by Stuart Slade
“Oh, I think we can guarantee you lots of corpses.” Panasov’s voice was almost droll as his mind recalled the long rows of guns awaiting the Baldrick assault.
“And, Dr Abrams,” said Dr Surlethe.
“Thanks,” said Dr Abrams, an older gentleman with a fine Santa Claus beard. “We find that the atmosphere here is relatively similar to that of Earth, which means that there was either gaseous exchange or the life processes here are similar to those on Earth. The high particulate count at this location suggests some volcanic activity in the vicinity, or a hell of a lot – pardon the pun – of volcanic activity somewhere far away. Other than that, we can't really do any meaningful climate science, aside from weather observations, without getting data from the upper atmosphere. We've sent to NASA for some weather balloons to go up; hopefully, they'll get here in the next couple of days, and then we can go from there.” He sat down.
“All right,” said Dr Surlethe. “Is there anything else?” Nobody spoke, so he continued: “Excellent. Let's plan on meeting weekly from here on out and comparing notes. Thanks, everybody!”
As the various scientists were moving out of the room, Dr Surlethe tapped Dr Fulton on the shoulder. “Mind if I have a word with you?”
“Sure,” said the taller man.
“I'm a mathematician by trade. Do you think you could email me the data? I'll see what I can do with it in my spare time.”
“I'd love to. Our department is all geographers; none of us really have the experience or knowledge to deal with this sort of non-spherical geometry.”
“Thanks,” said Dr Surlethe. “I look forward to it.” And he walked out of the room, contemplating just what he was going to tell the president and cabinet at the next meeting, and wondering on top of that what sort of shape could explain the curvature that was obvious here.
(Congrats to Jan who wrote the first part, Starglider the middle and Surlethe the end)
Chapter Fifty One
Secure Accommodation Block, Camo Hell-Alpha, Martial Plain of Dysprosium
The double doors burst open and Colonel Paschal strode in, flanked by MPs carrying menacing USAS-12 combat shotguns. The concrete room was the size of a small hangar, but the huge demon made it look like a cramped apartment. The big plasma screen was showing images of WWII aircraft attacking warships. The stack of DVD cases next to it confirmed that Abigor had been continuing to absorb military documentaries and war movies. The infernal general looked up with a surprised expression, which quickly hardened as he saw the heavy guard detail.
“General Abigor.” Paschal was carrying a ruggedized laptop, which he opened and placed on a table in front of the demon. “Can you explain this?” The colonel’s tone was not quite threatening, but clearly the humans were not pleased.
Abigor stared in silence as the images of lava, fire and destruction played out. “Belial” he said, in a tone of mild contempt. “This has to be his doing.”
“Belial?” Paschal had studied Abigor’s profiles of the top demon leadership but he didn’t recall the name. “Who is Belial?”
“A sniveling failure. Count Belial is the ruler of Tartarus, a barren wasteland in the part of hell furthest from Dis. Satan exiled him there many millennia ago, after he walked right into a trap laid by Lahabiel and got his entire army captured or killed.”
“If he’s an exile, how did he manage to do this?”
“Belial has been trying to regain Satan’s favor, by all means of craven and dishonorable means. His realm survives only because he makes himself useful, with his fancy tridents and his overgrown wyverns. His retinue is composed of failures like himself, mostly demons that deserted their lords instead of dying gloriously in their service.”
Abigor paused for a moment before continuing, uneasy with how close he had come to describing his own situation. Then he tapped the computer screen with a talon. “I have seen this before. Belial used a similar trick to destroy two human cities, back when we were last surveying this planet. Satan and Yahweh were competing to visit creative forms of suffering on the humans. As I recall, Belial’s flashy little stunt went down quite well, well enough for Mekratrig to allow him back into his court.
Paschal frowned. “The bible speaks of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah… by Yahweh though, not by Satan or his minions.”
Abigor snorted. “Well of course. The angels were always better at propaganda than us. Whatever your books say, it was Belial’s doing.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this earlier?”
