"Yes, Captain."
"Serpent. As soon as you get your radio, you will head west, conserving your strength. You can't outrun an angel, but we will try to guide you from the air. Take weapons."
"Yes, Captain."
"Conal, you come with me. Robin, Nova, you can come with me or stay here, as you please."
She was already on her way out of the room when she kicked one of the loose Titanide eggs Adam had been playing with. She froze, then walked slowly to the wall where it lay, bent over, and picked it up.
Cirocco held the egg up to the light and stared at it, and for the first time in living memory, the Wizard looked stunned. The egg was transparent.
She dropped it and stood for a moment with her shoulders slumped.
"Rocky," she said. "Gather all these eggs. Be sure you get them all. Destroy all the furniture, rip up all the pillows, but don't miss any. I'll have Chris radio back a count after we get away.
"When you're sure you have them all, destroy them."
It took a huge effort, but Cirocco managed to get her mind off the Titanide eggs and back to the problem at hand.
Both Robin and Nova had elected to join her. She did not try to dissuade them, nor did she question their reasons. They followed her into the jungle and up the hill toward the cave.
It was funny how quickly it all came back. The habit of command. Starting with what she felt was no natural talent for it and in an era when there were still few female role models she could study, she had worked doggedly at learning how it was done. She had talked to a thousand old men, naval captains, some of whom had commanded ships as far back as the First Nuclear War. Then there had been the space captains, and whole new traditions, new ways of doing things ... and yet with much in common. People were still people. Maybe they were a little more willing to let a woman command them than they had been in 1944, but the problems of insuring automatic obedience and earning the respect that would nurture a strong, united, and loyal crew were much the same as they had always been.
There were a thousand things you could learn, myriad ways of attaining that improbable position whereby men and women were willing to obey your orders. NASA had sponsored leadership courses and Cirocco had taken them all. She had read autobiographies of great leaders.
She knew, secretly, that she had no talent for command. It was all a false front, but if one kept it in place twenty-four hours a day no one was the wiser.
She lost her first command. Afterward, she had never been able to put the survivors back into a functioning team. They all went their own ways-all but Gaby and Bill-and she had lived for many years afterward with a deep feeling of failure.
NASA had been alarmed when only two of the seven people from Ringmaster could be convinced to return to Earth, and infuriated when they learned the Captain was among the five deserters. But NASA was a civilian organization, and after discharging what she saw as her responsibilities, telling everything she knew about what had happened and why, she felt justified in resigning her commission in a place of her own choosing.
NASA couldn't court-martial her, much as they would have liked to, even in absentia. But they did the civilian equivalent, which was to set up a dozen commissions and boards of enquiry.
She had had almost a century to think things over. In that time she had given a lot of thought to leadership. There were different kinds of leaders, she had concluded. Some were good, and some were bad. It was probably true that there were leaders who never suffered the doubts she had experienced, who were absolutely sure of themselves and everything they did. They were the egomaniacs, monomaniacs, megalomaniacs-Atilla, Alexander, Charlemagne, Mussolini, Patton, Suslov-men with obsessions, driven men, often psychotic or paranoid. It was even possible for them to be good leaders, but Cirocco felt that, by and large, the world was a worse place when they were through stamping their designs upon it.
For decades now Cirocco had been relieved of that kind of responsibility. She was most content when she had no one depending on her, and when she had to depend on no one. Her sole responsibility for the last two decades had been to keep herself alive, at almost any cost. Now maybe that was changing.
But when the need arose, it was satisfying to discover how quickly she could change gears.
Chris caught up with the rest of them just as they reached the cave.
It was high, wide, and deep: the perfect place for part of Cirocco's arsenal. The cave seemed to stand open, undefended. Actually, there were guardians so well-concealed that an intruder could walk over one without seeing it. Cirocco had gathered the creatures in Rhea, where they had once guarded an ancient idol, and had learned how to re-program their simple brains to suit her needs. They ignored Titanides. But any human not accompanied by Chris or Cirocco would have been dead before entering the cave.
Inside were the aircraft. There were six of them, but three had been cannibalized for parts to keep the others running. Twenty years ago, when Cirocco bought them and had them shipped to Gaea, they had been state-of-the-art. That state hadn't improved much in thirteen years, and not at all since the War. They were magnificent, incredible planes, bearing the same relation to the clumsy dinosaurs Cirocco had grown up piloting as the Wright Brothers Flyer did to a supersonic jet, though the differences would not have been obvious to the untrained observer.
She started her walk-around.
"How long since you took them out, Chris?" she asked.
"About half a kilorev, Captain. According to your schedule. I observed no problems with the Two and the Four, but the Eight is going to need some work."
"No matter. We won't need it. Robin. Nova. Can either of you fly?"
"Fly an airplane?" Robin asked. "I'm sorry, Captain."
"No need to overdo the Captain bit."
"I've ... back home, I fl-fl-flew a ... "
"Speak up, child. I won't hurt you anymore, I promise."
"I've soared," Nova said, in a half-whisper. "We have these gliders, and we go out along the axis and-"
"I've heard of it," Cirocco said. She considered it, still going over the Dragonfly Two, which was the smaller of the available planes and the one already perched on the catapult. "It's better than nothing. Conal, you'll fly this one, and Nova will go with you. Familiarize her with the basics if you get any free time. Get in now and heat it up and start your check-out. Chris, assemble five sets of survival gear. The basic kit, extra rations, hand weapons, rifles, clothing. Anything else you can think of that might come in handy and doesn't weigh too damn much."
"Flak suits?" Chris asked.
Cirocco paused, started to say something, then listened to her gut.
"Yes. Nova can wear one of mine. Get the smallest size you can for Robin, and-"
"I got you," Chris said. He was watching her, his eyes narrowed. "What about the cannons? You want them loaded?"
Cirocco looked at the Two, which had heavy-caliber guns mounted in its transparent wings.
"Yes. I'll get that. Robin, you help him."
She got two cases of shells for the wing cannons and loaded them, hearing Conal conducting his radio check with the Titanides. She snapped the covers closed as Chris and Robin loaded the gear into the space behind the seats.
"Stand clear!" Conal called out. He fired a test round from each cannon. It was quite loud in the cave.
Cirocco dragged the fuel line over the cave floor and snapped it to the fuselage, then watched as the big, collapsible tank filled to capacity.
"Get in," she told Nova.
"Where can I step?"
"Anyplace. The thing's a hell of a lot stronger than it looks." She understood Nova's concern. When Cirocco first saw the Dragonflys she thought some horrible mistake had been made. They seemed to be made out of cellophane and coat hangers. Nova climbed in and Cirocco slammed the door behind her. She watched as Conal showed her how to work the straps.