Armageddon tsw-1

by Stuart Slade

  “Who are you? What are you doing here? And stand up, stop grovelling.”

  “Balthechildis, Noble Sire.” The woman rose to her feet, unsteadily, tentatively. Even when standing she still looked down, avoiding the eyes of the men in the armored vehicles.

  “Why are you here?” Chisholm tried to moderate his voice, who knew what this woman had suffered during her stay here? “And I’m not a Noble Sire. I’m a Colonel. Colonel James Chisholm.”

  “I am a servant No… Colonel. In the house of Anthrapixicatis. I was brought here when I first came.”

  “Are there others like you? Servants of the baldricks… the demons?”

  “Some, Colonel, those who wanted human servants took them when we arrived.”

  “And how long ago was that? Where did you come from?”

  “I do not know how long Colonel, I was a wife in a Frankish settlement of the Danemark. I died in childbed.”

  “This Anthrawhatyoucallededhim. Did he treat you well?”

  “Yes Colonel. I was not whipped too often.”

  Chisholm wanted to say something but he changed his mind. Too many problems could start that way. “Very well, Balthechildis, you don’t belong to him any more. Go outside the city, follow the vehicles along back to the gate. Outside are some people who will help you. You’re free now.”

  The woman obediently started walking back the way Chisholm had indicated. Beside him, the vehicle sergeant spoke very softly. “He treated her well, didn’t whip her too often. What sort of place is this?”

  “This is Hell Sergeant, you know that. And I guess Stockholm syndrome works down here as well. Think about hit from her point of view, being a servant up here must be a prime choice compared with what goes on in the pit. Roll forward.” He flipped on his radio for transmission to Division HQ. “Sun-Ray Alpha Actual Here. Spread the word, there are humans in Dis, servants and others. Keep a watch for them and send them out to the reception teams when we spot them.”

  The message went out and a few seconds later his radio came alive again. “Sun-Ray Alpha Actual, this is Sun-Ray Prime. Be advised your earlier message is confirmed. Russian, British and Czech units all report finding humans in apparently menial positions.” The voice on the other end sounded as if it was trying to stop laughing. “Lead elements of the French cavalry division report they have found what appears to be a bordello staffed with humans.”

  “Trust the French to find a brothel.” One of the troopers in the command Stryker looked around at the sordid streets of Dis reflectively. “That we should be so lucky.”

  The vehicle procession started again, the crews scanning the ever-growing number of faces watching from the buildings. Eventually they came to a large open area, backed by a second wall, one thinner and lower than the great outer wall. From behind it, plumes of smoke, faint but discernable, were rising. The heat was noticeable, not quite burning his face but giving him the same feeling he had when he’s been out in the sun too long. Chisholm looked at his map just to confirm what his eyes had just told him. “This is it people. The other side of that wall is the Hell Pit. Now, our problems really start.”

  Underground Fortress of Palelabor, Tartarus, Hell

  Belial was in an expansive mood. In the five days since the demonstration of his new Great Tridents, the workshops had produced half a dozen more, each with a naga assigned to it. Perhaps the disaster at the second portal had been a good thing after all, it had left a good number of crippled naga that were fit for little more than power sources. They could all be used up in powering his new weapons. Entering the Great Hall of his fortress, Belial saw something that made him freeze in his tracks. A figure, only marginally smaller than he was, with great wings that stretched out. Most of his court was prostrate on the ground in front of it.

  “Belial.” The great voice boomed out, shaking the stone walls of the fortress.

  “I am here Messenger of Satan.” There was no mistaking who this creature was. One of the surviving Greater Heralds, a member of the Corps of Diabolical Heralds.

  “No Belial, Not a Messenger of Satan. Here me now. Satan is dead. The Lord Abigor now rules in his place. By my Lord Abigor’s ruling, the war with the humans is over. The City of Dis has surrendered and even now the humans move in to occupy it. My Lord Abigor commands you to lay down your arms and surrender to the humans. The war is lost, the fighting must end. So says my Lord Abigor.”

