Armageddon?? (93 page)

“What
happened to Servilia? Did she really die like that?”

“Nah,
she outlived the lot of them.” Kim paused. “Gaius, you know what happens to
women when they arrive down here?” Caesar nodded, guessing where this was
going. “Well, I got all torn up inside.”

“We
all heal fast down here Jade. We’re not the same bodies we had on Earth, look
the same but we’re not. Your wounds have healed.”

“Not
the ones up here.” She tapped her head. “I still feel all torn up. So, Gaius,
no. Thank you, but, just, no.” Then she smiled quickly. “But I do have one
thing to ask of you, personal favor?”

“Anything
for the beautiful woman who has brought hope to hell.”

“I
got my copies of ‘The Gallic War’ and ‘The Civil War’ brought through when I
heard you were coming. Could you sign them for me?”

Caesar
chuckled. “Of course. I….” Then he was interrupted by McInery entering the
cave, very fast.

“Ell-tee,
got a radio message came in, top urgency.” He handed over a slip with the
message printed on it. Kim read it and went white.

“Gaius,
we got a problem. One of the Spec Ops teams down in the Sixth Circle has sent
in a sighting report. There’s a major force of Baldricks, some 30,000 strong
with about 1,500 harpies, moving along the Sixth Circle boundary towards us.
They’re the other side of the wall at the moment but they can pass through the
gates any point they want to. They’ll be here in two days, perhaps three.”

The
amiable smile fell from Caesar’s face and suddenly he was the military
commander known to history. “They’re coming here?”

“Pretty
sure of it, nowhere else they could be going with a force like that. If they
link up with the forces we have on either side of us, we got real problems.”

“Why
would they want to do that? You’ve already stalled the demons there. They’ll
hit the river flank. How many men do you have?”

“I’ve
got about a hundred soldiers trained to handle modern weapons. That’s it.”

Caesar
smiled at the emphasis on ‘soldiers’ rather than ‘men’ but let it pass. “So you
can’t fortify the river boundary properly. I can get some people here, a
thousand or more in a day or so and five thousand in two or three, but they
won’t help much.”

“They
won’t help at all, we haven’t a chance to train them to use rifles and we
haven’t got the equipment for them even if we could. Humans don’t stand much of
a chance against baldricks without them. Still, the river’s still on our side.”

The
comment made Caesar’s mouth twist in despair. He kept forgetting that this
woman was a Lieutenant only, she was a junior officer and had the training to
match. In other words, not very much. “Jade, in Gaul I threw a bridge over the
Rhine in a couple of days. The Rhine is bigger and faster flowing that the Styx.
This river barrier you’re putting so much hope on counts for very little in the
scheme of things. You need all your ….. soldiers …. to hold the two end flanks.
You can’t defend that river as well. If the enemy has 30,000 troops coming in,
you’re done. Time to get out of here.”

“Can’t
do it. We’ve got civilians here now, we have to get them out, and the dead
we’ve rescued, we can’t hand them over”

“Ell-tee,
the British want a word with you, they ran the special ops team that got this
warning to us. They say they have some suggestions.”

British
Expeditionary Force HQ, Camp Hell-Alpha, Hell

“Are
you sure this is a good idea Sir?”

“Can
you think of a better one?”

“Honestly
Sir, yes. We’ve got the lift, evacuate the place.”

“Not
good enough. Look, Colonel, Free Hell and the PFLH is about the only successful
insurgency we’ve got running in Hell. Oh, the other groups are operating there,
but they’ve all got tied down rescuing the prisoners and so on. Very estimable
and good work but it isn’t actually fighting Hell. Only the PFLH have done that
and they’re entirely an American operation. So, while the Spams run around
making decisions, we do something to help the people on the sharp end. That way
we get to muscle in on their operation, even take it over if everything goes
right. The PFLH is run by a Lieutenant, so we send in 2 Para and its got a
Colonel, you, in charge. That makes you the ranking officer on scene and puts
you in command. And, once we’re in we stay in – with you in command. We’re
doing them a big favor inside, that Lieutenant has done well but she’s way out
of her depth. They need military expertise in there if they are going to
survive.

