Armageddon?? (67 page)

He
was about to check his C.O.’s wounds when he spotted a flash of movement
through the open door. As he struggled to focus the bronze glint resolved
itself into the shape of the Baldrick flyer, flapping furiously to escape the
destruction it had wrought. Oliver’s mind filled instantly with rage and a
determination not to let that bastard get away. Leaning over the corporal’s
body, he grabbed the AS50 and swung it up to firing position. The helo
continued to shake and buck, making it almost impossible to keep the fleeing
baldrick in the sights. Private Hughes knew he had only seconds to make the
shot, so he let fly with five rounds rapid. The first one went wide, the second
should’ve hit but had no visible effect, then the third one went wide again as
the helo started to shudder. Somehow he managed to bring the rifle back on
target and the last two rounds hit the creature, spraying blood visibly as he
watched through the scope. That was all he saw before the floor dropped away
from under him.

Meanwhile
Peter Taranaski had been fighting hard to stabilize his bird, which had been
thrown violently out of the flight envelope by the initial shockwave. The
strong gusts and uneven thermals kept undoing his efforts – the controls didn’t
seem quite right either, while all the time that pounding roar bored into his
head. Glowing balls shot through the sky all around them and he flinched
repeatedly at the near misses. Finally he managed to get the Explorer back into
level flight, but they’d lost most of their altitude and airspeed.

“Sergeant?
Sergeant!? Corporal!!?” There was no response over the intercom, so he tore his
eyes away from the instruments and glanced over at the observer’s position.
Sergeant Webster was slumped forward in his seat, seemingly unconscious, but
what struck him cold was the sight through the window. Some kind of massive
explosion had obliterated the university and fingers of glowing lava were
streaming out from the base of the smoke column. They had to get out of here,
now. Peter began to pull the bird up and away from the inferno, yanking the
collective just as the helicopter entered a powerful updraft created by the
lava flow. The swirling air quickly formed into a vortex ring, stalling the
rotors as the helicopter literally lost its grip on the air. The Explorer
rolled sideways and began to plummet towards the ground.

A
moment’s hesitation would have been instantly fatal, but fortunately Peter had
encountered this problem twice before, in a combat landing exercises. He shoved
the cyclic forwards, trading his precious remaining altitude for speed in a
desperate attempt to escape regain lift. He succeeded, but it was already too
late to avoid his pressing appointment with the ground. The Explorer skimmed
over a half-completed apartment block then ploughed into the corrugated metal
roof of a small tow-bar factory.

‘PINDAR’,
under the MoD Main Building, Whitehall, London.

The
Prime Minister strode briskly through the underground corridor. He’d retired to
Number 10 after the initial searches had turned up nothing, but in truth he’d
only been napping. He wasn’t ready to believe that the demons had simply
retreated after their slaughter, and it would seem that his instincts were
correct.

“It’s
Sheffield sir,” the aide next to him said, “some kind of massive incendiary
attack. Reports of fires burning out of control and of buildings collapsing. No
baldricks though.”

Gordon
Brown didn’t bother asking her to elaborate, as the situation room was just
ahead. He spotted Lord West across the room – the Secretary for Defence
probably hadn’t left since the initial attack – along with several other
cabinet members. The screens showed images of fire, brimstone and digital maps
with conspicuous red outlines superimposed on them.

“How
bad is it Admiral?”

“Prime
Minister. In short, the Baldricks have hit Sheffield with a weapon of mass
destruction, based on their portal capability. We’re looking at a total loss of
the city centre, severe damage out to three miles and significant damage to the
surrounding areas.”

The
PM’s expression was grim. “Comparable to a sub-strategic nuclear yield?” The
scenario seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn’t place the source of the déjà
vu.

“Not
exactly sir. We had one piece of luck, a police helicopter caught the
deployment on video.” Lord West nodded to the comms officer, who touched a
control. A pair of images appeared on a large screen, documenting G-SYPS’s
initial encounter with the Baldrick.