  The Greater Herald crashed a staff down on the floor, sending chips of stone flying.

  “NEVER!” Belial’s voice thundered around the hall, causing a stir of alarm from the assembled court.

  “It is His Infernal Majesty Abigor’s will.” The Greater Herald spoke what was to him a simple truth not to be countermanded.

  “Abigor is a traitor, a coward who surrendered to save his own life. Now he is a mindless puppet of the humans. I say he is unfit to rule. I spit upon his will and his commands. If Our Rightful Lord Satan has died, then it is I, I who was his favorite, I who was the only one to strike a blow against the humans, I who shall assume his throne.”

  “So you may claim. But Abigor occupies the throne and has been acclaimed as ruler of Hell. He has challenged any who might disagree not to argue it with him but to do so with the humans. Those same humans who have destroyed every army in Hell at trifling cost to themselves. They stand behind Abigor now. And I note that the Adamantine Fortress has already been the subject of their wrath. It looks a little damaged from the experience. Submit Belial. And make your peace with the humans. My message ends.”

  Belial looked at the Greater Herald and then looked at the Great Trident beside him, one that had just been delivered and was fitted with a naga in place and was charged up. His foot reached out and he kicked it so the barrel was in line with the Herald. One closed contact and the bolt flashed out, striking the Greater Herald full in the chest. The creature went down, its chest torn open, its blood already starting to burn its flesh. There was an awed silence in the great hall, nobody, dared to kill the Greater Heralds. Unless they were human of course, they killed everything that got in their way, Greater Heralds included. But demons never killed the personal representatives of the rulers of Hell. Belial looked at the audience and measured his power. It was growing fast and had just been confirmed.

  “So perish all traitors to Hell. Surrender? Never. My orders from Satan were to destroy human cities and that is what we shall do. This Herald of the Traitor Abigor has received my reply to his insulting message. Now the humans shall receive my reply to theirs. Their cities shall burn. Yulupki, the chorus is ready?”

  “It is Sire, although two more days…”

  “Will be two days too long. We move out tomorrow at dawn. Are the shrines at Okthuura Jorkastrephas ready?”

  “They are.”

  “Then there is no reason to wait. My first act as the new ruler of Hell will be to bring the humans to their knees. I say this again, their cities will burn. This is their legacy from Satan just as my supreme power is his legacy to me.”

  Belial gazed around the great hall again, drinking in his new-found power and status. His planning and scheming had worked better than he had any right to expect. With Satan dead and Abigor a traitor, all hell would rally to him. From a humble and forgotten count to the Supreme Ruler, the Infernal Majesty of Hell, he had much to thank the humans for. Not that he intended to show any gratitude for their services to him of course.

  City of Dis. Hell

  The Humvee drove down the street, the center of a convoy of five vehicles. The first pair contained troops from DIMO(N), the fourth was a communications truck, the last contained more troops. The center vehicle contained Julie Adams and a mass of electronic equipment. Every so often, her mind reached out, amplified by the electronics and touched a mind she knew all too well.

  “He’s here Jack. That building there.”

  “Got it ma’am.” The convoy came to a halt and the troops started to dismount, their. 50 caliber M4s swinging into firing pos
ition with comfortable ease. It seemed a long time since the M4 carbine had fired the puny. 223 caliber round.

  Julie dismounted also, touching her hat to make sure the tinfoil screen that stood between her and madness was still in place. These days, every cap on sale, be it a baseball cap or a British bowler had its tinfoil lining – and the days when a man or women was seen without a cap were also long gone. Building contractors were making a fortune, rebuilding houses, apartment blocks and office complexes with continuous metal linings built into their walls. Just one part of the way humanity was reacting to its new reality.

  The soldiers kicked the door of the house down without any real effort. It was flimsy, a nothing when matched with steel boots. Inside a group of demons, some male, some female, cowered at the sight of humans with guns. They knew what guns were now, there wasn’t a family in Dis that hadn’t lost many of its males to humans with guns.

