by Stuart Slade
Without being aware of it, Hertonymarkess had entered the Phlegethon River and it was with utter astonishment he realized he was in water up to his waist. The wading was slowing him down but he realized it mattered little. The human mage-fire was concentrated on the banks of the river behind him, some of the bolts were landing in the water but they were few in number. Most of the bursts were behind them and he got the feeling the ones in the river were mistakes, bolts that were landing short. Ahead, he could see a target, the first of the little forts that the humans had set up. Now that was odd. Why had the humans set up lots of little forts rather than one big one? Everybody knew that the bigger the fortress, the harder it would be to take?
There were Iron Chariots in the fortress, Hertonymarkess felt his stomach cringe at the thought of iron, then he set his grip firmly on his trident and closed the grip, discharging a bolt at the defenses ahead. It was immensely satisfying to strike back at last, after the helpless terror of the mage-bolts, now there was some way he could fight. Overhead, the vast cloud of harpies was closing in, with luck they would suppress the defenses long enough for his group to get close to that little fort.
Harpy Group, Northern Front, Phlegethon River Bulge, Hell
Uxaligantivaris screamed out her battle cry and tried to launch a jet of flame at the Sky Chariot but it was too fast for her and it rolled away and zoomed upwards. The humans were cowards, they refused to fight, they just stood off and let fly with their fire-lances and seeker-lances, cutting her comrades out of the sky. She knew the losses already suffered by the harpies were almost beyond comprehension, the first strike by the Sky Chariots had killed hundreds before they had even taken off. Then, there were the great seeker lances that had torn into the formation from afar, their explosions killing hundreds more. Then, after that, the Sky Chariots had returned and were slashing at the harpy cloud.
Her skin was on fire, a mass of mad itching that threatened to drive her mad. If the voices in her head didn’t do that first. There were so many of them, some were human speech that made little sense, others were a weird, intense beating noise, as if somebody was pounding her with a giant hammer. Yet others were a gentle hiss that simply filled every corner of her mind and drowned out all that went on inside. The mass of electronic noise was hardly surprising, Uxaligantivaris had no means of knowing it and would not have understood the implications even if she had, but she was being painted by more than 2,000 radar sets. Those alone were doing damage to her, quite distinct from the missiles and guns that they targeted. Uxaligantivaris knew that something was wrong but she couldn’t know how wrong for the truth was she was being slowly microwaved to death in mid-air. Already her body temperature was slowly rising as the radar energy was exciting the molecules that formed the liquids in her body.
Below her, she could see the human forts that formed their defensive position. It made little sense to her, but her job wasn’t to understand, just to do as she was told. Even though that meant something she had never done before. Harpies were scouts and raiders, intended to observe enemy formations and report on their movement. Sometimes they would attack undefended positions by night to spread fear and terror. Never before had the harpies been told to attack defensive positions that were fully-equipped and putting up resistance. Harpies traded protection and firepower for speed and flight. Not enough of either of course, not compared with the human Sky Chariots, but a good trade for their proper role. Now, they were being pitched against a serious defense.
There was one advantage in doing that. Uxaligantivaris had noted that the human Sky Chariots were staying high, not dropping close to the ground. Perhaps they couldn’t, she’d noticed that their wings didn’t flap like any proper flying creature. Oh, a couple had had wings that seemed to flap forward and backwards but none flapped properly. Still, the message was clear, close to the ground and the Sky Chariots would leave them alone. Cheered at the thought, she folded her wings, expelled gas, and dropped like a stone on the defense position beneath.
Command HQ, Camp Hell-Alpha, Hell
“The battle is joined Tovarish General.” General Ivan Semenovich Dorokhov was standing in front of his screen, the facilities here in hell were nowhere near as good as those General Petraeus had left behind in Baghdad but they would serve.
“Very good, Ivan Semenovich. How goes the day?”
“Well, David Howellovich.” Both men grinned at the mangled Russification of Petraeus’s middle name. “Our artillery and air strikes are hurting the baldricks badly. We estimate their casualties already must be approaching ten percent of their total.”