“We’ve
got Chinooks and Merlins to lift your battalion in. You’ll have Typhoon and
Tornados for escort, more Tornados and Jags to give air support one everything
drops in the pot.”

“Very
good Sir.”

“Move
out as soon as you can. And remember, you are the ranking officer down there.”

B-1B
“Dragon Slayer” 128th Bomb Squadron, Georgia Air National Guard, Approaching
Dis

“Everything
dialed in?” Major Curtis Trafford looked at his WSO and got a thumbs up by way
of response. The four B-1Bs were in a loose, finger-four formation, cruising at
29,000 feet. The discovery that the air was clear up here had been a major
advantage but it also meant that their target was lost in the rolling clouds of
red dust underneath. The mapping radar was doing a good job of penetrating it
though, the city of Dis was ahead of them and the long spur that stuck out into
the great caldera of Hell showed up clearly. Their target was where that spur
ended in a rounded promontory, for in the center of that feature was Satan’s
palace.

Detroit
was to be avenged and the United States Air Force did not take its revenge by
striking at the inconsequential As many consumer advocates had put it, ‘if you
want action, go right to the top’. There was another saying as well, ‘for
delicate work, get a bigger hammer’. The hammer hanging under Dragon Slayer was
the biggest conventional hammer the United States had at its disposal. The
Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000 pound bomb capable of tearing its way
through at least 130 feet of moderately hard rock. What it would so to the rock
Dis was built on was an interesting question. The hope was that it would
collapse the whole spur and drop Satan, complete with his palace, right into
the center of Hell.

The
MOPs had been modified for this mission, normally they were GPS guided but the
global positioning system was useless in Hell. No satellites and it was not
certain whether there was anywhere for a satellite to fly or even anything for
them to orbit. Hell wasn’t Kansas. Instead, the bombs had been equipped with an
inertial system that was supposed to prevent them wandering off a true
trajectory. That left the aiming job in the hands of the B-1s radar.

“We’ve
got a radar picture now. The spur’s showing up really clearly. Also showing was
the red carat that marked the predicted impact point of the MOP. All four
bombers were on slightly converging courses and the intention was that all four
bombs should hit Satan’s palace at the same instant.

Beast
Stables, City of Dis

“Take
care of that wyvern. Feed him carefully, do not let him bloat. If he is made
sick I will flay you alive and have you eat your own skin.”

The
orc blanched slightly and took the reins of the Wyvern away from Belial. In the
back of the orc’s stunted mind, a memory stirred of the time before these
creatures had come. Perhaps it was a genetic memory, perhaps the effect of
stories quietly whispered in the dark of night, but there were memories
nonetheless. Of a time when the orcs had been free and this had been their
home. Before the demons had come, before the great eruption that had poisoned
everything. Now, there were more whispers in the darkness, more words on the
wind. Words that said the millennia of slavery to the demons was ending, that
the demons had taken on a force to powerful even for them to handle. Words that
said the orcs might be free again. And these words were backed by the thunder
that never stopped, the thunder that came from the Phlegethon River.

Belial
also heard the thunder of the Russian Artillery but it hardly registered. He
had other things on his mind, how to present what had happened to his best
advantage. He had fulfilled his promise all right, he had identified the two
great arsenals of the humans and destroyed them both. The problem was that half
his naga were dead and the rest were crippled, stunned by the accident that had
taken place during the Dee-Troyt attack. He knew what was the cause of that of
course, the other lords had been told to send him their best covens of naga but
what they had actually supplied was their youngest and least-experienced. Lying
crippled in her sick-bed, Baroness Yalupki had told him of the trouble in
getting the inexperienced naga to sing in chorus and how that had caused the
portal to flare out of control. Thought of the crippled naga in her sick-bed
made Belial think quickly of Euryale but he dismissed the matter. She was a
gorgon, in the final analysis replaceable. If she did die of her wounds, she
could be replaced with a new consort, one more fitting to be seen at Satan’s
Court. In the back of his mind was an uneasy idea that it all wouldn’t be quite
that easy.

