by Stuart Slade
Hellmouth Air Traffic Control Center, Camp Hell-Alpha, Hell
Sergeant Stephanie ‘Stevie’ Moss liked being an Air Traffic Controller. It gave her a real feeling of power over the officers that flew the RAF’s aircraft. To help manage the flow of aircraft around the Hellmouth Number 1 Air Control Centre had deployed a Type 101 radar and a Tactical Air Control Centre. Some of the ATC staff were less than pleased to be deployed to Hell, but Moss did not mind, it would be the first chance for her to earn a campaign medal, and besides they did have the entirety of 1 Squadron, RAF Regiment defending the radar site, so she was not particularly worried.
She watched as the blip she had been expecting appeared out of the Hellmouth.
“X-Ray Five, Five, Eight, this is GCI. Welcome to Hell, gentlemen. You are clear to climb to operational altitude, over. Keep alert at all times, the air here is crowded and poor visibility means you will have very little warning of any aircraft out of their approved flight path.” There was a note of asperity in Moss’s voice, most pilots were doing their best in the unfamiliar conditions but there were some who just did what they wanted and left everybody else to sort out the problems.
Vulcan XH-558, Over Hell
It was reassuring to hear a familiar accent from ground control. “Thank you, GCI, climbing to cruising altitude, over.”
As expected at 28,000 feet the Vulcan broke through the clag and Squadron Leader Maxwell pulled back on the lever that opened the filters. The power from the engines surged and the bomber immediately began to climb more rapidly, up to its operational ceiling of 55,000 feet.
“Okay, open the bomb bay doors. Time to start our Cranberry impression.”
Underneath, the mapping radars scanned through the murk and started to make their record of the terrain that lay under the reddish fog that masked Hell. The minutes ticked past and turned into hours as the maps were generated, watching his displays Winters wondered how long it would be before there was a Google-Hell to partner Google-Earth. Even the thought suggested to him that Hell had irreversibly changed since The Message had arrived eight long months ago; no matter what happened in the war, it would never be the same again. While the radar system mapped the ground hidden in the murk below, the optical equipment started measuring the density of the dust suspended in the atmosphere, trying to gauge the size of the plume that extended from the giant caldera that formed the hell-pit. Above them, the sky was a red glare, no sign of anything to break the uniform light. Or to indicate what the light was for that matter, a problem that was believed to have given several physicists nervous breakdowns.
“Any sign of anything interesting down there?” Winters nodded towards the H2S display. As primarily a bombing radar, it was good at picking up the rectangles of habitations. Human ones anyway, yet another reason for this flight. Nobody really know how the baldricks actually lived. Did they have houses? Or live in caves? Nobody really knew.
Maxwell shook his head. “Nothing. This place seems almost unoccupied apart from the concentration around Dis.” He looked down to the flight instrumentation. “Time for a tank-up Boss.”
“Gotcha. Dropping down to 30,000 feet. That’ll be above the clag but the tanker should be able to manage it. Who have we got?”
Maxwell looked at the roster. “Lion-Oh-Three. Singapore Air Force KC-135. I’ve got his beacon up.”
“Fair enough, I’ll give him a bell.”
The refueling went efficiently enough, without the backchat that distinguished the RAF-only refueling hook ups. Winters got the impression that the Singapore Air Force crew were going out of their way to seem professional and efficient on this, Hell’s first aerial refueling. Other than the inevitable fuel leak, the hook-up went fine and the tanker peeled away to return to its base back on Earth.
“Humorless lot aren’t they.” Winters was relaxing as XH-558 climbed back to her operational altitude. “Still, coming from a country where one has to get a police permit before chewing gum…”
“Is that true? I thought it was an urban legend.” Maxwell stopped suddenly. “Whoa, now that’s one thing we wanted to see. The beacon is up.”
Sure enough, the navigation display showed a bright light far to the north of them. The beacon set up by a Special Undead Forces team to steer the heavy bombers to their target. Winters didn’t hesitate. “Control, this is XH-558. We have the Belial Beacon on our display. We read location as…” He hesitated and read the numbers off the display. “Have you got that? Then tell the spams their Bones are in business.”