“Right
is natural color, left is the thermal image. They intercepted the demon over the
cathedral, don’t know if that was significant.”

The
PM was staring at the Baldrick. It looked like a grotesque cross between a
woman and a bat, with bronze skin and no visible arms. There was something odd
about its hair… and its wings had started to glow.

The
image began to show streaks and speckles. Lord West continued to narrate.
“Intercept control lost radar coverage over the city shortly before the
intercept. Radio contact with the helicopter was lost about now.” The buildings
began to recede and the angle shifted. “They’re maneuvering for a shot. A
little too late, unfortunately…”

The
baldrick suddenly closed its wings and fell away, leaving a tower block in the
centre of the frame. The image flared; the visual camera quickly recovered to
show a blossoming orange firework, while the thermal image stayed whited out.
The room was silent as the cascade of magma obliterated the buildings below.
Then the image spun crazily before blanking out.

“The
helicopter went down?”

The
voice came from behind him but it was one the PM had become tiresomely familiar
with. Sure enough, Deputy Prime Minister David Cameron was standing behind him.

“Actually
no, though it was a close thing.” As if on cue, the video switched to showing a
panoramic aerial view of the destruction. “They recorded this before they had
to return to base. We’ve established that the burst height was a little over
eight hundred feet. Portal diameter is about fifty feet, and the damn thing
hasn’t shown any sign of closing yet.”

Threads.
That was it. An old BBC documentary, about Sheffield’s destruction during a
nuclear war. Gordon pushed the trivia out of his mind, but not before thinking
well, at least things aren’t that bad.

"Casualties?"

"We're
guessing at the moment, but I'd be surprised if we take less than ten thousand
fatalities. Still, it could've been much worse. That figure would be tripled if
the attack had come at noon instead of midnight."

And
that was our safest Labour seat the Prime Minister thought grimly.

“What’s
our response so far?”

“We’ve
got fighters up Sir. Tornados patrolling and some Hawks. They’re trainers but
they’ve always had a war-emergency point defense role. They’re carrying a gun
pod we’ve had in storage ever since the Phantoms were phased out.”

“Tornados?
Hawks? What happened to the Typhoons? For all the money those things cost us….”

“They’re
out in Iraq Sir. Anyway, the Home Guard is being mobilized and we’re moving in.
With that portal still open, we’ll have to be damned careful. The explosion did
one hell of a lot of damage and if there’s another, we could lose all our first
responders. Casualties? Quite apart from the numbers issue, we’ve got the lot.
Severe burns, blunt force trauma, gas poisoning, you name it. The baldricks
didn’t hit us with a nuke but they might as well have done. First priority is
to get the scene cordoned off…”

He
was interrupted by the telephone ringing. One of the aides picked it up and
spoke for a few seconds. “Sir, I have Dublin on the line. They’ve picked up the
news, probably intercept of the transmissions we’ve been watching. The Dublin
Fire Brigade is already on its way. A ferry is being held for them.”

“Word’s
out then. Didn’t take long did it. Have we any more data to give out.”

“No
Sir. We’ll be getting download from a Keyhole fairly shortly but that’s all we
can expect. All our good stuff is out in Iraq or on its way there. We can get a
Nimrod down but it’ll take time.”

“I
thought BAE Systems had killed off our Nimrod fleet?”

“Not
all of them sir. Just the ones they ‘upgraded’. The old ones are still
flyable.” The phone rang again. “Its Norway, Sir. They got the news about the
attack but no more than that. They say, whatever they’ve got and we want we can
have.”

“Nice
of them. Still no theories on why Sheffield was the target? Ground zero was the
university, were they doing anything important?”

“Nothing
credible Prime Minister. I checked the university… their materials department
did some engineering work on the new HEAD shells, but that’s all.”