He
shook himself and walked on. The highway to Satan’s palace, gleaming red-gold
as its bronze plating reflected the fires of the hell-pit below, lead along the
promontory towards the domed island ahead. As always, Belial looked down at the
tiers beneath, the nine great rings separated by high walls that defined Hell
itself. Once he had been banished from the city to the wilds of the North and
it had taken millennia to worm his way back in, and then only as something
barely more than a court jester. Now he was entering as a potential great lord.
One who would bask in the favor of Satan himself. Yes, the attacks on Sheffield
and Dee-Troyt had gone very well indeed. All that he needed to do was to
convince Satan of that.

Third
Platoon, Second Company, Third Battalion, Fourth Regiment, 247th Motor Rifle
Division, Phlegethon River Front, Hell

“Halt”
The order was abrupt and there was a tremor of fear in it. The three BMPs approaching
the decontamination facility had been right under the Sarin gas cloud that had
scoured the harpies from the battlefield. They were doubtless soaked in nerve
gas and there was no way anybody here was going to take chances. To either side
of the vehicles, high-pressure hoses were already pumping out thick streams of
alkaline slurry to coat the BMPs in their white paste. Then, a truck backed up,
a jet engine on its back. The exhaust was played over the outside of the
armored carriers, swiftly raising the temperatures to almost-intolerable
levels. Almost, but not quite and the temperature was needed to hydrolyse the
residue of nerve gas on the BMPs. Eventually, the jet engines and the sprays
had done their work. Detector waved over the carriers remained silent and
Pas’kov’s little command was ordered to one side.

Yet,
the work wasn’t done. They opened the hatches on the BMPs and the crews
scrambled out, only to be sprayed with alkaline slurry and brushed down with
brooms. Once again, the detectors remained silent and, at last, Pas’kov and his
men could remove their chemical warfare suits.

“Well
done Bratischka.” A Captain was standing to one side, his own suit still on.
“You have fought as heroes today. We will repair your vehicles and send you
back soon but until then you can rest. We have vodka for you, and fresh food.”
Behind them, a group of men were being lead away, gently but firmly. They
looked healthy but they moved with the shaking, trembling slowness of very old
men. The Captain looked at them sadly. “They were not so lucky. Their radio was
down and they did not get the word about the gas. Harpies had breached the
seals on their vehicles and they were contaminated, They used their antidotes
but…..” He shook his head.

Pas’kov
knew what he meant. The atropine and pralidoxime injector had saved their lives
but now they were old men in their twenties and would never be anything more.
The gas had slaughtered the harpies in a way no other weapon could but it had
costs all of its own.

Assembly
Area, Southern Flank, Phlegethon River Front  Major Evgenii Yakovlevich Galkin
looked at the boxy vehicle next to his tank. One with red mottling applied over
its dark gray paint, just as his was mottled with red over its moss-green. The
tank looked huge beside his sleek, curved T-90 but there was more to that to
fill Galkin with unease. The tank was German.

“Tovarish
major” The voice calling from below was in atrocious Russian, the accent making
the simple words almost unintelligible. Still, Galkin understood and dropped
off the turret of his tank to where the German was waiting.

“Soon
we will fight together. I just wanted to wish you good hunting.” The words were
a lot better this time, Galkin guessed that the German had carefully rehearsed
the phrase in an attempt to be friendly. Time to respond. Galkin’s German was
better that the German’s Russian.

“May
you have a good bag and a safe hunt.”

The
German beamed in response, then caught the Russian looking at the Leopard.
“Have you seen a Leopard II before?”

“Only
at our tank museum in Kubinka. This is the first one I have seen on service.”
The German officer’s eyebrows twitched, there wasn’t supposed to be a Leopard
II at Kubinka. How had the Russians got hold of one? “Is this the first Russian
tank you have seen?”