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  The Gods of War

  Created by

  CHRISTOPHER STASHEFF

  THE GODS OF WAR

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1992 by Bill Fawcett & Associates

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, N.Y. 10471

  ISBN: 0-671-72146-1

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-089-7

  Cover art by Stephen Hickman

  Interludes by Bill Fawcett

  First printing, December 1992

  Distributed by SIMON & SCHUSTER 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10020

  Printed in the United States of America

  BIRTH

  Tek arose out of the sand of the nearly endless desert that is the furthest boundary of form for Valhalla and Olympus. The exact location, paradoxically, was near one edge of the infinite ethereal plane. Such concerns of physics and geography were barely of concern to the gods. In a way he was created by the transistor and conceived in a million targeting computers. That made the silica and metals from which he was born ironically appropriate.

  Mankind's newest war god would later speak of how he rose majestically from a virgin bed of silica and rare earths. Actually the young god staggered for a few paces, knelt with one pale hand pressed to the ground for a long time, then instinctively shaped some of the ethereal matter into a low wall and leaned against it as he rose on unsteady feet. Even as he stood, his shape flowed and ebbed. Like all new gods, Tek was weak, devoid of any real measure of strength or even self-awareness.

  It is the faith of their believers that powers men's gods. Tek's faithful were few and unaware that they had given rise to yet another war god. In this case it was their blind faith in the technology of armaments that had summoned him forth. But few believed in the power of technology to win a war. He received a surge of strength when the U.S. Congress funded the development of an Atomic Weapon. But this was barely enough to make the godling aware of his own existence. Years may have passed, perhaps decades, but Tek was not yet capable of sensing clearly the passage of time.

  For a long time it was just enough for Tek to exist. The novelty of it all, the sensations, the flow of mana across this ethereal plane into which he had been summoned, were new and exciting. His form reflected the new god's confusion and wonder. It flowed from that of one type of humankind to another, now tank commander, now an engineer designing a better fighter plane, now a marine equipped to land on a hostile shore. Sometimes the form wasn't human at all. Such things didn't matter to a god. He spent a quite pleasant period as a tank clattering about the shapelessness encountering only those obstacles he himself imagined into existence.

  Then there was a war.

  "Damn," radarman third class Elliott Bromley muttered as he detected the blips that represented a flight of Japanese dive bombers approaching from northwest of Midway Island. "Sir, hostiles at bearing 295, forty miles and closing. Maybe Kates."

  "Alert the CAP and scramble another flight," he heard the captain of the Hornet order before the intercom closed.

  Not a single one of the unescorted dive bombers made it through the reinforced fighter cover. Every one of the five thousand men on the two carriers knew what had brought them to safety. The pilots had been brave, but the technology that gave them the warning had made the difference. The new god gained a lot of believers that day—though they didn't know who they now worshipped.

  Driven by a war fought around the world, his priests labored under a stadium to build a truly worthy sacrifice to the newly born god of war, a god that was born of the technology of war, not of the heroism it still occasionally inspired, nor by the myth of the glory of victory. Believers in the government filled the coffers of the universities and laboratories that were this god's temples. But the demands of a new god are great and the people s faith was weak. Somewhere Tek recalled fanatics called Wobblies smashing his machines in a fitful time before he had even been aware. The pain, when he had been so weak, had nearly destroyed him.

  Unsure and nearly powerless the godling moved to defend himself and his faithful and then watched as his technology and the power of those who served it, and him, spread. But such growth is slow, for people change their gods slowly. The papers spoke of heroism and courage, not competence and calculation. The generals stood oblivious to enemy fire or wore pearl-handled revolvers in a vain attempt to bring back the ways of the old gods. The sergeants fought him too, and were more effective, teaching the men to be brave, not dependent on the miracles the new god offered. But the new god got his revenge there, inspiring a man who knew no better to create new sergeants, technical experts who were beyond the sway of the soldiers who had made war their own until now.

  It is a funny thing, being a god, at least the kind that man summons from places he doesn't know exist. You have the potential for immense power, but know nothing until your followers believe in it. It was a year before Tek could leave the ethereal plane covered in a dusty blanket of sand and germanium where he had been born. By this time Mars and Thor had noticed something disturbing the ether, but Tek's weakness and insubstantiality protected him. Still, the gods are notoriously jealous. But all of the old gods men had summoned were too involved in this new war to pay more than an instant's attention to the distantly discordant note in the music of the spheres his new presence caused. Thor did react by inspiring his Teutonic faithful to greater frenzies of ceremony and to swear yet more resounding oaths. Mars, hard pressed to defend the island that sheltered the last of his forces, was too concerned to react at all. Tek sensed their challenge, carefully calculated his minimal chances of success in a direct confrontation, and remained silent.