  “Domiklespharatu. Where is he?” Julie rapped the words out, impatiently, angrily. She was carrying Desert Eagle handgun, also chambered for. 50AE ammunition. It was a very popular hand gun these days for people who liked semi-automatic pistols. People who liked revolvers tended to go for the Smith and Wesson 500. Then she looked around the house. It wasn’t what she had expected. She’d thought Domiklespharatu was a prince living in a great palace somewhere, not a hut that was barely more than a hovel. A slightly better hovel than those around it, agreed, but still a hovel. Across the room, one of the females gasped, another pointed to a curtain-covered doorway.

  Julie went through it, brushing the dirty curtain to one side. “Remember me Domiklespharatu? Remember what…”

  Then she stopped. It was Domiklespharatu all right, but he was as little as she had imagined as this house had been. He was cowering against a wall, shaking with fear, his eyes already beginning to glaze over. As she watched, he started to lose control of his bowels, urinating on the floor in sheer panic. And it was hardly surprising, Domiklespharatu was barely a half-grown kidling.

  “It was a game, it was just a game,” he was whimpering with fear, trying to drop to his knees to grovel in front of her yet he had lost the muscle control needed to do it.

  “Just a game.” Julie looked at him with loathing. All the misery she had endured for years was ‘just a game’. “And you think that made it all right.” She lifted up her Desert Eagle, feeling the comfortable bulk of it in her hands. She had dreamed of this ever since her tinfoil hat had brought her sanity back.

  Domiklespharatu looked down the bore, his mind seeing it grow by the second. “My father said it was all right. He gave you to me to play with. It was just a game. Please, I didn’t know you’d…”

  “You didn’t know I’d come here. You didn’t know you would have to face what you did to me.”

  That did it. Domiklespharatu lost whatever was left of his composure and burst into child-like crying. Julie stared at him, her gun still aimed, held steadily in the approved two-handed grip. ‘It was just a game’, the words running through her mind. As if that made it all right. Then she thought some more, about the people on earth who thought that adding ‘just kidding’ to the end of a phrase made everything all right, no matter how rude or offensive they’d been. Or the humans on the internet who thought that they could do what they liked to people’s lives because they’d never have to face the victims of their ‘games’. Were they actually that different from Domiklespharatu? If she killed this one, shouldn’t she kill them as well? She thought of one friend of hers whose life had nearly been wrecked by an internet user who’d tricked him into doing a highly illegal search on the FBI’s server. Wasn’t he just as bad as Domiklespharatu?

  The Desert Eagle was still aimed at the sniveling wreck on the floor. Quietly, one of the DIMO(N) troopers stood behind Julie, watching her aiming the pistol at the baldrick. “Is that really worth a bullet ma’am. Bit of a waste if you ask me.”

  “You didn’t have him in your mind for all those years Jack. You didn’t have him tearing at you, wrecking you. If it hadn’t been for James and all the others who sorted this thing out, I’d still be like that.” Then she sighed and the barrel of the Desert Eagle lowered. “But you’re right. He’s not worth it.”

  Julie Adams walked over and spat on Domiklespharatu. “We won, you little shit. Just like I told you, we came for you and we never stopped and we won. And when we did, you weren’t worth the effort of killing. Just remember that. You weren’t worth the effort of twitching my finger and blowing your brains all over that wall.”

  Julie turned and left the house, sliding into the front passenger seat of the Humvee. “You know Jack, that felt good.”

  Chapter Eighty Three

  Hills Around The Underground Fortress of Palelabor, Tartarus, Hell

  “Team-One reporting in Sarge, there’s life down there.” Cassidy shifted her position on the rocks and steadied her binoculars on the gates concealed in the canyon walls. Whoever had built the approach had done a fine job of concealing it, the canyon itself had a narrow entrance that was lost in the folds of the rock. It was narrow, so much so that the baldricks had difficulty using it. Behind that restricted path, the canyon opened up but the rocks had a marked overhang and shadowed the gates that lay underneath them. Even then, those gates were masked by more variations in the rock walls. Somebody stumbling across the canyon would have to go almost to the farthest end before the gates became visible. McElroy’s team had steered reconnaissance aircraft in over the site and they hadn’t seen a thing. Even using the battery of image modification technologies available, the underground fortress was virtually invisible.