“A word of advice Grazhdanin Ivan, divide your estimates by three. We learned this the hard way in Iraq and before that in Vietnam and the Balkans.”
“And we learned that same lesson in Afghanistan and fighting the Hitlerites. But Gospodin David, we have hit Beelzebub’s army hard. His casualties on the northern flank are mounting and they are only now moving into our main zone of resistance. The southern flank is moving more slowly, the situation had not developed there yet. There appears to be no movement at all in the center.”
“Hmm. The baldricks are learning. Not slowly either. Whatever you need, just call. We’re lining up the support for you here.” As far as Petraeus was concerned, that was his role in this battle. Let the Russian Army do its thing and just make sure they have every tool they needed, and some that they didn’t know they needed, not yet anyway. “For your information, the BUFFS have arrived. They flew through the hellmouth a few minutes ago and are circling to gain height. They’ll be ready when you need them.”
Dorokhov laughed. “The sight of those flying through the Hellgate must have been impressive. Is there an intact eardrum left back there?”
“Not a one. Not a one. But tell your men, the Gray Lady is coming.”
Chapter Fifty Seven
DIMO(N) Headquarters, Crystal City, Virginia
For the fourth time in the last half-hour, a gentle beeping filled the monitoring room. With some irritation, Technical Sergeant James Nevaquaya put aside the draft response procedure he’d been reading and glanced up at the grid of monitors. Code: ! 2-network Anomaly Detected! ! VERIZON node 21633: 28% dropped frames: Detroit, MI! VERIZON node 21638: 12% dropped frames: Detroit Metro, MI (4.8 km)! SPRINT node 45-3C: 15% dropped frames: Detroit, MI (2.5 km)?? Detailed capture triggered on 36 nodes.
One monitor was showing a map of the anomaly site – freeways snaking through a dense grid of streets, north of Detroit. Nevaquaya’s hand went to the mouse as he tried to bring up the spectrum display. The prototype was barely functional, a cobbled together mess of mostly civilian technology, but for now that novelty and importance of the task was keeping frustration at bay. The spectrum analyzer was still hobbled by the cell site’s receiver limitations, but it was clearly showing a broadband hump peaking in the low gigahertz.
The gentle beeping was abruptly replaced by an insistent two-tone warble. The text scrolling onto the status display snapped Nevaquaya’s mind to intense alertness. Code: ! Multi-network Anomaly Confirmed!
! VERIZON node 21633: 34% dropped frames: Detroit, MI! VERIZON node 21638: 25% dropped frames: Detroit Metro, MI (4.8 km)! VERIZON node 21629: 17% dropped frames : Detroit, MI (6.5 km)! VERIZON node 21635: 14% dropped frames: Warren, MI (9.3 km)! SPRINT node 45-3C: 31% dropped frames: Detroit, MI (2.5 km)! CDMA2000 down! SPRINT node 45-3A: 20% dropped frames: Detroit, MI (3.9 km)! SPRINT node 44-8D: 16% dropped frames: Warren, MI (8.7 km)! CINGULAR node MA335: 26% dropped frames: Detroit, MI (3.9 km)
W-CDMA down! CINGULAR node MA334: 22% dropped frames: Detroit Metro, MI (5.2 km)! ALLTEL node 4775: software failure: Southfield, MI (11.2 km)! T-MOBILE node MA5XA: W-CDMA resetting: Detroit, MI (6.3 km)?? Composite spectrum display enabled.? Detailed capture triggered on 92 nodes.!!*** POSSIBLE PORTAL OPENING – heuristic match 0.82****!
Within seconds an office chair rolled through the door from the adjoining office, carrying Graeme Wilson with it. The civilian contractor took
in the situation on the monitors almost instantly.
“0.82? That’s the highest yet. What do you make of the spectrum?”
“The general spike structure sure looks like the recordings. I’ll call NORAD – can you get any more resolution out of those sites?”
Wilson had already begun typing, his fingers a chattering blur. Console windows popped up and streams of incomprehensible commands flashed past. Meanwhile Nevaquaya had gone straight for the first entry in the speed dial.
“…big one, at four two degrees twenty three minutes north, eighty three degrees four minutes west. Confidence is moderate.”
