by Stuart Slade
It really didn’t register in time, the screams from overhead that drowned out even the shrieks and howls of the shattered cavalry charge. The explosions did catch his attention, they were large enough to attract anybody’s. they rippled across the killing field, tearing apart the force pinned down there and finally bringing peace to the crippled beasts as they were blown apart.
Just over 12 kilometers away, the 18 M109A6 Paladins had dropped into the steady firing rate of four rounds per minute, the rate that conserved ammunition and broke armies. Their shells arched over the Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles of the First Brigade and slammed into the mass of struggling baldricks below. On the ridgeline above the tankers and mechanized infantry watched in slightly bored interest as the baldrick cavalry died. There was nothing to be really interesting here, they’d seen MLRS and artillery at work before. The artillery observers actually had something to do, they watched the patterns of shells landing and datalinked a stream of information back to the guns, directing fire onto any pockets of survivors.
In the middle of the mass of artillery fire, Zorankalirtagap was learning new lessons and learning them very fast indeed. He was learning that he was helpless, that there was no defense against the shells that were moving backwards and forwards across the killing ground. He was learning that artillery and the controllers who directed in had no mercy, no compassion for the creatures they were slaughtering. They were just targets, to be erased as quickly and conveniently as possible.
Zorankalirtagap had learned one other thing. He was a creature of hell but these seemingly puny humans could create hell any time they wanted to. For the first time in his long life, Zorankalirtagap knew what sheer, unadulterated, panic-stricken terror felt like.
The Royal Dragoon Guards, Al Badiyah Al Janubiyah, Western Iraq
“Now that is a sight.” Guardsman Bass swung the turret of his tank so he could watch the scene in the minefields. The meter long bar mines had been designed to knock out tanks but they worked against the baldrick’s rhinolobsters very effectively. The first wave had been blown apart by the mines, Bass had seen one rhinolobster have both its left legs torn off by the mines, as it had collapsed to one side it had landed on another and been killed by it. But the problem with minefields were that they were declining assets, every mine that claimed a victim thinned out the field. The second wave had done much better than the first, for a time at least. Quite a few of the rhinolobsters had made it though the minefield and then they’d hit the razor wire.
Razor wire was nasty stuff, lift a piece carelessly and it could remove a man’s fingers. There were dozens of interlocked coils down there and even as Bass watched he saw the rhinolobsters tear into it and become entangled in the mass of razor-sharp edges. They screamed and threshed as the wire sliced ever-deeper into them and their efforts only got them more entangled and inflicted yet more damage. Some of the riders tried to help their mounts, grabbed the wire to lift in clear and these ones learned the terrible truth and the wire sliced their fingers to the bone.
Behind that second wave came the third and these had learned. Most of them followed the paths of the rhinolobsters that had made it to the wire. They climbed over the creatures from the second wave, escaping the first entangling coils of wire but got bogged down in the rest. Others followed them and by simple weight and mass they crushed down the wire with the bodies of those in front of them. By sheer weight of numbers, the enemy cavalry had breached the wire and were through.
“Get ready Boys.” Lieutenant McLeoud’s voice came over the radio. “The artillery lads are opening fire. Get ready to pick off any of them monsters that get through the barrage.”
Bass settled down into his tank commander's seat, then took a look through the scope. The blood in the minefield and on the wire was green.
Chapter Eleven
Su-30MKI Tiger Group Leader over the Al Badiyah Al Janubiyah, Western Iraq
The world rotated around Wing Commander Gurka as his Su-30 hit the top of its climb and he rolled smoothly over. The survivors of the massacre were far below him, their bodies barely visible. His radar could see them though, he’d lost them as he’d climbed out but now he’d re-acquired. The devastating missile salvoes had destroyed hundreds of the harpies, their bodies dissolving in fire as the missiles ripped into them. Once there had been so many that they’d swamped the memory on the radars but now, the situation was clearly defined. There were barely two targets left for each of the allied fighters and Gurka had already killed one of his. He’d picked his target for the next pass already, one harpy flying west, its nerve broken, running for its life.
It didn’t stand a chance. Gurka pushed his throttles over and went after it in a long, smooth dive. His gun-sight carat showed the predicted impact point of his cannon burst, it was sliding towards the harpy, the diamond embracing its back. Then, it turned red and Gurka squeezed the trigger, blasting burst of 30mm armor-piercing incendiary ammunition into the harpy’s body. For a second or so, nothing happened although Gurka could swear that he saw lumps of black flesh flying off the body. Then it flared into orange fire, burning and spinning for the desert floor.
“Tiger Group, time to go home. Call your boys off Tiger Leader, the squids want to play.”
Gurka looked around. Already the American F-15s were heading south, their missile racks empty. “Acknowledged.”
“Head for Dingbat Tiger Group,” Gurka mentally translated that. Dezful. “Some Russian transports have landed with missile reloads for you. Good luck and don’t mix with any naughty ladies.”
“All Tiger aircraft, break off, head for dingbat.” Gurka looked hard to the west. There was a black cloud approaching. “Eagle Eye, contacts to the west.”