  By the end of the second year Tek could take on the form of his most ardent followers. He even adopted the "glasses" they all seemed to wear as part of his war god's regalia. The lab coat and pocket full of pencils would hardly have impressed his sword-wielding predecessors. After inspiring the greatest minds of humanity to listen unconsciously to him, Tek was able to give them guidance. Their efforts moved quickly. Though the new god was not really sure what he was inspiring, he was sure it would bring the faithful victory and make him the predominant god of war from then on.

  By the time the coven of science worshippers and technicians had completed the device, Tek had learned how to travel in any form. Sensing that his glory was near, the godling became the crewman of the bomber that would test the device. Using what strength he could, and the distraction of the death throes of Thor's followers in Berlin, he ensured that any of the seven and half million glitches possible did not interfere with the test.

  When the device was released from the B-29 high over the desert, Tek wanted to see first hand the results of his follower's labors. He transferred his awareness to a coyote who had been living well off the construction crew's garbage. It was resting in the shade only a few miles from the point of impact.

  When the atom bomb landed, Tek discovered another new sensation, pain. Followed quickly by death. The experience horrified him, and he exulted in it. In that instant he became a true god of war, and realized how powerful the other, earlier gods must be. In the next few millionths of a second Tek calculated that someday he would need to become the only god of war and opened four files to study the problem. In the meantime, Tek knew he had to be cautious. His faithful were few and the fate of those who spread a radical new belief was most often martyrdom. His followers were not the type to whom this would appeal and so the god of scientific, calcula
ting war concentrated on giving them the tools to gain control of the generals, and especially the sergeants.

  Elsewhere the old gods felt the shudder, but were unable to pull away from the worldwide drama long enough to react. It was almost fifteen years before Tek would again attempt to act, and despite his careful calculations he allowed himself to be swayed by the faith, rather than the skill, of those who invoked him to aid them in their war.

  THE WINGMAN

  by Diane Duane

  He was squinting through the eyeslit of the tank, trying to make out whether that was a boulder five hundred yards in front of him, or just another swirl of dirt lingering in the still air, left by the Mark Ten Centurion in front of him, when the voice spoke to him.

  New week, it said.

  He sighed. That much effect being human had had on him: all the emotions that came with bodies, that used breath and blood to express themselves, were becoming a habit. But not so much of a habit, yet, that they interfered with his work.

  He counted briefly in his head while he steered around the boulder—it was one—and over a dune. Then, silently, so that his tank commander wouldn't hear him, he said, June 5th?

  That's right.

  He started to sigh again, and stopped it. I was just getting used to this, he said. You have to have known earlier.

  Now, the voice said, I did know earlier. Now I always have. This is the problem with free will, of course. You let them have it, and then the Universe itself has to sit around on hold until they make up their minds what they're going to do. But now they know. And so do I . . . and now, you.

  He agreed inwardly, and wrinkled his forehead a couple of times to get rid of the drop of sweat that was trying to trickle into his eyes. It was about a hundred and five outside the tank: what it might be inside, he hated to think. I'm going to need a transfer, he said.

  The resigned and weary sound of him must have caused the source of the voice some amusement. You could have a miracle instead.

  He thought about that for a moment. He hated transfers, the usual kind anyway: they hurt. All right, he said, if that's all right with you.

  Is there anything that isn't? the voice said. But nothing's free . . . you know that. Miracles cost, sooner or later.

  He raised his eyebrows. So what else is new? . . . What did you have in mind?

  Well, how about this—

  Rain is the most occasional land of event in the Negev in May: at least, rain that makes it all the way down to the ground. Usually it evaporates hundreds of feet up, doing the barren, thirsty ground beneath no good. But what these brief showers do produce is rainbows; sudden, splendid, suspended unfounded up in the middle of the hot blue air, like a sign.

  He saw the rainbow form, and smiled wryly for just a second before doing what any good Israeli tank driver would do in such circumstances, what his tank commander was doing too, having also seen the sign in the sky. Head already decently covered by his tanker's helmet, he started to bow himself back and forth, and began to recite the blessing one says on seeing a rainbow, giving thanks for the repetition of the promise that the world would never again be destroyed by water. He began to do this, as custom required, before doing anything else whatever. Like stopping the tank.

  The huge old cedar loomed up out of the dust, and he saw it coming, and couldn't do a thing. The tank crashed into it, leaned up against it, knocked it over, then bounced on over the top of it—and on top of the officer's jeep that had been parked in its shade, while the officer was out in the sun overseeing the tanks participating in this exercise. He finished saying the berukha, and breathed out a little, not needing omniscience to know exactly what was going to happen. Destruction of one of the oldest trees in a place where trees were scarce, at best—and of a very annoyed officer's jeep: transfer, in a hurry. Not a prejudicial one, for his tank commander would be able to testify at the hearing that his driver had only been following religious tradition exactly. He would be out of the tank corps in a hurry.

  The sound of swearing from behind him, though, made Micha'el wonder whether he should just have taken the usual mode of transfer, annoying as it was, and been done with it.