Nevaquaya watched the civilian work while the duty officer at NORAD checked the radar picture. The contrast between the usual procurement process, even the usual R amp;D process and what was going on here was incredible, things were happening in days that had taken years just a few months earlier. The monitoring system was crude and buggy as yet, but getting even that operational in under four days was amazing. America had apparently rediscovered engineers who thrived on doing the impossible. Then Nevaquaya thought again, no not rediscovered, just set free from the demands of reaching some unattainable ideal of perfection.
The spectrum display flicked and restructured itself, crisper and with fewer gaps. Secondary windows began to fill up with phase analysis of signal components. “There, how about that?”
Nevaquaya stared at the screen for three seconds before speaking directly into the phone.
“Confirmed, we’ve got more data here too, confidence is now high, repeat, confidence high for portal opening over northern Detroit.”
He pressed mute, then another button that began sounding the incident alarm in the other offices. Finally he turned to Graeme. “The spikes match. NOARD is seeing radar interference at that location. Looks like the demons are going for Detroit, with a big one too by the look of it. Fighters are on the way, they’ll be contacting national guard units next.” Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside as more DIMO(N) staff converged on the monitoring room. Both men stared at the screens, where the error rates and signal strengths were climbing inexorably. Both knew that their warning was better than nothing, but also that it left precious few minutes to intercept the demon targeteer. If friendly forces couldn’t stop it in time, the heart of a great American city would die in ash and fire.
Over Interstate 75, Detroit, Michigan
Megaaeraholrakni’s arm and wing muscles already ached from the exertion – she had done very little flying these last few centuries – but the demon was so enraged that she barely noticed. How could Euryale have been so incompetent? It could not have been her own fault, she had concentrated firmly on the great glass towers that stood haughtily above the human sprawl. Yet the portal had opened half a league to the north, instead of half a league to the south, almost completely the wrong direction. ‘More likely that half-witted naga.’ she thought, as she painfully climbed through 500 feet. ‘though surely Yulupki isn’t stupid enough to try sabotaging the Count’s scheme?’
Below her streams of tiny iron boxes raced back and forth, traveling along two wide black strips set in a shallow trench. The trench cut through the human city, snaking gently and occasionally joining up with other trenches in curious curling structures reminiscent of spilled entrails. Many more of the iron boxes stood motionless on parade grounds dotted between the buildings. ‘Perhaps they worship them’ Megaaeraholrakni thought; she could think of no other reason to go to such extreme efforts for the chariot’s sake.
The gorgon could sense the nascent portal ahead; indeed it would be hard for her to miss it, given how much psychic energy it was leaking. Belial had exhorted the naga to put every effort into this attack and they were obviously giving it everything they had. It could be that this focus on power accounted for their lousy aim. She was drawing near now and the air itself seemed to crackle with power. The portal mouth was bobbing high in the air over a dark L-shaped castle, or more precisely over the bone white chariot-filled parade ground behind it.
Megaaeraholrakni began a slow sweeping turn, oblivious to the attention she was beginning to draw on the ground below. She reached out with her mind, the psychic force radiating down from her wings to caress the extra-dimensional nexus at the heart of the portal. Crude ‘dragging’ was for novices, one merely had to induce a desire to move in a particular direction and the portal would do the work (or rather, the teams of naga powering it would be forced to do the work, but it was all the same to the gorgon). But mere seconds after the portal had begun to move it began to oscillate wildly, shedding energy that arced to the ground as lighting. Megaaeraholrakni had no choice to use every ounce of strength she possessed to wrestle the portal back into submission. Flying directly above it, buffeted by the thermals created by the arcing, it seemed to her that she was riding an untamed beast, ready to throw lighting back at her at any moment. The gorgon’s confidence in her own ability was supreme however, and perhaps not unwarranted, as she soon had the unborn portal simmering in a semblance of submission. Grimly she set off towards the great gleaming towers, a corner of her mind already devising a way to gain revenge on whoever was responsible for this mess.
Tanner Firearm Supplies, Northern Detroit
“Thanks for keeping these aside for me Erwin. I know they’re hard to come by right now, what with the Brits adopting them as standard and grabbing the whole production run.”