“We have the Tiger Group Leader. More harpies, covering the ground force main body. Sea Eagle Group will be handling them. Out.”
The out had a definitive note to it. The Su-30s were out of missiles and very low on cannon ammunition. Eagle Eye up there in his AWACS wasn’t interested in them any more. His attention was steering the group of F/A-18s from the three carriers offshore into the new harpy cloud.
Headquarters of Merafawlazes, Commander, Northern Flank, Abigor’s Army
“The cavalry have gone!”
“They’re through then. Order the flies to pursue the humans and cut them up on the way. The infantry will follow through. Advance on this place the humans call Kirkuk. Ravage it, Abigor will be pleased.”
“No, Noble master.” The messenger dropped to his knees and crawled across the floor to Merafawlazes hooves. “I must tell you, the cavalry have not broken the humans. The cavalry are dead. All of them. The humans killed them all with their magic.”
“What is this insanity? Humans do not have magic.” Merafawlazes’s voice dropped to a menacing growl. “This is not a good time to jest.”
It never was thought Falabrednowsa. Being a messenger was a very chancy and dangerous profession, especially where the recipient of the message was a Duke. They’d been known to eat messengers who brought bad news. “Sire, I fear to contradict you.”
“Good.” Merafawlazes interjected the comment with silky menace.
“But the humans do have magic. They have used it against the cavalry. They can call down thunder from the sky and drown their enemies in fire. They have destroyed our cavalry. It is a horrible sight, our cavalrymen dead on the ground torn to pieces by the fire, the surviving beasts on the ground screaming with pain as they die.” Merafawlazes attention was drawn by a thunder in the skies overhead, a roll of thunder followed by a deafening, hideous scream. “Sire, that is the war-cry of the humans in their sky chariots. A great battle is raging while we speak, the flies fight for their lives against the sky chariots. There is magic there too, the humans throw burning spears that never miss.”
“Our flies do well against them?”
The answer had better be yes was the reply running through Falabrednowsa’s mind. But he was a messenger and it was his duty to speak t
he truth. “No Sire, they die as the cavalry died. The human sky chariots are so much faster than they are. Our enemies cannot hear them come for the cowards give their battle cry only after they have launched an attack. They travel faster than the wind, they climb faster than any of us have ever seen before. They afraid to fight us in honorable combat so they kill by the hundred with their fire spears without ever coming close. Then, they sit above our fliers and dive on them like hawks. Our flies are worse than helpless against them.”
Merafawlazes grunted and turned his attention to the parchment map on the table before him. It wasn’t much help, it just showed the positions of the cities and his best guess at the locations of his troops. Why had the humans chosen to fight here? There was nothing important to fight for here, the nearest great cities were far away. All there was here were these rolling hills with the strange black strips the humans built across them. As he stared at the map, Merafawlazes got the feeling he was missing something very important.
Twenty minutes later, Merafawlazes strode out of his tent, towards the commanders of his remaining legions. Overhead, the sky was covered with strange, crisscrossing white clouds, although he didn’t know it, the contrails from the F-16C Vipers of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Group. The Lawn Dart pilots had, to put it mildly, been having a field day. Merafawlazes didn’t know and didn’t care, he had more important things to think about. “Get the Legions moving forward, all of them. Two waves, seven and seven. Tell all the infantry, the suffering of those who hang back will be legendary even for hell.” Merafawlazes picked a piece of Falabrednowsa’s flesh from his teeth. He’d finally worked out what he had been missing. Breakfast.
The Royal Dragoon Guards, Al Badiyah Al Janubiyah, Western Iraq
“Isn’t this what they call a target-rich environment?” And that, Guardsman Bass thought, was the understatement of the century. The first wave of the enemy attack had been smashed, it had died on the mines and razor wire, the few survivors had been torn apart by the artillery. That had seemed like a victory until the whole horizon had turned black with enemy infantry. The enemy line was almost 10 kilometers long, the rising sun glittering gold off their bronze tridents. It was a terrifying sight, one that told Bass just as surely as if he could look into the mind of the enemy commander himself that the baldricks had never seen wire and minefields before.
‘Look into the mind of the commander’. Bass rolled the words over in his mind. It would come, it would come. The ability of the baldricks to enter people’s minds and create illusions had been a nasty surprise but it had been discovered. Once something was discovered, it could be investigated and measured. That meant it could be understood and one the scientists understood something they could duplicate it. Once the scientists had duplicated it, the engineers would take that work and turn it into practical tools. Once the engineers had created the practical tools, the armorers would turn those tools into weapons. And once the weapons were available, the soldiers would use them. That was the way it had always been, that was the way it would be now.
Bass lased the enemy line, waited a carefully measured ten seconds then lased it again. The computer in the tank thought for a microscopic second, then translated the two readings into a speed readout, one that made Bass raise his eyebrows a second. “Right lads, they’re advancing at 15 kay-pee-aitch. The brass better know about that.” Another guiding human principle, Bass had no doubt the same piece of data was being transmitted in by dozens of other tank commanders but it was better for an important piece of data to be transmitted a thousand times than never transmitted at all because everybody thought everybody else had done so. The fact that baldricks on foot could move three times faster than a human was very important.