“It did not occur to me that Satan would consider this a viable tactic. This is not the way wars are fought…” The demon paused for a second, considering the things he’d seen on the image panel. “At least, it is not the way we fight wars. Most likely Belial is looking for another opportunity to ingratiate himself and Satan has permitted him to proceed in the hope of distracting you while Beelzebub moves his army up for a fresh assault.”
Colonel Paschal seemed to relax fractionally. He couldn’t be sure Abigor was telling the truth, but his story was plausible given what he’d seen of demon mentality so far.
“So how does this work? Is the lava coming from a volcano?”
“Most likely. The last time I was in Tartarus was during the Great War, when we used it as a prison to hold high-ranking captured angels. That was a very long time ago, but I remember the prison nestled in the mountains, many of which were crowned with fire.”
“Can you give us anything more specific?”
Abigor shrugged. “Not really. I don’t know the specifics of the ritual. Large portals are always handled by the naga, they keep many of the secrets of portal magery to themselves.”
“Naga? Is that what you call the demon flying over the attack site? Looked like an anorexic harpy to me.”
A low chuckle escaped the former general’s lips. “No, that was a gorgon. Another exiled failure, not surprising that most of them took up with Belial. Naga are much more common… I’m sure I described them to one of your vassals earlier.”
Colonel Paschal hit a few keys, calling up the interrogation logs for Abigor. Sure enough, there was a page of text describing ‘naga’ along with a striking artist’s impression of the half-snake, half-humanoid demons.
“I had a coven of them in my retinue,” Abigor volunteered, ‘but I didn’t bring any with me to earth. They’re slow and soft-skinned, and I did not appreciate the power of your ranged weapons, so I didn’t see any use for them.” He wondered if it would’ve made a difference if he had brought them. Certainly not to the outcome, but perhaps the human casualties would have been a fraction higher. He thought again, a small fraction higher.
“Is the gorgon necessary to open the portal? If we shoot it down before the portal opens, will that prevent the attack?”
Abigor stared into space for a moment. “I believe the gorgon was there to ensure the portal opened over the target. You see, the larger the portal, the harder it is to predict where it will open. The one you call the ‘hellmouth’ opened a full five leagues from the nephilim I possessed.”
“The naga do have a means of opening portals more accurately, but it requires a portal mage at both ends. I imagine the gorgon you saw was involved in that. If you could kill Belial’s witches as they appear, then he would be reduced to striking at random in the vicinity of whatever nephilim he could find.”
‘Better than nothing’ Paschal thought. “The target was Sheffield, a relatively small city in the British Isles. We aren’t aware of any obvious reasons to target it, other than the fact that British troops played a small but significant role in your defeat. Do you know why Belial chose that target?”
“No. Belial is fond of bizarre schemes… but then he must have used a nephilim to open a portal for the gorgon. It may be that your counter-magic is getting so good that he was forced to take the first nephilim he could find, and the gorgon just flew to the nearest city.”
‘So no way of knowing where they will strike next’ Paschal thought
unhappily. “We need to know when he’ll strike next. How many times can Belial do this, and how often?”
“I can’t give you firm answers Colonel. I do know that opening large portals is a great strain on the naga, they are weak and pained for many days afterwards. Tartarus has a great many volcanoes. The rate at which Belial can open portals depends on how many naga he has and how quickly he can find targets. If Satan intends to use this method to exterminate you, then he might order the dukes to loan Belial their covens until the task is done.”
“If not a firm answer, then an educated guess?”
“Belial should be able to open at least one portal a week.”
Paschal was silent for a moment. “I’ve got to relay this to my superiors. Sit tight, Ill be back shortly.” He pulled a black box from a pocket and brought it up to his ear as he left the room.