“Hey no problem Danny. Wouldn’t want to see a friend short of firepower if one of those monsters makes an appearance.” The shopkeeper insisted on shaking the customer’s hand. The man then scooped up the box of. 338 Lapua from the counter and made his way out of the store.
Daniel Wright had stowed the ammo in the under-seat safe and was about to start his pickup’s engine when a glint in the sky caught his eye. He considered himself something of an aircraft buff and took a closer look, trying to the identify the type. It was bronze colored, the silhouette changing as he watched… something clicked into place as he realized that it was not a plane, but a creature. A creature that looked just like the grainy news footage from England. At first it had looked like it was circling over the AA amp;M building. Now it was definitely heading for downtown; the shop was built just off the I-75 and the demon was flying roughly parallel to the highway.
He leapt out of the truck, grabbing his Barrett 98 from the rack. Fortunately the optics were still in place from his Sunday range visit. As Daniel unlocked the safe he hesitated for a second; shooting into the sky was usually a reason to make fun of ignorant third-worlders, as what went up had to come down and it could well come down on someone’s head. But only for a second. The Sheffield death toll had now passed 16,000 and he had to stop that happening here at any cost. Daniel clicked the magazine home, braced himself on the side of the truck, brought the monster into the sights and fired.
The shot was on the edge of effective range to start with, and without tracers it was basically impossible to correct for drop, deflection and wind drift, so Daniel just had to give it his best guess. He could hear other shooters opening up, and with luck one of them got lucky. He blew flew the first magazine with no apparent effect on the distant flapping form and as he was reaching for the second he noticed that other shoppers from the gun store had joined him in the parking lot. Some were starting at him, some at the sky.
“There’s a damned Baldrick up there!” he shouted, “grab a rifle and start shooting, or it’ll burn the city.” He didn’t wait to watch them respond, the fresh magazine clicked home and he soon had the rifle realigned on the target. This time the creature definitely seemed to be hit, dropping suddenly and flapping erratically as he fired his last three rounds. No way to know if it was one of his rounds that did it, but it didn’t matter. Erwin and Bob were back with AR-15s from the store, and beside him even Emily was enthusiastically letting fly with her Smith amp; Wesson 586. Top marks for effort, Daniel thought, as he noticed a large dark green and very old half-track coming to a stop on the side of t
he freeway. The ready platoon of the 3rd Michigan Infantry Regiment, United States Volunteers had arrived with an M-16 quad-50 they’d “liberated” from a museum and they wasted no time opening up with their much-loved M2 mount. Wright recognized some of the volunteers as they took up their positions, the 3rd Michigan had been built around a re-enactors group and to Wright, they looked a bit odd in modern BDUs.
I75-I94 Interchange, Detroit, Michigan
The gorgon’s mood had improved somewhat as she flew south towards the human towers. This realm’s bright direct light had been painful at first, but now it felt pleasantly warm on her back. The proto-portal seemed to have settled down, and she was free to gaze at the landscape below, savoring her power to end their pitiful existences. She was death incarnate, an avatar of cleansing flame come to burn this hive of vermin off the face of the planet. Megaaeraholrakni had always reveled in the exercise of psychic power, and now this was the culmination of all those millennia of effort.
That said she did have something of a dilemma. As she ascended it became clear that the towers were built next to a wide river. If she opened the portal over them, the lava would pool there and many of the lesser buildings would be spared. Perhaps it would be better to open it some way from the river, to ensure that the rest of the city burned? There were a great many parades of chariots here – the big flat buildings next to them could be workshops, and Belial had been quite insistent about destroying those. On the other hand, blocking the river with lava would not be so bad, the scalding steam and the flooding was sure to be amusing…
Megaaeraholrakni’s musings were interrupted by a sharp pain in her right wing. Suddenly she became aware of the irregular cracking sounds coming from below, coming faster and faster with each passing second. Agony flashed down her side as something tore into her flank. The gorgon looked back in disbelief at the green blood dripping from the wound. How dare they? She’d heard the rumors of the human’s newfound magery… now too late she realized how foolish she’d been to dismiss those warnings.
