got me that way, once, and I was damn lucky to walk away from it.”
That was all very well, and the one that had almost rammed them had certainly been big—possibly three times the length of the little Dragonfly. But clumsy, and slow? He looked again at the twisting trails in the sky. He thought he was faster than they were, and certainly more maneuverable, but these didn’t look all that clumsy.
“There’s one coming in behind us,” Nova said.
“I see him.” He tried a few things, feeling it out. All he could remember was dogfights in movies. There, they came out of the sun—but that wouldn’t work well in Gaea. And they got on your tail and shot you down. Since buzz bombs didn’t have guns, that wouldn‘t work.
He began to feel better. He slowed a little, let the pursuer move in closer, then went through a rapid series of turns and dives, all the time keeping his eyes open for the other four. The one behind him repeated his moves, but more slowly, overshooting. His confidence grew. Okay, the thing to do . . .
He put the thought into action, pulling back very hard on the stick, going up and up and over, feeling five gees press him into his seat. He kept going, through the loop, and the buzz bomb made a wide loop, falling back, and it was a little slow when Conal made an eight-gee right turn and a dive, and a sudden twist . . . and there it was, almost under him now, so he throttled back and the wings spread and shuddered as they dug into the air and lifted him but he kept the nose down firmly . . .
The thing was in his sights, and he found himself shouting as the wing cannons chattered. He kept shouting as he followed its frantic twists. Then it was spewing orange flame and he had to pull up and give it more throttle or he was going to fly up its tailpipe. He ripped through black smoke and saw the buzz bomb below him, one wing torn away, spiraling toward the ground ten kilometers below.
“Just like in the movies!” he roared. Nova was bouncing up and down in her seat, making a weird sound like nothing he’d ever heard, but you just knew it was jubilation even before you saw the eager light in her eyes. It was a fierce light, matched by the gleam of her teeth, and Conal loved her for it.
“Conal! Conal, do you read?”
“I’m here, Cirocco.”
“We’ll be taking off in about two minutes. What’s your situation?”
“I just splashed one buzz bomb, Captain.” He was unable to keep the pride out of his voice. “Four to go.” He glanced at Nova and she had picked just that moment to glance at him. It couldn’t have a second, but she wore a wicked grin that said you’re okay, and, by God, he thought, we are, aren’t we? It was the closest they had ever been. Then she was watching the sky again.
“We won‘t admire the scenery on the way there,” Cirocco said.
“I think we’re going to be okay, Captain.”
“There’s three pulling around behind us,” Nova said.
“I see ’em.” He had them on the radar screen, and visually. He wondered what they were up to, and where the fourth one was.
“I’m going to check with Snitch, see what he knows about this,” Cirocco said. Conal didn’t bother to answer. He pulled up again, did a wide loop, and almost had a shot at the trailing buzz bomb in the formation chasing him, but didn’t take it as he knew he had better conserve his ammunition. So he led them a merry chase through the skies until they were strung out all over hell, and they broke off and re-grouped as he gained altitude, still worrying about that last one. It wasn‘t on his screen. He had a thought.
“One may be headed your way, Captain,” he said. “Maybe he’ll try an ambush when you’re taking off.”
“I’ll watch for it, thanks.”
Once again they were behind him. He planned his moves, and figured he’d be able to pick off one this time, maybe two, before Cirocco arrived. They were in a line back there, weaving as they chased him. He pulled up, starting slow, and saw the last in line pull up quickly. He didn’t like that. Then the Dragonfly lurched to the left and he had to fight the stick. He looked out his window and saw a ragged hole in the wing, just outside the cannon. As he watched, two more holes appeared, and something whined off the tougher canopy material over his head. He looked up at the deep gouge, then yanked back on the stick.
“They’re shooting at us!” Nova shouted.
He didn’t know quite what he did for the next twenty seconds. The ground was all over the place, off to the side one moment, then overhead, then twisting around them. It must have worked. For a moment one of them was in his sights and he fired, but missed. He looked back, and all three were far behind, but lining up again.
Maybe he should just outrun them. He didn’t think they could match his top speed. Discretion being the better part of valor, and all that . . .
But he was worried about the damaged wing. Dragonflys were incredibly tough, but there were limits.