Market Place. City of Dis, Hell
Yellithanakstra went around the stalls in the market, looking for food for herself and her mate. And their kidling of course. Sometimes she had to remember that there were more than just the two of them now. There were some small food-beasts around but the choice had dropped dramatically. Word was spreading across Dis despite the efforts of the surviving Dukes to stop it, Beelzebub’s army had been smashed, destroyed. The humans had slaughtered his forces just as efficiently as they had destroyed those of Abigor. Now they were spreading out, surrounding the city, slowly cutting it off from its sources of supply. As they did so, their aircraft were pounding targets across the city.
Even as she thought of the humans and their machines, a wailing noise erupted from the roofs and walls of the city. The watchers had seen more human aircraft coming in and were blowing their horns to warn the demons in the city to take cover. Yellithanakstra looked around, some of the demons here were already scrambling for cover, trying to hide under abutments and arches from the bombs that would still be raining down. The older hands, like Yellithanakstra didn’t bother. The human aircraft, she rolled the new word around on her tongue, might be fast but they were incredibly accurate. Their bombs, another new word to savor, always hit the targets they were aimed at. Mostly the palaces of the powerful dukes, the barracks where their legions lived, the fields where they trained. They never scattered their bombs at random across the city. Yellithanakstra wondered at that, if they did, just bombed at random, they could create panic and chaos in Dis.
She looked at the aircraft approaching fast. Big aircraft with the strange wings that could flap forwards and backwards. Their camouflage made them hard to see against the red-gray sky but she caught a brief glimpse of the red stars on the wings and tails of the four aircraft. Then they were overhead, their howl making her head shake, and she saw them bank before releasing a rain of bombs. Underneath them, the palace of Naberius disintegrated into a cloud of dust shrouding a pile of collapsing stone. The humans weren’t perfect, she thought, Naberius had been killed when Satan’s own palace had been bombed. Or perhaps they had decided to destroy the palace anyway in case somebody had taken Naberius’s place.
Yellithanakstra sighed and started to return to her home. Her mate would be off duty soon, returning from the walls where he and his legion were waiting for the human assault they knew had to come. Demon armies fighting humans in the open had been destroyed. Would they have any better luck fighting from behind stone walls? She was so absorbed with her worries and the sight of the human bombers flying effortlessly overhead that she never saw the wooden pole being pushed out from behind a cart. It was beautifully timed, going between her legs and catching her feet, sending her sprawling to the ground.
For a second she lay there, on the cobblestones, stunned by her fall. When she had collected her wits, she started to get up again but a violent blow to the back of her head sent her back to the ground. Half-stunned, she looked around and saw greenish, scaly legs surrounding her. Bewildered, she looked more and realized she was surrounded by a group of orcs, almost a dozen of them, all carrying heavy clubs. They were jabbering at each other, rattling away in a language she couldn’t understand. Orcs never spoke in the presence of a demon, to do so was to invite death and so few demons understood orcish. Whatever the argument was about, one of the orcs solved it by taking his club and swinging down, hitting Yellithanakstra on the back.
She screamed in rage
and tried to summon up magic to drive them away but the rest had been encouraged by the success of the attack and they joined in, swinging their clubs down on her with all the force they could manage. Yellithanakstra felt the bones in her body breaking with the impacts, felt the ones to her head driving away her ability to concentrate for the generation of magic or even to think. She tried to crawl away but the orcs followed her, still battering her with their clubs. Eventually, she collapsed, her body shaking as the street faded away from her sight.
The orcs looked down on the body of their victim, a few still taking a few last swings although the demon was obviously dead. Then, they heard other demons running towards them and they scattered, running through the narrow alleyways and into the drains. Soon, they would gather and try and set up another ambush for an unwary demon.
Al Sahra Airfield, Iraq
”What a show, what a fight, we really hit our target for tonight, though with one engine gone we will still carry on coming in on a wing but with flair.