  He could swear he heard the voice chuckling quietly as Ari started screaming at him to stop the tank.

  Three days later, he was transferred to the airfield near Ha'ar Azuz. It would have been two days later, except that the third day he spent out in the dust, in fatigues, with a shovel and a hundred cedar saplings, paid for out of his own salary. He took his time about it; since it was him planting them, they would prosper, and he was careful about how they were positioned. He was annoyed, though, about having his salary docked to pay for them. He would have done it anyway.

  The airfield was hardly distinguishable from the rocky waste all around it. The Heyl ha'Avir, the air force, had gone to some trouble to keep it that way. All buildings, even the hangars, were partially buried, surrounded with rock rubble right up to their walls: their roofs were covered with sand and more rock. The runways could not be hidden so easily, but the concrete was the same pale color as the local sand, having been made of it. In most of the day's sunlight the whole place was an eye-burning pale beige, except for the dank caves of the open hangar doors. In those darknesses could be glimpsed the occasional glint of silver, being hastily painted over.

  Micha'el knew what those glints were, and wanted to get a look at them right away; but he behaved correctly, as always, and went to see the base commander first. The man's office was in one more sand-mortared Nissen hut, next to the biggest of the hangar buildings. Micha'el knocked at the door, and waited there in the burning wind for a good while before the voice told him to enter.

  The commander didn't look up for a while. He was writing furiously, in a fat neat cursive, filling out a report, probably. After a few minutes he said, "Your paperwork came in this morning, Captain bar-David. Sort of a last-minute thing, don't you think? Where were you six months ago?'

  Micha'el blinked. His paperwork always sorted itself out, no matter what he had been doing on his last assignment—it would be a poor sort of organization he was working for if mere bureaucracy couldn't be handled effectively. His records would now show him to have been air force from the start of things. "I'm not sure what you mean, sir."

  "No, I'm sure you're not," said the commander, with heavy irony somewhat ruined by his having to stop in the middle of his writing and fumble around his desk for a bottle of liquid paper. "A sudden attack of heroism by—yourself? Or one of your relatives up in the thin hot air by the top of the organization? To just have you added to a team that took enough training to get used to each other and work smoothly as it was—never mind that, just throw you in there without any thought of a new man's effect on the rest of a group. It'll make you look good when what could start happening, any day now, finally happens. A dangerous assignment, some nice showy flying, off you go with some good career experience, into a promotion. Huh?" All this while the commander had been painting delicately at his error: now he put the bottle aside and looked up. The commanders eyes were cruel-looking and angry: the mind behind them reeked with fear, but not for himself. "Whereas it won't go that way, not really: it never does. More like this: one of my men gets himself killed getting you out of some tight spot you get into, you go away after it's all over with a medal and a promotion, is that it—?"

  Micha'el blinked, and said: "No, sir. I don't think so."

  The commander stared at him for a good few seconds. Micha'el returned the gaze, as calmly as he could. The human body he wore, no more than twenty-two and running mostly on hormones, kept shouting things at him that mostly translated as Fight! Kill! Hit! Yell! He busied himself with ignoring it, though not without a moment's longing for his usual body, non-physical, created before entropy and hence endlessly obedient: not like this poor deathridden shell, this seething mess of mud, chemicals and electricity, with ideas of its own, almost all of them mistaken and needing constant overriding.

  Finally the co
mmander looked away and picked up his pen again. "For your sake, it had better not be that way, that's all I can say. There's too much riding on what we're out here to do to let someone's personal ambitions put so much as one screw loose on what's out in those hangars. I catch you being stupid or careless around my people or with my planes, I even get wind of it, and I'll ground you. Six feet deep, if necessary. Do I make myself clear?"

  "Perfectly, sir," Micha'el said.

  The commander stared at him in thinly veiled disgust, as if expecting something else: some flare of anger, some protestation of innocence. But Micha'el had served under too many commanders in his career to waste his time that way. He just stood quiet.

  "Go on, get out of here," he said. "Pilot quarters are down at the back of hangar three. Second one to your left."

  Micha'el saluted and left, closing the door carefully behind him. Through it he could hear a soft mutter of swearing.

  Hangar three was one of those with its doors open. He paused in the doorway for a moment, smelling the air. Paint—cans of it, over on one side, and sprayers: and over there on the left, half painted, the Mirage IIIC.

  He walked over to it slowly. The Dassault Mirage was not much to look at compared to some of the planes he had flown; not as graceful as the Spitfire II, not as hi-tech as the F-117a. But in its time, in this time, it was the fastest fighter aircraft in this theater, and (he thought) the best. No matter that it turned like a bullet: it went like a bullet, at Mach 2 and better. It had its weaknesses, but its strengths—that speed, and an indomitable ability to lift a lot of weaponry and deliver it accurately—more than made up for problems like its too-noticeable radar signature—