He shrugged, and pushed the throttle all the way forward.
“In front of you!”
She must have had incredible eyes. He never would have seen it until it was too late—did not see it, in fact, until it was almost filling his vision, just a gaping mouth shooting little gouts of flame at them. But he pushed down on the stick, and they shot under the fourth buzz bomb with about a meter to spare. He heard an explosion and risked a look back. The tactic had not paid off. It had just missed him, and collided head-on with the third one in the row behind him. What was falling toward Mnemosyne didn’t even vaguely resemble airplanes.
“Conal,” Cirocco’s voice came, sounding concerned. “Snitch says they may be armed. I don‘t know how reliable that is.”
“Thanks!” he shouted, and dived as he heard the bullets whipping by him. He aimed for the ground and twisted and turned all the way down. Then something smashed through the fuselage and seemed to ricochet around inside. The cabin filled with acrid smoke, and Nova was shouting and stamping her feet.
“It’s alive, it’s alive!” she was screaming, but he didn’t have time for that. He kept turning, and once again they spread out behind him. When he thought he had a moment he looked to his right. Nova’s face was contorted, and she was stamping at something black that wiggled and hopped and smoked. It had a mouth, and it kept biting at her legs. As he watched, she put one of the unused flak-suit leggings over it and tromped on it.
There was a bang like a firecracker, and Nova’s leg was shoved up so hard her knee hit her chin. The whistling note he had heard since they were hit altered in pitch, and he saw the legging sucked through a four-inch hole in the floor.
He didn’t have time to worry about it. He was almost on the deck. He pulled up, and streaked over the desert at seven hundred kilometers per hour, fifty meters above the dunes. The left wing was screaming its agony.
And still he didn’t have time to think, because they were right behind him and still shooting.
“Well, hell,” he said. “Now I’m mad.” And it was true, he was furious, and he didn’t give much of a damn. So, without thinking about it, he pulled up, still dodging for all he was worth, kept going up until he judged he had just about enough room, then he throttled back and pushed the stick forward as far as it would go.
For an instant they were weightless, then the gee forces pulled them, harder and harder, up against the straps. They were aimed at the ground, not very far below. Five gees, six, seven. Ten gees, and their faces were red as the ground, with agonizing sluggishness, rotated around them. Outside, the wing complained, and inside, Conal wondered if he had cut it too close. The outside loop was as tight as he could possibly make it. All he could do was hope the buzz bombs followed him, and hope he would soon see a slice of sky creeping over the nose.
He saw the sky appear through the floor, then grow. Dimly, he thought he heard two impacts behind them, and he managed a smile, but his thoughts were moving slowly. If he had worked it right, those buzz bombs had just flown into the ground. Then he was flying level, upside-down. The sand was so close that if he lifted his hand, he could have touched it.
Gingerly he nursed the Dragonfly higher, until he had room to flip over again. He glanced at Nova, who looked green. He would have felt the same way if he’d had the time for it, but the wing was chattering at him now. He took it up slowly to one kilometer, having to throttle back three times as the left wing began to flap. The little plane felt like a car jolting over a rutted road. He glanced at the wing again, saw it was being held on by one thin strut, and cut the engine. They were crawling through the air in silence.
“Out!” he shouted, and watched her throw her door open. She had forgotten the harness release, so he hit it, shoved her, saw her push up and out, then leaped in the other direction and was falling.
He counted to ten—at seven his teeth started to chatter, when he realized he had never parachuted before—and pulled the cord. The chute billowed out, jerked him hard, and he let out a deep breath. He looked around, saw the twin columns of flame where his pursuers had crashed, and then spotted the bright orange blossom of Nova‘s chute.
He was five for five.

Gaea turned purple when she heard about it.
“He endangered my baby!” she roared, and began to stamp up and down the already churned grounds of Pandemonium. Everyone had to hustle to get out of her way. Many of them were successful.
“Who does he think he serves, anyway?” she thundered. “No chances, no chances are to be taken with that child! Didn’t I make that clear?”
There were affirmative shouts. Bolexes jostled closer for the shot, climbing over each other like beetles in a jar.