The chorus of the old song reverberated around the beams of the mess. Al Sahra had been one of Saddam Hussein’s based, now it was the home of the B-1Bs of the 128th Bomb Squadron, Georgia Air National Guard. Major Curtis Trafford gave out a cheer as the song ended and he finished off his drink. Coca Cola as it happened since he was on alert, waiting for the word to come that the beacon was up and the strike waiting in the dispersal areas could head off for Beelzebub’s fortress. Six B-1s, two of them were carrying the massive EBU-5(1) Mod. 1 bombs intended to close off the portals showering lava onto Sheffield and Detroit. The other four ware loaded down with conventional bombs, some unitary penetrators designed to knock down fortifications, others anti-personnel bomblets to slaughter any baldricks caught in the open.
“Attention, your attention please.” General Graydon was standing on a chair at the end of the room. A dangerous thing to do in a mess full of rowdy pilots. “We have just heard from the Brits, a Vulcan they have up has picked up the beacon from Tartarus. The raid is on. All assigned crews, report to your aircraft. The tankers are already taking off. You have already had your briefings, be ready to follow them. Thank you.” Graydon stood down and left the room.
Across the mess, the 24 crewmen assigned to the strike quietly got up and left, collecting back-slaps and salutes as they went. Trafford followed them, out to where Dragon Slayer was waiting. The mission was a complex one, already tankers would be converging on the strike route, some to refuel the B-1s, others to refuel the tankers. It took 14 tankers to get each of the B-1s to their target and back and more than a few of those tankers would be flying two missions. It was a 22,000 mile flight in total, making this the longest-range bombing mission that had ever been attempted. It was one for the history books, and it was one to avenge Detroit.
Trafford started to climb in to his aircraft then stopped half way in, reaching out to pat the airframe. “Well, honey-bunny, we’re on our way at last.”
Chapter Seventy Four
USS Turner Joy, On Trials Before Leaving For The AUTEC Transition Point
"Kind friends and companions, come join me in rhyme….Come lift up your voices in chorus with mine. Come drink and be merry, from grief we'll refrain.. For we know not when we will all meet again. So here's a health to our company and one to my lass, We'll drink and be merry all out of one glass, We'll drink and be merry, from grief we'll refrain, For we know not when we'll all meet again!"
"But we WILL meet again!" Rochelle Emerson added with a dark laugh as the chorus faded off, their voices hoarse from shouting over the noise of the turbines and various gear. "Even if it be in the burning lakes of Hell!"
"Does the ship actually have alcohol on board?" Lieutenant Travis frowned for a moment and then looked rather hopeful.
Chief Robert 'Bob" Gaussington, who was effectively heading the revitalization efforts that culminated today, seemed like he had just spat. "I hope they find Josephus Daniels last, with respect, Lieutenant."
He'd lost his right leg in a car accident in '96, and that was why he wasn't called back to the colors himself, blast it all. Particularly since the car accident had cost him his wife; as far as he was concerned, the war was an intensely personal thing. His course in virtually delivering their proud ship to the Navy single-handed had been the best he could contribute not merely to revenge but liberation for the woman he had loved. He masked his dedication with an incredible sense of humor which had carried through all the engineering students he had recruited.
And why not? It's better than never seeing someone ever again. Sophia Metaxas thought to herself as she listened to the banter, in particular, the Chief's ability as a civilian to explain to a lieutenant precisely why Josephus Daniels deserved to burn in Hell longer than any other person so condemned. Also he could hide the location of the liquor store which would just happen to all have to be consumed before tomorrow. Then, if all went well, USS Turner Joy DD-951, would gain her commissioning pennant once more and become one of the last operational steam warships in the navy.
Decommissioned on November 11th, 1982, she was handed over to a preservation society in Bremerton, Washington, in the year 1990 after being struck from the reserves, and the Turner Joy's new owners had found themselves with a luckily well-preserved ship, and enough money to make her last. Almost two years of extensive reconstruction and preservation efforts had followed, and the ship that came out looked almost exactly as she did in 1982 when still in regular service, and might have even been in better condition. And they'd kept her that way: Her hull and her interior and engines bore no sign of rust, her 5in rifles had never been demilitarized, nor her torpedo tubes, and her masts had not been cut nor most of her electronics fully stripped.