Abigor stared at the frozen image of the burning city. For a while he was completely certain that the humans would defeat Satan, but now he was not so sure. Old traditions were being discarded, the once unthinkable was being considered. The humans had given hell an object lesson in how efficiently war could be conducted when one made decisions purely on the basis of effectiveness, not honor, politics, auspiciousness or tradition. How fast could hell learn?
Paschal had returned. “Ok General, let’s do this properly. I need everything you can tell me about Belial and Tartarus, starting with its grid co-ordinates.”
Abigor wasn’t sure what ‘grid co-ordinates’ meant but he got the impression it had something to do with maps. “You want to know how to get to Tartarus?” Of course, the humans wanted to stop the attacks by destroying Belial. “It is almost three thousand leagues from here, across all manner of terrain. Even with your chariots, it would take many months to fight your way there, and Satan would harass you and your supply train all the way.”
Paschal smiled grimly. “General, I have a small gift for you.” He handed over a small flat box, one that Abigor recognized immediately as a DVD. It was labeled ‘A History of the Manhattan Project’. “Abigor, you have barely begun to see what we can do when we truly wish to destroy our enemies.”
White House Communications Suite, White House, Washington DC
“Well, if we can’t shut it off, I suppose the only thing left will be to market it as a tourist attraction.”
It was probably fortunate that everybody’s attention was focused on the imagery being transmitted from the aircraft circling Sheffield. Had they been looking at Condoleezza Rice, they would have seen her eyes bulging from their sockets with sheer horror. “I can’t believe he just said that.”
Beside her Defense Secretary Warner nodded fractionally in agreement. “I don’t know which is worse, the fact he said it or the fact that its true.”
“Mister President, thankful as we are for America’s usual generous aid in a time of disaster, I must remonstrate with you. This is hardly a laughing matter for my country.” Gordon Brown looked shocked as indeed he was.
“I agree Gordon, and I am sorry if my remark sounded disrespectful of your country’s loss. But the fact remains, I do not see what we can do about this yet. We will stand by you, fight with you to save what is left of Sheffield and its people, but I do not know how we can stop this torrent of lava. And if we cannot stop it, we must find a way to make use of it.”
“You mean for all our military forces committed to this war, we cannot stop this nightmare? That baldrick General who has defected to us. Is he of no help at all?”
“If I may interrupt Sir.” On another screen, General Petraeus spoke quietly as was his way. “We have discussed this with Grand Duke Abigor. He has told us much of value, identifying the primary culprit, a minor baldrick lord called Belial. He has told us how it was done and from where. Belial’s stronghold, a place called Tartarus.”
“So we can destroy it.” Three people spoke in exact unison even though they were on different continents. A minor marvel of modern communications that everybody in the room took for granted.
“That’s not so easy. Belial is a minor figure, in some disgrace and his fortress is far from our forces, Three thousand leagues in fact, we make that around 10,500 miles as a B-1 flies.”
“Can you get your bombers there?” Brown spoke urgently, the pain of Sheffield making his voice falter.
“We can Sir.” General John. Corley spoke from Offutt Air Force Base. “As soon as we find out where ‘There’ is.”
“Abigor told us. Tartarus.”
“Yes, but where is it. Sir, I’ve seen the map Abigor drew for us. It’s a good map, very carefully drawn, one that Abigor obviously took great care over. But it’s a map drawn by somebody who lives far in our past. It isn’t what we call a map, its more a picture. You’ve seen old maps Sir. The one Abigor gave us isn’t scaled and he doesn’t even know what projection is. Come to think of it, nor do we where Hell is concerned. We’ve got mathematicians working on that. But all we have is a picture. We’re going to be looking for a target probably about the size of a town hall, in an area the size of North America. And we’ll be doing it what amounts to a dense fog. We’re modifying our B-1A to an RB-1A with sidescan radars and a lot of extra fuel and it’ll go out and look but it could be weeks before she spots a target.”
Brown thought for a few seconds. “When we do find it?”
“We’ll smear it across the ground. But we have to find it first. Bombers aren’t the only option of course.” Corley spoke carefully.