She raised a hand into the air and there was silence but for the whining of the cameras. She clenched it into a fist the size of a station wagon, and lightning crashed down from the sky to make a purple nimbus around her. Face contorted with rage, she drew her arm back like a javelin thrower and hurled something that might have been a bolt of hatred in the direction of Mnemosyne.
High on the central cable, the Luftmorder’s fuel tanks exploded. Sidewinders and red-eyes caught fire and found themselves streaking in their death lunges, to explode when their fuel burned out. Four buzz bombs also caught fire. The event was noisy and bright, and looked very much like the traditional Japanese pyrotechnic shell known as Bouquet of Chrysanthemums. When it was over, there were only nine Luftmorder combat groups in Gaea.
Robin, Chris, and Cirocco saw the show, and Cirocco edged around it warily, but nothing came down from the cable to chase them. Cirocco laid the wings back almost flush to the fuselage, and headed for the place that was full of black smoke. She kept calling for Conal, and getting no answer.
She slowed down at the twin columns of smoke, and began to circle. They all dreaded to find that one of the pyres marked the graves of Conal and Nova.
A flare crawled up into the sky and burst, and three minutes later Cirocco was setting down lightly. She had no sooner cut the motors than Chris and Robin were out, hurrying toward the two figures.
Conal had somehow managed to twist his ankle. Cirocco would not have thought it possible in the soft sand—then she remembered she had never gotten around to the parachute training she kept meaning to give him.
He had an arm draped over Nova’s shoulders and she had an arm around his waist, and they managed to move in the one-quarter gee about as quickly as one person could walk. Nova had four inches on him, and he was wearing a silly grin, and Cirocco wondered just how badly that ankle was really hurt.
“Do we have any time, Cirocco?” he asked.
“It depends. What’s up?” She thought about Adam, and knew they’d have to hang well back if they might be attacked by buzz bombs again. Then she thought about buzz bombs, and her eyes went nervously to the skies. They made a hell of a target out here.
“There might be something in the fuselage we ought to take a look at. It’s right over there.”
“I’ll get it,” Nova said, and dropped him. He squawked, overbalanced, and sat down in the sand. They watched Nova running toward the wreckage of the Dragonfly.
“They were shooting at us,” Conal said. “Snitch was right.”
He told them about the attack, how he had shot down one and made two crash and lucked out on the other two. Cirocco told him about the explosion, which Conal and Nova had seen from a great distance.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what caused it,” Cirocco said. “But it was in the spot where the buzz bomb base used to be. And it wasn’t just jet fuel, either. There was a lot of explosives, and maybe some solid rocket fuel.”
Nova returned, breathing hard, and held out the remains of the thing that had tried to bite her.
It looked a little like an exploding cigar, after the explosion. It was about four inches of flexible, hollow tube. One end was scorched and the other was ragged, splayed out. Nova pointed to the ragged end.
“There was a head there,” she said. “It must have been hard, because it clanged when it hit the floor. It was jerking around like—”
“Like a fish in the bottom of a boat,” Conal said.
“It didn’t have any eyes. But it had a mouth, and it kept snapping at me. I stomped on it and its head exploded.”
Cirocco took it from Nova. She handled it gingerly, and sniffed the burnt end.
“It’s sort of a rocket bullet,” she said finally. “I guess it was supposed to explode when it hit. It must have had one hell of a hard head to get through the Dragonfly hull. But, see, if it twists it can aim itself a little after it’s ignited.” She grimaced, then looked at Nova, “You say it blew up under your foot.”
“Part of a flak suit was over it.”
“Still, it wasn’t enough of a charge to blow your foot off.” She sighed, and tossed it away. “But it blew a hole in the floor. Friends, a buzz bomb could carry one hell of a lot of those little abominations. I don’t like it one damn bit.”
She couldn’t think of anything to do but load them all back into the Mantis. She listened to Conal’s description of the radar-jamming that had happened, and of the shape of the buzz bombs he had shot down. Most of the changes sounded to Cirocco like they were meant to confuse radar—that complex of characteristics known as “stealth.”
Then they took off and headed east again. Soon they located the angel, and followed at a discrete two kilometers. Cirocco kept one eye on the radar and the other on the sky.

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