Another
cold war memory bobbed unbidden into Brown’s mind; a novel in which the
Russians had destroyed Birmingham with a single ICBM, then tried to sue for
terms. Bad end to a good book… he couldn’t remember the title. No matter, it was
a plausible scenario here. The attack might be a carefully judged attempt by
Satan to demonstrate his power before opening negotiations. But it was also
plausible that Sheffield was just unlucky, and that more strikes would follow
as fast as the demons could manage.

“We
have to know why and more importantly if, when and where the next strike will
be. What about that demon general the Americans captured? If he’s supposed to
be on our side why didn’t he bother to warn us about this?”

“You’ll
have to ask the Americans that Sir, he’s in their hands.”

“We’ll
do just that. Mr. Cameron, if you could call the White House and the Kremlin
please, I’ll want a video conference ASAP.” Brown was more inclined to assign
the twit to making tea, but alas one had to accommodate political realities.

(Hats
off to Starglider who did this bit (all the Belial/Lava attack parts are his).

Chapter
Forty Eight

'The
Cavendish”, West Street, Central Sheffield

Alex
Malcolm had saved up two week's worth of alcohol rations for the pub crawl, and
he was determined to use them all before the night was over. University life
hadn't changed that much, at least not for the engineering students. They'd all
had to join the cadets and that meant weekends wasted on the firing range and the
drill ground, but that was all. Not like the humanities students, most of whom
had been evicted from the halls of residence and drafted. In their place were
throngs of 'mature students' being pushed through the new short technical and
medical courses. In Alex's mind the humanities students were no big loss, it's
not as if they were doing real degrees anyway, though the replacement of all
those hot young psychology girls with boring ugly ex-call-center workers was a
crying shame.

Alex
downed his sixth pint and lurched to his feet. "Back in a sec,
mates." he slurred, as he made his way unsteadily to the men's restroom.
Half way through the process of relieving himself, the world exploded into
noise and darkness.

He'd
fallen against the wall, bruising his head against the pipe-work. Pain flashed
across his back; he instinctively reached over to feel the wound and his hand
closed around the chunk of broken glass embedded there. He pulled it out,
slicing his hand open in the process. The lights were out, the windows were
smashed and the whole building was shaking. Alex had only one explanation for
this, earthquake, but how could an earthquake on this scale happen in England?
Screams began to ring out over the rumbling and roaring, multiplying as the
panic spread. Adrenaline coursed through his system, fighting the alcohol to
get him moving. He had to get out of here, the earthquake was showing no sign
of abating and the whole building could come down on him. He barreled forward
down the corridor out of the lavatories, dripping blood and urine, and emerged
into a scene of utter chaos.

Over
a hundred drunken pub-goers were trying to force themselves through the
building's two exits, screaming , shouting, punching and kicking at each other.
The scene was lit only by a glowing orange light streaming in through the
windows. Alex couldn't understand why the earthquake was making people so
desperate that they'd risk being crushed to death… wait, was that light coming
from a fire? He tried to jogged over to the windows, but caught his foot on an
overturned stool and went crashing to the ground. Ignoring the fresh bruises,
he hauled himself up and stared in horror at the scene outside. A wall of
glowing lava over a meter high was advancing inexorably down the street, surrounded
by flames and smoke from the burning buildings and crowned by the twisted
wrecks of cars being carried along by the flow.

Another
crash, this one startlingly close. Someone had thrown a chair through the next
window along, carrying most of the broken glass and wooden dividers out into
the street. He turned in time to see two of his mates leap through the window.
There was no time for thoughts of rescuing others, he'd be lucky to save
himself. Alex clambered out through the shattered window, heedless of the fresh
cuts to his hands, and recoiled from the blast of heat that scorched his skin.
He began to jog away from the lava, towards the city centre, but he made one
crucial mistake; he looking back. The lava flow had accelerated as more rock
poured into the channel, and the intense heat seemed to scorch his eyes. The
world dissolved into pain as he tripped on a kerb and fell sprawling. The only
mercy was that his suffering lasted only seconds before the lava washed over
him. Well, that part of his suffering anyway. As everybody now knew, death was
only a temporary respite.