“A ground strike? If you need people, the SAS and SBS are ready to go. But how will they know where?”
“They won’t have to.” Petraeus’s voice was precise and emphatic. “We don’ have to know where a Portal is, we just have to know its in the right place. Then we can put a team in with beacon equipment to home the RB-1A in. And she can lead the rest of the Bones.”
“And the Tu-160s.” Prime Minister Putin’s voice was equally emphatic.”
“And the Tu-160s.” President Bush smiled engagingly at the screen. “General Corley wants to speak with you about the Tu-160.”
“One question, General.” Petraeus raised an eyebrow, “if the team are going to be pathfinders, how will they stay healthy long enough? They can’t have armor and air-locked buildings.”
“Mister Prime Minister. We do have military units that are native to Hell now. And we can reposition one of them for the job. In fact, we are selecting one for it now.”
Outer Ring, Sixth Circle of Hell
Hell made you different. It was the only way he could've reacted how he did to what he and the others had seen. But then he had felt the same way when he had heard of children dying of abuse back home. The same sick rage and desire to kill those responsible. But McElroy crushed his feelinsg down into his boots and forced himself to watch dispassionately.
Aeneas, born in an older, harder time, nevertheless felt the same. He and McElroy had crossed one of the low ridges and advanced down on some of the garrisons that were starting to spread along the banks of the lava flow. Not too close of course, even baldricks didn’t feel a desire to be too close to that nightmare, but far enough to provide patrols. The old days, of a single baldrick patrolling the banks for days at a time were gone. Too many had gone out and never come back. Now they patrolled in groups, never far from support. And that meant garrisons. Where there were garrisons, that meant troops who had to be supplied and the baldricks had never heard of logistics. So there had to be a market and sure enough, there was. In a cleared out patch of land, just outside the walls of one of the fortresses, many dozens of demons plied wares, bartered, and went about their business. Aeanas kept losing count, but there had to be well over three hundred demons. The best part of a whole company perhaps?
It was in this market that he spied a particular demon, whose cart was packed with writhing bodies. Human bodies. They were too far away to hear, of course, but every once in a while, a demon would come by and begin some sort of haggling. The merchant would fetch a victim from the cart
and pass it the customer who would open its throat with one of its claws, snap its neck for good measure then eat the carcass on the spot, devouring the body in a few short seconds. It did not take any of them very long to realize that the humans in the merchant's wagon were exclusively children.
Aeanas stared at the scene with cold fury. He did not angrily demand that they throw caution to the wind and charge in to save the children, a hot-blooded rage that blinded its victim to common sense would have called for that. Instead, stone-faced, he watched the merchant empty his wagon, pack up his other trinkets, and be off down the rutted dirt road. So did Cassidy and McElroy. There would be a time for vengeance, a time when debts like this one would be paid but this was not it. Three humans attacking 300 baldricks with edged weapons was simply a way to die. Or be thrown back in the lava streams
Aeanas was a Spartan warrior. To him, nothing was more satisfying than battering his opponent down and finishing him with two or three blows. An honorable battle where one man was pitched against another with victory going to the strongest and bravest. Only that way was victory meaningful. So when he thought about helpless children being sold as some sort of delicacy the scene just added to the anger and voluminous hate he held in his heart for his tormentors. He could not be certain, but he suspected that Cassidy and McElroy felt largely the same way. But did they? They didn’t look upon war the same way as he did, war for them was an exercise in cost-effective killing where the objective was to make sure the enemy never stood a chance. Aeneas had tried to explain where true honor lay once but McElroy had simply looked at him and said “If it’s a fair fight, you made a mistake somewhere.”
So were they affected by the horror they had seen? They were, of course, silent on these trips unless speech was absolutely necessary, but they didn't seem any more subdued or lethargic. Instead, they pushed on to get back to base at their same stalwart pace that their state of second death afforded them. It was that silence that allowed Aeanas to kill his first demon.