  “What’s happening?” Tucker McElroy crawled up to the observation position. His team was split in two parts, one was watching the gates themselves, the other the path that led away from the canyon towards the daughter-volcanoes that marked the flanks of the great cone overhead.

  “Can’t see anything yet. Team One reports that the gates have opened and that there appears to be some sort of procession emerging but.. hold one Sarge.” Cassidy listened to the radio again. “Make that a definite on the procession emerging. Baldricks on foot, rhinolobsters with a burden, looks like those snake things, Nagas intel called them. They’re going down the canyon now, we should be seeing them soon.”

  “Good. DeVanzo, get the laser sight set up. Cassidy, stay on watch, let me know as soon as that procession appears. Walsch, radio. Patch me through to Saber.”

  It took a couple of minutes to get through to Saber, the duty submarine on Communications watch. As far as McElroy knew, there were three submarines offshore who rotated radio watch between them. All used the Saber code-name as required and there was no indication which boat was actually answering.

  “Saber. Sitrep?” Submarines didn’t like transmitting, it ran against their collective ethos and the messages were terse.

  “We have activity, procession now leaving the underground fortress. From intel, it looks like another volcano attack being initiated. We are setting up the laser target designator now.”

  “Confirmed. Wait.” The radio went silent for a couple of minutes. “Ready to launch. Twenty four cruise ready. Half and half. ETA 15 minutes from launch. Indicate when firing is needed.” The radio went dead again.

  “Right guys. As soon as we give the word, there will be twenty four Tomahawks inbound. Cassidy, any sight of the target yet?” In just a few seconds, the procession had become a target.

  “Emerging through the canyon now Sarge. Confirming, baldricks on foot with tridents, rhinolobsters with, confirmed Sarge, they have nagas coiled on their backs.”

  “Saber, confirm target is volcano-initiating party. Fire when ready.”

  “On the way.”

  The seconds ticked by and turned into minutes. Ten minutes after the launch confirmation, DeVanzo turned his laser designator to active and trained the dot on the ground just in front of the column that was advancing across the plain towards the volcanoes about twelve miles away. McElroy was amused to no
te that they’d be passing the ruins of their previous home on the way. If they lived that long of course.

  “Remember not to shine the laser on the baldricks until after the missiles start to arrive.” McElroy’s voice was urgent, the baldrick’s skin was sensitive to laser light and shining it on them might give them enough warning to get clear.

  “I know that” DeVanzo spoke irritably, annoyed at the interruption disturbing his concentration. He was holding the designation dot just in front of the feet of the leading baldrick. He’d flip it back as soon as he heard the Tomahawks making their run.

  He didn’t get that much warning, the first group of three missiles skimmed over the hill to their east and started the run down towards the column before he could register their presence. Originally, the Tomahawks had been GPS-guided but the Global Positioning System didn’t work in Hell and it was looking increasingly unlikely that it ever would. The older option, radar terrain mapping and matching required accurate maps of the target area and those would come eventually, but not now. So, for want of a better choice, the missiles had been modified to use laser designation.

  The first salvo of three missiles had unitary warheads and the explosion of the 700 pound charges enveloped the head of the column in rolling orange-red fireballs. Through her binoculars, Cassidy saw the baldricks start running sideways trying to get away from the onslaught they knew had to come. Word from the survivors of Abigor’s and Beelzebub’s armies had spread fast, when the humans started shooting with their missiles, the only way to survive was to run far and fast. And so they did, or they tried to. Cassidy swung her binoculars back on to the great Rhinolobsters. They had been abandoned on the track and the magnification of her binoculars allowed her to see the great beasts swinging their heads around, looking for an enemy to gore, while the terrified nagas on their backs screamed and tried to struggle free.