Third Legion, Southern Flank, Abigor’s Army
Krykojanklawas jogged forward, most of his attention devoted to the enemy in front, the rest to the leader of his contubernium. Like most of his fellow demons in the ranks, he was holding his tripod underarm, the points angled upwards so he didn’t stab the demon in front. There might be time for that later. He and his fellows were lucky, the ground in front of them was clear, they wouldn’t have to pass through the hideous scene where the human magic had destroyed the cavalry legion. Word that the humans had magic had spread through the ranks like wildfire, the stories growing with each retelling. They could make the ground rise up and swallow their enemies, the stones come alive and crush their victims. They could conjure up snakes from the ground that would wrap themselves around their prey and slice them apart. That story was true, Krykojanklawas decided, he could see the great circular holes in the ground where the snakes had come from.
He could see something else, the ground ahead of him was littered with strange-looking bars, painted gray-yellow so they were hard to see against the sand and rock. There were a lot of them though. Curiously, Krykojanklawas glanced to one side, there were a lot fewer where the cavalry had ridden to its death. Even as he watched, a demon in the front rank stepped on one of the bars and the explosion threw him in the air, spraying yellow body fluid as his legs spiraled away from his body. The bars were human magic, Krykojanklawas realized the truth as additional explosions added their noise to the death toll that was already far higher than the Greater Demons had expected. He didn’t care much about the expectations of the Greater Demons though, what he did understand was that stepping on the bars was death. He’d heard about human explosives, how they could blast even a Lesser Demon apart so that all that remained was stains and rags of flesh. If they could do that to a Lesser Demon, what could they do to a Minor Demon like him? Krykojanklawas had just seen the answer and it didn’t please him.
So there were a lot fewer bars where the cavalry had died? Krykojanklawas did the obvious and started to edge sideways, being careful not to step on the bars, heading for where the ground was just littered with the scraps of flesh and mutilated bodies of beasts and their riders. All along the ranks of the legions, the other demons were starting to do the same.
The Royal Dragoon Guards, Al Badiyah Al Janubiyah, Western Iraq
“Here they go…” Bass watched with interest. There had been a ripple of explosions as the advancing horde reached the outer edge of the minefield and the first victims stepped on the bar mines. The mines had been intended for anti-tank work but their fuses had been adjusted so they’d be set off by much lesser pressures. That had worked, a handful of baldricks had died but the rest were starting to funnel in towards the area partially cleared by the cavalry charge. Bass lased them again, the advance had slowed right down as the baldricks tried to pick their way through the minefield. Poor sods. Bass thought, he could almost feel it in his heart to be sorry for them. Almost, but not quite.
Watching through the high-powered optics of his Challenger II, Bass could see the ranks of baldricks stretching, bucking and surging. He knew what would be happening in there, the NCOs and officers trying to prevent the lines drifting into the cleared zone, trying to force the baldricks to keep moving straight ahead, accepting the losses from the minefield. Idly, he wondered what the Iranian division was thinking, hidden far off to the left, but doubtless watching what was happening. He’d heard they’d cleared minefields by marching infantry through them. Looked like the baldricks were doing the same.
Overhead, Bass heard the scream of shells. “Outbound,” the sound easily distinguishable from the ominous “Inbound”. He wondered quickly how long it would be before the baldricks learned to tell the difference. He looked again through the optics, seeing the shells impact on the mass of baldricks hung up on the flanks of the cavalry graveyard. The artillery forward observers were doing their job, directing the artillery in on the flanks, trying to compress the advancing army into a huddled mass. That was happening already in the graveyard, the baldricks lucky enough to be facing that area were moving in but the ones to either side were sliding in also and the resulting congestion was slowing their movement to a crawl. The spams called this “shaping the battlefield”, a typically melodr
amatic term in Bass’s opinion but descriptive enough.
Anti-Aircraft Battery, Brigadier Carlson’s Headquarters, Al Badiyah Al Janubiyah, Western Iraq
“There are satans approaching. Raid count 20.” The Iranian Lieutenant rapped the report out in Farsi, then translated to English for the benefit of Sergeant Major Harper. “Prepare to engage.”
“With respect, Lieutenant, might I suggest we wait for a short while and let the situation develop?”
The Iranian frowned slightly, more from curiosity than annoyance. “Sergeant, we have modernized Osa-M missiles here. We have more than 20 kilometers of range.”
Harper settled back slightly. He’d been expecting some of the harpies to leak through the fighter screen, no fighter cover in history had managed to eliminate the threat of just one or two survivors getting past. The sheer numbers of harpies had meant more than that would although this was a larger group that he’d expected. “Lieutenant,” Harper’s voice was very quiet so nobody else could overhear, “how long have you been in the Army.”
“Three years Sergeant.”
“I’ve been serving my Queen for twenty. Let me give you a little advice. We blast those harpies now, when they’re 20 kilometers away and the brass will think our job is easy and move us somewhere dangerous. Now, we wait until they’re five kilometers away and the brass is really sweating, then blast them, we get to be heroes, get a commendation and possibly even a three-day pass. And we get to keep this nice soft billet.