Bob Gaussington had been one of the half a dozen or so men who had committed themselves to spending a great chunk of their retirement maintaining the ship. When the general mobilization could not, of course, include him, he went back to work at the shipyards from which he'd only recently retired. But then he'd heard that the steam warships still preserved would not be considered for restoration to active service. And it had irritated him, severely. He'd gotten the rest of the volunteers together, mostly also workers at the shipyard, and they'd spread the word at the 'yards.
Then he'd talked to Dr. Brown, the head of the engineering department at Olympic College, and obtained permission for his students-exempted from the draft due to their needed profession-to abandon their free time with the promise that "we can damn well make her sail again, Doctor." And so more and more men had started pouring in from the shipyards, volunteering their time off to the effort-and with a benevolent ‘official’ eye turned, borrowing equipment not needed for anything else at the moment.
Several weeks later the Navy had got wind of it, and been goaded into sending a survey party. Two days later, everything had kicked into high gear; the poor USS Barry at the Washington Navy Yard and the Forrest Sherman and Edson, both retained for future donation as museums, were ripped apart at the docks where they lay by navy teams for any spare parts that could possibly be redeemed for use, in the same way the few surviving Charlie Adams' had been stripped to support the Germans in recommissioning the Molders. The work teams had been made official, and additional weapons and electronics started arriving for the ship.
And now under a short crew with most of her civilian workers onboard, monitoring the ship's machinery and running final tests, she was making ten knots through the shipping channel of Rich Passage out to Puget Sound for the speed trials which would put her boilers to the test.
"Sophia!?" Dr. Brown stepped down into the engine room, as unflappably calm about the situation as might be expected, even when he had to shout to be heard. "Can you check some the connections on the foremast!? We're having some problems in CIC with the radar feed from the SPS-64!"
"And I'm the only one who won't fall off the mast, right, because everyone else is a fat nerd."
"Hey! I resemble that remark!" Mark, it turned out, still had enoug
h of his hearing left that he could hear her from his position next to her.
"Yes! Yes you do! Watch to pressure for me?"
"No problem!"
She left the engine room in some relief and climbed up to where the usual Washington rain met her. That, and the other ship that the Engineering students had been tapped into working with, to her surprise at delight-the ferry Kalakala, miraculously restored from a rusting hulk-well, she was still a rusting hulk, but one that worked, hauling a load of shipyard workers in from Seattle on the cross-sound run, her direct drive diesel sounding like it would destroy the army of Hell by sound alone. Along with the four Steel Electrics and the Olympic, they filled out the ferry service while the Super's had been pulled from the regular routes to do commuter service between Seattle and Boeing Everett via Mukilteo, and Todd in Tacoma on the other side of things, also replacing a large number of rationed cars. In some respects, it was a return to the 1880s for the region-every single boat which could carry large numbers of passengers was pressed into service as a new Mosquito fleet now gas rationing was taking effect and they could supplement buses on land. Even the rusted and battered old Kalakala would have to last just long enough for new vessels to be built.
Just like the Turner Joy would. Sophia reached the foretop with some pride in the fast of even a light breeze, the Kalakala hammering her way to Bremerton in their wake, Rich Passage churned with the speed of her effort, all concerns over shore erosion gone, and the destroyer, for her part, was now at last rounding Bainbridge island with the open waters of the Sound ready for their speed run north through Admiralty Inlet to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the national flag crisp in the wind, though for the moment there was no jack. Sophia got to work with her diagnostic equipment-it turned out to be just another artifact of the rush job, and five minutes of twisting and adjustment solved the problem. The climb back down came just in time, too, as Commander Reynolds brought them around to port and rang up revolutions for twenty-five knots. The brave old lady dug in her heels and surged forward. Everything worked perfectly as billows of oil smoke trailed behind her.
